"That's what I'm here for," the Baron soothed. "To listen to my people."
He watched the Counselor exit. Measured him. A clumsy man, he thought, but valuable. If things got worse, he could always throw him to the Migs. No. Not necessary. Not now. Events were just being blown out of proportion.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
FOR A PERSON who had just pulled off a minor coup, Ida looked glum. She had found Bravo Project. Even with Sten's help, it had been a nasty problem. It was, obviously, near The Row. Or, what had been The Row. But the whole area was a warren of corridors, factories, homes. And specially constructed computer dodges, worked out by a genius whom Ida had grown to admire.
"What I did," she told the group gathered around her terminal, "was make the assumption that Bravo Project was sealed from the rest of Vulcan."
"Naturally," Sten said.
Ida glared at him. "That means all the people who worked there have to be kept under ultralight security. But these are special people. Not prisoners. So I figured they gotta be kept happy. The best food. Drink. Sex. The whole shot."
Doc smiled a nasty little teddy-bear smile. Ida had more brains than he gave her credit for.
"I set up a monitor on gourmet food shipments. Livees for highbrows, things like that."
"What's the problem, then?" Sten asked.
Ida tapped some keys. A three-dimensional model of the Bravo Project lab blossomed out. Silence as they all studied it.
"Projection," Jorgensen said. "Direct assault unacceptable casualties. Mission in doubt with conventional tactics."
Doc looked it over. His tendrils waved in agreement. The others waited for his conclusions.
"Under the present circumstances," he said, "Jorgensen is correct. But what if we move it up a stage?"
Jorgensen ran it through his brain. "Black operations. . .Input flux increased. . .Bravo target. . .Yes. . .alternatives. . .but too numerous to compute."
They discussed it.
"I vote we push to the next level," Sten said.
"What the clot 'm I supposed to say?" Sten whispered.
Doc was trying to learn a sneer. He didn't have the expression quite right yet. "The usual inspiring drivel. You humans are easy to impress."
"If it's so easy, why don't you get up on those crates?"
"Very simple," Doc said blandly. "As you keep telling me, who believes a teddy bear?"
Sten looked around at the other team members.
"Tell 'em aught but the truth, lad," Alex said. "They're nae Scots so they'd no ken that."
Bet just smiled at him. Sten took a deep breath and clambered to the top of the piled boxes.
The forty-odd assembled Migs in the warehouse stared up at him. Behind them, their Delinq guides eyeballed Sten curiously.
"I don't know what the Company will think of you," Sten said, "but you scare clottin' hell outa me!"
There was a ripple of mild amusement.
"My da told me, most important tool you had was a four-kilo hammer. Used it to tap his foremen 'tween the eyes every once again, just to get their attention.
"I'm lookin' at forty-seven four-kilo hammers just now. You and your cells are gonna get some attention. Starting next shift."
A buzz rose from the cell leaders below him. "You all got jobs, and you and your folk've run through them enough. I'm not gonna stand up here and tell master craftsmen how to set your jigs.
"Just remember one thing. There's only a few of us. We're like the apprentice, with half a tool kit. We go breaking our tools early on, we'll end up not getting the job done."
The men nodded. Sten was talking their language. Doc's tendrils wiggled. Correct procedure, he analyzed, even though he didn't understand the analogies.
Sten waited until the talk died. Raised his arm, half salute.
"Free Vulcan."
He waved the Delinqs forward to guide the Mig cell leaders back through the ducts to their own areas, and jumped down from the crates.
"Well, Alex?"
"Ah nae think it's Burns. . .but it'll do. Aye, it'll do."
The Mig eyed the weapon skeptically. It wasn't confidence-inspiring. A collection of 20-mm copper plumbing pipe, brazed together. He unscrewed the buttcap, and took two of the sodium thiosulfate tablets that fell into his palm, shoved the weapon back into his coveralls and went down the corridor.
Breathe. . .breathe. . .breathe. . .normally. . .you're on your way to report a minor glitch to your foreman. There is no hurry. . .
He touched the buzzer outside the man's door. Footsteps, and the bespectacled foreman peered out at him.
He looked puzzled. Asked something that the Mig couldn't hear through the roaring in his ears as he brought the weapon out and touched the firing stud. Electric current ran into tungsten wires; wires flared and touched off the ammonium-nitrate compound.
The compound blew the sealed prussic-acid container apart, whuffing gas into the man's throat. He gargled and stumbled back.
The drill took over. The Mig dropped the gas gun on the dead Tech's chest and walked away. Took the amyl nitrate capsule from his coverall pocket and crushed it—completing the prussic-acid antidote—stripped off his gloves and disappeared into a slideway.
Ida swam a hand idly, and the robot's lid opened. She stared in at the ranked desserts in the server. "Y'all gettin' fat," Jorgensen said.
"Correction. I am not getting fat. I am fat. And intend on getting fatter."
She began stuffing some megacaloric concoction into her face with one hand and tapping computer keys with the other.
"Did you wipe them?" Sten asked.
"Hours and hours ago."
"Then what in the clot are you doing now?
"I randomed, and got the key to the Company's liquid assets pool. Now, if I can get a linkup, I'll be able to transfer whatever I want into some offworld account."
"Like a Free Trader roll?"
"That could—oops!" Her hand flashed across the keyboard and cut her board out of circuit. "Suspicious bassids got a security key hidden in there."
Sten started to say something, then turned away. Bet had been watching, confused.
"What's she doing?"
"Setting up her personal retirement fund," Sten said.
"I figured that," Bet said disgustedly. "I meant the wiping."
"We figured Company security and the patrol kept records on troublemakers. Migs who didn't rate getting brainburned or pulverized yet. Ida located the records and wiped them."
"I did better than that," Ida said, wiping her hands on the bot's extended towel. "I also put a FORGET IT code in, so any more input will be automatically blanked." Bet looked impressed. Ida turned back to the keyboard. "Now. Let's have another squinch at those assets."
"This is Free Vulcan," the voice whispered through a million speakers.
Frantic security Techs tried to lock tracers onto the signal source. Since the signal was initially transmitted via cable to a hundred different broadcast points, randomly changing several times a second, their task was hopeless.
"It has begun. We, the people of Vulcan, are starting to strike back. Seven Company officials were removed this shift for crimes against the workers they've ground down for so many years.
"This is the beginning.
"There will be more."
Sten slumped into the chair and dialed a narcobeer. Drained it, and punched up another.
"Any casualties?"
"Only one. Cell Eighteen. The contact man got stopped on the way in by a patrol spotcheck. His backup panicked and opened up. Killed all three of them."
"We'll need the name of the man," Doc said. "Martyrs are the lubricant of human revolutions."