Voyagers III - Star Brothers (32 page)

Very softly, but quickly, Paulino closed his door. Leaning against it, he heard the footsteps pass him by, heard a woman asking who the armed men were and what they wanted.

They want me, Paulino knew. I’ve got to get away.

His eyes darted back and forth across the bare little room. No way out. No escape.

Then he saw the grille covering the heating shaft up by the ceiling. With the strength of desperation he worked it loose and boosted himself on the shaky metal shelving to its level. It was a narrow square tunnel of smooth metal, too small for a man of Matthews’s size.

But not too small for Paulino. He scrambled up into the shaft, scraping his knuckles and barking his shins, then wormed around and replaced the grille. It was slightly lopsided and would fall to the floor if anyone as much as touched it. But it was the best he could do.

Slithering along the shaft, Paulino found himself looking through another grille out into the cafeteria. The whole staff of the base was there, sitting at the tables or standing glumly against the far wall. They looked bewildered, frightened. Like the people of my village must have looked when the soldiers came, Paulino thought.

The men in black uniforms did not start shooting, however. Another man, short, stocky, wearing crisp new coveralls of tan and gold chains around his neck, was calling out names and checking those who answered against a pocket computer he held in his hand.

Finally he said, “All right, that’s the entire staff. Good. You people will be staying here until further notice.”

Paulino saw Matthews take a step toward the man in the tan coveralls. Several of the soldiers leveled their guns at him.

“There’s nothing for you to do, friend,” said the man, “except relax and enjoy it.”

Then he turned to one of the soldiers and said, “Okay, bring in Stoner and the Hungarians. Set him up the way they want him. Jo Camerata should be arriving in less than an hour.”

HUNCHING slightly as she stood behind the driver’s seat, Jo saw through the tinted windshield of the lumbering bus the squat saucer shape of the rocket sitting on its spindly legs at Delphi base’s main airlock. The saucer was unpainted, unmarked, but she knew that Vic Tomasso had brought an assault team of Pacific Commerce commandos in it to seize the base.

“Check Archimedes,” she said curtly to the woman sitting at the driver’s right.

The woman, in the coral jumpsuit of the security department, touched the comm panel in front of her with one hand while passing a headset to Jo with the other.

Jo received a terse report from the security chief at Archimedes. The attempt to kidnap Rickie had failed, and all the Pacific Commerce commandos were dead. Three platoons of paramilitary personnel were already aboard ballistic rockets, ready to take off for Delphi at Jo’s signal.

“Good,” said Jo tightly into the pin mike. “If I don’t transmit a signal within half an hour, send the troops.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the security chief’s voice. He had been with Vanguard since boyhood, and Jo had investigated his background and actions so thoroughly that she knew him better than he knew himself. He was utterly reliable, she would stake her life on that.

I
am
staking my life on him, she told herself as the bus labored over the last small rise in the dust-covered rocky ground and finally groaned to a halt before the auxiliary airlock of Delphi base.

Jo walked down the length of the bus to its main hatch. Cliff Baker pulled himself up from his seat and joined her, a quizzical grin on his puffy face.

“So what’s here that’s so bloody important?” he asked Jo.

“You’ll see soon enough.”

It took a few minutes for the personnel inside the small rubble-covered dome to snake out the access tube and make the connection with the bus’s main hatch.

At last the indicator light on the wall panel turned green and the hatch popped open with a little sigh. Jo’s nose wrinkled at the slight odor of stale air and plastic as she pushed the hatch all the way out. Stepping into the access tube, she felt every sense heightened, every nerve straining taut.

Hsen’s not here, she knew, but Vic is. He thinks I don’t know he’s taken over the base. He thinks he’s trapping me.

As she walked slowly along the tube, Baker two steps behind her, she thought, And I think I’m trapping Vic. The kids are safe, so that card’s been taken out of Hsen’s hand. Even if I can’t get to Hsen right away, I’ll have Vic in my grasp. And I’m going to squeeze him until his damned traitor’s eyes pop out.

She paid no attention to the fact that the two men working the airlock wore black uniforms rather than the blue coveralls of Delphi’s staff. With Baker trailing behind her, Jo placed both her booted feet on the power ladder and grasped the rung at the level of her shoulders. It began to descend slowly, the faint hum of an electric motor the only sound in the cramped little dome. Baker followed her down.

