The Fortress in Orion (16 page)

Pretorius frowned. “That's only five.”

“Two are docked at the fortress right now.”

“
At
the fortress? Not in some orbital hangar?”

“
At
the fortress,” said Pandora. “I assume their loads are so big that it would take a dozen shuttles to carry the stuff down, so the fortress seems to have four towers that serve as docks, maybe half a mile high, to accommodate them. One may be for military ships—and of course they'll have an orbiting hangar for the really big troop transports—but at least three of the towers are for supply ships.”

“Better still,” said Pretorius. “That means we don't have to find a covert way onto the planet and into the fortress. I didn't like the thought of transferring to a shuttle. This solves the problem.”

“You still have the problem of how all eight of us are getting onto a supply ship.”

“Find out where the three cargo ships that are between us and Petrus are touching down on their regular routes, and we'll work it out.”

“Give me another eight or nine hours.”

“Take twenty.”

She looked at him curiously. “Twenty?”

“Yeah,” he said “And get me blueprints of the ships.”

“That might be difficult.”

“They're not combat ships or military of any kind. Some shipbuilder made them and had to file the plans somewhere.” He smiled at her. “Hell, find me one with an all-robot crew that you can control, and take twenty-one hours.”

“You're all heart, Nate,” she said, and turned back to her computer.

“Oh . . . and hunt up a couple of worlds along the way where we can unload the pelts.”

“Actually there's one coming up in about an hour,” she replied. “A single planet circling Pordeli, a class-G star. Seems to be a trading outpost. Hard to believe they haven't seen these furs before.”

“Radio ahead, make sure someone on the planet buys pelts, and if they do, make an appointment and set us down there.”

She did so, got a positive reply, and they landed a little more than an hour later. Djibmet got off the ship, met the proprietor of the shop that dealt in such goods, got a pair of robots to help, and while they were making the trips carrying the pelts Pandora wiped all knowledge of the ship's human crew from their memories.

They found another world five light-years away that bought the rest of the pelts. Djibmet offered to turn all the money over to Pretorius, but the latter shook his head.

“I can't show myself or spend your currency anywhere within the Coalition,” he explained, “and by the time we get to where I
can
spend it, this currency's no good. So you hang onto it. You're the only one who can spend it where it'll be accepted.”

Pretorius then declared that all the preliminaries were over and it was time for the main event: reaching and entering the fortress.

“So what do we
do
once we're inside it?” asked Snake, as she and Ortega joined Pretorius at Pandora's station on the bridge.

“Wait for Michkag to arrive,” said Pretorius.

“Just like that?” she said sardonically.

“Come on, Snake. You've been on enough missions to know.”

“Tell me—
us—
anyway,” she replied. “Maybe someone can make a suggestion.”

Pretorius shrugged. “Okay. We sneak in, we find a secure room, we find a way to monitor what's going on, we capture their Michkag and replace him with our Michkag, we escape with him if we can or kill him if we can't, and then we make a beeline for home.”

“Sounds simple when you put it that way,” said Ortega.

“You think so?” said Snake derisively. “How are we going to sneak into the fortress past armed guards that are there to make sure nothing gets unloaded except the goods they ordered? If we're in a room that's so secure their security system can't penetrate it, how is Toni going to monitor them without telltale emanations from her machines?”

“Toni?” said Ortega, puzzled.

“That's Toni,” said Snake, pointing. “Nathan calls her Pandora, but her name is Toni.”

“I didn't know.”

“That's the least of things you don't know,” continued Snake.

“How are we going to kidnap the best-protected Kabori in the whole damned Coalition—and if we pull
that
off, how do we escape the planet with him in tow?”

“You sound like you want to quit,” said Circe.

“No,” said Snake. “But if we pull it off, I sure as hell want a raise and a bonus.”

That broke the tension and brought general laughter.

“I assume you
are
doping out all these problems?” said Circe.

“That's what they pay me for,” answered Pretorius.

