Prisoners of Tomorrow (107 page)

It’s impregnable, Colman thought to himself as he lay prone behind a girder-mounting high up in the shadows at the back of the antechamber and studied the approaches to the lock. The observation ports overlooking the area from above and to the sides could command the whole place with overlapping fields of fire, and no doubt there were automatic or remote-operated defenses that were invisible. True, there was plenty of cover for the first stages of an assault, but the final rush would be suicidal . . . and probably futile since the lock doors looked strong enough to stop anything short of a tactical missile. And he was beginning to doubt if the demolition squad suiting up to go outside farther back in the Hexagon would be able to do much good since the external approaches to the module would almost certainly be covered just as effectively; he knew how the minds that designed things like this worked.

“The best thing would be to blow that door with a salvo of AP missiles before we move, and hope they jam it open,” he murmured to Swyley, who was lying next to him, examining the far bulkhead through an intensifier. “Then maybe drench the lock with incendiary and go in under smoke.”

“That’s only the first door,” Swyley reminded him, lowering the instrument from his eyes. “There are two of them. Whatever we do to that one won’t stop them from closing the second one.”

“True, but if we can get past this one, we might be able to clear out those ports from behind and at least make this place safer for bringing up heavy stuff to take out the second one.”

“And then what?” Swyley said. “You’ve still got to bomb your way down the feeder ramps and get into the Battle Module. Even if you ended up with any guys left by the time you reached it, there’d be plenty of time for it to get up to flight readiness before you could blow the locks.”

“Got any better ideas?” For once Swyley didn’t.

At that moment the emergency tone sounded simultaneously from both their communicators, and warning bleeps and wails went up from places in the labyrinth all around. They looked at each other for a second. The noise died away as Colman fished his unit from his breast pocket and held it in front where both of them could watch it, while Swyley deactivated his own. A few seconds later, the faces of Wellesley, Borftein, and Lechat appeared on the tiny screen. Colman closed his eyes for a moment and breathed a long, drawn-out sigh of relief. “They made it,” he whispered. “They’re all in there.”

“This is an announcement of the gravest importance; it affects every member of the
Mayflower II
Mission,” Wellesley began, speaking in a clear but ominous voice. “I am addressing you all in my full capacity as Director of this Mission. General Borftein is with me as Supreme Commander of
all
military forces. Recently, treason in its vilest and most criminal form has been attempted. That attempt has failed. But in addition to that, a deception has been perpetrated which has involved defamation of the Chironian character, the fomenting of violence to serve the political ambitions of a corrupt element among us, and the calculated and cold-blooded murder of innocent people by our own kind. I do not have to remind you . . .”

“That has to give us the rest of the ship and the surface,” Swyley said. “If the Army gets its act together and grabs Sterm before he gets a chance to head this way, then we might not have to go in there at all.”

Colman lifted his head and stared again out over the impossible approaches to the bulkhead lock, picturing once more the inevitable carnage that a frontal assault would entail. Who on either side would stand to gain anything that mattered to them? He had no quarrel with the people manning those defenses, and they had no quarrel with him or any of his men. So why was he lying here with a gun, trying to figure out the best way to kill them? Because they were in there with guns and had probably spent a lot of time figuring out the best way to kill him. None of them knew why they were doing it. It was simply that it had always been done.

On the screen of the communicator, the view closed in on Celia as she began speaking in a slightly quavery but determined voice. But Colman only half heard. He was trying to make himself think the way a Chironian would think.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Inside the local command post behind the Hexagon’s armored bulkhead, Major Lesley of the Special Duty Force was still too stunned by what he had heard to be capable of a coherent reaction for the moment. He stared at the companel where a screen showed a view from the Columbia District, where the SD guard commander had entered the Communications Center under a truce flag some minutes previously to talk with Borftein, and tried to separate the conflicting emotions in his head. Captain Jarvis, Lesley’s adjutant officer, and Lieutenant Chaurez watched in silence while around the command post the duty staff averted their eyes and occupied themselves with their own thoughts. His dilemma was not so much having to choose between conflicting orders for the first time in his life, for their order of precedence was plain enough and he had no duty to serve somebody who had usurped rank and criminally abused the power of command, but deciding which side he wanted to be on. Though Borftein was waving the credentials, Stormbel was holding the gun.

