She emerged in a large hemispherical loading bay, surrounded by baffled, angry, frightened classmates. Her fellow prisoners were still coming through the hatch, which was set in the base of the hemisphere, and led to the Venera. Lucy tried to count the people in the bay, to see how many of her classmates had stayed alive and made it this far, but they were still in zero-gee and it was impossible to keep track of all the men and women hovering or drifting in the air long enough to tote them up.
Prisoners were still struggling through the airlock tunnel. A scuffle of some sort broke out across the loading bay. Lucy couldn't see much through the tangle of floating bodies, but she could hear shouting and meaty thuds. Then three small, perfect, globes of bright red blood sailed quietly past her and splattered onto the bulkhead in slow motion.
"AW RIGHT, SHUT UP!" An over-amplified voice boomed through the bay. "SHUT UP! Make your way down a bulkhead and set your feet on the flat deck of the bay. There are handholds all around the edge of the dome at waist height and I want you to grab one and stay put. I'm gonna get a head count, and nobody is going anywhere until I do, so clear the center of this bay, get off of the dome wall, and get down to the flat deck. Line up around the edge of the dome. Move it!"
Slowly, with a lot of muttering and grumbling, the prisoners did as they were told. Lucy spotted Cynthia Wu at the base of the dome and headed over toward her, towing her duffle bag.
"Hey, Luce. There you are. Now maybe we get some answers," Cynthia said.
"At least we're out of that cabin. And into some cleaner air," Lucy said.
"Give thanks for small favors. We won't see any big ones."
"PIPE DOWN!" The bay was just about clear, and now they could see the speaker, a heavy-set man in his forties, standing on the flat deck of the bay. He was in full battle-armor, his faceplate open. He wore magnetic boots and clomped to the center of the deck, holding a clipboard. What looked like sergeants' stripes were painted on the arms of his suit. "Awright. Now, I'm gonna do a roll call, and you'd better cooperate, because nobody's going anywhere until everyone is accounted for. Call out when you hear your name. And say whether you were crew or passenger on the Venera. I gotta split this out into two lists later. Ackerman, Daniel.'
“yo!"
"Passenger or crew, Ackerman?"
"Passenger."
"Right. Akomo, Dwight."
"Present. As the senior surviving member of Venera’s crew, I demand—"
"Shuddup, boy. You ain't where you can demand anything. Calder, Lucille."
"Present. Passenger."
"Danvers, Joseph."
"Present. Passenger."
"Desk- Desk—"
"Deskophsky, Dmitiri. Present. Passenger."
"Okay. Right. Entin, Robert. ..."
Lucy waited out the roll call with the rest of them, keeping count herself. Two men turned up missing, and there was a twenty-minute delay until it was discovered they were still locked in their cabin aboard the Venera. Finally, it was over. Five crew and fifty-three passengers were in the bay, still alive. Twelve crew and sixty Survey Service personnel had set off from Bandwidth.
"That does it. Now stay put and keep it down." The sergeant hit a stud on the arm of his suit and spoke into a helmet mike. "Captain? All present, accounted for, and
ready for you in Bay Three, sir."
* * *
Captain Lewis Romero pressed the mike key on his desk intercom. "Thank you, Sergeant. I'll be there directly." Romero's office was in the spin-section of the station, under the 1.13 gees of his home world, Capital. As befitted the commander, it was the largest and most luxurious office in the orbital station. As befitted the commander of a small post located in a backwater rear area of an over-extended military, Romero was an ignoramus. Competent officers were too much in demand to waste one on what amounted to garrison duty.
But Romero's back was straight, his uniform was pressed and cleaned at all times, his jackboots (which were more than slightly incongruous on a space station) were gleaming, and his black hair and moustache were neatly trimmed, and that was all that was required of him. At the moment, his sallow face bore its usual expression—a patently synthetic look of friendly interest. He spent a lot of time in front of a mirror, rehearsing facial expressions. Romero saw himself as a reasonable fellow, ready to listen, who led by gentle persuasion and example. He was proud of the effort he put into appearances. After all, if one didn't look the part, how were the troops to know who the boss-man was?
