“Sotoropolis gave the code to his wife,” he guessed. “The old diva’s had it all along. All these years she’s been living with the guilt that she stopped her husband from using the weapon. It cost him his life, her adopted world most of its life, and, even now, we have no other way to deal with the Titans.”
“Then why didn’t she just come to your people—the Navy—with the codes?” Kat asked him. “Why all this time, all this misery?”
“Her code was meaningless without the master target code modules,” he pointed out, “and they were down here and believed to be lost. She had the missing part of the master code, but no way to aim the damned weapon. The Dutchman knew where the necessary modules were and probably could have followed up his man’s failure and gotten them, but he wouldn’t have had the master code. Because they argued and agonized as the enemy came, the enemy won. Now they need each other to do what they couldn’t so long ago.”
“Why weren’t the damned targets just programmed in on Hector?” N’Gana grumbled. “Damned amateurs!”
“Probably fear that the Navy would close in and stop them,” Harker guessed. “Or take it over and maybe not use it where Karas and Melcouri were interested in using it. You’re right—it was a tragedy of errors and misjudgments and mistakes, and there’s enough blame to go around. That’s all over and done. It’s past. Enough people have agonized and suffered too long for those mistakes. No use in rehashing it. The important thing is that we may be able to give it a try at last. As the mentat said about Jastrow, if you can’t survive, at least get even.”
Kat wasn’t so sure. “Um, Gene—if they use it here, then it might well shatter the whole damned planet. Might I point out that we are on said planet?”
He nodded. “And we’re gonna be on it for quite a while. You know that as well as I do. I want to live, but I’d rather die and take them with me than live as one of their experimental subjects.”
“But—”
“Let us not refight the arguments of ninety years!” N’Gana snapped at her. “If we can do it, it will be used. Never mind even thinking of revenge. We have nothing else we can do.”
“At least now you can feel for what they were going through when push came to shove back then,” Harker noted. “Imagine having to do it with everybody and everything you hold dear in the balance.”
She sighed. “Well, maybe they won’t even use it on us anyway. We’re kind of a backwater now in the fight.”
“They have to,” Harker pointed out. “If they don’t use it and knock out the Titans here on Helena, then the Titans are going to be quickly turning Hector into a molten mass. Krill and company are in a worse position than we are. It’s possible we can escape and live—if you call it living. They can’t even take a practice shot. The moment they get the codes they have to shoot and shoot straight at us. We’d better damned well think about that angle. Never mind what happens if it doesn’t work. What if it does?”
Although much of the ancient factory seemed intact, the far end was a real mess. Here some of the structure had collapsed.
“It happened when they began to expand the base,” the mentat told them. “The bedrock shifted, then cracked, and there was a general collapse like a small earthquake.”
Not only was there a great deal of rubble, but just beyond was the bank of freight elevators that carried material from one level to another. The giant cages were at the bottom where they’d fallen, and because these were magnetic levitation systems, there were no cables just deep, dark shafts.
“Jastrow actually managed to get down to the bottom level,” the mentat told them. “However, the car itself has been crushed at the bottom, blocking access to the tunnels beyond. I have no sensors in the area, so I could not see or predict what was down there. I know he worked down there, using metal rods and other scavenged items to try and enlarge the hole, to get in there, but after two days he was only bloodied and scratched. He said it was impossible. That only a Pooka had a chance of getting through that.”
“I do not like that term,” Hamille croaked. “I am Quadulan.”
“Very well. But it is a bit late to be offended. The question is, can you get down the shaft?”
The creature slithered over the rubble, then extended tentacles to hold on to what it could and stared down into the shaft. Finally, it pulled back.
“Get down, yes,” it said. “Back up much harder.”
N’Gana studied what he could see of the shaft. “I assume this Jastrow used the service ladder here, which is in this indented area?”
“Yes,” the master computer responded. “It is the emergency service access and exit.”
“How deep is the shaft?”
“One point two kilometers,” the mentat told him. That brought them all up short. “How deep?”
“One point two kilometers, give or take a few meters. Straight down. There are, of course, many other floors, but the security storage was at the very bottom for obvious reasons.”
Harker whistled. “Well, that lets out dropping cables down, I’d think. Even if we had such cables. So what do we do now?”
“Hamille, with one of us for backup, goes down there and gets the damned modules,” N’Gana replied. “Any volunteers?”
“I don’t have the imprinted information and I don’t think Kat is the best one in a technical situation,” Harker noted. “The kids are getting claustrophobic even in this spaceship hangar of a building. That leaves you, Colonel.”
“Colonel—I can do it,” Kat said. Harker turned to her as if she’d just gone nuts, but he needn’t have worried.
“No, Doctor, Mister Harker is correct. It’s my job.” The mercenary looked down at Hamille. “Rest first or should we just go do it?”
“Let’s do it,” the Quadulan croaked. “I would rather be tired than dying of thirst.”
N’Gana took a deep breath, went over to the shaft, judged the distance as best he could, then jumped over to the indented platform from which the ladder descended straight down into the darkness. Hamille looked down into the pit, then slowly oozed in, the rows of tendrils now extended slightly, giving it a millipedelike appearance.
“I thought with that rotor action of yours you’d just fly down,” Harker said.
“In the shaft?” Hamille responded. “I fly like spear. In there, you fly like rock. Get down fine, but the landing would be messy.”
With that, it oozed further on in and vanished, and those who remained behind could hear N’Gana begin the long slow descent as well.
Harker turned to Kat. “Why in hell did you just volunteer to do something nobody sane would volunteer to do?” She shrugged. “Haven’t you noticed? He’s got problems. Mogutu noticed, after we were down. He went out of his way to do things the colonel might well have done for himself, and he was constantly worrying.”
“N’Gana’s just hiked over a terrain under severe conditions that few others could,” Harker countered.
“Yes, but I’ve seen his face when he didn’t know it, and heard him sometimes in the night. I don’t think he knew it or he wouldn’t have come, but I’m pretty sure it’s his heart. Back in civilization, he’d be put in stasis, they’d clone another heart from his heart cells, and he’d be better than new in months, but here—no. I think his tolerance for pain may be enormous, though.”
“You think he can get back up?”
“I don’t know. I hope so. I don’t think he wants to die, particularly down there, but unless you take physicals every few months and follow the rules all the way, it can always happen. I think he knows it full well, too.” She paused. “He must have been a hell of a soldier in his day.”