Death Sentence

by Roger MacBride Allen

  If that meant misdirecting the questioning to protect the humans in the morning, but feeding them information in the evening, so be it. If it meant dismissing them altogether the moment they were not of use, arranging their departure, then saddling them with a Metrannan troublemaker more determined than he was to get the formula, that was not a problem. A skilled chess player might go to all lengths to defend a particular piece--then sacrifice it in a heartbeat if doing so would ensure a win. It was a perfectly acceptable and proper gambit, and it would never occur to anyone to object to it.

  Unless, of course, one was the chess piece in question.

  The liftpod was a thirty-meter-long needle-nosed silver bullet lying on its side. It had a forward nose skid, two aft skids for landing gear, and a personnel hatch up toward the bow, but was otherwise featureless. The hatch was hinged at the bottom, so as to open out into an access ramp.

  A harried tech was rattling off a hurried explanation of what was going to happen, and Taranarak--who was scarcely less flustered--was doing her best to translate what he was saying into Lesser Trade. It was not going well.

  Eighty meters away, Fallogon's aircar was already buttoning up again. It lifted off almost at once, abandoning Jamie, Hannah, and Taranarak to their fate--and, probably more importantly, getting Fallogon away fast. If he wasn't there long, it increased the chances that he could get away with claiming he had never been there at all. In the snake pit of Metrannan politics, there could be any number of reasons he might need to deny it.

  Only a few hundred meters away was Groundside Station, somehow looking even more like the Tower of Babel in the dimness of the predawn hours.

  "You--that is, ah, we--will be sealed into the passenger cabin," Taranarak was saying, echoing what the tech was saying. "It will be small, a tight fit, but you--we--should all fit. Air content and pressure and gravity will all be normal throughout the journey. There are no viewports and only one small status board. This is a vehicle for rapid emergency transport, not for tourists to look at the passing scenery. As soon as the hatch is sealed and they have run the last checks, the vehicle will go into, ah, horizontal hover, and lift to about--let's see, it would be about fifty of your meters, if I have that right. The landing skids will retract.

  "The liftpod will rotate until the nose points directly down--no! forgive me! until the nose points exactly up. The liftpod will accelerate to about, oh, in human measures, about eight hundred kilometers an hour very quickly and hold that speed for the first few minutes, until it is clear of the lower atmosphere. The liftpod will then accelerate at, let's see, let me convert, about thirty-eight of your acceleration units--yes, thirty-eight gravities. It will shut down its engines and coast for a brief period while it rotates to put its engines forward.

  "It will decelerate at the same rate and come to rest a few twelves of meters above the target point on Free Orbit Station.

  "It will make a landing in the same horizontal attitude, about eighty-four meters from the Sholto. The hatch will open automatically, and an air tunnel will form between our landing point and the Sholto. There will be air pressure so that we may walk from the liftpod to the Sholto. All is completely automatic."

  "How long?" Jamie asked. He was thinking of the tactical situation and doing his best to squeeze out every bit of information possible. Any minor detail might be the one that saved their lives. "How long will it take us to get there?"

  "Hmmm? What? Didn't I say? Forgive me. Let me figure the conversion. About one and a twelfth of your hours, if I have that right."

  "Which do you think would be scarier to calculate," asked Hannah. "Our maximum velocity or our average velocity?"

  "Both, when you consider we're going to do the whole run about a hundred meters away from the cable cluster," said Jamie. "Wouldn't it be fun if we hit it? Thanks, Taranarak."

  They walked a few paces away from the Metrannans and looked up at the vehicle and the cable cluster. "Well, here we are," Jamie said, "with all our clothes, equipment, and food blown up, and we ourselves presumably presumed dead. All we've got is the clothes we're standing up in, plus whatever we have in my pockets and your handbag, which means there's me in my tuxedo and you in your very lovely evening gown, along with a Metrannan in fancy dress who's halfway to being in shock and has no supplies of her own at all--besides the supply of emergency rations she had smuggled onto our ship. We're about to be loaded into a giant lawn dart, then fired into space so we can get to our own ship before a set of possibly ruthless and/or imaginary bad guys can try to break into it and maybe set off the self-destruct system and strand us here on this lovely planet. And if we get past all that, we have to shoehorn all three of us into a ship meant for one person, boost as fast as we can for the outer system, then figure out what we do from there. It seems to me we're in trouble. Again."

