If his Yukoidian helpers were less enthusiastic, they were not admitting it. Lew and Dini were fingering the stunners in their pockets, and Lew had a firm grip on the lock-picks in his other hand. Dini was eyeing the feral cats sympathetically; she had caressed one of them near the first gate, and had been rewarded with a friendly head-butt to one of her thighs.
Lindy was tensely following in the wake of the cats, but keeping her pace down to that of the Guru beside her. As the only trained Agent in the group, she was keenly aware of her responsibility. But, she kept reminding herself, the people surrounding her were very capable, in Shellion's case, almost uncannily so. Not to take anything away from Kami-Cameron, who was plenty motivated to succeed, for his sister, as well as for personal vengeance.
Leon and Sandy had proved themselves valuable, too. Nice people, both of them, Lindy thought, yet, because of their sheer physical size and muscularity, they could seem enormously intimidating. And Lindy suspected that intimidation was going to come in useful before it was time to bring out the big weapon carried by the smallest person of the group.
She tried to not worry about Sarah—she had begun to think of her as Sarah, not Sunny, since she was no longer repressing her Sarah characteristics. That was understandable; it was Sarah, not Sunny, who would have to act. But it was her beloved husband who was in the hands of Evil Evella, in the building that the Team was heading towards. The Guru had revealed that bit of news to Lindy and Shellion, and had asked them to help reason with the young woman, should she stumble onto the information.
“I made a point of not telling her,” the Guru-Seer had said to Lindy in a whisper. “And I asked her not to do a mental probe of the premises, on the pretext—which has a factual basis—of not letting the enemy know that she and her Stone are here, until the last possible moment. It's perfectly possible that someone among the Elites could recognize her mental signature, assuming, of course, that they've got one of their machines working. She was inside their laboratory for quite some time during the last operation.”
The cats waited for the humans at the second gate. Lindy motioned Lew to come forward with Shellion's lock-picks.
“Just unlock it,” she said to him in a low voice. “I'll get the Guru to tell us who is where, inside, as far as he can determine, before we all charge in there.
“Remember,” she added in a louder voice, “that we want to round up all the prisoners, and bring them together in a convenient location for Sarah to do her transporting thing.”
“Dyron suggested the grassy area between the building and this fence,” the Guru added. “There's a bench on the knoll not far from the wall. Use that as your target. And remember, once we're inside the fence we're visible to whoever is manning the security, whether on premises, or elsewhere. The place swarms with spy-eyes, and -ears.
“The cats want to be the first ones in. We may as well allow them the privilege. For a few moments, perhaps, whoever is monitoring the security cameras thinks that all that has happened is that the animals have got loose. That may give us another few precious minutes in which to act.”
**
Keeper Ariane was sitting in her office, drinking coffee to stay awake, and feeling sorry for herself. She had had to take the late shift tonight in spite of having worked all day already. The Underkeeper scheduled to work it had called in sick at the last moment, and none of the other Underkeepers had wanted to stay late. The Elite who was in charge of the Pleasure House, but who actually did very little of the administration involved, was always telling her—well, whenever she came around to ask how things were going—that she was way too soft with the young women employees.
“You don't make them work nearly hard enough,” the Elite woman would say. “Just assign one or another to take whatever shift has to unexpectedly be covered. Whoever does it will get paid. Those girls ought to be grateful to make a little extra money.”
The trouble, as Ariane saw it, was that the extra money was a pittance. The Underkeepers' salaries were poor—the job was considered an easy one, and filled by low caste young women, so the Elites thought that their earnings did not have to amount to much. There was no such thing as overtime pay, all hours worked were compensated for at the same rate, a rate which depended not just on the length of time that the employee had been with the Pleasure House, but with her social status in the planetary pecking order. Had Ariane, herself, been born into even the least of the Elite classes, rather than having regular citizens for parents, she would have made double the salary that she did earn. Not that she dwelt on that; there was no sense in driving herself crazy.
