Dyson's Drop (23 page)

They date back to the Old Empire when Kanto Kantoris, then known as Krasnik Prime, was a major player in the Great Game. The tapestries have been preserved, untouched. If you look closely, there is still blood embedded in parts, not all human, either.’ Here he glanced at the Envoy. Remote sensors must have read the alien’s biosigns.

‘Then I am even more impressed. You must tell me more about this during my visit.’

‘I would be delighted. I am something of a historian.’

‘Wonderful. Until tomorrow then, Ambassador.’ Roag left and the underling stepped forward. ‘I will take you to your rooms to freshen up,’ he said.

‘Lead the way.’

It was nearly an hour later before Black was able to get the Envoy alone. He set up dampening fields and activated voice scramblers.

‘Use your internal sensors. Scan the room,’ Black ordered.

The Envoy gave an inward stare for a moment, and then nodded. ‘It is safe to talk,’ he said.

‘We must get a sample of the blood the Ambassador spoke of I think I have just learnt the greatest secret in the galaxy!’

The Envoy remained silent, his head tilted in question.

‘Unless I am mistaken, I have just discovered the nature of the Sentinels,’ Black explained.

And what will you do with this information?’

Black smiled. ‘Use it to crush them, of course.’

IT was cramped, smelly and uncomfortable. At least, for Anneke. Yosira wasn’t complaining. Anneke tried to adjust her position but couldn’t; she had Yosira’s elbow and knee pressing into her side.

Their ‘ride’ seemed to be doing its best to jar every bone in their bodies.

‘I think we made it,’ Yosira whispered.

‘Don’t count your atoms before they split,’ said Anneke.Just then there was a blinding shaft of light, a juddering groan of landing struts hydraulically extending, a final shudder, then nothing.

They were on Kanto Kantoris, presumably in the capital city of Qule.

Now all they had to do was wait.

They were not, as Command had supposed, in an escape pod. Anneke had programmed all the pods to launch and to show biosigns. Meanwhile, she’d managed to suppress their vital signs long enough for them to conceal themselves in the lower maintenance bay of the primary shuttle, the one Anneke guessed would take Brown to the surface.

Here, so close to a source of
n-space
radiation, with the shuttle’s own shielding working for them, she knew their signatures would be almost impossible to read. Anneke was counting on it.

Then again Brown might have detected them and decided to play along. Anneke did not underestimate the man’s cunning or his cruelty.

But she kept her fingers crossed mentally. There wasn’t enough room to do it for real.

‘How long do we have to stay like this?’ asked

Yosira, her lips pressed too closely to Anneke’s ear.

‘Till it gets dark at least. I wouldn’t want to risk a move before then.’

‘Then let’s try to get comfortable. I feel like a pretzel worm.’

They shifted around awkwardly, with stops and starts, contracting knees and shoulders away from tender places, and trying not to laugh, which might have proved fatal. When they finished, Anneke figured she was ten per cent better off. In the manoeuvring Yosira had managed to arrange for their lips to be within centimetres of each other’s. Every time Yosira breathed, Anneke felt her warm damp breath on her face.

‘This is comfy.’

‘Hmmn.’

‘Oh, don’t be such a wet tunic. You only live once.’ Anneke wanted to say,
Not if you have the lives if a
cat,
but she didn’t want to jinx herself. She felt she always had luck with her- ever since the death of her parents, as if the universe, having taken something precious from her, had decided to give her something else back.

As the hours passed, the young women talked about their respective lives but, like females their age, their conversation kept coming back to boys.

‘You must like Jinks. The real one, I mean,’ said

Anneke.

Yosira shrugged, digging an elbow into Anneke’s stomach in doing so. ‘He was different. Didn’t have to prove himself like the others did. And he seemed to like me just the way I was. Even if he was drunk.’

‘So you going to look him up when he’s sober?’

‘You going to change your orientation?’

‘No.’

‘Then I’ll look him up. If he remembers me.’