Snake chuckled. “They only pay if you survive.”

“Our friend Nathan has survived a hell of a lot,” noted Circe. Ortega turned to Pretorius. “What was it like on Benedaris IV?” he asked.

“Where's that?” said Snake.

“Our stalwart leader's last assignment,” said Pandora without looking up from her keyboard. “The record is absolutely fascinating.”

“Oh?” said Ortega. “What was his mission?”

“I have no idea,” answered Pandora. “It's still classified.”

“Then what's so fascinating about it?”

Pandora smiled. “He was given a posthumous Medal of Valor—and then they brought him back to life.”

“You were really dead?” asked Ortega.

“They say I was, for maybe a couple of minutes,” answered Pretorius. “I don't remember a damned thing.”

“Just as well,” said Snake. “Who wants to spend the rest of their life remembering hell and stocking up on burn lotion?”

“Thanks for that vote of confidence,” said Pretorius dryly.

“We're all going there,” said Snake. “Well, all of us except maybe Proto.” She turned to him. “Hey, Proto—you ever kill anyone?”

“No” was the answer.

“Cheer up,” said Ortega. “You'll have plenty of opportunity on Petrus IV.”

“Please do not joke about this,” said Djibmet. “After all, these are my people.”

“We're only talking about killing the bad ones,” said Snake.

“They are not bad, only misled,” answered Djibmet. “That is why
our
Michkag will make a difference.” He paused and looked at each of them in turn. “I have read and viewed some of your history. You have had many tyrants—Caligula, Adolf Hitler, Conrad Bland. Once they were gone, was it necessary to perform genocide on their followers, or were they incorporated back into a civilized society?”

“Point taken,” said Pretorius. “And we'll take your concerns into consideration from this point forward.” He looked at each of his crew. “There will be no more joking or making light of the more repugnant things we may have to do to accomplish this mission. Is that understood?”

There was a unanimous nodding of heads, even from Proto, who in actuality had no head of his own to nod but understood and mimicked the gesture.

They fell silent then. Snake and Circe went off to the galley to eat, Proto joined Djibmet and Michkag in their connected cabins for more lessons in the language, Ortega went off to take a nap, and Pretorius, as he did in almost every spare moment, concentrated on all the problems that Snake had outlined.

Finally, after a few hours of relative silence, Pandora got up, stretched, and announced that she had pinpointed the ship they wanted.

“You're sure?” asked Pretorius.

“It fits your criteria, and it'll be the easiest to approach,” she answered.

“Okay, tell me about it.”

“I can't pronounce its name—doubtless Michkag or Djibmet can—but it translates as
the Wayfarer
. It's the second-largest of the three ships between here and Petrus, but it has three advantages over the others.”

“What are they?” asked Pretorius.

“First, it's due to land on Nortiqua II six days from now, and we're only four days away. Second, it's to unload all its cargo at the fortress nine days after that, and from what I can tell, that puts us on Petrus two days ahead of Michkag, maybe three.”

“I see the trace of a smile,” he said. “What are you holding back?”

“The third advantage.”

“I'm all ears.”

She grinned. “It's a totally automated ship. The entire crew consists of six robots, nothing else.”

“You know, it makes sense,” said Pretorius thoughtfully. “What the hell do they need a living crew for when all they're doing is transporting inanimate goods, and every port has machines to do the loading and unloading.”

“I thought it would please you,” she said, still smiling. “I should be able to access the security and robot override codes in another hour.”

“You were right. It pleases me.”

“Anything else?”

“You need me to tell you?” he said. “Lay in a course for Nortiqua II.”

18

Pretorius had called the entire crew to the bridge to explain their next assignment.

“We're going to touch down on Nortiqua II during the middle of its night. There's no sense landing at the spaceport that's our ultimate destination. There's simply no way we could avoid being identified.”

“But the ship has been inspected and cleared,” said Snake.

