Explorer (43 page)

“You have to talk to Madison. He’s in charge. B corridor.”

A name was helpful. But he couldn’t leave this man unaccounted for. And he didn’t know what to do with him. “Look,” he said, improvising. “I’ve got to have a list.”

“What list?”

“List, man. There’s always a list, isn’t there? Life requirements. That sort of thing. You’re supposed to have
one drawn up for me.”

“I’m not supposed to have anything. That’ll be Madison, that’s what. I can call him.”

Last thing he wanted. “Look, Madison’s not in my instructions.
You
were supposed to have the list.”

“I just sit at this door, man. I don’t have any damned list!”

“Look, they swore up and down you were going to have it.” He switched sides on the desk, drawing the man’s eyes toward him, away from the corner where his staff waited. He put on a hangdog face. “Man, you’re putting me in a hard place.
Shigai
said move on it.”

There. Shigai wasn’t a name. It was Ragi. And Banichi, and Jago arrived around the corner.

“Migod,” Bren said, looking up.

The man turned his head. Fast. Bren pulled his own gun, as the man swung to look around—and made a dive for his intercom.

Bren grabbed his arm short of that button and held his gun right at eye level.

“No,” Bren said. “Don’t touch that button. I really wouldn’t touch any button. They won’t hurt you. I might.”

Banichi and Jago arrived on the other side of the desk, and the man looked left and right, sweating.

“They’re not from the same planet as the prisoner,” Bren said. “They’re from Alpha, matter of fact, same as I am. Same as he is.” This, for Barnhart, who had stayed close to Banichi, along with the co-pilot. “And the brochure, let me tell you, is the truth. This station is being evacuated by order of the Captains’ Council, and you’ve got a limited time to do it. Upper administration is being recalcitrant, not to the good of ordinary station folk. So we’re seeing to the evacuation ourselves, trying to get all you good people onto the ship and lifted safely out of here before the attack comes.”

“Attack.”

“This station isn’t going to exist in a few days.
We’re
here to take you back to Alpha Colony, where it’s safe, where there’s an abundant, peaceful planet, and where you don’t have an alien ship ready to come in here to get back this prisoner you claim to have. If we can have a little cooperation, here, I’ll let you go. Then you
and your family can go pack your belongings, advise your neighbors, and get yourselves off this station alive. That is, supposing we can get our ship fueled in time to get away from here. Which Mr. Braddock for some reason doesn’t want us to do without following his regulations. Mr. Braddock has annoyed the aliens, lied to our senior captain, and otherwise made himself generally objectionable to us. Given the situation, and an irritated alien presence out there, we aren’t in a patient mood. So decide what you’re going to do.”

It was not a pleasant sight, a truly scared man. But not a stupid man. He didn’t move. He looked from him to Barnhart and the co-pilot, twice, and once, fearfully, at Banichi and company.

“Get up from the desk,” Bren said. “You’re quite safe. I’ll send you where you’ll
be
safe for the duration. I take it you have family who want to see you again. Just get up quietly. One of my associates will see you to safety.”

“One of
them?
Who are
they?
What do they want?”

“The
legitimate
inhabitants at Alpha. As for what they want—after several hundred years of careful negotiation, they’re our hosts, our allies, and on our side. Nadi-ji, escort this good gentleman to the lift car.”

One of Cenedi’s men, behind Banichi and Jago, took that request. “Kindly comply,” that one said in Mosphei’, certainly a surprise coming from the dowager’s staff, and a greater surprise to their detainee, who had broken into a sweat.

“And
where
is this prisoner?” Bren asked.

The man looked at him as if he had the only life preserver.

“You’re safe with him. Worry about
me,
and be very accurate. Where is the prisoner?”

“B,” the man said. “B17.” And helpfully pointed the direction B was supposed to be. “There’s a restricted section. Three guards.”

The Guild didn’t seem to command the highest loyalty among the populace.

“And
who
is this Madison?”

“In charge of the prisoner. In charge of the section.”

“This person says the prisoner resides in B17, and we may expect three more guards there.” Bren gave a
dismissive wave of his hand, quite calmly so—the dowager’s gesture, he was disturbed to realize—but the mind was busy.

