Sten (8 page)

He figured the foreman had been being funny. Until he graduated and found out how fast other areas killed Migs.

The virus had shaped that lump into a dull black rectangle, 10

X 15 x 30 cm. Sten tapped the STORE button, and the neutralizer control, then walked to another console. He quickly built up the three-dimensional model of the tool he would build, which included measurements of the inside of Sten's loosely closed fist.

This tool would fit only one man.

"Ya gon' gimme your synthalk for as long as I want?"

"That's right."

"What'ya want?"

"You know how to fight. Foreman—his bullies—don't mess with you."

"Clottin'-A they don't. Learned how to tight-corner all over the galaxy. Boy, I even had some guards training!" The little man beamed proudly. "You want to be taught?"

"That's it."

"Yeah. Yeah. Why not? Ain't nothin' else to do down here.

'Cept wait to die."

Sten hit the TRANSFER switch and input his model, set up as a machining program, into the biomill. Waited until the PROGRAM ACTIVE light went on, then touched the START

button.

Small, medium-power lasers glowed and moved toward the block of metal. Virus sprayed onto the block, and more metal crumbled away. Then the lasers "masked" areas, and the virus shaped that block into the reality of Sten's model.

The shift hours dragged past, and the mill hummed on happily. Once Sten had to shut down when a guard came through. But he didn't stop at Sten's machine.

"Base position. Now. Clot! Stick always goes across your body.

Just above the waist. Then you're ready for any kind of defense."

"What about a knife?"

"You know stick—you'll be able to put that knife about eight inches up the lower intestine of the guy what pulled it on you.

Now. One—swing your left up. Stick's straight up and down. Step in…naw. Naw. Naw! Stick's gonna go into the side of somebody's neck. You ain't askin' to dance with him. Do it again."

An hour before shift-change, the TASK COMPLETE light went on. Sten began flushing the mill's interior with neutralizer. He knew better than to hurry.

"You in a bibshop. Man breaks off a bottle. Comes at you.

What'ya do?"

"Kick him."

"Naw. Naw. Naw. Hurt yourself that way. Throw somethin'.

Anythin'. His arm's low, throw for his face. He's ice-pickin', slide a chair up his groin. Awright. You hit him. He goes back.

What'ya do?"

"Kick. Kneecap. Arch if you can get close. Neck."

"Awright! He goes down. What next?"

"Put his bottle in his face."

"Sten, I'm startin' to get proud of you. Now. Get your tail in the head. Practice for the rest of the off-shift. Next off-shift, I'll show you what to do if
you
got a knife."

Sten unlatched the work-area cover and lifted out his tool.

His. For the first time in his life, he had something that wasn't borrowed or leased from the Company. That the material cost was a merchant prince's ransom and the machining techniques used enough power for an entire dome made it even sweeter.

Sten held a slim double-edged dagger in his clumsy suit gloves. The skeleton handle was custom-fit for Sten's fingers to curl around in the deadly knife-fighter's grip the little man had taught him.

There was no guard, just serrated lateral grooves between the haft and blade that tapered from 5 cm width down 15 cm to a needle tip. The knife was 22 cm long and only 2.5 cm thick.

It was possibly the deadliest fighting blade that had ever been constructed. The crystal tapered to a hair-edge barely 15

molecules wide, and the weight of the blade alone was enough pressure to cut a diamond in half.

Sten tucked the knife in an unused suit storage pocket. He already had the sheath built. Hite had done that for him.

He and Sten had hidden out in a normal-environment disused area. He'd put Sten out with a central anesthetic. And then delicately gone to work.

The sheath was inside Sten's lower arm. With pirated microsurgery tools, Hite laid back a section of Sten's skin down to the dermis. He put an undercoat of living plaskin next to the subcutaneous tissue, then body-cemented into place the alloy U-curve that Sten had already built. That would keep the knife's blade from touching anything—including the U-curve.

A wrist muscle was rerouted across the mouth of the sheath to keep the knife in place. Then Hite replaced the layer of dermis and epidermis over the surgical modifications and body-cemented Sten back together.

It took several cycles to heal. But Hite was satisfied the plaskin was nonirritative, and the skin over the sheath would continue to regenerate.

The shift buzzer in Sten's suit blatted. Sten shut down the mill and headed for the lock.

Nobody knew exactly what Hite had done to get stuck in Exotic Section. It was known that he'd been a pioneer-world doctor. It was known that he'd taken a Tech contract on Vulcan for an unknown reason. And it was obvious that he'd done something incredibly wrong.

Hite never told anyone—including Sten—about what he'd done.

He was not only the only medic the Migs had access to but he'd been in Exotic Section for years.

He was also the only friend Sten ever had.

"Sten, lad. The problem with you is you don't laugh enough."

"Laugh? I'm stuck in the anus of Vulcan…everybody's trying to kill me—they're gonna succeed—and you want me to laugh?"

"Of course, boy. Because what could be funnier than all that?"

"I don't get it."

Hite leaned closer. "It's because the gods hate you.

Personally."

Sten considered. Then smiled slowly. And started laughing.

"Huh?"

"What's there to laugh about? You're up the arse of Vulcan and everyone's trying to kill you. I'd get worried if I were you."

Sten stared at him. Then shook his head and started howling.

In the shiftroom, Sten fed high-pressure disinfectant into his suit and resealed it. He waited. There was no leak. Sten dumped the disinfectant into the recycler and pegged the suit. In the Exotic Section, elderly vacuum worksuits, condemned by the Techs, were used. Leaks were very common. And in an area, there wasn't time to patch them. Sten yawned and pushed through the Barracks toward his bunk.

The knife was tucked inside Sten's arm. His open hand held it securely in position. Sten couldn't wait to show it to Hite.

