Текст книги "Explorer"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

If somehow some armament didn’t like the firesafe signal the pod emitted, and wanted to blow them to little agitated atoms…

Toby , he’d write, if he had the chance, you won’t believe where I’m going. You won’t believe what we’re doing. What we’re hoping to do. We’re absolutely crazy. There might have been a better plan than this …

Big bump. Jago nearly lost him from her grip.

Clang. Bang. Bump-scrape-clang. He gritted his teeth while the pod skidded over some surface it should be able to grab. God, they’d missed their grapple.

Thump-clang.

Jolt.

Whine.

“We’re at the port,” the pilot reported breathlessly.

Thank God, thank God, thank God.

The whining kept up. And kept up. The whole pod seemed queasy in its attachment—but attached. Something had gone wrong, he was sure the pilots had improvised—but they had weight . His feet were on the floor again, which meant they’d reached a cylinder surface, and Jago let him go. She made a rapid check of her gear, as Banichi and Cenedi’s men did, as Barnhart checked his pockets and his coat, and he took the cue himself: he had the gun still in his right pocket, despite the jolt, that, and the pocket com in his left. Brochures securely inside his coat.

The whining stopped. The pilot and co-pilot crawled out of their seats and began working at the forward port, pulled it back, and, dyed with blinking green light, showed them a metal wall, flame-blackened, a lot the worse for wear.

In the middle of that wall, a round port with a blinking green light in the middle of it, under lettering that said EPORT 81.

They’d missed number 80. They were at another access. How did that number match their numbers? Bren asked himself: was it up or down on the cylinder, and where were they?

The pilot and co-pilot opened the control cover, going for switches. There was a red handle. The co-pilot pulled it, and the whole surface of the door recessed rapidly.

White light came on, blinding, flooding their little pod.

Banichi and Jago went through, and Bren went, the rest of the mission behind them, through the open port, into a white-lit airlock.

“Good luck,” the pilot wished the lot of them, and the door shut between. Banichi pushed a button and opened the door into Guild territory—a dimly lit engineering corridor that very happily had heat and light and air that didn’t hurt. One could be ever so grateful for those basics. Bren personally was.

“This way,” Barnhart said, and pointed with a gloved hand. They walked a considerable distance down that corridor, and the air by now didn’t feel so warm.

But they reached a shut section door marked 80, which was where they were supposed to be, and an unfortified approach—far more luck than their skidding entry had forecast.

Bold as brass, Barnhart strolled in that direction, and Bren took a deep breath and got into the fore of the expedition as well, as far as a cross-corridor which was, to their vast relief, vacant. The pilot had stayed behind, keeping systems hot and waiting for them, but the co-pilot had tagged along with them. For a brief while they were to be infelicitous eight—disastrous eight, double infelicitous four. Only acquiring the prisoner could change those numbers to three of threes, the adventurously felicitous nine—God! The mind zigged and zagged in terror through superstition and operations—even his atevi bodyguard would call it nonsense, while their nerves twitched to it. At this point of the operation, felicitous numbers rested in accomplishing their mission. Jase’s orders. Jase’s sensitivity to atevi nerves. And now atevi lagged back and a handful of reasonable-looking humans, give or take the cold-area coats and gloves, had only to walk, calmly down the corridor, calmly, up to an ordinary lift, in the right section, the section they were supposed to be in.

Bren turned, gave a little nod and waited for atevi to join them and take up positions on either side of the door.

Then he stripped off the gloves, pocketed them, punched in a call—no need for the key—and waited for the lift.

The door opened. Empty. Not unexpectedly so. The lift system cycled people to sensible destinations, not detouring them through cold, dimly lit maintenance levels. People in cold, inconvenient spots had to wait while the lift system emptied a car.

“Nadiin,” Bren said, first in, holding the door open, and Banichi, Jago, and the rest boarded and occupied the sides, atevi back against the walls, out of sight, humans to the center.

Barnhart input their destination. The lift rose. And rose. And rose.

And stopped.

The door opened. A single security officer faced them, not even yet expecting trouble as he walked in.

Bren grabbed his jacket and yanked him in. There was a yelp, the start of an outcry.

That stopped, if the struggle didn’t. The car started up again.

They reached level four. And stopped. The door didn’t open. The lift panel flashed a request for security clearance.

“Key,” Barnhart said, and Bren put the keycard in.

The door opened tamely and without alarm. And while his key was in, Bren put the car into a maintenance hold, door open.

“Very poor,” Jago said softly, “very poor provision.” As they exited the lift.

