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"If they don't get their asses here soon, I'd go without 'em," Maniac said as
he surveyed the swarm of Pilgrims for a second, then shook his head and headed
back for the Diligent .
"Hey!" a young woman cried, clutching a boy of two or three. "Are you getting
out? Can you take us?"
"Attention," came the NAVCOM AI's disembodied voice. "Ship will reach PNR
velocity in four minutes."
Blair tensed as he studied the woman. "Get in."
"Thank you, Brotur. Thank you." She hustled past him.
"What're you gonna do, Blair? Make us too heavy to escape the well?" Maniac
snarled. "Give me this!" He ripped the pistol from Blair's hand, then cocked
his head toward the hold. "Get this bitch pre-flighted. I'm guarding the
hatch."
Realizing that an argument would only waste time, Blair staved off his anger
and shifted inside. "Karista?" he called back. "I need your help."
After making sure that the woman and child had found the crew cabin jump
seats, Blair nervously tripped and banged his way to the bridge, where his
trembling fingers drummed on touchpads at the helm and navigation stations. He
swiveled a pair of screens closer and watched data bars flood and scroll with
ship's status reports. Emergency warm-up and pre-flight in progress.
"What do want me to do?" Karista said, staring at the foreign landscape of
flashing displays.
"Just get in that seat," Blair said, gesturing to the copilot's chair to
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starboard. "Panel there marked life support. Activate, select diagnostic,
vital systems only."
She sat, lifted a hand. "Uh, okay."
"Hey, Merlin. I need you, too."
The old man coalesced from the flash of his activation and paced along the
top of the navigation console. " Now I know how it is, Christopher. You only
call when you want me to pick locks or when you're about to be atomized. You
wouldn't just like to hang out some time and, as they say, shoot the breeze?
No. I'm just a tool, a holographic helot."
"A what? Forget it. We'll talk about this later. Right now I need you to link
to ship's systems. Monitor diagnostics and give the commands for emergency
repairs as needed."
"Why do you need me for that? You can "
Blair sprang from his seat.
"Where are you going?" Karista asked.
"This means a lot to him," Blair said, holding up Paladin's cross. "He's not
coming back."
"And neither will you if you go after him."
"I owe him."
He ducked and wound his way toward the hold, feeling a definite rumble pass
through all one hundred tonnes of the old errant.
"Attention. Ship will reach PNR velocity in three minutes."
An almost deafening discord filtered in from the open hatch. Troopship
turbines warbled over the cursing, the shouting, the moans. As Blair drew
closer, he saw that Maniac had backed himself up to the hatchway and now waved
his pistol at a wall of fifty, sixty, maybe seventy-five Pilgrims, their faces
burnished an angry red. "Let me out," Blair said.
Maniac ignored him, his attention commanded by the mob. " I will shoot !"
"Let us on, you bastard!" someone clamored. "You've got more room on this
errant! The troopships are full! Don't let us die here!"
A round ricocheted off the hull, missing Maniac's shoulder by a finger's
length.
"That's it," Maniac said, then ducked back into the hold and slapped his hand
on the interior ramp control.
Seven or eight Pilgrims jumped onto the gangway as it angled up, hydraulics
groaning under the added weight.
"Get off," Blair shouted. "It'll crush you."
A teenage boy and a heavyset woman of forty or so managed to pull their arms
and legs completely onto the ramp and came sliding into the ship. Three more
rioters slipped off and fell back into the crowd. Another two met the same
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fate, but the last man, a muscular blonde of about twenty, got his hands
caught in the ramp as it began to seal into the hull. Blair looked away as the
Pilgrim shrieked, bones crunched, and the severed appendages thumped to the
deck.
Maniac jammed his pistol into the teenage boy's head. "You're going back
out." Then he aimed at the lady. "So are you." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]