The Prison in Antares, page 19
“The transport didn’t stop because we were on it,” explained Irish. “We know there was nothing to unload. That means they have something, perhaps a lot of things, to load onto the transport. They were delayed by the little scene with Proto, but now that he’s been captured and the injured Antareans have been moved to safety, they should be coming back with whatever they plan to put in the transport.”
“And if we get into a shooting match with them, we may win the battle, but they’ll lock every entrance to the building and go on full alert, and we’ll have lost the war,” concluded Pretorius.
“So we rigged Proto to guide us, and now we’re storming the place without knowing anything about its interior?” demanded Ortega.
“We’re not storming it,” explained Pretorius. “We’re just getting out of the most obvious line of fire. Once we’re inside, we’ll do our damnedest to find a storage or supply room, something like that, and wait until Proto regains consciousness.”
“And he’ll say, ‘I’m in a prison cell somewhere in the building. Find me,’” growled Ortega.
“It’s okay, Felix,” said Pandora before Pretorius could curse at him. “The thing he swallowed is emitting a signal that I can trace with this.” She held up one of her tiny computers. “He’ll tell us what he can, and we’ll dope out the rest from his signal.”
“Hurry!” snapped Pretorius. “Before they come or the door snaps shut.”
He stood aside as his team entered, then stepped through the doorway just before it closed. They found themselves in a circular room, with passages leading to the right, the left, and straight ahead.
“Okay,” he said. “Proto said they were carrying him straight ahead. That’d be the corridor opposite the transport. It either leads to the cells, or to the interrogation rooms, and that means it’ll be better-protected than most of the place. So do we go right or left? There’s no sense splitting up. Only Pandora can read and trace Proto’s signals.”
“This one,” said Snake suddenly, heading off to her left.
“What makes this one better?” asked Pretorius as they all fell into step behind her.
“I see a vent in what passes for the ceiling,” replied Snake. “It figures. There’s no natural air circulation two miles below the ground. If you or Felix will give me a boost, I can probably fit in the ventilation shaft and follow it to see where it leads.”
“Sounds good,” said Pretorius as they reached the tunnel.
“Well?” demanded Snake as Pretorius walked past her.
“Let’s see if this damned tunnel curves enough so that we’re out of sight when they walk through the entrance,” he answered. “If there’s a vent here, there’ll be more along the way.”
They walked straight ahead for perhaps seventy feet, and then the tunnel curved gently to the right. They came to a storage room and entered it. It was filled with bags of torn clothes and blankets, and had another vent in the ceiling.
“This’ll do,” said Pretorius. “We’re totally out of sight.” He turned to Ortega. “Felix, lift her up and see if she’ll need any tools to remove the damned thing, or if she can just pull it down or push it aside.”
Ortega put his hands on Snake’s hips and held her above his head. A moment later she pushed the vent loose and shoved it aside.
“Okay, I’m in,” she said. “I don’t suppose anyone’s brought a headlamp?”
“Don’t be silly,” said Pretorius. “For all you know you’ll be crawling or slithering over the guards’ quarters. We don’t need to let them know someone’s up there by shining a light through the vent.” He paused. “We’ll be waiting for you in this room.”
“All right, all right,” said Snake irritably. “What exactly am I looking for? I mean, if this doesn’t lead to Nmumba?”
“Empty secure rooms,” answered Pretorius. “An armory. Other prisoners that we can set free to cause a distraction.” He paused, thinking. “There’s no day or night down here, so I imagine they work in two or three shifts. That means there’s got to be a dormitory, living quarters, for those guards who aren’t on duty. If you can pinpoint them, it could prove useful.”
“Okay.”
“And remember, you’re just our eyes and ears, not our weapons. You look, you listen, and then you report back to us and tell us what you’ve seen.”
“You know, Nate,” said Snake, “you’re no fun at all.”
“I’ve been told that before,” replied Pretorius. “Now get your ass in gear.”