They had one prisoner in the lift car, a slightly conscious and bruised prisoner. One of Cenedi’s men remained with him. The rest of them moved out at a sedate pace, and without a word Bren took the lead, in a brightly lit, warm corridor, Barnhart beside him, the co-pilot close by. They were to make as soft an entry as they could into what their prisoners back on the ship told them was a detention area, creating as little fuss as possible.

Max security, Becker and his men had called it. Max security, as station understood the term. Jago thought it wouldn’t be much. God, he hoped not.

Blind turn. And if they were getting close to occupied areas, it was the paidhi’s turn to see, solo, what was down that hall. He gave a little tug at his slightly rumpled work jacket as he faced the corner. “Hang back,” he said to Barnhart and the copilot, got a worried look back.

“Use great caution,” Jago wished him, a whisper at his shoulder, “Bren-ji.”

“One will do one’s utmost, Jago-ji,” he said. He pulled the com from his pocket, did a fast check of his shortrange communications, nothing so extensive as to reach the ship, and the answering flash said he had contact with his bodyguards.

He walked out, facing a sealed door, no guards in sight. Just very blank corridor on either hand, no designation on the door.

He used his key, locked the door open by means that gave as few signals to the system as possible, and walked ahead into an equally blank corridor, no doors, nothing but a left turn toward what his recollection of the diagrams said should be a main transverse corridor. He whistled tonelessly as he walked, not wishing to startle anyone around the next corner, and on inspiration, took one of the brochures from his jacket pocket—not that paper wouldn’t be a phenomenon, but it posed its own puzzle to the eye, and distracted attention from the cut of his coat.

He walked around the bend, and saw a man at a desk, the image of men at desks in front of sealed doors everywhere in human civilization.

He walked up, whistling, preoccupied with his brochure.

“What’s that?” the man at the desk asked him. And a second, closer look: “What department are you?”

“Technical.” That explained almost anything, in Bren’s experience. “You seen this thing?” Bren laid the brochure on his desk.

“Where did you get this?”

“Admin.” That also answered everything.

The man handled the brochure cautiously, saw the pictures of beach and mountain. Opened it, gave it a scant glance, while Bren meditated simply hitting him on the head, but he was curious.

The man read, looked up, alarmed. “They’re serious?”

“Very serious.” He played it by ear. “Look, I’m supposed to estimate the prisoner’s needs in this transfer.”

“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 we 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.”

“Yes, sir,” the man muttered. The other, still on the floor, seemed beyond speech, as Jago extracted the whole packet of brochures from their kit and set them in his lap.

“Safe,” she said to him, encouragingly.

“My bodyguard says this is your ticket aboard,” Bren said shamelessly. “Pass them out. Brochures get first boarding. The access is open now. We have a handful of days to get everyone aboard.”

Down and down the levels, all the way to the bowels of the station’s maintenance, down to the service-port and the dim, cold depths. Banichi was on the comm the moment the doors opened, and they freed their two Reunioners, then shoved their rescuee out into this place that, whatever thoughts might be going through the alien’s mind, certainly wasn’t the prosperous end of the station.

They ran, then, dragging the alien with them. Cold hit like a wall, burned the lungs as they tried to make time, down dim corridors, into section 81.

There escape in fact loomed in front of them: the co-pilot had opened the emergency hatch from his side, the only way it would open, and with a broad inclusive wave, beckoned them in.

Safe, now. Two frightened humans trying to raise an alarm upstairs might only tell where they had been, in a very few moments, but if they were the least bit worried, Bren thought, those two might keep quiet, believing those brochures were a precious thing, to be passed out quickly among reliable friends.

Meanwhile their assorted party crammed themselves inside the airlock, within the webbing. The alien looked about him, large, dark eyes glittering in the dim light, a liquid glance passing jerkily over strange sights and strange faces—thinking of escape or murder, more than likely, but if they knew one thing about this person by now, they knew this was by no means a fool. Cooperation remained the moment-to-moment rule, compliance as the pilot and co-pilot got the pod door shut—no fuss, no argument. They were leaving the place that had held him and that suited the alien fine.

Haste and distance was their collective intention: haste in reaching the cover of the ship itself was all they could do to protect themselves from the station. And if the pod had been close quarters going out, now, with the door shut, they jammed themselves up closer and tighter, human, atevi, and shivering, strange-smelling unidentified.

Thump! Clang! They were free, rotating alarmingly at first. Then a steady hard push of propulsion cut in, compressing the whole untidy mass of them toward the aft bulkhead, a painful tangle of muscular flesh punctuated with other people’s knees and elbows.

“We did it,” Barnhart panted at Bren’s ear, breathless and astonished, and Bren only thought, enduring a hard atevi elbow between his shoulder blades, and air too dry and thin for comfort, For God’s sake, man, don’t jinx us .

