The Engines of Dawn (30 page)

The two then left.

Cutter Rausch shook his head. He looked at TeeCee Spooner. "Did you have an open channel?"

The tall young woman nodded. "Yes, sir. The captain's waiting."

"Al, how much of this did you catch?" Rausch asked.

The voice of Captain Cleddman filled the room.
"Most of it."

"What do you want us to do?" Rausch asked.

"Forget about Fontenot for the time being. Right now we've got to find out what those four Enamorati did with that student."

"His com/pager isn't sending out a signal," Rausch said. "Unless he has a pager, we can't track him."

"I'll figure out something. Right now get word down to the gondolas. We 're going to have our own propulsion system in place in the next eight hours or so. If we can do that, we'll be able to relocate ourselves in space and deal with the Enamorati at our leisure. What's the progress on our data-bullet system?"

"I have located the problem and fixed it," Rausch said. "We're set to go."

"The 'package'?"

"It's going out right now," Rausch said. "As we speak."

Lisa Benn pressed the button on her console, opening up the rail queue and activating the launcher. Seconds later, the bullets started going out-data packets that chronicled their situation-complete with photographs, video records, and voice testimonies. The package also contained an exactly duplicated version of the letters supposedly sent from Mason Hildebrandt, giving the university president the right to hand over the ship to campus security. Added at the very last moment by TeeCee Spooner was the molecule scan of the rail saboteur's chip, which was clearly not of human manufacture. And all of this was done under Lieutenant Fontenot's nose.

Those bullets, however, were very heavily compacted and would take days to reach the H.C.

And they didn't have days. They had perhaps hours.

No one could save them but themselves. And even
that
now seemed like an impossibility.

35

If ever there was trouble to be had, the Bombardiers had enough to last them several lifetimes-or consecutive prison sentences.

"Now what?" Mark Innella asked Ben as they stood above the nearly unconscious Avatka in the outer hallway of the student commons.

"Let me think," Ben said, down on one knee cradling the injured alien.

As Ben's mind raced with a thousand scenarios, most of them involving incarceration, Tommy Rosales and George Clock shooed away the onlookers in the hallway when the physical plant opened up the corridors and hallways.

"It looks like you've got a hell of a story to print," Ben said to Innella.

Rosales sneered. "You think campus security will let this story out? Not fucking likely."

"We need this guy alive," Innella said.

The Avatka seemed to be breathing easily enough, but none of them there knew the first thing about Enamorati physiology. For all Ben knew, the Avatka could very well have been dying. Its membranous eyelids fluttered erratically.

"Tommy," Ben said, standing. "You're the strongest. Throw this guy over your shoulder and let's get out of here. Mark-" He faced the reporter, who seemed stunned to have the story of a lifetime on his hands. "You have to get news of this incident to every single person on the ship. Faculty, staff-everybody."

Innella's Adam's apple bobbed a couple of times as he swallowed nervously. "I know," he said. He took off, threading through the gathered throng in the hall.

Ben turned to his friends. "I don't want campus security to catch us with this guy. We'd never leave detention."

Rosales effortlessly slung the Avatkas over his shoulder. "Okay. Where to?"

"The Cloudman," Ben said. "He has to know about this."

They ran back to the physics department taking as many shortcuts and detours as possible, always on the lookout for elements of campus security. But with their com/pagers turned off, there was little anyone could do to track them.

When they arrived at the physics department, the Cloudman was already orchestrating the dispersal of the physics team. Since Eve's unique stardrive created no propulsion ejecta, there was no need to place them in a cluster at the rear of the ship. They chose, instead, the central shaft of the vessel. There, the six small units could operate around Eos's center of gravity without the physics team having to factor in various equilibrium equations.

Most of Eve's people had left when Ben and his friends showed up. Curiously, no one from either the fire department or the physical plant had responded to the alarms that the second disassembler weapon had set off or then: calls for help. But that was all right with Ben. He was just happy to find the captain.

Ben related the Avatka's confession to the captain, who in turn told him of the "student" from Babbitt Hall who had transited to the Enamorati compound in the company of four Enamorati-an apparent kidnapping.

