Downbelow Station

Chapter Four

i

They were pulling back. Australia was veering off, Pacific and Atlantic gone off the track. Signy listened to the sigh of relief which ran the bridge as the cha

Norway was intact for the most part. Graff was still nominally at helm, but he had let it go to alterday’s Terschad for a moment, and spared a look at telemetry, his face bathed in sweat and set in a long-held grimace of concentration. G went off combat synch and weight became definite, comfortingly stable.

Signy stood up, listening to the reports of longscan, testing her reflexes. Stood steadily enough. Looked about her. Eyes glanced furtively in her direction, darted back to business. She cleared her throat and punched in general address. “This is Mallory. Looks like Australia has decided to cash it in too for the moment. They’ll all be pulling back to base and giving Mazian an assist. They’ll be taking Pell apart. That was the plan. They’ll be headed for Sol Station and Earth; and that was the plan. They’ll carry the war there. But without me. That’s the way it is. You’ve got your choice. You’ve got a choice. If you take my orders, we’re headed out our own way, going back to what we’ve always done. If you want to follow Mazian, I’m sure turning me in would pay your way back to him in style. Right now there can’t be anyone else he’d rather have his hands on. You go deal with Mazian, if enough of you want to. But for me… no. No one runs Norway but me so long as I’m in any condition to say so.”

A murmur came back over com. Cha

“Sit down!” she shouted at them. “You think this is a holiday?”

They were in danger. Australia might have been diversion. They were moving too fast for reliable scan now, and Atlantic’s position and Pacific’s were conjecture: anything could turn up out of the hazed comp projections of longscan, and there were riders loose.

“Rig for jump,” she said. “Lay for 58 deep. Keep us out of the way for a while.” Her own riders were still at Pell. With luck they could dodge long enough. Mazian would be too busy to bother. With sense they would lay low, trusting her, believing in her, that she would come back for them if she possibly could. She meant to. Had to. They desperately needed the protective riders. With any sense at all the riders would have scattered to the far side of everywhere when they realized Norway was ru

She put her mind from it and punched the med station. “How’s Di?”

“Di’s fine,” a familiar voice answered for himself. “Let me up there.”

“Not on your life.” She punched him out and pressed guard one. “Our prisoners break any bones in that?”

“All in one piece.”

“Bring them up here.”

She settled into her cushion, leaned back, watched the progress of events, mapped in her mind their position out of plane of the Pell System, moving out for safe jump, at half light speed. Damage control reported in, a compartment voided, a little portion of Norway’s gut spilled out into the cold, but not in a perso

Time to get out. For close to an hour the signals of what was going on at Pell had been flashing toward ships that would kick it on, until it ended up in Union scan. It was about to become an unhealthy region for bystanders.

A light went on her board. She powered her seat about, faced the prisoners who had come in the door aft, hands secured behind them, reasonable precaution in the tight aisles of the bridge. No one got on Norway’s bridge; no outsider… until these two. Special cases… Josh Talley and Konstantin.

“Reprieve,” she said. “Thought you’d both want to know.”

Perhaps they failed to understand. The looks they gave her were full of misgivings.

“We’ve quit the Fleet. We’re bound for the Deep, for good. You’re going to live, Konstantin.”

“Not for my sake.”

She gave a breath of a laugh. “Hardly. But you get the benefit of it, you see.”

“What’s happened to Pell?”

“Your speakers were live. You heard me. That’s what’s happening to Pell, and now Union has a choice, doesn’t it? Save Pell or chase after Mazian in hot pursuit. And we’re getting out of here so we don’t confuse the issue.”

“Help them,” Konstantin said. “For the love of God, wait. Wait and help them.”

A second time she laughed, looked sourly on Konstantin’s earnest face. “Konstantin, what could we do? Norway’s taking no refugees. Can’t. Let you off? Not under Mazian’s nose, or Union’s. They’d dust us so fast…”

But it could be done… when they went back after their riders, a pass by Pell…

“Mallory,” Josh said, coming closer to her, as close as the guards would let him. He shook at the restraint of their hands and she signed, so that they let him go. “Mallory… there is another choice. Go over. There’s a ship, you hear me? Named Hammer. You could clear yourself. You could stop this… and get amnesty.”

Something got through to Konstantin; the eyes went to Josh, to her, apprehensive.

“Does he know?” she asked Josh.

“No. Mallory — listen to me. Think, where does it go now? How far and how long?”

“Graff,” she said slowly. “Graff, we’re going back after our riders. Keep us set for jump. When Mazian clears the system, we’ll move in crosswise, maybe shoot this Konstantin fellow out where he can take his chances with Union; freighter might pick him up.”

Konstantin swallowed visibly, his lips bitten to a thin line.

“You know your friend’s Union,” she said. “Not was, you understand. Is. A Union agent. Special services. Probably knows a great deal that could be of use to us in our position. Places to avoid, what null points are known to the opposition…”

“Mallory,” Josh pleaded.

She shut her eyes. “Graff,” she said. “This Unioner is making sense to me. Am I drunk, or does it make sense?”

“They’ll kill us,” Graff said.

“So,” she said, “will Mazian. It goes on from here. To Sol. To a place where Mazian can find new pickings, gather strength. It’s not a fleet anymore. They’re looking for loot, things to keep themselves going. For the same thing we are. And all the null points we know, they know. That’s uncomfortable, Graff.”

“It is,” Graff acknowledged, “uncomfortable.”

She looked at Josh, looked again at Konstantin, whose intense face hoped, desperately hoped. She snorted disgust and looked at Graff, at helm. “That Union spotter. Lay course that way. They’ll jump out of scan when they get wind of us ru

“We’re going to run dead on them stumbling about here in the ’tween,” Graff muttered; and that was true. Space was wide, but there was a hazard of collision, the nearer they ran to that particular vector out of Pell, two intersecting courses relying on longscan.

“We take our chance,” she said. “Use the hail.”

She looked then at Josh Talley, at Konstantin. Smiled with all the bitterness in her. “So I play your game,” she said to Josh. “My way. Do you know their hailing codes?”