Prisoners of Tomorrow (106 page)

The next part was going to be the trickiest. The information obtained by Stanislau had confirmed that the outside entrances to the complex, which had already been bypassed, were the most strongly guarded, and the three inner access points to the Communications Center itself—the main foyer at the front, the rear lobby, and a side entrance used by the staff—were covered by less formidable, three-man security teams. The problem with these security teams lay not so much with the physical resistance they might offer, but with their ability to close the Communications Center’s electrically operated, armored doors and raise the alarm at the first sign of anything suspicious, which would leave Sirocco’s force shut outside with no hope of achieving their objective and facing the bleak prospect of either fighting it out or surrendering to the guard reinforcements that would show up within minutes. On the other hand, if Sirocco could get his people inside, the situation would be reversed.

Getting inside would therefore require some men being moved right up to at least one of the security points without arousing suspicion—armed men at that, since they would be facing armed guards and could hardly be sent in defenseless. Malloy had again discouraged ideas of attempting to impersonate SDs. The only alternative came from Armley—a bluff, backed up with information manufactured by Stanislau, to the effect that regular troops were being posted to guard duties inside the complex as well as SDs, and providing reliefs from D Company. Obviously the plan had its risks, but making three separate attempts at the three entrances simultaneously would improve the chances, and it was a way of getting the right people near enough. In the end, Sirocco agreed. Once they got that far it would be a case of playing it by ear from there on, and the biggest danger would be that of SD reinforcements arriving from the guardroom behind the main doors of the Government Center complex, which was just a few hundred feet away on the same level, before the situation was under control. That was the part that Bernard Fallows had come along to handle.

Stanislau stood back from the compack and announced that the changes were completed. Sirocco peered at the screen, checked the entries in the revised schedule that Stanislau had produced, and nodded. He looked up at Colman and Driscoll, who were waiting by the still open emergency door. “Okay, the last ball’s rolling,” he told them. “On your way. Good luck.”

“You too,” Colman said. He and Driscoll left for the forward section of the Spindle to join Swyley, who, if all was going well, would already be organizing the men drifting in from various parts of the ship to block off the Battle Module.

Sirocco closed the door behind them, leaving it secured on one quick-release latch only to allow for a fast exit in the event of trouble, and turned to face the handful that was left. “Let’s go,” he said.

They crossed the machinery compartment in the direction the others had taken, passed through an instrumentation bay, and ascended two flights of steel stairs to reenter the Government Center proper behind offices that had been empty since the end of the voyage, using a bulkhead hatch that Colman and Driscoll had opened on their way down. There was no sign of the others who had gone ahead. Here the group split three ways.

Stanislau and two others, moving carefully and making use of cover since they were now in a part of the complex that was being used, headed for the storeroom near the front foyer of the Communications Center to join Hanlon’s group, which by now should have been swollen by the arrival of Celia, Malloy, and Fuller; Sirocco took three more to where another group was assembling near the approaches to the rear lobby; and Bernard with his toolbox strolled away casually on his own toward the corridor that connected the Communications Center to the main entrance of the complex.

Fifteen minutes later, inside an office that opened onto a passageway to the rear lobby of the Communications Center, an indignant office manager and two terrified female clerks were sitting on the floor with their hands clasped on the top of their heads, under the watchful eye of one of the soldiers who had burst in suddenly brandishing rifles and assault cannon. “What do you think you’re trying to do?” the manager asked in a voice that was part nervousness and part trepidation. “We don’t want to get mixed up in any of this.”

“Just shut up and keep still, and you won’t,” Sirocco murmured without moving his eye from the edge of the almost-closed door. “We’re just passing through.” After a short silence Sirocco tensed suddenly. “Here they come . . . just two of them with a sergeant,” he whispered. “Get ready. There are two guys talking by the coffee dispenser. We’ll have to grab them too. Faustzman, you take care of them.” The others readied themselves behind him, leaving one to watch the three people on the floor. Outside in the passageway, the SD detail on its way to relieve the security guards at the rear lobby was almost abreast of the door.

