The head of State Security had the Marine officer in tow; the man was looking guarded, which any sensible officer would at being in this close contact with the Committee.
"Now, Citizen Brigadier . . . Conflans?" The officer nodded. There were scorchmarks and rusty-looking dried fluids across the arm and chest of his combat armor. "Perhaps you could explain exactly how your most timely assistance came about?"
The Chairman's brows rose until he felt his forehead ache. "Timely indeed," he murmured when the man was finished. "Esther McQueen, eh?" He looked at Saint-Just; the Security chief nodded. And I was supposed to interview her this afternoon. He looked at a screen; three hours almost to the minute since this began. He felt as if it had been that many decades . . . and where had he managed to get that bruise, or tear his jacket?
"Well, where is the lady?" he said. "I gather from you and Citizen Captain Norton that she isn't on Rousseau?"
"No, Citizen Chairman," the Marine said. The fierce, handsome face behind the sweeping mustaches suddenly looked pinched. "Her pinnace went down while it was directing the final operations. We haven't . . ."
Rob S. Pierre looked at his Security chief. "Find her for me, Oscar. I think the lady has gone from a possibility to a certainty, and it would be excessive irony if she were dead."
The calm, pale bureaucrat's face nodded. "Of course, Citizen Chairman. At once."
Esther McQueen realized that death was much like space; very dark, with flashes of light in infinite depth.
After a second she realized she was dangling upside-down and watching electronic equipment self-destruct. The battle steel hull of the Naval pinnace had withstood a collision that would have left a civilian vehicle travelling at its velocity smeared across the side of the tower. The remains of the pinnace were sticking into the side of it now, like a knife thrust halfway into a giant cheese. A gaping rent directly below her showed the three hundred and fifty story drop to the pavement of the People's Avenue . . . and if the buckled shock harness gave way, she'd drop straight down to make her smeared remains one with the multi-thousand victims of her strafing run.
That made her laugh. The tearing pain of that brought her fully back to consciousness with an involuntary whimper, enough to feel the pinnace shifting in its stony cradle. More lights danced behind her eyes as she froze; intellectually she knew that a seven-hundred-ton pinnace wasn't likely to shift and fall because a short, slight woman moved, but her gut was harder to convince. Carefully, slowly, she raised one hand to her face and wiped her eye, then pushed back the flap of scalp that was hanging loose. Coagulating blood held it in place.
Ribs, she thought. She wasn't actually coughing blood, so the splintered ends weren't likely to kill her in the immediate future . . . unless she moved vigorously. Which, since I'm hanging upside-down over a long, long drop, I probably will have to do. All the other figures she could see were immobile, either unconscious or dead.
All except People's Commissioner Fontein. His shock harness had broken even more thoroughly than hers, but it had broken away as a unit. The last fastening point had held, so far, and it swung him out over the gap in the pinnace's hull. As she watched he tried to reach for a dangling piece of wreckage, and the fastener gave a small, tooth-gritting wail.
"Fontein," she said—whispered, rather.
"You're alive?" he blurted.
"Temporarily." She grinned. The expression was ghastly in the bloody mask of her face. "Let's see how temporarily . . . how badly are you hurt?"
He looked terrible, his face and what she could see of his body a mass of bruises and dried blood; tear-tracks cut half-clean runnels through the matter on his face, except where the skin had been abraded away and oozed raw. She was almost glad that her nose was broken and swollen shut; she had no wish to smell this charnel-house of her own making.
"I'm . . . no broken bones except for this." He twitched his left hand, and she saw that the little finger was at right angles to the others and swollen to sausage-size.
"Good . . . for . . . you," she wheezed painfully. Christ, but this hurts. No matter. Get going, bitch. "Is the release catch on your shock harness working?"
"I think so. I'd really rather not find out, though, Citizen Admiral."
Fontein looked down. An acrobat in high training might be able to catch something in the half-second before he fell clear and down a long, long way. A middle-aged man of sedentary habits with serious injuries might as well flap his arms hard on the way down, for all the good it would do him.
"Here's my plan," McQueen said, and laughed again, stopping herself with a shudder of agony as things moved and grated in her torso. "Sorry, classical reference. Getting a little light-headed. You swing across and grab my hand with your right. Then, as soon as I've got you, you hit the release—do it fast, so you don't lose momentum. I'll swing you on across to there," she said, indicating a section of wall plating with dangling cables festooned across it. "Then you can go and get help for the rest of us."
Fontein looked at her blank-eyed for a moment. Then he spoke: "You don't give up very easily, do you, Citizen Admiral McQueen?"
"White Haven didn't think so."
He nodded. "On the count of three."
"One." The Commissioner heaved his weight backward, like a child on a swing.
"Two."
She closed out everything except the hand she would have to grasp.
"Three."
It jarred into hers, and she heard a click–snap and falling clatter as her fingers clenched. Then she was screaming, screaming and tasting iron at the back of her throat as Fontein's weight came onto her outstretched arm and wrenched her savaged body against the unyielding frame of the shock harness. Blackness surged over her, welcome as the memory of her mother's arms, then receded into a red-shot alertness. She spat to clear her mouth; that was blood this time. A steady trickle of it, if not an arterial gusher. The bone spears had hit something.
"See," she said to Fontein's shock-white face where he clung to the wreck's wall not more than an arm's length away. "We really do accomplish things when we cooperate, Citizen Commissioner."
Then the blackness returned.
Rob S. Pierre looked down at the stretcher. "Will it endanger her life?" he said.
"No, Sir," the medtech said unwillingly.
"Then I insist." He stepped back.
Esther McQueen's eyes opened, and she sighed once in blissful relief; the stretcher's lights blinked as it swept away her pain. Her eyes moved.
"Gerrard?" she said, her voice faint but steady. The Marine went to one knee and looked at her, his face warring between relief and revulsion. "The butcher's bill?"
"Light, Skipper," he said. "By the time we hit them they were running on empty; the Chairman's Guard bled them bad."
"Ship?"
"Some damage, but Citizen Pierre called them off in time."
She nodded again, and the Chairman of the Committee of Public Safety stepped forward. "Citizen Admiral McQueen," he said. "The People's Republic, the Committee, and I myself are in your debt. Your prompt action . . . we'll talk more about this later. I already intended to have an interview with you today, but tomorrow will do just as well."
"Thank you . . . Sir," she said. The eyes began to wander again, and he stepped back and motioned the techs to take her away.
He looked around the wreckage of the Committee's tower. The other members were dispersing about their various tasks; it would be some time before they got this mess cleaned up and returned to the agenda he'd intended to spend the day on.