  "Thanks for the summing up," said Hannah. "Don't ever volunteer to be the morale officer."

  Taranarak was halfway across the tarmac to the liftpod's hatch. She gestured and called to them to hurry up. "You try hurrying in a gravity field that's an extra twenty-one percent," Jamie growled. "That's one bright spot about leaving sooner than we thought," he said to Hannah. "Maybe my feet will stop hurting." Then Jamie remembered there were problems going the other way, and he upped his pace, to get to Taranarak sooner. "Taranarak!" he called out. "Gravity aboard our ships is only about four-fifths of what you're used to--and we sure don't have any meds on our ship that could help you."

  Taranarak had been looking spooked and disoriented to start with. Hours before she had been at a fashionable dinner party hosted by the rulers of the planet. Since then her home had been destroyed before her eyes in an attempt on her life and she had been ordered into exile. Jamie's words seemed to take a minute to penetrate into her brain. "What? Oh! Yes!" She turned to the technician and spoke with him. He spoke into a pocket comm unit, listened, then spoke to her again.

  "Very good. My thanks for thinking of that. They have a small stock of a palliative drug that should at least see me through the first few days."

  "Good. I think we can adjust the onboard gravity to help you, but I don't know the ship's systems that well. Ah, you might also ask if they could provide you with some clothes suitable for wear on the ship--and any other small necessities. We won't have anything suitable for use by a Metrannan." They might even have trouble scrounging up supplies for her once they got back to Center--if they made it that far--but there was no point in worrying that far ahead.

  "Excellent, excellent suggestions." She turned to the tech again, who seemed to be starting to feel harassed himself. He gave another positive reply, though not as cheerful a one. Taranarak turned back to Jamie. "They will grab whatever they can off their supply shelves in the next two short-duration units, throw it all in a container, and put it aboard the liftpod with us. But we must board now."

  "No argument from me," said Jamie. "They've already tried to blow us up once. Let's go."

  The interior of the liftpod's passenger section was an almost featureless cylinder, completely covered in a sort of yellowish-white padding material, just spongy enough to be a little bit hard to walk on. There were thick woven loops set at regular intervals into the floor, the side panels and the overhead panels to serve either as handholds or as strap-down points for cargo.

  By the hatch there was a combination door-control and status panel set at eye level for a Metrannan, and the interior of the hatch was padded with the same material as the rest of the compartment. That was it. Obviously the idea was to leave the interior wide open, to leave as much space as possible for whatever might be needed in a rush at Free Orbit Level Station. From Hannah's point of view, no seats at all was a major improvement over Metrannan-style saddle-seats. The moment the hatch was shut, she kicked over her shoes and lay down with her feet on the floor, her head propped up a bit on the padded side of the interior. "Wake me up when we get there," she said, "and I'm almost not kidding."

  Jamie loosened his tie, pulle
d off his own shoes, and sat down next to her. "Um, don't you think that maybe we should talk about a few things?"

  "No," said Hannah. "I think we should rest. Once that hatch opens on the station, we've got to get outside, deal with whatever the situation is, get aboard the Sholto, and get away. There's nothing I know about that we have to discuss that will matter between now and when we boost off the station. After we get that done, we'll have lots of time to talk, and enough to talk about to keep us busy until we match course with the Adler. And we'll have a lot more chance to talk privately. For all we know, Fallogon set this whole thing up from start to finish to get us aboard this hypersonic padded cell so he could listen in on all the hidden mikes, and Taranarak is in on it with him, and she's wired for sound and had an intensive course in English before we got to the planet."

