Miles, Mutants and Microbes - Lois McMaster Bujold [39]
"I didn't think you did."
"But I jumped—"
"It would have been plain stupid not to. Look, can we talk about it later? I really think we ought to get out of here."
"Yes, oh yes. Uh, the pack . . . ?" Tony peered into the dimness of the recess.
Claire didn't think they were going to have time for the pack, either—yet how far could they get without it? She helped Tony drag it back to the edge with frantic haste.
"If you brace yourself back there, while I hang onto the ladder, we can lower it—" Tony began.
Claire pushed it ruthlessly over the edge. It landed on the mess below, tumbled to the concrete. "I don't think there's any more point in worrying about the breakables now. Let's go," she urged.
Tony gulped, nodded, moved quickly onto the ladder, sparing one upper arm to help support Andy, whom Claire held in her lowers, her upper hands slapping down the rungs. Then they were back to the floor and their slow, frustrating, crabwise locomotion along it. Claire was beginning to hate the cold, dusty smell of concrete.
They were only a few meters down the corridor when Claire heard the pounding of downsider foot-coverings again, moving fast, with uncertain pauses as if for direction. A row or two over; the steps must shortly thread the lattice to them. Then an echo of the steps—no, another set.
What happened next seemed all in a moment, suspended between one breath and the next. Ahead of them, a gray-uniformed downsider leaped from a cross-corridor into their own with an unintelligible shout. His legs were braced apart to support his half-crouch, and he clutched a strange piece of equipment in both hands, held up half a meter in front of his face. His face was as white with terror as Claire's own.
Ahead of her, Tony dropped the pack and reared up on his lower arms, his upper hands flung wide, crying, "No!"
The downsider recoiled spasmodically, his eyes wide, mouth gaping in shock. Two or three bright flashes burst from his piece of equipment, accompanied by sharp cracking bangs that echoed, splintered, all through the great warehouse. Then the downsider's hands jerked up, the object flung away. Had it malfunctioned or short-circuited, burning or shocking him? His face drained further, from white to green.
Then Tony was screaming, flopping on the floor, all his arms curling in on himself in a tight ball of agony.
"Tony? Tony!" Claire scrambled toward him, Andy clamped tightly to her torso and crying and screaming in fear, his racket mingling with Tony's in a terrifying cacophony. "Tony, what's wrong?" She didn't see the blood on his red T-shirt until some drops spattered on the concrete. The bicep of his left lower arm, as he rolled toward her, was a scrambled, pulsing, scarlet and purple mess. "Tony!"
The company security guard had rushed forward. His face was harrowed with horror, his hands empty now and fumbling with a portable com link hooked to his belt. It took him three tries to detach it. "Nelson! Nelson!" he called into it. "Nelson, for God's sake call the medical squad, quick! It's just kids! I just shot a kid!" His voice shook. "It's just some crippled kids!"
Leo's stomach sank at the sight of the yellow pulses of light reflecting off the warehouse wall. Company medical squad; yes, there was their electric truck, blinkers flashing, parked in the wide central aisle. The breathless words of the clerk who'd met their shuttle tumbled through his brain— . . . found in the warehouse . . . there's been an accident . . . injury . . . Leo's steps quickened.
"Slow down, Leo, I'm getting dizzy," Van Atta, behind him, complained irritably. "Not everybody can bounce back and forth between null-gee and one-gee like you do with no effects, you know."
"They said one of the kids was hurt."
"So what are you going to do that the medics can't? I, personally, am going to crucify that idiot security team for this. . . ."
"I'll meet you there," Leo snarled over his shoulder, and ran.
Aisle 29 looked like a war zone. Smashed equipment, stuff scattered everywhere—Leo