THE FOREVER GENE (THE SCIONS OF EARTH Book 1) (24 page)

Katya and Carson were frisked and their 'links confiscated.  She expected them to find Carson's sidearm, but he didn't have it anymore.  Clever boy; he had stashed it somewhere.

Then the soldiers fell in around them and frog-marched them down the corridor.

"I've been wondering," she said conversationally to her fellow captive, "What is your first name?  I don't think I've ever heard anyone use it."

"Yes you have," he said.  "It's Carson."

"Your name is Carson Carson?"

"No, my first name is Carson.  My last name is Armitage."

Understanding dawned on her.

"General Armitage is..."

"My father, yes."

"Good grief," she said.

CHAPTER TWELVE

It was not far to the brig.  When they arrived, the officer spoke curtly into his 'mote.  The electronic lock on the hatch was released and the two captives were unceremoniously shoved inside.  The hatch closed behind them and they heard the lock re-activate.

The room was already occupied, although it was not as full as Katya had expected.  General Armitage and two or three other American officers were there, as well as another of the Russian cosmonauts, Vitaly Dasaev. She also recognised one of the British astrophysicists and Heller Lahm, a German Lieutenant.  It seemed that Chang had decided to imprison selected representatives of each delegation.

Armitage was beyond apoplexy.  He had reached a higher level of rage than Katya had ever seen before, even in the Russian military.  Locked up in what he regarded as his own brig, he was seething.

"You have no right to keep me in here," he bellowed after the departing soldiers.  "I demand to see Chang; Heaven help him when I get my hands on him!"

The others were silent while Armitage raged.  Eventually he ran out of steam and stopped.

The moonbase brig wasn't used very often.  Only highly qualified personnel, who had all been thoroughly vetted from a security perspective, were eligible to be sent to the Moon.  There was generally little need to lock anyone up.  It was a much more civilised prison than Katya had ever seen.  At a glance, she took in a large, clean room with eight bunk beds at one end and a series of tables and chairs along two of its walls.  It even had a large wall-screen above the hatch they had just come through. Through a hatch along one of the side walls was a bathroom containing a communal shower area, which was adjacent to a series of lavatory stalls.  She took it for granted that all ventilation shafts had been secured and that there was no way in or out, except through the main hatch.

She joined Vitaly at the table where he was sitting.  If she was going to be there for the next three days, she might as well use the time to bring herself up to speed.  "What happened to the American soldiers who had secured the base, Vitaly?  I expected to see more of them locked up in here.  Was there any fighting?"

"No, Colonel.  The Chinese were all armed with laser-repeaters and a few warning shots were fired.  The American soldiers were outnumbered and had to surrender.  The ones I saw were disarmed and taken on board the shuttle.  They have all been rounded up and are going to be sent back to Earth in the shuttle."

"That makes sense," said Katya.  "I would do the same thing.  The Chinese don't want any fighting which might damage the base; they mean to take over the project for themselves.  Chang has obviously been planning this for some time."

"What about us?  Why aren't we being sent back?" asked Vitaly.

It was Armitage who answered the question.  "Hostages, to make sure that none of our governments try to take the base by force."  He grimaced bitterly.  "That is why there are high ranking members of each delegation in here."

"So," said Vitaly slowly, "no-one is coming to help us.  We are on our own."

"When the time comes, we will help ourselves," said Katya cryptically.

They looked at her quizzically, but she didn't elaborate.  There were surveillance cameras in the room and she was sure that every word they spoke was being monitored.  She decided to take advantage of that fact.

"It is a good thing that Dr Mattheus and Dr Hasper left the base when they did," she said to Armitage.  "Otherwise they would be in here too.  Perhaps they will be able to persuade their governments to put pressure on General Chang to let us go."

The American general's face reddened in anger at the mention of the two astrophysicists, but he played along.  "This is all their fault," he growled.  "If they hadn't compromised the project, we would probably have had an operational star drive by now and this wouldn't have happened."  He made an expansive gesture taking in their surroundings.  "And now they are gone and we are left to carry the can."

