The Fortress in Orion

by Mike Resnick

  She grinned. “It’s a totally automated ship. The entire crew consists of six robots, nothing else.”

  “You know, it makes sense,” said Pretorius thoughtfully. “What the hell do they need a living crew for when all they’re doing is transporting inanimate goods, and every port has machines to do the loading and unloading.”

  “I thought it would please you,” she said, still smiling. “I should be able to access the security and robot override codes in another hour.”

  “You were right. It pleases me.”

  “Anything else?”

  “You need me to tell you?” he said. “Lay in a course for Nortiqua II.”

  18

  Pretorius had called the entire crew to the bridge to explain their next assignment.

  “We’re going to touch down on Nortiqua II during the middle of its night. There’s no sense landing at the spaceport that’s our ultimate destination. There’s simply no way we could avoid being identified.”

  “But the ship has been inspected and cleared,” said Snake.

  “Yeah, but it’s a ship with two Kabori and no one else, as far as the records show. We’re not in the Democracy; this close to Orion, they’ll shoot Men on sight.”

  “We could pose as Djibmet’s prisoners,” continued Snake.

  Pretorius shook his head. “We’ve got someone they haven’t seen who is even more instantly recognizable than a Man, and that’s our Michkag,” answered Pretorius. “If anyone reports seeing him, they’ll lock up Petrus IV tighter than a drum.”

  “So what do we do?” asked Circe.

  “Once we get close enough, Pandora will pinpoint the spaceport—and if there’s more than one, she’ll find the one we need—and then she’ll have the computer map the roads around it and at least an hour from any city that may be attached to it or surrounding it.” He turned to Pandora. “You can do that easy enough, right?”

  She nodded. “Not a problem.”

  “All right,” said Pretorius. “We touch down, hopefully unseen, hijack the first vehicle to come along that will hold the lot of us—hopefully it’ll be a truck or their equivalent of one, something we can drive right to a loading dock—and take it to the spaceport.”

  “Somehow I suspect that’s the easy part,” said Circe.

  Pretorius smiled. “There are no easy parts, or I wouldn’t have selected you to come on this mission.”

  “So what comes next?” asked Ortega.

  “If Pandora can pinpoint which warehouse supplies the ship that’s going to Petrus, we’ll find a way to get into it, hide inside whatever’s being shipped, and just wait to be loaded into the ship.”

  “That sounds too easy,” said Ortega.

  “We’ll probably have to kill our way onto the vehicle, and if it isn’t permitted to pull into the storage building, we’ll almost certainly have to kill our way in and eliminate any eyewitnesses. That means you”—he indicated Pandora—“are going to have to rig something that’ll screw up their security system. Killing our way in is just half of the problem; not being seen on some screen half a mile away is the other half.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” answered Pandora, “but I can’t guarantee it’ll work until I find out what kind of system they’re using and how it works.”

  “They must all have certain things in common,” suggested Pretorius.

  “I’m told if you go to Earth,” she replied, “you’ll find a variety of insects called spiders. They have many things in common—but some can kill you with a bite or a sting, and others can’t even break your skin.”

  “Do what you can,” said Pretorius.

  “And if it doesn’t work?” asked Djibmet.

  “Then we’re going to have to kill one hell of a lot of people before they kill us,” answered Pretorius. “There are a couple of other things, basic but essential.”

  “Okay,” said Snake. “What are they?”

  “I know you hate alien food, but there’s a limit to what we can take with us. The ship will either be carrying food to Petrus, or it will have once been run by a live crew of whatever race and will have a galley. Same with water. Once Pandora’s got the override codes, she’ll make sure there’s food and water to be had somewhere on the ship. If she can’t, that’s when we’ll worry about an alternative.”

  “There’s a small galley leftover from when the ship had a live crew,” said Pandora, studying her computer. “We won’t like it, but it’ll keep us alive.”

  “And the other thing?” asked Circe.

