A Device Of Death Part 9

Tramour'des added. 'We halted our ships on the edge of the system. We dared not risk going closer, because apart from the radiation belts there are still active vortex mines and bioweapon packages left over from the battle drifting about.

The Landorans dropped wreaths and played their anthems, I remember. It was hard not to be moved by it all. If that had happened to Jand, perhaps I'd also tend to overvalue my lost culture and be impatient with others who hadn't suffered equally. Perhaps, secretly, they envy us because we still have worlds to call home?'

Fortunately the Oranos Oranos's drive was fully functional and the ship proved as fast as they had antic.i.p.ated. They dropped out of hypers.p.a.ce in the outskirts of the Nethra.s.s system without any sign of pursuit from friend or foe, activated the newly amplified detector and began their search for a suitable target.

They only had to wait a few hours.

'Averon fast freighter located heading out of system,' the operator monitoring the detector reported excitedly.

His call brought Ch.e.l.l to the bridge with Harry close behind him. Tramour'des flashed a look of triumph at them.

'The integrated system is working perfectly, sir. We're well outside their own detector range yet registering them perfectly.'

'Don't get any closer than twice the standard range,' Ch.e.l.l said. 'Are you ready for their transition into hypers.p.a.ce?'

'The tracking is on automatic, sir. It will engage our drive and set us on an approximate departure vector as soon as they jump. We shan't lose them.'

'Sorry, but I don't know much about this sort of thing,'

Harry said. 'Why don't they just pop into hypers.p.a.ce as soon as they leave a planet?'

'It's a matter of the gravitational gradient,' Tramour'des explained. 'It takes more power to jump the closer you are to a ma.s.sive body. It's also safer to make the transition in open s.p.a.ce.'

'Safer? What sort of things can go wrong, then?' Harry asked uneasily.

'Leaving half your craft behind in normal s.p.a.ce, emerging in the middle of a sun, that sort of thing,' Tramour'des said casually. 'Ah, there they go!'

The trace of the enemy craft had blurred and changed colour. The scale grid on the screen shrank to keep the other craft within its field as its velocity increased in a quantum leap. Harry felt a slight dropping sensation and a moment of nausea. The stars beyond the bridge portals blurred and stretched and they were in hypers.p.a.ce, travelling at many times the speed of light and apparently still intact. After a few moments he asked, 'Any idea of where it's headed?'

'Not yet. We shall need to track it for a little longer before we can start making any guesses.'

The detector monitor said sharply, 'Sir, eight craft are entering hypers.p.a.ce behind us. They register as Averonian Varcon mark 4 pursuit fighters, and they are closing on the freighter.'

'It had an escort,' Tramour'des said angrily. 'We can't risk being caught between them adjust to a parallel course.'

'Eight more contacts approaching from ahead, wide formation. A second flight of Varcons: their formation is opening out, and so is the first flight.'

'Surely they can't detect us at this range?' Ch.e.l.l asked.

'No, but they think something must be here, or else we've been unlucky enough to be caught in the middle of an exercise,' Tramour said. 'Maximum drive away from present course, any bearing. We can't risk being englobed.'

'Both flights are speeding up. Their detector fields will be touching soon.'

'Can we get out before they close the lid?'

'No, sir.'

'Can't we drop back into normal s.p.a.ce?' Ch.e.l.l asked.

'They'd detect the discontinuity ripple at this range even on their equipment and follow us. We have to get clear before we can drop out undetected. Battle stations ready weapons.

We'll have to make a hole for ourselves.'

Harry licked his lips as his mouth suddenly seemed very dry. 'Anything I can do?'

'Prepare for casualties,' said Ch.e.l.l tersely.

'Commander,' the monitor said, 'another object approaching on tangential course. Closing fast.'

'Another fighter?'

'No. Configuration unknown. A large ship, velocity mark seventeen and accelerating. It's heading straight for the fighters.'

On the screen they saw the new point of light pa.s.s through the first wall of ships. Half of them held their positions, the others altered course to pursue the stranger.

'It'll pa.s.s us at the limit of visual range,' the monitor announced.

'Display it,' Tramour ordered.

A magnified image appeared on a second screen. For a moment they saw four sleek black bat-winged forms tearing after a ship whose improbable sculpted golden lines gleamed and sparkled. Explosions burst in its wake and beams of light stabbed about it, but it bobbed and wove from side to side unscathed, as though teasing its pursuers.

Harry shivered and clasped the edge of a console for support as a wave of inexplicable foreboding washed over him.

Then the darting and dodging ships were out of visual range and heading towards the oncoming flight of fighters, some of which were already breaking off to intercept the unknown craft. The Oranos Oranos's instruments recorded the energy pulses of multiple gunfire, but again the golden ship evaded the beams and projectiles with contemptuous ease. Then it was through the screen with half the fighters trailing after it and the rest scattered in disarray.

