Downbelow Station

Troops boiled out onto the dock, formed up, with shouts of orders, took up positions relieving the rifle-bearing crewmen, armored figures, alike and implacable. And of a sudden there was another figure from high up the curve, a shout, and other troops came from the recess of the shops and offices along that stretch, from the bars and sleepovers, troops left behind, rejoining their comrades of the Fleet, carrying their wounded or dead with them. There was reunion, a wavering in the disciplined lines that took them in, embracings and cheers raised. Damon pressed as close to the concealing machinery as he could, and Josh shrank down beside him.

An officer bellowed orders and the troops started to move in order, from the docks toward the green nine entry, and while some held it with leveled rifles, some advanced within it.

Damon shifted back, farther and farther within the shadows, and Josh moved with him. Shouts reached them, the echoing bellow of a loudspeaker: Clear the corridor. Suddenly there were shouts and screams and firing. Damon leaned his head against the machinery and listened, eyes shut, once and twice felt Josh flinch at the now-familiar sounds and did not know whether he did also.

It’s dying, he thought with exhausted calm, felt tears leak from his eyes. He shivered finally. Call it what they would, Mazian had not won; there was no possibility that the outnumbered Company ships had beaten off Union for good. It was only a skirmish, decision postponed. There would be more such, until there was no more Fleet and no more Company, and what became of Pell would be in other hands. Jump had outmoded the great star stations. There were worlds now, and the order and priority of things had changed. The military had seen it. Only the Konstantins had not. His father had not, who had believed in a way neither Company nor Union, but Pell’s — that kept the world it circled in trust, that disdained precautions within itself, that valued trust above security, that tried to lie to itself and believe that Pell’s values could survive in such times.

There were those who could shift from side to side, play any politics going. Jon Lukas could do so; evidently had. If Mazian had sense to judge men, he would surely see what Jon Lukas was and reward him as he deserved. But Mazian did not need honest men, only men who would obey him, and impose Mazian’s kind of law.

And Jon would come out a survivor, on either side. It was his own mother’s stubbor

Only he could not. If he had Jon in front of him now — hate… hate of this measure was a new experience. A helpless hate… like Josh’s… but there was revenge, if he lived. Not to harm Pell. But to make Jon Lukas’s sleep less than easy. While a single Konstantin was loose, any holder of Pell had to feel less secure. Mazian, Union, Jon Lukas — none of them would own Pell until they had gotten him; and that he could make difficult for them, for as long as possible.

Chapter Three

There was still no answer. Emilio pressed Miliko’s hand against his shoulder and kept leaning over Ernst, at com, while other staff clustered about. No word out of station; no word from the Fleet; Porey and his entire force had gone hurtling offworld into a silence that persisted into yet another hour.

“Give it up,” he told Ernst, and when there was a murmuring among other staff: “We don’t even know who’s in control up there. No panic, hear me? I don’t want any of that nonsense. If you want to stand around main base and wait for Union to land, fine. I won’t object. But we don’t know. If Mazian loses he might take out this facility, you understand? Might just want to destroy it beyond use. Sit here if you like. I’ve other ideas.”

“We can’t run far enough,” a woman said. “We can’t live out there.”

“Our chances aren’t good here either,” Miliko said.

The murmuring swelled into panic.

“Listen to me,” Emilio said. “Listen. I don’t think their landing in the bush is that easy, unless they’ve got equipment we haven’t heard of. And maybe they’ll try blowing up this place; but maybe they’d do that anyway, and I’d rather have cover. Miliko and I are taking a trip down the road. We’re not going to work for Union, if that’s what it comes to up there. Or stand here and deal with Porey when he comes back.”

The murmuring was lower this time, more frightened than panicked. “Sir,” said Jim Ernst, “you want me to stay by com?”

“You want to stay here?”

“No,” Ernst said.

Emilio nodded slowly, looked about at all of them. “We can take the portable compressors, the field dome… dig in when we get somewhere secure. We can survive out there. Our new bases do it. We can.”

Heads nodded dazedly. It was too hard to realize what they were facing. He himself did not, and knew it.

“Flash it down the road too,” he said. “Roll up the operation or stay on as they choose. I’m not forcing anyone to head into the bush if he doesn’t think he can make it. One thing we’ve already seen to, that Union won’t get their hands on the Downers. So now we make sure they don’t get their hands on us. We get food from the emergency stores we didn’t mention to Porey; we take the portable com; take some essential units out of the machines we can’t take with us… and we just take a walk down the road and into the trees, by truck as far as we can take the trucks, dump the heavy stuff in hiding, carry it to our new dig bit by bit. They might blast the road and the trucks, but any other answer is going to take them time to mount. If anyone wants to stay here and work for the new management… or Porey, if he shows up again, then do it. I can’t fight you and I’m not interested in trying.”

There was near silence. Then some pushed out of the group and started gathering up personal belongings. More and more did. His heart was beating very hard. He pushed Miliko toward their quarters, to gather up the few of their belongings they could take. It could go the other way. Something could start among them. They could deliver him and Miliko to the new owners, if that was what it came to, gain points with the opposition. They could do that. There were far and away enough of them… and Q, and the workers out there…

Of his family… no word. His father would have sent some message if he could. If he could.

“Make it quick,” he told Miliko. “Word of this is going every which way out there.” He slipped one of the base’s only handguns into his pocket as he snatched up his heaviest jacket; he gathered up a boxful of cylinders for the breathers, took up a canteen and the short-handled axe. Miliko took the knife and a couple of blankets rolled up, and they went out again, into the confusion of staff packing up blanketrolls in the middle of the floor. They stepped over it. “Get the pump shut down,” he told a man. “Get the co

“Q,” Miliko said. “What do we do with them?”

“Give them the same choice. Get down the line, put it to the regular workers, if they haven’t heard yet.” They passed the lock door, through the second and up the wooden steps into night-bound chaos, with people moving as fast as the limited air would let them. There was the sound of a crawler starting up. “Be careful,” he yelled at Miliko as their paths diverged. He headed down over the crushed rock path, down and up again onto the shoulder of Q’s hill, where the patched, irregular dome showed wan yellow light through its plastic, where Q folk were outside, dressed, looking as if they had had no more sleep than others this night.