  “Somewhere in our own storage unit are a bunch of unmarked, nonreflective black outfits with matching boots and weaponry. You’re practically invisible in them. I want everyone wearing them before we touch down on Nortiqua II. Not Proto, of course, since he’ll just be casting an image”—he turned to the alien—“but try to match the color and texture. I don’t want a headlight, a spotlight, or any kind of light sensor spotting you on the road or at the spaceport.”

  “What about our heads?”

  “I’ve brought hoods.”

  “Sounds uncomfortable,” commented Ortega.

  “If Snake can stay locked in a drawer for half a night, you can stay in a hood for the same length of time.” He paused. “The second we know they’re obeying our orders, you can take off your hood and let the ladies admire your face.”

  “What about us?” asked Djibmet.

  “You’re Kabori. The closer we get to Petrus, the less suspicions you’ll arouse.” Pretorius turned to Proto. “You’re not going to fool any camera or sensors, but you might as well appear as a Kabori. If they just look at you, they’ll accept it. And if not, well, you’re a life-form they haven’t seen before, but you’re traveling with two Kabori, so that might convince them.”

  “All right,” said Proto. “Though of course if the situation calls for me to appear as anything else, just let me know what and when.”

  Pretorius nodded, then turned to Michkag. “Now we come to another problem. We’re going to have to change your appearance, and I don’t know enough about your race to make any suggestions, so that will be Djibmet’s job, though everyone will pitch in and help once he decides what needs doing.”

  “If Proto can’t fool a security system,” said Michkag, “what makes you think makeup or a false limp or some such thing will?”

  “It won’t,” agreed Pretorius.

  “Then why bother?” asked Snake.

  “If he appears as Michkag, it’ll set off alarm bells from here to Orion,” said Pretorius. “They know where Michkag is, they know where he’s going and when he’s arriving, they know how many medals he has on his uniform and how many subordinates surround him whenever he appears in public. We let our Michkag appear as he really looks, and we’ve got a life expectancy, not to be too pessimistic, of maybe two minutes.”

  “Then I don’t understand,” persisted Snake.

  “If he is heavily disguised, then if the security systems pick up his true appearance, there’s only one conclusion: he’s traveling incognito, inspecting various worlds and their security, and woe betide anyone who gives his identity away.”

  “I don’t know . . .” said Snake.

  “Neither do I,” admitted Pretorius. “But I do know what happens if we let him appear as Michkag.”

  Circe nodded her agreement. “A telling point.”

  “We can’t count on having makeup facilities aboard the cargo ship, so I suggest that Djibmet start practicing when this meeting breaks up, and I want a couple of you to help him.” He turned to Ortega. “Felix, I think we can assume makeup isn’t your specialty, so when I’m through speaking, go into the cargo hold and start pulling out the black uniforms.”

  “I hope you remembered night-vision goggles,” said Snake.

  Pretorius nodded. “For everyone but Felix. You can’t improve on the vision he’s got with those artificial eyes.”

  “So I am initially a Kabori?” asked Proto.

  “Probably,” said Pretorius. “We
’ll have to play it by ear.”

  “Whatever that means.”

  “It means we’ll adapt to the situation as required. But if you have to be a Kabori, I want you to appear as a low-ranking officer—enough to get obedience from the local citizenry and some of the spaceport employees, but not enough to make them wonder what a commander or general or their equivalent is doing here.”

  Proto nodded his assent.

  Suddenly Pretorius turned to Djibmet. “I’ve got a question.”

  “Yes?” said the Kabori.

  “If we’re properly identified—not suspected, but identified—once we get to Petrus, we may need a few seconds’ confusion to escape or establish a defensive position.”

  “Yes?” repeated Djibmet, frowning as he tried to see what Pretorius had in mind.

  “On Earth, and even on some worlds that have been colonized by Men, some members of my species still retain, even at this late date, an instinctive fear of and revulsion toward snakes.”

  “What is a snake?” asked Djibmet.

  Pretorius turned to Proto. “Do you know? Can you show him?”