"Jim," Ben said. "They wouldn't be after anybody else."

"They'll be coming after us next," Tommy Rosales said. "Just watch."

"Not if the transit portals are shut down," the captain told them. "They'd have to travel half a mile on foot and go through the student commons to get to us. They wouldn't risk it."

"Unless," Clock said, "they knew they could get away with it."

"They have enough swords," Rosales added.

"Yeah, but what do they want with Jim?" Clock asked.

"After what
he's
done?" Rosales said. "Hell, for all
we
know they may decide to
eat
him."

"We have to get Jim out of there," Ben said. "I don't want to wait for the Kuulo to decide what he wants to do about this. It would involve the Auditors, President Porter, and God knows who all. It'd be the trial of the century."

"What about the air inside the Enamorati compound? The smell in there alone could kill him. It might do to him what ours did to this guy here."

Cleddman, watching it all, ran a hand through his ash gray hair. "There are other matters to consider here."

"Like what?" Ben asked.

"I'm not quite sure yet just
why
Mr. Fontenot wants to take over the ship. He stands to lose as much as the rest of us if we have to face the Enamorati High Council on Wolfe-Langaard 4."

"What about the Governors' Council?" Ben asked. "Can't we get them on
our
side?"

Cleddman shook his head. "Porter's got them by the short hairs. They'll do anything he says if it will keep the Enamorati Compact from falling apart. Our first concern is getting Eos to safety, out of the reach of the Enamorati ruling council."

"But what about Jim?" Clock demanded.

Ben considered the Cloudman. "Let us go in and get him."

"Before they
eat
him," Rosales added.

Their former pilot crossed his arms and considered them evenly. "Well, men, according to a whole bunch of laws-some real, some imaginary-I'm not captain of the vessel anymore. I can't give you permission to do much of anything, let alone go searching for your friend."

"Would you try to stop us?" Ben asked.

"You'll get yourselves killed," Cleddman stated.

"I hadn't been planning on that," Ben said.

"Then we never had this conversation," Cleddman said. He turned and headed back to the remainder of the physics personnel, just now getting down to the task of duplicating Eve Silbarton's stardrive parts.

"Okay, wise guy. How are we going to get
in
there?" Rosales asked. "The Auditors aren't going to let us waltz past them."

"We're not going through the Auditors," Ben said.

"We?"
Clock said.

"We
are going to take a lifepod and go in the back way. The pods have docking collars that will fit any exterior airlock, and if we can't dock, then we'll use EVA suits. We'll take cutting tools, anything we'll need to get in there."

"Jim's pager is off," Clock said. "How are we going to find him?"

Ben had thought of this already. "First, we trace Jim's fractal signature from the transit portal in Babbitt Hall to the exit point in the Enamorati compound. Even if they moved on from there, that could be a good place to start."

"Then what?" Tommy Rosales asked. "Jim would be a needle in a haystack. We'd be looking around for hours. We'd be caught long before we could find him."

Ben pointed to the being at their feet. "That's why we're going to take this guy along with us. If we can get him into his own atmosphere, he might revive long enough to help us."

"Then
what?" Clock asked.

"I haven't thought that far ahead," Ben said. "But we
have
to do something and we have to do it
now."

Since Cleddman was supposed to coordinate the return of the planetside gondolas anyway, he went to the EVA bays and made sure that Eos's main computer didn't notice a lone lifepod pulling away from the ship. Ben knew that the risks they were all taking could mean their deaths. However, doing nothing and giving in seemed both inconceivable and unconscionable .. . and yet, one month ago doing
anything
daring seemed impossible for Ben. Now, they were out in the middle of fucking nowhere, at a crossroads in galactic history, flying right up the Enamorati's rear end.

For the first time in a long time, Ben felt
alive.

The lifepod eased along, nudged by the gentle pulses of its thrusters until it drifted aft of the main section of the ship to the gigantic Engine nacelle section. No human had ever gotten this close to Enamorati territory, not even for minor maintenance and repair. The Enamorati themselves tended to all matters regarding their territory.