“Yeah, but it's a ship with two Kabori and no one else, as far as the records show. We're not in the Democracy; this close to Orion, they'll shoot Men on sight.”

“We could pose as Djibmet's prisoners,” continued Snake.

Pretorius shook his head. “We've got someone they haven't seen who is even more instantly recognizable than a Man, and that's our Michkag,” answered Pretorius. “If anyone reports seeing him, they'll lock up Petrus IV tighter than a drum.”

“So what
do
we do?” asked Circe.

“Once we get close enough, Pandora will pinpoint the spaceport—and if there's more than one, she'll find the one we need—and then she'll have the computer map the roads around it and at least an hour from any city that may be attached to it or surrounding it.” He turned to Pandora. “You can do that easy enough, right?”

She nodded. “Not a problem.”

“All right,” said Pretorius. “We touch down, hopefully unseen, hijack the first vehicle to come along that will hold the lot of us—hopefully it'll be a truck or their equivalent of one, something we can drive right to a loading dock—and take it to the spaceport.”

“Somehow I suspect that's the easy part,” said Circe.

Pretorius smiled. “There are no easy parts, or I wouldn't have selected you to come on this mission.”

“So what comes next?” asked Ortega.

“If Pandora can pinpoint which warehouse supplies the ship that's going to Petrus, we'll find a way to get into it, hide inside whatever's being shipped, and just wait to be loaded into the ship.”

“That sounds too easy,” said Ortega.

“We'll probably have to kill our way onto the vehicle, and if it isn't permitted to pull into the storage building, we'll almost certainly have to kill our way in and eliminate any eyewitnesses. That means
you
”—he indicated Pandora—“are going to have to rig something that'll screw up their security system. Killing our way in is just half of the problem; not being seen on some screen half a mile away is the other half.”

“I'll do what I can,” answered Pandora, “but I can't guarantee it'll work until I find out what kind of system they're using and how it works.”

“They must all have certain things in common,” suggested Pretorius.

“I'm told if you go to Earth,” she replied, “you'll find a variety of insects called spiders. They have many things in common—but some can kill you with a bite or a sting, and others can't even break your skin.”

“Do what you can,” said Pretorius.

“And if it doesn't work?” asked Djibmet.

“Then we're going to have to kill one hell of a lot of people before they kill us,” answered Pretorius. “There are a couple of other things, basic but essential.”

“Okay,” said Snake. “What are they?”

“I know you hate alien food, but there's a limit to what we can take with us. The ship will either be carrying food to Petrus, or it will have once been run by a live crew of whatever race and will have a galley. Same with water. Once Pandora's got the override codes, she'll make sure there's food and water to be had somewhere on the ship. If she can't, that's when we'll worry about an alternative.”

“There's a small galley leftover from when the ship had a live crew,” said Pandora, studying her computer. “We won't like it, but it'll keep us alive.”

“And the other thing?” asked Circe.

“Somewhere in our own storage unit are a bunch of unmarked, nonreflective black outfits with matching boots and weaponry. You're practically invisible in them. I want everyone wearing them before we touch down on Nortiqua II. Not Proto, of course, since he'll just be casting an image”—he turned to the alien—“but try to match the color and texture. I don't want a headlight, a spotlight, or any kind of light sensor spotting you on the road or at the spaceport.”

“What about our heads?”

“I've brought hoods.”

“Sounds uncomfortable,” commented Ortega.

“If Snake can stay locked in a drawer for half a night, you can stay in a hood for the same length of time.” He paused. “The second we know they're obeying our orders, you can take off your hood and let the ladies admire your face.”

“What about us?” asked Djibmet.

“You're Kabori. The closer we get to Petrus, the less suspicions you'll arouse.” Pretorius turned to Proto. “You're not going to fool any camera or sensors, but you might as well appear as a Kabori. If they just look at you, they'll accept it. And if not, well, you're a life-form they haven't seen before, but you're traveling with two Kabori, so that might convince them.”