Cenedi’s man took their anxious detainee back down the corridor toward the lift, there to join the unfortunate from the lower deck . . . a collection that might grow further, Bren thought desperately, and none of them the ones they wanted, while they were keeping a lift car out of the system longer and longer, which might soon raise questions from maintenance.

He gave a cursory glance to the man’s abandoned console, read the story implicit in key wear, and looked down the corridor, reading signs like scuff on the floor tiles and the invisible signs of human handedness that confirmed to him that, yes, traffic did go through here, and key wear could almost tell him which keys the man used when people had valid authorizations.

No labels here.
That
ship-habit the station definitely had. But security was all soft.

He walked further, toward the door in question, and exchanged his gun for his keycard, trusting it more than the console. He was about to open it when he became aware of his bodyguard still in view, close to him.

“We may take the lead from here, nadi-ji,” Banichi said.

“Not without casualties, nadi-ji. I insist. Stay back. Let me attempt this.”

His security was not happy to wait. They had other armament ready. They were far enough in, and prepared to finesse it, as Banichi would say, from here on. But Banichi motioned his contingent back against the wall, into what concealment the section door frame offered, while he keyed the door open and locked it into position.

He and Barnhart and the co-pilot walked into a corridor that could be any stretch of small offices, no windows, nothing to indicate who was where, or that this was a high-security area. He counted doors. Ten.

First intersection of corridors. The habitual scuff marks in the corridor took a turn. Bren pulled a brochure out, sole precaution. And around that corner they faced a uniformed guard.

“Banichi,” Bren said under his breath, to his electronics, “one armed man at a desk and a shut door.” He kept walking, himself and Barnhart and the co-pilot, as if the guard himself, not the closed double door beyond, was their objective.

“Who are
you?
” the guard asked.

“Looking for Madison,” Bren said, and laid the brochure on the desk. “Have you seen these things?”

The man took a split second to read the title and look at the pictures. And looked up into a gun-muzzle—a weapon in the hands of a very scared paidhi-aiji who really, truly hoped his security would hurry so he and his two non-combatant allies wouldn’t have to defend themselves. “Don’t touch anything. Don’t make a move.”

The man considered carefully what to do with his hands. He was indeed wearing a gun.

“Read the paper,” Barnhart suggested. “It explains what’s important.”

The guard looked down, opened it as if it had been a bomb. And looked up, alarmed at what he read—twice alarmed, as Banichi and Jago turned up silently.

The guard looked from Bren to them and very carefully didn’t move a muscle.

“We’re from Alpha,” Bren said calmly, “and these are our neighbors, no relation to the people who blew a hole in your station. This station is in imminent danger, we’re here to get the prisoner and evacuate the station as quickly and quietly as we can. Stay very still. We’re going to remove the gun. You don’t want to use it, anyway.”

“Damn you!”

“Mind your tone. They don’t speak much of our language. Be polite and smile at them.”

“The hell!” The man moved to prevent Jago lifting the gun from his holster. Mistake. Jago took the arm instead, yanked him up straight out of his chair, and Banichi took the gun in a wink.

“Be still, sir,” Banichi said in Mosphei’, and the guard said not another word.

Bren moved on and inserted the keycard at the next door:
the
door, the hallway in the other direction showing an office-like door at the end.

The door didn’t open. The builder’s code didn’t work. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

“Code’s not working,” he said. “It must be a jury rig. Not on the system.”

“Finesse will not suffice here,” Banichi said in Ragi, and took a fistful of the guard’s jacket. “Open the door.”

The guard commendably refused.

Just as someone, an administrative sort, opened a side office door and blithely walked out into the situation.

Blinked, open-mouthed.

And ducked back. Other doors stayed shut. Jago walked down the short corridor, dragging the unhappy clerk with her, shoving small clear wedges into the small gap between door and mounting—assuring someone from the outside was going to have to release the occupant; but the alarm by now would go to Central.

“Gas,” Banichi said, gun in hand, and Bren tugged the mask out from under his collar as the others did the same.

