Lexi smiled rather grimly. “I have a different idea. It’s like this. Your civilization, well mine too, now, since I’m here to stay, has many parallels to America’s old Wild West,” she thoughtfully said. “There is no law outside of the small areas the Accord worlds can patrol. Where there are laws, there is no way to enforce them. It takes a long time to get from place to place. Crimes can be committed and it will be weeks or months before anyone hears about them, if they ever do. There are certainly other similarities.”
Geena said, “Jis said some of the miners are from Earth. Raiding a Level-Two world for slave labor is certainly illegal throughout the Accord. Even Helga stands behind that law.”
Lexi nodded, her expression still thoughtful. “What I can’t decide is whether I’m Artemus Gordon or Jim West.” Not one of Will Smith’s best roles, but hey that spider thing Dr. Loveless made was pretty cool and other than the era, somewhat believable. Well, maybe not so much. Kevin Kline was amazingly great in A Fish Called Wanda. That’s not relevant, I suppose. But he was. Once we have Ron and Jis back, I think we’ll screen Silverado. Kevin was totally awesome in that one.
“Yes, you’re right about that,” Geena agreed, “although I don’t know who those people you mentioned are. We had to fight our way out of a few bad situations, Lexi, back when Crane was still alive. I tried to keep us away from those types of jobs afterward. I had a young son for a partner. By the time Ron was grown up enough to look out for himself, it had become an ingrained habit.”
She paused, looking into her iced tea, before taking another sip. “Now that I’ve had time to think about it, that may be why we were going broke. Money seems to be where the danger is. We taught you about the various Accord cultures. With the notable exception of Helga, slavery is illegal everywhere, yet outside of the Accord member worlds, it is rampant. This world is a good example. I don’t know how many thousands of people from your own Earth wind up being collected by slavers, but I know it is a significant number. It’s not just Earth. Other Level One and Two worlds suffer the same predation. We all look the other way because there is nothing we can do about it.”
“That’s certainly depressing, Geena, but not our immediate concern. Let me tell you what I’m thinking of doing. Urania operates under Cardin registry,” Lexi mused. “Assuming we weaponized the ship, how many Cardin laws would we break just by flying in over the slave camp and shooting the place up? That was rhetorical. In order to rescue those people, we need to weaponize Urania. Something we aren’t allowed to do. I’d risk it to save them, but maybe we don’t have to. You know as well as I do, sometimes you just have to think outside the box.” She managed a small laugh. “Sometimes you just need to watch movies you know ahead of time are going to be stupid because you love the actors. We’re going to build Urania an exoskeleton.”
“Pardon me; you’re going to do what?” Urania asked.
Lexi laughed. “Picture an Earth spider. Now scale it and picture yourself as the thorax. Unless we go rogue, I can’t arm you until we switch your planet of registry, but, and somebody correct me if I’m wrong, I can do whatever I damn well please with a remotely controlled exo. I don’t think it will take long to build what I have in mind. We’ve already gutted your interior. That debris and the plating material in the hold give us plenty of raw material to feed to the fabricators. I can scale up my ray-guns in a day or two making the exo deadly once we mount them on it, on the exo, not on you. Unbelievably deadly. I haven’t figured out yet how to limit their range, so you’ll have to be careful firing them. As an enormous spider with eight robotic legs, you stroll in and crush the defenses at the mining camp. While you’re doing that, Geena and I infiltrate the main compound to get Jis and the others out.”
“You want me to scuttle into battle?” Urania asked incredulously with a decided emphasis on the word “scuttle.” “I won’t do it. I’m a starship, Jim, not a damn bug! It’s demeaning.”
“Look, Bones,” Lexi said reasonably, “think of it as going in wearing a disguise like they do in the Mission Impossible movies. We can’t install any weapons, we can’t arm you, without getting into major legal trouble if and when word gets back to the Accord. But we can put as many freakin’ tanks on the surface of this planet as we want.”
She smiled. “I want to build a tank big enough and sturdy enough to carry you. Technically, the weapons we’ll deploy will be on the tank. You’ll just be remotely controlling them from a few feet away. I want to arm the pigeon launchers too; smaller antipersonnel-sized beams I think. I’m going to need you to control them as well. Multi-tasking at its finest. But you can do it. You’re controlling dozens of subsystems now. A few more should be easy for you. The pigeon launchers go in with Geena and me when we breach the chalet.”
“Lexi,” Geena said, hesitantly, “I know you think you’ve solved the problem of hand-held ray-guns. You haven’t tested them. Everyone in the Accord thinks we’re at least hundreds or possibly even thousands of years away from developing that level of technology. How sure are you that they’ll work?”
Lexi nodded, finishing her lunch. “That’s a reasonable concern, love. Ideally, we’d go outside and vaporize a few boulders with one. I’m afraid they may have us under satellite observation, which would take away the element of surprise. The exoskeleton may confuse them, but hopefully, they’ll assume it’s scaffolding, especially as we’ll be climbing all over the hull drilling holes and attaching it. You trusted me with the redesigned anti-geriatric meds. I’m going to have to ask you to trust me again this time. They’ll work.” She shrugged. “Maybe too well.”
