Explorer (53 page)

If Gin was out there, he had no idea where; but if she’d gotten there, trying to take the power out—she was still at risk from anything wired in, independent of station power, and they couldn’t communicate with her.

“We don’t know where Gin is,” Bren said, muffled in the mask. “Hang on, hang on before we start pushing any buttons.” He had his own communications, in the pocket com, in the handheld, and took it out uncertainly.

“That won’t reach the ship,” Barnhart said.

“Lights. Gin’d see that. Can we get an on-off? Let her know we’re here.”

Barnhart moved his hand over one board, looking for a switch in the haze, then reached across the board and flipped one. Camera view dimmed. Brightened. The spotlight on that port went off. On. Off. On.

That
had to tell Gin she had help inside. That risking her neck had suddenly gone to a lesser priority, and she had time.

And they, meanwhile, were faced with an array of buttons none of which was going to be labeled
blow the damn fuel.

“I don’t think we should touch it, yet,” he said to Barnhart, extending a cautionary hand. “Just guard it and get some of the ship personnel up—”

Shots rang out from the left hand of the door. That intersecting T-corridor—he could see it in his mind. Ilisidi’s men. They
weren’t
safe here. They were far separated from safe territory.

Shots became a volley. A firefight. And Banichi vanished from the doorway, headed leftward, leaving Jago alone to hold the door. As fire broke out from the other direction. Jago pasted a shot in that direction, and crouched down, delving into Banichi’s black bag.

Bren left the consoles to Barnhart and joined Jago, hand on the gun in his pocket. “I can lock these consoles down, Jago-ji,” he said. “We can make a run for it. Can we tell Banichi that?”

A sudden fire was going at either side, and there wasn’t a safe place for anyone in the corridor, where
they’d dumped the hapless ops center technicians. Banichi and Ilisidi’s men stood their ground at the corner; while fire down the corridor was coming from midway and far down, and the technicians, crawling, attempted to go in that direction.

Jago was assembling another of Cajeiri’s little cars with tape and a black box, and with a fast wrap of tape, she set it loose, steered it left, down the corridor toward Banichi’s position and right around the corner.

“Twenty farther!” Banichi yelled out, and fired around the corner. “Farther, farther. Right turn—now!”

Boom!

Banichi and Ilisidi’s men dived around the corner, not a second’s hesitation, one covering their rear in the T, a thunder of booted feet on the deck and a second explosion. Jago squatted, assembling bits again, this one a knob on a stick.

“I think I know the right switch,” Barnhart reported from behind them.

“Not yet!” Bren said. His full attention was for the way he could watch, while Jago was on one knee, delving into the black bag while snatching looks down the corridor the way they’d come. The technicians they’d evicted had made it halfway to the lift, crawling the distance, coughing and half-blind. Beyond the lift, where the third of Ilisidi’s men maintained position with, presumably, Jenrette, and a handful of stationers, Sabin was still down there under cover—about, he thought, at the next T-intersection. Whoever was firing up the hall was farther off than that, bad for aim, but not comfortable for them getting back to the lift.

Jago made a ripping move, stepped full into the corridor and made a throw with all the considerable strength of her arm. She ducked back as fire came at her, as the grenade hit the decking and exploded in a cascade of ceiling and wall panels.

A section door went shut down there, likely automatic at the explosion, possibly sealing off someone’s retreat.

“It’s sealed that direction,” he said; and about that time another door opened and fire came out toward them. “Damn!”

Jago was on the pocket com, advising Banichi: the things operated independently on short range and
searched for signal. “The section sealed in our direction, but we have another site two doors off the lift, nadi, do you hear?”

“One hears,” Banichi seemed to say, difficult to understand. “We have cleared this corridor. It would be wise to close our section door.”

That
took a key.

“I’m coming,” Bren said, springing up. “Tell him I’m coming.”

“Nadi!” Jago protested; but he wasn’t the shot she was, and
she
protected the fuel supply. Momentarily expendable, he ran, hung a tight right at the intersection, almost into one of Ilisidi’s men, and down the hall where Banichi waited.

