Freedom’s Choice (40 page)

She haggled and finally made her mark on the collection of glyphs that spewed out of his electronic equipment. She also added the glyph for Kubitai that Zainal had shown her, grateful for his forethought.

Then they all loaded the boxes into the flitters. Their driver had estimated the cargo space required and called in two, not one.

All the way across the city, Kris forced herself to cheerful thoughts, terrified that something might happen and they'd be caught by an army trap or port patrol or some other unexpected glitch. But they made it safely back to the berth, and started unloading. Mitford, Gino, Slav, Coo, and Pess hurried out to speed the process along, Gino whistling under his breath at the range of their purchases.

“Catteni can't whistle,” Kris said inside the safety of the ship.

“Ooops.”

“Any word from Zainal?”

Gino shook his head, trotting back down the ramp, muttering unintelligible noises that could be muffled
Catteni curses and adding “Drassi says” in a grumpy tone.

They were nearly finished unloading when Balenquah staggered into the open hatch, his gray face paint smeared with rivulets of sweat, his hair mud rubbed off overnight on the pillow, looking not at all like any Catteni.

Mitford recovered first. “Sick! Get back! Dow, Nine, get him back!” The two hauled the pilot back out of the way and he had time for only one muffled protest before someone knocked him out. Mitford rolled his eyes at Kris, who was facing the stunned flitter drivers.

Taking her clue from Mitford's remark, she shook her head, feeling quite ill suddenly, too.

“Very sick. Terran sick,” she said, still shaking her head and making her wobbly legs carry her back down the ramp. There were only a few more boxes to be stored.

“Dockmaster knows?” the one-handed Catteni asked, his murky yellow eyes suspicious.

“Dockmaster says keep him on board and take him back to Terra,” Mitford said, keeping his face away from the Catteni. “Leave him there.”

“Drassi say we leave today,” Kris added for good measure. “I take shore leave back there! Told Bal no good there.”

She gave the drivers just enough to satisfy them, not so meager a sum as to annoy them yet not enough to be considered a possible bribe. She mentally blessed those awful shopping journeys with her Catteni steward for knowing the difference.

With them safely off the dock area, she marched straight to the bottle of hooch and poured herself a stiff one. Dowdall and Ninety joined her, silently taking the bottle from her hand.

“We tied him in,” Dowdall said. “Goddamn stinking arrogant bastard nearly blew the whistle on us.”

“He might still have,” Mitford said, holding out his hand for the bottle, “I'm not sure the one-handed guy bought the explanation.”

“Yeah, but why would he suspect Catteni-dressed soldiers to be anything but Catteni?” Kris said, reaching for reassurance.

“There is that,” Mitford agreed.

“Is it safe?” whispered Beverly and Bert Put from their compartment.

“For now,” Kris said, sitting down because her legs had never felt so kneeless. She buried her head in her hands. “I never want to go through another moment like that.”

An urgent buzz from the com board on the bridge startled all of them. Beverly and Mitford tried to make it through the door at the same time, with the sergeant twisting his torso edgewise to allow the general through first.

“Schkelk?” Beverly asked in proper Tudo response as he keyed open the ship's unit. “Oh, thank God.” Craning her head toward the bridge, Kris could see him visibly relax. For just one moment—then he straightened and urgently beckoned the others to come in. “Yes, yes, I got you. What does ‘forty-seven' look like in Catteni, for God's sake?…Oh.” He had grabbed up a pad, which Mitford now held firmly for him, since he had the hand unit. “Thick upright, two crossbars, three downstrokes, and a small right-hand square within the end two right-hand downstrokes. Got that. That's for the KDI?” Beverly began to smile and heaved a sigh of relief that seemed to permeate his whole frame. “Thank God,” he whispered. “Okay, so there's just a change in the final figure, a circle rather than a square between the two right-hand downstrokes?…Got it. Be there as fast as we can get permission to quit the dock. Watch for us.”

He toggled the line closed.

“Contingency plan is now in operation. Mitford, grab another bottle of hooch and go visiting. Gino, Coo, Slav, Pess. Ninety, lounge outside like you're bored. We're going to rescue us some folks. And God grant there's some spark of mind left to them. We're clearing the prisons.”

“I know how to work the levels,” Kris said, and grabbed Ninety by the hand. “I'd better show you. Let's hope they're the same as the wreck's.”

The controls were sited in the same place by the hatch, although they looked in far better working order.

“And will they be drugged and all?” Ninety asked anxiously.

“I hope so. They'll survive better if they are,” Kris said, deliberately not thinking about that process and the bodies that would shortly inhabit the four levels of shallow deck. “Take a peek outside. Ninety, just in case we have unexpected visitors,” she said, shoving the comunit from her belt at him.

F
or a contingency plan, hastily organized and speedily executed, it went very well. But there were other Catteni around on the dockside now, shifting cargoes or watching the Rugarians do so. Bert Put's height would make him stand out like the proverbial sore thumb. So he got wrapped up in blankets and Dowdall and Slav carried him over to the KDM, grumbling about Drassis and their crazy tradings back and forth. Then returned to the KDI.

“Piece of cake.” Mitford said when he returned to the KDI. “Front and center, Bert, general. We're about to shift ass off this sinkhole.”

“What about Zainal and Scott?” Ninety asked.

“We meet them at platform forty-seven and forty-nine when we pick up our passengers. Now I gotta log on to port authority and get clearance.”

While Bert settled into the captain's chair, Beverly took the engineer's place as Mitford made contact with the port authority. Kris watched as his shoulders stiffened and he rolled his eyes.

What now? The glitch she had been expecting all
along that was going to betray them? She fretted, knees getting wobbly again.