  An instant later a glistening black snake was slithering toward Djibmet, hissing and baring its fangs.

  “This is a snake?” asked Djibmet.

  “Yes,” answered Pretorius.

  “And Men have an instinctive fear of it?”

  Pretorius nodded an affirmative. “Okay, Proto.”

  Proto instantly appeared as a middle-aged man.

  “We have no instinctive fear of it,” answered Djibmet. “Or at least I don’t.” He turned to Michkag. “Do you?”

  “No,” answered the clone.

  “I didn’t think you would,” said Pretorius. “But is there something, anything, that can elicit an instinctive fear or revulsion in a Kabori?”

  “Ah!” exclaimed Djibmet, finally comprehending. “Yes, indeed there is.”

  “What is it?”

  “A crosthion.”

  “Can you describe it?”

  “Better still,” said Pandora. “Give me a minute and I’ll pull up a holo.”

  She went to work on her computer, and some forty seconds later the image of a long, lean, low-to-the-ground alien animal with glowing golden eyes and flaring nostrils appeared on the bridge.

  “That is just an image, right?” asked Djibmet nervously.

  “Right,” said Pretorius.

  “I’ve never seen one before,” offered Michkag. “But it makes me very nervous. The thought of making any kind of physical contact with it is . . .” He concluded his thought with a shudder.

  Pretorius turned to Proto. “Can you do it?”

  “Let me study it a little more” came the answer. “I need to see it move some more.”

  Djibmet and Michkag backed away and gave the image a wide berth.

  “All right,” said Proto. “I’m ready.”

  “Wait,” said Pretorius.

  Proto looked at him curiously.

  “Djibmet and Michkag, close your eyes. Nothing will harm you, I promise.”

  The two Kabori did as he asked. Then he turned and nodded to Proto, who immediately took the form of a crosthion.

  “Okay, open ’em up,” said Pretorius.

  The two Kabori opened their eyes and quickly backed away from Proto and the holo.

  “Can you tell which is which?” asked Pretorius. “Take your time.”

  The answer, after a full minute, was negative.

  “Okay, we’ve got at least one way to buy a little time. Proto, put that one in your repertoire. If you’ve any doubts, practice it out here where Pandora can compare it with the image.”

  “Right,” said Proto, returning once again to his human image.

  Ortega returned a few minutes later, loaded down with the black, light-killing outfits and weapons for the human contingent.

  “Okay,” said Pretorius. “I’ve provided backpacks for each of you and for our two Kabori too, though I want them in their military uniforms tonight. Proto, you’ll start out as a Man, but of course you won’t be wearing one of the outfits. Just study them and make a duplicate that’ll pass visual inspection. Just add it to your image.” He paused. “Okay, that takes care of today’s session. We reach Nortiqua II in three days. By then Pandora will know a lot more about the landscape. In the meantime, just stay healthy and be ready for surprises, because I’ve never been on a mission that didn’t have its share of them.”

  19

  Three and a half days had passed, and they were now within an hour of Nortiqua II. Luck was on their side, at least so far. The spaceport would be on the nightside of the planet, and the cargo ship was approaching at such a rate that, as best as Pandora could calculate, it wouldn’t land for five hours.

  “Okay,” said Pretorius as he assembled his team. “There’s a pair of major roads leading to the spaceport from the north. We’ll approach from a hundred miles north of them, see which one has more traffic, and decide where to land based on what we can observe. Proto, they’re not going to have security out where we plan to get transportation to the spaceport, so you might as well appear as a Kabori. They may be suspicious, but there’s no way in hell they’re going to shoot a Kabori in the dark, and if three of you signal them to stop, I think they will.” Suddenly he laughed aloud. “Oh, shit!

  We’ve got a better way to use you!”

  Proto looked at him nervously. “Oh?”

  “All you’re doing is projecting an image, right?” continued Pretorius. “There’s no limit to its size?”

  “Well, I can’t appear to be a seventy-five-story building or a stadium teeming with spectators,” said Proto carefully.