It was just after ten o'clock; another nearly two hours to go before midnight when she could turn over the monitoring of the premises to the Law-Enforcers, and go home. The Law-Enforcers would keep an eye on things while they flew around the city (or parked somewhere and drank beer, which was just as likely), in their flyers which were equipped to tune in to the various surveillance systems of the city, including that of the Pleasure House. Of course, if she had trouble before midnight, she could always call the Law-Enforcers to come and sort things out, but she was not expecting anything like that tonight.
The last time that there had been trouble had been when Evella's favourite, Coryn, had commandeered a flit to make an escape attempt. (Ariane suppressed a shudder at the thought of the “punishment room” where Evella had taken him tonight.) The Law-Enforcers had picked him up very quickly, and Woman Elite Daria had not punished Ariane for the incident; she had not even docked the Keeper's pay. For some reason, the incident had delighted some of the male Elites, though Ariane had not been told why, and she was hardly in a position to ask.
Coryn was one of the inmates whose presence in the Pleasure House disturbed her a lot; he was obviously a bright man who would have preferred almost any fate over being Evella Copoz's sex toy. Evella, self-centred as she was, considered his reluctance nonsense; he had been a sex-worker on one of the Confederation Space Stations when she had first encountered him, and, according to her thinking, the beings who were not fortunate enough to have been born Elites had their places in the pecking order, and should expect to stay there. In that attitude she hardly differed from the other Elites, Ariane well knew; they all believed that they had been deemed by some God, or gods, to be the Rulers of the Galaxy, and had the right to do as they wished with their subjects.
Thing was, Ariane had grown to doubt that reading of reality. Of course, she knew that she ought to be grateful to have been tapped for the responsible position which she held. In fact, it had given her the opportunity to talk to these so-called slaves who came from worlds outside the Neotsarian Sector, and they had spoken about different kinds of social orders, of home planets where people did not exist in strict hierarchies. The dark-skinned, curly-haired young men seemed to have come from a world where people mostly communicated through telepathy, and one of them, Dyron, had explained to her that in a telepathic society the kind of exploitation that he was seeing on Volgoid just was not possible. Respecting another person's humanity was a given when you understood, on a deep level, his or her motivations.
“I'm not saying that we all love one another,” he had said with a laugh. “There were people I thoroughly disliked, even some who were close to me. But they knew how I felt, and avoided me, just as I avoided them. And I acknowledged that my dislike was in no way definitive, it was just the way I felt, others did not necessarily share it. Everyone is different, after all.”
“Everyone is different.” What a novel concept that had been, to one raised in Volgoid Prime City, where the assumption had always been that the regular citizens were just cogs in a giant machine, and the imported slaves were less than that! She had started to observe people with this new concept in mind, and had been secretly delighted with the results. It was true! Why had she not seen it before?
“Because I have been brainwashed,” she muttered to herself now, careful, like always, to keep her mutters so low and indistinct that the surve
illance system could not separate the syllables. She was not a fool; she understood that the monitoring of the premises could be used to scrutinize her behaviour. There was no safety for a regular citizen on Volgoid. Fear was the main weapon of control for the Elites.
She yawned, rubbed her eyes, and downed the dregs of her coffee from the mug on her desk. She was going to have to do a walking tour of the premises if she wanted to stay awake until it was time to call the flit to come and fetch her home. At least the job gave her that privilege, she could go home in a hired flit at no cost to her, thanks to the necessity of crossing the barrier of the cat-infested woods. Not that the Pleasure House needed a personal inspection from her, the surveillance program was telling her that all was in order within the halls of the building, and outside in the enclosure. However, she needed a walk, and an inspection was a good excuse for one.
She set the surveillance program to contact her, if there was need, via the com that she took with her, and got up, stretching her aching muscles.
