The Fortress in Orion (20 page)

The robot seemed frozen for about ten seconds. “Yes,” it said at last.

“Good,” said Djibmet. “Now go away.”

Pandora told them when they were within thirty minutes of docking, and they left their room, sought out their containers, and climbed into them.

They docked almost half a mile above the ground at the southern tower. A team of robots began unloading the cargo, they felt themselves being moved, and the preliminary stage of the operation was finally over.

Now the fun begins
, thought Pretorius wryly.

23

Pretorius waited until he was sure the robots were through moving cargo to the storage area where the containers had been placed, then opened his and stepped out. He found himself in a large circular room, perhaps one hundred feet in diameter. The room was filled with crates, containers, and boxes, and the portal leading to the ship was closed. He looked out a window and saw that he was perhaps half a mile above the ground. He walked by the seven crates that held his team and tapped gently on each. One by one they emerged, and he gave them some time to look around and get their bearings.

Finally he walked over to Pandora.

“The tower's just for cargo, right?”

“And defense against land attacks, though I don't imagine there have been any in centuries,” she replied.

“How many towers are there?” he asked.

“Four. One at each corner.”

“But the fortress itself is seven rectangular levels?”

She nodded. “That's right.”

“It looks like stone,” he said. “At least the part I could see from the window.”

“No, Nate. It's much stronger than that. The stone is just a decorative surface laid on over the super-hardened metallic structure.”

“Okay,” said Pretorius. “Do they use the tower for anything besides defense and storage?”

“I don't think so,” she replied. “What did you have in mind?”

He shrugged. “I don't know. Prison, laundry chute, anything.”

“Like I said, I don't think so.”

“Djibmet?” he said, turning to the Kabori.

“Yes?”

“Would I be correct in assuming that no one comes up here unless they're after something that's stored here or the place is under attack?”

“I assume so.”

“You ‘assume' so?” repeated Pretorius. “Why don't you
know
?”

“I have never been to Petrus IV,” answered the Kabori. “I am on this mission as Michkag's coach and teacher.”

“Have you heard anything about it?”

“Very little,” said Djibmet. “Just that it has this impenetrable fortress.”

“We've already penetrated it,” said Pretorius. “So much for myths.” He put his hands on his hips and slowly surveyed the room. “I guess we'll make this our headquarters at the start, at least until Michkag shows up. They're a lot less likely to do a spy check up here rather than down on one of the levels that we can assume are constantly in use.”

“So we just sit here and then hope we can find Michkag?” demanded Snake.

“I didn't say that, Snake,” replied Pretorius. “This is where we'll eat and sleep, and where we'll come back to after making our excursions into the parts of the fortress where Michkag and his bodyguards will be.” He paused. “We've got to get Pandora access to some of their security systems if it's at all possible, so she can rig them to let us pass. And we need a place to hide Circe where she can still contact us, because she'll be the one who knows if they're buying the impersonation or not.”

“And the rest of us?” asked Ortega.

“The rest of us are foot soldiers,” said Pretorius. “Or, more accurately, foot saboteurs. The three who definitely have predetermined functions are Pandora, Circe, and of course Michkag, who is the object of the exercise. The rest of us will work at harassing, misleading, and confusing the enemy enough so that we can pull off this masquerade and make our escape with our prisoner.”

“How will we escape?” asked Proto. “We don't have a ship.”

“I'm working on it,” said Pretorius.

“You're not much for sharing your plans with your comrades,” complained Djibmet.

“You swear in blood—always assuming you have some—that no one more than thirty feet away can hear me, sense my presence, or read my lips, and I'll consider being more open with you.”

“I apologize,” said the Kabori. “I am not a warrior or a saboteur or a kidnapper. I am just a businessman who is appalled by what my home planet and our Coalition have become.”

“No hard feelings,” said Pretorius.

“You have to understand,” said Circe gently, “this is new to you and relatively new to most of us, excerpt perhaps Snake, but Nathan's been doing it just about his whole adult life. That's why we trust him as our leader, and we also don't question him when we're in enemy, or even neutral, territory.”

Djibmet turned a dull shade of purple—the Men assumed it was his equivalent of a blush—and stared at the floor.

“Well, we might as well get started,” said Pretorius. “Or at least
one
of us might.” He turned to Pandora. “I see a door off to the left. It looks too small for any machine that would be required to take these containers out more than one at a time, so I assume it's for Kabori to enter and exit. Is it wired?”

Pandora checked the tiny computer in her hand, then took another off her belt to double-check.

“Yes, but I can negate it.”

“Without sounding any alarms?”

“There won't be any alarms even if I screw up, Nate. It'll show up in their security headquarters, but they won't want whoever's using the door to know that he's alerted them.”

“And you can negate that?”

She checked her two computers again. “Almost certainly.”

“Ninety percent chance or better?” he persisted.

She nodded her head.

“Good. Have the robots move six—no, make that seven—containers in here, containers that can hold a Man or a Kabori—and line 'em all up on that wall, just in case we should have any use for them in the days to come.” He turned to Djibmet. “All right. You'll be our advance scouting party of one.” He stared at him. “Get out of that officer's uniform. I don't want anyone talking to you, mentioning things, or asking questions you don't know the answer to. I know you packed a grunt's uniform too. No one ever talks to them.”

“A grunt?” asked Djibmet, confused.

“An enlisted soldier,” said Pretorius. “Someone who can ask certain questions I want answered without arousing any suspicions.”

Djibmet walked over to his backpack, opened it, and uttered a very alien growl.

“What is it?”

“It's gone.”

“Gone?” repeated Pretorius.