“Geena,” Urania said, “I watched and recorded everything she did. I very nearly understand the science she developed. And it is new science. She didn’t build on existing science. As far as I can tell, she has implemented ray-guns. They’ll serve the purpose.” She added privately to Lexi over her comm, “As long as they don’t explode when you pull the trigger.”
Geena nodded, a thoughtful expression on her face. “I do trust you, darling. It’s just that ray-guns are science fiction. Everyone knows it. They aren’t possible. If you’ve made them reality, I’m wondering how many other impossible things you’re going to do. You’re brilliant. I have no doubt of that. But you’re human. Humans make mistakes.”
Lexi’s expression turned momentarily grim. “Too many lives depend on us. I can’t afford to.”
Chapter 25
Underground
“Ron,” Lexi said, “I’m so sorry you were injured. We knew going into this that we were taking risks. Maybe we should have turned down the job like Geena wanted. I’m the one who pushed for this. I’m just truly sorry, love.”
“No, Lexi, you were right to push us in this direction,” Geena said. “Ron, Jis pointed out, correctly, that there should be investigators all over these disappearances. They’ve been going on for two years. We’re the ones who figured out how to find this place. We’re the only ones. Without us, none of these people would stand a chance of rescue. It had to be us.”
Lexi said, “Thanks, love. Ron, we’re working on a plan to get you out of there. What happened?”
“Couldn’t be helped,” Ron said in response to Lexi’s question, “I was too damn close to a blasting charge. I can’t talk now, people will hear me. But I’m OK. I’m not at full effectiveness and a lot of me hurts, but nothing’s broken. I’ll call you when I can.”
The fact that he couldn’t talk about it didn’t stop the horrifying experience from replaying in his mind. He almost died in that blast. So had the little girl.
The girl’s name was Nina. She didn’t talk much. She was twelve years old. Her brother Toby was only a year older. The adult miners on the crew looked out for them as best they could, finding things for them to help with that didn’t overtax them physically. The substandard rations were taking a harder toll on the weaker members of the crew.
That afternoon, the entire work crew hurriedly retreated maybe eight or nine hundred yards down t
he tunnel and around a corner after the overseer showed up, informing them of the decision to open the shaft further using blasting sticks. The thirty-nine of them working this shaft gathered there, far enough away to be safe, when they all heard a panicked Toby yell, “Nina?” Then, even more loudly, “Where’s Nina?”
When he started to try to push through the group, the adults restrained him. At that point Ron yelled, “Hold Toby. I’ll go back for her.”
Someone behind him, a man, but he didn’t know who, yelled, “Hurry, Ron!”
He raced back down the corridor at the best pace he could manage considering the narrow, jagged tunnel and the low ceiling overhead. If he bashed his head in on a low-hanging protrusion, it wouldn’t do anybody any good. Fortunately, the lighting units attached along the ceilings and walls lit his way. He knew he had no more than a minute or two to find the kid. He hoped he had at least that minute or two. Wishful thinking could get him killed.
He found the small girl collapsed on the floor of the tunnel no more than thirty feet from the blasting sticks. She was whimpering, rocking back and fourth, holding a scraped and bloody leg close to her chest. She had fallen to the back of the crew in the rush to get away from the forthcoming explosion. Running to catch up to the others, she tripped on the uneven floor hand-carved out of the hard basalt crust of the planet by the miners.
With a painfully injured leg and an ankle twisted so badly it refused to support her weight when she tried to stand, she didn’t know what to do. She could barely think at all through the agony. She knew she couldn’t crawl far enough to save herself. If the adults even noticed she was missing in time, no one would come back for her. No one could because of the blasting sticks the bad man stuck to the end of the tunnel. So she sat on the hard, uneven stone floor, whimpering and waiting to die.
Ron scooped her up, scaring her because not only hadn’t she seen him coming, he didn’t even stop, picking her up on the run and heading down the tunnel back the way he came and away from the explosive pack. The poor kid weighed almost nothing. Even at the best speed he could manage, he wasn’t fast enough, making no more than two hundred and twenty feet before the device detonated with a deafening roar. Somewhere before, possibly on Earth, he encountered the phrase, “the clap of doom.” Now he knew what that phrase meant. He wished it had remained a mystery.
The blast lifted him off of his feet, hurling him down the tunnel. His hand cradled Nina’s head against his chest with his forearm over her spine, trying to protect her while he tumbled in the concussive wave. He felt it when his shoulder and rib cage scraped along the wall of the rough hewn tunnel. Or maybe that had been the floor. Whichever it was sent him spinning as well as tumbling. It was also the last he remembered until he woke up with someone splashing some of their precious ration of water in his face.
He wasn’t too proud to groan as he came to. “Did Nina make it?” he asked while still flat on his back.
Aunt Shirley, one of the women on this crew, was cradling her while an anxious Toby looked on. He still didn’t know why they all called her “Aunt.” “No, not OK,” Aunt Shirley said. “But she’s alive thanks to you. Are you OK?”
Ron sat up. Everything hurt. “I couldn’t hear you over the noise in my ears. What did you say?”
