Heavy Time (38 page)

“I’m afraid all that’s under our jurisdiction, Mr. Porey: you’ll have to get an administrative clearance for that access. I can refer you to Mr. Crayton, in General Admin—”

Porey reached inside his coat, pulled a card from his pocket and tossed it down on his desk. “Put
that
authorization in your reader.”

Salvatore picked up the card with the least dawning apprehension they were in deep, EC-level trouble, and put it in the reader slot.

It said,
Earth Company Executive Order, Office of the President, Sol Station,
Earth Administration Zone
.

To all officers and agents of Security and Communications, ASTEX

Administrative Territories:

By the authority of the Executive Board and a unanimous vote of the Directors,
a state of emergency is deemed to exist in ASTEX operations which place military
priority contracts in jeopardy. ASTEX Security and Communications agencies and
employees are hereby notified of the transfer of all affected assets and operations
to the authority of EcoCorp, under ASTEX Charter provision 28 hereafter
appended, and subject to the orders of EcoCorp Directors…I hereby and herewith
order ASTEX company police and life services officers to place themselves directly
under the order of UDC Security Office in safeguarding records and personnel
during this transfer of operational authority.

Salvatore sat down and read it again.

“Effectively,” Porey said, “your paycheck comes directly from the EC now.

You’re a civilian law enforcement officer in a strategically sensitive operation, subject to the rules and decisions of the UDG, the UN and the EC officers and board. I’m directing you to turn over those files.”

“You can’t have gotten an order from the EC—you haven’t had the time to get a reply.”

“Good, Mr. Salvatore. You are a critical thinker. There were triggering mechanisms. The transfer document has lain on my commanding officer’s desk for some few days. But I’d think again about destroying files, or advising your former administrators of your change of loyalties. You have a long career with the EC in front of you if you use your head. I can’t say that about all your managers.” A second card hit the desk. “That goes in a Security terminal. It will make its own accesses. Can you trust your secretary?”

“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
Industry
file. Purge it, among first things.”

“
Purge
it?
Erase
it?”

“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!”

“
Find
Paul 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
hide
on 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
else
won’t be working when we need it.”

“I’m the only contact our people
have
on this station—I have my orders—Mitch is—”

“
Mitch
isn’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
hell
up 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
that
your 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?”

Good
question.

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
were
shutting 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
you
doing?”

“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.

Try
to 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.”

«
^
»

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!”

Dekker turned his shoulders, grabbed a handhold, forced his way past panicked, flagging clerks and restaurant help—the Shepherd yelling “Go!” and shoving him from behind.

A hundred feet each deck level. No way clerks and waiters could outclimb spacer legs—on the end of four months’ gym time. Meg was out of sight above them.

A siren had started in the distance—around the curvature of the ’deck. Ben couldn’t see where—but, God, it was the direction of the club—where they were going.

“Come
on
,” Sal cried, trying to hurry him—grabbed his hand and pulled him through the crowd coming out of the Amalthea, but steps raced behind them. “Hold it!” a shout came from close at their backs: a hand grabbed Ben’s shoulder and spun him around and back, bang up against the plex front of the bar. He found himself nose to nose with a cop, with a stick jammed up under his chin.

“Pollard, is it?”

Shit, he thought, struggling for air.

Out of nowhere, Bird’s voice said, “Hey! Hey, what do you think you’re dealing with?” Bird came up and caught the cop’s shoulder, another cop grabbed Bird and somebody in the crowd spun the cop around face-on with a beer mug.

“Hold it,” Ben tried to say, “wait, dammit,—
Bird
!”

Something banged, the plex window shook to an impact, and there was blood all over—he slipped, and the cop’s riot stick came away as he hit on his knees, Bird was lying there with a bloody great hole in his sleeve and a look of shock on his face. All else he could see was legs and all else he could hear was people cursing and screaming. He scrambled over, grabbed Bird’s coat and dragged him up close against the frontage, Bird fainting on him, people trampling them until he had a moment of clear space and Sal grabbed his arm to pull him to his feet.

“Ben! Come
on
!”

He scrambled for his feet, pulling at Bird. Sal hauled, Bird tried to get his legs under him, and they threw arms around him and ran with the crowd, battered and staggered by people passing them, Bird doing the best he could, Sal shoving him up from the other side—gunfire and shouts echoed at their backs.

Screaming broke out ahead of them, and the crowd ebbed back at them without warning, shoved them the other way. The PA said, echoing over the shouting and the distant siren,
This is not a test. This is a real emergency
—

“Stairs,” Bird gasped, and Ben thought, God, where are they? You passed them time and again, the utility accesses—between the frontages, back in the bars—

—used to use them in the Institute, up and down the dorms, you used to duck under the security cameras—

One was right next to The Hole, that was where.

His lungs were burning, Bird was losing his footing, stumbling with every step as they reached the alcove and Sal shoved at the door.

“Mike’s got a key,” Bird gasped.

“Hell with that,” Ben said, and hit #, /, and 9 simultaneously, 8, 0, and /.

Management Emergency Access.

They weren’t the only ones that wanted the stairs—“Get out of my way!” Ben snapped at Sal, feeling the panic in the crowd as they pushed for the opening door—God, they couldn’t climb and carry Bird between them: he got a shoulder under him and carried him solo, with Sal running the stairs ahead of him. Hysterical people shoved him from behind, shoved past, nearly knocked him down, and then somebody with sense, thank God, pulled him square again and shoved him forward when his balance faltered.

“Lock
through
, dammit!” Sal yelled—downside door shut was the only way the door up on 3-deck would open; and the guys ahead of her got out. Ben saw it through a black-rimmed blur, heard it through the ringing of the steps and the pounding in his chest, one thin feminine voice, “E-drill,
ten at a time
, you dumbass bastards!”