“I—” He saw the guns—automatics. Explosive shells. Not riot control gear. And not ASTEX any longer. “I think I’d better explain it to him,” he said, and thought about his wife, about his daughter. He took the card, slid it into the computer and pressed ENTER.
The screen went to Access, and came up again with a series of dots. Porey folded his arms and watched it a moment, looked his way then with the tilt of a brow.
“The Industryfile. Purge it, among first things.”
“ Purgeit? Eraseit?”
“It’s become irrelevant. Personnel have already been transferred. Certain questions won’t be asked beyond this office. That’s official, Mr. Salvatore. Your career could rise or fall on that simple point. Take great care how you dispose of it.—Mr. Paget.”
“Sir!”
“ FindPaul Dekker and escort him to the dock.”
“So what’s the new plan?” Meg asked, she thought with great restraint, standing between Dekker’s temper and some fill-in Shepherd data-jock with a rulebook up his ass who persisted in trying to get contact with a shuttle that was probably—
The Shepherd said, “They’re still not getting through to Mitch—they’re jamming us.”
“So what do you expect? It’s not just the company anymore, it’s the soldiers, for God’s sake, and you can’t hideon a station—”
“You can’t hide a ship, either, Kady. I’m not sure how long my ship can hold position out there—”
“Then let’s get up to the dock. Play it by ear for God’s sake!”
“This isn’t a game, woman, we don’t know if the lifts are working—”
“Sit on your ass a little longer and we won’t know what elsewon’t be working when we need it.”
“I’m the only contact our people haveon this station—I have my orders—Mitch is—”
“ Mitchisn’t answering, you’re not contacting anybody out there, the phones are down, the soldiers are all up and down the ‘deck, for God’s sake—let’s get the hellup to the dock, if that’s our option!”
“It does us no good to get to the shuttle, our pilot’s out there on the ‘deck!”
“Is thatyour problem? Well, you’re in luck, mister! You’re up to your ass in pilots.”
“C-class, Kady, not a miner craft—”
“Earth to orbit, ship to station, Bl, anything you can dock at this hellhole. Let’s just get the hell up there.”
“Kady, there’s police out there. There’s armed police in front of our door. D’ you have a way we’re going to get past them?”
Goodquestion.
A whole squad of soldiers passed, going somewhere in a hurry. Ben found sudden interest in a bar window, in a crowd of exiting patrons. They wereshutting the bars, dammit. At least closing the doors.
Serious time to get somewhere. Bird might have headed back to The Hole, Bird might have been arrested by now, God only where he was.
A touch brushed his arm. His heart turned over. He looked in that direction and saw a coffee-dark face under a docker’s knit cap.
Dock monkey’s coveralls, too. When women were damn scarce on the docks. “What are youdoing?”
“Getting to the club unobviously as I can, which I think the both of us urgently better. Any word on Dekker?”
“No, damn him, I’m looking for Bird right now.”
“We better get him. They got soldier-boys with rifles now. They pulled those lads off liberty and they’re putting some of them down by the offices.”
“Damn, I don’t like that.”
“No argument, cher. Some of those guys are still flying a little.”
“Bright. Corporate bright, there.”
“Ain’t corp-rat, cher, that’s the so’jers—which we got gathering right down there. Don’t look. Just let’s stroll along and find Bird.”
He hadn’t been entirely scared until now. He started to walk, hearing distant shouting. People were coming out of the bar behind their backs.
A beer mug hit the deck and broke.
“Just keep walking,” Sal said.
“Don’t hold my arm. You’re a guy, dammit!”
“Yeah,” Sal said, and dropped it.
Tryto find a match on a refinery station—
“There’s candles in Scorpio’s,” the Shepherd said, rummaging the repair-kit.
“Not excessively helpful, mister. Never mind the screwdriver. Screw. Have you got a brass screw? Wire?”
Dekker objected, “Meg, what are you doing?”
She pulled the cover off the door-switch. “Wait-see, cher rab. God, the man has wire. What are we coming to?”
“A short’s only going to start the—”
Dekker got this look then.
“Yeah,” she said, winding wire about bare contacts. “Remember the ‘15, cher? Want you to take a few napkins, and the vodka bottles… Won’t take me a minute here.”
“That door’s going to seal,” the Shepherd said, “the second the fire-sensor goes off. We’ll suffocate.”
“Uh-uh. Door’s going to stay open. Make me happy. Say we got fire-masks in here.”
CHAPTER 18
THE emergency speakers said, from every other store front: This is a full security alert. Go to your residences immediately. Go to your residences immediately. Clear the walkways for emergency vehicles.
Sal said: “So what are we supposed to do, go home or clear the walkways? Stupid shits!”
“I don’t like this,” Ben said. “Seriously time to get down to the club.”
The wires sparked and melted, the door opened, Meg whipped a chair into the doorway and ducked back. Shots spattered. Dekker kept his hands steady: the toilet paper caught, the cloth fibers caught, the cloth caught, blue fire in the folds; Dekker lit the next and Meg snatched the bottle and threw it into the hall.
It shattered. Dekker lit a third vodka bottle, passed it, and Meg lobbed the second out the door and ducked back as somebody screamed in pain.
The Shepherd was on a chair with another bit of burning cloth. The smoke alarm went off inside. The fire system started spraying, the door tried to shut as shots spattered off the edge and blew hell out of the chair-back. They were down to gin bottles.
Fire-spray started outside, white chemical clouds billowing up.
“That’s got it,” Meg said, pulled her mask up, trod on the chair and cleared it into the smoke outside as shots went past the door.
No notion whether she’d made it, no knowledge how to dodge or duck—he just deafened himself to the shots, cleared the chair and hugged the wall in the neon-lit smoke—running shadows rushed out of Scorpio’s, screaming in panic.
Shots slammed into the crowd. Bodies flew; voices shrieked above the wailing siren. He sprinted past the restaurant’s blue glare, dodged runners in the mist, not caring right now if the Shepherd was behind them or not—Meg was ahead of him trying for the Emergency Shaft, Meg had the Shepherds’ key, and people who’d been taking cover in the restaurant were running every which way through the mist and into the gunfire.
He saw Meg stop, saw her trying to get the key in a slot.
A shot blasted a gouge in the wall beyond her—he flinched, pressed himself as flat to the wall as he could.
“Take the lift on the next level,” the Shepherd gasped, clutching at his shoulder, beside them. “They’re bound to have our cards blocked—Use your own. Berth 18 if we get separated—”
People were bunching up around them in panic—somebody in a waiter’s uniform had a key, shoved Meg aside. The door opened. Meg slid in with the crowd and he pushed after her, he didn’t care who he knocked out of the way—there were more and more pushing at their backs, the rush shoving them past the second door and up the steps. He pulled his mask down for air, grabbed the rail to keep from being shoved down and pushed all the way into the clear, with the Shepherd close behind, around the turn and up.
“3-deck damn door isn’t going to work!” the Shepherd yelled out of the clangor behind them in the stairwell. “Door’s still open down there! Go for 4-deck, get a door shut behind us!”