Jarvis scanned the screen on the far side of the post. “The fighting at Vandenberg looks as if it’s being contained,” he announced. “Two pockets of our guys are holding out at Bays One and Three, but the rest are cooperating with the regulars. The regulars have pretty well secured the whole module already, Stormbel won’t be getting any help from the surface through there.”

“What’s the latest from the surface?” Chaurez inquired.

“Confused but quiet at the barracks,” Jarvis told him. “A lot of shooting inside the base at Canaveral. Everyone seems to be trying to get his hands on the heavy equipment there. A shuttle’s on fire in one of the launch bays.”

Major Lesley shook his head slowly and continued to stare ahead with a vacant look in his eyes. “This shouldn’t be happening,” he murmured. “They’re not the enemy. They shouldn’t be fighting each other.”

Jarvis and Chaurez glanced at each other. Then Jarvis looked away as a new report came up on one of the screens. “Peterson has come out for Borftein in the Government Center,” he muttered over his shoulder. “I guess it’s all over in the Columbia District. That has to give them the whole Ring.”

“So they’ll be coming for the Spindle next,” Chaurez said. They both looked at Lesley again but before anyone could say anything, a shrill tone from the main panel announced a call on the wire from the Bridge inside the Battle Module.

Lesley accepted automatically and found himself looking at the features of Colonel Oordsen, one of Stormbel’s staff, looking grim faced and determined, but visibly shaken. “Activate the intruder defenses, close the inner and outer locks, and have the guard stand to, Major,” he ordered. “Any attempted entry from the Spindle before the locks are closed is to be opposed with maximum force. Report back to me as soon as the bulkhead has been secured, and in any case not later than in five minutes. Is that understood?”

At that moment a local alarm sounded inside the command post. Within seconds the sounds of men running to stations came from the passageways and stairs to the rear. One of the duty crew was already flipping switches to collect report summaries, and Chaurez got up to go to the outer observation room just as the Watch Officer appeared in the doorway from the other side. “There are troops approaching the lock,” the Watch Officer announced. “Regulars—thirty or more of them.”

Leaving Colonel Oordsen peering out of the screen, Lesley rose and walked through the door in the steel wall dividing the command post from the observation room and looked down through one of the ports at the approaches to the lock below. Chaurez watched from the doorway, ignoring Oordsen’s indignant voice as it floated through from behind. “Major Lesley, you have not been dismissed. Come back at once. What in hell’s going on there? What are those alarms? Lesley, do you hear me?”

But Lesley was not listening as he gazed down at the platform below, which fanned outward from the arc lights above the lock to become indistinct in the darkness of the antechamber. Figures were moving slowly from the shadows by the transit tubes and freight rails, spread thinly at the back, but closing up as they converged with the lines of the platform. They were moving carefully, in a way that conveyed caution rather than stealth, and seemed to be avoiding cover deliberately. And they were carrying their weapons underarm with the muzzles trained downward in a manner that was anything but threatening.

“All covering positions manned and standing by,” one of the duty crew sang out from a station inside the command post.

“LCP’s standing by and ready to fire,” another voice reported.

“Intruder defenses primed and ready to activate.”

“Lock at condition orange and ready to close.”

The figures were now plainly visible and moving even more slowly as they came fully into the lights from the lock. They were regular infantry, Lesley could see. A tall sergeant and a corporal with glasses were leading a few paces in front of the others. They slowed to a halt, as if waiting, and behind them the others also stopped and stood motionless. Lesley’s jaw tightened as he stared down through the observation port. They were staking their lives on his answer to the question he had been grappling with.

