Survival (34 page)

She'd be even happier once she was home again, for good.

When a light jostling marked their box being lifted into position, Mac hurriedly strapped herself into her chair, mimicking the actions of her companion. For an interminable length of time, she waited, hands locked on the chair arms and doing her best to emulate the outward calm of her companion as well.
She wasn't,
Mac thought ruefully,
fooling either of them.

The slingshot itself was an anticlimax after Nik's caution of a rough ride. No warning sound, no sensation of movement, just a feeling of increasing pressure against her entire body, the pressure smooth and building to a point that was certainly no worse than she'd experienced in a dive. Perhaps the interior of the box was protected somehow from the worst effects of fleeing Earth's grip.

Mac thought of her salmon, leaping from pool to pool, defying gravity with only their strength and determination. They couldn't see what awaited them until making that final commitment.

She wished she had their courage
.

The pressure lessened abruptly, signaling launch—the moment their box joined the line of containers curving upward through the Arctic sky, another ball tossed at space.

Courage or not, she'd made her leap,
Mac told herself, determined to hope for the best. She began to unbuckle her straps.

“Don't do that yet, ma'am. The snatch can be bumpy. Should happen the moment we break atmosphere.”

Snatch?
Mac didn't like the sound of that. Of course, she wasn't very happy about the idea of breaking atmosphere either, so it was probably just as well someone was waiting to “snatch” them. Mac's ever-helpful imagination stuck on the image of a ball reaching the top of its arc then plummeting back to the ground. Fortunately, she was soon startled from that less-than-helpful thought by sounds from “outside” the box, a sullen series of thuds, as though a frustrated bear was trying to break open a waste container.

“They've got us, ma'am.”

On the surface, the explanation was reassuring, but Mac had to ask: “How do we know who has us?”

“That's my job, ma'am.” Her companion turned over her hands, which had been resting lightly on the arms of her chair. A weapon like Nik's nestled in each, colored to match the paler skin of her palms. “Welcoming committee,” she announced with an easy smile, flipping her hands to lie innocently again.

Odd how one's view of the ordinary could spin on an instant. The woman in front of Mac was no longer companion, but warrior. The arrangement of chairs was no longer haphazard, but deliberate, to give her protector line of sight to the only entrance.

And Nikolai Trojanowski obviously didn't trust to subterfuge alone.

“Is there anything I should do?” Mac asked, her voice sounding normal to her own ears.

Perhaps not to others
. The other woman's smile broadened. “Nothing would be safest, ma'am. Don't even worry. I'm sure—There.” This reassuringly as the thuds were replaced by a staccato series of high-pitched tones and Mac jumped as far as the straps allowed, jarring her rib. “See? On schedule and with the right code. In a few minutes, you'll be on your way.”

Mac made herself relax, made herself focus on the next steps.
One at a time,
she told herself, the way she would when climbing a rock face to check its ledges as potential field stations. Normally she wasn't much for heights, but necessity was admirable motivation. That attitude helped now. “The shuttle takes us to the ship?”
She didn't know what to call the damned thing,
Mac realized. Starship? Transport? Prison?

“Not directly, ma'am. Too many variations in freight handling in the Union, despite standards. We're being taken to a way station. You'll transfer to the—to where you're going.” A smooth slip past what she was probably not supposed to say.

Mac didn't press the point. She'd be wherever it was all too soon anyway. “What about you?”

The other woman hesitated an instant too long, her cheerfulness too forced as she answered: “Paid leave, ma'am. Nice gig if you can get it.”

“Is everyone who helps me getting a similar—vacation?” Mac asked.
Was Nik?

A sharp look. “I wouldn't know, ma'am.”

A warning she'd trespassed?
Mac disliked games and secrets. Now it seemed she was to be surrounded by them. It left a foul taste in her mouth as she waited through the next half hour; she kept swallowing to rid herself of it.

But when another round of bear-thuds marked arrival at the way station—whatever that was—and the other woman unbuckled herself, then came over to help her, Mac patted her crown of tidy, if slightly sticky, braids. “Thank you,” she said, for the protection as well as the hair.

Another of those brilliant smiles. “All part of the first-class service on Box Airlines, ma'am.”

Mac's laugh twanged her rib, so she rather breathlessly reached for help standing up. “I'll be sure to recommend you,” she said, as the other woman hauled her to her feet. “Although I can't say I plan to do this again soon.”

A shrug. “If you need us, we're here.” It wasn't as casual as it sounded. Mac looked up into a pair of somber, worried dark eyes and could only nod.

Then, the side of the box fell away.

Revealing total darkness beyond.
Vacuum!
But when her guardian reacted by standing at ease, as if this had been expected, Mac could hardly do otherwise. But she moved ever so slightly closer to the other woman and tried not to hold her breath.

“Clear!” The darkness had a voice, male, loud, and authoritative. “Lifting shroud on three. One, two, three.”

The darkness was gone, replaced by a whole new world.

“Go ahead, ma'am. It's safe.”

Mac's first impression was of being outdoors again. She stepped forward, blinking in what seemed full spectrum sunlight. When she was out of the box, however, and could squint upward, she could see, far above, that the “sunlight” was coming from myriad sources.
A lie,
she thought, aware of the irony.

Scale was hard to grasp. The box she'd traveled in might be a child's toy, left lying on the floor near towering piles of others. Skims of a style she'd never seen passed overhead in multiple lanes, sending their shadows to the floor. The floor itself, drawn with broad lines of yellow, black, and green, wasn't of metal or any substance Mac could identify. A heap of what appeared to be fabric lay nearby, black yet with a sheen to it.
The “shroud?”