Banichi hadn’t wanted
him,
he was sure of that as he shoved his key into section control and got the control panel open. “One is long out of practice, nadi, with the gun.”
Section door close
was a two-fingered operation, and he did it, fast. That door cut off anyone coming from that direction. “Better Jago holds that door.” Another breath. He had a stitch in his side from the sprint he’d done. “One or more enemies with a pellet rifle at the end of the corridor; Jago has thrown a grenade down there. Jenrette should be in the lift and I think Sabin is somewhere between us and our enemies. We have tried to signal Gin-aiji.
Everyone
is here.”

“For the fuel,” Banichi said, sensibly, and pushed him along, back down the corridor toward the intersection. “For control of that commodity. Which we desperately need. All sides will come here. But one takes it there is fuel to defend.” They reached the corner, where Ilisidi’s two men stood on opposite arms of the T. “So we have it, and we shall hold it.”

“Sabin’s got ship’s security with her.” Out of breath, thoughts jarred loose in his brain. “Jenrette knew Sabin-aiji would come here. She never went to Central.”

“She cannot have been here long.”

“We made a great deal of noise upstairs. There may have been a standoff, if only in the last hour. But that Jenrette is here, too—one cannot trust him, Banichi-ji. We cannot trust him, and I sent him to the lift!”

Banichi took out his pocket com. “Kasari-ji, disarm the ship-human immediately.”

Banichi had the com close to his ear. Bren strained to hear, glad there was a reply—not glad that a frown touched Banichi’s face.

“Jenrette never went to the lift,” Banichi reported, and said, via com: “If he arrives, disarm him.”

“He must have moved toward Sabin’s position,” Bren said. “Jase has banned him from the ship unless he comes with her, but I by no means rely on his man’chi.”

“This relies on human thinking,” Banichi said to him, “which is notoriously convolute.”

“Simple, in this case, nadi-ji. His man’chi may lie with Braddock. Kill Sabin, kill all the ship’s senior security, and board with Braddock, trying to take equal power with Jase-aiji during negotiations with the alien ship. Or ally with her, and Braddock. Get aboard. And strike at Jase and the dowager by treachery in the homeward voyage—perhaps taking possession of Tabini’s heir, to strike at Shejidan. This thing might have either of two paths, but one destination.”

One might expect Banichi to be appalled: but Banichi, reloading his gun, shrugged. “Greatly discounting Cenedi.”

“I would never discount Cenedi.”

“Nor would I.” Banichi employed his pocket com a second time. “Nadiin-ji, Bren marks Jenrette as dangerous.”

It was a death sentence. I would never, he wanted to say. Civilized Mospheirans had process of law, of courts, of appeals and debates.

In the aiji’s court—there was Banichi’s Guild. And here was no place to file Intent. Only to move on targets until there was leisure for consideration.

Click. Banichi reloaded his second gun.

“Go to Jago,” Banichi said. “
We
will find Jenrette.”

“No, nadi. He will have appealed to Sabin with a lie. I can deny that.” He took out his own gun, that long-ago gift, not sure he could hit the opposing wall after years of no practice, but it posed at least a visible threat. “My presence is absolutely necessary.”

“Movement,” Anaro reported, Ilisidi’s man, next to them, never having taken his eyes off the intersecting corridor.

Bren looked. At that farthest intersection before the closed door, dim with smoke-haze and Jago’s having blown the lighting down there, a handful of humans had come out of hiding, headed up the corridor toward the lift. Sabin. He could make out the silver hair. A dozen or so of her security. He didn’t see Jenrette, and that was worrisome. If Jenrette had communications, and was in touch with Braddock—

“Sabin!” Bren yelled. “Look out!”

Fastest he could think, and the desired result: her security moved to protect
her
, bodies between her and any conceivable threat, and up against the wall, trying to get to the lift.

“Sabin, we’re in the lift! That’s safe!”

Fire broke out from the place Jenrette had occupied before, the intersecting hall a little down from the lift. Two of Sabin’s party went down, a third hit.

Banichi ran; Bren dived after him, a hard sprint down the corridor toward what had become a firefight. They passed Jago’s position; passed the lift, where Kasari held the doorway, no one in position to get the sniper that was taking down Sabin’s guard.

The sniper put his head and his sidearm around the corner.

Banichi braked so fast Bren nearly hit him; braked, and fired, and the sniper vanished backward, leaving an appalling spatter against the opposing wall.

