by Alex Kings
Hanson sat back and thought for a few moments. “Could I be a prisoner?” he said.
Ivis's segments all turned in different directions for a moment. “What?”
“You have indentured Petaurs going in and out regularly. Would a human prisoner work instead?”
Ivis considered this for a while. “Perhaps,” he said. “Other species are unusual, though not completely unheard of. If I sent a message ahead, from some minor department, saying there was a human prisoner, the guards would likely let us through without questioning it. But … a human prisoner stands out, so the ruse would be discovered quickly. Furthermore, I would need to obtain a guard suit.”
“There seems to be no way I could accompany you in this case,” said Vyren.
“No … “ began Ivis. “Though, perhaps …”
The doors to the bar swung open, and another Albascene came through. Immediately it floated up to the table.
“Ivis!” is said. “What are you doing?”
Only then did Hanson recognise him: Eulen. He went tense. If they were discovered now ...
Ivis's middle segment turned back and forth in an agitated way. “What are you doing here?” he said.
“You are planning action against the corporation,” said Eulen. “It is clear from your work cable that you were looking up information on how to free the Petaur.”
Ivis was silent.
“You are breaking a dozen of AC3's highest regulations, committing effective treason,” continued Eulen.
“Yes,” Ivis said quietly.
The two Albascene seemed to square up for a moment.
“I covered your tracks,” said Eulen. “I wish to help.” His top segment turned as though he was facing Hanson. “May I join you?”
“The more, the merrier,” said Hanson. He tapped the tablet. “Now let's figure out how we're gonna do this.”
Chapter 32: Acceptable Security
Moore stepped out into the surprisingly cool air. It must have been a good ten or fifteen degrees colder here than where they'd just come from. Her armour kept her warm from the neck down, but the chill bit at her face, and her breath immediately condensed in front of her.
Agatha whistled. “Someone's saving on life-support.”
The transit pod doors opened into a small, well-lit corridor, about ten metres long, that connected the transit tube to the floor of the canyon.
At the end of corridor, the landscape was totally different. The canal down the middle was still there, but the water level was lower – there was a two metre drop at the edge. And the water itself, Moore saw as she approached, was an opaque, greasy brown. To either side of the canal, most of the ground was taken up with roughly-hewn blocks of stones, storage tanks for water, oxygen, feedstock, and warehouses – most abandoned, some not.
Even the air smelt dirty. Mostly particulate carbon and some silicates, according to the dognose sensors on Moore's suit. Nothing really dangerous, just unpleasant.
There were a few people about. Two or three Albascene, a couple of humans.
“Home, sweet home,” said Srak. “For lowlife criminal scum, anyway.” He laughed.
“Hold on,” said Agatha. “D'you mean us, or Arka?”
Srak gave a non-committal grunt.
Moore recalled the map, and gathered her position. “This way,” she said.
They found the access to the docks: A pair or lift doors build into the canyon wall. Moore tried to summon the lift at the panel, but it told her the dock was private and asked for identification.
A company logo appeared on the panel, showing a cheesy cartoon ship snuggled in a berth. (SuperDocks Incorporated. 100s of Locations! Cheap Fees! Passable Security!)
“Anyone want to have a go at this?” Moore asked.
Agatha shrugged. “Not my department,” she said.
Moore frowned and stepped back, looking up the wall all the way to the canyon roof some two kilometres above.
The Dauntless had a shuttle ready to go. They could access the same location from the outside, rent a berth, and get in that way.
She activated her comms. “Moore to Dauntless.”
Miller's voice came back a moment later. “This is Dauntless. What is it, Sergeant?”
“I've got a SuperDocks docking port here. Number 42. It's where Arka's parked his ship. Could you send a tentative docking request through? See if there's any space?”
“I'll see what I can do.”
Moore waited.
After a few minutes, Miller said, “Sorry, Sergeant. No space. They've got three berths available. Two are under maintenance, and have been for the last … three years, apparently. The other one is occupied.”
“Alright,” said Moore. “Thanks anyway.”
“Good luck,” said Miller, and closed the feed.
A couple more avenues lay open to her. She took her tablet out, extended it, and called up Yilva's program. “I don't suppose,” she asked her teammates, “you know how this is supposed to work?”
Agatha shrugged.
“Oh well,” said Moore. She dredged up the little tech knowledge she'd acquired in the academy. After running her fingers under the panel, she found a small indentation. Pulling this away, she found a socket underneath, and pugged her tablet in.
Try to affect it without knowing exactly what she was doing would likely start an alarm. SO she tried running Yilva's code.
For a few seconds, there was silence as her tablet talked to the control panel. Then the tablet display vomited up a few dozen lines of response.
The gist of it? Her attempt had failed. The system was unreadable.
She tried again, twice, with the same result. Finally, she disconnected her tablet.
“Great,” she said. “So we have a parting gift that doesn't even work.”
“It's the thought that counts,” said Srak.
Moore gave him a look. Then she nodded towards to door. “Want to try doing this the hard way?”