Despite herself Jo was trembling inside. More than the anticipation of roasting Vic for his part in killing Cathy, there was something else gnawing at her innards. Not fear. Something else.

The ladder carried down past three landings to the lowest level of the underground base, ending at the juncture of five corridors. Vic was standing there, smiling brightly, as Jo stepped off. He was in the tan coveralls of a Vanguard administrator, the damned traitor, with the front unzipped halfway down his hairy chest to show off three ropes of gold.

“You don’t look surprised,” he said to Jo.

“Should I be?”

Baker stepped off the ladder, his lopsided grin fading into genuine puzzlement.

“Your bodyguard?” Tomasso asked.

“Hardly,” said Jo. “This is Cliff Baker, chairman of the International Investment Agency. You’re the one who needs a bodyguard, Vic.”

“I’ve got one.”

“They won’t be enough. Rickie and Cathy are safe. The goons Hsen sent to take them are all dead.”

Tomasso’s smile faltered for only a heartbeat. “I didn’t think that would work. Hsen wanted it for insurance, though.”

“Where is Hsen?” Jo asked, her voice low and murderous.

Tomasso made his smile wider, showing lots of perfect teeth. “I thought you’d be more concerned about the whereabouts of your husband.”

“Keith can take care of himself. There’s nothing you can do to hurt him.”

“Oh no?” Crooking a finger, Tomasso said, “You’d better take a look at this.”

He led Jo down one of the corridors and into a small empty office. He pointed to the desktop computer and Jo stepped up to the desk and swivelled its display screen so she could see it.

Her face paled and she leaned heavily against the desk. Baker’s mouth dropped open.

The screen showed Keith Stoner, blindfolded, strapped into a stiff-backed chair, his bare torso showing a score of ugly burns, yellowing black against his pale skin. His head was slumped forward; he was obviously unconscious.

Jo kept herself from screaming. Barely. She realized that the tension, the odd sensation she had felt a few minutes earlier, had been a warning. The fear that she had kept bottled within her all these weeks finally erupted in a hot flame of anguish: Keith was helpless and in their hands. He was not the powerful, confident, capable superman she had told herself he was. He was just as vulnerable and defenseless as any ordinary man.

Jo realized now that she was vulnerable and defenseless, too.

Zoltan Janos had been carefully briefed by Tomasso. He and Ilona Lucacs had waited inside the rocket with the handcuffed and blindfolded Stoner until a black-clad Pacific Commerce commando returned to tell them that the base was securely in their hands. Then, following Tomasso’s orders, Janos dispatched Ilona and two of the orientals to set up Stoner while he himself followed a third black-uniformed man to the base’s communications center.

Ilona Lucacs had gone with two men who led Stoner, their hands tightly gripping his arms, down the base’s only elevator to a small storeroom. There they ripped off his shirt and strapped him—still handcuffed—into a stiff chair. As Janos had told her to, Ilona then injected Stoner with a heavy dose of phenobarbital. He gave a little gasp, more of surprise than pain, when the needle went into his bare arm. Then his head lolled on his shoulders, and finally his chin sank to his chest.

Ilona stared at the unconscious Stoner for several moments, thinking, He wanted to help me. He wanted to be my friend, to be my father, almost. And all I’ve given him in return is pain.

She pulled off the earphones that were still tightly clamped to his head. He was completely limp, sagging against the straps that cut into the flesh of his chest and arms.

But it has to be this way, Ilona told herself. He is too important to be sentimental over. His offers to help me, to love me, they were nothing but bribes to make me do what he wanted. Janos and I must study him further, pry out all the secrets within him. He is an experimental subject, nothing more. An experimental subject.

Still, she knew that he had not volunteered for these experiments. And the only end to them that she could see was death.

The two silent orientals were waiting at the door. Carrying the earphones in one hand, Ilona walked out into the corridor. The two commandos shut the airtight storeroom door firmly; the rubberized gasket around its rim gave a sighing sound. They clicked its electronic lock and, for good measure, wedged a thick metal rod across it as a makeshift bolt.

Ilona took a deep breath and headed for the room that the man Tomasso had indicated she could use. Her pleasure machine was waiting for her there. Just a few minutes of it and she knew she would feel much better about everything.