**
“Elites Mogron, Copoz, and a bunch of their cronies are having a bash at Copoz's mansion,” Squad Leader Kelvin had informed his Enforcers when he had arrived for the evening shift. “When we do fly-overs of that area, we're to ignore whatever shenanigans may be happening on the property. That bunch of Elite boys have a reason to celebrate it seems—they're about to tighten a noose around some little Witchy woman's neck. They've successfully lured her into town, and now intend to stash her somewhere until their infernal energy machine is ready for use. When it is, they're going to force her to operate it for them. Then the Elites will be able to take over the Galaxy.”
He had shaken his head.
“Or so the story goes. Me, I'm a skeptic, and I'll believe fairy-stories when I see the results.”
“They're always dreaming of taking over the Galaxy,” had complained Law-Enforcer Herron who, on account of his tender age, was considered the least of the Squad, but who likely was the brightest light on it. “I don't get it. Why can't they be satisfied with what they've got? They've got everything their way, right here on Volgoid. With our kind making sure that things stay that way.”
“Yeah, and our job isn't getting any easier; only try and tell the Elites that,” had said Kelvin. “I've been trying to get through to that joker, Elite Jonnas, who is supposed to be in charge of City Security, about the pockets of Resistance that we know of, around the city, which cause trouble, and then disappear into thin air before we can catch them. You think he listens? Hah!
“'You fellows deal with them,' he says. 'How hard can that be? Just find them and throw them in jail.'
“Just find them and throw them in jail! Sure, Elite Jonnas, we'll do just that! Sure, we will! I'd blast them to smithereens if I could, never mind jailing them! But the problem is that they're elusive rascals, and there's not enough of us to comb the whole city! But try and get an Elite to understand that!”
“Take it easy, Kelvin,” had said the Squad Second, Jem. “Here, have a beer. I brought a few along, when I heard that the Elites would be celebrating at Copoz's, and we weren't to interfere with their fun. They brought women there this afternoon, you know, paid women, not their wives. And Geof Copoz's wife has to go play with her boy-toy at the Women's Pleasure House, because the guys did not want her on premises while they play with the hired girls.
“This is all good info; my cousin's wife cooks for the Copoz couple, and, boy, the stories I've heard from the cousin about the goings-on in that mansion!”
“Wasn't that Evella Copoz's 'boy' who made a break for freedom a week or so ago?” Herron had asked. “The day shift took care of him, though, and took him back to Evella.”
“Yeah,” Kelvin had said. “The Copoz couple had taken the trouble, and the expense, of marking him with a tracer. I was surprised to hear that; usually the Elites don't spend money like that on sex-slaves.”
“They probably intend him for some other use,” Herron had said astutely. “Once Evella tires of him.”
“That would explain it,” Kelvin had agreed. “Only, there's usually not much left of Evella's boy-toys once she's finished with them.”
“Well, Evella has orders from her husband to not harm this guy, at least not too much,” had said Jem. “At least that's the word from my cousin—through his wife, of course.”
“Which proves my point,” Herron had said with a shrug, pouring himself a beer from Jem's supply, into one of the chipped glass steins that were kept on a shelf by the office fridge.
Not one of the Law-Enforcers that used the office was fanatic about order and cleanliness. Messes piled up until the female cleaners came in, every two weeks, and scratched their heads about all the assorted papers that covered the two desks, and were told to just pile them up, if more neatly, because there might be important information buried there. Though most of the necessary data was on the electronic tablets, making little mess, and taking up almost no space, so, twice a year or so, the Head Cleaner got annoyed enough to toss out all the stacks of paper into garbage bags, regardless of what was on them. Apparently, nobody had ever missed anything of consequence.
“Are the flyers ready to go?” Herron had asked. “In case it turns out to be an interesting night after all, instead of the usual snorer?”
“Sure,” Kelvin had answered. “Jacky was in charge of the day shift and he's a fanatic when it comes to maintaining the flyers. He says that it keeps his mind occupied during the boring parts of the shifts. Though I wish that he'd do a little looking into the Resistance pockets during the dull times, instead of just applying spit and polish to the flying machines.”