  "You are paranoid. Maybe with reason, I grant, but even so." Jamie glanced over at Taranarak. She was squatted down on the deck and digging through the small box of odds and ends that were going to be all the Metrannan goods she would have for a while. Maybe for the rest of her life. "Right about now she looks more like someone almost catatonic with shock and not so much like a secret agent."

  "Yeah, well, later on I'll tell you about my slightly more realistic theory that says Hallaben's unfortunate death was no accident. The point is that if we get killed before we get aboard the Sholto and out of here, none of it matters--and once we're aboard the Sholto, it won't matter if Taranarak is a plant. How could she report back? Plus it'll be a lot easier to speak privately in any event. We can hide in the Sholto's air lock and pull the hatch shut if we want."

  "I won't want," said Jamie. "I was locked in that air lock for long enough."

  "Whatever. But for now, the best we can do for ourselves is rest up as best we can, check whatever gear we actually have, and think about what it might take to get us back to the Sholto."

  There was a faint hum and a low whistling sound from the outside of the ship. "Were those takeoff noises?" Hannah asked.

  Jamie stood up and went over to the status display. "No," he said in a strained, mock-calm sort of voice. "We missed the takeoff. If I'm doing my conversions right, we are already at about two thousand meters and climbing--and if you want to stay sane, don't think about what the gravity orientation is on this thing relative to the ground."

  "Good advice," she said. "Now check your gear."

  TWENTY-FOUR

  DOWN AND OUT

  When the Metrannans made a system automatic, they went all the way. According to the information placard attached to the status display board, not only would the hatch open automatically when the liftpod landed itself, but there was no way to override the mechanism and do it on manual. A sensible arrangement if the beings aboard were totally untrained and/or incapacitated or if the liftpod was carrying cargo only, but not so great for a lightly armed and jumpy pair of Special Agents who would prefer to go out the door when they were ready, and not when the door was ready.

  They had both gone over the weapons and gear they carried a dozen times and were as sure as they could be that everything was all ready. The main item in the armory concealed in Jamie's dinner jacket consisted of a lightweight all-plastic slug-throwing gun, designed as much to get past detectors as it was to fire bullets. The rounds it fired were a special high-density shatterproof plastic, but even so they packed a lot less stopping power or penetration ability than a conventional gun. He also had a pocket laser cutter that could serve as a low-power laser pistol in a pinch, a single baby stun grenade, an even tinier smoke grenade, a set of night-vision goggles, an encrypted pocket comm, and a Swiss Army knife.

  Hannah's equipment was even sparser, thanks to the limitations imposed by a lady's evening bag. She had an identical plastic slug-thrower, but not the laser cutter or grenades or goggles or knife. She did have a pocket comm matched to Jamie's and a small spool that held fifty meters of superthin, superstrong tapeline strong enough to hoist a piano, plus a pair of lethal little throwing knives, a tube of eyeliner, a lipstick, and a compact with a mirror.

  Taranarak, needless to say, was carrying no weapons or useful gadgets of any sort, and her carton full of supplies didn't seem to contain anything that might prove helpful.

  "All right, Jamie," Hannah said, speaking in Lesser Trade for Taranarak's benefit. "You're our tactical genius. How do we play this?"

  "We have no idea at all what we're up against out there," said Jamie, "so it's a little hard to say. If it's sixty Order Guards in full battle gear, we don't have a chance, of course. But what we've got going for us is that it's probably a small conspiratorial group--and they probably think we're dead already. However, unless they're completely blind and deaf, they're going to notice this liftpod coming in for a landing, so we can't count much on surprise."

  "Or we might get lucky and we might beat them there--or they might not be coming at all."

  "Maybe. But tactics and optimism don't mix too well. So here's what we're going to do. I'm going out first, because I'm the junior team member and because I'm better with weapons--but mostly because I can move better in trousers than you can in that outfit. You and Taranarak stay put in the liftpod--and you stay as far from the door as you can until I say otherwise, just in case someone out there decides to take a few potshots at it or throw in a grenade.