He found that he was speaking to an empty space.
35
“Do we know what kind of cells they have here?” asked Irish.
Pretorius shrugged. “Not a hint,” he said. “Could be bars, or electricity, or a force field, or half a dozen other things.”
“I’m more concerned with how we get back out of here once we’ve freed him,” said Pandora.
“There are at least two routes that we know about,” answered Pretorius. “The way we came, and the shaft that leads directly to it.”
“You say that as if you think there might be a third way.”
“I don’t know of one,” he replied. “But I wouldn’t rule out the possibility. I mean, who the hell thought we could get to where we are now by entering a mine fifty miles away?”
They fell silent then, waiting to hear from Proto or for Snake to return. Pretorius posted Ortega by the doorway in case any Antareans approached it, but fifteen minutes later no one had come near it.
Then Snake returned, lowering herself until she was hanging by her fingertips. She released her grip, landing with the grace of an athlete.
“Well?” said Pretorius.
“If they’ve got any prison cells in this place, you can’t prove it by me,” she answered. “I followed the vent for maybe two hundred fifty, three hundred feet. At the end—not the end of the vent, just the end of my little exploration trip—I found myself over what seemed like an interrogation room. I was hoping they’d have taken Proto there, but it was empty.”
“Then why do you think it was an interrogation room?”
“You ever seen a dining room with a Neverlie Machine?” she asked.
Pretorius considered what she said.
“I think we’re okay,” he finally replied.
“Okay?” said Snake, frowning.
“The Neverlie Machine gives you a helluva painful jolt every time you lie,” he said. “But it doesn’t work for all species. If they thought it would work on Proto, they’d have taken him there immediately, and you’d have seen him.”
“Maybe not,” said Pandora. “He’s been unconscious for the past few minutes.”
“Damn!” said Pretorius. “You’re right. They might take him there after he’s awake.” He lowered his head in thought for a moment, then looked up. “It won’t make any difference. The mere fact that they captured him in the transport tunnel means that by now they’ve checked with all the mines and they know that the one we came in through has got three dead Antareans . . . and since they’ve seen Proto as he really is, they know he didn’t kill them or rip up the roof of the transport, and that he’s clearly not alone. But that means we can’t just sit here waiting to be discovered.” He turned to Pandora. “How accurately can you pinpoint his location through the signal he’s emitting?”
“I can get us pretty close,” she replied. “But what I can’t do is tell you who or what is between us and him.”
Pretorius grimaced. “I hate to start marching down corridors and through rooms without knowing where the cells are. We’d be too damned exposed. Let’s give him a few more minutes.”
Suddenly Ortega waved his arm for attention, then put his finger to his lips.
“Of course!” whispered Pretorius. “They’re going to load the transport.”
The door was cracked open, and Ortega was peering through it. He extended his forefinger, then the middle and fourth finger.
Pretorius held up three fingers with a questioning look, and Ortega nodded. Snake drew her burner, but Pretorius shook his head and pointed to her screecher. She holstered the one and drew the other, and Ortega and Irish followed suit.
Are they all here? Pretorius mouthed the words.
Ortega nodded an affirmative.
Open the door.
Ortega walked through the doorway, which irised to let him pass through, and he, Pretorius, Irish and Snake all fired their weapons at the unsuspecting Antareans, who collapsed in a writhing, twitching heap next to various sacks they’d been carrying.
“Make sure they’re dead,” said Pretorius. “Then drag them in here.”
“They’re all dead,” announced Ortega a moment later, dragging the first of the three into their room as Snake, Pandora, and Irish began dragging the sacks.
“Why the screecher instead of the burners?” asked Irish.
“A laser beam can put a hole in its target and scorch the walls behind it,” answered Pretorius, “and we don’t want to leave any blood or other marks to show that anything happened here. The screecher kills them with a barrage of solid sound; no wounds, no blood.”
