Both angry and sad, she chose her first target with care—one of those thin shadows standing behind a particularly aggressive stream of energy blasts—aimed, and fired. Away down the corridor, across the central intersection of the Crossings, that source of the blaster fire failed. “Sorry,” Nita said under her breath, meaning it, though not hesitating to immediately choose another target. She fired again. “Sorry.”
Beside her, Sker’ret made his way down toward the central intersection. The closer he got, the more blaster fire hit his shield. It turned a fierce glowing red, mirroring itself in Sker’ret’s shiny carapace—and every bolt that hit it bounced instantly and directly back in the direction from which it had come. Any unshielded being standing in the same place after having shot at him suddenly found itself on the receiving end of a boosted version of whatever it had fired. Nita followed Sker’ret, not hurrying, choosing her targets with regret and great care. The fire from in front of them began to lessen, but now Nita felt some fire hitting her shield from behind. She turned and started walking backward, aiming carefully at more of those thin shadow-shapes who leaned out from behind cover farther down the corridor. “They’re behind us, too, Sker’!” she called. “How’re we planning to get out of here? I don’t want to get cut off.”
“I’m not going anywhere till I find out who these people are, and get them out of here somehow!” Sker’ret called back, making steadily for the intersection. “I’ll open you a gate and get you home.”
“Not the slightest chance!” Nita said, coming abreast of him. “If you think I’m gonna leave you by yourself in the middle of a firefight, you’re nuts!”
They paused together just before coming out into the open intersection. The central control structure was just within sight. Nita had half expected to see the Stationmaster’s body hanging there in the rack, but it was mercifully empty. Nita swallowed. “Okay,” she said, “you ready?”
“Let’s go.”
They ran out across the intersection together. As Nita had expected, both their shields immediately lit up with crossfire from both sides. They ducked into the control structure, and Nita got down behind some of the control surfaces while choosing more potential targets. Sker’ret’s shield kept up its active-defense role, and the rate of fire dwindled—but not nearly as much as Nita would have liked it to.
She popped up, aimed at a shadow that was getting too close for her comfort; it went down. Her stomach turned. While Nita hadn’t been able to clearly see the results of her own fire, self-defense had been easier. “Sker’,” she said, “what now?!”
“Give me a minute,” Sker’ret said. “I’m making this up as I go along.” He pulled himself up into the racking, enough to tap briefly at the main control console. The rate of fire at them increased, and Nita popped up once more, sighted on yet another shadow—they were getting bolder, getting closer, no matter how many of them she, or Sker’ret’s shield, took out. She fired again, and once again her stomach wrenched. I hate this, Nita thought. But I’d hate it more if the weapon stopped doing that.
All around them, the blaster fire continued, but the impacts on both their personal shields abruptly ceased. Nita looked around and saw that a larger force field had sprung up around the central control structure. This one was invisible, but its hemisphere was clearly defined by the bright splatter of frustrated energy hitting the outside of it.
“That’ll give us a few minutes,” Sker’ret said.
“A few?” Nita said, alarmed.
“The console shield will cope with this level of fire all right,” Sker’ret said, sounding very grim indeed, “but how long do you think it’s going to stay like this? Whoever those people are, they plainly intend to take the Crossings by force. When they find they don’t have enough force, they’ll bring up some more. I give us maybe five minutes. By then I should be able to find out why the Crossings’ own defense systems haven’t come up, and either I can get them up again or… do something else.” His voice went perfectly flat in a way that Nita had never heard before. “But you need to keep them off my back. Stick some of your power into the shield, give it a boost. Here are the schematics—”
A glowing diagram full of lines and curves and weird symbols appeared in the air in front of Nita. She gulped; not even knowledge of the Speech could turn you into a rocket scientist between one breath and the next. “Sker’, I’m a wizard, not an engineer!”
Sker’ret pointed an eye at the diagram. “Right there,” he said. “Energy conduit. Put whatever spare power you’ve got right into that.”
Nita let out a breath and started to think of how to hook a power-feed wizardry into the energy conduit. In the back of her mind, instantly, the peridexis showed her the spell. Nita hurriedly spoke the words, and a few seconds later felt the built-up power inside her flowing into the shield. “Okay,” she said to Sker’ret, “I’ve boosted it maybe five hundred percent.”
“Let’s hope that’s enough,” Sker’ret said.
Down at the far end of the Main Concourse, Nita could see more clearly the shadowy figures that kept darting out of cover to fire at them. The shapes were tall and angular, and very thin; it was hard to tell their bodies from the weapons they were carrying. “It’s like being attacked by a bunch of praying mantises,” Nita muttered. “What are those things?”
Sker’ret chanced a glance up through the blaster fire. “Sort of tall, skinny creatures?” he said. “What color?”
Nita peered at them. “Red,” she said. “No, kind of purple. Magenta, I guess.”
“How many heads?”
Nita couldn’t tell. If I could stick a lens into the shield, she thought.
She felt the peridexis once again suggesting the wizardry that was necessary, needing only her approval. Okay, she thought, and started to say the words in the Speech, except it was almost as if they said themselves, leaping out of her as if they, too, were weapons. The force field in front of her suddenly went sharp and clear, as if Nita were looking through binoculars. I could get really used to this, she thought, grim but also triumphant. Is it like this when you’re really a Senior out on errantry? Does the power just flow to you on demand?
She got a view of what she was supposed to be looking at. “Just one head,” she said to Sker’ret, whose handling claws were still tapping frantically at the console. “What’s the matter?”
“They’ve taken the defense systems completely offline,” Sker’ret growled. Nita was startled. She’d never heard him sound so furious before. “Sabotage. Or an inside job, and somebody on our own staff betrayed us.” He hissed. “Never mind now. Just one head? Those are Tawalf.”
“Never heard of them.”
“Wish I never had,” Sker’ret said. “They’re a very… mercantile people. They’d buy anybody from anybody, and sell anybody to anybody, if the price was right. Looks like someone on our staff decided that our security was merchandise.” He growled again. “The Tawalf sell themselves, too. They make some of the best mercenaries in this part of the galaxy.”
“Looks like somebody went out and bought them in bulk,” Nita said, as more and more of the Tawalf came into sight, every one of them armed with at least a blaster, and every one of them firing at the shield surrounding the rack. “Can you turn the defense systems on again?”
Sker’ret waved his upper body from side to side, his version of a human shaking his head. “There are a couple of things I still need to try,” he said. “But there’s no other information on what happened here. Everything’s been left on auto, and no station staff have logged in since that last transit spike.”