Orion Shall Rise (64 page)

Ronica sank cross-legged to the floor, closed her eyes, spent a minute bringing nerves and muscles and brain back toward oneness. The men stood almost as quiet, not daring to disturb.

She sprang to her feet. Her breath was even, her motions flowed. ‘Okay,’ she said crisply, ‘let’s hash out a few details. Two rifles in yonder rack.’ While neither she nor Iern killed for amusement, they had maintained their marksmanship. ‘Each can knock a man over. Better take extra ammo clips, in case things turn sour. And, oh, yes –’ She whirled toward the bureau, snatched notepad and pencil, scribbled as she stood. ‘This is to ask Cluff and Sonaya Browen to adopt Pussifer,’ she explained. ‘They’re cat people, they’ll
give
her a good home.’

3

In a high-level corridor, a ladder fixed to the wall went up through a three-meter shaft. This gave on a horizontal passage, short but zigzagged, which in turn led to another ladder and shaft. Having completed the second climb, Iern emerged at the end of a thirty-meter hallway. Halfway down that length, a massive ironwood door stood open. Shutters covered loopholes in it. The near side was steel-plated, the farther side heavily lined with spongy, sound-absorbent material. Similarly padded was the rest of the tunnel. At the midpoint of that section, a control board was set flush in rock and concrete. The mouth of the tunnel stood open on a dimly lighted emptiness: the ascent tube. A narrow balcony with a safety rail projected out.

Two guards sat at a table by the door, near the entrance to a lavatory. They were playing a card game but clearly had scant interest in it. Their casual garb identified them only by the brassards they wore, and the sidearms. Close at hand, a rack held two automatic rifles.

They rose warily when Iern appeared. He walked nearer, they recognized him, a little relaxation came upon them. One was a middle-aged man, grizzled and burly. One was a woman, red-haired, young but with laughter lines around mouth and eyes. She
wore a dress rather than coveralls or blouse and slacks, because she was about
six
months pregnant.

‘Hi, Iern,’ she called. He had made the acquaintance of both, as he had of many in his outgoing fashion. ‘What can we do for you?’

‘I’ve something to show you, Jori,’ the Clansman replied. He stopped where he was, a distance off, and nodded at the man. ‘You too, Dak.’

‘Is the meeting over?’ the latter demanded. ‘What’s happened?’

Jori’s scrap of good humor blew from her. She reached out as if pleading. ‘The story isn’t true, is it?’she asked unevenly. ‘About the … those weapons. I couldn’t believe it.’

‘I’m afraid it is true,’ Iern told her. She whitened.

Dalt peered at him. ‘No wonder you’re in such a plain-to-see spin-out,’ the Norrman said. ‘Well, I’ll be damned if I’m sorry, and you shouldn’t be either, Jori.’

‘What will happen next?’ the woman choked, and caught at her filled belly.

Dalt shrugged. ‘The kanakas will get their ass out of our waters in an almighty hurry, if they’ve got any sense. Uh, Iern,
is
the assembly over? What exactly did the speakers say? And why’ve you come way up here?’

The flyer stayed where he had been when hailed, five meters off by the opposite wall. ‘It developed that you may have emergency duty to perform,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d better show you in person, since I might be involved also.’ Deliberately, he had dropped his voice.

‘Eh?’ Dalt said. ‘Can’t hear you. Speak louder or come closer, will you?’

‘Emergency duty!’ Iern shouted.
The signal
. He moved slowly toward them.

He had their full attention. Ronica had swung out of the shaft and was well down the hall before they noticed. They knew her too, and suspected no evil. In a moment they would see that her left arm was behind her back. Iern retreated.

Ronica whipped her rifle around, out in front. ‘Stop!’ she yelled. ‘Not a move! Raise your hands!’

Dalt snatched for his pistol. Ronica’s firearm barked. The bullet whined nastily by his ear. She bared teeth at him while she loped close. ‘Not a move, I told you,’ she said. ‘You know I’m a crack shot.’

Wairoa followed. He bore the second of her guns. Around
his
shoulder hung strips cut from a bedsheet. Jori screamed. Both
guards lifted their hands.

Wairoa joined Ronica. From the side, Iern said fast: ‘We won’t hurt you if you behave. We’ll hog-tie you. On the safe side of the door, naturally. But I warn you, we’re desperate. We mean to hijack
Orion Two
. That should prove what sort of people you’re dealing with. Behave!’

‘Oh, no, no,’ Jori moaned.