She didn't respond and let the subject drop.  Too much in the way of amateur dramatics might make Chang suspicious.

Over the next three days she thought often about Hans and Harry and whether they had made it to the star ship.  There was no sign anything untoward had happened; she heard no alarms blaring and the guards who brought food into the brig twice a day betrayed no hint of there having been any incident.  But that didn't necessarily mean that all had gone according to plan.  An alarm in the hangar bay would not be audible in the brig, and the guards might have been instructed to give nothing away.

It was possible that the astrophysicists had been captured trying to sneak onto the ship, and were being held elsewhere.  In that case Earthworm's unofficial maiden voyage was off.

She tried not to think the unthinkable; that they had not made it back inside at all.  When formulating the plan it had seemed a remote risk.  Even if they had not been able to sneak into the airlock before it closed, they would have had the option of revealing themselves to the returning technicians, or of activating their radios and calling for help.  She had been certain that Chang would not refuse to bring them back in, particularly when they identified themselves.  Saving the two delegation heads from an ill-advised spacewalk would have been a massive feather in his cap.

But what if something had gone wrong?  What if they had called for help and Chang had elected not to respond?  For reasons of his own, it may have suited him to be rid of them.

Her nagging doubts made the first two days she spent in the brig almost unbearable.  If something had happened to the two men, it was her fault.  She could easily have told them that there was no way to get onto the ship without being seen.  Of course, they might have tried anyway.  Then they would almost definitely have been captured, but at least they would be alive.

She had warned Carson not to say anything about their plan to the other inmates of the brig.  She was sure that they wouldn't be able to help discussing it amongst themselves and would be overheard.  So she and Carson kept what they knew to themselves and concentrated on appearing frustrated and angry, as captives with no hope of rescue would.

On the second day the hatch opened and half a dozen armed soldiers entered, motioning the inmates to move back.

Chang followed them in.  "I am sorry general, I don't mean to tread on your toes," he said sarcastically to Armitage.  "However, my country's need is greater than yours; it has the biggest population on the planet.  I assure you that, once we have completed the project and begun our programme of extra-terrestrial colonisation, we will make the star drive available to the rest of the world."

"That will take years, you bastard."  Armitage's rage was alive and well.  "Meanwhile the rest of the world will suffer."

"The rest of the world is not my responsibility."  Chang turned to Katya.  "Where did you think you were going when you were apprehended, Colonel?"

She shrugged.  "The captain and I were going to try to sneak on board the shuttle.  We were hoping to get back to Earth without your knowledge.  It might have worked if my suit hadn't malfunctioned."

Chang's face betrayed no reaction to her explanation.  "To ensure the co-operation of your governments, you will be our guests until we have finished the project."  He ignored the loud snort from Armitage.  "Provided you behave sensibly, you will not be harmed."

Having delivered his implied threat, he turned and walked out, accompanied by his soldiers.  The hatch was shut and the lock re-activated.  He made no mention of Hans and Harry, which Katya decided to take as a good sign.

The inmates were left alone after that, and there was nothing to do but watch the news channels on the wall-screen.  That turned out to be a dubious distraction, however.  All they saw was a seemingly never-ending series of confrontations, riots and fire fights.  The worst was what had happened in Russia.

Despite Yashin's assurances, Belanov's arsenal had not been found.  At first, it seemed to have been an idle threat; the ramblings of a madman.  The deadline came and went without any attack on Moscow.  But, just when the Russians were breathing a sigh of relief, the city of Yekaterinburg, south of the Urals, was hit by a series of missiles.  The attack was sudden, unexpected and devastating.  The Russian military had concentrated its defences around Moscow and the smaller city was completely unprotected.