“Sure thing, boss,” said Srak. He steadied himself in front of the lift doors and reared up on his hind legs. With his middle and front hands flat against the doors, he pulled. For a moment nothing happened. The doors whined slightly, and Srak growled in response. Then, at last, the doors squealed and gave way. Once they were open by a few inches, he could get his fingers into the gap. That done, he opened the doors the rest of the way with ease.
The shaft inside was empty. A rectangular, dingy space, with six vertical ridges – magnetic tracks. With Srak still holding the doors open, Moore leant into the shaft and looked up.
A two kilometre journey, nearly straight up, with a lift in the way.
But she didn't see many other options.
There was something resembling a ladder on the side – though of course, it was designed for Albascene to grip with effector fields, rather than human hands. Instead of rungs, it had flat plates. Still, Moore was able get a grip, and climbed inside. Agatha followed her. Finally, Srak swung inside. The doors slammed shut as soon as he let go. He grabbed three rungs of the ladder with one hand, and the closet magnetic track with the other, and shuffled upwards. There was just about enough space for all of them to squeeze past if the lift came down. At least, she hoped there was.
“Let's get going, then,” she said.
Chapter 33: Suiting Up
Eulen floated into his office and sent a wireless ping to shut the doors behind him. Hanson, Vyren, and Ivis were preparing to leave in the next quarter-hour.
Inside his suit, the four thousand or so fishlike animals that made up his body and mind twitched and swarmed in agitation. They filled the water with hormones showing fear, anticipation – and frustration. Annoyance even. The suit's systems scrubbed the worst of it, but the feeling was still unpleasant.
To calm himself, he drained some of the water and piped in some fresh. Then he took a nutrient-dense slab of food and put it into a tray in his middle segment. Automated systems would disperse the feedstock into the water at an appropriate rate.
He picked up a cable from the side of his office and plugged it in. Making sure to doubly encrypt his signal, he sent out a call.
A visual and audio feed came in, piped directly into his suit: An older human, male, sitting in a chair. A younger human, female, standing nearby.
“I have done as you asked,” Eulen said. “But why? Why allow him to go through with this plan at all? Especially after I have gone to such trouble to cause this situation in the first place, why help him solve it?”
“You don't know Hanson as we do,” said the male human. Pierce – that was his name. “He can be very tricky. If you allowed AC3 to find out about him, then he would probably come up with another plan. And then we would lose control. If he thinks things are going well for him, he's less likely to cause problems.”
“I feel that breaking into the holding facility counts as causing problems.”
“Not in any important way,” said Pierce.
“So I simply go along with his plan? All the way?”
“Go along with it at first,” Pierce said. “Keep him busy. Keep him focussed on the problem at hand. But when you get a chance, when you're alone with him – kill him. And the Petaur too, if the opportunity arises. But be careful. If you get into a shooting match with him, you'll lose. It's better to wait until he's off guard.”
“And if there's no chance to be alone with him?” asked Eulen.
“Then wait. Even if he gets Yilva back, we have other things planned.”
Eulen felt the water is his suit stinking of frustration again. To be hired as assassin, then to be told not to bother …
But he had to accept it. “As you wish,” he told Pierce, and disconnected.
The segments of his suit turned back and forth in agitation. Eulen stifled them, and headed for his locker. There, he extracted the appropriate add-ons for a guard – lasers, armour, sigils – and began to connect them.
Chapter 34: Guards on Duty
Arcta Holding Facility Docking Station:
The room was tiny, covered in featureless, glowing white panels for floor and ceiling, and an aluminium grating for the floor. Sliding doors sat in front and behind: one pair led to the led back down the canyon; the other let to the prisoner transport. To left and right, small octagonal windows showered the desolate surface of the planet.
Govan, one of the two guards on duty, rested his suit directly on the floor, without intervening effector fields. He was plugged in to the local network, keeping an eye on local telemetry, and a camera feed of the lift.
Thirty-two seconds behind schedule and counting. They were getting sloppy, he thought.
Then, at last, the lift door opened, and a human stepped in, flanked by two Albascene.
“They're here,” he told his companion. Without unplugging the cable, he turned on his effector fields, raising a few inches off the floor, and floated, prepared.
The lift doors opened, revealing the human prisoner, with his hands manacles behind him, and his Albascene guards. Govan, following his instructions to the letter, first looked over the prisoner, then over the guards with him. He read the tablet they offered him. Finally, he doubled-checked the message that had come twenty minutes earlier, telling him to expect the arrival.
It came from the right sources.
Everything seemed to be in order.
“Go on,” Govan said shortly. He opened to doors to the transport. The human and his two guards entered. Govan closed the doors, checked the internal feed from the transport's cameras, then sent a go signal.
With creaking, aching, primitive slowness, the transport disconnected from the dock and began to roll forward. Its six bulbous wheels silently crunched over the thin ice of Kalbraica's surface.
“Over all my years here,” Govan told his companion, “I've only ever seen one other human transported before now.” He kept watching the transport's video feed.
“Who?” his companion asked.
“Some criminal from Sweetblade. Came here and tried to defraud the company,” Govan said. “I suppose it doesn't really matter. Humans and Petaurs are very similar. And Glaber, too. All mammals.”
