Time Past (42 page)

But some of the residents of Jocasta had also seen, close up, murders by Q’Chn. Feelings against the Confederacy must be strong indeed if these people were willing to accept the New Council. Yet I felt that their support would vanish the moment the Q’Chn threat changed to a real attack. Terror looks very different in one’s own home. Venner must realize what a thin line she walked, but if she could keep the Q’Chn under control on the station, the New Council could gain support here, even if she had to leave soon after.

The throughway was crowded with evacuees from the spoke. Not all of them would stay in Alpha, but it looked like most of them were being off-loaded here, presumably so the uplifts could go back and get more. We could fit about twenty people in one uplift car. Six uplift lines in one spoke, four cars working each line. I calculated it would take at least six hours, possibly eight, to evacuate the few thousand people in each spoke, including the loading and unloading time.

Most of the people carrying boxes and bags were human. I tried to slide against the flow of their movement and my ConFleet uniform received some angry stares and muttered comments such as “useless.”

The crowd thinned closer to the spoke, where a few stragglers were talking to a Security constable. Another constable tapped the comm unit next to the uplift doors, then slapped the panel with a curse.

“Has that last car gone back up?” I asked her.

She turned, and bit back a retort when she saw the uniform. Her long-boned face and expressive eyes were familiar, also the way she drew her mouth sideways in frustration.

I trawled for the memory. A break-in to the quarters I’d shared with three other women. This constable had come and taken our statements about what we’d left where.

“Caselli, isn’t it?”

Her eyes widened. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Problem with the lift?”

“It started to go. Now I think it’s stuck.”

“Stuck?” I crouched down and pulled open the controls maintenance cover.

“It won’t respond to directions,” she said, crouching beside me. “We’re supposed to keep the lines running, or the other cars will get stuck, too.”

“I know the drill,” I said. Unfortunately, the problem was not with the uplift controls as such, but with one of their supporting “mother” systems. And the diagnostic function on the controls here was not enough to tell me what was wrong. I suspected it was the fault of our intruder in the core.

The other constable was now arguing into his comm link. The other uplifts were experiencing similar problems. Definitely a support malfunction, then. But I couldn’t get to the core to isolate it unless the uplift was running...

Caselli looked at the panel above our heads and pointed. “We’re on again,” she said, half to me and half to her companion.

I stood up too quickly, and when the flecks of brightness stopped streaming in front of my eyes, the orange standby lights on the uplift had changed back to green. The next car on this line was approaching. “I’ll be going back up on this car once it’s empty. Right to the center.”

She looked at the four rank stars on my collar, slid her eyes politely over the state of my face, and glanced at the cover of the maintenance controls, which I’d tapped open with a code from memory.

“Ma’am, would you mind confirming that? It’s just that we were told nobody was to go back up to the spokes...”

Murdoch didn’t answer the comm link immediately. When he did, he sounded as tense as I’d ever heard him. He simply told the constable to give me help, then when I asked him if anything was wrong, said,
We’ve got trouble in Section Four. Two Q’Chn have come down looking for K’Cher. Talk to you later.

I cut the link, shocked. What could we do if the Q’Chn were down here already? Apprehension twisted a sharp-edged knot in my stomach. All right for Murdoch to talk about primitive explosions, but they couldn’t use that in a residential area. For a moment I wondered if I should go back to Section Four and join him, then common sense returned. I would be no help to Murdoch there, while I could be of great use up in the core.

If only the damn uplift would come.

The gravity grabbed at my feet and stomach as the uplift stopped at Level Six. When the door swished open, a thin, scruffy human carrying a maserlike rifle was waiting. He wore oversized body armor—a vest and hip-cover—over drab civilian clothes, and a visual enhancement headpiece circled his untidy hair.

He pointed the rifle at me. “Go away,” he said in heavily accented Confederacy Standard. “You not allowed here.”

“Tell Captain Venner that Com... ex-Commander Hal-ley wishes to speak with her,” I said in the same language. Then repeated it in Earth Standard.