Unable to watch the scenes of death and destruction any longer, Katya switched the channel to CNN. In disbelief, she watched footage of a mob rampaging through Washington DC.  The people were not heavily armed and were not doing any significant damage, but somehow the sight seemed more shocking than the burning buildings in Yekaterinburg.  If the West's superpower was unable to control its people, what hope did the rest of the world have?

No-one objected when she switched off the wall-screen.  She walked over to a bunk bed and lay down, facing the wall.  She had no intention of sleeping; she just wanted to concentrate on nursing the anger that was building within her.  Anger at what was happening to millions of innocent people on Earth; and anger at Chang's actions.  If he was to have his way, the world would be denied technology which might save it from anarchy.

For some people, anger was a distraction which prevented them from thinking rationally.  Not Katya.  She used it to fuel her creativity.  The angrier she became, the less chance her enemies had of withstanding her plan of action.  She couldn't speak to anyone about the unscheduled launch of Earthworm, but that didn't matter.  She was used to relying on her own initiative.

On the morning of her third day in the brig, she decided that it was time to enlist the help of the other inmates.  She waited until after breakfast had been delivered before subtly indicating to Armitage, Carson, Vitaly and Heller that she wanted to have a discussion in the bathroom.  Vitaly and Heller made a show of getting ready to take showers, and then went into the shower room.  They turned on the hot water, creating as much noise and steam as possible, so that it would be difficult for whoever was monitoring the surveillance cameras to see and hear them.  The general and Carson joined them, creating even more steam, while Katya slipped into an adjacent lavatory cubicle.

Raising her voice over the noise of the showers, she hoped it was not loud enough for the surveillance cameras to pick up.  She quickly outlined where Hans and Harry had gone and what they were intending to do.

"They're crazy," grumbled Armitage.

She ignored the comment.  "At ten o'clock the electronic lock on the main hatch will release."

"How do you know that?" asked the general.

"I have positioned a stun-grenade in the electronics recess behind the ops room.  It is powerful enough to knock out the systems inside, one of which controls the lock.  The lock itself is programmed to open automatically if its system fails."

"Is it?"  The general was surprised.

"It is a safety feature.  If the base is damaged to the extent that its systems fail, people won't be trapped in the brig. You should read your own base manual."

"How are we going to get to the ship?" Carson interrupted.

"The grenade will knock out more than just the lock, so the ops room will have quite a few systems failures to contend with.  That should give us a chance to get clear before anyone realises what is happening.  The critical thing will be for us to silence the guards outside the hatch before they can sound the alarm.  From what I have seen at mealtimes, there are two stationed there at all times, armed with laser-repeaters.  When the food is delivered, they stand back from the hatch and cover it.  They won't be expecting the lock to fail, so they are unlikely to be fully alert when it does."

"We have no weapons, how are we going to silence them?"

"The explosion of the grenade should distract them for a moment, which should give two of us enough time to get through the hatch and take them out."

"Which two?"

"Heller and I will do it."

"You?" interjected Armitage.  "Heller I can understand, but you are..."

"A woman?" she finished for him.

"That is not what I meant; those are Special Forces soldiers out there."

Vitaly coughed apologetically before speaking.  "Do not worry, general, I have seen Colonel Kasparova in action.  She could disable both of those soldiers by herself in the blink of an eye."

"There is one more thing," Katya broke in impatiently.  "The grenade will get us out of the brig, but the Chinese will soon spot us if we simply head for the hangar bay.  We are going to need a diversion."

There was a moment of silence.

"I'll do it," growled an unexpected volunteer.  Katya was as surprised as the others to hear Armitage's voice.

Carson objected immediately.  "No sir, you must come with us.  I won't leave you in Chang's clutches.  If we succeed in getting away, he may decide to take it out on you."

"I won't abandon my base to that usurper," snarled the general.  "No, it seems to me that the best diversion would be for me to make a lot of noise when we escape.  Chang will concentrate his efforts on re-capturing me and the rest of you may be able to get away."  He paused.  "But I will only do it on one condition; Carson must go with you."

"No sir!  I won't desert you."