In the Company of Others (7 page)

He dogged closed the inner door and wasted no more time, sliding the panel over the station air vent, then cranking the hydraulic-assisted hand pump to evacuate the chamber until the sensors would allow the outer door to be opened manually. It took fifty-three full pumps.

Pardell shone his light over the outer door. It glinted from a misshapen ring of steel clipped to a chain, in turn spot-welded to the doorframe. The assembly was crude, but strong. A similar one hung outside, in vacuum.

He slipped his gloved hand inside the ring, drawing it close to his side. Jase Cohn claimed the ring was from the neck seal of a 'suit worn by a stationer who'd tried to keep out his family. It wasn't the right size or shape, but the notion pleased some. Ring in hand, Pardell leaned his helmet against the outer door and listened.
Nothing.
He brought the steel ring up and thumped it, five times, in a specific rhythm. The vibration reverberated through his helmet, like some muted bell. He listened again.
Nothing.

Habit again
, Pardell thought, but he wouldn't volunteer to be the first to break this one. Not so long ago, there'd been an armed guard leaning outside at all times, ready to slice the suit of anyone exiting the air lock without the code. Or the code would be answered by another, perhaps a warning to be weapons-ready, or demanding information. There hadn't been a guard since Rashid had died at the post, victim of either old age or a too-old suit—or both.
It didn't mean
, Pardell reminded himself,
there might not be one this time.
It would only take a change in the situation to restore the self-preserving instincts of the 'siders. A change like Earthers on-station, naming names.

Safe for the moment from defenders and their ghosts, Pardell stepped out of air lock S17 and into a scene of brilliant confusion, squinting at metal fired by the noonday sun.

The builders of Thromberg Station had perhaps fancied it a planet, setting it in close enough orbit to a white dwarf to make daytime on the station's surface a contrast between blinding glare and utterly black shadow, its light a rich feast at any hour for the mammoth collectors isolated from the station's spin. The sky was starkly black as well, except sunward, where the station's orbit paralleled a sparkling belt of ice-rich cometary debris, raw material for its industry and the sole reason life lingered in Thromberg's giant belly.

The station had been built to process a steady stream of immigrants on their way to the six terraformed worlds within its reach, capable of comfortably—albeit temporarily—housing thousands; providing air, water, and food; complete with immense luggage and freight handling capability; and hosting the bureaucracy, human and machine, to speed people to their futures. There had been lounges to entertain those waiting their turn on the transports, and customs stations aplenty to catch those planning to take advantage of their futures in ways Earth didn't condone.

Today, the luggage and freight areas still echoed with work crews, but their arms loaded and harvested transparent pipes packed with fungus and other simple organisms, the stuff of life rather than personal belongings or mail. If the exodus and riots hadn't killed so many, even that harvest might not have been enough. The customs stations were rumored to be jails. The lounges, Pardell had heard, were hospitals now, places where those who'd lost all hope could quietly apply for sterilization and so qualify for permanent station citizenship. Their rations, despite all talk of equality with immies, were supposedly somewhat better.
Maybe on the inward levels
, Pardell thought wryly. His stationer friends seemed to eat what he did. They drank the same swill, for sure.

If only by coincidence, the builders of Thromberg had planned well for the crisis caused by the Quill. But they could never have imagined what would happen to their station's smooth, polished exterior.

Pardell shut the air lock's outer door, relieved to find himself alone, and surveyed the part of Thromberg Station that no one acknowledged and no one dared touch.

Closest to him in the glittering metal forest was the
Endeavour
, her asteroid grapples biting deep into the multilayered skin of Thromberg like the jaws of a bloodsucking insect. Welds, some old and some fresher, made sure those grapples wouldn't come free again. There were welds and repairs on her hull as well.
Endeavor
had been a battle zone, once, and bore her scars of melted metal proudly.

It was still a battle, merely frozen in time
, Pardell thought. He could count—and name—dozens of other starships from here; they continued beyond the long curve of the station, a crust thinning only where too close to the inhabited sections within. Shuttle or transport, freighter or private yacht: each was locked in its death's grip with the station, driving in pipes to siphon off air and water, many tapping station power lines. All had sacrificed moving among the stars so those they carried could live, forming a city out of their now-lifeless shells.

A city stretching in all directions, bordered by vacuum and held intact by a bloody determination to survive. Station Admin had tried to stop them, rejecting any responsibility for the ships who'd ripped Thromberg apart in their flight to Earth, only to be forced back by Sol System's killing zone. The ships had ignored all warnings, knowing the station had no warships or weapons, that it was a terminal designed to welcome voyagers, not protect itself. So the authorities had turned turtle, closing the docking rings and sealing air locks, refusing to expose themselves even to service the dying ships.

Pardell's lips pulled back over his teeth as he looked for, and found, the
Haida V
. She was an old freighter, a piece of junk that should have been out of service and scrapped, but the kind of ship a bit of coaxing and a lot of luck kept running. She'd arrived at Thromberg with the rest, her holds jammed with survivors from another ship crippled when her Captain hadn't believed Earth would fire on her own. The
Haida
had been almost out of fuel and her Captain well out of patience with panic-stricken fools. After a standoff lasting three days and two deaths, she'd ignored both hysterical warnings and normal docking protocols, ramming the dust-pocked nose of her ancient ship into the station with force enough to fuse them together. Then she sent two groups of space-suited volunteers outside. One group stood armed and ready, while the other drilled into the station and connected the ship's systems to Thromberg's own lifelines.

Station Admin hesitated—stunned perhaps by the audacity of the attack, despite it doing little more than lodging the nose of the
Haida
deep into Thromberg's whipple shield, that layer of metal and composites ready to be sacrificed as it absorbed energy from the unavoidable rain of micrometeors and other debris. Or perhaps there had been agonized debates on how to help or who to blame.
Maybe
, Pardell sometimes thought wistfully,
someone had pleaded
, “Look the other way.”

