No escape. He was trapped as surely as any of the prisoners. He had no doubt that Bacarion would try to have him killed, and in such a way that it required the least investigation. Which meant probably not shooting or stabbing or even a fatal blow to the head—any of which would require sending his body for forensic examination. She might or might not have a collaborator in the medical facility on Stack One. Though such a murder could be blamed on a prisoner, far more useful for her purposes would be a disappearance, something that would leave the blame on him. If he went AWOL—as he had been thinking of doing, he realized with a start—Bacarion would be free to make up whatever story she liked about him.
The most likely thing was a quick toss over the cliff, alive or dead. Alive, probably, because then Bacarion’s agents could honestly claim not to have harmed him. She would not order an attack until she was sure it would succeed—until she was sure she had enough support. He had a little time to make his preparations, minimal though they could be.
Three Stack had fifty Personal Protective Units, Planetary, in storage. In theory, a PPU would protect its wearer from the rigors of a planetary climate, as well as a variety of traumas. Abstracting a Personal Protective Unit from stores would definitely attract attention, but they were inventoried only once a month. Would the attack come in that time? Probably, he thought.
But a PPU wouldn’t be enough to keep him alive in the ocean. He needed something else.
Aircraft carried survival gear; they did occasionally come down in the ocean, and the crew did occasionally survive to use the life rafts and other gear. There was a manual—he had seen a copy once—on surviving such wrecks, modified from one written by people who liked to sail around in boats. But he had read the manual out of boredom, while waiting for a shuttle flight, and with the casual contempt of someone who would never be stupid enough to get himself in a situation where the details presented would be important.
Methlin had always said learn everything you can. Meth had survived worse.
Why did big sisters have to be right so often?
Spare survival gear for the aircraft based at Three Stack—the commander’s personal aircar shuttle with a capacity of four besides the pilot, and the two mail/utility vehicles which would hold 20 in a pinch—was stored in a locked bay on the shore side of the hangar. In his first month onstation, when he was still learning where everything was, he had been part of the inventory team that preceded the annual IG inspection. He remembered clearly the fat bundles, like sausage lumps, that were stacked next to the outer wall. Heavy, awkward, and not something he could tuck under his arm.
So . . . where could he stash something like that? Before he took it, he had to have a place to hide it, and he spent the next few off shifts looking. Everywhere on the limited surface of the Stack, someone else had reason to be. The two main lava tubes were in regular use; one had a small lift tube fitted into it. Personnel were up and down several times a day, though most didn’t venture beyond the stacks of reserve supplies piled at the foot, and the little nest of discarded clothing just around the corner, where those who wanted to keep their encounters private bedded down in the warmer months.
Still . . . it was the only place. The smaller of the tubes opened to the outside, above the high-tide level except in storms. Generations of guards had broken a connection between the two; he was not the only one who had stood in the sea opening watching the waves at closer range and even trying to catch one of the native sea creatures on a moly line. As long as no one saw him actually dragging a deflated life raft into the sea cave, his presence in the tubes would cause no notice. He hoped.
He felt clever about figuring out a way to get the folded raft through the buildings and into the lift tube without detection. He didn’t have to take it himself; he’d stenciled it with a supply code, and simply told a pivot to take it down with other supplies when the next load came in. Supply drops were chaotic enough that no one noticed—or seemed to, he cautioned himself—when an extra container went down. Later, he found it, and—having borrowed an AG dolly—floated it down the tube, through the gap, and to his chosen hiding place.
He felt better after that, even though his chances were still, he felt sure, closer to zero than a hundred. At least he had a chance, if a small one.
Once that was done, his mind turned to Bacarion’s plans, not his own. What was she up to? He was as sure as if he’d crawled into her head that she had sought this assignment. But why? She would not have come here because of him—surely revenge on Methlin’s little brother wasn’t profit enough for three years on Stack Three—but what was her purpose? What could she do with a prisonful of convicts and guards, isolated in the midst of the ocean?
When he put it that way, he had to wonder what she could have done with a prisonful of guards and convicts on the mainland, or in space . . . and the answer chilled him. Lepescu’s protégés, he was sure, had not become exemplars of sweetness and light since Lepescu’s death. Indeed, Methlin had warned the family against having anything to do with any of them. Next thing to traitors, she’d said. So involved with their own game that nothing else mattered.
What he should do was find out what Bacarion was doing, and report it. But how? He was not in Bacarion’s confidence and he had no access to the administrative offices anyway. That would just get him killed faster.
As the days passed, Gelan found that acting normal stretched his nerves almost past bearing. Inspections, chores, guard duty . . . wondering which of the guards and which of the prisoners were in on the plan, and yet again what the plan was. It had to be more than just killing him. Bacarion might take pleasure in killing Methlin Meharry’s little brother, but she would not have finagled an assignment here just for that. If only he knew what was going on . . . but although it became increasingly obvious that something was—that he was being left out of meetings and plans—he could not find anything out.
He had not considered himself a trusting soul, but now, trying to trust no one, he realized that he had the normal human desire to be part of a group, not a complete outsider.
Margiu Pardalt had accepted a position as junior instructor in the Schools, and discovered that she enjoyed teaching. As the weather eased, bringing the occasional cool breath from the far north, her spirits lifted. Xavier had never been quite as hot as Copper Mountain in summer, and she looked forward to winter here. Unlike some of the others, who never took to planetside life, she enjoyed learning more about the world she was on. The Regular Space Service had facilities scattered around the planet, from the frigid polar caps to the balmiest of tropical islands. Most were used for training of some kind, or testing equipment; it did not occur to Margiu to wonder why a space force would do so much training and testing on a planet. Instead, she hoped she would have a chance to see the steppes near Drylands, so much like her homeworld, and maybe climb a mountain when she had some leave coming.
Her first chance to travel came in the break between class sessions, and she didn’t even have to use leave time. Priority directives of very high classification had to be hand-carried from base to base. Ensign Pardalt was the obvious choice.
So on a morning that was not quite crisp, but at least not stifling, she accepted a case full of the directives, locked it to her belt, and climbed aboard one of the regular supply aircars headed for Camp Engleton. She sat on a sack of something lumpy and uncomfortable for two hours—the supply aircars had no passenger slings—and watched the red-sand brush country give way to dirty-green coastal grasslands and then dark-green trees standing in brown water.
She had only fifteen minutes to deliver the directives to the base commander, but fifteen minutes of the sticky heat and sulfur stench of the swamp forest was more than enough to quench her curiosity. She was glad to climb back into the aircar, now headed for Drylands. The lumpy sack she’d been sitting on had been unloaded, along with others, and the crew chief now had room to rig a seat of sorts.