Downbelow Station

She shrugged on her jacket and walked out and down the corridor to the bridge, stood there and looked about her as bewildered mainday and alterday crew turned and stared back at her.

“Open intraship,” she said. “All stations and quarters, every speaker.”

The com tech pushed the main switch.

“They ran us off the docks,” she said, clipping a button mike to her collar, as she did when they were on casual op. She reached her own station, the control post beside Graff’s, central to the bowed aisles. “Everyone’s aboard. Crew, troops, everyone’s aboard. Mainday to stations, alterday to backup. Flash battle stations. I’m pulling us out of here.”

There was stu

“No undock, rip her loose.” She flung herself back into her own cushion, reached for straps. She would have taken helm herself, but she did not, at the moment, trust her reflexes. “Mr. Graff, skin her by Pell and take her out bearing…” She sucked air. “Bearing nowhere at all. I’ll take her then.”

“Instructions,” Graff asked calmly. “If fired on do we fire?”

“No holds barred, Mr. Graff. Take her out.”

There were questions coming in via ship’s com, troop officers belowdecks wanting to know the emergency. The riders were on patrol. There was no bringing them in for consultation. There was no bringing them in at all. Graff was ru

“Execute,” Graff said.

There was a crash, the lock seal, the emergency disengage; and a jolt that wrenched them out of Pell’s slow spin. They hammered into a zenith rise and mains cut in, slammed them over station. Something hit the hull and slid: trailing co

“Mallory!” a voice shouted over ship-to-ship.

It was alterday. Captains were abed. Crews and troops were scattered on the dock and they had breached umbilicals…

She clenched her teeth as Norway hurtled over Pell’s far rim and headed for a course closer to a planet than comfortable. Held her breath and listened to the curses that crackled over com.

Pacific and Atlantic were ordered to intercept. They had not a prayer of getting into line in time, the rest of the Fleet in the way; and Norway had Downbelow coming up for cover. Australia was breaking loose from station, with no obstructions between them, and that was the danger. “Armscomp,” she ordered. “Aft screens. That’s Edger. Get him.”

No acknowledgment; Tiho reached for switches in rapid motion and lights flashed, screens shaping it up.

They had no riders for tail cover. Australia had none for bow. Norway’s combat seals went into place, segmenting them. G was increasing as cylinder synch calculated maneuver-possible. Over com came a frantic query from one of their own riders, asking instructions. She gave no answers.

Downbelow loomed in vid and they were still accelerating all out. Approach warnings were flashing. Australia was the bigger ship, the more at hazard.

Screens and lights flashed. They were fired on.

vii

“No.” Mazian hovered by his post, a hand pressed to the earplug while his bridge swirled in chaos. “Hold where you are, hold for troop pickup. Warn all troops blue dock is breached. Pick up any trooper on green no matter what ship. Over.”

Acknowledgments crackled back. Pell was in chaos, a whole dock breached, air rushing out the umbilicals, pressure dropped. Debris floated between Europe and India, troopers who had been on the dock, dead and drifting, sucked out when an access two meters by two was ripped from its moorings without warning. The dock was void. Everything had gone. Ships’ locks had closed automatically the instant the depressurization hit, cutting off even those closest to safety.

“Keu,” he said, “report.”

“I have given the necessary orders,” the imperturbable voice came back. “All troops on Pell are moving for green.”

“On the run… Porey, Porey are you still in link?”

“This is Porey. Over.”

“Pass orders: destroy Downbelow base and execute all workers.”

“Yes, sir,” Porey said. Anger vibrated through his tone. “Done.”

Mallory, Mazian thought, a word which had become a curse, an obscenity.

Orders were not yet disseminated, plans not firm. They had to assume the worst now and act on it. Disrupt the station’s controls. Get the troops off and run for it… they had to have them. Ruin anything useful.

Sun. Earth. It had to be now.

And Mallory… if once they could get their hands on her…

viii

Jon Lukas turned from devastation on the screens to chaos on the boards, techs scrambling frantically to relay calls to damage control and security.

“Sir,” one asked him, “sir, there’re troops trapped in blue, a sealed compartment. They want to know when we can get to them. They want to know how long.”

He froze. He had stopped having answers. The instructions did not come. There were only the guards, who were always about him, Hale and his comrades who were always with him, day and night, his personal and unshakable nightmare.

They had their rifles on the techs now. He turned, looked at Hale to appeal to him to use the helmet com to contact the Fleet, to ask information, whether it was attack or malfunction, or what had sent a Fleet carrier ripping over their heads and three others on its tail. Of a sudden Hale and his men stopped, all at the same time, listening to something only they could hear. And all at once they turned, leveled rifles.

“No!” Jon screamed.

They fired.

ix

There was little chance for sleep. They took it when they could, man and hisa, crouched the one in Q dome and the other in the mud outside, sleeping as best they might, shift by shift in their clothes, in the same mud-caked, stinking blankets, what sleep they were allowed. The mills never stopped; and the work went on day and night.

The flimsy doors of the lock slammed, one after the other, and Emilio lay stiff and still, apprehension confirmed — a sound had wakened him. It was not time to wake, surely it was not time. It seemed only minutes ago that he had lain down to sleep. He heard the patter of rain overhead; heard a number of boots crunching the gravel outside. There was no shuttle down; they roused both shifts of them out only for loading.

“Up and out,” a trooper shouted.

He moved. He heard moans about him, the other men wakened, winced in the strong light which swept over them. He rolled out of the cot, grimaced with the pain of strained muscles and blistered feet onto which he pulled water-stiffened boots. Fear worked in him, small things wrong, different from other nighttime rousings. He fastened his clothing, put on his jacket, groped at his throat for the breather mask which always hung there. Light hit his face again, drew groans of misery from others. He walked for the door among others who were going; outside, through the second door, up the wooden steps to the path. More lights in his face. He flung his arm up to shield his eyes.