“Freeze!”
Sirocco stepped out in front of them with his automatic drawn and Stewart beside him holding a leveled assault cannon. Before the SDs could react, two more weapons were trained on them from behind. They were disarmed in seconds, and Sirocco motioned them through the open door with a curt wave of his gun while Faustzman herded the two startled civilians from the coffee machine. Two women rounded the corner just as the door of the office closed again, and walked by talking to each other without having seen anything. Moments later Sirocco left the office again with two privates. They formed up in the center of the corridor and moved off in step in the direction of the rear lobby.

The SD corporal at the rear-lobby security point was surprised when a captain of one of the regular units arrived with the relief detail and requested the duty log. “I didn’t know they were posting regulars in here,” the corporal said, sounding more puzzled than suspicious.

Sirocco shrugged. “Don’t ask me. I thought it was because a lot of SDs are shipping down to Canaveral. I just do what the orders say.”

“When was it changed, Captain?”

“I don’t know, Corporal. Recently, I guess.”

“I better check those orders.” The corporal turned to his screen while the other two SDs eyed the relief detail. After a few seconds the corporal raised his eyebrows. “You’re right. Oh, well, I guess it’s okay.” The other two SDs relaxed a fraction. The corporal called up the duty log and signed his team off. “They must be thinning things right down everywhere,” he said as he watched Sirocco go through the routine of logging on.

“Looks like it,” Sirocco agreed. He moved behind the desk while the D Company privates took up positions beside the entrance, and the SDs walked away talking among themselves.

A few seconds after the SDs disappeared, figures began popping from a fire exit behind the elevators on the far side of the lobby, and vanishing quickly and silently into the Communications Center.

Meanwhile, the SD sergeant at the main foyer was being conscientious. “I don’t care what the computers say, Hanlon. This doesn’t sound right to me. I have to check it out.” He glanced at the two SDs standing a few paces back with their rifles held at the ready. “Keep an eye on ’em while I call the OOB.” Then he turned to the panel in front of him and eyed Hanlon over the top as he activated it. “Hold it right where you are, buddy.” Hanlon tensed but there was nothing he could do. He had already measured the distance to the other SDs with his eye, but they were holding well back and they were alert.

Suddenly, from the outer entrance to the foyer behind Hanlon, a firm, authoritative voice ordered, “Stop that!” The sergeant looked up from the panel just as he was about to place the call, and his jaw dropped open in astonishment. Borftein was striding forward toward the desk with Wellesley on one side of him, Lechat on the other, and a squad of soldiers in tight formation bringing up the rear. Celia and Malloy were between them. The two SD guards glanced uncertainly at each other.

The SD sergeant half rose from his seat. “Sir, I didn’t—I thought—”

Borftein halted and stood upright and erect before the desk. “Whatever you thought was mistaken. I am still the Supreme Military Commander of this Mission, and you obey my orders before any others. Stand aside.”

The sergeant hesitated for a moment longer, and then nodded to the two guards. Borftein and his party marched through, and Hanlon began posting men to secure the entrance. Another section of B Company materialized from a stairwell to one side of the foyer and vanished into the Communications Center, taking with them a few bewildered secretaries and office workers that they had bumped into on the way.

But no Borftein was present to save the situation at the side entrance. “I don’t know anything about it,” the SD Officer of the Bay said from the screen in reply to the call the guard there had put through. “Those orders are incorrect. Detain those men.” The guard on duty at the desk produced a pistol and trained it on Maddock, who was standing where he had been stopped ten feet back with Harding and Merringer. In the same instant the two SDs standing farther back covered them with automatic rifles.

“Down!”
Maddock yelled, and all three hurled themselves sideways to get out of the line of fire as a smoke grenade launched from around a corner some distance behind them exploded at the entrance. Fire from the entranceway raked the area as the B Company squad broke cover and rushed forward through the smoke, but the first of them was still twenty feet away when the steel door slammed down and alarms began sounding throughout the Government Center.

