Downbelow Station

“They’re going to be checking all over white. I stumbled into an alarm over there… may have killed someone. They’re going to be stirred up, searching for someone using accesses…”

“Then how much time can we have left to think it over? If we don’t — ” He stopped, looked sharply about at Ngo’s wife, who brought them bowls of stew, setting them on the table. “We’re going somewhere. Keep it hot for us.”

Dark eyes stared at them both. Quietly, as everything about the woman was quiet, she gathered up the bowls and took them to another table.

“Won’t take long to find out,” Josh said. “Damon. Please.”

“What are they talking of doing? Rushing central?”

“Causing trouble. Getting to the shuttle. Setting up resistance on Downbelow… a small number of us. Damon, it all relies on your knowledge. Your skill with comp, and your knowledge of the passages.”

“They have a pilot?”

“I think there’s someone who is, yes.”

He tried to gather his wits. Shook his head. “No.”

“What do you mean, no? You talked about a shuttle. You pla

“Not to have another riot on the station. Not with more people killed, in a plan that’s never going to work…”

“Come and talk to them. Come with me. Or don’t you trust me? Damon, how long can we wait on chances? You haven’t even heard it out.”

He let go his breath. “I’ll come,” he said. “They’re going to start checking id’s in green soon enough, I’m afraid. I’ll talk to them. Maybe I know better ways. Quieter ones. How far is this place?”

“Mascari’s.”

“Across the corridor.”

“Yes. Come on.”

He came, out amongst the tables, past the bar.

“You,” Ngo said sharply as they passed. He stopped. “You don’t come back here if you bring trouble. You hear me? I helped you. I don’t want that kind of pay for it. You hear me?”

“I hear,” Damon said. There was no time to smooth it over. Josh waited by the front door. He walked out to join him, looked left and right and crossed the corridor with him into the noisier and darker interior of Mascari’s.

A man at the left of the entry rose and joined them. “This way,” the man said, and because Josh went without question, Damon swallowed his protests and went with them, to the far side of the room, which was so dark it was hard to avoid chairs.

A dim light burned in a curtained alcove. They went inside, he and Josh, but their guide vanished.

And in another moment a second man came in at their backs, young and scar-faced. Damon did not know him. “They’re coming,” the young man said, and quickly the curtains moved again, admitted two more to the alcove.

“Kressich,” Damon muttered. The other was not familiar to him.

“You know Mr. Kressich?” the newcomer asked.

“Only by sight. Who are you?”

“Name’s Jessad… Mr. Konstantin, is it? The younger Konstantin?”

Recognition of any kind made him nervous. He looked at Josh, finding discrepancies, bewildered. They were supposed to know him. This man should not be surprised.

“Damon,” Josh said, “this man is from Q. Let’s talk details. Sit down.”

He did so, at the small table, uncertain and apprehensive as the others settled with him. A second time he looked at Josh. He trusted Josh. Trusted him with his life. Would hand him his life at the asking, having no better use for it. And Josh had lied to him. Everything he knew of the man insisted Josh was lying.

Are we under some threat? he wondered wildly, seeking some cause for this charade. “What kind of proposal are we talking about?” he asked, wishing only that he could get himself out of here, and get Josh out, and get it all straight.

“When Josh said that he had contacts,” Jessad said slowly, “I didn’t suspect who. You’re far better than I dared hope.”

“Am I?” He resisted the temptation to look again in Josh’s direction. “What precisely do you hope, Mr. Jessad from Q?”

“Josh didn’t tell you?”

“Josh said I’d want to talk to you.”

“About finding a way to get this station back into your hands?”

He did not change expression in the least. “You think you have the means to do that.”

“I have men,” Kressich interjected. “Coledy does. We can raise a thousand men in five minutes.”

“You know what would happen then,” Damon said. “We’d have ourselves neck deep in troopers. Bodies in the corridors, if they didn’t vent us all.”

“You know,” Jessad said quietly, “that the whole station is theirs. To do with as they please. Except for you, there’s no authority to speak for the old Pell. Lukas… is done. He says only what Mazian hands him to read. Has guards about him everywhere. One choice is bodies in the corridors, true. The other is what they’ve given Lukas, isn’t it? They’d give you prepared speeches to read too. They’d let you alternate with Lukas, or outright dispose of you. After all, they do have Lukas, and he takes orders… doesn’t he?”

“You put it neatly, Mr. Jessad.” And what about the shuttle? he thought, leaning back in his chair. He looked at Josh, who met his eyes with a troubled stare. He glanced back again. “What’s your proposal?”

“You get us access to central. We take care of the rest”

“It’ll never work,” Damon said. “We’ve got warships out there. You can’t hold them off by holding central. They’d blow us; don’t you count on that?”

“I have means to make sure it works.”

“So let’s have it. Make your proposal, flat, and let me have the night to think about it.”

“Let you walk around knowing names and faces?”

“You know mine,” he reminded Jessad, and obtained a slight flicker of the eyes.

“Trust him,” Josh said. “It will work.”

Something crashed outside, even over the music. The curtains came inward, with Coledy, who landed atop the table with a hole burned in his forehead. Kressich sprang up shrieking in terror. Damon hurled himself back, hit the wall with Josh beside him, and Jessad clawed for a pocket. Shrieks punctuated the music outside, and armored troops with leveled rifles filled the doorway of the alcove.

“Stand still!” one ordered.

Jessad whipped out the gun. A rifle fired, and there was a burned smell as Jessad hit the floor, twitching. Damon stared at the troopers and the leveled rifles in dazed horror. Josh, at his side, did not move.

A trooper hauled another man in by the collar — Ngo, who flinched from Damon’s stare and looked apt to be sick.

“These the ones?” the trooper asked.

Ngo nodded. “Made me hide them out. Threatened me. Threatened my family. We want to go over to white. All of us.”

“Who’s this one?” The trooper nodded toward Kressich.

“Don’t know,” Ngo said. “Don’t know him. Don’t know these others.”

“Take them out,” the officer said. “Search them. Dead ones too.”

It was over. A hundred thoughts poured through Damon’s mind… going for the gun in his pocket — ru

And Josh… and his mother and his brother…

They laid hands on him, turned him against the wall and made him spread his limbs, him and Josh beside him, and Kressich. They searched his pockets and took the cards and the gun, which in itself was cause for a shooting on the spot

They turned him about again, back to the wall, and looked at him more carefully.

“You’re Konstantin?”

He gave no answer. One hit him in the belly and doubled him, and he flung himself at the man shoulder-on and low, carried him and a chair over under the table. A boot slammed into his back and he was trampled in a fight which broke above him. He tore free of the man he had stu

A rifle clubbed him. His knees loosened, refusing to drive him to his feet; a second blow, on the arm stretched on the table. He went out, doubled as a boot slammed into him, stayed doubled against the blows until they knocked him half senseless. Then they hauled him up between two of them. “Josh,” he said dazedly. “Josh!”