“One of the robots on the ship offered to clean my goods for me when I was in the bathroom. Somehow it neglected to put it back.” He growled again. “But I never told it to clean
that!
”

“Could he have put it back in Michkag's backpack?”

Michkag quickly inspected it. “No,” he said.

“I am so humiliated!” said Djibmet.

“No sense worrying about it now. We have work to do. Snake?”

“Yeah?” she replied.

“You can hide in more uncomfortable places than anyone I've ever met. Go out the door, find out how we get down to the main body of the fortress, and note any possible places we can hide for more than a few minutes once we're down there, or as we're getting down there.”

“We can do better than that,” said Pandora. She took a tiny machine off her belt and attached it to the front of Snake's belt.

“What is this?” asked Snake.

“Our eyes,” said Pandora. “It'll see what you see—or it will if you remember to turn or pivot so it's facing whatever you're looking at—and it'll send a tri-d video back to us.”

“Sounds good,” said Snake, heading for the door.

“Just a second,” said Pretorius.

“What else?” demanded Snake irritably.

“Pandora, show her where the on-off switch is.”

Pandora did so, and Snake frowned. “Do you want me to transmit images or not?”

“Of course I do,” said Pretorius. “But if you wind up hiding in the equivalent of a file drawer for five or six hours, I want you to remember to turn the damned thing off or it'll be useless to us once you're on the move again.”

Snake walked to the door, which slid open the instant it sensed her presence.

A moment later the image that was being sent by Snake's computer materialized near them, and they all watched intently as the small woman made her way to an airlift, stepped onto it, and began descending.

“I hope she's bright enough not to ride it all the way down,” said Pretorius. Even as the words left his mouth Snake uttered an order to the airlift.

And nothing happened.

“Can I speak to her quickly?” asked Djibmet.

Pandora made a quick adjustment to her computer. “Go ahead.”

“
Kydosh!
” he said, and the airlift came to a stop, suspending Snake in midair.

“That was the word in my language for ‘stop,'” said Djibmet.

“Can you pronounce it?”

Snake did so, and Djibmet turned to his companions. “All of you.”

They all repeated the word a few times.

“Good,” said the Kabori. “The word for ‘start' is ‘
Lobeesh
.'” As the word left his mouth, the airlift began transporting her down again.

“Good words to know,” said Pretorius. “Especially on this world. If there are any others you think we need to know, teach them to us before we leave here.”

“I cannot know what situations we'll find ourselves in,” replied Djibmet, “but I will supply you with a dozen words that one or more of you will probably have to use sooner or later.”

“Good,” said Pretorius. “Start with her,” he added, indicating Pandora. “She can capture your voice and pronunciation on one of her computers and play it back when we need it.”

He made the Kabori equivalent of a nod of his head, then walked over and began speaking into one of Pandora's machines, uttering first the Terran word or term and then the Kabori equivalent.

Pretorius sat down with his back propped against a gleaming metal crate and watched the video transmission.

“Where is she now?” asked Proto.

“Looks like a far end of a corridor,” answered Pretorius. “On the seventh level, I hope.”

“Why is that preferable?”

“If she has to run, she's already on the top level. All she has to do is make it to the airlift and up to our level of the tower.”

“By the way,” said Circe, “what
is
our level?”

“I saw some symbols when the door was open,” said Pretorius.

“I'll copy them into Pandora's computer when she's done.”

“There's no need to,” said Michkag. “I of course read my own language. We are on the sixty-third floor or level, but I do not know if the numbering started at ground level or just above the seventh and last level of the main fortress.”

“Makes no difference,” said Pretorius.

“Oh?”

He smiled. “I just want to make sure we all know how to get back here. Once they see the symbols and can interpret them, that problem's solved.”

“We got one that isn't solved,” said Ortega suddenly, staring at the transmission.

Snake was coming up to a cross corridor, and she—and they—could hear footsteps of what seemed like a party of from four to six Kabori walking down the corridor. She looked in each direction, saw a small container in the corridor, something that had clearly been left out for a service robot to transport or dispose of.

“Oh, come on!” muttered Pretorius. “You couldn't fit in that thing if it was totally empty! Turn and run back to the airlift!”

She raced to the container, which was no more than two feet high and perhaps that wide, turned it upside down so that its minimal, neatly wrapped contents fell out, pushed them a few doors away with her foot, and began climbing into it.

Suddenly the picture went black. Not vanished, but black, since that was all the computer could see. They could hear the Kabori walking by; one of them said something, another replied, they uttered the semi-roar that passed for Kabori laughter, and their footsteps grew fainter.

“What did they say?” asked Pretorius.

“It was a joke about sending the service robot back to training school,” replied Djibmet.

“And that's funny?” asked Ortega.

“Robots don't go to school,” explained Djibmet.

Suddenly the video feed showed the corridor again rather shakily at first as Snake climbed out of the tiny container.

“You should have run to the airlift,” said Pretorius. “You were lucky this time, Snake.”

“Lucky, hell!” she grated. “I was good.”

“That too,” agreed Pretorius.

“I don't know what you're paying me, Nathan,” she said, “but if I have to climb into anything like that again on short notice, I want a raise.”

Pretorius smiled. “That's my Snake.”

“Well?” she demanded as she began walking down the corridor again.

“If you survive, you've got it.”

24

Snake spent another ten minutes exploring.

“Nothing's going on this level,” she said at last. “I think most of the action's going to be on levels three and four.”

“Why those?” asked Pretorius.

“No sense putting it on six. This floor is pretty solid, but it can be breached. And you'd never put your most valuable asset on the ground floor, or even the second level. So it figures to be three, four, or five. And five is the least likely, simply because it's the most bother to reach.”

“Makes sense,” agreed Pretorius.