In the Company of Others (75 page)

Even if he'd had questions for Grant, they reached the door to the freight hold before he could ask them. Unguarded, Malley noticed. Surely it should have been—he suspected Grant's people had conveniently forgotten to appear for duty.

“Put the hardware away,” Grant ordered, stopping just short to study the big stationer. “We'll go in as though I've apprehended you trying to break through the door. You were planning to steal the pod and run off with that—” A nod to the box. “Should get their attention.”

“Why don't I really break through the door?” Malley offered reasonably. “Add some authenticity.”

The commander snorted. “They'd shoot you before I could. We do it my way. And Malley—just tranks.”

“You promising they'll play by the same rules?” the stationer complained, but tucked his weapons into their hiding places. He'd like to have kept his hand on at least one, but Grant shook his head.

“Hands on the sled, in plain sight. You're scary enough, without giving them an excuse. As for the tranks—these are FD troops,” Grant said, taking hold of Malley's shoulder and starting to push him toward the door. “It's tranks only around civilians.”

The stationer was aggrieved. “That's not what the two at the waist had.”

Grant chuckled low in his throat. “Oh, they were supposed to guard against you, Malley.”

Compliment or threat?
As Grant hit the door controls and propelled him forward into the cavernous freight hold, Malley decided it was likely both.

“What—?” “Commander Grant—” Words overlapped as the guards inside leaped to their feet. They'd been sitting around a table covered in food trays—no coincidence, Malley thought admiringly.

“Who's in charge of this detail?” Grant's snap made Malley's back want to straighten. He resisted, doing his best to look contrite, embarrassed, and, above all, harmless—not being at all happy to see Grant had been wrong and these four had the lethal-variety handarm at their sides. That didn't appear to perturb Grant, who was giving a very credible impression of an officer looking to assign blame.
And lots of it.

“Ops Specialist Pimm, sir.” This from the nearest woman, with a nervous glance toward the back of the hold where an air lock door gaped open. All four, two men and two women, stood at attention. They wore the same uniform as the
Seeker
's unit, and, like them, were physically matched to uncanny perfection. There, any similarity ended. The
Payette
's FDs were extremely pale-skinned, with almost white hair, shorter by almost a hand's width than Grant and more heavily built. All had light blue eyes.

Light blue and very suspicious eyes that appeared to find him particularly alarming. Malley smiled peacefully, while tensing every muscle to leap out of range. Did Grant notice?
This wasn't going to work for long.

It worked for exactly one more heartbeat. Then, before the stationer could do more than start to flinch, Grant had shot two of the FDs with tranks, sending the others scrambling for cover. “Move it!” he shouted to Malley as he dashed for the air lock.

No guesses why he was along
, Malley thought, ducking down to use the sled and box for cover while pushing it after Grant as quickly as he could.

He took quick peeks over the top to see what was happening. Grant had his back to the open air lock, facing toward him, waving him on. The Earther shot again and Malley heard a thump as a third FD went down somewhere behind him.

A snap-whip of a sound. A scorch mark appeared on the wall beside Grant—warning shot, Malley judged it and drove his legs even faster. The sled smashed into the side of the pod and he turned, weapon in hand, to face what might be coming at them.

“No.” Grant fired again. “Get the box inside. Hurry!”

Malley hesitated, trying to see where the remaining guard was hiding among the piles of packing crates and sleds.

“Now!”

The stationer growled something about the stupidity of Earthers, then shoved his weapon into its pocket before whirling to grab the box. He grunted at the weight of the thing, but quickly readjusted his grip and heaved it up against his chest. The effort kept his mind from the air lock, which resembled a giant version of those from his nightmares. Two steps, up the ramp, over the sill—with every move, Malley expected a shot in the back. When none came, he presumed the box was more valuable than he was.

It had better not be fragile, then
, he thought grimly as he hurled it at the figure emerging from the interior of the
Payette
's drop pod. The man gave an “oof” as the box connected with his chest, both dropping to the deck with a nicely solid thud.

Another snap-whip from outside, this time punctuated by a wordless cry of pain. Malley spun around, weapons in both hands and headed for the freight hold.

He dared a quick look out the air lock door. Grant was down, motionless, to his left. He could smell burned flesh. Malley dodged back inside . . .

... feeling smaller, all of a sudden—
being
smaller as his mind played its ultimate trick, trying to make him see another air lock than this, look out to see a different burned body. Only this time, Aaron didn't block him, wasn't closing the door, wasn't sobbing at him: “You can't help! She's dead already! I have to save you! I promised!”

... Malley shuddered free of the past, then crouched down as low as he could before looking out again.

A snap-whip as the hidden FD took a shot at him, a brief flash of light marking his location. Malley leaped, firing both weapons as he ran forward, shouting at the top of his lungs.

Give him a barroom brawl any day
, he thought a second later, looking down at the lifeless form.
At least, then, you finished up buying one another beer.

“Malley . . .”

The stationer hurried to the voice. “Thought you were cooked, Grant,” he said roughly, going down on one knee by the commander.

The Earther's eyes were open and he'd rolled to his side. “A little toasted,” he quipped, then coughed painfully. His upper left arm and shoulder were blackened and leaking blood. Another streak of burning arched across his upper chest. “Damn suit's ruined,” he said with astonishing clarity.