Fire had stopped from Sabin’s party; Banichi flattened himself against the wall and whipped around that corner, but the immediate relaxation told the tale, and Bren didn’t think he wanted to see the damage that had left its evidence on that other wall.

Banichi wasn’t so fastidious. He squatted down, collected items from Jenrette’s pockets, a sidearm, a pocket com and a handheld, on each of which he killed the power with a press of his thumb.

Those were worth later investigation.

Sabin arrived, her guard battered and bloody, herself with a bloody forearm and a ripped sleeve.

“Mr. Cameron?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Is that Mr. Jenrette?”

“Yes, ma’am.” They didn’t have time for question and answer. There was that ship moving in. “Dr. Kroger’s out there trying to defuse whatever-it-is, we’ve got the station up there, we dislodged Braddock from Central and blew the Archive. Captain Graham’s boarding civilians fast as he can. We took the alien hostage Braddock was holding, we’re trying to get communication with him, and last I heard, his ship’s moving in, but we’re talking to it.”

Several blinks. “Not half bad for a day’s work.”

He was numb. He had a dead man at his feet. And a captain who’d tried her best to take the station from inside, with the force she had. And not done a bad job of it, counting she’d ended up at the right place to secure the fuel, the high card
she’d
known the station held. “Captain Graham will want you aboard soon as possible.”

“Possible, once we get the fuel flowing.” Sabin gave a glance aside as Banichi stood up; and up.
“Hato,”
she said. Ragi, for
good.
It applied to food and drink, not quite apt.

But Banichi understood.

And called Jago. “Jago. Jenrette is dead. Sabin-aiji is safe.”

Jago said something that made Banichi smile.

“Barnhart has found Gin-aiji,” Banichi reported. “She has swum up to the camera and made encouraging signals. One believes she is in direct communication with Jase.”

“Get my wounded aboard,” Sabin said. “I’ll handle the fuel.”

“Get them into the lift,” Bren said. “We’ll manage. Fast as we can.—Banichi-ji. We are requested to take the wounded back as quickly as we can. Sabin-aiji will manage here.”

“Yes,” Banichi said, and relayed orders to his associates in three positions.

They’d done it. His knees felt weak. They’d actually done it. It didn’t
feel
done. They’d been attacked from two fronts and the middle, and the way down wasn’t guaranteed safe—particularly sneaking a handful of very
tall atevi back on board; but they did what they could.

“I have Jase’s key,” he confessed to Sabin. “I need it to get them back.” Meaning the wounded, and the handful of techs in their keeping.

“You’re just full of tricks,” Sabin said. “Go lock those section doors with that key, Mr. Cameron—I trust you know how to do that—and then get that thing back aboard the ship. Fast.”

The lord of the heavens had his bailiwick and his arena of understanding; it didn’t include ship’s operations, or that fueling station; and when Sabin suggested locking the critical doors with an unbreachable lock, barring all station access to this place, it seemed a good idea to do exactly that, and fast.

“Go,” Bren said to their detainees, once the lift car reached the mast entry level—one expected that to be the most desolate area of the station; but it was jammed with refugees, men, women, children carrying other children and parents carrying baggage—and their detainees vanished into jammed lines of refugees. Terror rippled the lines as unprepared stationers saw atevi exit the car, but they were locked in that essential fact of station life, the line, the line that gave precedence, the line in which all things were done and solved, the line which meant entitlement—in this case, to ship-boarding; and the line buckled.

“They’re from Alpha!” Bren shouted. “They are, and I am! Pass it on! We have injured people here—excuse us. We need through to medical immediately,
please!”

They didn’t have access to station communications; but word of mouth rippled both ways in the moving lines—lines ultimately diced and packeted by the lift.

They had one of ship’s security, walking wounded: Barnhart had an arm around him, helping him along. There were three who couldn’t walk, one in bad condition, and Ilisidi’s men carried them like children, gear and all—atevi protocols: Banichi and Jago had their lord present, and guarded
him
, and that was the way of things. So he went, scaring evacuees—until humans saw a bona fide mission of mercy, and blood, and atevi carrying human wounded toward the ship. Then stares attended them, and confusion swayed the line, but no panic ensued.