He pressed the call button on his desk, and within a minute an answering beep came from the console. His escort was ready. He stepped out of his office to find the four surly-looking troopers in their full dress uniforms, two on either side of the doorway. They formed up, two ahead and two behind him. "To Bay Three," Romero said. They escorted him to the lift. Romero, so concerned with appearances, would have been horrified to know how foolish his men thought the whole idea of an escort squad.
The lift car arrived and the five of them squeezed into it. Without waiting for instruction, the two troopers on either side of him knelt down, a bit awkwardly in the tight space, and each pushed a small stud set into the heel of Romero's boots. That powered up the electromagnets in the boots, making them suitable for walking the corridors in the zero-gee section of the station. Romero had had them made up specially. "They looked a great deal better than standard mag work shoes, which clashed horribly with his jet-black uniform. The elevator door opened, and there was a slight pause while the escorts changed into standard mag boots. Finally they made their way to Bay Three. The head of the escort detail opened the hatch and they ventured out into the center of the large deck, stepping most carefully.
The first thing that struck Romero was the stench. Well, these poor devils couldn't help that. Lieutenant Higgins had taken their ship quite a while ago, and a ship under guard had little time for sanitary questions. Still, perhaps he ought to have a word with Higgins about keeping CIs cleaner in future. The smell was quite ghastly. Romero did not allow any reaction to the odor to cross his race, but held to a stern-but-fair expression that seemed quite suited to the occasion. He took a good look at what was going to be the replacement technical staff. Damn shame that Ariadne's whole tech crew had been shipped out with the main fleet, but such were the needs of the times.
But what of their replacements? A motley bunch. Every color of the rainbow, but then that was true of practically every gang of CIs ever taken. They seemed to have no idea about the foolishness of mixing the races. And their women! Women not only in the military, but outranking men, if he followed the insignia. Lieutenant Higgins had reported that a woman—and a black one at that—had been Venera's skipper, before he shot her. He stared hard at one or two of the white men they had bagged in this haul. How could they bring themselves to take orders from some blackamoor female? Blackamoor. That was a good word. Much more refined than "nigger" or "darkie," and yet clearly indicating an opinion. Suited to use by an officer. He must remember it.
Finally, Romero completed his inspection and spoke. "Good day to all of you, and welcome to Guardian Orbital Station Ariadne. My name is Captain Lewis Romero, commander of G.O.S. Ariadne. Let me start straight off by
clarifying your status. You are not prisoners of war, or technically prisoners of any sort. You are under the jurisdiction of the Guardians of the Planetary Commonwealth of Capital. Under Guardian law, you are Conscripted Immigrants—CIs—and have the rights and obligations of any other sort of immigrant." Romero didn't mention that there were no other sorts of immigrants. They'd find that out soon enough.
"Now, you were brought here to work. Work well, pay attention to your duties, and many of you may well prove eligible for Guardian citizenship. Sloth, inefficiency, or refusal to obey orders will gain you nothing and could cost you dearly." He paused meaningfully, then went on in a more cheerful tone. "But, I'm sure there won't be any such difficulties. You are here to work. Work hard, and you will be treated well. I think that about cover
s it. Sergeant Mosgrove here will arrange for you to be escorted to quarters and—ah—cleaned up. Then we can see about explaining your duties to you." Romero turned as if to go when a high, clear voice called out.
It was Cynthia Wu. "Excuse me, Captain, but just so I've got this straight. It sounds like you've prettied it up, but we've been kidnapped and brought here as skilled slave labor. Is that about right?"
Romero flushed angrily. The insolence! And from a tiny little doll of a Chinaman's girl. He chose to ignore her. No response at all seemed best to him. He calmed himself and said "Sergeant Mosgrove. You may commence with the processing of the priso—of the immigrants, Sergeant."