His face relaxed a little when he heard the message the second time, but the rifle muzzle didn’t waver. He stepped back to the far side of the corridor while he activated a comm unit on his vest and muttered into it, all the while keeping me covered.

“Can I come out?” I said. “They want to use the uplift.”

He waved the rifle to one side of the door. I stepped slowly out that side. The uplift door hissed shut.

I caught the words “captain” and “uplift” from the man, this time in a guttural Mars dialect of Earth Standard.

“Wait,” he said to me, and suited action to word by leaning comfortably against the door, the rifle handle firm under his arm.

“Can I see her or not?” I shifted my heels against the deck.

“Wait,” he repeated.

I hadn’t expected him to leave his post. I didn’t expect Venner to come down here, either, and hoped she’d send someone else to take me up to the dock on Level Three.

The rebel dug something from his pocket with his free hand and popped it into his mouth, his eyes on me all the while. He chewed contentedly. I smelled the familiar, mint-like scent of
maq.
Difficult to think of this man as the enemy, when he seemed so much a part of my world. Down in the rings he would blend in easily.

“Why did you join the New Council?” I said.

His brown, watery gaze wandered over my dark blue uniform and his lip curled. Then he looked at my face and seemed to hesitate.

“Why did you join that lot?” he said.

“ConFleet?” I decided on honesty. “To get away.”

“From?”

“From Earth. Family. Being trapped.” It seemed so long ago. I felt a vague irritation at my fifteen-year-old self who thought that if ConFleet offered escape, it was worth selling her freedom.

He chuckled derisively. “What a luxury. Least you had a family. I joined the Council so I could get back at the Confederacy. The Confederacy didn’t think my colony was worth preserving, y’see. But you ConFleet clones don’t understand about that kind of thing, do you?”

“Clones?”

“Yeah. Looking and thinking just like they tell you. All the same.” He glanced at me again. “Well, most of you.”

I had to smile. Looking scruffy had its advantages. “What’s it like sharing a ship with Slashers?” I said, genuinely curious.

“What do you think?” he said, then relaxed a little. “Makes everyone a bit nervy. Cuts down on space, too, ’cause they’ve got to have a whole section to themselves.”

“It’d make me nervous, not knowing if you’re going to wake up one morning without your head.”

He snorted. “They’re not completely unpredictable, you know. Not like they used to be. We’ve improved...” He stopped. “Well, anyway, you know some pirate isn’t going to attack you with them around.”

That was a joke—from what Henoit said, the New Council were the pirates.

Voices echoed around the bend in the corridor and two figures appeared, one walking in front of the other. The second one was a taller, sturdier version of my guard, the first was Dan Florida’s lanky dark form.

“Dan.” I waved.

“Commander!” He waved back, and strode a little faster.

“What happened to you?” He peered at me.

“Long story. Are the delegates all right?”

He glanced at the two New Council humans, who were discussing their respective orders. “They’re okay. A couple of them wanted to get nasty with the New Council. The only way to shut them up was to come up here and deliver their formal protest in person.” He shook his head. “Like a medieval messenger.”

“What’s she like?” I lowered my voice and poked my chin at the guards.

“Tough. Why are you up here? Have you...” He stopped.

“What?”

“Have you decided to join them?”

“You’re not starting that again, are you?” I glared at him. “I’m trying to get access to the core, that’s all. We’ve got opsys problems. On top of everything else.”

On top of some people behaving like idiots,
I nearly added. “If you’re going to start rumors about anything, you might try talking to people about the jump network.”

He cocked his head and gave me a measuring look. “Why?”

“You might try asking people from the Bubble about the coordinates of the jump point Murdoch and I came back through.”

The rebel who’d accompanied Florida called out to me.

“You. Over here.”

“See you later, Dan.” I began to walk obediently down the corridor ahead of the man.

“Commander!” Florida called after me. “Is this your sensational tip-off?”

I turned and waved acknowledgment. “It’s a start.”

“Shut up, ConFleet,” the rebel grunted.

Stone was in the airlock lobby on Level Three with the New Council captain. He stood with his back to us, grasping the handrail as though he were worried the gravity field might suddenly fail.

