Marten sagged into the cramped pilot’s seat. If it hadn’t worked—maybe then he wouldn’t have to slip out the barracks anymore and he could rest. Rest and sleep and rest and… he shook his head, poked outside the pod and made a thumb’s up sign to Nadia, who watched from the observation dome.
Several minutes later she space-walked outside and detached the anchor from the hab and clamped it to the pod.
He squeezed over and she wedged beside him.
They clinked helmets together.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Let’s go.”
They didn’t have radios or comlinks, but they could speak by shouting and letting the metal of their helmets carry the sound waves.
Marten engaged and the thrusters spewed a fine spray of hydrogen particles. Below them in a subjective sense, the Sun Works Factory’s inner skin passed underneath the pod. Their pod had no running lights, although their tracker worked.
It was a gamble, but better than being gelded.
He glanced at Nadia as she pressed against him. This was much better than being gelded! He squeezed her arm. She faced him and he imagined her smiling. It made him smile. Then he concentrated on flying.
The kilometers went by. He checked the fuel. He slowed and read huge numbers painted on the habitat skin and dared take them into an area that four and half years ago he’d never flown in for security reasons. He had realized several days ago that he couldn’t build a ship like his parents. It was either this or highjack a shuttle, which would be desperation indeed.
He braked, slowed and stopped. They secured the pod with the anchor and floated onto the habitat, switching on their magnetic boots. His heart thudded as they clanged across the surface. So many memories… his eyes turned watery. Clang. Clang. Clang.
Marten stopped at an ordinary looking hatch. By careful observation, one could see the welded lines of a much bigger opening. This hatch was akin to a portal in a castle gate. As soon as he pressed the 4, it all came back. 4-8-8-2-A-1-1-2-3. He felt the hatch shudder. If someone had punched in the wrong code, well, he was certain that his Dad’s rigging would still kill the unwary or overcurious, if it was still operative.
The hatch swung open. Marten couldn’t breath. He didn’t dare believe that, that… He grabbed the float rail and drew himself into a dark shaft, with Nadia behind him. Here. He reached for a flashlight that long ago… yes. His heart pounded harder as he wrapped his hand around the flashlight. He turned and groped for Nadia’s hand, clenching it tightly. Then he turned on the flashlight and washed the beam into the darkness. His eyes boggled. It was going to work. They really could get off the Sun Works Factory.
A huge shape made out of stealth material sat before him. He blinked and remembered the countless hours his Dad and he had worked to make the ultra-stealth pod. And here it was. PHC had never found it. It had no fuel, however. But…
Nadia clinked her helmet against his.
“Is that it?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“That means we can escape?”
“As soon as we fill her with hydrogen.”
The flood of emotions became too much and Marten began laughing and whooping in delight and shedding tears in remembrance of his parents.
20.
“Chief Monitor,” said a young woman in a dark, secret policeman’s uniform.
Hansen looked up from behind his messy desk. There were a thousand details to this job and finding Bock’s hidden wealth had taken all his extra time. He’d had no idea that Bock was so secretive. He scratched his cheek. The woman before him, ah, by her shoulder tabs she was a class three operative. She was pretty in a slattern sort of way. No doubt, she had once been Sydney slum-trash just like him. She held onto photos and grinned as if she had something important.
“Yes,” he said.
She slid a photo onto the litter of papers.
He peered at—he smiled. There was Marten Kluge as he hurried down a utility corridor. Marten wore a white maintenance uniform. Well, well, well. He reached for the photo, but the woman placed a second one on top of the first.
He hunched forward, glanced up sharply and picked up the second photo. He couldn’t be certain, but the woman in the photo looked like Nadia Pravda. She wore a vacc suit.
“I brought them right away,” the class three operative said.
Hansen leaned back. This woman was ambitious, a climber, in Highborn terms.
“I knew you’d want to see them,” she said, smiling, promising many things with it.
Yes, a climber indeed. “These photos were taken during night duty?” he asked.
“Yes, Chief Monitor.” She cocked a hip and her smile grew.
“I take it that only you have seen these?”
“Yes, Chief Monitor. I knew you’d be interested. The man is a shock trooper. The computer matched him. Marten Kluge is his name.”
“Very good work,” said Hansen. “Does your superior know?”
“I hope I did the right then by bringing them directly to you.”
Hansen gave her his patented fox-with-a-chicken-in-his-mouth grin. “Would you wait outside, please? And tell no one else about this.”
“Yes, Chief Monitor.”
She exited. Hansen studied the photos and then called on the intercom for his best clean-up man. The Praetor wanted the shock troopers, and he would give them to him. But first, he planned a little revenge of his own, a few more key deaths, some returned product and mouths that would never talk. Too bad the class three operative who had given him this would have to die. Loose lips sink ships. Well, no one was going to sink him.
The door opened and a short, wide-shouldered monitor entered. His gray eyes seemed dead, lifeless, without any emotion.
“I have a little assignment for you, Ervil,” Hansen began.
21.
Behind her dark visor, Admiral Rica Sioux chewed her lip.
A little over a week of weightlessness had given her chest pains. She refused medication, as that would be a sign of weakness. And if the others saw weakness as they neared the Sun Works Factory—no, at least admit it to yourself. They neared the Highborn. No one had defeated the genetic super-soldiers. Who was she to think the Bangladesh could?
She squeezed her eyelids together. The waiting wearied her. She felt a tap on her shoulder and turned.
The First Gunner raised his gloved thumb.
What did he want now?
He tapped the command-pad on his arm. His visor slid open, revealing a dark, bearded, unwashed face. Hollow marks ringed his brown eyes. He was from Pakistan Sector, a good officer, one of the last true loyalists aboard the beamship.
Ship etiquette overruled her wants. Admiral Sioux chinned a control, and her visor slid open. She was old, with a terribly wrinkled face, as only her Native American ancestors seemed to have ever had. Her longevity treatments had started late, and she’d never had time for skin tucks. So her face showed all of her one hundred and twenty-one years of age.
Admiral Sioux scrunched the flat, triangular-shaped nose that dominated her face. The command capsule stank of unwashed bodies and stale sweat. She peered around the small circular room, with its sunken pits and VR-module screens. Only half the posts were filled. Some of the officers lay strapped on the acceleration couches in the center of the capsule. They were apparently asleep as their visors pointed up at the low ceiling.
“Admiral,” said the First Gunner. “I think you should look at this.”
“Do you smell that?” she said.
“What? Oh, yes, yes, of course. If you’ll please look at this, Admiral.”
“Maybe I should order them out of their suits. We’re past the radiation leakage.” She knew she should have already thought of that.
“Admiral Sioux.”
Maybe this enforced inactivity, or maybe the dreadful waiting…