Downbelow Station

“Captain,” another put forth, “your cooperation is earnestly requested.”

“You have what I’ll give and not a step further.”

There was silence, a slow murmuring from the tiers. The man Ayres’s face reddened further, his precise dignity that instinctively galled her now further and further ruffled. “You’re an extension of the Company, captain, and you hold your commission from it. Have you forgotten that?”

“Third captain of the Fleet, Mr. Second Secretary, which is military and you’re not. But if you intend to come, be ready within the hour.”

“No, captain,” Ayres declared firmly. “We’ll take your suggestion about freighter transport. It got us here from Sol. They’ll go where they’re hired to go.”

“Within reason, I don’t doubt.” Good. That problem was shed. She could reckon Mazian’s consternation at that in the midst of them. She looked beyond Ayres, at Angelo Konstantin. “I’ve done my service here. I’m leaving. Any message will be relayed.”

“Captain.” Angelo Konstantin left the head of the table and walked forward, offered his hand, an unusual courtesy and the stranger considering what she had done to them, leaving the refugees. She took the firm handclasp, met the man’s anxious eyes. They knew each other, remotely; had met in years past. Six generations a Beyonder, Angelo Konstantin; like the young man who had come down to help on the dock, a seventh. The Konstantins had built Pell; were scientists and miners, builders and holders. With this man and the others she felt a manner of bond, for all their other differences. This kind of man the Fleet had for its charge, the best of them.

“Good luck,” she wished them, and turned and left, taking Di and the troopers with her.

She returned the way she had come, through the beginning establishment of Q zone, and back into the familiar environs of Norway, among friends, where law was as she laid it down and things were as she knew. There were a few last details to work out, a few matters still to be arranged, a few last gifts to bestow on station; her own security’s dredgings — reports, recommendations, a live body, and what salvaged reports came with it.

She put Norway on ready then, and the siren went and what military presence Pell had for its protection slipped free and left them.

She went to follow a sequence of courses which was in her head, and of which Graff knew, her second. It was not the only evacuation in progress; the Pan-Paris station was under Kreshov’s management; Sung of Pacific had moved in on Esperance. By now other convoys were on their way toward Pell, and she had only set up the framework.

The push was coming. Other stations had died, beyond their reach, beyond any salvage. They moved what they could, making Union work for what they took. But in her private estimate they were themselves doomed, and the present maneuver was one from which most of them would not return. They were the remnant of a Fleet, against a widespread power which had inexhaustible lives, and supply, and worlds, and they did not.

After so long a struggle… her generation, the last of the Fleet, the last of Company power. She had watched it go; had fought to hold the two together, Earth and Union, humanity’s past — and future. Still fought, with what she had, but no longer hoped. At times, she even thought of bolting the Fleet, of doing what a few ships had done and going over to Union. It was supreme irony that Union had become the pro-space side of this war and the founding Company fought against; irony that they who most believed in the Beyond ended up fighting against what it was becoming, to die for a Company which had stopped caring. She was bitter; she had long ago stopped being politic in any discussion of Company policies.

There had been a time, years ago, when she had looked differently on things, when she had looked as an outsider on the great ships and the power of them, and when the dream of the old exploration ships had drawn her into this, a dream long revised to the realities the Company captain’s emblem had come to mean. Long ago she had realized there was no winning.

Perhaps, she thought, Angelo Konstantin knew the odds too. Maybe he had taken her meaning, answered it, behind the gesture of saying farewell — offered support in the face of Company pressure. For a moment it had seemed so. Maybe many of the stationers knew… but that was too much to expect of stationers.

She had three feints to make, which would take time; a small operation, and a jump afterward to a rendezvous with Mazian, on a certain date. If enough of their ships survived the initial operation. If Union responded as they hoped. It was madness.

The Fleet went it alone, without merchanter or stationer support, as they had gone it alone for years before this.

Chapter Five

Pell: 5/5/52

Angelo konstantin looked up sharply from the desk covered with notes and emergencies which wanted immediate attention. “Union?” he asked in dismay.

“A prisoner of war,” the security head told him, standing uncomfortably before the desk. “Part of the Russell’s evacuation. Turned over to our security separate of the others. A pickup from a capsule, minor ship, armscomper, confined at Russell’s. Norway carried him in… no turning him loose among the refugees. They’d kill him. Mallory added a note to his file: He’s your problem now. Her words, sir.”

