Cenedi’s men had trussed their terrified detainees and kept them flat on the floor, and now they all jammed themselves into the lift, straddling their detainees, dragging along a frightened, sweating alien who smelled like overheated pavement and bulked like a small truck. Bren shoved his key in the slot and Barnhart punched in their destination before he extracted the key and pocketed it.
“We’ll let you go at the bottom,” Bren said then to the two white-faced, absolutely terrified humans crouched at their feet. He reached down and assisted up the man he’d dealt with. “Come to the ship when you’re ready. The paper isn’t a lie. Believe it!” He remembered the rest of the fliers, took the sheaf of them from inside his jacket and shoved them inside the man’s jacket. “Here, have some brochures.”
“Yes, sir,” the man muttered. The other, still on the floor, seemed beyond speech, as Jago extracted the whole packet of brochures from their kit and set them in his lap.
“Safe,” she said to him, encouragingly.
“My bodyguard says this is your ticket aboard,” Bren said shamelessly. “Pass them out. Brochures get first boarding. The access is open now. We have a handful of days to get everyone aboard.”
Down and down the levels, all the way to the bowels of the station’s maintenance, down to the service-port and the dim, cold depths. Banichi was on the comm the moment the doors opened, and they freed their two Reunioners, then shoved their rescuee out into this place that, whatever thoughts might be going through the alien’s mind, certainly wasn’t the prosperous end of the station.
They ran, then, dragging the alien with them. Cold hit like a wall, burned the lungs as they tried to make time, down dim corridors, into section 81.
There escape in fact loomed in front of them: the co-pilot had opened the emergency hatch from his side, the only way it would open, and with a broad inclusive wave, beckoned them in.
Safe, now. Two frightened humans trying to raise an alarm upstairs might only tell where they had been, in a very few moments, but if they were the least bit worried, Bren thought, those two might keep quiet, believing those brochures were a precious thing, to be passed out quickly among reliable friends.
Meanwhile their assorted party crammed themselves inside the airlock, within the webbing. The alien looked about him, large, dark eyes glittering in the dim light, a liquid glance passing jerkily over strange sights and strange faces—thinking of escape or murder, more than likely, but if they knew one thing about this person by now, they knew this was by no means a fool. Cooperation remained the moment-to-moment rule, compliance as the pilot and co-pilot got the pod door shut—no fuss, no argument. They were leaving the place that had held him and that suited the alien fine.
Haste and distance was their collective intention: haste in reaching the cover of the ship itself was all they could do to protect themselves from the station. And if the pod had been close quarters going out, now, with the door shut, they jammed themselves up closer and tighter, human, atevi, and shivering, strange-smelling unidentified.
Thump! Clang! They were free, rotating alarmingly at first. Then a steady hard push of propulsion cut in, compressing the whole untidy mass of them toward the aft bulkhead, a painful tangle of muscular flesh punctuated with other people’s knees and elbows.
“We did it,” Barnhart panted at Bren’s ear, breathless and astonished, and Bren only thought, enduring a hard atevi elbow between his shoulder blades, and air too dry and thin for comfort, For God’s sake, man, don’t jinx us .
Then the alien they were transporting began struggling—huge arms, legs like tree trunks and a swing, if they hadn’t all been pressed together like a sandwich, that could have cracked skulls. Banichi grabbed one arm and pinned it. The alien’s eyes showed wild, broad nostrils flared and the mouth—omnivore, Bren decided, just like humans—opened in frantic gasps.
“Air pressure!” Bren shouted against the weight compressing his rib cage. “Take the air ship-normal! Fast!”
Fast still wasn’t an instantaneous process. They were in freefall and the pilots had their hands full, what with the possibility that the station might at any moment find something capable of taking a shot at them, either inside the ring or once they started up the mast toward the ship. Bren personally didn’t want to distract them—but they had an alien laboring for breath, close to passing out after his wild exertion: he must have stood it as long as he could, and gotten desperate.
“Short distance to our ship,” Bren yelled into the alien’s face. Touching him could be reassuring. It could equally well be deadly insult. He opted for hands-off. “We want to help you. Be still. All right?”
He didn’t know whether the alien heard or understood. Banichi’s grip held the alien fast against a new burst of resistance, and now one of Cenedi’s men began to wind self-adhesive restraint about him, which didn’t calm the situation or likely help his breathing at all.
“Caution, Bren-ji,” Banichi said, struggling to hold the massive arms out of action, and if Banichi was having trouble keeping his grip on those arms, Bren found no chance. He wriggled to back up as far as he could, acceleration pressing them together. Then Jago added her efforts, inserting an arm and struggling past him to get the binding wrapped.
But it all became easier as the alien stopped fighting and let his head loll, close to passing out.
“Easy, easy, easy,” Bren said, and took a chance. “Oxygen. Can we get the emergency oxygen, Jago-ji?”
Jago reached a long arm to an emergency panel. In a moment more they had an oxygen mask roughly over the alien’s broad, flat face, and the last fighting eased as their passenger gasped for breath.
Not a crazy person. One trying to breathe.
Then acceleration stopped, all in one stomach-wrenching moment, and the axis spun over. They began, despite the testimony of senses, to slow down, trying not, Bren said to himself, to impact the ship and smear their little mission all over their ship’s travel-scarred hull.
Slowing down. Slowing down. The pilot and co-pilot were talking to someone with an incredible and reassuring calm.
Bren found himself breathing as if oxygen for all of them had grown far too short and he wished there were a mask for him.
But the pilots worked calmly just as if they were coming in at Alpha station, a precise set of communications and maneuvers.
Their alien’s eyes opened slightly. He was no longer fighting them. He might not know another word of who they were, but air was potent, the most basic requirement. They had satisfied that urgent need, and they had taken him out of that clear-walled cell, and they weren’t where he had spent the last six years—they had that to recommend them.
“We’re coming to our ship,” Bren said to their alien, in the hope that those years in human hands had taught him some few words. “My name is Bren. This is Banichi. We’re from the ship. We want to help you. Do you understand me at all?”
The alien gave no response, only a slow, blinking stare.
“We’re coming in,” the copilot said. “Brace, all.”
Thank God. In. Safe. They had the station’s precious hostage, and—now that the station knew they’d been robbed of that asset, now that the station had the ship’s offer of rescue coursing the halls and soon being gossiped in the restaurants—maybe the station would just give up quietly, turn Sabin loose, and let them have the fuel.