Stoner remained limp and sagging against the straps that constrained him until he was certain that he was alone. His star brother had neutralized the sedative that Ilona had injected into him almost as quickly as the chemical had entered his bloodstream. But it wouldn’t do to let them know we’re perfectly conscious.

He sensed a camera over the room’s only door, up by the ceiling. Originally installed to guard against pilfering, now it was watching him. He probed its mechanism and found that it could be overloaded and shorted out without much trouble.

Jo! He realized that she was in the base, watching the picture that the camera showed. Stay strong, Jo, he said silently. Stay strong. The real test is just beginning.

Paulino Alvarado wormed his way along the heating duct, desperately looking for a way to escape the soldiers who had taken over the base. He had seen Matthews and the others milling about angrily, worriedly, in the crowded cafeteria. If he could find them weapons, maybe they could fight their way out. There seemed to be only a dozen or so soldiers.

As silently as he could, Paulino slithered along the cold metal ducting. He had never seen guns or weapons of any kind in the many days he had spent at the base. But surely there must be something.

He stopped at one of the grilles. A beautiful young woman was sitting on the bed, an open suitcase full of electronic gear on the floor at her feet. Her face was exquisite, but so troubled that Paulino felt he had stumbled upon a princess in exile, like the stories he had read in childhood.

All the soldiers wore black uniforms and were orientals. This lovely young woman wore a tweed skirt and a wrinkled blouse that had once been white. Her hair was the color of thick honey and her skin was like flawless cream.

And she had a suitcase full of electronics. Maybe it was a radio. Maybe they could summon help. If she isn’t one of the enemy. Paulino knew he had never seen her before. She did not wear the blue coveralls of the regular staff. Yet she was sad, perhaps even frightened, as she stared at the little suitcase on the floor.

And so beautiful. With the glandular wisdom of youth, Paulino decided that a woman of such beauty could not possibly be evil, or an enemy.

He tapped on the grille.

Ilona flinched and looked up toward the sound that startled her. A man was behind the grille set up in the wall near the ceiling.

“
Senorita
,” he whispered hoarsely,
“por favor…”

“Who are you?” she whispered back in English as she stood up.

“I need your help,” the young man replied in accented English.

It took a few minutes of rummaging in her purse before Ilona found a nail file sturdy enough for the screws holding the grille. Standing on the room’s only chair, she quickly got the grille off, then stepped down and watched Paulino slide stealthily to the chair and then the floor.

He looked something of a scarecrow, rail-thin, with frightened, darting eyes. The eyes were deeply dark, though, and his thin face with its sculpted cheekbones had an aesthetic look to it that was almost romantic. His pale orange coveralls were stained and rumpled, as if he had been living in them for days on end.

“I can help you,” he whispered, once his feet were safely on the bare floor. “We must work together to get away from the soldiers.”

Ilona heard herself answer, “Yes, but how?”

She was shocked at her own words, until she realized that she did indeed want to get away from these menacing orientals in black, away from the guns and the danger, away from Janos and what he was doing to Stoner.

But how?

JO recovered her strength and her poise after only a moment. She tore her eyes away from the display screen, away from the picture of Keith helpless and unconscious, and faced Tomasso once again, unconsciously fingering the belt that cinched her glittering jumpsuit at the waist. Its jewelled buckle was an old family heirloom; it could be pulled free easily and used as a dagger.

Vic was trying to keep his face straight, trying not to smile, not to sneer. He almost succeeded. Jo, her mind filling with images of how his smile would turn to agonized screams, stepped away from the desk. Cliff Baker stood out in the hallway, goggle-eyed, trying to digest all that was happening.

“Your husband’s in a storeroom,” Vic explained, “and the air has been pumped out of the corridor on the other side of his door. If you don’t cooperate, we’ll have to pump the air out of the room he’s in.”

“I play ball or you kill him,” Jo snapped.

Tomasso nodded. “That’s it.”

“What does Hsen want?”

Tomasso allowed himself a small grin. “Hey, what about what I want?”

Jo gave him a level stare, then replied, “Vic, you’re nothing but a miserable little shit who’s going to get his guts ripped out an inch at a time.”

From the corridor, Baker made a guttural noise that might have been a suppressed laugh. Tomasso’s grin vanished. “You oughtta watch your mouth, Jo.”

