“We waited,” Dekker panted. “Long as we could—”
Ben nodded. He didn’t have the breath to tell Dekker he was an ass and it was his damned fault, he wasn’t sure he could get his next gasp. He waved a helpless gesture at Bird, meaning take care of him, fool, do something for him: he couldn’t straighten—while the car shot for the core and the Shepherd said, “We don’t know what’s going to be waiting for us up there. The minute the door’s open, out and hit the handlines. If he can’t hold the line—” A breathless wave of the hand in Bird’s direction. “There’s no way to take him.”
“Screw you!” Dekker said. “We’re taking him.”
“There’s guards on the dock up there!”
“Then screw them too!” Dekker yelled.
“Listen, kid,—”
“Shut up!” Meg yelled, and Ben saw the way Meg was holding Bird—how of a sudden Bird had become weight in her arms and his eyes and his mouth were still open. No, Ben thought; he couldn’t move, just stood there, waiting for Bird to move, bent over with the ache in his gut, until Sal got up and took hold of him and a handhold, because they were approaching the null-zone.
Meg said, between breaths, Bird still locked in her arms, “We got a shuttle at 18, clear down the far end of the mast, dumb shits couldn’t park it closer—going to take us out to a Shepherd ship. They got that carrier coming this way from the shipyard, don’t know if it’s got guns mounted.”
“It’s fast,” the Shepherd said. “Too damn fast.”
Their talk went past Ben’s ears. It ran through his brain, as a set of facts explaining where they were going and that their chances weren’t good. He thought he ought to come up with a better idea, but his brain wasn’t working right—he just felt the lift reach that queasy spot and felt his gut knot up.
Bird wasn’t dead, Bird couldn’t be gone—it didn’t make sense to him. He’d done everything he could and somehow Bird just—went out on them and he didn’t know what to do with him. It wasn’t damned fair, what had happened—he’d carried him, dammit, til his gut was full of knives, and Bird wasn’t friggin’ dead, he couldn’t go like that—
Dekker reached in slow-motion after his arm as the car clanked into the interface. Dekker held on to him until the car stopped and the doors opened. The Shepherd made the first swing from the lift’s safety grip to the mounting bar and hand-over-handed himself toward the line. Meg had let Bird go, and Meg went next—
Nothing else to do, Ben thought, with an anguished glance at Bird drifting there so white and different, among beads of blood, and grabbed the mounting bar and went, fast as he could. Without Bird.
Eerie quiet in the core. The chute was silent. You could hear the line moving in the slot, you could hear the low static hum of the rotation interface. Couldn’t see anything for a moment but the line’s motor housing slipping past them.
He looked back, to be sure it was all real. But Sal and Dekker were reaching for the line, blocking his view of the inside of the car.
Meg was on the line behind the Shepherd, he was three spaces back. They passed the housing out into the open, out where the core spun to a dizzy vanishing point and tricked the eye and an already aching stomach. He held on—just held on, while muscles cramped in the cold.
Past the customs zone. He kept thinking—what if someone had a gun—what if they know where we are? Nothing they could do up here. Nothing but go at the pace of the line. Cold chilled his blood-soaked clothing and turned it stiff. Fingers lost all feeling, eyes teared from the cold, more bitter than he’d ever felt it, and the line moved at the same steady pace, clank, clank, clank—with his teeth chattering and the only thought in his head now just keeping his fingers closed on the hand-grip. Meg had said berth 18. 18 was hell and gone at the end of the mast. Shuttle out to a ship that was going to take Dekker and the rest of them out of here, he guessed, but the only thought that kept replaying, over and over again, was that gun going off, Bird getting hit—
He hadn’t had time to stop the bleeding, dammit. Hadn’t had time—Sal had known where she was going, Sal had known about the shuttle—hadn’t told them, God, he should have told her to go to hell, taken Bird to the Trans, taken him to the hospital—Bird shouldn’t be dead…
It was Trinidad they were passing, now, Way Out mated to her for the trip they weren’t going to take. They’d been so damn close—
Movement caught his eye, against the steady spin of the core, big supply can drifting free—hell! he thought, shocked by the sight, damned dangerous, a thing the size of a skimmer floating along like that with no pusher attached—
He thought—as clearly as he was thinking at all—that’s wrong.
That’s wrong, that is—
The line jolted and stopped.
“Shit!” Sal gasped, loud in that sudden silence, and Dekker thought—we’re not going to get there, it’s not going to work—we’re hanging up here and we can’t reach the shuttle—can’t reach the dismount lines…
“Hand off the line!” Meg yelled of a sudden, juvie lessons, old safety drill. He reached for Sal, caught her hand—saw, all of a sudden, the whole line bucking, a wave coming toward them.
Dekker yelled, “Let go!” and threw everything he had into the chain they made, hand to hand—he threw his whole body into that snap-the-whip twist, aimed as best he could and let go—
A moment of floating free, then, nothing they could do if that line hit them, if they missed the dismount-line—
The wave sang overhead and passed. The Shepherd snagged a dismount line with his foot and hauled them all toward it.
Meg called out, “Center-mast! We can’t make the shuttle, we got our own ship there. Her tanks are charged!”
“Won’t dock!” the Shepherd yelled back. “Won’t mate, dammit!”
“Take what we can fuckin’ get,” Sal yelled. “They’ve turned the line loose, there’s no way we can get there, Sammy, move your butt!”
Fire popped, somewhere, Dekker had learned that sound. “They’re shooting at something,” he called out, following Sal and Ben down the line that connected along the dockage.
Something sang past him. He thought, God, they’re fools, there’s seals where we are and they’re shooting bullets—
Another ricochet—he saw Meg kicked sideways, blood spraying—thought she was going off the line, but her left hand held the line, and Sal caught up and grabbed her jacket. He made a fast catch-up to help both of them, but Meg had caught Sal’s coat with her left hand, blood floating in great dark beads near her other arm. Sal screamed at Ben to get out of her way, get the hatch open.
Ben scrambled along the line and overtook the Shepherd at Trinidad’s entry. Sal took a swing and floated free toward them and Dekker hurled himself after, caught Meg’s arm and got his hand over the bleeding as Ben and the Shepherd grabbed their clothes and hauled them into the open hatch.
“Get it closed!” he gasped, stopping with a shove of his foot on a touch-pad. “Meg,—”
Meg’s own hand shoved his aside, clamped down on the arm. “I got it, I got it,” Meg said between her teeth. “God, just get me a patch—get us the hell out of here! Get us to the shuttle, 18, this guy’ll tell you—”
“We can’t mate with a shuttle-dock!” the Shepherd cried. “We’ve lost it, dammit, all we are is under cover. Aboujib, get com, get contact with the Hamilton, tell them our situation, see if they can talk us out of this—”
“Severely small chance, Sammy.”