"Yes sir." Mosgrove saluted Captain Romero and watched as his commanding officer and escort turned to leave the bay. The sergeant glared at Romero's back with undisguised contempt. He didn't do a damned thing to her! This captain was all spit and polish and no backbone. In a real outfit the little Chink slut would be a dead and bloody pulp by now. That was the way to set an example. But if the captain wanted to ignore it, the captain could deal with the results. "Aw right. Now I'm gonna take you in
groups of six for cabin assignments. The sooner we're done, the sooner you can wash and eat."
Exhausted by their nerve-wracking journey and glad for the chance at showers and hot food, the Venera survivors settled in without much argument. The Survey Service prisoners began to learn about their new home.
Ariadne Station was a fairly standard design. It was made up of three cylinders linked together through their common axis, like three fat tin cans stacked end to end. The three were simply called A Drum, B Drum, and C Drum. B Drum, the center cylinder, was spun up to simulate one Capital gee, 1.13 Earth gravities, at its outermost deck. The two outer cylinders, A and C, were zero-gee work areas.
Ariadne was a communications center and a space traffic control station, tracking the orbital tugs and other craft, assigning orbits to spacecraft moving in orbit of the planet below.
The station was a gloomy, uncomfortable place—or at least those parts of the station the Survey Service prisoners could get to were. As with all such spun-for-gravity systems, the closer to the axis a deck was, the weaker the force of simulated gravity. Lucy and Cynthia found themselves assigned to a small, bare, austere cabin with four other women on Deck Three, the living area nearest to zero-spin. All the "Conscripted Immigrants" were on Three and Four. Decks One and Two were nearer zero-gee, but housed the command and communications centers. Deck Six was furthest from the spin axis. That was split between officers' country, sick bay, the commissary, and some engineering and exercise areas.
The CIs' barracks decks were painted a uniform gun-metal gray, and the lighting was kept dim to save power. The cabins were tiny, cramped, and stuffy. Nothing folded up into the walls to make more room. The beds were welded in place, and the one chair, which was bolted to the deck, was bare aluminum and usually too cold to sit on. There was no storage space, and keeping the place at all tidy meant stuffing everything back into the single duffle bag each of them had. The duffles themselves took up a large part of the cabin. The six women settled on the convention of keeping them on the bunks during the day and stacking them in the corner to sleep.
The Guards wasted no time in getting some work out of their new "immigrants." It seemed the CIs were to replace a Guardian crew that was being shipped out to other duties. The Survey Service prisoners were hurriedly trained to do the technical work of the station, often literally with guns to their heads.
Cynthia might have gotten away with speaking up in Bay Three, but the CIs quickly learned that was an exception. Several of the Survey students protested their treatment and were beaten severely. That, at least, the Guards didn't try to make mysterious. They were quite happy to let the CIs know what would happen if they didn't cooperate. There were further protests and further punishments, but nothing changed the situation. The Survey Service CIs were on Ariadne Station whether they liked it or not. Escape was clearly impossible, and Guards controlled the guns, the food, the water.
The CIs were expected to run the station's communications center, operate the space traffic control system, manage the station computer system, and generally do routine technical work. Failure to cooperate got them nothing but another beating. The Guards made that simple to understand.
The League of Planets Survey Service had chosen the brightest young people from the military services of every League member and trained them to be skilled pilots, ready to adapt to new situations. The CIs—they were already calling themselves that—mastered their new jobs quickly. It helped that the equipment was more or less familiar, as if the Guardians had begged, borrowed, and stolen whatever old and new designs they could get their hands on, and copied them.
The CIs tried to protest, to sabotage, to avoid work.
Until Wilkie was shot. Wilkie hadn't done anything. They shot him because Leventhal had refused work, wouldn't t cooperate. Romero had strutted out to talk with them all the next day and announced that Wilkie's death was not an accident—it was policy. "Shirk your responsibilities, and it isn't your life you risk—it is your friend's, your cabinmate's, your comrade-in-arm's. I was reluctant to take extreme measures, but you have left me no choice. Each of you is hostage to the behavior of the others."