‘Oh, I think he’ll remember you.’

‘You’re sweet.’

‘Well, that’s the first time I’ve been called that.’

‘Now that I can’t believe.’

‘You’d be surprised. There was this one guy though. He used to - Shsssh!’

Someone approached on the deck above them. Pairs of jackboots rang hollowly on the plastisteel deck plates, growing louder. They stopped immediately above their hidey-hole. Anneke tried to still the beating of her heart. She could almost feel Yosira’s heart thumping through her ribcage.

Then came voices.

‘You been out yet?’ said a gruff voice.

‘Nah. I don’t figure we’ll get shore leave either.’

‘Bit of R&R right now’d lower the drive.’

‘Not for me, it wouldn’t. Girls here all look like your mother.’

‘I heard they all look like you.’ The men laughed and moved on.

When it was safe, Anneke whispered, ‘Seems we’re all talking about the same thing.’

‘Yeah. What do you know.’

Anneke could see through the pinhole port that darkness had fallen outside. Signing to Yosira, she uncramped her muscles and slowly prized open the lid of the sub-floor storage unit they were squashed into.

Checking the passageway above, Anneke geared herself to move. Blood rushed back into her limbs. She waited for the pins and needles to subside. Yosira climbed out beside her, groaning softly, almost unable to move. They massaged one another’s arms and legs, restoring blood flow.

As soon as they were able to walk (or rather limp) they made their way to the landing gear compart ment, removed a vacuum proof service plate with a sonic screwdriver, and three minutes later were looking down through a gap to the landing strip.

‘Here goes,’ Anneke mouthed to Yosira. Lowering herself headfirst, she inched downwards till her eyes breached the opening. She scanned the area. The immediate vicinity was deserted, but the ship sat in a virtually enclosed bay. A small troop of guards, probably Kantorian, loitered at the only entrance, a hundred metres away.

Anneke dropped to the ground, keeping the bulky landing flange between her and the guards. Yosira joined her a second later.

‘How do we get out of here?’ Yosira asked, sneaking a peek over the flange.

‘Through there.’ Anneke indicated the ground two metres away, where there was a drainage cover.

‘Gotcha,’ said Yosira.

Since then, they had solved three of their most pressing problems. They’d found clothes so as to blend in with the locals, pilfered food and stolen a wad of local currency. Not having money made you a vagrant and vagrants had one universal enemy. The local constabulary.

This still left their biggest problem. They did not have papers.

Ordinarily, Anneke would have every documentation she needed, but she had not foreseen that Brown would go straight to Kanto from Dyson’s Drop. Not until the ship had laid its course was she able to confirm that Brown had cracked the first-level encoding of the first coordinates.

So here they were without ID in a militarised dictatorship that controlled every aspect of its citizens’ lives. The government knew who everyone was and everything about them, including their movements. Anneke wondered if there was a central AI that monitored the downtrodden citizenry and compared it with the ebb and flow of real time biosigns.

If so, their moving ‘discrepancies’ would show up sooner or later. And then the fun would begin.

They found a local alehouse and took a booth in the back corner. It was a relief from the squalor and fear that filled the grey monolithic canyons outside and, worse, the grim mirthless faces of the Kantorian people. Anneke felt a deep sorrow for them, for the ragged homeless children squatting in doorways with great beseeching eyes and the endless flow of ant-like workers who marched to and fro, as if powered by dark clockwork. It was as though the sun never shone here, the hopelessness of living under such a regime almost unbearable. And without hope, what was there?

The booth kept them secluded and allowed Anneke a partial view of the street outside. They had not attracted any undue attention and she preferred to keep it that way. Of course, now they would have to order something. Like most worlds, Kanto Kantoris used a range of languages, but the common galactic tongue was Esperanto - a hybrid old universal language once used on Earth.

A youthful waiter arrived - a real one, rather than an auto waiter. Anneke ordered Ruvian coffee for two.

The boy’s eyes widened. ‘You be aliens?’