Barracks smelled like The Row. Cubed and recubed. With no Sociopatrolmen. A couple of hulks were going through the meager effects of a young boy who lay sprawled in a pool of blood. One of them grinned up at Sten. "Got fresh meat in today."

Sten shrugged and kept walking. The ethanol stand was crowded as always. He stopped by his bunk. The female Mig who bunked over him had his blanket hung as a curtain, and paired grunts came from behind it.

Sten headed for Hite's square. The old man had been sick, and Sten hoped he was feeling semihuman. He wanted to ask him more about Pioneer Sector.

There was a knot of men around Hite's bunk. The foreman and some of his toadies. And beside them, a robot trundle.

Two of the thugs picked up a gray, frail, still form from the bunk and dumped it unceremoniously onto the trundle.

Sten broke into a run as the trundle automatically swiveled away. He smashed a fist into its control panel and the trundle stopped.

"Ain't no use," one of the toadies said. "Ol' basser's dead."

"What happened?"

"Guess he just died. Natural causes."

Sten started to turn…then pulled Hite's body over.

Blood still oozed from the slash in Hite's throat. Sten looked up at the foreman.

"He di'n't want to go on-shift. So, like Malek says, he just died.

Naturally."

The foreman made the mistake of laughing.

Sten came off the floor at the foreman. One thug body-checked him and Sten went to the floor, twisted, and came back to his feet.

And the little man echoed in his brain.
You're never angry.

You never want anything. You are a response without a mind
.

A toady moved in, and Sten's foot lashed. The man's kneecap shattered audibly and he dropped.

"Take him."

The toadies surged forward. One huge man had Sten from behind, crushing him with both hands. Sten wiggled an arm free and swung a fist back, thumb extended.

The tough dropped Sten and howled back, blood pouring from his eye socket.

Sten spun, his foot coming wide against the base of the bully's neck. It snapped and the man crashed to the deck.

"Get him, you clots!" the foreman thundered.

The two men left looked at the foreman and at Sten, trying to decide which was worse. One of the men ripped a bunk support free, and the second man's hand snaked into his pocket and flicked out with a gleaming knife, honed down from a hand chisel.

Sten dropped his right hand limply. Curled his fingers. The knife dropped into his hand. Cold. Comforting.

The man with the steel bar reached Sten first, swinging. Sten brought the knife up…and the blade razored through the steel.

The man gaped for a second at the short steel stub he held, then Sten lashed in and cut his throat like soft butter.

The knifeman feinted once as Sten spun, then lunged for Sten's stomach. Sten overhanded a block…

The foreman stared, horrified, as his toady's arm, still holding a knife in writhing fingers, thudded to the deck.

Then the foreman turned and ran. The wrong way. Down, away from the guard capsule. Toward the areas.

Sten caught him just before the shiftroom. The foreman turned. Holding out both hands. Panicked eyes wide.

Sten slashed once.

The foreman screamed as his guts bulged out, and slopped wetly to the deck.

"That was for nothing."

Sten ran for his suit as alarms began to shrill.

Inside Area 35, Sten could hear the banging on the lock. He wasn't too worried. He'd dumped the lock air and wedged the inner door open. That'd take them some time to get through.

The guards had to figure Sten was trapped. There was no interconnection to another area. All that was outside Area 35

was hard vacuum.

Sten gingerly lifted the viral spray tank out of his bio-lathe and muscled it to the dome's curving outer wall. He flipped the bleed valve open and scrambled back toward the overturned gravsled as the red viral spray hissed against the dome's skin.

The gravsled was the biggest thing he could get into position.

He'd put all of its anchors down, and hoped it would hold when everything went.

The wall cracked and peeled and bubbled out until…the wall dissolved and became exploding blackness. A storm of escaping gasses howled into space. Megacredits' worth of crystal boulders, vehicles, and tools pounded around the hole and then ripped their way out.

The gravsled cracked…anchors tore loose, and then, with a grinding crash, the sled came free and thundered toward the hole. It smashed across the hole but was just too large to fit between two main support beams.

And then the howling stopped. And what was left of Area 35

was silent.

Blood ran down into Sten's eyes where he'd slammed into his suit visor rim. He blinked it away and checked his suit carefully for leaks.

Then he slid around the sled and out the hole.

He swayed, momentarily vertiginous as blackness and harsh starlight rose around him.

One way or another, he was out of Exotic Section. And—he managed to grin wryly—achieving one of his dreams. He was out of Vulcan.

And then he was moving. Away from the hole, away from Exotic Section. Headed North, toward the only hole he could maybe hide in—the sprawling main mass of Vulcan.

He had no idea where he was going. First he took steps, then as he became bolder and realized there was enough magnetism left in the suit's boots to keep him from spinning off into space, in great meters-long bounds.

Several times he almost panicked and looked for a nonexistent hiding place, when repair craft and patrol boats speared down toward him.

Then he realized…all they were worrying about was the sudden expensive explosion kilometers away in Exotics. If they even spotted him, one man in a worksuit wouldn't be connected with the destruction.

Not yet, anyway.

He held out as long as he could—until his suit's air supply began to rasp in his ears, and he could hear the regulator gurgle at him—then went to the first hatchway he saw. Sten guessed it was for routine maintenance.

He fumbled with its catches, and suddenly the hatch slid smoothly open. He crawled in the tiny lock chamber, closed the outer door, and hit the cycle button.

The inner door creaked open—at least there was air on the other side to carry noise—and Sten stepped out.

A long, deserted corridor stretched away before and behind him. Dust was thick on the walkway, and several of the overheads were burnt out. Sten slumped down against a bulkhead. He was free. He was home.

He considered those two thoughts. And smiled. His smile became laughter.

Free. Until they caught him. Home? On Vulcan?