Downbelow Station

viii

Something was going on outside. Damon walked over the littered floor of the dark shop and leaned there, trying again to see out the scarred window, jerked as the red explosion of a shot distorted in the scratches. There was screaming mingled with the grinding of machinery in operation.

“Whoever’s out there now, they’re moving this way and they’ve got guns.” He edged back from the door, moving carefully in the lessened G. Josh stooped, gathered up one of the rods that had been part of a ruined display, offered it. Damon took it and Josh got another for himself. He moved up near the doorway, and Josh went to the other side of it, back to the wall. There was no sound near them outside, a lot of shouting far away. Damon risked a look, the light coming from the other way, jerked back again at the sight of human shadows near the scarred window.

The door whipped open, carded from outside, someone with priority. Two men dashed in, guns drawn. Damon slammed the steel rod down on a head, eyes unfocusing for horror of it, and Josh hit from the other side. The men fell strangely in the low G, and a gun skittered loose. Josh scooped it up, fired twice to be sure, and one jerked, dying. “Get the gun,” Josh snapped, and Damon bent and pushed fastidiously at the body, found the unfamiliar plastic of the gun butt in a dead hand. Josh was on his knees, rolled the other body, began to strip it. “Clothes,” Josh said. “Cards. id’s that work.”

Damon laid the gun aside and swallowed his distaste, stripped the limp body, took off his own suit, struggled into the bloody coveralls… there would be men aplenty in the corridors with bloodstains on them. He searched the pockets for a card, found the papers there, found the card lying where the body’s left hand had dropped it. He canted the id folder to the light. Lee Anton Quale… Lukas Company…

Quale. Quale, from the Downbelow mutiny… and Jon Lukas’s employ; in Jon’s employ, and Jon had comp in his control — when Q happened to get the doors open, when Konstantins happened to have been murdered in Pell’s tightest security… when his card stopped working and murderers knew how to locate him — it was Jon up there.

A hand closed on his shoulder. “Come on, Damon.”

He rose, flinched as Josh used his gun to burn Quale’s face beyond recognition, the other corpse afterward. Josh’s own face was sweat-slicked in the light from the door, rigid with horror, but the reactions were right, a man whose instincts knew what they were doing. He headed for the dock and Damon ran with him, out into the light, slowed at once, for the docks were virtually bare. White dock seal was in place; the seal of green dock was hidden up the horizon. They walked gingerly across the front of the huge seal of white, got in among the gantries across the dock, walked along within that cover, while the horizon unfolded downward, showing them a group of men working at the docking machinery, moving slowly and carefully in reduced G. Corpses and papers and debris lay scattered all across the docks, out in open spaces which would be difficult to reach without being seen. “Enough cards lying out there,” Josh said, “to give us plenty of names.”

“For any lock not voice-keyed,” Damon murmured. He kept his eye to the men at work and those standing guard down by the green niner entry, visible at this range — walked out carefully to the nearest corpse, hoping it was a corpse, and not someone dazed or shamming. He knelt, still watching the workers, felt through the pockets and came up with a card and additional papers. He pocketed them and went to the next, while Josh plundered others. Then nerves sent him scurrying back to cover, and Josh joined him at once. They moved further up the dock.

“Blue seal is open,” he said, as that arch came down off horizon. He entertained a wild, momentary hope of hiding, getting to blue sector when the traffic in the corridors returned to normal, getting up to blue one and asking questions at gunpoint. It was fantasy. They were not going to live that long. He did not reckon they would.

“Damon.”

He looked, followed the direction Josh indicated, up through the gantry lines to the first berth in green: green light. A ship was in approach, whether Mazian’s or Union’s there was no telling. Com thundered out, echoing instructions in the emptiness. The ship was closing with the docking cone, coming in fast. “Come on,” Josh hissed at him, pulling at his arm, insisting on a break for green nine.

“The G isn’t going,” he murmured, resisting Josh’s urging. “Don’t you see it’s a trick? Central’s got the corridors cleared for their own forces to move in them. Those ships wouldn’t dock with G completely unstable; no way they’d risk that with a big ship. Just a little flux to quell the riot. And it won’t stay cleared. If we run into those corridors we’ll be in the middle of it. No. Stay put.”

“ECS501,” he heard over the loudspeaker then, and his heart lifted.

“One of Mallory’s riders,” Josh muttered at his side. “Mallory. Union’s retreated.”

He looked at Josh, at the hate which burned in the angel’s haggard face… hope cancelled.

The minutes passed. The ship snugged in. The dock crew ran to secure the umbilicals, thrust the co

A handful of men poured out of the obscuring periphery of the gantries, unarmored… two ru

“Get your head down,” Josh hissed, and Damon moved slowly, knelt by the brace of one of the movable tanks where Josh had taken closer cover, tried to see what was happening farther up, but there was a skein of umbilicals in the way. Mallory was using her own men for dock crews; but Jon Lukas must still be in command up in central, cooperating with Mazian, and in the pressure of Union attack, Mazian would choose efficiency over justice. Go out there, approach armed and nervous Company troops, raise a charge of murder and conspiracy while Jon Lukas physically held central and station, and Mazian had Union on his mind?

“I could go out there,” he said, unsure of his conclusions.

“They’d swallow you alive,” Josh said. “You’ve nothing to offer them.”

He looked at Josh’s face. Of the gentle man Adjustment had turned out… there was nothing left, but perhaps the pain. Set him at a comp board, Josh had said once, and he might remember comp; set him into war and he had other instincts. Josh’s thin hands clutched the gun between his knees, and his eyes were set on the arch of the dock, where Norway was moving in to dock. Hate. His face was pale and intense. He might do anything. Damon felt the butt of the pistol in his own right hand, shifted his grip on it, moved his forefinger onto the trigger. An Adjusted Unioner… whose Adjustment was coming undone, who hated, who might go on coming apart. It was a day for murders, when the dead out there were too many to count, when there were no rules left, no kinships, no friendships. War had come to Pell, and he had lived naive all his life. Josh was dangerous — had been trained to be dangerous — and nothing they had done to his mind had changed that.

Com a

“Don’t intend to,” Josh said without looking at him. “Only so you have as good sense.”

He let the gun to his side, finger slowly removed from the trigger, the taste of bile in his mouth. Norway was in solidly now, a second crashing of locks and joinings, a seal hissing into union.