Banichi ripped the panel off the double door, clipped a line and attached a small switch, which quietly opened the door on a wide open area that suddenly, in Bren’s recollection, matched their charts—he was thinking that and thinking he had better get himself to the fore, when Banichi tossed a grenade that went rolling down the hall.

A guard ran to grab it, and it blew out a cloud of gas and went on spewing, while the guard, a shadow among other shadows in the gas, doubled over. Jago and Banichi charged in. Bren ran. Man’chi, whatever impelled a sane human—he went in, gun in hand, desperate—skidded to a stop as Jago pitched another grenade, this one percussive, with a great deal of smoke, a shock that deafened human ears. Two human senses were impaired.

Sirens started. Red lights dyed the gas. They’d gone in as civilized individuals. They’d become invading, masked monsters. Guards, whose defenses hadn’t included gas masks, were down and choking in front of a clear-walled enclosure that itself was filling with gas; and the yellow-clad figure caught inside that cube of slowly obscuring air, white-lit in the general haze of red, could have been a very stout, brownish-gray human in a baggy yellow coverall.

The occupant of that glass cage applied stocky dark-gray palms to the glass wall, pressed close, trying to discern the nature of the invaders. It had a broad, large-eyed face, heavy-jowled, heavy-browed. All of that, Bren saw at first blink, before Jago blew the clear plastic door in, and the yellow-clad alien turned away to face intrusion.

Then the alien turned full circle, as if seeking some other route of escape—or expecting to die by the hands of some oddly composed lynch mob.

Banichi invaded the cell, seized the alien’s massive arms and hauled the alien toward the shattered wall. Banichi had brought a spare mask. He whipped it out of his jacket and pressed it over the alien’s mouth, and at that point the alien stopped fighting, held the mask in place with his own hands and, perhaps conceiving of safety, cooperated in the rescue, accompanying Banichi, trying to keep up with a wider stride.

Jago stood with rifle ready to provide covering fire, and as they brought the alien past, Jago folded their expedition inward and began a fast retreat. Bren tried to observe that plan, grabbed Barnhart by the arm as they reached their rear guard, accounting for the co-pilot: he meant to get to the fore again, but Jago took the lead and Banichi dragged the rescuee along with them.

Cenedi’s man stayed rear guard. Bren didn’t look back, except to be sure that all their company was retreating with them, a rush back toward clear air, back past rows of—thank God—closed office doors, where people were likely phoning for help, but nothing but another builder’s key could close a door a builder’s key had locked, so Gin swore, and so far things were working.

Someone, maybe the guard, rushed at them at the corner: mistake. Jago flattened the man with an elbow and light-footed it ahead, pausing for corners and doorways. They reached clear air at the corner by the desk, and pulled the masks down in favor of unobstructed breathing and vision. The prisoner, seeing others give up the breathing masks, removed his own—then looked wildly about at a thunderous rush behind them.

Men came running behind them; and all of a sudden Jago heaved another grenade down the corridor, and running attackers skidded to a stop and tried to get back.

It blew in a cloud of gas. And Cenedi’s man blasted the overhead light panels, a neat, one-after-the-other chain that darkened the corridor and drove their pursuers in retreat.

They ran, then, Banichi dragging the stocky alien, as fast as he could; and Bren had his gun in hand, keeping an eye to pursuit behind them, not wanting to shoot any hapless guard. The doors had stayed open; and he found the presence of mind to shut one and lock it with his key.

Then he ran to catch up, almost hindmost, around the last turn. He passed Barnhart, passed Banichi, caught up with Jago just as she reached the lift.

Cenedi’s men had trussed their terrified detainees and kept them flat on the floor; and now they all jammed themselves into the lift, straddling their detainees, dragging along a frightened, sweating alien who smelled like overheated pavement and bulked like a small truck. Bren shoved his key in the slot and Barnhart punched in their destination before he extracted the key and pocketed it.

“We’ll let you go at the bottom,” Bren said then to the two white-faced, absolutely terrified humans crouched at their feet. He reached down and assisted up the man he’d dealt with. “Come to the ship when you’re ready. The paper isn’t a lie. Believe it!” He remembered the rest of the fliers, took the sheaf of them from inside his jacket and shoved them inside the man’s jacket. “Here, have some brochures.”