Not quite as mentally quick, however. “Thought we were going down one,” the agent said.
“Cap’n said tour you around the colony deck, sir. Figured you’d want to see that, where we got all the special rigging.”
The agent wasn’t eager to admit he and his hadn’t a clue what rigging and what arrangements were, and it clearly wasn’t uncommon for Guild levels to keep truths from each other. If there was anything but a top level officer at the other end of the agent’s electronics, figure that that authority would still have to wonder if there were higher-up secrets to which their agents were inadvertently being exposed—he gave himself about thirty minutes of administrative confusion before someone conceivably asked far enough up the chain and got an order to take action.
But the desire to see all they could see might well keep this fellow tame and following—that left three on the bridge, not four, and just that quarter less force gave Jase more breathing room up there.
The lift door opened on a bone-cold, very dimly lit corridor.
“What is this?”
“Colony level, sir.” He was glad of the coat. Breath frosted. Rime formed on the edge of the door. “Just starting the warm-up.”
“For what?”
“Dunno, sir. Best I know, there’s guys you’re sending, and here’s space for ’em, and we’re going to save the day, I suppose, where we’re going. We got the stores—you want to tour the stores, sir?”
“I’ll take your word for it.” The agent, breath hissing between his teeth, reached for the lift controls.
Bren hit the order for two-deck. Fast and first. First number entered was the number, unless the user used an override, and the agent didn’t appear to have the key.
“What’s on three?” The car moved.
“More crew quarters, sir.” He still had the tray and the basket—and Jase’s picture—clutched against him.
“You’re not damn bright, are you?”
“No, sir,” Bren said cheerfully, as the lift doors opened on two.
The agent looked disgusted. But this level was lighted, it was warm. The agent walked out and Bren walked to his right, tray clutched tight against him.
“This nearest and straight ahead is medical, sir. Just this way is crew area.” Straight to the right, side corridor, a fair walk, two more corridors. Bangs and thumps came from the distance, cook’s operation. Bren felt his heart thumping while his brain sorted the corridors, the charts, the not-quite-perfect knowledge of what was where among all these unmarked doors.
There was, for one thing, warm-storage here, for items various departments needed often and didn’t want frozen. There were cleaning closets. He earnestly wished he dared shove the man into one and lock the door.
That firepower, however, might be adequate to blast right back through a door, and most of these doors were crew quarters. He wasn’t expert in firearms. He wasn’t sure. He wished he could contrive to ask Banichi and Jago that surreptious question, but he didn’t know how to describe the rifle.
So he walked, opened random section doors, a meandering tour of two-deck, while the agent held his rifle generally aimed at the walls and not at him.
Elsewhere the lift operated.
The man looked in that direction, as if things he saw just weren’t entirely adding up.
And stopped. Wary. Listening to his electronics.
“What’s the matter?” Bren asked.
“Shut up,” the agent said. And aimed the gun at him while he went on listening.
Bren had his hand on a door switch. Storeroom. He was ready, heart in mouth, to make a desperate maneuver and hope the door was adequate, if that was his only choice.
“What’s that?” The agent motioned at that hand with the gun barrel.
“Service closet, sir.” He punched it open to demonstrate the fact, and dropped the offending hand.
“Don’t get smartass. Where’s life in this place?”
“All these cabins. They’re still waiting in quarters. Ship’s rules when we dock, sir.”
“What’s that?”
There’d been a sound, a clank, a clatter. A cart, somewhere in motion not far away. “Oh, I imagine that would be galley, sir. The staff’s delivering food around. People got to eat, no matter if shift’s held over.” The storeroom door shut. Doors always did, left unattended. But the agent was jumpy. Very. The gun twitched that direction. And something in the Cameron bloodstream, some ancestral fool, suddenly just had to push when pushed. “Door’s automatic, sir. Watch your fingers.”
“Where’s auxiliary ops?”
“That’s on a ways aft, sir. We can go there when you like. But there’s more.”
“Let’s go that way.”
He obliged the man. They walked. They saw exactly nothing. They might go to the galley, Bren decided, lacking a plan, not sure how far or how long his staff was holding off, but absolutely certain they were being tracked. He could arrange a diversion, maybe get cook’s help to shove the fellow into a storeroom, his best amateur imagination of a solo heroic finish to this foolery.
But the minute he made a move on this highly wired individual, conversely, and probably what Banichi and his staff was thinking, Jase would have to answer for that action upstairs, with all the others and all that delicate equipment up there—not to mention the communications links this team of enforcers presumably had to the station’s inner workings, where Sabin was also exposed to reprisals. Banichi and the rest might be maneuvering into position in the service accesses, for what he could guess—which was a cold, arduous business, getting between levels. But he wasn’t alone. He was sure he wasn’t alone, and that all the problems he could think of were being thought of: Banichi might have been deceived once about the sun and the stars, but the handling of an armed intrusion and a hostage situation was no mystery at all to him.
The question here was who was hostage. Bren rather thought he wasn’t, that he, in fact, had this part of the problem in hand.
So they walked. And walked. Bren rattled on about safety procedures, the most boring official tour information he could muster, a compendium of the orientation video tour the crew had put together for groundlings. He clutched the trays and the damning picture against him as they walked, and he toured the man up one hall and down the other for what felt like a gun-threatened eternity, telling himself he was gaining time for those who knew what they were doing to work matters out—possibly for Gin to communicate with Jase and coordinate actions.
Meanwhile small rackets led their tour steadily toward the galley’s open door, where cook’s mates came and went. The armed approach drew an anxious look, but no one, thank God, reacted in panic.
“Galley, sir,” Bren said brightly, the obvious, and led their tour inside, stopping just inside the door, where he set the tray and its load onto the nearest shelf and trusted no one to ask brightly what the picture was.
The agent gave everyone the cold eye. A food truck wanted out the door. The agent stood there just long enough to be inconvenient, saying nothing, asking nothing, just looking. The agent moved and the innocent cart trundled past.
“Want a soft drink?” Bren asked, pushing it way beyond bounds, at the same time cuing cook what part he was still playing. “Cup of tea, sir?” He asked himself in an afterthought whether the food menu and the planet-origin smells might give away to this man as much as Jase’s photo, but most anything could pass for synthetic, if the observer were predisposed to believe everything in the universe was synthetic. “Stuff’s real good.”
“Not here for that,” the agent said, and walked out, shoving him aside in the process.
“So what are you looking for?” Stupid question of the hour. Bren followed him. Got into the lead again. Without the damning tray.
“Checking things out,” the agent said, and pointed at random. “Looking for answers. Open that door.”
“It’s just a door, sir. It’s a cabin.”
“Open it?”
“Yes, sir,” Bren said, and politely pushed the entry-request, same as a groundling’s knock at the door.
The door took its time opening. A couple of uniformed crewmen stood there looking confused. Alarmed, to have a stranger with a rifle standing in their cabin doorway.