Downbelow Station

End were making their own preparations for flight

At any moment, she hoped, at any moment com might clear, station central might come through bright and sane, bringing contact with command — with Damon, who might be in central and might not. Not, she hoped, in those corridors with Q run amok. Mainday noon — the worst of all times — with most of Pell out away from jobs and shops, in the corridors…

Blue dock was his emergency assignment. He might have tried to come there; would have tried. She knew him. Tears blurred her eyes. She clenched her fist on the arm of the chair, tried to think away the diminishing ache in her belly.

“White section seal just activated.” Word came to them from Sita, which had a vantage. Other ships echoed reports of other seals in function; Pell had segmented itself in defense, the first sign that it had defensive reactions left in it.

“Scan’s got something,” came panicked word from a crew member behind her. “Could be a merchanter out of pattern. Can’t tell.”

She wiped her face and tried to concentrate on all the threads in her hands. “Just stay put,” she said. “If we breach those umbilicals we’ve got dead in the thousands out there. Do manual seal. Don’t break, don’t break those connections.”

“Takes time,” someone said. “We may not have it.”

“So start doing it,” she wished them.

vii

Pell: sector blue one: command central

The red lights which had flared across the boards had diminished in number. Jon Lukas paced from one to the other post and watched techs’ hands, watching scan, watching the activity everywhere they still had monitor. Hale stood guard beyond the windows, in central com, with Daniels; Clay was here, at one side of the room, Lee Quale on the other, and others of Lukas Company security, none of the station’s own. The techs and directors questioned nothing, working feverishly at the emergencies which occupied them.

There was fear in the room, more than fear of the attack outside. The presence of guns, the lasting blackout… they knew, Jon reckoned, they well knew that something was amiss in Angelo Konstantin’s silence, in the failure of any of the Konstantins or their lieutenants to reach this place.

A tech handed him a message and fled back to his seat without meeting his eyes. It was a repeated query from Downbelow main base. That was a problem they could defer. For now they held central, and the offices, and he did not intend to answer the query. Let Emilio figure it a military order which silenced station central.

On the screens the scan showed ominous lack of activity. They were sitting out there. Waiting. He paced the circuit of the room again, looked up abruptly as the door opened. Every tech in the room froze, duties forgotten, hands in mid-motion at the sight of the group which appeared there, civilian, with rifles leveled, with others at their backs.

Jessad, two of Kale’s men, and a bloodied security agent, one of their own.

“Area’s secure,” Jessad reported.

“Sir.” A director rose from his post. “Councillor Lukas — what’s happening?”

“Set that man down,” Jessad snapped, and the director gripped the back of his chair and cast Jon a look of diminishing hope.

“Angelo Konstantin is dead,” Jon said, scanning all the frightened faces. “Killed in the rioting, with all his staff. Assassins hit the offices. Get to your work. We’re not clear of this yet.”

Faces turned, backs turned, techs trying to make themselves invisible by their efficiency. No one spoke. He was heartened by this obedience. He paced the room another circuit, stopped in the middle of it.

“Keep working and listen to me,” he said in a loud voice. “Lukas Company personnel are holding this sector secure. Elsewhere we have the kind of situation you see on the screens. We’re going to restore com, for announcement from this center only, and only announcements I clear. There is no authority on this station at the moment but Lukas Company, and to save this station from damage I will shoot those I have to. I have men under my command who will do that without hesitation. Is that clear?”

There were no comments, not so much as the turning of a head. It was perhaps something with which they were in temporary agreement, with Pell’s systems in precarious balance and Q rioting on the docks.

He drew a calmer breath and looked at Jessad, who nodded a reassuring satisfaction.

viii

The webbery of ladders stretched before and behind, a maze of tubes across the overhead, and it was bitterly cold. Damon shone the beam one way and the other, reached for a railing, sank down on the gridwork as Josh sank down by him, the breather-sounds loud, strained. His head pounded. Not enough air, not fast enough for exertion; and the maze they were in… branched. There was logic to it: the angles were precise; it was a matter of counting. He tried to keep track.

“Are we lost?” Josh asked between gasps.