  “But you could appear to be a disabled vehicle, couldn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “That makes this a lot easier,” said Pretorius. “By the time we land, Pandora will be able to supply holos of the local vehicles. We’ll wait by the roadside, and when our instruments tell us that a truck or the Nortiquan equivalent is coming down the road, you’ll convince them you’re a truck that’s broken down, and Djibmet and Michkag will signal the oncoming truck to stop. The driver won’t say no to a pair of Kabori, not this close to Orion.”

  “I thought you didn’t want anyone to see me,” said Michkag.

  “It’ll be pitch-dark on this side of the planet. Nortiqua II’s got no moons. We’ll have Djibmet change your face a bit, and that should do the trick. No one’s going to be looking for Michkag next to a broken-down vehicle in the middle of the night on a minor dirtball like Nortiqua.”

  “Makes sense,” agreed Circe.

  “What do we do when we get to the spaceport?” asked Snake.

  “Djibmet will tell them he’s got a load for whatever the hell the name of the cargo ship is and ask whoever’s in charge to direct him to it.”

  “Just like that?” said Snake dubiously.

  “In theory,” agreed Pretorius.

  “And if it doesn’t work?”

  “Then we improvise.”

  “Surely you have some alternative plan?”

  “I’ve got half a dozen,” answered Pretorius. “It depends on the situation.”

  “Give me a for-instance, just so I’ll be less edgy,” said Snake.

  “Okay. The guard says no, we can’t approach the ship. Maybe it’s our papers, maybe someone’s found the real driver’s body, maybe it’s some other reason. We invite him into the truck, show him Michkag, ask if he knows who he’s facing, and explain that he’s on his way back from a very private conference with a turncoat representative of the Democracy, and he has to get to Petrus for the much-ballyhooed meeting. That ought to convince him to help us every way he can.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “Then we’ll use one of my five other contingency plans or just wing it.”

  “Maybe if you had more reasonable plans, you wouldn’t keep winding up in hospitals,” said Snake.

  “By the time they send me out on a job, the enem
y has seen every variation of every reasonable plan in the book,” said Pretorius.

  “Getting one,” announced Pandora suddenly.

  “One what?” asked Felix.

  “You haven’t been listening,” said Pretorius. He turned to Pandora. “Okay, let’s see it.”

  “Here it comes,” she replied, and an instant later the holograph of a truck-like alien vehicle appeared in the middle of the bridge. “This is about twenty percent of its actual size, but I couldn’t fit a full-sized one in here.”

  “Damn!” said Pretorius, studying the image. “I don’t know what the hell those wheels are made of, but they don’t look like it’s even possible for them to ever go flat. What fuels it?”

  “I can’t tell,” said Pandora.

  “But nothing combustible?”

  “When’s the last time you heard of a vehicle that ran on combustible fuel?”

  Pretorius stared at the image for another minute.

  “They got any wildlife on this section of the planet?” he asked.

  “Probably,” answered Pandora. “It’s an outpost world. Probably doesn’t have a population of more than half a million. That’s a lot of unsettled, unbuilt world.” She stared at her computer. “Ah! Here it is!” She projected a holograph of a large, fur-bearing animal, a third the size of the vehicle.

  “Herbivore?” asked Pretorius.

  “Yes.”

  “About how much would this one weigh?”

  “Maybe three tons,” said Pandora.

  “Okay, that’ll do it. Proto, can you project both the truck and the animal?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right,” said Pretorius. “Once we’re on the ground, we’ll wait for a truck of the proper size to come down the road. Before it gets within a mile or so, you’ll project an image of another truck on its side, with the front end caved in, and right next to it one of these animals, looking like it was hit and killed by the truck. Can you do it?”

  “Yes,” answered Proto.

  “Let’s see it.”

  “There’s not enough room here.”

  “Give us a smaller picture. Pandora did.”

  “Okay, but it won’t feel right.”

  “To us or to you?” asked Pretorius.