Explorer

“Can you lock the board, Bren-ji?” Jago asked, and Bren shook off the spell of Barnhart’s general a

Barnhart pointed. He slid it in and Barnhart punched buttons.

“They can’t lock the board down,” Barnhart said, and flipped more switches. “Data’s all over this system. But main storage is over there.”

“Banichi,” Bren said, and translated: “That is the Archive.”

Banichi got into the bag and took out an alarmingly large limpet. And stuck it on.

“We should leave now, Bren-ji,” Banichi said, and said in Mosphei’, “Run. Now.”

Sabin, Bren thought, realizing the finality of the next explosion. They had no idea where Sabin was. But Jago shoved him and Barnhart at the door and through it, Banichi and Ilisidi’s men following, out into a hall where the third of Ilisidi’s guards maintained one foot in the lift and held under threat of his rifle all the coughing, terrified technicians sitting on the floor. And he didn’t see Braddock.

“We should go support Gin-aiji,” Banichi said, and waved an arm, beckoning the frightened civilians. “Run! Go to the lift!”

The techs scrambled up and ran. Ilisidi’s man stepped out, and Bren stood in the lift door and beckoned the techs. “Come on in with us. We’ll get you to safety. Hurry!”

A handful hesitated, then rushed into the car; the rest scattered.

“Don’t go back into Control!” Barnhart yelled at those that stayed, and about that time the charge blew. One of Ilisidi’s men yanked Barnhart back into the lift and Jago shut the door.

Key. Bren shoved it in. The humans with them jammed themselves into one corner of the car, scared beyond speech and probably now asking themselves if they’d made the right choice.

“Anybody know fuel systems?” Barnhart asked, and in a silence aside from heavy breathing and the thumps of the moving car: “If we can’t move the ship, we’re all in a mess. Is there fuel?”

“There is,” a smallish man said, coughing. “There ought to be.”

“G-10, by the charts,” Barnhart said, and Bren punched that in.

Bang-thump. The car started to move. Bren’s heartbeat ticked up in time with the thumps and jolts the car made.

“All the rest of you,” Bren said, keeping his voice calm, at least, “all of you just stay in that corner and don’t do anything when we get down there. Chairman Braddock claimed you’ve rigged the fuel to explode. We’re going to try to get past that lock to refuel the ship that’s going to get you out of here and back to Alpha. When we get that done, you’ll be free to do whatever you want—get your families aboard, gather the family heirlooms, or run hide in a closet on the station, which we don’t advise. That alien ship is moving in to get its next of kin back, which Braddock has been holding prisoner for most of ten years. Now we’ve got him, and we’re going to give him back and get the ship out of here. Join us if you like.”

Banichi reached into his coat and pulled out, quite solemnly, several of the color brochures, which he offered to the stationers. “Baggage rules,” he said.

The stationers took the papers very, very gingerly. Banichi smiled down at them.

The car slowed. Bren hit lock , then pocketed his key: no car coming in—this one wasn’t getting out. “I’ve locked it.” he said to the workers. “Safest, to stay inside until the dust settles. One of my associates will stay with you. Don’t put your heads out if you hear gunfire.” He straightened his coat, glanced at Banichi and Jago, drew a deep breath, and looked out into the corridor.

Deserted. But fire-scorched along the wall panels. Ceiling panels down, showing structural elements that themselves were potential sites of ambush. It looked as if, please God, everyone had deserted the place.

“Hello?” he called out, playing tourist on holiday, looking, he hoped, not like a foreigner. “Hello?”

Heads popped out of a room down the hall. Projectile fire went past him, and he hit the floor, flat on his face, playing corpse. Pellet-fire came from the room down the hall and projectile-fire came back from at least two sources.

“Bren-ji?” Jago’s voice, from the lift car behind him.

“Cameron?” a hoarse yell from behind him, from a corridor past the lift. Clearly someone knew him. He didn’t quite peg it. “Cameron, get back!”

“Cameron, dammit! Keep down !” God, he knew that voice. Sabin . That came from still farther back down the corridor.

“I’m lying very flat,” he called out to his own team, begi

Heads popped out of the doorway up the corridor. The occupants fired. Banichi and Jago fired, Sabin’s position far behind him fired, all over his head, and he scrambled backward along the wall, pushing with his palms and knees.

Then a curious object whined along the decking, past his head—one of Cajeiri’s toy cars, with something taped to the top. He was completely mesmerized for the moment, at ground level, watching it zip ahead down the corridor. It finessed a sharp turn, right into the appropriate room—Banichi had to have his head exposed, steering it: that was Bren’s immediate thought.

The car went off in a white flash of brilliant light. A cloud of gas rolled out of that room.

Ilisidi’s men raced past his prone body, as a strong atevi hand grabbed him by the scruff and hauled him up—that was Banichi—and another, lighter footstep came up beside him.

Jenrette. A white-faced, anxious Jenrette, gun in hand. Damned right he’d known that first voice.

If Jenrette intended trouble—he had to admit—Jenrette could have shot him.

“ Trying to follow Graham’s orders,” Jenrette said. “I knew she’d come here, if anywhere. Tell her that.”

Vouch for a many-times traitor, at this critical point, whose reason for not shooting him was far from altruistic? Sabin was farther down that corridor, down by the intersection, still under cover, not coming out into the clear.

Banichi, meanwhile, had joined Ilisidi’s men. Jago had possession of the corridor, rifle in hand, and waited for them. For him . For the key , which he had, dammit and bloody hell!

“Stay down by the lift,” he snapped at Jenrette. Barnhart had run ahead of him, halfway to Banichi. Bren caught a shallow breath and ran, too, on legs that wanted to wobble as if the emergency were already over.

Which it wasn’t by a mile. The rules had changed, but the machinery in that room was still operating. If any of the techs inside had vented the fuel or set something ticking in that gas-filled room, they had a problem.

Next was an intersection of corridors, ambush possible. Banichi and Jago, masks up, entered the room, Ilisidi’s men went to the T of the hall; and there ensued bangs and thumps from inside the gas-clouded room, bodies hitting consoles, God only knew. Bren reached the door beside Barnhart, pulled his gas mask up, already feeling the sting of the gas. His limited view made out Banichi and Jago on their feet, and two lighted consoles in this moderate-sized room, two monitors lit—the techs who should be watching those monitors were on the floor, at the moment, coughing and struggling, and Banichi and Jago were kindly dragging them out.

The mercy mission exited. Barnhart headed in. Bren did. His hazed view of the monitors shaped a camera view of machinery on one screen in the middle of the consoles, graphs and figures on the other, the rest dark and unused. This place handled refueling. Controlled the pumps, the valves, the lines, the booms, and none of that was going on; but that monitor—that one monitor had what looked like a camera-shot of the fuel port; and that, more than the switches, was where Bren directed his attention.