Dalt roared, half moved to charge, looked into the muzzle of Ronica’s rifle, and let his foot slam back down on the floor. His gullet worked. ‘The kanaka, yes,’ he said. It sounded like vomiting. ‘And the foreigner. But you, a Wolf woman. Couldn’t you just have turned whore?’ He spat.

‘No words,’ Iern ordered. He was about to instruct them in the position they must assume for binding, when Jori spun on her heel and ran for the control panel.

‘Hold, you fool!’ Ronica shrieked, and fired a fresh warning. Jori never wavered. Iern bounded in pursuit. She had a head start and it was incredible she could run so fast, she’d reach the alarm switch before –

A third smack resounded. Jori’s skull burst open. Blood and brains spurted. Her body lurched forward, fell, rolled over and over, arms and legs flopping. It ended below the panel. More blood ran out. The trail and the pool of it were luridly red.

Iern’s knees failed him. He sank onto them and fought for breath. Darkness went in rags before his vision and a roaring through his head.

He grew aware that Ronica knelt beside him, held him close, cradled him to her. ‘Are you all right, darling?’ she cried low. ‘You weren’t hurt, were you?’

He clawed his way toward full consciousness. ‘Did you shoot her?’
If she did – what then?

‘No,’ Wairoa answered. He stood above Dalt, whom he had made lie prone, like a dark-visaged figure of Death, masked and tiger-hooded. His voice was loud enough to carry but quite level. ‘I did. Her purpose was obvious, and she would have achieved it. A merely crippling shot was too unlikely to strike right, as charged with adrenalin as her system was.’

‘I… could not… have done that,’ Ronica said. Tears flowed quietly from the green eyes.

‘A woman and an unborn kid,’ Dalt raged at her.’ Are you satisfied, traitress?’

It
’s still alive in her, I suppose,
passed through Iern.
How long will it take to die? Could it possibly be saved? No, I forbid my self that idea
.

‘She would have thwarted our purpose,’ Wairoa declared in his calmness. ‘Orion would have risen at the behest of the nuclear weaponmasters.’

Dalt retched.

‘I didn’t say what you did was outright wrong,’ replied Ronica. ‘I doubt if I’m proud of the fact that I was unable to.’ She rose, and helped Iern do likewise. ‘C’mon, dear. Time’s a-wasting.’

We do what we must, what we must, what we must
. The chant in his head joined the task of binding and gagging Dalt and dragging the prisoner well away from the door. Together, they loosed the Clansman from thralldom. Later, when he had time, he could mourn. Wairoa mounted guard. Ronica tugged the body aside, laid it out, covered the remnant of its face with a towel from the lavatory, and used another towel to wipe up the worst of the spill.

Meanwhile Iern finished his chore. Returning to Wairoa, he said, hearing how mechanically the words marched, ‘We can’t delay. Let me demonstrate the setup.’

‘Can the shots have been heard?’ the Maurai asked.

‘Hardly.’
How blessed are these technicalities
. ‘We’re near the top of a hundred-plus-meter shaft designed for sound absorption. So is this area, and the staggered passages to it are meant for sound baffles as well as precautions against debris or radioactivity if something goes badly amiss. However, we can’t tell when that meeting will adjourn. Mikli was enjoying himself, and perhaps planting the seeds of a political career, but he does have other things to take care of.’

Iern led Wairoa to the balcony. A chill breeze muttered from the depths of the tube. A rustle of ventilators and throb of pumps were barely discernible. Darkness reached downward and downward, lights firefly-feeble at intervals that seemed enormous, until it came to a white cascade of radiance. There poised the ship. At that remove she was small, exquisite, a piece of jewelry beside the spiderweb of her access frame. In the upward direction, sight ended after twenty meters, blocked off by metal dimly aglimmer.

Iern pointed that way. ‘The portal,’ he said. ‘It’s not a simple door, it’s an elaborate machine. It has to be extremely massive and totally integrated with the rest of the structure, if it’s to survive the forces Orion unbinds. A conventional bomb, direct hit, would hardly make it shake.

‘The panel here controls a set of motors that move the complex. First an outer valve tilts back. That’s the one onto which the camouflage
is
secured. Then the inner valve retracts, and the way
is
clear for the ship. The initial blast flings her out, while the fallout pit at the bottom – the equipment and solvent tanks built into its walls –capture the bulk of the material given off.’

‘A remarkable achievement,’ Wairoa commented.

