Brain Ships - Anne McCaffrey [202]
"Fassa del Parma—I arrest you—in the name of Central Worlds—for embezzlement of SpaceBase—construction and supplies," the bastard wheezed. Both his hands were around her wrists now, pinning her to the floor. Fassa gasped for breath, brought up a knee into the brute's crotch, and wriggled free in one movement. Her brain had never stopped working. So there was a witness! Darnell had double-crossed her? All right; dispose of the witness, that was the new problem, then she would deal with the rest.
"Kill that man!" she screamed at the dumbstruck idiots on her loading crew. She raced towards the safety of the spacebase.
The droneship's loading doors slammed shut. How had the bastard managed to transmit the command? He should still be writhing in agony.
He was. But as Fassa looked, he rose to his knees. "Under—arrest," he panted.
"That's what you think," Fassa said with her sweetest smile. What did this fool think, that she was too weak and sentimental to kill a man face to face? He was still on his knees, and she was standing, and the needler in her left sleeve slid into the palm of her hand with the cool solid feel of revenge. Time slowed and the air shimmered about her. The Courier Service brawn was lunging forward now, but he'd never reach her in time. Fassa aimed the needler until she saw a face neatly framed in the viewfinder. Who was he? It didn't matter. He was a total stranger, he was Sev, he was Senator Cenevix, he was Faul del Parma. All turning green around her, and her fingers almost too weak to squeeze the needler; what was happening? Fassa swayed on her feet, squeezed the needler handle and saw an arc of darts ripping wildly through the thick green clouds that surrounded them now. So dizzy . . . her eyes wouldn't stay open to track the darts to their target . . . but she'd been too close to miss. So close . . .
Fassa collapsed in the cloud of sleepgas with which Nancia had, just too late, flooded the closed loading bays. So did Caleb, going down just in front of Fassa with his black and silver uniform all spoiled by blood.
CHAPTER TEN
"Don't gas the lift! Don't gas the lift!"
The shouted commands, coming from a closed-off area
behind the fake walls, startled Nancia. She shifted views rapidly, cursing the quick and dirty remodeling job that had left large areas of her own interior cut off from her visual sensors.
Sev Bryley, white-faced, appeared from behind one of the puce-and-mauve pseudoboard walls. "I'll get him out of the loading bay," he snapped without so much as a glance towards Nancia's sensor unit. "You can keep the sleepgas confined to that area?"
"Yes, but—"
"Don't have time for a mask." Bryley was in the lift now, and Nancia could watch him on the agonizingly slow passage down to the loading dock. His chest rose and fell rapidly as he took the deep, rapid breaths of clean air that would keep him going in the loading bay.
Nancia kept the lift door on three-quarter pressure, just enough to let Bryley squeeze through the flexible opening that shut behind him. At the same time she flushed the loading bay with the ventilation system on high power, replacing as much sleepgas as she could with clean air.
Sev's back and shoulders bulged awkwardly half through the lift door. Nancia released the flexible membrane just long enough to let him drag Caleb through into the lift. She kept the ventilation system on high for the long seconds of the ride back. By the time the lift was at cabin level, she could find no measurable trace of sleepgas in the air. But Sev had inhaled enough to make him slump against the wall, too woozy to carry himself and Caleb farther.
"Antidote . . . ?"
"In the corridor," Nancia told him. "In the corridor!" She had no housekeeping servos within