Hoping for a slow-down, for their pursuers to be baffled by the door latch.
Hearing it open behind them.
“Fletcher!” Jeremy had heard it.
He pulled Jeremy with him, ducked over an aisle and spotted a door with Fire Access in red and white letters. That had to have a simple turn-toggle latch.
They’d broken through. He heard the footsteps, back among the aisles of boxes. He felt the cold draft. His fingers sought the toggle and twisted. He shoved the door open, shoved, against the air-pressure from the docks. Fools had left the door open. He strained, established a crack, and a siren went off as a gale streamed into his face. Jeremy pushed. He braced it wide enough for Jeremy to get by him, and scraped his body out, jerked his leg free last, with a bash on the ankle as it slammed.
“Come on,” he said, hurrying Jeremy along. He limped, forced the leg to operate despite the pain and ran for the docks.
Wanting all the witnesses they could get.
The wind began to wail again. They were opening that door behind them. A shot rang out, hitting what, he didn’t wait to see.
There was a free-standing block of shops at a right angle to the warehouse frontage. He dragged Jeremy around the corner, in among spacers window-shopping and bar-hopping, ran through, startled outcries in their wake.
Gunshots came from behind them. There were outcries, outrage, panic. He kept running, dodged among passersby diving for cover.
“Stop!” someone yelled, and they didn’t stop. Then Jeremy knocked someone down and fell, himself, twisting in Fletcher’s grip as Fletcher tried to get him on his feet and keep going.
“What’s going on,” spacers around them demanded.
“Finity’s End!” was all Fletcher could say, trying to hold a winded kid on his feet. “Somebody call our ship!” He tried to run on, but the pain in his side was all but overwhelming. Hands were helping him now, and he pulled Jeremy with him, hearing the sounds of resistance behind him, shouts and curses around the gunfire. There was nothing to say, no wind to say it with. He just took Jeremy the direction open to him, vision too jarred and blurred to know where he was going until he hit someone else and that someone grabbed him.
“Fletcher!”
Chad. Chad and Nike and Toby.
“The whole ship’s looking for you!” Chad yelled at him.
“Guys after us,” he tried to say, but about that time something sailed past their heads and rebounded off a pressure window, bang!
Fletcher ducked into the door-recess of a shop, nearest refuge, got down with arms across Jeremy, and Chad and Nike came in, flung themselves down as a barricade as all hell broke loose outside. Others spotted their shelter, younger crew, not Finity juniors, not even all of the same ship, but just at that moment a pressure window exploded right across the aisle of shop fronts.
“They’re shooting!” Nike cried.
Chains were out of pockets among the spacers and people were yelling. Jeremy’s head came up and Fletcher shoved it down again. He was shaking. He’d seen riot break out. He saw this one. People with no idea what the fight was were arming themselves, spacers aiming at whatever spacers had at issue.
Like stationers with guns.
“The whole damn dock!” Chad said between his teeth. “God, Fletcher. How’d you manage this one?”
“They’re trying to kill us!” Jeremy said indignantly.
Then the police showed up, a lot of police, with stunners they were using indiscriminately; and chains swung. Fletcher grabbed an indiscriminate armful of spacer kids and shoved heads down as a flung missile sailed past their refuge.
Nike risked her skull to reach up and try to shove the shop door open. It was locked, people inside with the door barred. She slammed the door with her fist, yelling, “We got kids, you damn fools! Open the door!”
Riot spilled past them, police literally stumbling into their shallow shelter, being pushed there by the crowd, driven in retreat by chain-swinging spacers. Someone stepped on Fletcher’s leg and a chain cracked against the window over their heads.
Then to a shout of “There they are!” silver-suits showed up.
Bucklin reached them, Bucklin, Wayne, and a handful of Finity seniors, creating a barrier between them and the fight.
“Hold it!” Fletcher heard someone shout, then, a voice that hit nerves and stopped bodies in mid-impulse, and he knew that voice… he thought he knew it. “We’ve got kids here! Hold it, hold it, stop right there, you!”
JR. And Finity personnel. And when JR used that voice, bodies obeyed while minds were thinking it over. Fletcher’s own nerves had jumped. Now he just caught his breath and waited for the missiles to stop.
But in the fading of riot around them, Chad and Nike got up. Toby did. Fletcher let Jeremy and the kids up, then, and hauled himself to his feet, with an ankle swollen tight against his boot.
“Hold it!” a voice yelled. The police advanced on the small collection they made, police, with stunners.
“Hold it!” JR said, interposing himself, and Bucklin and the other Finity personnel were right beside him. “Just back off,” JR said to the Esperance police, and chains might have disappeared into pockets or trash cans, but the weapons were still there, Fletcher was sure of it. The police were armed, and there were nerve-jolted spacers down from the last encounter.
“Who are you?” The age-old police voice.
“Captain James Neihart, merchanter Finity’s End, and those are kids, here. Nobody’s pulling a weapon on our personnel.”
“Rose’s kids, too,” a spacer said, and came in close, “Damned if you wave a weapon near Rose’s juniors, mister. Just stow it.”
“Get out of there,” the lead officer said, and two of the kids who’d run in for shelter scrambled up and walked over to the man who spoke for Scottish Rose.
A lot more spacers had gathered, most in civvies, Finity personnel among them. The police were increasingly outnumbered, and calling for reinforcements. Fletcher heard the crackle of communications.
“Break it up,” the lead cop said, and Jeremy yelled: “Those guys back there’s trying to kill us!” And to JR: “This shop had the stick, sir! It’s back there in the shop! There’s guys chasing us.”
“Not now,” a spacer said with chilling finality.
“We have a breach in the maintenance system,” the chief of the police said. “We have windows broken. We have—”
“They shot at us!” Jeremy cried indignantly. “They were firing shots all over!”
“Jeremy found stolen property in a shop,” Fletcher said. “I went in to get Jeremy, and they took us both into the tunnels.”
“You’re responsible,” the policeman said.
“We ran,” Fletcher said. “ We weren’t the ones with the guns.”
“You’re under arrest,” the cop said.
“No,” JR said, and stepped between. So did Bucklin. In two blinks a wall of Finity officers and assorted spacers had interposed themselves, blocking the police from action.
“We’ve had a breach of the tunnels,” the police objected.
“We have larceny of Finity property and assault against underage crew,” JR said.
“Where’s your ID?” the policeman asked. “You’re not wearing any insignia. How do we know who you are?”