by Alex Oliver
"We're nearly there," Bryant said, just as the screen flicked on and began displaying a dozen displays at once. He paused for just a moment to aim a smug smile in Campos' direction. "Tell me I'm a genius."
She gave him that smile again - the one that said 'I don't believe your cheek, but I find it charming'. "You're a genius. So what do we know?"
He caught sight of the plan of the compound, and Oh. Shit. there was the Governor's spaceship, in an underground silo beneath the parade square in front of the mansion. That metal area rolled aside, and the launch lifted from just outside the doors.
But that wasn't what made his mouth dry out and his hands prickle with sweat, or a flush of nettle-rash feel like it was itching under his scalp. No, what caused that reaction was the specs of the launch itself. He'd thought they'd all be manual like the Froward's launch. He'd thought ideology would demand it.
But apparently the governor here was cut from a different mold, because this was a Fairlight Dash, two years old and equipped with everything a space tourist might desire.
Specifically, it was equipped with an AI and piloting software. And it was almost literally under their feet.
He flicked the display beneath a second readout so that Campos would not see it too. "There's... um... The prison is on the North East of the compound. It's - ah - it's another one of your bloody old fashioned analogue lock ones. I can't release the doors from here. But you should be able to melt through the locks with the... hand... I gave you. Feel free to thank me for that, any time."
Did he sound nervous? He sounded nervous, didn't he? Um. He made a concerted effort to calm down, but couldn't stop the blood from thundering past his ears or his heart from drumming in his chest like a snare.
"There's a... there's a note on here to say that's where they're keeping the Frowards and what remains of the Governor's staff."
Campos was peering over his shoulder now at the schematic of the prison and the schedule of the guards who patrolled outside and in. She was going to go there straight away, and kill the guards and open all the doors, setting off a dozen alarms in the process. The moment she began, all chance of sneaking out would be well and truly scuppered.
Decision time then. His own prospects had suddenly opened up. While she stormed the jail, causing a distraction, he could head for the ship. He could steer it back to the alien city, load up on likely looking antiquities to sell, and then get well out of here.
Her plan - to take the place back and then wait for relief - was shit, to be frank. It wouldn't work. Even if it did, it meant running the gauntlet of her crew. It meant trusting them all to be okay with what she had promised, hoping that none of them were the kind of brown nosers who would grass her up, get her into trouble for her moment of mercy and get him sent straight back here with no options. And what were the chances of that?
"Are you all right?" Campos startled him out of his thoughts, looking at him with concern in her lion-like eyes. Shit, he was giving himself away.
"They've sent ransom demands. So no one's been touched yet," he said, as if that was an explanation for his behavior, "But the time limit for a response runs out tomorrow."
"Then tonight's a good time to get them out," she sounded quiet and sure, and Bryant was going to miss her certainty, her faith that no challenge would ever come along for which she was too weak.
"What about the ship?" she asked, and he grimaced.
"It's down under the compound, but it's also behind several manually locked doors. If you give me another half an hour with this console, I can get it primed for take off from here, but I'll need you to open the doors and pilot it out."
"Not going to help me with the jailbreak?" Campos's smile was fond this time, like a master watching his dog utterly stuff up retrieving a stick.
Bryant felt weird inside. Maybe the alien water and the meat he'd eaten was finally disagreeing with him, because he felt sick and heavy and it was an unconscionable effort to smile back and say "At this stage I think it's apparent that you don't need my help."
And I don't need yours.
"Besides, I'm not sure I can face going out there by the bonfire again. Being sexually harassed once a night is enough."
Campos's heavy, sullen look told him he'd made her think about something she had rather avoid, so he flipped up a close angle on the route to the silo - the one without the ship's details. She would guess his plan if she saw he could pilot the ship by himself.
"This is the way to the Governor's launch when you're all out of the jail. I'm going to try to stay in hiding here and work on the flight protocols. Maybe also get some information about what happened to the Froward. But if I think it's unsafe I'll make my way to the first silo door and wait for you there.”
Campos lifted a hand and curved it carefully around Bryant's cheek, the touch very delicate for such a strong man. She smiled, warm and fond and trusting, and Bryant told himself he must not flinch. But perhaps his regret came out looking like fear, because Aurora just wiped a thumb gently across his cheekbone and said, "It's going to be fine. Don't worry."
Bryant's mouth was dry and that weight in his guts threatened to tear its way out, leave him eviscerated and bleeding. "Good luck," he managed, because she would need it.
She laughed and leaned in to brush a chaste kiss over his closed mouth. "I heard I make my own. You take care."
"Oh, I always do." He murmured, looking down, away from her. He didn't watch as she walked out. Why should he? All of this would fade away in a matter of weeks, when he was free, why not minimize its impact as soon as he could?
If he closed his eyes he could sense her thoughts and feelings, catch glimpses of what she was seeing. The sensory feeling of her mind was elegant, focused, he had no impression of distrust from it. She was thinking about how to get out of the compound without being seen and the thought that Bryant might be double crossing her had not occurred.
That actually made it worse.
