The Dragon Never Sleeps

— 59 —

Seated against the wall, Jo was first to sense the strange, short vibrations. They filled her with undirected dread. "Anybody else feel the station shaking?"

Everyone did. AnyKaat, Degas, and Colonel Vadja looked grimly uncomfortable. But Haget just sat there grinning. "I suggest you all get yourselves up to military specs."

Eleven days in close confinement had produced one plus. Seeker was communicating. Some.

A killer ship has come, Jo heard within her head. It is attacking. It has not communicated with the station.

Jo glared at Haget. "A Guardship is here. You knew it was coming. How did you do that?"

Haget grinned some more. "The routes IV Trajana and Glorious Spent took come back together at M. Carterii. When Timmerbach started acting strange, I rigged a dead-man signal on a longwave transmitter and concealed it in the main hold. It carried a copy of our mission log. It had to be reset daily to keep it from broadcasting a mayday."

"Clever. And you kept it all to yourself."

"If I'd told you, I'd have been telling everyone else who happened to be listening. They might have moved us out of here. They're coming. Let's look like soldiers."

I Am A Soldier. Jo grunted, got up, joined Haget at the cell door. The others fell in behind them. Even Seeker prepared to move. Haget smiled pleasantly when Station Master, the STASIS chief, and a squad of retainers appeared. "Buck up, girls. We all screw up."

"Don't overdo it," Jo muttered.

The station people let them out and returned their possessions and equipment, loaded them aboard a bus. The bus took them to a docked ridership guarded by an unstable hologram of a youth clad in a style unseen for three thousand years.

"WatchMaster Commander Haget, take your party aboard. Station Master, I've surveyed your data reservoir. The following persons are to be delivered to me." Followed a list of forty-six, with job titles.

Station Master started to protest.

"I have loosed a Hellspinner. This station can survive no more than seven."

Station Master got the message.

"I am remanding to this station the crew and passengers of the confiscated Cholot Traveler Glorious Spent. All passengers will be delivered to their contracted destinations at the expense of House Cholot and will be reimbursed for their inconvenience and lost time."

There were no comforts aboard the ridership. Prisoners and rescuees alike were crowded into a compartment that soon stank of fear and excretions for which no facilities existed. Some prisoners babbled pleas to Haget.

"Be quiet. I'm no more in control here than you are."

The ridership settled into IV Trajana's hull. The Guardship was in the groove and running for the Web.

The same uncertain hologram waited outside the exit hatch. It seemed blind to everyone but Haget. "Bring them out, Commander."

Haget nodded to Jo. She herded the prisoners out and formed them in a column of threes. They were beyond terror now, into that dulled, accepting, bovine antihysteria that grips the victims of great disasters and atrocities, glazed eyes becoming one-way glasses keeping reality at bay. Wake up some day and find it all a bad dream.

Ha.

Lights came on ahead and died behind. Physically the Guardship resembled VII Gemina. But it was empty. Haunted empty, leaving Jo feeling isolated and alone. Like she had been warmed from storage to find the entire Guardship abandoned but going on. Haulers and Travelers came off the Web that way sometimes. Without a soul aboard and nothing to show what had become of the crew.

It took half an hour to reach their destination. The same holo character awaited them. "Prisoners to the left, Commander. Your own facilities to the right."

"Jo?"

There was an electronic barrier. It parted. A light came on. Jo moved the prisoners.

Degas said, "Hey, look. It's our old buddy Chief Timmerbach. How's it going? Not so good?"

AnyKaat silenced him. "They left the lights on where we were, Degas."

The holograph told Haget, "I'm on the Web running for Starbase. Gemina will put in before and after the action against the pirates. I have little capacity for sustaining the living. I may dispose of the prisoners as I examine them."

"My WarAvocat would want the Chief off the Traveler. And possibly the krekelen."

In a moment of illumination, Jo realized Haget was talking directly to Trajana. Directly! No one ever spoke to Gemina direct, nor did Gemina speak directly to anyone. If that should happen, it would scare the crap out of the whole crew.

Bound for Starbase. For home. There was a lot of loneliness and uncertainty out here. She missed the familial closeness of the squad and platoon, the certainty of knowing who and what and where you were. She did not miss the rigidity, the lack of humor and humanity in the chain of command.

Things happened out here. Strange things, weird things, interesting things. Today's universe was alien to the one where she had been bom.

Born? A woman she no longer remembered had carried her inside her body. Did they still do that, down on the worlds? She could not recall the last time she had seen a pregnant woman.

They did not have the several immortalities down there. That was not allowed. Somebody too strong might come along.

This place was the antechamber of Hell. Here the shadows of madness met and danced. She wanted out badly.

Once upon a time she had lived on a world, a child who could look up and see uncovered sky... .What was the matter with her?

Shit. The place was creepy. And that damned spook Trajana was on a talking jag, going like it would not stop till it dumped them at Starbase. Yakking like some crazy old hermit who had not seen another human being in thirty years.

Spider momma, ate all her babies, cries because she's all alone.