“Sick?” Mitford exclaimed in Catteni, and swore with unexpected fluency in the language for emphasis. “Yes, Terran sick.” He sounded disgusted. “We dump him with others. They not see,” and he managed a very evil chuckle. “Kotik. Ten.”

He whistled when he closed the switch. “That driver was suspicious. Let's get out of here before anyone comes to look at our Terran-sick soldier. Take her no higher than a thousand plegs, Bert. That's our assigned level.”

Mitford gave Kris a good luck sign, and, grabbing another bottle of hooch, leaving only two for the journey home, he sauntered back to the recently hijacked vessel.

Bert initiated the undocking procedures, starting the siren to warn the crew back inside, closing the hatch when they reported all in, starting the engines, just as if he'd done it all his professional life. The KDI lifted easily, and Bert made the course correction and they could see the spaceport steadily receding. On the small thrusters that were permissible in such crowded airspace, it seemed to take a long time to circumnavigate Barevi town, strewn before them and out into the nearby forests and fields. They could see where big land-moving equipment was knocking down trees and scooping up great mountains of rock and dirt to clear more space. Doubtless, Kris thought bitterly, for the masses of products they were importing from a pillaged Earth.

Flitters darted in and around, and each one that seemed to choose a trajectory in front of Kris made her catch her breath.

“They can't see in,” Bert said, to reassure her. “And I'll turn this seat over to you immediately if we are hailed. Wouldn't you like to drive this beauty for a while?”

His banter made her relax but she stayed right beside his position in case they had to execute a quick shift.

They did have a little trouble deciding which platform they should dock at, since there were only minor changes in the basic glyph that Zainal had given them. But as they cruised at the slowest possible forward speed, everyone on the bridge identified the number at the same moment, and could even see the KDM's platform just beyond.

Below were the slave pens, similar to the ones Kris had been in when she'd been forced aboard the transport that had landed her on Botany so many months ago. There were acres of pens, spreading out from a huge rectangular building. Not all the pens, however, were full or in use. Only four. She couldn't see who inhabited the ones beyond platform 49 and hoped she wouldn't ever know who or what they had had to abandon that day.

Bert neatly sidled into the platform, cut the engines, and opened the hatch. Kris took her station at the controls and suddenly Zainal strode up the ramp, spitting out the disfiguring pads, muttering under his breath, and snarling up at her, but winking as he passed on his way to the bridge. Kris managed a very subservient “Yes, Drassi,” and saw the first of the pathetic transportees.

She nearly burst into tears at the sight of the expressionless faces, the dead eyes, the automatic motion that no intelligence motivated. She did manage to alter the decks to the lowest one as the loading process began.

Half the time she had all she could do to keep from bawling out loud, getting some relief by snarling at the Catteni who drove these poor souls up the ramps. Most had their blankets slung over their shoulders, one hand holding the packet of ration bars to their bodies, the other the treacherous soup cup, now emptied of its contents. She told herself over and over that she was rescuing them—they'd soon be safe, they'd soon be cared
for—and she wondered how on earth they would manage all these walking dead at Botany, where there was so much hope and life and a future.

She shifted blindly when the first level was filled. Several of those trudging like sheep up the ramp staggered and fell. It was all she could do to keep herself at the controls and not go help them up, but that would have been out of character for the Catteni Tudo she was pretending to be. She was
not
going to cause a glitch. She was rescuing these people. She was doing all she could.

She shifted to the third level and then it was filled up. So was the air around her with little sobs and cries for pity from those in the lower decks. The drugged soup couldn't put them out of their immediate misery, and hers, soon enough.

It was Zainal who carefully removed her hands from the controls when the ramp retracted and the hatch clanged shut. He helped her back to the wardroom and poured her another shot of hooch.

“We're almost out of it,” she protested.

“You need it now, Kris,” he said. “I hadn't realized what you were in for. I'd've done it myself—”

“No, no,” and she shook her head, “not a Drassi captain.” Then she put her head on the table and began to weep.

“They're all asleep now,” Zainal said, gathering her up in his arms and against his chest, stroking her hair.

“Zainal?” she cried, raising her tear-marked face, “did we get them all?”

“All we can cram on board. A few spare Deski, Rugarians, half a dozen Ilginish and some Turs for good measure.”

“We need Ilginish and Turs so badly, don't we?” she quipped, trying to control her weeping.

Ninety and Beverly stood in the doorway. Zainal nodded at them to enter and both poured a hefty tot from the bottle.

“We don't have much left,” Kris said inanely.

“It's medicinal, my dear,” Beverly said, and she thought he looked awful under his coffee-colored skin. “Dowdall says the KDM's on a parallel course. There's incoming traffic but we're cleared to leave the system and doing it with all possible speed.” He let out a long sigh and knocked back the rest of the hooch. “You're relieved, Bjornsen. I don't want to see you on deck for two full shifts.”

“Aye aye, sir,” she said, managing a weak smile and limp salute.

Zainal helped her stand and guided her back to her compartment. He had to lift her up into the upper bunk but his hands, as he covered her with the rough Catteni-issue blanket, were very gentle.

* * *

They answered several challenges over the next two weeks, until they got to the less trafficked area leading to the Botany system. Most were more or less standard ship-talk which Zainal handled on the bogus KDI and Mitford on the KDM.

They also talked about how they could integrate the people they had rescued into the Botany colony.

Kris found herself regarding Admiral Ray Scott with amazement: under all that naval braid and command training there was a man with unexpected compassion. And a high moral integrity. She wasn't the only one who kept reassuring him that there was no way those folks could have been allowed to depart on Catteni slave ships.