Anneke smiled. ‘I guess we are. We’re with the trade delegation from Griffin.’

The boy nodded, like he knew where Griffin was. Perhaps it was safer being an ‘alien’ in a place like Kanto. Political ties and agendas, including sedition, were less likely among those born under other stars.

The boy, who wore ragged clothing and appeared underfed, returned with their coffees. ‘What’s your name?’ Anneke asked.

‘Paginus,’ replied the boy, ‘but I am called Pagin by my friends.’

‘The work here is good?’

Pagin looked over his shoulder at his boss. ‘As good as it can be. I complain not.’

Anneke tipped him a week’s wage, judging by his reaction. ‘Thank you!’ he said, making the money disappear before the alehouse owner could spot it.

‘I’ll be your servant.’

When they were alone again, Anneke activated sonic shields and dampener fields and an array of other camouflaging devices, and then she and Yosira leaned their heads together. ‘What’s the next move?’ Yosira asked her.

‘The next move is for you to get out of here,’ Anneke said.

‘What?’

‘You need to get off Kanto. Get to the civilian spaceport, enter the inter-system section. Once there, you can access a line of credit I have, get a ticket, and take a jump-gate somewhere else. Anywhere.’

‘Why’d we steal the money if you have credit?’

Yosira asked.

‘Entering the inter-system sector is easy, but you need papers to get out again, whether into the departure section or back onto Kantorian soil. So memorise the account number.’

‘You don’t want me here?’ Yosira seemed hurt.

‘Yosira, this isn’t your battle. And I work best alone. If I have to worry about you, or if Brown captures you, then he’s won and I’ve lost. Brown will also be looking for two women. Besides, I’ve got a message I want you to take to Sasume of Myoto.’

‘You want me, a Quesadan, to go see the CEO of

Myoto? Are you crazy?’

‘I never said there weren’t risks.’

Yosira snorted. ‘How about I just have a fire fight with fifty-to-one odds against me instead?’

‘Are you going to do it or are you going to make lousy jokes?’

Yosira huffed. ‘Fine. What’s the account number?’ When Yosira had memorised it, she finished her coffee and eyed Anneke strangely.

‘What’s your next step?’

‘I’ve got to make contact with Josh. Hopefully he’s cracked the rest of the code. Then I go find the second set of lost coordinates before Brown does.’

‘Too easy.’

Just what I was going to say.’

‘And Plan B?’

‘There is no Plan B.’

‘Nothing like a good backup.’

‘Nothing like it,’ Anneke agreed. They both laughed quietly.

‘I’m going to miss you.’

‘Me too.’

Yosira leaned across and kissed Anneke on the lips. No one in the bar saw and Anneke felt it would be churlish not to give the girl that much.

Afterwards, Yosira stood up. ‘I’ll be seeing you,’ she said, misty-eyed.

‘Count on it.’

Yosira left without a backward glance. Anneke sighed and suddenly felt lonely. It had been nice having a partner, albeit briefly. Maybe that’s what a relationship felt like. Warm and wanted.

‘Okay. Time to go to work,’ she murmured to herself. When Pagin returned to see if she wanted anything she gave him another week’s wage. It disappeared faster than the first.

‘I need some help.’

He studied her for a long moment, then nodded.

‘I be off in thirty minutes. Meet me at the black rock end of the plaza north of here. Act like you’re my big sister.’ Anneke raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘Give me a hard time or something.’

The boy was right on time. Anneke had been sitting, waiting impatiently. When he showed she told him off, cuffed him lightly, then made him follow behind as she hurried from the plaza. He hung his head all the way. Like a pro.

At some point, as they moved through streets unknown to Anneke, Pagin angled in front of her and started leading the way. She followed, looking purposeful so as to attract less attention.

A short time later, Pagin turned into a side alley in an unpopulated light industrial part of the city. He then veered into another, then another. Soon they were lost in a maze of tiny lanes and alleyways. Finally they stopped at a door and Pagin led her inside.