by K S Augustin
“Interested in tri-mob sensor arrays?” one man close by asked, his gaze quickly shifting from one member of the party to the other. He was barely visible as a bobbing head bouncing from behind one pile of boxes to another. “Best on the planet.”
The soldiers looked away, bored, although Moon noticed that they still kept a tight grip on their weapons.
“What about libation?” Srin asked him, flicking a look at his guards. “Liquid refreshment?”
The shopkeeper pointed farther along the arcade. “Janit’s. Sixty metres that way.”
“Thank you.”
They walked the distance carefully. At one point, Srin sauntered to the balustrade that edged one side of the crowded pathway and looked down. The complex was built against sloping land, and it turned out that they were strolling three levels above the ground floor. Like every other level, it seethed with small shops and pyramids of goods.
“Busy place,” Srin commented. His voice was casual but his eyes tried to tell Moon something. The only problem was, she wasn’t sure exactly what he was trying to tell her. She widened her eyes, hoping she was adequately conveying her complete ignorance.
Behind them, the guards were conducting their own muted conversation.
“—stupid bitch thinks this is a great place for some r-and-r.”
“Yeah, and she threw the captain out of his quarters, did you hear?”
“Fucking command. They can’t get anything right.”
Srin leant in close to Moon on the pretence of avoiding a small group of giggling children. “I’ve got a plan.”
Moon stopped at a small stall. She picked up a trinket—a small sculpture of the planet’s system. After looking at it from various angles, she put it down again. “And?” she replied softly, looking away from the soldiers.
“Don’t resist. Timing is everything.”
They moved to Janit’s, which none of them could have missed, even if they hadn’t received any directions. It was a large, sprawling bar complex that spilt onto the arcade in every direction. Moon assumed Srin would choose a seat along the balustrade. That would be close to an avenue of escape. She was surprised, then, when he moved deep into the bar’s interior, where he seated himself at a low, circular table. He looked up at the soldiers who were still standing and smiled.
“If you guys want to grab something, Dr. Thadin and I’ll be happy to wait here for you.”
One of them snorted. “If you think we’re going to leave both of you alone, you’ve got vacuum for brain.” He grabbed a chair and sat down opposite, his back to the wall so he could watch the room. “Get me one of whatever’s available, Dof.”
The other soldier nodded. “Sure thing.”
“So, what’s it like?” the soldier asked Moon while they waited.
“What’s what like?”
“Working with the Turk. Him losing his memory every day. Must be frustrating.”
“It’s every two days,” she stressed, not liking the way Srin was being ignored. The slight smile on his face told her he had come to terms with it, but she had not.
The burly soldier shrugged. “Whatever. Must get boring repeating the same thing over and over again every two days. Would drive me crazy.”
“Then I suppose it’s just as well you don’t have to do it,” she replied sweetly.
He grunted out a laugh, just as his companion returned with four white beakers of liquid, carefully held within a two handed grasp.
“The local beer,” Dof said, distributing the drinks around the table.
“Would you guys let the doctor and me have a look around?” Srin asked, looking from one to the other.
“You stay put,” Dof instructed them, after taking a long swallow of alcohol. “You move when we’re ready to move.”
Srin sank back into his chair. “Okay.”
They laughed. “Good Turk.”
At first Moon was mystified, but as the hour wore on and the soldiers became more and more relaxed she started to get an inkling of what Srin’s plan might involve. It was after Dof left for his second visit to the bathroom that Srin made his move. Dof’s companion was looking the other way, eyeing a couple of women who had walked into the bar and seated themselves two tables away. The women, apparently human, sent flirtatious glances over to the remaining soldier. He responded in kind, shifting in his seat to face a bit away from Moon as he worked up the courage to begin a conversation.
Srin stood up suddenly, jerked up the table and flipped it against the soldier, knocking him to the ground and pinning him against the wall behind him. Moon gawped at the scene, but Srin didn’t hesitate. He grabbed Moon’s wrist and pulled her to the entrance. She barely had time to grab her satchel and loop it around her neck before they were away.
“Trust me,” he shouted as she tried to match him, step for step. Outside the entrance, he pulled her up onto a table close to the edge of the walkway and catapulted both of them off the end of the balustrade.
“Jump!”
Chapter Twenty
Moon held her breath. She felt the air rush past her body, fluttering the hem of her trousers. She barely had time enough to wonder what was on the floor below before she crashed through a mountain of boxes. Sharp corners caught her shoulder and hip, and she thought she bounced at least once before finally coming to rest on a compacted and teetering mound of clothing and broken panels. The remains of a stall and its merchandise.
Pandemonium erupted around them. Voices yammered, some surprised, some with tones of outrage. “Come on.” Srin’s voice was low and urgent beside her.
With a groan, Moon turned over, trying to scramble through the ripped board and uneven scraps of wire, plastic and cloth. But it was difficult for her to get purchase on the shifting debris. She tried to find stable ground, but her feet kept slipping.
Moon didn’t dare take the time to look, although she was sure at least one of the guards was trying to target them from his perch three levels above them. The thought of a weapon being trained on her back gave her the energy to scrabble with her legs until she found the floor and managed to jump free of the demolished stall.