'The formation has broken up, sir plenty of holes now,'

the monitor reported with evident relief.

'Now we can drop back into normal s.p.a.ce,' Ch.e.l.l breathed.

'No. Reduce speed and alter course.' Tramour gave the pilot a string of figures. 'We'll sidestep the remains of the second fighter screen and fly an arc that'll take us back to intersect the freighter's projected course. There's a good chance we can pick it up again and follow at extreme range.

You'll have your prize yet, sir,' he told Ch.e.l.l.

Ch.e.l.l grinned in satisfaction. 'Well done, Tramour.' He glanced around at Harry and gave a start. Harry was still clutching the edge of the console and looking desperately pale.

'What's wrong?'

Harry could only shake his head slowly for a moment as he tried to regain his composure. He knew he was a straightforward, solid, perhaps rather unimaginative sort, but he'd certainly never felt anything like this before. He took a deep breath and said shakily, 'When that gold ship went past us, I swear it felt as though somebody had just walked over my grave!'

13.

Escape arah awoke into bedlam.

S The dormitory was full of crying, shouting and screaming, while outside gla.s.s shattered, metal groaned and fire crackled. Her bunk shook as somebody barged into it and she looked about wildly, trying to make sense of what was happening. The blackness was only broken by pale glow strips along the aisles between the bunks. By their dim radiance she made out a wild throng of figures filling the s.p.a.ce, stumbling over toppled bunks and their fallen fellows. A crowd was surging about the chamber's two doorways, and she could hear a hollow crash and thud as some heavy object was swung to and fro in a frantic attempt to break them down. And suddenly she understood their panic: she could smell burning.

She threw back her blanket, but a hand touched her arm and 829 climbed on to the bunk, shouting above the commotion: 'Hold it, Seventy-three. Get dressed and let them get a door open first.'

Lying on her bunk, Sarah wriggled into her outer clothes and pulled on her boots. As she was fastening them there came a final triumphant crash and one pair of doors burst open, letting a shaft of light from the hallway beyond into the dormitory. The group at the second door abandoned their efforts and joined the rest in a mad scramble for the exit. Sarah and 829 let the living tide flow about them until the dormitory was empty, except for a couple of frightened sobbing voices somewhere in the gloom. Sarah took a step towards them, but 829 held her back.

'We can't just leave them,' Sarah protested.

'We must. We haven't a chance if we carry pa.s.sengers,'

829 said harshly, and Sarah knew she was right.

They made their way cautiously past the ablutions and the general hall, and peered out through its broken doors across the compound. The hard night stars were washed out by the pole-mounted worklights and the yellow flicker of a dozen fires, sending the grotesquely elongated shadows of running figures dancing over the hard packed earth and across the sides of the a.s.sembly sheds. A distant metallic tw.a.n.g and crash told of a fence being torn down, and from all around came a medley of shouts and oaths, mingled with amplified voices of the synthoid guards calling for order and the hiss and crackle of their guns.

'What's happened?' Sarah wondered. 'Why haven't they used the ident plates to stop all this?'

They edged along to the corner of the building and looked towards the control domes. The camp's skyline had altered radically. Stars shone where the towering skeletal form of the central pylon should have been. Its tangled wreckage now lay over two of the domes. It had been brought down, but how?

Then she noticed a large hole in the fence between them and the central compound, on a clear line to the base of the pylon.

Straining her eyes, Sarah could just make out the remains of a couple of flatbed trucks crumpled about the twisted stump of one of the pylon's support legs. Somebody on the night shift had obviously been using the trucks, but how had they managed to drive them through the inner compound fence?

The ident plates would have been triggered as soon as they entered, even if the guards had not stopped them. Then she realized they had lashed a couple of trucks together, locked the steering, pointed them in the right direction and left them to go on their way unmanned. How ridiculously simple.

'They did it,' 829 said disbelievingly. 'No communications with Averon, no long-range control of the guards, no override cutouts on vehicles no ident signal!'

They looked at each other, the true significance of the fall of the tower beginning to dawn even as the firelight glittered off the plates on their foreheads.

'You mean it's safe to take these things off?' Sarah said slowly. 'Won't they still trigger automatically?'

'We won't know unless we try we'll need tools.'

'First we'll need food and water if we're going to have a chance out there.'

829 grinned at her. 'You're learning, Seventy-three.'

