“Decide?” said Garrett, staring at the black malice of the pistols. Machines designed for death, a perversion of engineering’s purpose.
Eaton said, “The question is: will you pledge your life for this place?”
Garrett shivered, feeling he was floating above Castor and looking down on all they’d done. To run away and let others die was unthinkable even if — he gulped — staying might mean his own death. The possibility didn’t feel real, anyway.
His voice was small but his hands grabbed a gun. “I’ll do it.”
Then he and Eaton were running armed through concrete halls, hearing shouts and banging from below. Garrett said, “I told people to shelter in Dockside, but that’s where the enemy will probably enter.”
“A boat at the docks, by the stairs?” Garrett nodded and Eaton said, “Up, then.”
Garrett followed him up the stairs. “Why?”
“I saw you have ropes up top. We’ll go up, down and around. Instead of walking downstairs from inside the building we’ll take the enemy from behind, same place where they entered.”
They reached the moonlight again, skirted the hole in the deck, and found rope. Eaton lashed one end to a post, threw the rest over, and waved Garrett on. With a nod, Garrett grabbed the rope and kicked off his shoes. He tried not to think about what he was doing. In his hands the rope shuddered like a snake but he kept going downward in a rhythm, watching the wall nearby. Then he was in the water and Eaton was coming down too. Garrett felt the waves sloshing weirdly along the sensors of his legs, enough to distract him from the fear. Eaton arrived and said, “We swim quietly, with our hands only, and come up by the dock. These guns should work even wet. I’ll judge when to open fire, depending on whether we’re seen.”
“Open fire?” said Garrett, incredulous. “Can’t we disarm them?”
“Maybe. Ready?”
Garrett started swimming. With his face in the water he pushed ahead with sweeps of his arms, moving efficiently. He felt caught between worlds: the deck that loomed over him, the lapping waves studded with kelp fronds, and the underworld of cables and cylinders. There was the Hidden Pirate Cave; here were schools of his people’s fish. To flee would mean losing a piece of himself.
Eaton grabbed his arm and pointed. A black boat was lashed to a post and unattended; the Dockside door was open. “Okay?” Eaton signaled. “Go.”
Garrett heard voices in Dockside as he crept up to the pier and pulled himself to where he wouldn’t be seen. The waves made it hard to tell but it sounded like whimpering, like a crowd too scared to act. They needed a leader. Fortunately Eaton was here.
“Down on the ground!” a man yelled. People screamed. Eaton glanced around the doorway so fast Garrett didn’t think it possible to see anything, but Eaton used one hand to mime a gun to his head. Then signaling: “Three, two, one—”
Garrett and Eaton sprang through the door with pistols drawn. Eaton yelled, “Freeze!” There were lots of masked men, and everybody else was on the floor with their hands on their heads. Boxes and tables lay everywhere. The gun trembled in Garrett’s hands; he was afraid of it. They were outnumbered in gunmen. Someone sobbed.
There was music somewhere by the stairs, in the back of the room. Trumpets. Several of the enemy turned to look — and a flock of plastic birds swarmed at them, blasting the notes of a cavalry charge.
People shouted and someone swung towards Garrett, raising a rifle. Terrified, Garrett yelped and made the gun kick once, twice. The rifleman spun as if offended, then dropped where he stood. The birds flapped at the enemy’s faces and shots went off into the ceiling, hurting Garrett’s ears. Eaton kicked somebody. Garrett was crouching behind a box, trying not to die as he shot a man coming up behind Eaton. Garrett stood up but tripped. His leg wouldn’t move right. Now people were getting up, some of them, making it dangerous to shoot hastily. He saw Phillip grab a pipe and swing it like a saber, shouting to the Pilgrims to fight. Garrett lost track of him when something smacked him on the back and knocked him to the floor. If he stayed down maybe nobody would hurt him.
Tasting blood, he sprang up to tackle a man, but missed and fell. His leg — the right one was a mess of loose wires, a dead thing. As he was getting up a man leveled a gun at him --
But Phillip slammed that pipe against the man’s neck. Phillip had blood on his wetsuit and fire in his eyes, saying, “My place is here!”
Then with a boom, something made one side of Phillip’s face vanish. He toppled, staring at Garrett with his remaining eye.
Garrett yelled and had clubbed the shooter half to death by the time he noticed no one else was fighting.
A hand touched his shoulder and Garrett wheeled to attack again, but it was only Eaton. Garrett surveyed Dockside: a shattered mess with four masked gunmen disarmed on their knees, another bleeding where Garrett had left him, and a sixth flat on his face with a piece missing from his chest. He saw Tess cowering in a corner, a damaged Zephyr guarding a seventh enemy, Martin clutching one arm and Leda whimpering by the stairs, with her and Tess tended by birds. I caused all this. I wasn’t smart enough to prevent it. I should’ve known we’d be attacked. Dozens of people looked up from the floor, terrified, or hugged the walls or peeked down the stairs or held heavy things over the gunmen’s heads.
Garrett was standing there idiotically, so he staggered forward to face the prisoners. His left arm felt slick. “Who are you? Why are you here?” They glared at him through balaclavas. No way was he going to put up with that. He grabbed the top of one mask and yanked, taking some hair with it. Garett shouted in the man’s face. “Answer me, damn it!”
The man flinched. “Easy pickings, he said. Must be loaded, he said. You people are dirt poor for Americans.” There was a sack of jewelry nearby.
“Who said?”
The man jerked his head to his left, to a man who cursed him for it. Garrett tore off this guy’s mask too and revealed a man with a thick neck and scruffy hair. “Your bright idea?” said Garrett.
“You’re a bunch of bigoted polluting drug-dealers getting what you deserve. You’re a criminal yourself. You can’t do anything to me.”
Garrett slammed his fist into the man’s ribs. It felt good to have power over them.
The man gasped and said, “There’s nothing you can do. We’ve got friends; we’ll go free and come back to finish the job.”
Eaton said, “That was a dumb thing to say.” Garrett was surprised to have Eaton intrude on the focused little world of him and the prisoners. “What do you want done with them, Fox?”
Hearing Eaton, hearing a sane voice, made Garrett start to doubt himself and tremble. “We have to send them back for trial, don’t we?” The prisoners grinned. Garrett wheeled on them. “Who put you up to this?”
“You idiots were sitting out here advertising yourselves. You think you’re tough? You’re dead men, all of you.”
Martin said, “They’ve got to go back, don’t they, Eaton?”
“I do fighting. The captain has the final say.”
It felt like everyone’s gaze had converged on him like lasers, heating him up. Damn these outsiders! There was blood on his face and feet, and these men were already plotting to come back for more. “You’re pirates!” he said, his voice shaking. “You came here to put me and my people in danger, and you didn’t care an ounce for what we’re trying to do! For the hundred people who came here and all the people who believe in us, I won’t let you destroy our colony!” He aimed his shaking gun at the leader’s heart.