Ruth shook her head. "That's possible, but… I'd be surprised. Keep in mind that these passages-and the hatches that lead to them from the control areas-are used very rarely. Except for emergencies, probably only twice each voyage. Once to load the 'cargo,' and once to unload it. Whereas the hatches-probably just one hatch-leading directly to the slave quarters would be used by the crew every day. Manual-only hatches are a real pain in the ass. It wouldn't be that hard to make a single electronically controlled hatch pretty much fool-proof."
She glanced down, with great satisfaction, at the mini-computer in her hands. "Fool-proof from slaves, at least. Who can't possibly afford the kind of equipment a princess can-and you don't want to know how loud and long my father howled when I told him what I wanted for my birthday. This thing is worth more than its weight in gold. Uh, considerably more."
Thandi was puzzled. "Why would the crew need regular access to the slave quarters? Once they're locked down-oh."
Ruth's faced was pinched and hostile. "Yeah. 'Oh.' You're dealing with the scum of the universe here, Lieutenant. It's one of the perks of being part of a slaver crew. All the sex you want-any way you want it, with anybody."
Angrily, she rose and stalked over to the other hatch. The Amazons, despite being much larger and more muscular women, gave way before her instantly. The expression on the princess' face was truly savage.
Ruth had the panel open and began working on her computer again. "Well, not exactly," she muttered. "They'd have no interest in most of the slaves. But a large shipment is bound to have some of the pleasure lines included. They'd be kept in a special quarters not far from the entry hatch."
Thandi squatted down next to her. "How do you know so much about it?" she asked.
Ruth kept working. "I hate slavery. Always have. Imbibed it from my mother's milk, probably. She was a slave too, you know. Not exactly the same kind as Manpower's, but close enough. And the two things I always study a lot are the things I love and the things I hate."
The quick fingers paused at the keyboard. "That's odd…"
She looked up at Thandi. "I was going to disconnect all the surveillance equipment in the slave quarters. More precisely, set the records to just keep recycling on a two-hour interval so we'd be able to move through there without anyone on the bridge knowing we've arrived. But-"
She looked back down at her computer. "The slaves must have already gotten loose. All the surveillance equipment in the slave quarters appears to be have been smashed."
Thandi pursed her lips. "That'll make our life easier in one respect-but it also means it'll be chaos in there. Damn."
"Well, it's all done except the last, then. It's your call." Ruth tapped one of the keys lightly. "Once I punch in this last command, the hatch opens and we're in the middle of them. A madhouse, probably, even if Manpower hadn't packed this ship with twice the number of slaves they'd normally be hauling."
Thandi didn't hesitate. "Do it."
The hatch slid aside. Thandi was through it in a combat crouch. Not wanting to inflict mayhem on panicky slaves, to be sure, but still prepared to do it if necessary. Time was running out for Victor and Berry.
She stayed in the crouch, for several seconds. But that was simply due to surprise.
"Welcome," said the smiling man who greeted her. He was wearing the very utilitarian garb provided for slaves in transport. Nothing much more than a jumpsuit with no pockets, and cheap sandals on his feet. A dozen other men and women were crammed into the same small chamber. Most of them were perched on the chamber's four cots, which were stacked two deep on either side. They must have been forced to share the beds.
Thandi stared. She was almost gaping. All of the slaves were smiling. And not one of them seemed even surprised-much less panicked.
"Greetings," he repeated. "The Princess told us you'd be coming. Let me take you to her."
Chapter 37
Within half an hour after being forced into the slave quarters, Berry had managed to adjust to the…
Surreal situation.
There was no other word for it, really. By then, she'd discovered that the slaves had not only seized the slave quarters and held them for a day, but had even managed to jury-rig a government of sorts. They'd been able to do so, for two reasons:
First, the Masadans had killed over half the slaver crew, including most of the officers, in the course of seizing the ship. That, at least, was the best guess of the slaves' steering committee-based on admittedly sketchy evidence. But their estimate matched the number of crewmen Berry had seen on the bridge.
She did the arithmetic herself, and came up with the same basic conclusion. There'd been just four crewmen on the bridge, including only one officer. Allow for perhaps another officer and two or three crewmen still alive in the engineering compartments. There'd been only four Masadans on the bridge also, which left two unaccounted for. Assuming that Kubler would have put them to oversee the surviving crewmen in the engineering compartments, that meant that in the course of seizing the ship the Masadans had wound up killing about two-thirds of the crew. Including, presumably, the captain.
No wonder the Masadans aren't trying to control the slaves any longer! They CAN'T.
Nor, she realized grimly, did they really need to. There was no way for the slaves to break out into the rest of the vessel. And unless they could do so, they simply couldn't threaten the ship itself or the men running it. What they could do, they had done-taken control of the slave quarters and gotten themselves organized.
After that… nothing. Just wait, and probably die when the Masadans decided to blow the ship.
"How did you find out about me?" she asked, early on.
The slave named Kathryn, who seemed to be presiding over the steering committee, issued a harsh little laugh.
"They told us."
Kathryn gestured at a piece of surveillance equipment suspended on the wall of the compartment which the steering committee had seized for itself. A former mess compartment, judging from its accouterments. There wasn't much left of the surveillance gear, beyond smashed pieces hanging limply from brackets.
"We wrecked most of the surveillance equipment early on, so they couldn't monitor what we were doing any longer. But we left the equipment intact in a compartment not far from here so we'd still have a way to negotiate with them if we needed to. Not long after that, one of the new people-the 'Masadans,' you're calling them?-got in touch with us. We think he simply wanted to calm us down. The gist of what he told us was that they'd seized the ship, they weren't slavers themselves-and they'd either free us eventually or kill us all by blowing up the ship."
Juan, another member of the steering committee, snorted sarcastically. "Of course, we told him we didn't believe a word he was saying. Why should we? So, after a few minutes, another Masadan came on-said he was the leader, a guy named Kubler-and explained to us that he was going to use a Manticoran princess as a hostage. I guess in order to prove his point, he showed us some footage of you."
He gave her costume a quick, smiling scrutiny. "You were wearing a lot fancier clothes, then. Standing in front of some kind of mansion shaking hands with…"
The words trailed off. All nine members of the steering committee seated at the mess table in the center of the compartment were now staring at Berry. So were the dozen or so other slaves standing around nearby.
"Was that really the Countess of the Tor you were shaking hands with?" Kathryn asked quietly. Her tone was almost awestruck. "And was that really W.E.B. Du Havel standing next to you?"