“Has anyone, besides me, tried to figure out where the Resisters must be quartered?” Herron had asked.
Jem had stared at him, while the fourth member of the Squad, named Morky, had yawned, and helped himself to a beer. He had known that there was plenty more of that, once Jem's supply was exhausted. He and Kelvin had stopped to buy some, and even Herron had shoved a six-pack into the fridge when he had put his lunch in there. Everyone had heard about the Elites' bash, and everyone was prepared to take advantage. Elite Jonnas would no doubt be one of the most enthusiastic partiers, and not likely to come checking up on his employees.
“Have you been trying to do that?” Morky had asked. “What are you? A brown-noser?”
Herron had flushed.
“No. I'm just curious,” he had objected. “I wondered if I could use the maps of the city on my tablet, and the records of the incidents, to try to make some guesses as to the whereabouts of the Resisters' quarters. It's an exercise that passes the time when we're waiting to be alerted to a disturbance.”
It had been Kelvin's turn to stare at him.
“Cripes,” he had said. “That's the sort of a thing that Elite Jonnas probably thinks that we should be doing. Our Squad might get a bonus if there's something to it. Is there?”
“Not so far,” Herron had replied. “But I've only started. The city's big, and there have been a lot of incidents lately, though I'm not sure that every break and entry can be blamed on the Resisters. But if some of you others are willing to help with the correlating, we might well come up with some useful patterns.”
“Don't ask me to do any fancy-pants 'correlating', Morky had said, pronouncing the last word with some difficulty and more derision. “I'm just a simple Law-Enforcer who catches bad guys when he's told to, and where he's told to.”
He had swigged his beer to emphasize the words.
“Yeah, well, that's what we all are, basically,” Kelvin had conceded. “But I'm not about to discourage Herron's curiosity, let me tell you. Heck, if we could locate the nest of these Resisters, we'd be heroes!”
“For a day, maybe,” Jem had muttered. “Then the Elites will forget that it was us who located it, and turn to give Elite Jonnas pats on the back for work well done.”
Kelvin had laughed. It had not been a nice laugh.
“You got that right, Jem,” he had said, d
owning a large glug from his beer bottle.
“I'm all for a quiet night,” Morky had said. “Besides the Elite party which we're required to ignore, no matter how rowdy it gets, is there anything unusual we're supposed to mind?”
“Nah,” Kelvin had answered. “Just the usual. The Elite Women's Pleasure House will turn their surveillance over to us at midnight as they always do, when the last Keeper gets to take a flit home. We'll do an overflight or two, but those can be combined with our regular circuits above this sector of the city; nothing difficult there.”
Herron had eyed the Squad Leader speculatively. He had decided to be smart and take it easy on the beer. The other three men had been wallowing in the bitterness of the knowledge that they would never get credit for work well done, only punished for the mistakes that they might make. They were also envious of the wild parties that the Elites liked to indulge in, whenever they had a reason to do so. If anything unexpected did happen, and surely the Resistance people had heard about the latest bash, somebody would have to have his wits about him. Looked like, once again, that somebody was going to be him.
**
The Copoz mansion was impressive. Once again, Elite Mogron had felt certain twinges of envy as he had directed the shipment of drink, food, and the inevitable drugs, into the kitchen. The workers with him had been using hover-transports to bring them into the building; the loads had been heavy ones.
“Where can all this be stored until tonight?” he had asked the worker who seemed to be cooking something on the stove. She was a mere labourer, but there was nobody else present to ask.
The woman had looked up at Elite Mogron, the two delivery men, and the heavily-laden hover-carts curiously. A gossip, Mogron had thought to himself, slightly annoyed. Before the day was out a lot of locals would have heard about the supplies he had brought to Geof Copoz's party. Not that it really mattered.
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