Explorer

“Alarm on four!” he called out, which happened to be the truth. “Alarm on four! They’re evacuating.”

The clerk looked at him in shock.

“Get out of here!” Bren said; and about that time his company exited the lift car. The clerk pasted himself to the wall.

“Grenade!” Jago said, and Bren translated it: “Grenade! Run! Ship’s boarding!”

As another noisemaker hit the corridor, siren shrieking, Gin’s voice saying over and over, “ Evacuate !”

Banichi and Jago ran for those doors, and Bren ran, Barnhart ran, and two of Ilisidi’s men ran with them. Down went the black bag, Banichi opened the flap, and handed Jago a small object and a sticky wad which Jago pressed together into the door seam—Bren was watching that as Banichi, black bag in hand, jerked him back and pressed him against the wall, Banichi and Jago on either side of him. The stuff exploded with a shock that came up through the decking. Alarms screamed and machinery operated down the hall. Doors shut.

Central knew they were here, no question. Sirens warred, out of sync, theirs and the station’s, as Banichi and one of Ilisidi’s men seized the pair of damaged doors, wrestled something like a truck jack into the bottom.

Fire from inside the room pasted back, close to Banichi. Bren drew his gun, sole comfort in a situation that hadn’t turned out in the least diplomatic. Barnhart proved to have his own gun, but the human contingent could only watch as the second of Ilisidi’s guards added his strength to the jammed doors, as machinery and atevi muscle warred. More pellet-fire streaked out of that room, burning two streaks in Banichi’s sleeve, making him wince.

An office door opened halfway down the corridor, and fire came from the lift car: their own guns keeping whoever was in that new doorway pi

Their own doors widened, jostled aside. Jago dropped down to the deck in the doorway, rifle braced at ankle level, and fired into the room.

Pellet fire came out, over her head.

Banichi pulled a grenade out of his jacket and tossed it in. Jago rolled over, out of the way, shielded by the ruined doors.

Percussion grenade. Flash-bang. It no sooner went off than Banichi and Ilisidi’s men charged over Jago’s position and dived to either side within the room.

Jago scrambled up and in.

And damn if he was any use back here. “Watch the hall!” he shouted to Barnhart, and dived low inside the jimmied doors, ski

Not so much use here, either. Jago had him, hugged him close in the process of wedging him further back into the corner, where her armor protected him. A pall of smoke hung over the place, reddened by the lights blinking on consoles, and sirens were still going off.

Banichi and Ilsidi’s men inched toward wider positions.

And people were going to die.

If he didn’t think of something.

“I’m Bren Cameron from Alpha,” he shouted, “here with local allies from Alpha. Cease fire and get rid of the weapons. We’re a rescue mission! Just don’t fire and you’ll all get out of this alive!”

Fire answered that offer, pellets richocheting everywhere, doing no good for the consoles, which began beeping protests.

“One doubts they will surrender,” Jago said, incredibly patient.

“One regrets the attention, Jago-ji.” Pellets richocheted all about them. “Barnhart is out there watching the hall.”

“Excellent, Bren-ji.” Jago moved a little. “Stay here. Cover your ears.”

Banichi and Ilisidi’s men had just that instant passed out of sight behind a console, and now Jago moved—he hoped he hadn’t thrown their timing off. He crouched low, trying to become invisible.

Bang . A pop-grenade, a distraction. A man broke cover into his aisle, low as he was, and Bren braced his back in the corner and braced his pistol against his knees, affording that security guard a view down the gun-barrel.

“Stand up,” he said. “Stand up. Hands up. You’ll survive only if you do as you’re told. Where’s Braddock?”

“Office.”

“Stand up !” he snapped; but about that time pellets flew all about and the man, starting to stand up, ducked down, covering head and ears.

“I can’t!”

Another grenade explosion went off. What light panels hadn’t fallen, came rattling down everywhere, and Jago appeared on her knees behind his prisoner, snatched him by the foot and flattened him with an elbow and an open-handed blow that sprawled the man flat on the deck.

“One apologizes,” Bren whispered, too deaf to hear his own voice, and Jago scuttled toward him, seized him by the arm and dragged him off to another aisle of consoles where a handful of harmless, non-combatant station techs, caught between invasion and security forces, had taken cover and lay in heaps, covering heads and necks and each other.

A door was down that aisle. A windowed office.

“He said Braddock is in the office, Jago-ji.”

“Tell these persons to move.”

“Crawl out of here,” Bren said. “Clear this aisle. You’re safer outside: just stay down and don’t act hostile. Move, and you’ll survive!”

Most of a dozen techs and clerks mobilized themselves, scrambling out of the aisle, down into another row, an aisle that led potentially to the door; and Jago eeled forward, low, up against the door in question—stuck a device to it and got out of the way, as pellet-fire erupted from another aisle.

The limpet went off—blew a hole where the door edge met the wall; and fire-suppression went off, clouds of vapor coming down.

“Gas!” Jago yelled, and Bren dragged up his own mask, while the air grew thick with fog.

Jago, meanwhile, got a hand on the door-edge and pulled, and pellet-fire came out at them.

Didn’t stop Jago. She charged in and there was a heavy thump.

Bren scrambled to the door on elbows and knees, saw Jago on her feet, dragging no less than Braddock himself, who was swearing and flailing.

Jago’s patience ran out. She swung the man around in a restraining grip and shoved him onto the floor, under her foot.

“Bren Cameron, Mr. Braddock,” Bren said, ducked as low, at least, as the window-edge, bulletproof as it might be. “I’d advise you give up and get your people aboard.”

“Traitor to your own species!”

Name-calling. A disappointing lack of common sense.

“I did my best for you,” Bren said. “You’re on your own, Mr. Braddock. I just hope to prevent most of your people getting killed, because we’re taking this station down.”

“The hell!” Braddock yelled, and broke out in coughing and shortness of breath.

Jago simply flattened him.

“Banichi?” she called out. “We have the station-aiji.”

“We have the main area,” Banichi said, outside, not far distant, and appeared in the haze, standing up, leaning with a casual air against the ravaged door. “It was hardly a well-thought defense, particularly the firefighting system.”

Jago gathered Braddock up, half-conscious as he was. Bren thought it finally safe to stand up; and he could see, in the thicker fog outside, Ilisidi’s men moving about in the aisles.

“They’ll die,” he said, concerned for the techs and even for Braddock, but as he came outside he saw Ilisidi’s men were clearing the aisles of downed workers, simply dragging them out into the corridor, one and two at a time. Jago took Braddock himself to the wrecked doorway and the clearer air.

And Barnhart had come in, masked, walking over fallen light panels to get to the main console.

Station systems. Barnhart knew those, having built them. He started flipping switches. And took up a microphone. “This is station Central a