Ortega slung the second corpse over his massive shoulder, and dragged the third by an ankle. “Done,” he announced, as the door closed behind him.
“Okay,” said Pretorius. “They’re only armed with their version of burners, so we don’t need to appropriate their weapons. Check them for any communication devices, anything else that might prove useful.”
They fell to examining the corpses. Suddenly Irish held up a small metallic card, some three inches on a side, with some odd symbols on it.
“What’s this?” she asked.
Pretorius took it from her, studied it, and passed it over to Pandora. “Is this what I hope it is?” he said.
“I wish I had the ship’s computer here,” answered Pandora. “Still, maybe one of my little ones can confirm it.”
“‘Confirm it’?” repeated Irish. “It just looks like, I don’t know, maybe an ID.”
“Oh, it’s an ID, all right,” said Pretorius, as Pandora held it up before one of her tiny computers.
“What’s so special about that?” asked Irish.
“Give me half a minute and maybe I can tell you,” replied Pandora. She frowned, deactivated the computer she was using, then pulled another one from her belt and held the card up before it.
“Well?” asked Pretorius.
“Looks like it,” she answered. “Give me another few seconds.” Then: “Yes, we’ve hit pay dirt.”
“Pay dirt?” repeated Irish. “What the hell is it?”
“It’s an ID, of course,” said Pandora. “But it’s a very special ID. It gives him access to the cell blocks.”
“Then what’s keeping us?” said Ortega eagerly. “Let’s get Nmumba and Proto and get the hell out of here!”
“What’s keeping us,” said Pretorius, “is that we don’t know where the cell blocks are.” He turned to Pandora. “I don’t suppose that thing can tell us?”
She shook her head. “No. Which figures. Of course anyone down here would know where they are.”
“Anything from Proto yet?” asked Pretorius.
“Not a word.”
“Damn!” he said, frowning. “We’ll just have to follow his signal, then.”
“Why not wait for him to talk to us?” said Snake. “They wouldn’t rough him up enough to put him in a coma. They’ll want to question him.”
“Personally, I’d love to wait for him to tell us how to find him,” said Pretorius. “But we just killed three Antareans. How long do you think it’ll be before someone notices they’re missing and starts a search for them?”
“Okay,” admitted Snake, “you’ve got a point.”
He turned to Pandora. “Can you pinpoint his location?”
“I can come close,” she said. “But what I can’t pinpoint are any obstacles, natural or artificial, between us and him.”
“And we don’t know for a fact that he’s near Nmumba,” added Irish.
“We’re going to have to assume he is until proven otherwise,” answered Pretorius. He looked around the barren room. “Is there any way to hide the bodies and the stuff they were going to load onto the transport?”
“No benches, no chairs, no nothing,” said Ortega. “I’d say we’re out of luck on that front.”
“Not at all,” countered Snake. “I’m not climbing through this particular vent again if we’re leaving the room, so we can stash them up there.”
“Good point,” agreed Pretorius. “Felix, give Snake a boost, and then you and I will hand each body up to her. Snake, if I have to stand on Felix’s shoulders to help you pull the bodies through the vent until all three are up there, I will. Just let me know.”
It took about five minutes, and Pretorius did indeed have to stand atop Ortega, but they finally got all three Antarean corpses hidden from sight.
“Okay, now let me heave these sacks up there, and we’re done,” said Felix.
“Wait a minute,” said Pretorius. He stared at the sacks, frowning, for a moment. “Felix, see if the transport is still there.”
Ortega walked to the entrance and looked out at the tunnel.
“Yeah, it’s here.”
“Good. Let’s load the sacks onto it.”
“Why?”
“There’s no engineer or driver on that transport, we know that. So clearly it’s programmed, and the fact that it’s still here means that it’s programmed to pick up those goods before it leaves.”
“So what?” said Ortega.
“You know, I’m not following you either,” said Pandora.
