Mak gave a slow nod. “We’re not talking to those jokers sitting at the cordon points, though. And any signal we send out to Arkhor is going to take time.”
“So we have, what, a day before anyone turns up?” Yari guessed.
“Maybe longer.” Mak shrugged. “And for all we know, whoever let that fake crew through told them we’re here.”
“So what’s the plan?” Goojie straightened.
“We make sure they don’t find us.”
3
It was impossible to find a good place to hide.
Part of the problem was that Nyha had no idea who she and the girls were hiding from, and what their plans were.
All the hiding in the world wouldn’t matter if some zealots were here to blow up Cepi a week early.
But the other, more practical, problem was that there were no doors on any of the rooms in the ruins and most of their interiors had been stripped bare. Even if some of the waist-high carved stones that had been sprinkled throughout the ruins had still been in place, they wouldn't have provided much cover.
“We're screwed,” Vik whispered, summing it up succinctly.
Standing with the four girls huddled around her in a room at the far end of the top level, Nyha had to admit she was right.
She'd muted the sound on her comm set so she could concentrate on finding a place to hunker down, but desperate times were at hand.
She switched the sound back on. “Hello, Mak? Are you still there?”
“Where are you?” His voice was a deep, reassuring rumble in her ear.
“On the top floor, in one of the empty rooms,” she whispered.
“Are they searching for you?”
“I don't know.” But the chances were, of everyone here on Cepi, whoever had hijacked their pick-up vessel would know about her and the girls. It was their ride that had been stolen, after all.
“The best thing you can do is hide in one of the outside chambers in the ruin walls. Use a side exit, get out of the ruins, and I'll come and get you.” His voice was still low, but there was an urgency to it now, as if he knew something she didn't.
“We'd have to go down to a lower floor using the central spiral. There's no outside access on this level except the obs deck.” And whoever had hijacked the ship would surely have someone watching the spiral. It was everyone's way out.
“If you stay where you are, you're caught for sure.” Mak's voice was calm. “There's a side exit on the fifth floor, only two floors down from you. If you can get down there before they come up for you, you could make it.”
The idea of sitting here, fatalistically waiting to be rounded up, and either shot like the security guard or imprisoned, did not sit well. This was at least something constructive to do. “Right. Which side is the exit?”
He made a sound of approval, a sort of hum, as if he were a proud parent whose child had done well in a test. She fought down a spike of irritation as she waited for him to speak.
“It's on the opposite side to the docking bay, which is fortunate. Once you're on the fifth floor, go down the corridor, and you'll find a small balcony with no railings. If you look over the edge to the right, you'll see a graduated series of terraces. It should be possible to lower yourselves over the side with only a very short drop to each terrace until you reach the ground.”
“I'll let you know when we're down,” she said. “I won't speak while we're trying to get out.”
He grunted in response, and she had the sense he was running, or doing something strenuous.
She wondered if she'd seen him in the staff canteen. There had been quite a few security guards, and she hadn't known any of them by name. Although the ones she'd seen had all been in Kalastoni uniform, and from his accent, there was no question in her mind Mak was Arkhoran.
She explained the plan to the girls, and was pleased to see the tension in them ease a little at the possibility of escape.
“Absolute silence, all right?”
They nodded. Tilla was holding Fran's hand, and Vik and Ju were standing shoulder to shoulder.
They had come into the world in worse conditions than this, Nyha reminded herself, and they'd had to be strong their whole lives because of that rough start. They would get through this and they wouldn't fall apart.
She led the way back to the central spiral, every sense alert.
She could hear voices below, raised in shouts. The archaeological team had been found, she guessed.
She waited until everyone was standing beside her, and let herself be spun downward.
When she stepped off two floors down, she heard the shouting below had increased, and she winced as someone cried out in pain.
The lights in the rooms and corridors on Cepi were always on—no one had found a way to switch them off—and to her relief the area seemed empty.
When all the girls had stepped off the spiral, she led them to the only corridor she could see, walking quietly and close to the wall. The exit was a small open-air area, a balcony of sorts, jutting out from the ruin like a strange afterthought.
Sure enough, to the right there was a drop of about two standard units to another balcony that looked the same, except it had no access back into the ruin.
“Ju, you're the tallest, you go first. And wait until we're all down there 'til you go down to the next one.”
Ju nodded, and swung down easily with her usual athleticism. Vik and Tilla went next.
Nyha was crouched down beside Fran, showing her the best way to reverse down, when she felt the brush of air on her nape that signaled movement behind her.
She turned, heart thundering, and found herself staring at the business end of a laz. She skipped her gaze up, to the large hands holding it, and then higher, to clash with the dark brown eyes of a man in an Arkhor flight crew uniform.
“Quick thinking,” he said, nodding down to the girls below. “Very quick thinking.” Then he smiled. “But not quick enough.”
They were herded down to the docking bay. A woman and four teenagers surrounded by four armed guards.
Nyha wondered at the overkill of it when they arrived in the big loading area to find everyone else from the archaeological and support teams, some forty people in all, held by just six.