“You talk as if you’re in charge here,” Jo said. “But it’s Hsen who’s calling the shots. What if I tell him that I’ll cooperate—but only if he’ll turn you over to me.”

Tomasso frowned.

“Hsen knows you’re a turncoat. Do you think he really trusts you? You’ve thrown away your only card. Now that you’ve helped him take over this base, what’ve you got left to bargain with?”

His face flushing with barely-suppressed anger, Tomasso snarled, “Never mind the big talk. You just call off the troops you’ve got ready to fly here or your old man starts breathing vacuum.”

“Hsen won’t let you kill Keith.”

“Wanna bet? The medics can study his dead body. Be a lot easier than dealing with him alive.”

Baker said, in a complaining tone, “Would one of you mind telling me what this is all about?”

“It’s about a starship,” Jo replied. “That’s what you want to see, isn’t it, Vic? Well come on, then. Let’s go see it.”

She swept past Tomasso, out into the corridor and past Baker, heading for the chamber where the starship was waiting, her finger stroking the razor-sharp edge of her belt buckle.

Li-Po Hsen paced nervously, almost frantically, across the imitation bare wood floor of his private quarters. Tomasso’s reports from Delphi were all good, well-nigh perfect.

The base is securely in my hands, Hsen told himself. Stoner is incapacitated, ready for further examination. The bitch Camerata is my prisoner, and she has called off the counterattack that she had planned.

The only failure had been in the attempt to seize her children, but that is a minor matter. Jo Camerata is cooperating because she knows her husband is at my mercy. I can pick up her brats at any time now.

Hsen’s head nearly swam with excitement. I can control Vanguard Industries! I can have the Hungarian scientists
make
Stoner reveal all the alien’s secrets, because his wife is in my hands.

He clapped his hands gleefully and skipped right through a hologrammic reproduction of an ancient bronze horse to lean across his bare desk and tap the communications button.

Within a minute his dour-faced security chief entered the sparsely-furnished room.

“I have decided to go to Delphi base,” Hsen told her, “to see this starship for myself.”

The security chief bowed her head, but replied, “That is not part of our plan. It was agreed…”

Hsen snorted disdain. “The base is secure. There is nothing to fear.”

“Sir, we still do not understand the extent of the man Stoner’s powers.”

“He is unconscious at present, is he not?”

“Yes, but…”

“And even when he awakes, he will be made to realize that his wife’s well-being depends on his cooperation.”

“Still, sir, it is my duty to point out that there may be unknown dangers in your personally going to the Vanguard base.”

“Pah! It is
my
base now. I want to see the bitch and her husband for myself. I want to see this starship the alien has built for them. What kind of general sits quailing in his castle after his troops have conquered the enemy?”

A wise general, thought the security chief. But she dared not speak the words aloud.

Cliff Baker gaped in unabashed awe at the towering vat that bubbled and steamed, almost close enough to reach out and touch.

Vic Tomasso felt an uneasy sense of forces at work beyond his control or even his understanding.

The two men were standing with Jo on the grillwork catwalk that circled the vast underground chamber. The floor was lost in the mists, far below them. Many stories above, high-efficiency suction fans pulled the steam into special ducts where it was used to run turbines before cooling to the point where it condensed into pure potable water.

Jo was reciting woodenly, explaining the starship construction system as if she were a tour guide who had given this lecture a thousand times.

“The nanomachines are as small as viruses, but they are machines, not living creatures. Each one is programmed to do its specific task and no other. They can assemble individual atoms and fit them together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. What they’re doing now is taking the raw elements that are being fed into the vat in the gaseous stage through the hosing at the lowest level and picking out individual atoms to place them exactly where they need to be to build the ship.”

“Individual atoms?” Tomasso asked, his voice somewhere between incredulity and astonishment.

Without changing the tone of her voice or the frozen expression on her face, Jo replied, “Yes. Individual atoms of aluminum, titanium, silicon. Quite a bit of silver. Some gold. Mostly carbon atoms for the ship’s structure. The starship will be almost pure diamond, except for the guidance system and life support equipment.”

