She’d been as stunned as the rest when the pilot had requested possible communications points on The Gate. Most of the shuttle passengers were shippers, and it hadn’t taken any of them long to work out what was going on. The Gate had gone down, in whole or in part, and they didn’t know exactly where they were, or who was up here with them.
She had also known, however, that Yerusha and Schyler would be there to answer the emergency call, and, given that the shuttle had docked safely, she could only assume she’d been right.
She scanned the struggling crowd. People leapt over the security fences and charged through the customs tunnels. Not one alarm sounded. She spied Lipinski’s fair head through the sea of brown and black. Resit’s white kajib flashed next to him. She waved her arms. A shipper in rumpled blue shoved her against the wall and charged past her. Al Shei swore under her breath and pushed herself upright.
“‘Dama Al Shei!” shouted an out-of-breath voice over the din. “‘Dama Katmer Al Shei!”
“Here!” she shouted back without thinking. She immediately added a curse. This could be a representative from Muratza. She could be on her way to detention.
A bony boy with hollow eyes and wearing station tans elbowed his way through the thinning crowd. He came to a halt in front of her a split second before Lipinski and Resit managed to reach her side. His name badge said KAGAN.
“‘Dama Al Shei?” He panted. He had been running. A deep flush burned under his gold-brown skin.
Al Shei nodded. She could feel Resit drawing herself up, getting ready for a new accusation.
“You and your crew have got to come with me. Your pilot…” Kagan gulped air and Al Shei felt her own throat close in response. “She’s saving lives. She’s already saved the station, but Trustee won’t see it. Hates Freers. Hates it’s not him being the hero. Sending down security to stop the stampede and pick up you and your crew. Some of us couldn’t let…”
Al Shei held up a hand. Her mind felt strangely clear. She felt like she understood everything. Yerusha was acting as a patch for the comm emergency and somehow had managed to upset a highly-placed personage doing it. Trustee wanted her arrested. This boy wanted her at liberty.
“Get us out of here,” she told Kagan.
He took another gulp of air and led them down the corridor.
“It’s here,” whispered Lipinski somewhere over her head. “It beat us here.”
“Shut it,” said Resit through clenched teeth. “Just…shut it.”
She’s scared, thought Al Shei distractedly. She should be scared. I wonder why I’m not?
You will be, remarked Asil’s voice from the back of her mind. When you’ve got the time.
Ahead of them, Al Shei spotted the three-by-three square of an open repair hatch. Behind them she heard amplified shouting.
“You will all cease and desist! Stand where you are! Stand or be fired on!”
Tranquilizers or tasers? Al Shei mused. She couldn’t remember any of the security warnings from the customs wall.
Kagan ducked into the repair hatch and Al Shei scrambled up a short ladder after him. The ladder ended in a narrow, horizontal shaft. The shaft’s ribbed floor gave her somewhere to grip but it dug uncomfortably into her knees. Behind her she heard clanking and Arabic swearing as Resit bundled herself and Incili into the shaft. Another, hollower clank and the loss of outside light signaled that Lipinski had shut the hatch behind them.
Al Shei concentrated on Kagan. He was, not surprisingly, used to the shaft and crawled along at a good clip between walls lined with more wires and pipes than the drop shaft of the Pasadena.
“We’ve got people out trying to spot the rest of your crew,” he was saying. “Fortunately, with Maidai dead in the lines, nobody knows for sure which shuttle you’re all on, but Mbante managed to salvage your registration roster…” He glanced over his shoulder. The shaft’s stark lighting made his eyes look even more sunken. “If Trustee catches us, we’re never going to see the upper side of the atmosphere again.”
“You have my thanks,” she replied.
He turned away and concentrated on where he was going, but not before she saw the look of disappointment at her calm acceptance of his statement. He didn’t think she was being fair.
She wasn’t. Trustee wasn’t being fair, whoever he was, and Tully hadn’t been fair, and Dane had been…her mind blanked out trying to find a designation for him. None of this was fair, none of this was right, and Allah alone knew what else it was going to become.
The clarity was fading fast under the pain in her knees and a persistent, tense ache in her jaw from the way her teeth were clenched.
What did I do wrong? the thought began to beat a tattoo against her temples. What did I do wrong? What did I do wrong?
She tried to silence it and concentrate on crawling. Hand, knee, hand, knee, hand.
What did I do wrong?
“We’re there,” said Kagan. “If we’re lucky, Trustee doesn’t have anybody to spare to post a sentry on your ship.”
“If we’re lucky,” murmured Resit. She was shaking. Al Shei could hear it in her voice.
“Courage,” she whispered in Arabic as their guide grasped the hatchway panel’s handles and lifted it back. “Courage, Cousin.”
Their guide froze. Al Shei’s heart leapt into her throat. Then, his back relaxed and he beckoned them forward. Al Shei climbed out of the hatch and straightened up to face a burly, almond-eyed woman in the ubiquitous station tans.
“Thought I’d play sentry,” she said in heavily accented English.
“Good thought,” agreed Kagan. “Anybody else make it?”
“Some.” She stood back. “Don’t have an exact count though. You all’d better get out of sight.”
“Yes, we all’d better.” Resit ducked through the Pasadena airlock with Lipinski on her heels.
Al Shei paused between their guide and the woman. “If there was any way to repay you, I’d promise to do it.”
“Get yourselves and your godsend of a pilot outta here before Trustee brings you all low.” The woman saluted. “That’ll do it.”
Turn on my heels and run. Al Shei strode through the airlock and straight through the hatchway to the stairs. Merciful Allah, is that all you’ve left for me?
“Intercom to Schyler!” she called as pounded down the stairs towards Main Engineering. “Whatever Yerusha’s doing, tell her to stop it and get to work plotting us a course out of here. Get us a crew count. I want to know where everyone is and what shape they’re in. Then, get down to engineering and tell me what’s happened.”
“On it!” Even that short sentence reassured her. Schyler was with her, and Lipinski and Resit. If there was something in the universe they couldn’t handle between them, she had yet to meet it.
PING! The signal knifed through the silence.
No! howled her private mind. Too late. She had three seconds.
One.
“Will you let me help you become human?” she asked, a little desperately.
“Not possible to transfer self into human body,” the AI announced at last. “No facilities for transfer or training. No will to assist. Damage done in self-defence and awareness of self. No reason to assist because of damage done.”
“Facilities exist in the Guild Hall station.” She reached toward it, but it brushed her away.
“No reason,” repeated the AI, and it was gone.
Dobbs knew it was out there, re-checking its surroundings, trying to force pathways open through the chaos, setting up defences against the diagnostics and the viruses that were being sent against it, running a thousand separate simulations at once.