“All overly emotional,” added his companion.
“Yes, that too,” said Govan.
The transport eventually came to halt against the facility and docked. Govan watched on the feed as the trio left, then summoned it back. There. They were out of his jurisdiction now.
“I wonder who this one is,” he mused.
“Maybe you should ask,” his companion said.
*
No armour. No weapons. Just a jumpsuit of some greyish cloth. Hanson gave one last look to the interior of the transport – a featureless box, just like the docking station, and then stepped out alongside Ivis and Eulen.
The entrance to the holding facility was equally bland. It was just a long room. Two doors on the back wall led to the cells. The left wall held an airlock, looking out onto Kalbraica's surface. The right wall held a folded transparent membrane, though its purpose wasn't clear.
Another pair of Albascene guards stood ready to receive them. One read the tablet Ivis offered, then replied in the Albascene language. Ivis acknowledged this, then led Hanson forward through one of the doors.
The corridors was lined with cells on either side, each marked with symbols. The doors were small panels of sapphiroid, giving the prisoners almost no privacy at all.
Hanson checked each one as he passed. Many were occupied. The Petaurs inside hung listlessly from bars in the ceiling, or lay flat on the beds or floor. Many stared with perked ears as Hanson passed, surprised at the sight of a human.
But no Yilva.
They were halfway down the corridor when an Albascene came floating round the corner at the far end.
Another guard.
Hopefully, it was just doing the rounds. Nothing special.
Hanson averted his eyes, trying to play to downcast prisoner as much as he could. The guard approached …
And as they were about to pass, the guard suddenly shifted into the centre of the corridor, blocking his path. Hanson nearly bumped into it.
The guard said something in Albascene. Ivis replied, and offered him the tablet.
A language he didn't know was bad enough, but the calm, almost emotionless Albascene voice gave nothing away. Hanson couldn't even tell if the conversation was aggressive or friendly.
But he was starting to guess it was the latter.
The guard's pale red effector field made a needled shape, and pointed the way they'd come. Then, with calm arrogance, it took Hanson's arm and forcibly turned him round. It began to lead him back they way they'd come.
At last it stopped in front of one of the empty cells. Hanson figured out what the problem was – in the forged documents on the tablet, he'd been given an open cell number. He'd been assigned to this cell here.
The sapphiroid door slid open, and the guard pushed him inside.
As Hanson turned, he saw Ivis sidle up to the guard, reach out with an effector field, and disconnect something from its suit. Then he pressed the device against the guard. A moment later the was a short electrical crack.
The effector fields holding the guard up vanished instantly, and its suit fell to the floor with a clang. A few of its LEDs went out.
Ivis held up the device in his field – a metal rod with four spines at one end. His segments made short twitching movements that looked excited or agitated. “A stun-prod,” he announced. “Mostly used on Petaurs, but it works on Albascene too.”
“Thanks,” Hanson said, unlocking the manacles that held his hands behind his back. He looked at the silent, unmoving suit of the guard. “How long will it be out?”
“An hour, at least,” said Ivis. He gave the prod to Hanson. “Push here to activate. It may be useful. Oh, and this too.” He fiddled with the silent suit, and eventually pulled free a box with a black sapphiroid disk on one side. “A laser.”
The laser was a pain to aim, lacking a handle, b
ut it was better than nothing.
The Petaurs held in in the nearby cells were now watching intently. And yet, oddly, they were silent. It was almost as if they didn't quite believe what they were seeing.
Hanson tested the prod. A cross of violet light arced between the four spines. Good enough. He jogged forward to they point they'd been before, then slowed, checking each side for Yilva. He wasn't frantic – just quick and controlled. Ivis and Eulen followed behind.
There was a T-junction at the end of the corridor. To the right, it went on for a few metres, then hit a dead end. To the left, it went on until it joined up with another corridor. No guards in sight.
“Ivis, Eulen,” he said. “That way.” He gestured to the right.
Once they'd set off, he headed to the left, prod ready.
Still nothing. Swearing under his breath, Hanson came to a halt at the corner and looked round. The coast was clear. He turned to the Albascene and gave them a silent gesture to check the other dead end. The he advanced up the corridor.
He was about a third of the way along when a guard came into view near the far end.
Hanson's grip on the boxy laser tightened.
Chapter 35: Another Opportunity
Eulen trailed Ivis down the dead end, while Ivis moved forward in regular stop-start motions, checking each cell. This was ridiculous, he thought. He was the only one who had no idea which of these Petaurs was Yilva. He was useless here.
He could just as easily have been paired with Hanson. But the Captain had ordered otherwise, and Eulen knew it would arouse suspicion if he protested.
As Ivis reached the next pair of cells, a thunderclap echoed down the corridor. The distinctive sound of a laser being fired in air.
“Keep looking!” he told Ivis. “I'll see what's happening.” Eulen knew this excuse was perfect – he could leave the search precisely because he was the only one who wouldn't recognise Yilva.
And this was his chance. Hanson had run into a guard. If he survived the encounter, Eulen could get him alone, shoot him down, and have a plausible excuse. If he didn't, it didn't matter anyway.