Aliz said, “Don’t engage. Don’t fight to win, even if we’re attacked. Fight only if they block our route to escape.”
Tina went again through the basic layout of the station so that they could find their own way in case they were separated or the way ahead was blocked. She told them about the passages that Jens had used to enter the sector illegally.
The message was simple: get to the ship. If people got caught and left behind, keep going. The ship would leave when there was an essential crew on board. The Federacy Force would come back later.
Only one thing was left to do: contact Rex and Jens and get them to disable as much of the security system in this sector as possible. And tell them to keep quiet and then contact Finn to pick them up once the docks were open again.
She might not see Rex for a long time.
Tina activated the screen.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Tina used Jens’ instructions to access the station’s general system and quickly navigated through the menus. She sent a message to Thor, asking him to disable as many security systems as possible. He replied that he had read the message.
A moment later, a loud click sounded inside the door. Evelle pushed it. It opened.
“Quick, let’s go,” Tina called out.
First Evelle pulled the inner door seal from the frame. It was nice, springy rubber, soft and stretchy. Evelle cut it into pieces by running it over the sharp edge of the doorframe with the door ajar. Tina tied a length to the two pieces of tubing and tested the slingshot with her fingers. It would have to do.
She gave it to Margot and made two more of these makeshift weapons.
They were out of time and really needed to start moving.
They walked in single file along the gallery. Tina couldn’t see anyone at the ground level of the atrium, but that wouldn’t last very long.
Women banged on the cell doors they passed. “Get out. Door’s open! Get out, get out!”
The men came out of their cells. Some were bewildered, some ran, some shouted. Some could barely walk, and squinted against what little light entered the atrium. How long had they been inside the dark room?
It got quite crowded on the gallery.
“Do you see any of the crew members?” Tina asked Evelle.
“I don’t see anyone familiar.”
Tina was disturbed by how much of Dexter she could see in Evelle. Much more than Rex.
Despite having been locked up with them, Tina hadn’t seen most of the ship’s crew yet. Aliz turned out to be a middle-aged woman with greying hair. Margot was younger, with very pretty eyes and velvet black skin. Evelle looked pale. Her bruise had gone yellow.
Everyone hurried for the stairs. Tina made sure not to lose the others in the press of unwashed bodies.
Prisoners were already streaming across the ground floor of the atrium, where the few makeshift guards were struggling to contain them. Their computer systems were down. Tina could see the warnings flash over their screens. The guards were split between re-establishing communication with their supervisors and stopping the prisoners escaping. The flood of prisoners coming down the stairs was too big for the few men to handle.
They were panicked and clearly poorly trained.
Panicked guards did stupid things, especially if they had weapons.
“Hey,” a male voice said next to Tina.
She turned around and recognised the father from the blue shipworld family she had defended against a bully in the Manila’s galley. What was he doing here?
“Are they locking up their own people now?” she asked.
“We’re not their people. They took our name and destroyed it. They came to us and thought they could get away with thuggery. They saw we had no leader and thought we needed one. And those who protested, they locked up.”
“You’re free to go now.”
“We won’t rest until we expel this menace from our world.”
Other men agreed.
She lost contact with him in the throng of people pushing through the narrow alleys. It was hard enough keeping up with Evelle and the other women.
The stream of prisoners went through a doorway on the other side of the hall, held open because someone had jammed a piece of metal in between the door and the doorframe.
That was the passage where most of them would have entered the hospital that served as a prison.
Tina knew that the hospital was next to the huge experiment room. She also knew that there was a door between the two, at the lowest level.
Instead of making for the passage where everyone else was going, she led the group to the far end of the atrium, underneath the overhanging gallery. It was dark and dusty down there. Light from the atrium’s ceiling barely reached the far corner of what looked like a haphazard storage space.
A panel to the side of a set of double doors at the far end blinked with green lights: the doors were operational and unlocked.
Tina waited until everyone in the group had caught up.
Shouting voices echoed elsewhere in the hall. It sounded like reinforcements had arrived. Time was short.
She held the door open while all the crew members filed into a connecting hallway.
Tina made sure that the door shut behind them, but some people had already followed, a bunch of men who looked like independent merchants. That was not to be helped.
She ran after the others, but they had stopped at an open door. Over their heads, Tina could see the many shelves of the lab room, all of them in semidarkness.
“What’s going on? Hurry up, we don’t have all day,” called a woman in front of her.
“Are you sure it’s safe to go through here?” Evelle asked.
“Go,” Tina said.
“The boss says to keep going!”
Tina pushed between the people at the front of the group. They were all standing a few steps into the door of the large experimental room, staring at the shelves of cabinets.
“There’s people in here,” Margot said, her voice disturbed.
“Whoa, they’re trying to make them