He waited until she had eeled past the main gate, keeping to shadows, and strolled down the parallel street to the one they had entered the compound on, acting like a man with nothing to hide. Then he did prime the governor's launch for take off, and taking a leaf out of her book, he walked confidently out of the hospital door and across to the mansion's kitchen door.
Bryant had never been a fighter in his life, but he'd been a sneak since he could toddle. He flattened himself into the shadow in the angle of the door and watched as servers came in and out of the room. There were three cooks on duty, but they were washing up. The party must be going on in the main banqueting hall, and must have been going on for some time - all the food cooked and served and the plates now coming back.
Bryant waited until the cooks had their backs to him, bending over their various work stations, and then he walked in confidently, lifted a platter where a cloth had been draped over a litter of picked bones and walked out through the opposite door.
Someone behind him said "What are you?..." but he was gone, down the corridor, down the turret stairs, conscious after a moment or two that he was not being followed.
On his own, for greater verisimilitude, he took the cloth off the plate and wound it around his waist like an apron. Then he hoisted the platter onto his shoulder as the waiters at the fancy restaurants his parents attended had used to do, and he carried on down.
The mansion's poured concrete walls faded into green stone foundations. Three turns of the staircase down and a cross corridor lead to the intergalactic communications equipment, and okay his disguise was not great down here – there seemed very little call for canapes among the computers - but it was better than nothing at all.
He checked his internal clock as he listened to one side of the archway. Quiet chatter down here indicated that the tech hub of the place was being monitored. They wouldn't spot his little viruses at work until they affected something, but the spontaneous unlocking of every door between himself and the silo would be hard to conceal. So no, no he didn't have ti
me to wander down there and see if he could ditch the platter for a clipboard.
He flitted past the opening and carried on down. He was trying to go quietly, but clearly did not succeed, because, "Billy?" came a voice from the bottom of the stairs, "Get a fucking move on! My shift ended half an hour ago and I want my tea."
There was a guard. A guard in front of the door that was going to unlock with a conspicuous click in about forty five seconds. Shit! Bryant had not foreseen or planned for that. This was where he needed Aurora to casually reach out and snap the guy's neck... and that was a level of violence he was not supposed to have become habituated to.
Thinking fast, he ran back up the stairs to beyond the connecting corridor. Then he took a deep breath, gauged the angle carefully and flung the earthenware platter into the archway, shattering it on the wall. The sound smashed through the quiet corridors like an alarm bell. "Oh shit!" Bryant called, nerves making his voice shake appropriately. "Help!"
He pressed himself tight to the hub of the stairs, concealed behind its bend.
"Billy?" said the guard again, and then Bryant heard his footsteps come trudging heavily up to investigate. He got an eye around the corner and watched the man look in at the mess of bones and pottery. Just one step, come on, Bryant prayed, breathless and keyed up. Come on.
And then a doorway opened up the hall and someone called out to the guard. He stepped in to answer, and Bryant sprinted past his turned back just as the whir and click of disengaging tumblers told of the silo door opening.
"What the fuck?"
A moment of stunned silence behind him. He wrenched the silo door open, slid through and shut it again, punching in the combination to lock it. Not a moment too soon, because it shuddered in its frame just as he got the last figure in, and someone said "What the fuck?" again outside.
Billy's friend was obviously not the sharpest tool in the box, but someone else answered him. "Shit, they're going for the ship!"
That voice would belong to whoever it was had come out of the labs. Whoever it was could be a decent programmer. Could - given time - go back to his desk and stop the launch sequence, could stop the silo doors from opening, trapping Bryant, preventing him from escaping.
So, it would be best not to give whoever it was any time to work with.
Bryant sprinted down the long corridor, wrenching open another three doors and locking them again behind him.
Lights were already on in the hangar, showing him a domed room that strongly reminded him of the alien city, and a Fairlight Dash sitting on its tailfins, pointing up at a reflective circle at the apex of the dome. In the far distance across the hangar two more guards bolted to their feet, tipping over a table full of cards and tokens between them.
Shit! Panic sent rocket fuel into Bryant's long legs as he dashed to the hatch in the Dash's tail section and flung open the unlocked outer door with arms all but numb from adrenaline. He scrambled inside and secured it, did the same with the inner door. Shouting filtered through dimly from outside, then a klaxon blared, and oh shit there really was no going back now if there ever had been.
He swarmed up the ladder in the wall of what would become - in flight - the main corridor. In accordance with the protocols he'd started before he even left the hospital, systems were coming on line. Internal lighting flicked on and strengthened and the engines hummed beneath his feet.
He threw himself into the pilot's chair. "Computer, roll back the silo cover and launch."
"I am receiving a radio communication on the Governor's frequency aborting the launch," said the computer's well bred voice. It had a faint touch of Irish accent for extra calm, but he wasn't feeling it right now. He closed his eyes and sorted through the network, nanites linking its flows of data to his neurons. Someone in the labs was indeed trying to shut him out, and they were good, but they were nowhere near his level, amateurs.
"The communication is not from the Governor." He corrected it breathlessly. "His frequency has been hijacked. I'm invoking access code 45gh599vni32k #45. It's a state of emergency and I need you to turn this vessel over to me."
"A moment."