In a crouching run they made their way back around the living quarters block and inside to the empty kitchens. Raw dried food mixes were tipped out of airtight storage cartons and replaced with spongy grey bread and hunks of waxy pink pseudo-cheese. Two small urns which were used to carry water round to workers on particularly hot days were filled to the brim and their lids firmly screwed shut. These provisions were bundled into blankets recovered from the dormitory, with extra covers for themselves as protection against the night cold. Broken lengths of lightweight angle trim from around the shattered doors were pushed through the tied corners of their bundles, allowing them to be slung over their shoulders in traditional style.

Then they crept back out into the confusion of the night, which had not diminished. Hundreds of prisoners must have simply scattered over the lava plain or along the foot of the escarpment, but others seemed to have chosen to stand and fight.

Sarah and 829 edged along the wall, hugging shadows, until they could look across through a dividing fence to the first of the a.s.sembly buildings. The fence was split by a ragged hole, with half a dozen bodies scattered around it, either stunned or dead; they could not tell. A synthoid guard was standing over them, swinging its head around, its red eyes glowing. They froze, hardly daring to breathe. Please move, Sarah thought. Then there was a commotion from somewhere out of their line of sight and a small forklift type loader appeared, motor whirring furiously, and headed straight for the guard. The synthoid raised its gun arm and fired twice in rapid succession, eye searing bolts of blue-white fire blasting gouges in the forward frame of the truck. The driver screamed but held his course. There was a crash as the two met, the impact knocking the synthoid off its feet on to its back. The loader swerved, heeled over and fell on top of the synthoid.

The robot's legs and arms could be seen writhing about under the loader for a moment, then it found a grip and began to push the vehicle aside. The driver, who had been flung clear by the impact, picked himself up holding one arm awkwardly, and gaped at the struggling machine. A voice called out to him and he stumbled away out of sight.

'Now!' hissed 829, and sprinted for the gap in the fence.

Sarah followed. They pushed their way through, ignoring the sharp ends that scratched and tore their clothes, pelted across the momentarily deserted stretch of ground on the other side and into an open door of the a.s.sembly shed.

It was strange to see the great s.p.a.ce empty of workers.

Evidently the night shift had abandoned it as soon as the confusion had begun, leaving machinery still whirring and humming mindlessly. But a few had evidently paused in their flight long enough to make a parting gesture: the glittering remains of the shed's visi screen crunched under their feet.

Baal would not be looking down on his workers through that ever again.

829 searched through the items scattered across a workbench until she found what she was after. A wide-jawed adjustable wrench with a long handle. She knelt down and held it out to Sarah. 'Do it.'

'Can't we find a hacksaw or something and cut through?'

'No time, and we mustn't leave pin ends or anything inside us.'

Tight-lipped, Sarah adjusted the wrench until the tips of its jaws were closed firmly on the edges of 829's ident plate so that the handle of the wrench was projecting upward. She found a bit of rag and doubled it up between the wrench shaft and the top of 829's head, giving the tool a fulcrum to turn about. Then she stood behind 829 so that she could brace herself with her free hand against the back of 829's head. She took a deep breath and pulled the wrench handle sharply backwards. 829 gave a gasp of pain as the pins tore out of her skull bone and the plate came free. 829 clutched her forehead and slumped forward.

'Are you all right?' Sarah asked in horror.

Slowly 829 straightened and let her hands fall aside. There was a red weal on her hairline where the lip of the wrench jaw had pressed through the rag. Below this was an oval patch of very pale grime-ringed skin, inside of which were two pinholes with a drop of blood oozing from each. 829 looked at the plate still held in the jaws of the wrench and then into Sarah's concerned eyes. 'My name,' she said simply, 'is Angelyn Marcavos.'

Sarah hugged her for a moment in relief and delight, then, knowing they had no time to waste, steeled herself to hand over the wrench and rag and kneel down. Angelyn fitted them carefully in place as Sarah had done, braced herself and pulled. Sarah cried out as an agonizing tearing pressure seemed about to split her skull apart. Then it was gone and there was just a dull throb. She wiped her hand across her forehead. It came away streaked in blood and she smiled shakily. She picked up her pack, but Angelyn was rummaging amongst the stacks of fittings. In a moment she had uncovered two sheets of plasticized foil composite. It was matt black on one side and reflective on the other. She gave one sheet to Sarah.

'It might help protect us from the guard's thermal scanners.'

They shouldered their packs and left the shed, working their way along towards the nearest break in the outer perimeter fence. Fires still burnt and there came the occasional crackle of electric fence wires shorting out, but overall the noise was abating as the resistance in the camp collapsed.

They ducked as flying discs skimmed overhead and headed out across the lava plain. If only we could get hold of one of those, Sarah thought wistfully. They could hear concentrated firing in the distance, as though a pitched battle was being fought.

'The landing field,' said Angelyn. 'They must be trying to take a ship.'