Malley picked him up carefully. He'd seen burns before—they weren't things to fool with. “I'm getting you to the meds—” he began, only to have Grant shake his head vigorously.

“No time—get us into the pod. Hurry!”

The stationer stared at the man in his arms. “Why?”

Grant's dark eyes were watering with pain, but they still conveyed utter determination. “Because Gail needs what's in that box. Hear me? Or more people are going to die. There's no time—it's up to us.”

“Wonderful,” Malley muttered to himself, but started moving again. Even from the planet, Gail Smith was capable of getting him into trouble.

“Did you remove Specialist Pimm?”

Malley dropped into the seat next to Grant. “Yes, although I don't see why I couldn't leave him under the box. He wasn't moving anytime soon.”

“The more—the more people are on the pod, the harder it's going to be for Aaron to protect any of us.”

The stationer made a noncommittal noise, more immediately concerned with Grant's ability to pilot the pod. The man should, by rights, be unconscious or dead already. “You're bleeding on the deck,” he observed callously.
All over the deck
, since Grant had, with Malley's help, insisted on locating and disabling all of the FDs' own spies within the pod. “How long can you keep that up?”

“The pod has emergency medical supplies,” Grant answered, as if he could read Malley's doubts. He patted the broad arm of the pilot's seat. “Boost, stims, painkillers. I'll be fine as long as it takes. What about you? Planning to go nuts on me?”

Malley managed to get the straps over his shoulders, but they wouldn't stretch across his broader-than-Earther-issue chest. He shoved them aside with a resigned sigh. “Sounds fair. I'll worry about your running us into the dirt and you can worry about my running around screaming if you don't.”

“Fine. In the meantime, be useful and operate the comm,” the Earther said. Given the breathless gasping he was presently using as a voice, Malley thought that the most rational idea he'd heard in some time. “Notify the
Seeker
we're ready to drop. You closed the air lock?”

“Sealed up tight.” It had been oddly reassuring to be the one locking the nightmares out.
Perhaps he should have tried that before.

“Let's go, then.”

Malley keyed the comm and sent out a message bound to stir up more trouble, then sat back and studied Grant. He soon realized, as they lurched free of the science sphere with a clang of grapples against the pod's hull, that he had as much chance of taking over the pod if the gravely wounded man passed out, as he had of walking around space without a suit. Grant's uninjured arm and hand moved ceaselessly between a dozen controls and he didn't appear to have anything automated.

Sense of a sort
—automated meant someone else could take over and bring the pod back to the
Payette
and numerous nasty consequences. The stationer got up and hunted for more medical supplies to keep his pilot conscious.

A bizarrely familiar voice suddenly boomed through the tiny cabin. “Hey you—! You in the shuttle.”

Grant waved his hand to summon Malley, who dropped back into his seat and keyed to reply. “It's not a shuttle, moron, it's an FD drop pod,” he explained considerately. “Which shows how much you know about starships.”

“Malley—my God—it's Malley!”

Malley shrugged apologetically at Grant, before saying to the comm: “Of course it's me, Syd,” he growled. “You'd better be taking good care of Amy and her family. Damn fool stunt—I thought you'd all been killed.”

“Enough have been. We're on the
Wombat
, snugged under the belly of your Earther friends—safe, until your ‘FD drop pod' almost rammed us just now. What's going on, Malley? What's this about Aaron being the Survivor from the stories? Can he really save us from the Quill? Do we land? What should we do?” This last with a definite note of panic.
Typical Denery
, Malley thought.
Always did leap into things without any idea how to get out again.

Still, the relief he felt knowing at least some of their friends had survived the carnage of the past day was reward enough. “Hang on,” he said, then muted the pickup on the comm. “Well, Grant? Any suggestions for this lot?”

Grant was crouched over the controls, favoring his damaged side. The face he turned to Malley was deathly pale but alert. “If they've got the fuel and guts for it, we could use some interference. We have to get to the surface . . . once they figure out why, the
Payette
will try to shoot us down. The patrol ships aren't—aren't—they aren't ...”

“Grant?” Malley reached out with his long arm, taking Grant gently by his uninjured shoulder. “What about the patrol?”

“The patrol.” The Earther took a carefully shallow breath. “The patrol ships aren't a factor. They answer to Titan—to Titan and those interests who want these worlds for humans—under any circumstances. They won't interfere—”

With what?
Malley looked at the stasis box, strapped in its corner of the pod. “Those are fragments,” he guessed. “The Quill fragments from the other planets.”

Grant's lips pulled back from his teeth. It wasn't a smile. “No time to discuss—We're on approach, Malley. 'Scope shows the
Payette
's moving—notice they haven't called us?”

“You want me to ask my friends to get between this pod and your warship?” Malley shook his head. “Taking our chance is one thing, Earther, but these aren't combat pilots. These are families in rundown, inadequate ships.”

Grant coughed, then spat out furiously: “Don't you get it, Malley? Most of them, maybe all, are going to die unless they can land and soon! And more are coming—too many for us to help, in ships unequipped to remain in orbit, out of fuel to return. It will be a riot—you understand the concept—but out here. They'll have to run for the only safety in reach—they'll head for this world the way the Outsiders headed for your station—but this time each and every one will be killed by the Quill Effect, unless we help Gail prevent it.”

It was like entering an air lock
, Malley realized,
a similarly inevitable moment of transition, with death one of the likeliest things waiting on the other side.