Srin’s hand latched on to hers and plunged them into the noisy crowd. Moon was already panting as she followed Srin. He used his broad shoulders to barrel through the crowds, veering to the wall when he found the door to a set of emergency stairs. He pushed her through first, then swiftly followed, overtaking her as they flew downwards. Srin took leaps down several steps at a time, making the level square platforms that punctuated each metal flight shake. Moon followed as quickly as she could, but Srin ranged ahead. He paused to wait for her at the end of every couple of flights, encouraging her to hurry with urgent movements of his hands.
After several floors they exited at one of the higher basement levels.
Moon’s bewildered eyes had time to take in another large market crowded with vendors. There were no walls dividing neat cubes of space here. As they headed into the centre of it, Moon noticed old men sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by square baskets of food, next to women bartering with an assortment of humans and aliens over supplies and spare parts. The topography was dizzying, with some vendors using every centimetre of space to hang their wares, suspending dozens of trinkets on flimsy-looking poles, while others were content with resting merchandise in a pattern on the floor around them. There was no clear and standard demarcation between the informal stalls, the merchants encroaching on one another’s territory whenever it appeared opportunistic to do so.
Srin, fast and agile, ducked through goods and dawdling customers with a speed that amazed Moon. As they whipped past a clothing stall, he grabbed two dun-coloured jackets without stopping. She didn’t know if the stall’s owner was even aware of what had happened. He shucked on his fur-lined coat and threw the second stolen jacket to Moon. With tight lips, she repeated his action.
“Underground,” he finally gasped, skidding to a stop at the far wall. His eyes scanned the cold and hard brick expanse, searchin
g frantically for something. He seemed to find what he was looking for in a far corner because, with a grunt, he grabbed her hand again and began following the wall to its end.
“We’ve given our minders the slip,” he muttered, keeping his head down. Around them, heavily-garbed humans and aliens swirled. “But it’ll take time for them to gather the soldiers already on the planet. It will also take time for the next shuttle to arrive. I think we have about an hour before things start getting serious.”
Moon and Srin moved at the same pace as the surrounding population. The purloined jackets helped them blend in.
When they finally reached the corner that was Srin’s destination, he bent down and examined a large rectangular hatch set into the wall. Its edges were reddish-brown and bubbled from rust. Fading white lettering was unintelligible, faded and entirely scraped away in places. Srin grabbed the inset handle with two hands, heaved and twisted it anti-clockwise.
Moon remained standing above him, shielding his actions as much as possible and trying to look casual as she scanned the surroundings. She took advantage of the time to shrug off her right sleeve and sling her bag more securely over that shoulder. When she slipped the jacket back on she zipped it up securely.
“Done.” She heard Srin’s voice, quiet and satisfied, and then he was standing beside her. “There’s a ladder inside,” he told her, looking out into the crowd. “Get in and start climbing.”
Moon bent to look into the opening. A shaft led down into darkness. She ducked and eased herself through the hatchway, feet first. One foot caught on an unseen metal rung and she started descending. After several seconds, she heard Srin follow.
She stopped to look up at him, moving her body to one side and angling her head so she could see what he was doing. He pulled at the metal plate. A beam of artificial light caught his features, throwing them into relief, making them look grim and expressionless—then, with a screeching protest, it slid shut and all light was cut off. There were more sounds. It was obvious Srin was trying to secure the panel more thoroughly. Then came a rhythmic hollow chink as he started descending above her. Using that as a signal, Moon continued downwards.
The air got perceptibly cooler as they climbed down. They descended farther and farther, until Moon thought they must have been in the core of the planet by now. Above her, Srin’s steps kept up a steady pace, so she concentrated on just finding the rung below with her foot and kept on descending. The corroded metal bit into her palms after a while, but she kept going, and her bare fingers started tingling and turning numb at the tips before she finally splashed in some shallow water with a last, jarring step. They had arrived at the bottom of the shaft—wherever that was. She moved to one side and heard Srin land next to her. It was still pitch-black.
“Don’t suppose you brought a—”
A faint blue beam of illumination swung around the narrow space, highlighting narrow tunnels that snaked away in several directions. Thick bundles of cables followed the ceiling of each of the tunnels, tacked against the concrete every metre or so.
“—light,” Moon finished.
He flashed a grin and winked at her.
Now that she had finally stopped moving, Moon felt an ache in her arms and legs. She stretched both shoulders and felt a painful twinge near her kidneys.
“Ow!” she gasped softly. That must have been where she collided with the boxes at the start of her escape.
“We have to keep moving,” Srin whispered. “They’ll search the centre first. We should head away from the town.”
“Away? Won’t that make it easier to find us?”
He chose a direction—arbitrarily, it seemed—and ducked into the tunnel. The ceiling was low, so he was bent over. His walk was more of a shuffle as he half-stepped along its length. Moon followed, head down, and used her hands against the dry curved wall to help steady herself.
