Explorer (52 page)

An office door opened halfway down the corridor, and fire came from the lift car: their own guns keeping whoever was in that new doorway pinned down and out of action; Bren tried to see the target and couldn’t.

Their own doors widened, jostled aside. Jago dropped down to the deck in the doorway, rifle braced at ankle level, and fired into the room.

Pellet fire came out, over her head.

Banichi pulled a grenade out of his jacket and tossed it in. Jago rolled over, out of the way, shielded by the ruined doors.

Percussion grenade. Flash-bang. It no sooner went off than Banichi and Ilisidi’s men charged over Jago’s position and dived to either side within the room.

Jago scrambled up and in.

And damn if he was any use back here. “Watch the hall!” he shouted to Barnhart, and dived low inside the jimmied doors, skinned through the gap on his belly, facing a console base of some kind, only to feel a powerful hand seize the coat in the middle of his back and drag him aside and back against the wall.

Not so much use here, either. Jago had him, hugged him close in the process of wedging him further back into the corner, where her armor protected him. A pall of smoke hung over the place, reddened by the lights blinking on consoles, and sirens were still going off.

Banichi and Ilisidi’s men inched toward wider positions.

And people were going to die.

If he didn’t think of something.

“I’m Bren Cameron from Alpha,” he shouted, “here with local allies from Alpha. Cease fire and get rid of the weapons. We’re a rescue mission! Just don’t fire and you’ll all get out of this alive!”

Fire answered that offer, pellets ricocheting everywhere, doing no good for the consoles, which began beeping protests.

“One doubts they will surrender,” Jago said, incredibly patient.

“One regrets the attention, Jago-ji.” Pellets ricocheted all about them. “Barnhart is out there watching the hall.”

“Excellent, Bren-ji.” Jago moved a little. “Stay here. Cover your ears.”

Banichi and Ilisidi’s men had just that instant passed out of sight behind a console, and now Jago moved—he
hoped
he hadn’t thrown their timing off. He crouched low, trying to become invisible.

Bang.
A pop-grenade, a distraction. A man broke cover into his aisle, low as he was, and Bren braced his back in the corner and braced his pistol against his knees, affording that security guard a view down the gun-barrel.

“Stand up,” he said. “Stand up. Hands up. You’ll survive only if you do as you’re told. Where’s Braddock?”

“Office.”

“Stand
up!”
he snapped; but about that time pellets flew all about and the man, starting to stand up, ducked down, covering head and ears.

“I can’t!”

Another grenade explosion went off. What light panels hadn’t fallen, came rattling down everywhere, and Jago appeared on her knees behind his prisoner, snatched him by the foot and flattened him with an elbow and an open-handed blow that sprawled the man flat on the deck.

“One apologizes,” Bren whispered, too deaf to hear his own voice, and Jago scuttled toward him, seized him by the arm and dragged him off to another aisle of consoles where a handful of harmless, non-combatant station techs, caught between invasion and security forces, had taken cover and lay in heaps, covering heads and necks and each other.

A door was down that aisle. A windowed office.

“He said Braddock is in the office, Jago-ji.”

“Tell these persons to move.”

“Crawl out of here,” Bren said. “Clear this aisle. You’re safer outside: just stay down and don’t act hostile. Move, and you’ll survive!”

Most of a dozen techs and clerks mobilized themselves, scrambling out of the aisle, down into another row, an aisle that led potentially to the door; and Jago eeled forward, low, up against the door in question—stuck a device to it and got out of the way, as pellet-fire erupted from another aisle.

The limpet went off—blew a hole where the door edge met the wall; and fire-suppression went off, clouds of vapor coming down.

“Gas!” Jago yelled, and Bren dragged up his own mask, while the air grew thick with fog.

Jago, meanwhile, got a hand on the door-edge and pulled, and pellet-fire came out at them.

Didn’t stop Jago. She charged in and there was a heavy thump.

Bren scrambled to the door on elbows and knees, saw Jago on her feet, dragging no less than Braddock himself, who was swearing and flailing.

Jago’s patience ran out. She swung the man around in a restraining grip and shoved him onto the floor, under her foot.

“Bren Cameron, Mr. Braddock,” Bren said, ducked as low, at least, as the window-edge, bulletproof as it might be. “I’d advise you give up and get your people aboard.”

“Traitor to your own species!”

Name-calling. A disappointing lack of common sense.

“I did my best for you,” Bren said. “You’re on your own, Mr. Braddock. I just hope to prevent most of your people getting killed, because we’re taking this station down.”

“The hell!” Braddock yelled, and broke out in coughing and shortness of breath.

Jago simply flattened him.

“Banichi?” she called out. “We have the station-aiji.”

“We have the main area,” Banichi said, outside, not far distant, and appeared in the haze, standing up, leaning with a casual air against the ravaged door. “It was hardly a well-thought defense, particularly the firefighting system.”

Jago gathered Braddock up, half-conscious as he was. Bren thought it finally safe to stand up; and he could see, in the thicker fog outside, Ilisidi’s men moving about in the aisles.

“They’ll die,” he said, concerned for the techs and even for Braddock, but as he came outside he saw Ilisidi’s men were clearing the aisles of downed workers, simply dragging them out into the corridor, one and two at a time. Jago took Braddock himself to the wrecked doorway and the clearer air.

And Barnhart had come in, masked, walking over fallen light panels to get to the main console.

Station
systems. Barnhart knew those, having built them. He started flipping switches. And took up a microphone. “This is station Central announcing a general boarding. Take only essential items and medications. Essential personnel, remain at posts during boarding. You are assured time to reach the mast in an orderly evacuation. We have reached an understanding with the alien craft. Fuel operations techs, report to ship’s officers stat.”

“Can you lock the board, Bren-ji?” Jago asked, and Bren shook off the spell of Barnhart’s general announcement echoing from the hall outside, fished out the precious key and looked for a key-slot. Any key-slot, his being universal.

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 was 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, beginning to creep sideways, over against the same wall as the lift.

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.