“You can't do this!” someone
shouted.
They'd herded them all into the
cafeteria at gunpoint, most of them wearing no more then sleepwear.
Mara caught sight of the MuniPrin at the front of the room, speaking
to a female soldier. She pushed through the milling crowd towards
him.
MuniPrin Ludei was holding a
tablet, reading from it. “This is the Autarch's code,” he said,
reluctantly, to Vil Noli, the trimind, standing next to him. “Very
well. I am exercising my rights as a member of the ruling dynasty
and demand an immediate appeal of this action to the Autarch.”
“And I,” the trimind rumbled,
“will be requesting the intervention of my guild forthwith.”
“You have that right, of
course,” the woman said. “My orders, in fact, are to convey
you, Commander Milesi, and the rest of your command staff, to Elysium
forthwith. The remainder of your personnel will remain here under
guard until their ultimate disposition is determined.”
“Everything that has taken
place here is my responsibility,” the MuniPrin said. “The
personnel of this station have acted only under my orders – and
with the Autarch's blessing, I might add.”
The woman shrugged. “You will
need to discuss that with His Excellency. Now, I must ask you to
accompany me to the airlock.”
“May I speak with my aides for
a moment? I would not want anyone here to do anything foolish.”
“Of course.”
He turned to Mara. “I'm sure
this some kind of misunderstanding. I don't want anyone doing
anything that may get them killed. Make sure the rest of the team
knows.” He looked deep into her eyes. “Not to mention, the
records here are invaluable, and I don't want them damaged by
accident. I'm relying on you.”
“Of course, sir,” she said,
and her heart beat faster. “I'll make sure of it.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Two hours later they finally let
them out of the cafeteria, though the front third of the habitat,
with the servers and the data vault, was still blocked off by armed
soldiers standing in the halls.
The Orphans' dorm had been
thoroughly turned over, every container emptied onto the floor, every
mattress taken off its rack. Her few things lay scattered on the
floor next to her locker – a spare uniform, the comb for her fur, a
bar of soap, a choc pack she'd been saving, her airmask. The pile
seemed infinitely pathetic lying there. Her tablet and data sticks
were missing, a fact which did not surprise her. By the sounds of
distress from the other Orphans picking through the wreckage, she
wasn't the only one.
She felt like she was in a dream.
Any moment, surely, the alarm would sound and she would wake with
the others for breakfast, another day at the observatory.
She left the room, leaving the
pile where it was. Past the two soldiers standing guard in the
hall, she could see carts loaded with the server banks heading
towards the airlock, and felt a pang as she remembered the long
nights spent setting them up.
The door to the MuniPrin's
private room was unlocked. They'd treated it somewhat more
respectfully, made a half-hearted attempt to put things back where
they'd been. She'd been amazed at how small it was when she first
saw the inside, no more then half the size of the Orphans' dorm, the
furniture no more then a bed, bureau, desk, washstand. The entryway
was blocked from the sight of the soldiers by a slight turn in the
corridor. She slipped inside, her heart pounding.
She got on her hands and knees
and slipped under the bed. Then she carefully unscrewed one of the
floor panels.
Underneath, in a hollow in the
space between the panel and the stone floor of the tunnel, was a bag.
It looked, to all outward appearances, like any other. She drew
it out and left the MuniPrin's room to look for Ermon.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
“You idiots can get yourselves
killed if you want, but I'm staying out of it,” Dee said.
“If they're shutting the
observatory down, they'll smash the disks and burn the books. Or
stick them in a hole where no one will ever see them again. It's
our responsibility to our species to get them out,”
Ermon replied.
“Psych that. I'm not
responsible to anybody but me, and I'm not committing suicide for the
sake of some photos of rocks.”
“You psyching little malcon, we
should never have let you in the Guild. Trust an orphan to
not know the meaning of duty!”
There was a loud thump.
Dust rained down from the ceiling of the supply closet. “What on
Mars was that?” Dee demanded.
“Blowing up the 'scope,”
Ermon replied. “I did my journeyman's tour as a mining
seismologist; that was a demo charge.”
“Dee,” Mara said quietly.
“They're going to kill us all if we stay. Otherwise they would
have brought us back to Elysium with the MuniPrin and the rest of the
command staff. There's no reason to leave us out here unless they
want to get rid of us.”
“You can't know that!”
“Keep your voice down!” Ermon
hissed. “That air duct leads to the cafeteria!”
“I'm pretty sure,” Mara
replied, her voice cold. “Why would they let us live?”
“Then why didn't they just
shoot us to begin with?”
“They're not done cleaning the
place out,” Ermon said. “They've already asked me about backup
disks. They don't want to kill us until they're sure they've found
everything.”
Dee glared at them, unwilling to
believe.
“If you don't want to help,
then leave,” Mara said.
“Nuts,” Dee muttered.
“You're going to do this no matter what I say, aren't you?”
“Yes,” Ermon said. Mara
nodded.
“And go where?”
“If we can get across the
border, we'll be okay,” Ermon said. “There are Architect ruins
all up and down there where we can hide. And I know some people in
Lucky Strike who can make copies of the disks and get them to the
right places.”
“Then what? Live as outlaws
the rest of your lives? Lucky Strike won't let you in without
passes!”
“This is bigger then us, Dee,”
Mara said quietly. “Bigger then our lives. We need to get the
data out. And as many of the others as will come with us. Better
to die in the wastes then here.”
“Well, then you need me,” Dee
said flatly. “You'll never get past the guards on the airlock.
But I know another way out.”
“Tell me,” Ermon demanded.
“I will. But not for your
damned disks, or for you, you psyching malcon. I'll do it because
otherwise you're going to get even more people killed.”
“Can your self-congratulatory
speech and tell us.”
“Fine. Ventilation intake
three's screen pops out if you...”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Mara crouched in the ventilation
duct, waiting.
It was night outside. Ermon was
in front of her, his booted feet in her face, scrabbling at the vent
screen with a screwdriver. Dee and Yat and half a dozen others were
behind her, all who chose to go with them. The bag of disks and
books sat next to her in the crowded ductwork.
There was a soft thump as the
screen fell free, and Ermon dropped out and ran. She counted the
seconds as he sprinted for the observatory. There was about ten
meters of ground where he'd be in sight of any guards at the habitat
airlock. No shout of warning pierced the air, no gunfire lanced out
to catch him. He made it to the side of the observatory airlock and
out of sight in twenty seconds.
She crawled forward to the
ventilation exit, pushing the bag in front of her. Her heart
pounded, and she dropped down and ran, arms pumping, expecting death
at any moment.
It didn't come.
Ermon was crouched beside the
observatory wall, on top of a soldier. His screw driver was buried
in the soldier's neck, the soldier's blood black on the ground under
the moonlight. Mara struggled not to vomit, forced herself to look
away, to look towards the observatory airlock – hanging empty and
open, the observatory depressurized – in to the airmasks and
emergency kits hanging in racks inside the airlock chamber. She
pulled an airmask on, tossed another next to Ermon. Dee came round
the corner and she threw another, and another, until by some miracle
all nine of them had made it.
She couldn't believe it was
working. She handed out the emergency kits while Ermon stripped the
soldier of his gear. Then, in single file, they headed east, into
the wastelands.
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