“They’ll be expecting us to stay where the people are,” Srin answered. “They’ll think we want to find a way off the planet as quickly as we can. So, we won’t.” The beam of light from the torch swung back and forth with his steps. The walls were featureless. All Moon could see was the tunnel, stretching into the darkness.
“Where exactly are we?” she asked. “How did you know about this place?”
How did he know to bring a torch?
Srin walked briskly and Moon struggled to keep up. Every few metres, she had to attempt a half run so he didn’t leave her behind. Her legs protested at the uneven surface they were trying to navigate, but she was happy to indulge in an activity that kept the blood pumping through her veins. At least the exercise was keeping her warm, she thought wryly.
“Have you heard of drain-diving?” he asked after a short silence.
“No.”
“It’s something I did as a teenager. A group of us used to explore the subterranean drainage systems under cities we visited.” The ceiling was gradually sloping down, and the walls became more circular until they finally stopped at the intersection with four other—much larger—pipes. Each was easily two and a half metres in diameter.
They stepped out and, with a sigh, Moon stood up straight and stretched her back. She winced as her kidneys, hip and shoulders protested anew. After some consideration, Srin led them down the leftmost tunnel. “It’s a truism of the modern world that, for every level you build up, there’s usually an equivalent level down. More so on a mining planet like this. The hollowed-out real estate is too much of an opportunity to pass up.”
He stopped for a moment, seemed to reconsider his choice, and then kept going. “People still cross the galaxy with a sense of wonder. But most of them forget about what’s under the ground.”
“Won’t they find us here?”
“Earth and water are good sensor shields. When you combine them with the rampant cross-interference from all those transmitters above the surface—and the electromagnetic radiation from the cable bundles just over our heads—I’m reasonably certain we’re safe from their sensors for now. Of course, if they start bombing the place, that may change, but I don’t think they’ll do that.”
Recalling the serpent’s smile on Rosca Moises’s face, Moon doubted the consul would baulk at taking such an action, but didn’t say anything. They kept walking.
It was a different world, dim and cold. Moon rubbed her hands frequently to warm them up. Didn’t it ever get warm on this planet? Instead of a ship’s humming, the rhythm of the underground was carried by regular drips of water. Although the first, cramped tunnel had been dry, water trickled along the floor of this one. There was no way to avoid it.
“Here,” Srin finally said, lifting himself up and into a shelf-like cavity at waist level. “Let’s stop here for a while and think. It’s a disused outlet from the looks of things.”
He offered his hand and Moon took it gratefully, wedging herself next to him. They just sat for a while, catching their breaths, sharing their heat, listening for signs of anyone following. Except for the steady dripping of water, the tunnels were silent.
“We did it,” he said quietly, pride in his voice. “We escaped.”
“The trick is,” she commented, “staying that way.”
“Did you destroy the files?”
That was Moon’s part of phase two of their escape. “I set the scramble-bombs for two hours after our arrival on the planet. Even if they can salvage my research, it won’t do them any good without you. Or me.”
A corner of his mouth tilted up. Then he switched off the light and they were enveloped in the chill and damp darkness. “Conserving power,” he told her. “And escaping detection. Voice and light carry easily down these tunnels. We should be careful.”
She nodded, then realised he couldn’t see her movement. “Sure,” she said softly. Then a thought struck her. “I wonder if Drue will get court-martialled over this.” She felt regret over what would happen to him. He had always treated her with courtesy and sensitivity. It seemed like a poor way to repay him for such manners
.
“Most likely. Even if he retains his commission, his career is probably over.”
“He said that.”
“Did he?” There was surprise in Srin’s voice.
“Yes. He told me that news of Moises heading for his ship was enough to kill any future promotion for him.” She decided not to tell Srin just yet about Drue’s grandmother. They still had enough difficulties ahead of them without bringing up the dreaded subject of Bliss.
“He’s probably right.”
They remained silent for a while, still too keyed-up to relax. “How long do we stay here?” Moon asked.
“Let’s rest for an hour, then keep moving. I want to be ahead of the first wave of search teams and hiding somewhere they can’t find us by the time they reach our general location.”
On a Republic planet, they knew they could—with luck—evade the Space Fleet. Without help, however, they couldn’t outrun them completely.
“I think I’ll try contacting Kad tomorrow, if I can,” she said into the blackness.
“They’ll be tracking communications.”
“I’m fairly confident he will have allowed for that, or at least set up an encrypted channel.”
“Do you think he’ll help us?”
“I….” She hesitated. That was the critical question. Their escape wouldn’t collapse completely if the disguised comms chip couldn’t reach Kad, but it would increase the risk of capture significantly. Srin’s concerns were depressing and completely valid. But, on her side Moon was buoyed by the fact that her old research partner had given her the camouflaged comms chip in the first place. The investment of time and effort needed to craft such an unassuming piece of technology indicated that he was still open to further dialogue from her.
…if you ever get to that stage when you feel like the only choice left is to either jump off a cliff or be lasered, give me a call.
“I think there’s a good chance he’ll help,” she finally said.
“How long do you think you’ll need?” Srin asked.
“For the phone call? No more than ten minutes. And you’ll be beside me when I make it.”