“Their security has been breached,” said Pretorius. “They know that, because they’ve captured Proto. Now, if the three Antareans are missing and their goods never made it to the transport, they’re going to assume Proto wasn’t alone, and they’re going to start looking for three dead men and whatever they were loading, and if you’re looking nearby for dead men, you might very well check the vent.” He paused. “But if you know the goods made it to the transport, then you’re probably looking for three live Antareans who are off on their equivalent of a drunk, or maybe even hopped a ride on the transport. Anyway, you’re less likely to check where we’ve stashed them.”
“Until they start stinking,” said Ortega.
“If we’re not off the planet by the time you can follow your nose to them, we’re in deep shit,” said Pretorius.
“I would have thought being two miles deep on an enemy planet with no means of getting off it qualified as deep shit,” remarked Snake.
Pretorius was about to argue when he decided that he agreed with her. “Okay, we’ll be in deeper shit,” he said, looking around. “They knew the second Proto was inside that he wasn’t an Antarean, which means they’ve got some scanners near the entrance. We don’t want to destroy them; that’s a dead giveaway. Pandora, can you neutralize them for maybe a minute, send out some static, something like that?”
“I should be able to, as long as it’s just for a minute or two,” she replied, manipulating one of her computers. “Okay—go!”
They quickly loaded the sacks onto the transport, which began moving a few seconds later. Then they reentered the prison, and Pretorius turned to Pandora.
“All right,” he said. “Which way?”
She studied the tiny computer she held in her hand. “That way,” she said, pointing to her right.
“There’d better be a tunnel or a door there,” said Ortega.
“It’d be nice,” agreed Pretorius, walking over. “Yeah, it’s a tunnel. Pandora, can any of your machines tell us if we’re being watched once we enter it?”
“Probably,” she replied. “It depends on what kind of equipment they’re using, whether it reads motion, or heat, or even takes holos, though it’s so dark I doubt the latter.”
“They’ve got normal-sized eyes,” said Irish, “which means they don’t see any better in the dark than we do.”
“Okay,” said Pretorius, “the longer we stand here talking, the more likely it is we’re going to trip some alarm. Let’s get moving.”
One by one, they entered the tunnel.
36
“Are you getting any life readings?” asked Pretorius after they’d proceeded a quarter of a mile.
“Some,” answered Pandora. “But they’re pretty much spread out, and they’re too small to have the body mass of Antareans. I think they’re the equivalent of rats.”
“I hate rats!” whispered Irish with a shudder. “Ours or theirs.”
They followed a curve in the tunnel, and suddenly Pretorius stopped. “Lights up ahead,” he announced. “Anything showing up on your machine?”
Pandora shook her head. “Just what I’ve been getting all along.”
“Just the same, let’s approach it quietly. And if you haven’t pulled your weapons out yet, now would be a good time.”
They continued walking forward, and soon found themselves in a dimly lit natural chamber.
“How many ways out of here?” asked Pretorius, looking around.
“Four tunnels,” said Snake. “No, make that three. We just came out of the fourth. It doesn’t lead to anything but the transport.”
“So do we just take one and see what happens?” asked Ortega.
Pretorius shook his head. “No,” he answered. “With no map, we’re as likely to walk in on the jailors’ quarters or mess hall. We don’t need much to go on, but we need some indication, however slight, as to where the cells are.” He paused. “Failing that, I at least want to know where they aren’t.”
“Well, we can’t stay here,” said Snake. “If Antareans didn’t pass through it regularly it wouldn’t be even this dimly lit.”
“Well, damn it all!” exclaimed Pandora, staring at her machine. “I think I’ve found that better way.”
“What is it?” asked Pretorius as they all turned to face her.
“I only looked briefly at the life readings before,” she said. “They were all spread out. They’re still spread out, but they’re converging on something at the end of the right-hand tunnel. Not fast, but definitely moving.”
“The kitchen,” suggested Irish.