  "Hannah, you stand by, ready to move out when I tell you. You carry your gun in one hand, wear your pocket comm as a headphone, and carry everything else in the purse. I'm going to run like hell as soon as the door opens, find some cover, then see what I can see. I'm going to want to get to some sort of spot where I can provide covering fire for you, Hannah, when you come out. Taranarak, you're going to stay put in the liftpod until we know what's going on. Hannah and I are used to working together. My apologies for that. We don't have a weapon or a comm unit for you and you don't have the training."

  Plus we really don't know if we can trust you, thought Hannah. "That all seems clear enough," said Hannah. "Come on, Taranarak, let's get to the forward end, away from the hatch."

  Jamie stood by the hatch, watching the status display. "The acceleration compensators are just too good on this planet," he said. "I would feel a lot better if there was some vibration or sense of speed or something." He watched the display. "We're about two minutes out," he said. "Taranarak, again, my apologies but I'm going to switch to English now, just to make it harder if anyone's listening in."

  Jamie pulled out his comm unit and unfolded it into headset mode, put the receiver in his ear, and positioned the mike in front of his mouth. Hannah did the same.

  "Comm check, comm check," Jamie said in a low voice. "And what we do if the comm units don't work I have no idea."

  "I hear you loud and clear, partner," said Hannah. "How do you hear me?"

  "The same. Good. One less worry. We're about one minute out. Stand by."

  There was a trio of low clunks and thuds. "Landing skids just came out," Jamie said in a near whisper. There was a squeak and a groan, but no shake or thud or sense of motion. "And we're down. Stand by. I think if I'm reading this right, the automatic systems are growing an atmosphere-zone around us."

  "I don't know if it's possible to run through those pressure-containment fields or not," said Hannah. "Careful you don't go try the experiment when you start moving around."

  "Right. Okay. Good safety tip. The status display says we've got pressure out there now. I think the hatch is about to open. Here we go."

  The hatch swung out and down to serve as an access ramp. Jamie was through it almost before it was finished opening.

  Hannah tightened her grip on her pistol and swallowed hard.

  Jamie resisted the temptation to do anything fancy like a tuck-and-roll dive. Not in a tuxedo without much give in it, or in a gravity field that was twenty-one percent too high. Instead he settled for a quick trot down the access ramp, then a quick turn to the aft end of the bullet-shaped vehicle, in hopes of getting himself away from the obvious target of t
he hatch. He got himself in under the liftpod between the aft landing skids. There was no other piece of cover anywhere nearby on the giant bowl-shaped landing field. He went to a kneel-down to make himself a smaller target and made a rapid sweep of the horizon.

  It took a moment to get his bearings. He spotted Nexus Center, almost dead ahead as he faced in the direction that the ramp faced. But where was the Sholto? She seemed to be nowhere in sight. Maybe the bad guys had gotten there first, used their superduper Elder Race technology to defeat the locks and the self-destruct system, and launched her away.

  But then Jamie turned around to look behind himself. There! Not a hundred meters away. "The Sholto is still there and intact," he whispered into his headphone mike.

  "Any sign of company?"

  "Not sure. The lighting's not so good." They had landed just before "dawn," as measured by Groundside Station, but as seen from the vantage point of a location tens of thousands of kilometers above that point on the ground, the sun was well up in the sky--directly behind the Sholto as seen from where Jamie was. Whatever trickery the Metrannans used to filter the red-tinted sunlight was working just fine, but it was tough seeing much of anything with the Sholto more or less in rose-colored silhouette. "Hold it. Yes! Movement for sure. But I can't see more than that." Jamie thought of the night-vision goggles, but decided against trying them out. More than likely they'd be just as dazzled by the full-in-the-face bright sunlight as his naked eyeballs. Better not to lose time getting them out and fumbling around to get them on and maybe knocking off his comm headset or dropping his gun.

  "Can you at least tell how many?" Hannah asked.

  "One that I can see for sure," Jamie said, "and I can't really see more than jerky movement in front of the main air lock. But the light's tricky as hell, and there could be twenty more of them around the back. The crazy thing is that whoever it is isn't paying any attention to the liftpod that just landed behind him."