“Settle down,” the man with brown eyes shouted when a cacophony of voices rose up as soon as they entered the area. “Most of you will be leaving shortly. We're giving the authorities at the cordon permission to bring in a ship that'll take you all, and we'll be ferrying you across to it fifteen at a time in the pick-up.”
There was abrupt silence at that, and Nyha wondered if everyone felt the same sense of relief she did.
“What about my artifacts?” Professor Faro called out.
“Your artifacts?” one of the guards sneered. “Ours now.”
This was about the artifacts?
Nyha focused on the man who seemed to be the leader here. He looked in control, and completely sane, but no one could take these artifacts, sell them, and not get caught. They were unmistakably from Cepi. There had to be more to it than that.
As she watched him, he leaned in close to one of the women on his crew.
“Who the hell brought in a genuine believer?” he murmured to her. “I thought Cors weeded out the idiots.”
“I thought so, too,” she murmured back.
Nyha frowned, trying to work it out, when Faro's voice suddenly rose. “You have no right to the stones. No right!”
“Enough.” The leader stepped forward, shooting a disgusted look in the direction of the guard who'd started the argument with Faro. “No one says another word.”
He turned back, looked Nyha in the eye and pointed at her. “Except for you.”
He started walking toward the canteen, and raised an arm, flicking his hand forward. “Bring them.”
At his order, the woman he'd spoken to earlier jabbed her laz into Nyha’s shoulder.
“Move.”
Nyha looked at the girls, hoping they just me
ant for her to go, but the other guards were prodding them too, so it looked like they were keeping them together.
She held out a hand and Vik took it, and the others all latched on, so they walked in a row, linked together.
As they passed the archeological team, she caught sight of Faro and Garett standing together. Faro's expression was one of horror, Garett's was stone cold and absolutely without emotion.
Catano had maneuvered herself to the edge of the crowd, and as Nyha passed her she flicked her gaze to Nyha's ear, then rubbed a finger over her lips.
Nyha frowned at her, then she was shoved by the woman and stumbled forward.
Oh, she got it.
Catano wanted her to keep quiet about the comm set. As if she hadn't figured that out for herself.
But it also told her Catano had lied to her.
She hadn't been rebooting the comm set. She'd deliberately set it to the same wavelength as Mak's. Which meant she suspected something was wrong when Captain Farga's transmission had cut off.
Why hadn't she said something?
And why not set her own comm set to connect with Mak's? Why do it to Nyha's?
Because no one here took her seriously.
The answer came swiftly, and hit all the right notes for Nyha. Catano knew Nyha and her girls would be the last group anyone would expect to be in clandestine communications with a security guard.
Although . . . had Mak been scooped up with everyone else?
She was sure he'd been running when they spoke a little earlier, so maybe he'd gotten away.
She hoped, she really hoped, that someone had.
4
Mak slipped into the long, narrow space—more a tunnel than a room—that ran inside the strange circular walls of the ruins. He'd hoped that Dr. Bartali was in here somewhere with her four charges, but it was empty. There were at least five other such places, and he'd sent a member of his team to check each one, although this would have been the closest to the exit she'd been aiming for.
It strengthened his fear that the reason for her current silence was she'd been captured. And now he had the added worry of not knowing, if or when she spoke to him again, whether she was doing it voluntarily or with a laz to her head.
“No one here, Captain.” Vasouvy's voice sparked in his ear and broke through his thoughts, and then the others reported in one by one.
“Right, move back to the new position. Erenn, set up the equipment and see if you can access the scanners. I'd like to see what's going on in the ruins.”
They murmured assent, and for a moment, left in the quiet, Mak wondered whether he should follow his own order, or sneak into the ruins. Take a look around.
If he was caught it would endanger his whole team, but he wanted to. He really wanted to.
He curbed what he realized with surprise was fury, and made his way silently back to the two large rocks leaning against each other that lay close to the ruins.
It was Vasouvy who'd discovered that the narrow gap between them led to an open space inside. Mak knew he'd never have tried to wriggle in there, 'just to see where it went', and it was, in fact, an effort for him, Yari, Goojie and Fren to get in.
It was worth it, though. Ever since Vasouvy had found it, they'd marked it as their fallback position.
“Captain Carep, what kind of shit storm are you standing in, and why am I having to call you about it, instead of you calling me?”
At the sound of the unfamiliar voice booming down his comm, Mak dropped behind the closest rock. His uniform was in high reflection mode, making him almost completely invisible, but he wasn't going to stand around having a chat in the open.
“Who is this?” He kept his voice low, but his brain was working again, and he realized the hostage-takers were unlikely to contact him for a chat before they took him out.
“Vice-admiral Sinjin, commander of the Cepi cordon.” Sinjin's voice was slightly rough and very curt, and while Mak had never met her personally, he knew she had a reputation for straight talk. “Now, what the fuck is going on?”
“Vice-admiral, are you sure this link is secure?” He was dead serious, although he understood she might interpret his question as insubordination. She was Kalastoni, and not part of his direct chain of command, but technically, while on Cepi, he did report to her.