Angelo opened the file, stared at a young face, a record of several pages of interrogation, Union id, and a scrap of notepaper with Mallory’s signature and a scrawl: Young and scared.

Joshua Halbraight Talley. Armscomper. Union fleet minor probe.

He had five hundred individuals and groups who had thought they were headed back to their original housing; warnings of further evacuations in the secret instructions Mallory had left, which was going to take at least most of orange and yellow sections, dislocating more offices; and six Company agents who thought they were headed beyond to inspect the war, with no merchanter who would agree to take Company scrip to take them aboard. He did not need problems from lower levels.

The boy’s face haunted him. He turned back to that page, leafed again through the interrogation report, scanned it, remembered the security chief still standing there. “So what are you doing with him?”

“Holding him in detention. None of the other offices agrees what to do with him.”

Pell had never had a prisoner of war. The war had never come here. Angelo thought it over and fretted the more for the situation. “Legal Affairs have a suggestion?”

“Suggested I get a decision here.”

“We’re not equipped for that kind of detention.”

“No, sir,” the security chief agreed. It was a hospital facility down there. The setup was for retraining, Adjustment… what rare times it had ever been needed.

“We can’t treat him.”

“Those cells aren’t set up for long stays, sir. Maybe we could rig up something more comfortable.”

“We’ve got people without lodgings as it is. How are we going to explain that?”

“We could set up something in detention itself. Take a panel out; at least get a bigger room.”

“Postpone that” Angelo ran a hand through his sparse hair. “I’ll consider policy on the case as soon as I get the emergency matters settled. Deal with him as best you can with what you have at hand. Ask the lower offices to apply some imagination to the case and send me the recommendations.”

“Yes, sir.” The security chief left. Angelo put the folder away for later use. A prisoner of that kind was not what they needed at the moment. What they did need was a means to secure housing and feed extra mouths and to cope with what was coming. They had trade goods which were suddenly going nowhere; those could be consumed on Pell and on Down-below at the base, and out in the mines. But they needed others. They had economics to worry about, markets which had collapsed, the value of any currency in doubt as far as merchanters were concerned. From a star-spanning economy, Pell had to be turned to feed itself, to self-sufficiency; and perhaps — to face other changes.

It was not the single Union prisoner they had in hand, identified, who had him worried. It was the likely number of Unionists and sympathizers who would grow in quarantine, folk for whom any change was going to look better than what they had. There were only some of the refugees with papers, and many of those had been discovered not to match the prints and photos attached to them.

“We need some sort of liaison with the quarantine zone residents,” he advised council at that afternoon’s meeting. “We’ll have to set up a government on the other side of the line, someone of their choosing, some manner of elections; and we’ll have to deal with what results.”

They accepted that, as they had accepted all else. It was the concerns of their own constituencies which had them distraught, the councillors from dislodged orange and yellow, from green and white which had gotten most of the influx of station residents. Red sector, untouched, abutting yellow from the other side, was anxious; the others were jealous. There was a deluge of complaints and protests and rumors of rumor. He made note of them. There was debate. It finally came to the necessary conclusion that they had to relieve pressure on the station itself.

“We do not authorize further construction here,” the man Ayres interposed, rising from his seat. Angelo simply stared at him, given heart to do so by Signy Mallory, who had called a bluff on the Company and made it good.

“I do,” Angelo said. “I have the resources to do it, and I will.”

There was a vote. It went the only sane way, with the Company observers sitting in silent anger, vetoing what was passed, which veto was simply ignored while plans proceeded.

The Company men left the meeting early. Security reported them later agitating on the docks, and trying to engage a freighter at inflated rates, with gold.

There was not a freighter moving, for anything except in-system hauling, ordinary runs to the mines. It did not surprise Angelo when he heard that. There was a cold wind blowing, and Pell felt it; everyone with instincts bred of the Beyond felt it.

Eventually perhaps the Company men did, at least two of them, for those two engaged a ship home, to Sol, the same which had brought them, a smallish and decrepit jump-freighter, the only merchanter with an ec designation which had docked at Pell in the better part of a decade, laden with Downbelow curios and delicacies for its return, as it had brought in goods from Earth, which sold high, for their curiosity. The four other Company representatives upped their offers, and boarded a freighter for an unguaranteed run on the freighter’s own schedule, to call at Viking and wherever else the uncertain times left safe. They accepted Mallory’s conditions from a merchanter captain, and paid for the privilege.