Redliners(58)

The building president stopped in front of al-Ibrahimi, ignoring Farrell and Lundie. Her face was flushed both with heat and anger. "What I want to know, Mr. Manager," she said in a lower voice that cut like a hacksaw, "is do you expect to treat people the way you treat the excess luggage? Throw them into the jungle when they get to be a burden?"

"No," said Farrell. He'd heard dogs snarling that sounded more human than he did. "We're not abandoning anybody alive, Ms. Reitz. Other folks'll carry them or they'll ride the trailers. The dead I don't care."

"The ground pressure of the trailer wheels—" Lundie began.

"Fuck the ground pressure!" Farrell said. "We'll throw out ammo before we leave people behind."

"I don't think that will be necessary, Major," al-Ibrahimi said with a faint smile. "Not at the rate I fear you'll be using that ammunition. Ms. Reitz, why don't you and I discuss the matter with our less healthy fellows and see what can be arranged."

He offered Reitz his arm. The gesture obviously surprised her, but she accepted it.

Farrell's eyes were closed. He felt his stinger's magazine click as he reseated it in the butt-well.

"Major Farrell?" said Tamara Lundie in a quiet voice beside him. "You're correct, of course. The human considerations are the only considerations that are really pragmatic."

The nearby tractor whined like a giant hornet. It was starting forward against its own mass and that of the two loaded trailers.

"We don't leave anybody behind," Farrell whispered to his ghosts.

* * *

The doors to the living compartments on 10-1442 didn't lock, but 2A was closed unlike any of the others on the corridor. Meyer checked the name on a sidebar, then raised her visor to look less threatening. Top said not to scare the cits and not to use any more force than necessary.

"Margaret Lock?" she called and started to push the door open.

"No!" a woman shouted from inside. The door slammed against its jamb. A child began to shriek.

The sound of the door threw a switch in the striker's mind. It was shutting her out, not in, but all Meyer's nightmare reflex heard was the closure. She hit the panel with her right shoulder and pivoted in. Her finger was within the trigger guard of her stinger. The muzzle swept the room.

Male and female, not obviously armed. Child of three or four, female, screaming like a steam vent. The parents were around thirty, the man trying to view both Meyer and the woman Meyer'd flung across the compartment with the door. The woman looked like a harpy's corpse, but she'd probably be all right when her face wasn't distorted with fear, anger and a day of hysterics.

"I'll take care of this, soldier!" the man said. "I'm Councillor Matthew Lock and this is my wife."

"Get your little girl out, sir," Meyer said, breathing hard. She let the sling snap her weapon back under her arm. Christ, what had she been thinking of? "Don't threaten them," Top had said. "I'll guide your wife."

Meyer reached for the child's arm. The child screamed, "Help, Mommie!" and dodged back.

"Get away from her, you filthy whore!" cried the woman. She launched herself at Meyer.

Meyer kicked the woman in the crotch, a bar-fight reflex that was about as effective on one sex as the other. The compartment was too small. Filters of memory darkened it in the striker's mind. She was back on Active Cloak.

"I'll have you—" Councillor Lock said as he grabbed Meyer by the shoulders. Meyer slammed her stinger's barrel into the pit of Lock's stomach.

He doubled up, still clinging to her. Meyer's intellect caught her instinct just before she butt-stroked him in the face. She batted the insides of Lock's elbows to break his grip, then stepped away.

Both civilian adults were on their knees. The woman made wet sobbing sounds. The kid's mouth and eyes were wide open, but for a wonder she'd stopped screeching.

"Coming through!" Steve Nessman warned. He entered in a crouch with his stinger ready, then straightened uncertainly.

"My people went out on their own," Nessman said as he eyed Meyer. "Figured I'd stop off on Two and see how you were doing, Essie."

"Yeah," Meyer said hoarsely. "Help me get these guys to the lifts, will you?"

Councillor Lock put his arms around his wife and stood, helping her up with him. "Alison, come along at once," he said to his daughter in a breathy voice. "We'll get the luggage later."

Lock walked the woman out of the compartment, holding her to hide her face against his chest. He kept his eyes straight ahead. The child caught the slack of her father's trouser leg and followed. Unlike the adults, she stared at Meyer while leaving, turning her head like an owl.