Jarvis appeared suddenly in the doorway beside Chaurez. “Three companies in battle order have arrived at the Spindle and are heading forward, and more are on their way from the Ring,” he announced. “Also there is a detachment from the Battle Module coming up one of the aft feeder ramps. They must be coming back to close the lock.”

Lesley looked at the two of them, but they said nothing. There was nothing more they could tell him. He could close the lock and commit himself to the protection of the Battle Module’s armaments; alternatively, with the added strength of the regulars who had arrived below, he could hold the lock open against the SDs coming from the Battle Module until the rest of the Army arrived. It was time for him to decide his answer.

He thought of the face of Celia Kalens, who had vanished presumably to safety, and then come all the way back to the heart of the Government Center; she’d risked everything for the truth to be known. Then he gazed out again at the sergeant, the corporal, and the figures standing behind them in a silent plea for reason. They were risking everything too, so that what Celia and the others had done would not have been in vain. Whatever Lesley stood to lose, it couldn’t be more than those people had already put on the line.

“Tell the men to stand down,” he said quietly to Jarvis. “Deprime the intruder systems and revert the lock to condition green. Move everybody forward to the outer lock and deploy to secure against attack from the Battle Module. Chaurez, get those men down there inside. We’re going to need all the help we can get.” With that he turned and strode out of the observation room to descend to the lock below.

Jarvis and Chaurez caught each other’s eye. After a moment, Jarvis breathed a sigh of relief. Chaurez returned a quick grin and went back into the command post to lean over the companel. “Lieutenant,” Oordsen demanded angrily from the screen. “Where is Major Lesley? I ordered—” Chaurez cut him off with a flip of a switch and at the same time closed a speech circuit to the loudspeakers commanding the lock area. “Okay, you guys, we’re standing down,” he said into the microphone stem projecting from the panel. “Get in here as quick as you can. We’ve got trouble coming up a feeder ramp on the other side.”

As Chaurez finished speaking, an indicator announced an incoming call from the Government Center. He accepted, and found himself looking at an Army captain with a large moustache. “Forward Security Command Post,” Chaurez acknowledged.

“Sirocco, D Company commander, Second Infantry Brigade. Is your commanding officer there?”

“I’m sorry, sir. He just went down to the lock.”

“What about his adjutant?” Sirocco asked.

“Gone forward to the outer lock.”

Sirocco looked worried. “Look, there is a force on its way forward to occupy the nose. We want to avoid any senseless bloodshed. Those locks must be kept open. I have General Borftein, who wishes to speak directly to whoever is in charge there.”

“I can speak for them,” Chaurez said. “You can tell the general that the news is good.”

Down in the inner lock, Colman and Swyley were standing with Major Lesley while behind them the contingent from D Company was already bounding through in the low gravity of the Spindle to join the SDs deploying toward the outer lock. “You took a hell of a chance, Sergeant,” Lesley said.

“Fifty-fifty,” Colman answered. “It would have been zero the other way.”

“You think pretty smart.”

“We’re all having to learn how to do that.”

Lesley held his eye for a second, then nodded. “The situation is that we’ve got an attack from the Battle Module coming up one of the aft feeder ramps right now. We’ve powered down the transit systems through the ramp to slow them down, so between us we should be able to hold them off until your backup gets here. How long should they take?” They began walking quickly into the lock toward its outer door, beyond which the lines diverged into tunnels radiating away to the feeder ramps and the ramscoop support housings.

“How far have they penetrated?” Colman asked.

“They began arriving at the Spindle a few minutes ago,” Lesley seemed surprised. “How come you didn’t know?”

“It’s been kind of. . . an unorthodox operation.”

Ahead of them, Jarvis had positioned soldiers to cover all of the tunnel mouths, with the strongest force concentrated around the outlet from the feeder ramp along which the SDs from the Battle Module were approaching, and he had retired to a sheltered observation platform from which he could direct operations with a clear view into the tunnel. Lesley, Colman, and Swyley moved behind a stanchion where Driscoll and a couple more from D Company were crouched with their weapons. A few seconds later the soldiers all around tensed expectantly.