Precursor

“You take Graham’s orders.”

“Yes, sir,” Kaplan said faintly. “We’re all here. Andresson; Polano, the lot of us. Got to the rifles, couldn’t get the rigs. We’re armed. There’s a bunch of atevi on the station.”

God help us, Bren thought. The monitoring.

“Resources,” Bren said loudly. Harshly. “About which we won’t speak.”

Ramirez reached for the side of the bed, tried to put a foot off it, and didn’t. “Damn,” he said, “damn!”

“Don’t get up,” Jase said. “Leave it to us, sir. Hear me? Leave it to us.”

“Get it done!” Ramirez said, in pain, and Jase pulled away, drawing Kaplan with him toward Bren; and there was no choice but to take the light with them, out to the hall where they gathered to plan their next move.

“What are we going to do?” Kroger caught his arm. “What canwe do? You’re talking about getting a communications panel to work. You want it to reach C1. If they were overhearing us, they already know the captain’s here and they don’t give a damn… you think they’re going to listen to orders?”

It was a point. It at least argued they might be free of bugs.

“Then we assume they’re not overhearing us,” he said, “and we give them a—”

The security door opened, not their doing, a spotlight shone at them.

Bren shoved Jase to the wall and down as Kaplan and Kroger just stood helpless in the light.

Banichi, however, had not ducked, and the light went down, spun like some alien sun about a hall turned chaotic with bursts of electric charge, and Jago moved, and Tano, three shadows of giant size against the light. Bren remembered the gun in his pocket. He snatched it out, stood up and aimed it, heart pounding, but his eyes found no targets, just three atevi, a suddenly lengthened hallway, and a human lying flat in that truncated circle of light, struggling weakly under Banichi’s foot.

“Others have escaped,” Banichi said. “I advise against pursuit, Bren-ji.”

Tamun’s supporters might be few, but misinformed crew might number far too many to risk casualties, even in their dire straits; that was his thought about pursuit. But then he saw what the straggler was wearing.

“Is that a security rig? Are they security?”

“One believes this man is,” Banichi said. “Watch the corridor,” he said to Jago and Tano, and removed his foot from the struggling captive, who scrambled away, but only as far as the wall and an abortive attempt to rise.

Jase and Kaplan together seized on that man and spun him against the wall.

“Bobby,” Kaplan said to the man as he struggled to get loose, “Bobby, you hold it, hear! Don’t make a fuss. The old man’s alive, you hear me? Ramirez is alive. You want to see, or do I beat your head in?”

A wide-eyed stare met the erratic light as Kroger retrieved the intruders’ lantern.

“Yeah,” the man named Bobby said, “yeah. If that’s so, I want to see him.”

“We get the rig,” Andresson said. “So turn it over. Tamun’s gone right out of his head. Shot the old man. Now he’s shot Frank for no good reason. We got to get rid of him.”

“You say!”

“We all say! These aliens could’ve diced you for the cycler and didn’t, so shut it down and be polite. They’re sane. Tamun’s crazy. You’re alive and the rest are still breathing. Think it through.”

The wind seemed to go out of Bobby then, and he let Jase and Kaplan both help him up and haul the rig off him, piece by piece, Kaplan fitting it on as they went.

More light came into the corridor, this time from the chest-lamp of Bobby’s equipment as Kaplan turned it on.

“Let Bobby talk to the captain,” Jase said, “and then let Bobby go, to tell anybody he wants to. Tamun’s out. He’s damn-all out the air lock when Ramirez gets hold of him.”

“What’s Ramirez doing with the aliens?”

“Surviving,” Jase said. “No thanks to the human sods who won’t help him.”

“You come with me,” Kaplan said, taking Bobby in tow.

“The light is a target,” Jago remarked quietly in Mosphei’, never taking her eyes from the hall. Her pistol was in her hand. “Dangerous, Gin-nadi.”

Gi

“A light down the hall,” Jago said, once that light was shut down. “Growing brighter.”

Bren didn’t see one in the direction she was looking, but his eyesight was nothing like hers in dim light. That fitful reflectivity of atevi eyes showed now as Tano glanced his way in the small light Jago held aimed at the floor, and it was more than an ornamental distinction.

“Take cover, nandi,” Tano said.

“Someone’s coming,” Bren said to Kroger and the rest. “They’re coming back. Everyone under cover.”

The pocket-torch went out immediately. He had the illusion of total blindness, then, but he heard someone coming up near him, from the direction that Bobby and Kaplan had gone, and his ears said two men, at least two, in hallway they controlled.

“I’m with the old man.” A stranger’s voice somewhat dismayed him. Bobby’s, he thought, where he had expected Jase’s. “He says go, I go. Let me loose down the hall. I’ll spread the word. Don’t go shooting at my team.”

“Then go,” he said. He whispered, more loudly, “Jago, Tano, Bobby-nadi is coming through. Let him reach his associates.”

“There is hazard,” Jago said. “Bobby-nadi, speak out to others down the hall. They are attempting stealth.”

“You stay put down there!” Bobby yelled out into the dark, and the shout resounded like the trump of doom. “The captain’s here, and they got him alive, and Tamun’s a bleeding liar! You can talk to ’em, hear?”

There was a silence, a lengthy, anxious silence.

“Prove it’s you!”

“Tad,” Bobby shouted out, “you remember who broke the water tap and flooded the section! Would I be telling you that if it wasn’t me?”

“Bobby?” came a voice out of the dark, from well around the corner. “Bobby? Are you with them?”

“Yeah. And I’m all right, and Leo’s here and Frank and his team, and Tamun shot Ramirez with a bullet, Tad. Spread thaton the net. Shot the old man with a bullet. You can talk to Leo on the net. He’s got my rig on.”

“Tad,” Kaplan said, into the communications on the body unit. “You hear me? Frank Modan’s gotten a bad shock. Blew a hell of a lot of his rig out. There’s the lot of us trying to save the captain, but he’s in a bad way, shot in the chest. We got a tape, which is him, which I can play for you, if you’ll just plug into Cl and pass it on, and keep passing it. You’re still live, aren’t you? You’re hearing me loud and clear.”

“They’re telling the truth!” Bobby shouted up the corridor by voice. “Tell Cl just the hell doit, all right?”

“You got that recorder, sir?” Kaplan asked under his breath.

“I have it,” Jase said. “No adapter, just take it in on directional mike.”

The small sound of the recorder’s play button, the initial whisper of the leader sounded u

“ Ramirez here.” The recorder gave out that thread of a voice. “ Don’t believe a thing Pratap Tamun says, don’t take his orders for spit. I’m alive now only because Jase got me out. Tamun and his cousins are guilty as sin. Jase Graham to sit fourth. Jase, you get him out, hear!”

Chapter 27

“Do you read?” Kaplan asked when the recording played out. “Tad? You hear that loud and clear?”

Kaplan paused a moment, and his expression showed alarm. “There’s somebody moving up on them.— Tad! You get to us, hear! Run!—Ma’am, mister,” this, incongruously, to Banichi and Jago. “They’re moving our way, they have to! Don’t shoot!”

“I understand, Kaplan-nadi,” Jago said, a voice that was calm itself. “Banichi?”

“ Cenediis behind them,” Banichi said.