Leventhal tried to kill himself by slashing his wrists the next day. They got him to sick bay in time.
But that settled it. They did the work. They cooperated. "Bide our time, wait and see," Wu had said, and they did.
Lucy drew a regular shift in front of a communications console. It took her only a day or two to confirm her vague impressions of what was going on. Most of the signals were encrypted, but enough was in clear for her to find things out. She compared notes with the other CIs, and they quickly came to some conclusions. Ariadne wasn't in orbit of Capital, but circling another planet, called Outpost.
Much of Lucy's job was in relaying data and voice communications between at least two dozen ships in different orbits. Ariadne relayed any traffic for ships that didn't have line-of-sight on each other.
Lucy's console, and nine others, were in a large compartment on B Deck. As she and the other CIs worked, two well-armed Guardians watched them, sullen-faced and bored. Slave labor, Cynthia had called it, and that was close enough. And Lucy told herself that no half-abo Aussie from the Outback was going to be a slave. Not for long, and not without revenge.
Another signal was coming in from the big ship in high orbit. Leviathan. The Lev was using the same code as the planetside stations, and Lucy wanted to know that code for her own reasons. She hit a few keys on her console and a copy of Leviathans signal went into a very private computer file she had set up. Lucy was learning.
CHAPTER TWO Aboard G.O.S. Ariadne
First Lieutenant Johnson Gustav, Guardian Navy, knew he was lucky not to be dead already, shot for treason. Being transferred out of Headquarters Intelligence to be the executive officer of some unimportant orbital station wasn't much, but being alive was something. And Gustav had all his off-duty hours to reflect on the concept of the truth being treason.
His report had been erased, shredded, burned, purged, eliminated in whatever form it had existed but one. It was still in his mind. Gustav had the feeling that Captain Phillips had arranged to keep Gustav alive so that one last copy of the report, up there in his brain cells, wouldn't be "erased" as well. Which meant the Phillips knew Gustav was right, and Phillips was a good man—so why didn't Phillips forward the report instead of wiping it out of existence and shipping its author to some tin can orbiting Outpost?
Because Captain Phillips knows that doing that would get us both shot without accomplishing anything, Gustav thought. Phillips was like that. All the good officers in Intelligence were. They had to balance the necessary against the possible. Odd phrases like that cropped up in Intelligence a lot. Phillips had sent Gustav off with another one:
"Pay more attention to politics and less to reality. Until the times
change."
Well, the times were, about to change all right, but not to anyone's benefit. It was all there in the report.
The trouble was that Intelligence trained its men to be objective in analysis, and it was the only branch of the Navy that sent its men out of the Nova Sol star system to other settled worlds.
It had been easier before he had been trained to go out. He had heard what every kid heard growing up, from the school books and the Political Orientation lecturers: that the Guards had threatened the established order on Earth and had been driven off the mother planet by the plutocrats, cleverly leaving misleading clues as to that part of the sky for which they were bound. That the League of Planets had been formed with the sole purpose of tracking the Guardians down and smashing them, that the League would never stop searching for Capital, the one world that threatened the League's utter domination of human space, and that Capital must be prepared, well armed, disciplined, ready to fight.
Then Gustav had been approved for Navy Intelligence, started his training, and learned a whole new story, one he hadn't really believed until he had shipped out in a tiny one-man ship with a phony Liberian High Free Port registration to wander the League worlds gathering information for Capital.
He had gone out and come back in a score of times. He had stolen designs and collected technical journals that would end up in Guardian labs. He had fingered likely ships for the CI "recruiters." He had read news services and passed back political reports. He had travelled. He had seen.
Gustav had been to Kennedy, to New Asia, to New Finland, even to Earth. He had seen Capital's "enemies" and discovered that the plutocrats and hedonists and demagogues and bloodsuckers of grade school P.O. were just— people. Worse, they were people who had never even heard of the Guardians, and it took a day of digging in the New York Public Library data files to find more than a passing mention—and the truth—about the Guardians.
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