Baker muttered, “It must be worth…”

“It costs less than a lunar shuttle,” Jo said, with a little force. “The nanomachines are incredibly cheap; once you have a few master assemblers, they create all the other machines out of simple raw materials like carbon and silicon. Then the raw input for the ship itself is the same stuff, plus a bit of metal. Literally dirt cheap; we scoop most of it from the top few centimeters of the soil outside.”

But as she spoke Jo was furiously thinking of how she could get out of this trap, how she could overcome Tomasso and the dozen or so military types who now controlled the base, how she could save Keith. No plan of action came to her mind. For once in her life she accepted the ancient wisdom of patience. The burning hatred still seethed in her heart. Every part of her wanted to tear Tomasso’s flesh into bloody ribbons. But now her ancient blood counseled patience, so Jo kept her passions frozen within her and waited for the proper moment to strike.

For nearly an hour the three of them paced slowly around the catwalk, peering into the bubbling, frothing vat. Jo could make out a graceful curve of crystalline material through the steaming brew, but little more.

“And this ship is big enough to leave the solar system and go out to the stars?” Tomasso asked.

Jo replied, “This is only the propulsion and guidance unit. The living quarters and life support sections have already been completed. They’re waiting in underground hangars, not far from here.”

“What kind of propulsion does it use?” Baker asked.

“It taps magnetic fields when it’s close enough to planets that have them,” Jo said. “Don’t ask me how, the physicists are still trying to figure it out. For the long-distance jumps between stars it scoops in hydrogen from the interstellar plasma to feed a fusion engine.”

“And it can go from one star to another, all that distance…”

With a single nod, Jo said, “The nanomachines constantly maintain all the ship’s systems. Keith told me they can even repair the erosion that micrometeors cause when they strike the hull.”

Tomasso was about to ask another question, but his wrist communicator chimed softly. He held the unit to his ear for a moment. Jo saw his face go from surprise to pleasure.

“Hsen is coming over,” he announced. With a wry smile, “You’ll have a chance to show him your starship, Jo.”

Jo kept her face expressionless. But her heart leaped within her. The murderer is coming here! And she knew exactly what she had to do. Kill the bastard. Throw him over the railing and let him drop fifteen stories to the concrete floor. Slice his throat open with the dagger built into my belt buckle. Jam my thumbs into his eyes and then kick his balls into his throat.

She clenched her hands to keep them from shaking with anticipation.

My babies are safe; he can’t get to them now. I’ll kill him. What happens to me afterward doesn’t matter. What happens to Keith doesn’t matter. I’ll kill the sonofabitch with my bare hands.

Stoner, meanwhile, was still pretending to be unconscious while his mind explored the underground base. Reaching, probing, he sensed Jo with Tomasso and Baker, felt the fury of her mind blazing like a bonfire in the night. He recognized Matthews and many of the base’s staff cooped together in the automated cafeteria. Delicately stealing along the silent underground corridors he realized that there were twelve professional soldiers present, half of them in the base’s communications center, the others divided between the life support center and the docking facility.

Why the docking facility? Another rocket was on its way to the base, he found with a feathery touch on the mind of one of the orientals. Li-Po Hsen himself was coming to view his new conquest firsthand.

Stoner filed that information and pressed onward. Zoltan Janos was busily setting up equipment in one of the laboratories, getting ready to resume his experiments on Stoner. Where is Ilona?

He found her in one of the cubicles that served as quarters for the staff. There was a man with her; a stranger.

For several moments Stoner explored their minds, learning what he could without pressing hard enough for them to realize he was present. Then, realizing that he had no better choice, he called to the Hungarian scientist.

—Ilona. Ilona, can you hear me?

She stiffened with surprise, sitting on the bed. Paulino, primly ensconced on the room’s only chair on the other side of the room, saw her face go pale.

“What is it?” he asked.

She silenced him with an upraised hand while replying aloud, “Yes, I can hear you.”

—I need your help.

“There’s nothing I can do.”

Paulino saw that she was talking to thin air. His mother would have recognized a religious vision; his father would have twirled a finger against his temple. Paulino, however, had grown accustomed to electronics miracles and immediately assumed that Ilona was speaking to someone through a miniature communications device planted somewhere on her person.

“Who is it?” Paulino asked, getting up from his chair and crossing the room to sit beside Ilona on the bed. “Is it someone who can help us?”

And he heard in his mind:—Perhaps we can help each other.