The H’digh female stood poised beside him, a plasma pistol in one hand. When she had appeared with Stone in the announcement, she’d presented herself as a diplomat, in a plain brown tunic and leggings with no obvious weapons. As if she’d been advised to tone down the popular image of H’digh, which was one of warriors always ready for battle. Now she looked more “normal.” Over the tunic she’d slung a bandolier lined with an array of weapons; the dagger and the blunt kesset grip were the only ones I recognized. Probably a knife tucked into her boot as well.

Her thin, unevenly pigmented face was impassive. The iris-filled eyes focused on my shoulder. As I got closer, the pheromone effect hit me like a mild asthma attack. It wasn’t too bad because of the inhibitor I’d taken.

“Here she is,” said the man with the gun behind me.

Stone grunted in surprise and swung around.

Captain Venner’s actual scent was nothing like Henoit’s. His had been like crushed pine needles on a hot summer day. Hers was stronger, sharper, with a metallic reek to it like blood. She inclined her head with a grace that encompassed her whole body.

“Ex-Commander Halley. It is good you came. I wished to speak to you.” Her Earth Standard was easier to understand in the flesh. But her voice was so similar in tone and timbre to Henoit’s that I flushed, the memory of his voice inextricably bound with the dreams in which his presence invaded my body.

Stone frowned. “What are you doing here?”

I inclined my head back at Venner and smiled at him with as much friendliness as I could. More important things to do than quarrel. “First, a request for the captain. The engineers need to come up to the core to fix opsys malfunctions.”

“What authority do you have to negotiate?” said Stone.

“And second?” said Venner.

If she was like other H’digh I’d known, she would not agree to anything without due consideration.

“Second, two Q’Chn are loose down in Alpha ring right now. You must get them out.”

Stone faced Venner. “You didn’t tell me. When did this happen?”

“Just as I came up.” I tried to soothe him. “I don’t have the details. Murdoch’s handling it.”

Stone didn’t acknowledge my words and kept talking to Venner. “This is intolerable. You told me you could keep those creatures under control.”

“Maybe they are under control,” I said. “Killing one or more of the Four species, such as the K’Cher in Alpha, would make a useful demonstration of power without alienating potential supporters among the Nine.”

Stone snorted. “It would alienate
me.
” “But not, perhaps, those unfortunates who suffered years of Confederacy misadministration here,” said Venner. “Just get them out of Alpha,” I said, more sharply than I’d intended. Misadministration indeed.

“Does this indicate a willingness on the part of station administration to consider the New Council’s request for permanent entry privilege? Mr. Stone has refused us,” said Venner.

Stone glared at me. “This person has no authority to negotiate anything. No official position. In fact, she’s in custody, waiting trial for possession of Invidi technology.”

So much for friendliness.

Venner angled her shoulders toward me and her amber eyes looked me over again without meeting my own. “The Invidi ship, yes. I should like to talk to you about this ship that so interests my Invidi colleague.”

I bet
he
won’t tell you anything about it. “I’d be happy to discuss anything you wish, but first get the Q’Chn out of the rings and let us make sure the station functions properly,” I said. “The situation is serious and we’re not sure of the cause. Have any of your crew attempted to access the opsys core in the center of this structure?”

Venner tilted her head, a H’digh negative. “No.”

“Good. It’s an unusual system because it was built onto existing non-Confederacy technology. If you don’t know what you’re doing, it can be dangerous.”

“It is unacceptable for any of your people to be in this structure, even the opsys core. I cannot guarantee their safety. Both because of my Q’Chn comrades, and also because my crew becomes nervous if their identities are known.”

“Please, only three engineers. I’ll start repairing the comm system myself first.”

“Very well,” said Venner. “Three only. Unarmed.”

“You can’t ask them to go defenseless against the Q’Chn,” protested Stone.

Nothing is a defense against the Q’Chn, I thought. And Gamet’s people could conceal hand weapons in their toolkits if she wanted them to.

“Agreed,” I said, and turned to go back down the corridor to the core.

“Wait.” Venner’s light voice snapped. “We talk.”