Above him, the lights in the rafters shook and cobwebs rained down past the view-screens. Someone was hitting the tail hatch with something metallic, a crowbar perhaps. The clanging hurt his head when he was having to concentrate as hard as this. He was overcome with hunger, gnawing as the guilt in his chest, as he remembered Aurora feeding him, taking care of him. Soon she would know that he had betrayed her. He hadn't realized until this moment that he'd been secretly hoping it wouldn't come to this, secretly hoping they could still be friends.
"Access granted."
A yelp and the hammering at the door fell silent as the engines roared titanically into life, and then a push into the seat - mild because the artificial gravity had come on line - and the Dash was inching its way upwards against the pull of the planet, gathering momentum with every second. Its rounded nose had already slipped out through the crack in the dome. A moment later Bryant saw the facade of the Governor's mansion slide by, and beyond it the building that could only be the prison where Aurora's crew were being held.
He imagined her hearing the take off, looking out of the door and realizing he had gone without her. Realizing he had left her alone, trapped in a body she regarded as monstrous, surrounded by enemies. Understanding that yet again she had trusted too far and been betrayed.
Served her bloody right, though, didn't it?
"Take me to 55° 45' N / 37° 37' E and set down there anywhere you can find a patch of ground flat enough."
"Coordinates confirmed."
Aurora would be fine, though, he thought, hating the way that sick heaviness in his belly just kept growing. They wanted her as a hostage. She was valuable, they'd keep her safe, and maybe bloody Admiral what's-his-name would realize what he stood to lose and finally come through for her. Yeah, she'd probably get a happy ending out of the whole thing.
'God's got it sorted,' indeed.
The disadvantage of an automated ship was that there was nothing for him to do. He sat in the pilot's chair and watched as the revelers boiled out of the mansion. One of them took a pot shot at him with a bazooka, but the missile just bounced from the Dash's collision defense forcefield and rebounded to explode among the pears. As he rose over the lip of the worn down volcano, he thought he saw a shadow move in the caldera, and a lighted shape swivel as if to target him, but nothing showed up on the sensors, so it was probably only the Dash's shadow and the reflected glare of her own engines.
The horses had kicked down the walls of their stables at the noise of the launch. His last sight of the compound was of them galloping after him, gleaming copper chestnut in the launch's floodlights against the teal blue of the planet's mossy grass. And then he was away, with nothing to do but re-fly over the ground he had covered with Aurora, and try not to think about what she must be feeling now.
This probably explained why he had no friends, only colleagues he hadn't yet ditched as an inconvenience. He clutched at his hair so hard his fingers came away with a bouquet of corkscrew curls, but even the pain of his scalp seemed irrelevant beside the ache and nausea in his chest.
It's going to go away, he told himself as the Dash set herself down neatly in the litter of their former campsite. okay maybe there weren't predators on this planet but there were some efficient scavengers, because the bodies Aurora had left behind her had been picked clean of meat, and the bones pushed together into a grisly cairn. In a month you'll feel like yourself again. Yourself before all this, when you were respected and innocent, and rich. It's not as though she was any great catch anyway.
He continued telling himself this as he loped down the shallow steps and along the walk way into the alien city, but the city contradicted him with every footstep. He hadn't noticed before, but its emptiness was forbidding, and there was something vaguely mocking about its spiral pathways that curved out from the temple in its center like the iris of an eye.
Its silence seemed judgmental, and even the chicken-scratch writing on the floor of the government building where he had left the scanner probably contained some secret of the universe that would make him weep.
Cursing his own over-active imagination, and the thing he didn't want to call guilt that was wound around his lungs like a parasite, he scoured the city for small, high value items. Anything exotic, of obviously alien manufacture, should cause a stir among Snow City's collectors, the Source's academics and the novelty-seekers of the Diaspora.
The crystal tiles in the floors of the government buildings pried up and were clearly computers of some sort. He took one, worrying it out of the matrix of soft polished sandstone in which it was embedded, not even sure if it was still functional once he'd finished scraping it out of its hole with a shard of pot. In the temple, he found a statue of that many armed faceless thing he had seen carved above the entry stairs. Exquisitely detailed and fashioned out of a metal that looked like silver with gold and copper flame-like swirls across its surface, it looked unpleasantly insect-like to him, but would fetch several thousand Snow-City dinar for its materials alone, if he could not interest a xenophile in its intrinsic mystery.
Likewise, one of the larger buildings next to the temple had contained long thin sets of rings interlinked with rods of precious metal and stones, which he surmised to be antennae ornaments. Finger thick rods of opal and ruby gleamed in the light of his torch, and a stone he didn't recognize – jade green as the rock of the cavern on the outside, but opalescent and full of a misty swirl of color on the inside – looked like it would be rarer and more precious still.
The Dash had had a bag full of emergency medical supplies, which he had emptied onto a seat. Now he filled the empty rucksack with alien jewels and technology. When it was stuffed, he stopped. Scarcity put the price of everything up, so he would take only this. One bag full of remnants of a forgotten civilization, and the archaeologists and scholars and collectors would be falling over themselves to bargain for a piece. That was what he wanted.
