by Patty Jansen
He gave a barely perceptible nod, and finally started speaking.
“Everyone was singing her praises, but I never trusted that Dr Crawford.”
“She saved our lives!”
“Yes, but the rumours that she worked for Allion were very strong.”
“People saying those things were just jealous of her success and reputation.”
“This suggests otherwise.”
“Oh, you can’t seriously suggest that just for some lame reason yet to be determined, she spiked me with nanometrics just so that she can spy on me years later, in case I might do something she’s interested in?”
“Not just you. Here was an excellent opportunity. Three women from highly ranked families willing to spend a lot of money to nurse you three back to health. If you recovered, you would go on to influential careers. Who wouldn’t like a secret window into the life of a political activist, a company executive and a highly ranked military officer?”
Thalia opened her mouth, but she shut it again.
What he said made more sense than anything else she had heard. “But why?”
The whole thing chilled her to the bone. She clamped her arms around herself at the idea that she might have been violated with intelligent chemicals while she lay half dead and broken in hospital.
“Why did Allion do anything? They’re big in human augmentation. At the time of the accident, the company’s settlements were being eradicated. A cornered cat makes strange jumps.”
Thalia snorted. “I don’t know if I believe this. If Dr Crawford did any such thing, she would have done it for my health. Nanometrics have lots of other uses.”
“Yes, but the main reason why the technique isn’t widely used is that there are ways in which nanometrics can be used to spy remotely. And this is also the reason that ISF doesn’t want people with nanometrics on their bases.”
“Well, it’s not used in that way in my case, if what they say is true. I don’t know any spies and Allion is dead. I just fight for human rights. I want people to be treated fairly everywhere. And I’m going to demand to speak to base command and tell them that if they don’t want us on the base, they should send us home.”
Chapter 13
* * *
BY GIVING IN TO HIS CURIOSITY, Fabio had probably blown his chance to escape through the loading dock, as much of a long shot as that might have been in the first place.
On the way back to his hideout, he noticed an increased number of people just standing around doing nothing. In all probability, someone had raised the alarm and they were on the lookout for him.
Any time now he was going to be pulled up and asked for ID and that would be the end of his adventure.
He needed a plan.
Back in his hideout, he peeled off the hot and sweaty suit liner. It was good that he managed to get it, but if he wanted to go outside, he’d still need a suit and a helmet and a filled tank.
He was considering using the goods train for the next stage in his plan, but he still didn’t know if the tunnel was pressurised. On second thoughts, it probably was, because most things that would be transported—equipment, supplies like food—would respond poorly to being exposed to a vacuum. But the air quality would be very poor, so just the suit liner minus pressure suit might do, but he would need air.
He drank the remaining water and ate the remaining biscuits. There was still no sign of the reappearance of the implant.
So. The plan.
They were looking for him all around this part of the base, expecting him to turn up in the entry hall, since they knew he had stolen a suit liner and probably planned to steal a truck.
But the entry hall was not the only place where trucks were parked. At least one was always parked at the top of the research facility. That part of the base was not as busy and he knew it better. Also, if by some miraculous chance he managed to get out and inevitably got caught, everyone involved would be an ISF officer, they would think he was an idiot and he would simply be handed back to Banparra and no one outside the base would ever know.
He needed to create a publicity fuss outside the base, outside ISF preferably. He needed people who could testify that he was right about his treatment and the treatment of other dissenters in the force. He needed to free the Council Of Four delegation as well, even if only for the reason that those people had to have some form of diplomatic immunity. And publicity, if anything happened to them. He was a nobody and no one would care if he disappeared. If they disappeared, there would be hell to pay.
Yes, that was a plan.
So it was back into the sweaty suit, and yes he had to pull the hood over his head, even if he’d attract some strange looks. Hopefully the security cameras wouldn’t recognise him when wearing the hood. He did consider wearing the surgical mask, but he’d attract even more attention when wearing that, so sadly he had to take the risk. That, and walk very quickly.
And hope that he could figure out how to get into the cargo containers, shut the door for the inside and operate the train at the same time. He hoped he was right about the location of the train stop.
He tucked the water container in a pocket on his suit liner, because he could probably fill it somewhere. Some extra biscuits would be nice, but a secondary consideration.
He went into the corridor and turned left to walk past the workshops, where someone in a suit liner would not attract so much attention. But he was nervous, actively avoiding people by ducking into doorways when someone was walking the other way, waiting until they passed before continuing.
He arrived at the place where the train stop was meant to be, and crap, it was hidden behind a sliding door. He could open that door with his pad, but he didn’t have his pad, because someone had removed it from his duffel.
Well, crap, what now?
The access was in a corridor where quite a number of people walked past, so he couldn’t even fiddle with the panel.
And dammit, people noticed him, because he drew some raised eyebrows. This required crude measures.
