"Oh my God," Robin said, looking at the Nidu marines.
"Take this," Creek said, and handed Robin one of the marines' nearly foot-long combat knife. He took the other as well as two marble-sized objects he recognized as Nidu flash grenades.
"Are you expecting me to use this?" Robin asked.
"Hopefully not," Creek said. "But if it comes to that, I hope you'll think about it. They need to take you alive. That"'s going to make them want to not hurt you. That's to your advantage." He stood up and retrieved his shirt, which now had multiple holes in it, and put it on. "Come on," he said. "They'll have figured out the elevator's stopped by now. We need to move."
"Where are we going to go?" Robin asked.
"Down," Creek said, and started walking toward the nearest stairwell. They would be watching the elevators now, which made the stairs a better bet. "Down to the shuttlebay. We need to get off the ship."
"That's nuts, Harry," Robin said, following behind. "These guys came from the shuttlebay. We'll walk right into them."
"We've got them spread out on several decks," Creek said. "They're looking for us to hide. They're not expecting us to go to the shuttlebay. There's probably their pilot and one or maybe two of the marines there." When he said it in a rush like that, Creek almost believed it himself.
"Harry—" Robin said, men stopped. The stairwell door was opening.
"Get down," Creek said. "Look the other way." Robin sank to the floor. Creek fingered one of the grenades, feeling for the slight ridge that indicated where he needed to press to trigger the timer. Creek recalled that at Pajmhi, Nidu grenades had about a three-second timer. He pressed hard on the grenade, felt a click, counted a long one one thousand, and then flung it as the stairway door was kicked open from the other side, looking away as soon as he tossed it
The grenade detonated waist-high about eighteen inches in front of the first Nidu, who dropped his weapon and grabbed his eyes and screamed in pain. The second Nidu directly behind the first received nearly the same amount of searing light; he staggered backward and dropped a hand to the stair railing to steady himself, and in the process activated the explosive grenade he had nestled in his palm. Behind these two a second pair of Nidu marines was ascending the stairwell, just now arriving at the landing. Creek, who had planned to rush the blinded Nidu, saw the grenade as the second Nidu raised his hand. He was too close to the door to retreat; he hit the door instead and pushed it closed as hard as he could.
He almost had it closed when the grenade detonated, blowing the door back open and slamming Creek back against the perpendicular wall. Creek's head connected solidly with the wall; he spent about six seconds vacillating between the choices of vomiting and passing out before choosing neither and standing up. He touched the back of his head and winced, but his fingers didn't come away with blood on them. Small blessings.
"You okay?" he asked Robin.
"What just happened?" Robin asked.
"Grenade," Creek said. "Someone else's. Come on. Other stairwell. This one's messy and loud, and that's going to bring company." Robin got up and started running to the other side of the deck; Creek paced somewhat unsteadily behind.
Robin and Creek got down two decks on the stairwell when they heard heavy steps coming up from one of the lower decks—two sets. Creek grabbed Robin and as quietly as possible opened the door to the nearest deck. Creek had Robin step away from the door; he crouched and put an ear up to it. On the other side he could hear the footsteps get louder as they approached, a quick snippet of Nidu speech, and then footsteps receding up the staircase.
"Hiroki?" Creek heard behind him. He turned to find Ned Leff, in a bathrobe.
"Jesus, Ned," Creek said. "Get back to your room."
"What me hell is going on?" Leff said. "People are hearing gunfire and explosions, and about three minutes ago two Nidu stomped down the hall with guns. I saw them through the peephole."
"Nidu marines have boarded the ship. They're looking for someone," Creek said.
"Who?" Leff said.
"Me," Robin said.
Leff gazed at her for a moment. "Why?" he said, finally.
"Ned," Creek said, not unkindly. "Get back to your room. It's not safe."
"What are you going to do?" Leff asked.
"Get off the ship," Creek said. "If we stay, they'll find us. And the communications are jammed. If I can get to the surface, I might be able to use my comm and get word out what's going on."
"There's a communication center on the Plain of Pajmhi," Leff said. "Right where we're going to have our ceremony. We were going to use it to send back a live feed. That's got a direct connection to the UNE network. You could use that. And I know the shuttles are already programmed to fly there since I gave the information to the shuttle coordinator myself. You wouldn't even need a pilot. You could just cycle the launch and arrival program."
"That sounds good," Creek said. "Thanks, Ned. Now get back to your room."
"Hold on," Leff said. "don't leave yet." He paced quickly to a door a third of the way down the deck and re-emerged almost immediately carrying an object in his hand "Here," he said, handing it to Creek.
"A handgun," Creek said, setting down the Nidu knife and taking the gun.
"An M1911 Colt .45," Leff said. "Or a replica, anyway. Standard issue handgun for U.S. officers for most of me twentieth century. I wear it with my dress uniform. Call it an affectation. But the point is, it works. And I just loaded it: seven bullets in the magazine, one in the chamber. Semi-automatic, just point and shoot. I think you need it more than I do."
"Thank you, Ned," Creek said. "Now, please. Get back to your room." Leff smiled and hurried to his cabin.
"Ready?" Creek said to Robin.
"No," Robin said.
"Great," Creek said. "Here we go." He opened the door, checked for company, men held the door to let Robin hustle through.
Robin had just slipped through the stairwell door of the shuttlebay and Creek was sneaking through the door when Creek's comm signal fired up; its mellow ping carried surprisingly far in me near-empty bay. Creek bit his cheek and fumbled to answer the communicator, dropping the Colt .45 as he did so. It was this clatter that the pilot of me Nidu shuttle, standing bored outside his craft, heard and headed toward, rifle hefted for action.
"Oh, shit," Robin whispered. The two of them were caught in the open; shuttlebays were kept bare as possible to avoid damage to shuttlecraft if me bay doors ever buckled and explosive decompression followed.
The Nidu pilot spotted them and headed toward them, bellowing in Nidu as he did so and jerking his rifle as if to say, Put your hands up. Creek reached into his pants pocket and found the second flash grenade; he activated it and then raised his hands, launching the grenade directly above his head like a miniature shot put, and yelling at Robin to close her eyes as he did the same. Creek could feel the hair on his head crisp as the grenade flared into brilliant light; he knew that every exposed surface on his body had just experienced a very bad sunburn. The Nidu pilot gurgled and grabbed his eyes; Creek opened his, lunged for the Colt .45, and prayed that Leff actually had put a bullet in me chamber.
He had.
"Christ," Creek said to whomever was on the other end of me communicator. "You just about got us killed."
"Creek," Captain Lehane said, not bothering with an apology. "Ned Leff just told me you're planning to take a shuttle to the surface."
"Yeah," Creek said.
"don't," Lehane said. "That Nidu gunship will track you and blast you before you get ten klicks out."
"We can't stay on the ship," Creek said.