Meanwhile, other ships, many as close to failing as the
Haida V
, made their own decisions. Like a drift of pollen landing on the mirrored surface of a lake, they matched velocity with the slower aft ring and touched down as if by plan, choosing their times by when the station's spin shadowed her wounded side, as if that kept what they were doing a secret.

It wasn't a secret, of course, nor was it truly meant to be. By crippling their ships and welding them to the station's plates, those returning from their attempt to reach Earth threw themselves on Thromberg's mercy instead, waiting to see if the air lock doors would finally open and grant them the only home humanity had left.

Pardell's eyes followed the feathered melt-lines along the
Endeavour
's hull.
It could have happened like that
, he sighed to himself, straightening up and testing the hold of his mags on the station's pitted shield plates before letting go of the door handle. But the stationers had been caught reeling from the damage caused by the exodus; parts of the station were uninhabitable; and calm reason still couldn't refute the dread of the deadly Quill somehow arriving here next. Rumors burned through the station like so many wildfires: maybe the Quill had contaminated the ships limpeted to the station like so many parasites; maybe that was why Sol System had fired on their own instead of letting them come home.

That had to be the reason.

Fear spread, and what could have been the brightest day in Thromberg's history turned into its darkest. Desperate spacers burned their way through the station's 'locks and waged war in a maze of darkened corridors; equally desperate stationers suited up and attacked the ships on the surface, many dying simply from underestimating the passionless constraints of vacuum and gravity.

Too many died in places and ways they'd never imagined.

It was hard to say, later, if they fought each other or, on some deep, terrified level both sides thought they were striking back at the Quill. Regardless, it might have continued until all were trapped or dead, but abruptly all hostilities ceased. A deal had been struck, though neither side ever admitted it. Instead, the spacers retreated to their ships, posting guards on key air locks to watch the stationers retreat in turn. Station Admin quietly ceased any restoration of the sections directly below the ships, except those repairs necessary to keep air and water flowing through the systems.

Soon, faces once familiar, now haggard and drawn into those of strangers, began showing up in the ration lines, sometimes doing occasional work that didn't require an immigrant registration number or station ident. They didn't have quarters or assignments; it seemed poor manners to ask about either, when it was common enough knowledge where they lived. It was a tenuous tolerance from the beginning. During the Ration Riots, the Outsiders, as they came to be known, were the first and easiest targets. Most learned to stay away from large gatherings.

Old news
, Pardell reminded himself, tilting back to judge the angle of the cable he wanted, almost unconsciously listening for the reassuring whine of the suit's conditioning system as it dumped heat. Today, 'siders had more in common with the virtually imprisoned immigrants who'd never fled the station, and some immies frankly admired what appeared to be 'sider freedom.
As if these ships could ever fly again.
To Pardell's knowledge, few could boast real crews anymore, those with skills finding work inside the station. The ships themselves? Most had been gutted for any parts worth trading. The station looked the other way when 'siders lined up for rations, but it took something solid in hand to gain medical care, clothing, or simply a pocketful of negotiable dibs for beer.

The haphazard arrangement of ships, combined with their tangled roots into heaved and buckled station plates, made moving around on the surface tedious at best. Pardell glanced up, checking for traffic on the cable system. Clear.
One break today
, he told himself, inclined to feel morose.

The cables tethering the largest ships to one another had originally provided private comm feed between their Captains but, as ship systems failed and died—or were scavenged—the cables had become playgrounds and passageways for 'sider children. When those children grew up, they threaded more cable from ship to ship until the black sky loomed behind a web of glittering steel. Along that web, one could slide from one end of the docking ring to the other.

It wasn't for the faint of heart. Pardell switched off the mag under his left boot, careful not to disturb the placement of that foot against the plate beneath him. There were two large homemade clips on his belt, each attached by its own coil of fine wire to a reinforced loop. Taking one clip in his gloved hand, Pardell opened it so he held a hook, before reaching down to very gently switch off the mag under his right foot. His position had to be just so, his body perfectly symmetrical—

He pushed off gently but firmly, arms outstretched, hook in his left hand, aiming for the uppermost of the set of three cables catching sunlight in fiery streaks overhead. Passed the first. Missed the next by a slim margin; like most of his generation, he was prone to showing off even when alone.
There!
The hook snapped closed around the third cable.

Pardell's body kept heading out into the void until stopped by his grip. He used the change in momentum to start his spiraling slide along the cable, heading away from the air lock. The tops of starships swept by beneath him, like the jagged rocks of a dry river.
Plenty of ways to die out here without snagging your suit fabric on a rust bucket
, Pardell remembered Raner's lectures, but his awareness of the hazard posed by the ships was at best subconscious; he was too busy watching for the glint of anyone else sliding in his path. Right-of-way mattered, when you were using inertia for propulsion. There were several other space-suited figures in sight, but all were specks beading distant threads.

Pardell readied the second clip on his belt to snag an opposing cable as it rushed toward him, a move he made with the unconscious grace of practice and the necessity of risk. Time the spin and release right, and you flew in a new direction with hardly any loss of speed. Time it wrong—well, it would be a dark, three-hour trip, depending on whether you waited for your air to run out or spent it screaming for help that couldn't possibly arrive soon enough. The only mobile ships were owned by Thromberg or Earth, and they were snugged to the stern docking ring at the opposite end of the station.

There were a couple of kickoffs along Pardell's usual route home, spots where the cables passed close enough to a hull to allow a well-timed push in the desired direction. Otherwise, he whirled along with deceptive slowness, eyes almost closed against the station's glare despite the autodark of his helmet, until he got a glimpse of something where nothing belonged.