Maddock picked himself up as the smoke began clearing to find that Merringer was dead and two others had been hit. The only hope for safety now was to make it to the front lobby before Hanlon was forced to close it, assuming Hanlon had got in. “Go first with four men,” he shouted at Harding. “Fire at any SDs who get in the way. They know we’re here now.” He turned to the others. “Grab those two and stick with me. You two, stay with Crosby and cover the rear. Okay, let’s get the hell out.”

But SDs were already pouring out of the guardroom behind the main doors of the Government Center and racing along the corridor toward the communications facility while civilians flattened themselves against the walls to get out of the way, and others who had been working late peered from their offices to see what was happening. The engineer in coveralls who had been working inconspicuously at an opened switchbox through an access panel in the floor closed a circuit, and a reinforced fire-door halfway along the corridor closed itself in the path of the oncoming SDs. The SD major leading the detachment stared numbly at it for a few seconds while his men came to a confused halt around him. “Back to the front stairs,” he shouted. “Go up to Level Three, and come down on the other side.”

On the other side of the fire-door, Bernard dropped his tools and ran back to the front lobby of the Communications Center, praying that the alarm hadn’t been raised from there. Hanlon and Stanislau were waiting outside the entrance with a handful of the others. Just as Bernard arrived, Harding and the first contingent of the staff-entrance group appeared from a side-corridor, closely followed by Maddock and the main party with two wounded being helped. Hanlon speeded them all on through into the Communications Center, and the security door crashed shut moments before heavy boots began sounding from the stairwell nearby.

Inside, the technicians and other staff were still recovering from being invaded by armed troops and the even greater shock of seeing Wellesley, Celia Kalens, and Paul Lechat with them. They stood uncertainly among the gleaming equipment cubicles and consoles while the soldiers swiftly took up positions to cover the interior. Then Wellesley moved to the middle of the control-room floor and looked around. “Who is in charge here?” he demanded. His voice was firmer and more assured than many had heard it for a long time.

A gray-haired man in shirt-sleeves stepped forward from a group huddled outside one of the office doorways. “I am,” he said, “McPherson—Communications and Datacenter Manager.” After a short pause he added, “At your disposal.”

Wellesley acknowledged with a nod and gestured toward Lechat. “Speed is essential,” Lechat said without preamble. “We require access to all channels on the civil, public service, military, and emergency networks immediately . . .”

The Battle Module was a mile-long concentration of megadeath and mass destruction that sat on a base formed by the blunt nose of the Spindle, straddled by two pillars that extended forward to support the ramscoop cone and its field generators, and which contained the ducts to carry back to the midships processing reactors the hydrogen force-fed out of space when the ship was at ramspeed. Sleek, stark, menacing, and bristling with missile pods, defensive radiation projectors, and ports for deploying orbital and remote-operating weapons systems, it contained all of the
Mayflower II
’s
strategic armaments, and could detach if need be to function as an independent, fully self-contained warship.

The Battle Module was not intended to be part of the
Mayflower II
’s
public domain, and restriction of access to it had been one of its primary design criteria. Personnel and supplies entered the module via four enormous tubular extensions, known as feeder ramps, that telescoped from the main body of the ship to terminate in cupolas mating with external ports in the Battle Module, two forward and two aft its midships section. One pair of feeder ramps extended backward and inward from spherical housings at the forward ends of the two ramscoop-support pillars, and the other pair extended forward and inward from the six-sided, forwardmost section of the Spindle, called, appropriately enough, the Hexagon. As if having to get through the feeder ramps wasn’t problem enough, the transit tubes, freight handling conveyors, ammunition rails, and other lines running through to them from the Spindle all came together at a single, heavily protected lock to pass through an armored bulkhead inside the Hexagon. Aft of the bulkhead, the lock faced out over a three-hundred-foot-long, wedge-shaped support platform upon which the various lines and tubes converged through a vast antechamber amid a jungle of girder and structural supports, motor housings, hoisting machinery, ducts, pipes, conduits, maintenance ladders, and catwalks. There was no other way through or round the bulkhead. The only route forward from the Hexagon was through the lock.