Dismayed, she searched for anything familiar. Surely this was a Human station. Emily had traveled like this. Millions did every week. But the figures waiting for her were Dhryn.

Not all,
Mac realized with relief, as two men—Human men—came toward her.
Odd, she'd never needed to make that distinction before now.
They were both wearing an alarming amount of protective gear and each cradled an item of weaponry Mac concluded had been designed to intimidate an enemy into surrendering without a fight, given the number of wicked protrusions and glaring red lights on each bulky device.

“Welcome to Way Station 80N-C, ma'am.” His had been the voice in the darkness. Shorter of the pair by a hand's breadth, older by several years, with a face sporting implants on almost every possible surface of his caramel-toned skin.
Career military was a safe guess,
Mac concluded, swallowing hard. “Sorry for the delay opening your—” his eyes slid by her to the box as if seeking a helpful label, “—transport.”

“We must leave this place at once!” An urgent boom that startled them all.

Mac didn't catch which of the five Dhryn spoke, but the volume and bass tones were familiar. She'd glanced at them once, quickly, expecting Brymn, but these were unfamiliar. Now she looked more closely.

Instead of colored silks, these Dhryn wore bands of woven fiber, either naturally the same cobalt blue as their thick skin, or dyed to match. No jewelry, but the upper portion of their middle arms bore what looked to Mac like black holsters, each holding a stubby cylinder. She had the impression they were smaller than Brymn, though that could have been their surroundings. Mac had never been inside anything so large.

Sam had loved to talk about way stations, she remembered, from how they were numbered for the Earth latitude above which they orbited, later given a letter to designate their sequence among the others in that orbit, to how they were the next logical outgrowth of Human cities. He'd set his family 'screen to receive live feed from the construction of 15S-C, the newest 'station of the time. Now Mac dredged her memories for those images, wishing too late she'd paid more than token attention.

The way stations were like the mining towns that had grown, or been planted, around points of access to treasures from Earth's crust, designed to process ore and house miners. Rather than ore, however, the modern incarnation processed materials being exported from or imported to the planet. They contained the refining and other industries no longer permitted within an atmosphere, as well as manufacturers who assembled products before shipment, or who specialized in repackaging for a varied species' marketplace. And they housed the teeming thousands required to run these operations, not to mention service the diverse shipping fleets that ferried both goods and people.

Mac had only the vaguest conception of the way station's ring shape, more a flattened doughnut than a circle, bristling with docking ports. She did know much of the structure was hollow, with buildings and industrial plants erected inside as required.

She hadn't known the reality would be sheer bedlam. She wanted to cover her ears. It was like standing beside a malfunctioning skim engine while Tie tuned it, only multiplied a hundredfold and with random explosions added. The larger skims roared around lumbering t-levs overhead, small skims passed both, all apparently lacking the mufflers required on Earth. Below them, teeth-like racks stretched into the center from ports in the upcurved wall, ferrying boxes of various sizes from air locks to the receiving floor, the machinery complaining every step of the way. Shipping boxes were literally raining down atop the building-sized piles on every side of where Mac and the others stood, a cavalier treatment Mac was grateful their box had been spared.

There were automated shuttle trucks spinning among the piles like so many whirligig beetles on a pond, quiet enough on their multiple tires, but making their presence heard with a sharp
BANG . . . Clang!
as each rammed the box of its choice in order to slide it up on its flat back.

It was a wonder any cargo survived intact
, Mac thought, staring around in astonishment. There were no other people in sight. A pair of skims sat nearby, one larger than the other, explaining the arrival of her welcoming committee. Was everything in this section automated?
It would,
she decided with a wince at a shrill grind of metal to metal,
explain the racket.

“We must leave!” The Dhryn were visibly agitated, limbs shuddering.
Not all,
Mac corrected, leaning to one side to get a better look at the Dhryn standing behind the rest.

He—she kept assuming male for simplicity—was maimed, his left lowermost limb a mere stub, jutting at an acute angle from his shoulder, his right lowermost missing below the elbow joint.
How did he sit?
There were nicks along both ear ridges, too irregular to be decorative. More proof, if she needed it, of the Dhryn disdain for medical care.

“Our friend's right, ma'am,” the Human said, though he looked none too pleased about agreeing. “Follow me—”

“We must leave NOW!” Two of the Dhryn jumped at Mac, arms out. Even as she opened her mouth to protest, she was grabbed and spun around so that her guardian could put herself between Mac and the oncoming aliens. The other Humans moved just as quickly to stand in front, aiming their weapons. The frontmost Dhryn stopped and, obviously not loath to escalate the encounter, used their uppermost hands to draw their weapons from their holsters and aim them at the Humans.

Cursing under her breath about trigger-happy fools of any biology, Mac shoved the other woman aside and stepped forward. She made eye contact with the maimed Dhryn and announced as firmly as she could, given the ominously nervous beings surrounding her: “Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor is all my name. I thought we were cooperating.”

The Dhryn, weapons still out, shifted aside so Mac and the maimed individual faced each other. She sent what she hoped was an “I know what I'm doing” look to her fellow Humans. At least they didn't budge. Unfortunately, neither did their weapons.

“I take the name Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor into my keeping,” that Dhryn said finally, giving one of those lifting bows. “Dyn Rymn Nasai Ne is all my name.”