Then the alien they were transporting began struggling—huge arms, legs like tree trunks and a swing, if they hadn’t all been pressed together like a sandwich, that could have cracked skulls. Banichi grabbed one arm and pinned it. The alien’s eyes showed wild, broad nostrils flared and the mouth—omnivore, Bren decided, just like humans—opened in frantic gasps.

“Air pressure!” Bren shouted against the weight compressing his rib cage. “Take the air ship-normal! Fast!”

Fast still wasn’t an instantaneous process. They were in freefall and the pilots had their hands full, what with the possibility that the station might at any moment find something capable of taking a shot at them, either inside the ring or once they started up the mast toward the ship. Bren personally didn’t want to distract them—but they had an alien laboring for breath, close to passing out after his wild exertion: he must have stood it as long as he could, and gotten desperate.

“Short distance to our ship,” Bren yelled into the alien’s face. Touching him could be reassuring. It could equally well be deadly insult. He opted for hands-off. “We want to help you. Be still. All right?”

He didn’t know whether the alien heard or understood. Banichi’s grip held the alien fast against a new burst of resistance, and now one of Cenedi’s men began to wind self-adhesive restraint about him, which didn’t calm the situation or likely help his breathing at all.

“Caution, Bren-ji,” Banichi said, struggling to hold the massive arms out of action, and if Banichi was having trouble keeping his grip on those arms, Bren found no chance. He wriggled to back up as far as he could, acceleration pressing them together. Then Jago added her efforts, inserting an arm and struggling past him to get the binding wrapped.

But it all became easier as the alien stopped fighting and let his head loll, close to passing out.

“Easy, easy, easy,” Bren said, and took a chance. “Oxygen. Can we get the emergency oxygen, Jago-ji?”

Jago reached a long arm to an emergency panel. In a moment more they had an oxygen mask roughly over the alien’s broad, flat face, and the last fighting eased as their passenger gasped for breath.

Not a crazy person. One trying to breathe.

Then acceleration stopped, all in one stomach-wrenching moment, and the axis spun over. They began, despite the testimony of senses, to slow down, trying not, Bren said to himself, to impact the ship and smear their little mission all over their ship’s travel-scarred hull.

Slowing down. Slowing down. The pilot and co-pilot were talking to someone with an incredible and reassuring calm.

Bren found himself breathing as if oxygen for all of them had grown far too short and he wished there were a mask for him.

But the pilots worked calmly just as if they were coming in at Alpha station, a precise set of communications and maneuvers.

Their alien’s eyes opened slightly. He was no longer fighting them. He might not know another word of who they were, but air was potent, the most basic requirement. They had satisfied that urgent need, and they had taken him out of that clear-walled cell, and they weren’t where he had spent the last six years—they had that to recommend them.

“We’re coming to our ship,” Bren said to their alien, in the hope that those years in human hands had taught him some few words. “My name is Bren. This is Banichi. We’re from the ship. We want to help you. Do you understand me at all?”

The alien gave no response, only a slow, blinking stare.

“We’re coming in,” the copilot said. “Brace, all.”

Thank God. In. Safe. They had the station’s precious hostage, and—now that the station knew they’d been robbed of that asset, now that the station had the ship’s offer of rescue coursing the halls and soon being gossiped in the restaurants—maybe the station would just give up quietly, turn Sabin loose, and let them have the fuel.

Maybe rainbows would shine in deep space.

But, he thought, up against this strange creature who smelled like pavement, they did have a major asset in their hands, they’d told the truth to a handful of people. And they hadn’t killed anyone during their mission.

Let the Guild recalculate its assets now.

Thump-clang. Rattle and stop. Blessed stop.

They were in. They were safe.

“Mr. Cameron,” the co-pilot said, “captain’s compliments, and will you get up to his office at the earliest after dock?”

Urgently, never mind they’d just worked a miracle and he had an alien he had to talk to—get upstairs.

Something wasn’t according to plan.

Chapter 16

Come up, Jase had said, and to the bridge Bren went immediately, gun in pocket, jacket torn and rumpled, sweat and the lingering stink of noxious chemicals about him. It made his eyes water. Narani would be scandalized, Bren thought, aware he was light-headed at the moment. He needed to be down below to supervise their alien guest.

But Jase needed him topside, fast.

The lift door let him out. He spared only a quick leftward glance to be sure Jase wasn’t on the bridge. Crew there was busier than it had been, which said something on its own.

And—God?—a blood trail snaked down the corridor from the lift, a set of dots leading down to the executive offices.

Jase’s was the second door. Where the dots entered. There was no bodyguard outside.