"I don't see any guards," Ben said, staring out the forward port of the lifepod. "And no shuttles."

"No wakesprites," Tommy Rosales said. "They must be asleep out there somewhere."

Ben was sitting in the copilot's seat. "I'm not picking up any security monitoring scans. That's good. I think."

George Clock expertly guided the lifepod, its lights out, over the edge of the vast Engine exhaust funnel, a forbidding, blackened cone more than a hundred yards wide. It was like floating over the edge of the famous Grand Canyon on Earth.

The black cave of the exhaust shield rose around them as the lifepod descended into the Enamorati abyss. Mr. Rausch in ShipCom had given them Jim Vees's transit pattern, from transit portal 61 in Babbitt Hall to transit portal 72 deep inside the Enamorati compound. That meant that the lifepod would be able to get quite close to Vees's position. Had Eos's massive Engine still been in place, their rescue plan would have been impossible.

As Clock ghosted the pod deep into the narrowing nacelle, Ben and Tommy Rosales climbed into e-suits. Though unconscious, the Avatka appeared to be breathing, if a bit shallowly. The alien had stirred a couple of times during the transit, eyes coming open, then closing again, but Ben didn't know what that meant.

Risking discovery, Clock turned on the lifepod's lights. Here the nacelle had narrowed to just fifty yards in diameter. However, instead of steel bulwarks and structural supports for a stardrive of mechanical design, this nightmare cavern bore rippled tubes and strangely calcified formations like tubers and roots. It looked absolutely
alien
to Ben, transformed by decades of chemical accretions and bizarre technology.

"I see a docking collar," Clock announced in a whisper.

"Is it one of the original locks?" Rosales asked as he pulled his gloves on and sealed them.

"We'll know in a minute," Clock said.

Clock turned out all of the lifepod's lights again. He threw a couple more switches and the Bombardiers saw the docking collar's tiny red guide lights come on. The collar's sensors had received the signal from the approaching pod and responded automatically.

"It looks like they haven't modified it much," Clock said. "Let's just hope that there isn't an army waiting on the other side. If there is, I'm heading home."

"When you pump atmosphere into the collar, George, keep its internal gravity at zero. It'll make it easier to haul our guide over there," Ben said.

"What if we get him over there and he doesn't revive?" Rosales asked.

Ben shrugged in his tight-fitting e-suit. "We might be able to use him for a trade."

"A trade?"

"Or a shield.
I
don't know. Quit nagging me."

Ben and Tommy wrestled the Avatka out of his seat. As they did, George Clock inflated the docking collar. "We're all set," their pilot told them. "The collar's secure, the lock at the other end is open."

"Did the computer over there ask for entry authorization?" Ben asked.

Clock shook his head. "It did, but I ran a standard go-ahead from my computer. No problem."

Their helmeted e-suits were lightweight and very flexible, but guiding the unconscious body of the Avatka through the narrow docking collar was awkward. However, the lock at the other end responded to their touch and the door hissed open, allowing them entry.

The airlock had its gravity setting at eighty percent Earth-normal, standard for the Enamorati's home world, Virr. Ben carried the Avatka as they boldly stepped into a dark and gloomy hallway from the airlock and found themselves in what appeared to be a maintenance corridor. The yellowish green Enamorati atmosphere made it all but unrecognizable. So did the gunk growing on the walls and the floor and the ceiling. It was a leathery substance, clearly organic, very much alive. They placed the Avatka on the floor.

"How long are we going to wait until he comes out of it?" Rosales asked.

"Don't know," Ben said. Both young men spoke in lowered voices which were projected softly over a secured radio frequency.

Their suits had collar speakers, but using them might spell their doom. Enamorati supposedly had excellent hearing.

Ben bent over the alien on the floor and placed his gloved hands on the creature's chest. Its armor was barely flexible enough for Ben to attempt CPR. He didn't know what else to do. The Enamorati had one central lung chamber and two hearts. Pressure in the center of the chest could theoretically stimulate the upper and lower hearts into action. Or perhaps it would just kill him.