Downbelow Station by C. J. Cherryh Read Free Book Online Page B

Graff knew, her second. It was not the only evacuation in progress; the Pan-Paris station was under Kreshov’s management; Sung of Pacific had moved in on Esperance. By now other convoys were on their way toward Pell, and she had only set up the framework.
    The push was coming. Other stations had died, beyond their reach, beyond any salvage. They moved what they could, making Union work for what they took. But in her private estimate they were themselves doomed, and the present maneuver was one from which most of them would not return. They were the remnant of a Fleet, against a widespread power which had inexhaustible lives, and supply, and worlds, and they did not.
    After so long a struggle… her generation, the last of the Fleet, the last of Company power. She had watched it go; had fought to hold the two together, Earth and Union, humanity’s past—and future. Still fought, with what she had, but no longer hoped. At times, she even thought of bolting the Fleet, of doing what a few ships had done and going over to Union. It was supreme irony that Union had become the pro-space side of this war and the founding Company fought against; irony that they who most believed in the Beyond ended up fighting against what it was becoming, to die for a Company which had stopped caring. She was bitter; she had long ago stopped being politic in any discussion of Company policies.   There had been a time, years ago, when she had looked differently on things, when she had looked as an outsider on the great ships and the power of them, and when the dream of the old exploration ships had drawn her into this, a dream long revised to the realities the Company captain’s emblem had come to mean.   Long ago she had realized there was no winning.
    Perhaps, she thought, Angelo Konstantin knew the odds too. Maybe he had taken her meaning, answered it, behind the gesture of saying farewell—offered support in the face of Company pressure. For a moment it had seemed so. Maybe many of the stationers knew… but that was too much to expect of stationers.   She had three feints to make, which would take time; a small operation, and a jump afterward to a rendezvous with Mazian, on a certain date. If enough of their ships survived the initial operation. If Union responded as they hoped. It was madness.
    The Fleet went it alone, without merchanter or stationer support, as they had gone it alone for years before this.
     
     

Chapter Five
    « ^ »
    Pell: 5/5/52
    Angelo konstantin looked up sharply from the desk covered with notes and emergencies which wanted immediate attention. “Union?” he asked in dismay.   “A prisoner of war,” the security head told him, standing uncomfortably before the desk. “Part of the Russell’s evacuation. Turned over to our security separate of the others. A pickup from a capsule, minor ship, armscomper, confined at Russell’s. Norway carried him in… no turning him loose among the refugees. They’d kill him. Mallory added a note to his file: He’s your problem now. Her words, sir.”
    Angelo opened the file, stared at a young face, a record of several pages of interrogation, Union id, and a scrap of notepaper with Mallory’s signature and a scrawl: Young and scared.
    Joshua Halbraight Talley. Armscomper. Union fleet minor probe.   He had five hundred individuals and groups who had thought they were headed back to their original housing; warnings of further evacuations in the secret instructions Mallory had left, which was going to take at least most of orange and yellow sections, dislocating more offices; and six Company agents who thought they were headed beyond to inspect the war, with no merchanter who would agree to take Company scrip to take them aboard. He did not need problems from lower levels.
    The boy’s face haunted him. He turned back to that page, leafed again through the interrogation report, scanned it, remembered the security chief still standing there. “So what are you doing with