He turned around and went back through the maintenance corridor. He remembered having ducked into a workshop where a variety of tools were stored.
He found the workshop, and a laser cutter.
It was a heavy thing with a big battery on a trolley, which he wheeled to the door. A storage rack held folded safety screens, and he grabbed one of those as well.
Like all rooms, this workshop had an emergency cabinet next to the door, which included two pressure suits and an air tank. He stacked those onto the trolley, and then went up to the cargo bay door dragging all his gear. Holy crap, he was sweating so much in that ridiculous suit.
He waited until not many people were around, and then set up the safety screen as he had seen maintenance crew do on other occasions.
Inside the space sheltered by the screen, he started up the laser.
“Hey, excuse me, what do you think you’re doing?” someone asked.
The voice belonged to a man in overalls with the tag Lt. Fawcett.
“The door is jammed, sir,” Fabio said. “They asked me to open it. Lots of stuff needs to be taken up to research.”
The officer nodded and continue walking.
Sweat rolled down Fabio’s back. It wouldn’t be long before someone discovered that he was pulling all this bullshit and unmask him.
But the laser cut through the lock in no time, and Fabio was able to push the door open. He left the screen and the laser cutter in the corridor, picked up the suit and the tank, went inside and pushed the door shut as far as it would go. The light came on automatically.
He found himself on a small platform similar to the one he had seen at research, where a carriage waited with the cargo door open.
He went to the panel on the side and set the destination for Research, and the departure time within two minutes.
Then he pulled on the suit, put on the helmet, connected the tank—phew, cool air flowed into his lungs—climbed into the carriage, and p
ushed the door shut.
Oh boy, it got dark inside that thing, and he just remembered that he didn’t like small, dark and stuffy places.
Why wasn’t this train moving yet?
There were footsteps in the corridor, and a man’s voice shouted muffled words.
Come on, come on.
He could hear someone pushing open the door to the platform. “He’s not here.”
And then the carriage jerked into motion. Thank the heavens. Although the people back there wouldn’t take long to figure out that he was on the carriage.
It went with incredible speed. Very soon it grew quite hot inside the little cubicle.
Fabio lay flat in complete darkness, while every bump in the track made a tube under his back bite into his skin. He really didn’t like this. How long was this going to take?
When he went up the mountainside with Doric in the truck, they had been driving for almost an hour, he guessed.
The carriage rumbled and rumbled. Fabio tried to calm himself by imagining getting to freedom. However he would achieve that, wherever he would go.
But while he lay there all the memories came back to him.
Red plains of sand on Mars. His hands on the wheel of a truck, his attention half on a screen that displayed the expected fallout from the explosion caused by the asteroid hit. The flashing danger zone was getting too close for comfort.
The landscape was so desolate, he could barely believe that people lived out here. Maybe someone had been telling him lies and there was really no one out here and this was all a big joke.
But he had to make sure.
He had been driving for a while on the plain when white dots in the red sand heralded the first settlement. This one was a jumble of pressurised tents sitting in a little dip. The tents were made from transparent material and Fabio could see people moving within. Some were agricultural tents on the back of a flatbed truck. Most of the tents were connected to each other through inflatable tubes.
Personnel carriers and cargo trucks sat at the edge of the settlement. A couple of people in suits came out when he pulled up next to them.
He couldn’t hear what they said, because their receivers were set to a different frequency from the one on his truck.
He put on his helmet and let himself sink onto the red sand.
He held up his hands. “I’m Fabio Velazquez. I have important information for you.”
He had no idea if anyone could hear him. The people seemed friendly, beckoning him to come inside their interconnected settlement. The tent even had a proper airlock with stands for suits and tanks. The floor inside was covered in rugs where people sat around low tables.
They all looked up when he came in. By far the majority of them were women. The few men in the room were very black-skinned, all of them with bald heads.
Aggregates. Half-men, half-machine.
He didn’t think he’d ever seen one. ISF considered the creation of aggregates illegal and refused to afford them status as human beings. But here they were mingling with people.
One of the women got up and came to him. She was slender, dark skinned as most of the women were, and had long sleek black hair.
“You must be Fabio,” she said.
“I wonder how you guessed.”
She smiled, and the glimmer in her eyes, the intelligence, the wit and humour of it, went straight into his heart.
“These are my community. These are the free rangers of Mars. My name is Priya Anyanda.”
The carriage was slowing down.
Inside the cramped space of the cargo hold, Fabio managed to worm his legs under him, so he sat in a crouching position, ready to jump out when the lid opened. He disconnected the air tank from the harness and held it by the valve handle. Once he was inside the research base, he wouldn’t need the tank, but it was the only thing he had that he could use as a weapon, in case someone was waiting for him.
But when the train stopped and the lock clicked and he could push open the door, it was to an empty loading dock where the light came on as soon as he clambered from the carriage.