That he and his team were here at all would be galling to her. It was the final muscle flexing of his planet, Arkhor. The Arkhorans had discovered Cepi, and they'd managed to keep a grip on it even as their claim became more and more tenuous.
The Arkhoran insistence on a secret team to keep watch before the Kalastoni made it all go boom was the last, petty power play in a game that had begun back when the Kalastoni were first Rediscovered by Arkhor and embraced into the bosom of the Verdant String, very much the backward hicks of the alliance.
But Sinjin's annoyance at Mak's current placement was the least of his worries.
The problem between them now was trust.
He stayed where he was, making himself as small a target as possible behind his rock. He wasn't going any closer to his team's new hidey-hole until the transmission was over.
“By secure you mean . . . ?” Sinjin asked, and he didn't miss the edge to her tone.
“I mean can I be tracked through this signal, or can someone, either part of the cordon or elsewhere, listen in?”
“You think what's happening is an inside job?”
Mak let a beat pass in silence. “When the pick-up came in, I was given assurance it was cleared. That was obviously a lie. So I have to wonder whose lie. I chose to report directly back to Arkhor, rather than take the risk of speaking to the wrong person amongst your staff.”
“You can be sure heads are already rolling over the all-clear that was given to that vessel.” The admiral's tone was icy. “So, you're telling me you've informed Arkhor?”
“We have, but with the relays, it'll take hours to reach them. They'll be coming, but it will be a day at least before they arrive.”
Sinjin made a sound of disgust, and Mak grinned, because he knew she'd be annoyed at the thought of having to deal with Arkhoran military warships in her own solar system, and he was Arkhoran enough to find that funny.
The fact that Arkhor, and to a lesser extent Halatia, had kept their claws in Cepi for so long, even though it was a minor moon of Kalastoni, was a festering blister on the Verdant String alliance, and had been for at least the last two hundred years.
Now that Halatia was no more, Kalastoni resentment had focused on Arkhor, and Mak wondered how much of the glee with which some Kalastoni were anticipating the destruction of Cepi wasn't in part a reaction to the fact that they'd never really been able to claim it, despite it being theirs.
“I can assure you, this is a very secure link, so let me get back to my original question. What's going on down there?”
“The pick-up scheduled to fetch Dr. Bartali and her four charges came in on time, but the crew is either dead or imprisoned onboard. My last contact with the main building was that the team who'd taken the vessel had shot at least one security guard and were rounding everyone up.”
“Who's your contact?” Sinjin's voice was sharp.
“With respect, given I think there's a breach in the cordon team, I'm not going to tell you.” If they didn't know about Catano, it needed to stay that way, and no one would look at the Halatian doctor unless he pointed her out to them.
“We've got contacts in the ruin, too, and none of them have gotten back to us,” Sinjin said. “I might have to compel your superiors into telling me who your contact is, so I can find out about my people.”
Now that was interesting. Catano had tried to work out if the Kalastoni had anyone on Cepi reporting to the cordon's senior command. She hadn't managed to find anyone, but there obviously were a few.
“If I get the order, then so be it.” Mak checked the time, knew his team would be starting to worry that he wasn't back yet. “I have to move. Do you have any information abo
ut the hostage-takers that I don't?”
“Will you be cooperating with me from now on?” Sinjin asked.
“I'll cooperate with you directly,” Mak agreed. He would need cordon help and he had to trust someone. Unless Sinjin was being offered a massive sum, he couldn't see her being bribed into putting her own planet in danger by delaying Cepi's destruction.
“Good enough,” Sinjin said. “Someone calling himself Veld got in touch. He's planning on sending over most of the hostages, more because it'll make life easier for him than because of any compassionate impulse is my guess. And he doesn't need them anyway, he has the perfect hostages in hand.”
“Perfect hostages?” Mak asked, wondering who that could be. He'd seen the file on every person at the ruin, and there were no truly high-profile figures here at the moment.
“Dr. Bartali and the four young women with her.” Sinjin let that settle for a moment. “If we try to capture any of his people when they hand over the archeological team and their staff, they've threatened to kill one of the girls.”
Oh.
Mak wondered how he could have been so blind. So stupid.
The doctor and her young charges were Halatian. He'd thought of them all as Halatian since this started, even though the girls at least had never known any planet but Arkhor, but he'd never fully grasped the implications . . . This was truly a shit storm, as Sinjin had said.
If there was one guilt button everyone in the whole Verdant String had, it was the Halatians.
The doc and her girls embodied the most vulnerable, the most tragic, and the most brave of survivors. Orphans of the greatest tragedy in Verdant String history, whose fate had shown both the worst and the best of the Verdant String citizens.
It was memories of the worst, though, that made all Halatians walking reminders of some of the darkest moral choices ever made.
They were, as Sinjin said, the perfect hostages.
Who'd thought it was a good idea to bring them here?
“I see you appreciate the scope of the disaster,” Sinjin said into the silence.
Orphans In the Black: A Space Opera Anthology Page 40