He shook his head, angled the beam up, the way they should go. Mad to have tried this, but they were alive, in one piece. “Next level,” he said, “ought to be two. I figure… we go out… take a look, how things are out there…”

Josh nodded. G flux had stopped. They still heard noise, unsure in this maze where it came from. Distant shouts. Once a booming shock he thought might be the great seals. It seemed better; he hoped… moved, with a clattering ringing of the metal, reached for the rail again and started to climb, the last climb. He was overwhelmingly anxious, for Elene, for everything he had cut himself off from in coming this way… No matter the hazard, he had to get out.

There was a static sputter. It boomed through the tunnels and echoed.

“Com,” he said. It was coming back together, all of it.

“This is a general announcement. We are approaching G stabilization. We ask that all citizens keep to their present areas and do not attempt to cross section lines. There is still no word from the Fleet, and none is expected yet. Scan remains clear. We do not anticipate military action in the vicinity of this station… It is with extreme sorrow that we report the death of Angelo Konstantin at the hand of rioters and the disappearance in violence of other members of the family. If any have reached safety, please contract station central as soon as possible, any Konstantin relative, or any knowing their whereabouts, please contact station central immediately. Councillor Jon Lukas remains acting stationmaster in this crisis. Please give full cooperation to Lukas Company personnel who are fulfilling security duties in this emergency.”

Damon sank down on the steps. A cold deeper than the chill of the metal settled into him. He could not breathe. He became aware that he was crying, tears blurring the light and choking his breath.

“… announcement,” the com began to repeat “We are approaching G stabilization. We ask that all citizens…”

A hand settled on his shoulder, pulled him about “Damon?” Josh said through the noise.

He was numb. Nothing made sense. “Dead,” he said, and shuddered. “O God -

Josh stared at him, took the lamp from his hand. Damon thrust himself for his feet, for the last climb, for the access he knew was up there.

Josh pulled him hard, turned him around against the solid wall. “Don’t go,” Josh pleaded with him. “Damon, don’t go out there now.”

Josh’s paranoid nightmares. It was that look on his face. Damon leaned there, his mind going in all directions, and no clear direction. Elene. “My father… my mother… that’s blue one. Our guards were in blue one. Our own guards.”

Josh said nothing.

He tried to think. It kept coming up wrong. Troops had moved; the Fleet had pulled out. Murders instant… in Pell’s heaviest security…

He turned the other way, the way they had just come, his hands shaking so he could hardly grip the railing. Josh shone the light for him, caught his elbow to stop him. He turned on the steps, looked up into Josh’s masked, light-distorted face.

“Where?” Josh asked.

“I don’t know who’s in control up there. They say it’s my uncle. I don’t know.” He reached for the lamp, to take it. Josh surrendered it reluctantly and he turned, started down the ladders as quickly as he could slide down the steps, Josh following desperately after.

Get down again. Down was easy. He hurried at the limit of breath and balance, until he was dizzy and the lamp’s beam swung madly about the framework and the tunnels. He slipped, recovered, kept descending.

“Damon,” Josh protested.

He had no breath for arguing. He kept going until his sight was fading from want of air, sank down on the steps trying to pull air enough through the breather to keep from fainting. He felt Josh leaning by him, heard him panting, no better off. “Docks,” Damon said. “Get down there… get to ships. Elene would go there.”

“Can’t get through.”

He looked at Josh, realized he was dragging another life into this. He had no choices either. He got up, started down again, felt the vibrations of Josh’s steps still behind him.

The ships would be sealed. Elene would be there or locked in the offices. Or dead. If the troops had hit him… if for some mad reason… the station was being disabled in advance of a Union takeover…

But Jon Lukas was supposed to be up there in central.

Had some action failed? Had Jon somehow prevented them from hitting central itself?

He lost count of the stops for breath, of the levels they passed. Down. He hit bottom finally, a gridwork suddenly wider, did not realize what it was until he searched with the light and stopped finding downward ladders. He walked along the grid, saw the faint glimmer of a blue light, that over an access door. He reached it, pushed the switch; the door slid back with a hiss and Josh followed him into the lock’s brighter light. The door closed and air exchange started. He