He took off the helmet and listened—all was quiet.
Then he took off the rest of his gear, because the suit was cumbersome and heavy and he couldn’t possibly run while wearing it.
The big room with the workstations next to the lift foyer was filled with light and a few people were busy at work, most with their backs to the door. A clock on the far wall proclaimed it to be the late shift, so Doric would be in her room.
Fabio ran across to the lift and went down to the floor where his room was. He found his duffel and his clothes pretty much untouched. That was something at least. He also took the harness and full air tank from the emergency cupboard inside the door, because he was likely to need them. Then he went onto the corridor—
—Straight into someone who looped an arm around his neck and a hand over his mouth.
“Mmmmm!” Fabio said, trying to worm the harness and air tank free so that he could swing them around.
The tank connected with the person’s knees. He—because it was a man—toppled sideways, hanging onto Fabio’s suit liner.
Fabio swung the tank again. It glanced off the side of the man’s head.
He crumpled onto the floor. The man wore a tag that said Private First Class J. Dickson. Fabio seemed to remember having seen him before, although he couldn’t remember when.
Shit. Now he was in real trouble.
Fabio grabbed the man under his shoulders and dragged him into the room. Fortunately, the floor was smooth, but he was heavy and Fabio was neither big nor well-muscled.
He did a quick check of the man’s pockets and found an access card. That was going to be useful. He also removed the man’s pad, since it would tell the superiors where he was.
Then he left the room, pulled the door shut and ran through the corridor while carrying all his stuff.
The access card let him through the barrier at the end of the hallway. So far, so good. But when he knocked on the door to the apartment where the delegation had been staying when he first found them, there was no reply.
Fabio didn’t want to shout, in case he had an audience. But the private’s card didn’t open the door.
Shit.
He’d used his PCD before, and it would have remembered the sequence, but they’d taken it off him when they took him to the main base.
Maybe he could do something with the Private’s pad. To his horror, the charge had almost run out.
He rummaged in his duffel for the illegal data patch that had opened the door previously. It had remembered the sequence, and when he attached it to the Private’s pad, it sent a command to the door before starting to flash with the need to be charged.
Phew.
The door sprang open. It was pitch dark on the other side so he flicked on the light on his suit liner.
The apartment seemed abandoned, the beds neatly made, the bags gone. But as soon as Fabio stepped into one of the bedrooms, he sensed the presence of people. Also, there was no way that an ISF recruit, no matter what rank, would do such a sloppy job at making a bed.
“It’s me, Fabio,” he said in a low voice. “I need to get out of this place. I figure you’d be interested in getting out, too.”
A soft sound came from deep within the darkness of the room. Fabio grabbed his air tank, ready to lash out if necessary.
But it was Thalia, coming out from under the bed. Her face was pale.
The light in the room flicked on and someone shut the door behind him. Jun Hasegawa. Paul Armitage let himself down from the top of the bunk bed.
“How in the hell did you get here?” Sol Whitaker asked.
The whole delegation was here.
“They don’t call me the escape artist for nothing. I’ve come to get you out of here.” Now that concept felt familiar and fit him like a glove. That was what he did, help people escape.
“Where are you going to take us? There is nothing out there
except empty space, and lots of military installations.”
“You’ll be in the company of the biggest bullshit merchant in the universe. I can talk my way into anything.” Sanchez’s office, the Allion inner sanctum, anything.
“Who are you working for? Are you a spy?”
“They call me a spy, but I work for no one, except for the oppressed and neglected. They don’t know what to do with me, but I am their conscience. I tell them you can’t treat people this way. When I was placed with Doric—”
Paul’s eyes widened. “Wait. You said Doric? Katarina Doric?”
“Yes, anything wrong with her?”
“She’s my wife.”
Katarina
* * *
AN ESCAPE FROM THE BASE needed to be planned.
The idea of running away filled her with despair.
It would ruin her career—
If she ever had any career to speak of, after she discovered what ISF had done at the asteroid belt.
Sanchez pretended he cared, but did he really care about what went on in the Outer System, what injustices were perpetrated in an area he couldn’t control and where he was little respected?
Or did he just care about the public image of the force, only fixing up problems when they became widely known to the masses on Earth?
Was any of this worth ruining her life?
She should have dropped out of the force and found a civilian job so that she could be with Paul. But somehow, she’d had the illusion that a military career was important to her, and that she couldn’t serve humanity in any other way. She remembered seeing Paul’s face when she told him that she was going back.
“But why?” he’d asked.
She had told him some blather about honour and wasting the years they’d spent on her training. Not that ISF cared about that.
No, it was really because she felt that she was not proper military unless she followed in her father’s footsteps, and she could feel her father’s disapproval if she was going to retire and speak of doubts, or be dishonourably discharged while having exposed the things that she couldn’t hide.