“She’s alive, Ron.” She practically yelled it this time. She also gave him a thumbs up, just in case.
He nodded his head and immediately wished he hadn’t. “Would a couple of you help me stand up?”
Two men stepped over. With one on each side, they got him to a standing position. His left shoulder and ribcage hurt like hell and his right side felt bruised. Badly bruised. The slight dizziness he felt on standing didn’t completely pass until the next morning, but at least it wasn’t so bad that he felt like he was going to fall over.
Jasos, the man nominally in charge of this crew, looked at his sorry, tired group of miners. “We have another two hours on our shift, give or take. We’ll give the dust another ten minutes to settle out. Then let’s start clearing the rubble from the blast. Nina, I want you to sit here and rest. Toby, your job is to take care of her for now. Don’t argue with me, it’s an important job. Ron, I don’t know about you. If you want the rest of the day off, take it. You can sit with the kids. The rest of us, let’s go move rock. Keep your eyes open for any ore that may have shaken loose.”
Ron stayed with the miners as they went back to work. He found that bending over to pick up rock hurt his side so much he almost passed out again. Since he couldn’t manage that, he took the heavy stones as the others handed them to him and walked them to the motorized mine-carts. Then he went back for another load. As long as he didn’t bend over, he could tolerate the pain. The chunk that it took two of the stronger men to lift almost did him in but he managed to drop it into a cart. He doubted he would have been able to pick it up by himself even if he wasn’t injured, but then, simply carrying was easier than lifting.
The explosion happened around thirty-two hours before he heard the voices of Lexi, Geena and Urania for the first time in weeks. He didn’t want to complain, but they needed to know that in any action, he was going to be less than one-hundred percent effective. He was healing faster than he would have expected, a side-effect of the anti-aging meds Lexi developed. Still, he remained physically compromised.
“Look, I need to cut this short now. Keep me apprised. Love you all. Ron, out.”
Urania sent, “Take care, Ron.”
Chapter 26
Hardware
The loaded freighter finally lifted the evening after Urania’s arrival. One less thing for them to worry about. Lexi was of two minds about it leaving. It was probably large enough to evacuate the seven-hundred miners. If they could have taken it, they wouldn’t need a transport. But they weren’t ready. Besides, she couldn’t come up with any ideas as to how to take three targets nearly simultaneously. They just didn’t have the assets.
Over the next three days, they talked with Ron on the rare occasions when he was above ground and positioned where others couldn’t overhear him. He was still angry, but comforted that a plan to rescue everybody was in place. He could even picture the pigeon launchers being used as tanks. That made sense; he built them like small tanks.
What he was having trouble with was the concept of Urania with legs. Well, that and the fact that Lexi thought she could mount working primary beams on those legs. He didn’t argue against the idea. He certainly didn’t have a better plan. He thought about it overnight, coming to the conclusion Aeolus wouldn’t be breaking any Accord laws arming the exoskeleton. He reminded himself when the team was out of options trying to return home from Earth, it was his girlfriend who came up with idea of refueling in Saturn’s atmosphere. She went on to design the hardware which made it work.
She was doing it again. Implementing a scheme that no one else would have even thought up.
They were all working on subvocalizing over the comm-gear, but at this point all they ever got was something like, “Ag bleh gargle rituin smad.” That was beyond Urania’s ability to clean up into something intelligible and was meaningless in all of the twenty-five languages Lexi was fluent in, English being one of them.
Jis was still comfortable, with nothing new to report other than developing a taste for lizard bacon. No one was allowed near the towers that might or might not contain missiles. Locked gates blocking the hallways ensured that. Getting through required both a key and a biometric scan. The guards she asked only stared back at her. If they didn’t answer, she was unable to tell whether or not they were lying. Whatever anxiety they emoted when questioned could mean anything. Or nothing. Maybe they had been warned about their Ackalonian prisoner.
She used the chalet’s gym facilities daily. She decided she liked her budding muscles and was willing to work to keep them. Not that what she developed during the ten days on Urania was very impressive, but it was a start. Frankly, she liked the way Lexi looked. At least she had a goal. None of the off-shift gua
rds working out in the gym, despite jumping in enthusiastically to spot her on the free-weights, would chat to her about the chalet’s defenses either. They didn’t even talk about their home worlds. Telepathy would be a useful skill.
Three days passed uneventfully. They talked with Ron mornings and evenings each day when he was above ground. He made contact when he could step away from the others. There was nothing the other slaves could do to help. The overseers were crueler than there was any call for. Standing by, watching relatively helpless people be knocked around bothered him greatly. Like Jis said, he was angry, perpetually angry. It was almost too much when he witnessed a man near him be shot for moving too slowly. There was nothing anyone could do to save him from bleeding out.
They chatted with Jis somewhat more frequently as it was easier for her to find privacy in her room behind her closed door. When discussing the plan for getting them out, Jis said, “You remember when I said I didn’t know much about military hardware? That’s true. However, I’m copied on reports concerning new ship trials, including weapon tests. Lexi, you know I trust you, but your beam weapons can’t be as powerful as you think. I don’t even understand how you can power the things without hooking them into Urania’s fusion plants.”
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