‘Yes. It involves an ablative layer that dissipates most of the fireball energy – but you’ve doubtless studied the subject; you study everything, don’t you? … The ship passes this point on momentum. She’s held to a precise path by high magnetic fields, high, generated by superconducting coils behind the shaft lining. The opening of the portal activates them automatically.

‘The gate can’t close ahead of the second blast, in atmosphere. It comes too soon – but at an altitude from which it won’t damage works built like these, especially since it’ll be weaker. Well, we needn’t consider that. Your job
is
ended when you have opened the portal and I have raised the ship.’

‘It has never been clear to me why there is a separate arrangement for the gate,’ Wairoa said. ‘Why don’t they operate it from the Mission Control centrum?’

‘A number of reasons, including the general principle of decentralization and defensibility. And economy – less electronics required, simpler construction. This whole undertaking has been a wild gamble using a bare handful of resources – a handful that had to be replenished again and again by the most ticklish means – and why are we chattering?’ Iern snapped.

He started back inside. ‘Doctrine is as follows,’ he said. ‘After the portal has opened, an observer on the balcony takes a last-minute look at conditions, chiefly the treacherous weather. Then the entire team leaves the site. They close that heavy door behind them. You can guess what the detonation of an atomic bomb in a confined space, plus a hull rising faster than sound, will do to the air. Besides the concussions, it’ll still be hot enough after helping accelerate the ship – still be hot enough when it gets here to cook your lungs. The engineers think the controls have the ruggedness to escape damage, after modifications following the first shot, but that remains to be seen. Anyhow, the door, together with the noise-absorbing stuff, protects the team. Just the same, they’re supposed to scramble down to the hall below.’

‘I observe the door can also act as a barrier to enemies.’

‘Yes, an extra precaution, against saboteurs or commandos or whatever – like us. Your case is going to be rather special.’

Iern reached the panel and quickly explained the array of meters, switches, and buttons. Wairoa was as swift to understand.

‘When the gate opens, an alarm sounds,’ Iern said. ‘That’s automatic; we can do nothing about it. The purpose is to make sure everyone seeks the safe place assigned him. The mission plan allows twenty minutes, but the interlocks disconnect at once and the ship can lift at any time. I’ll try to make the interval short, so you can dodge out before the Norries arrive.’

Wairoa nodded. ‘I must hold this post for us until you are away,’ he agreed steadily. ‘Can you send me an advance notification?’ He pointed to a loudspeaker.

‘Not directly, I fear,’ Iern told him. ‘Communications to and from the ship do go through Mission Control, which is shut down at the moment.’

‘And wouldn’t likely cooperate anyway,’ said Ronica from her scrubwoman’s posture.

‘The pilot
is
supposed to activate a three-minute advance signal,’ Iern said. ‘That will shut off the gate alarm, which sounds like a – a trumpet, I’ve been told. The ship’s is a high, sustained note. I’ll be sure to send that, of course. Three minutes should give you time to slip out the door – you had better have it closed and barred in advance, against possible assault – slip out and try for escape.’

Ronica got up, checked her coverall and shoes for telltale stains, and put all firearms at the gun rack. She and Iern could not carry weapons through the longer, more direct passage to the crew entrance without being challenged. Iern finished his lecture. Ronica came back to the men. She took Wairoa’s right hand in both of hers. Compassion dwelt in her visage and tone. ‘Luck fly with you, trail-friend.’

He gave her one of his rare smiles. ‘Do not fret about me,’ he replied. ‘I know what the odds are, and feel no fears. Rather, it will be good to stand as what I am, a watchman. Blessings be yours.’

‘Goodbye,’ Iern said. He could not utter more to the hybrid, nor shake his hand.

Wairoa folded his arms. His gaze followed the others until they were gone. Thereafter he checked on Dalt, secured the door, refreshed his knowledge of the control board, paused for a while at Jori’s body, and went out onto the balcony.

In thirty minutes, Iern had decided arbitrarily, he was to open the portal. It was about the time his companions would need to reach their goal and prepare for launch, assuming they encountered no trouble. Wairoa did not require a view of the clock on the panel; he always knew its reading. He leaned over the guard rail to contemplate darkness and the light flashing in great banners off the ship far below.

4

Every entry to the ascent tube had a defensive door and sound-absorptive lining fifteen meters from the end of the corridor that led to it. However, on lower levels where workers constantly went to and fro, the approach was straight. Admission into the main shaft was past a valve as ponderous as the one at its mouth. When closed, this would block off most of the air shocks from Orion. At boarding level, the distance was considerable from the last cross passage. No possibility existed of coming upon the guards by surprise.