The Icerigger Trilogy: Icerigger, Mission to Moulokin, and The Deluge Drivers (118 page)

“All right.” She looked past him. “Roger!”

Iriole came over and saluted.

“You know what’s going on here?”

The soldier jerked his head in September’s direction. “I have been briefed.”’

“What do you think about it?”

“If I may be allowed to say so, ma’am, it stinks.”

“You’re allowed to say so and you’re quite right. We’re going to make a few citizens’ arrests. We’re going to shut this operation down. I saw that they finally put in a deep space communications system at Brass Monkey. When we get back there I’m going to get on the horn. I know the counselor for this whole volume of space. We’ll have a peaceforcer brought in to haul the rest of these maggots off-planet in comfortable cells.” She shoved a clenched fist into the air.

“Tran-ky-ky for the Tran!” Then she added in a softer tone, “That felt pretty good. In business you can’t always be sure you’re doing the right thing. No such uncertainty here. It’s a nice feeling.”

Hunnar, Elfa, Seesfar, and Cheela Hwang were brought aboard, the Tran marveling at the prospect of flying not across the ice but through the air.

“Roger and his people will take care of things up here,” Colette informed them. “Why don’t you go below until the arguing’s over?”

“I’d rather stay outside,” Ethan told her.

“No way. I’m not having my prospective husband’s head shot off just after he’s accepted my proposal.”

“It’ll be all right. They’ve only got a few hand beamers over there. When they see how badly we’ve got them outgunned, I don’t think there’ll be much fighting. You might have more trouble with their Tran allies. They’re stubborn.”

“I remember that much. No offense,” she told Hunnar and Elfa through her suit translator.

“There is no offense in truth,” he replied. “We
are
stubborn.” He smiled, displaying sharp canines.

B
AMAPUTRA DID NOT LOOK
toward the harbor as he turned up another of the steep switchbacks that led up the mountainside away from Yingyapin. He did not have to. Antal’s monocular had already revealed the unexpected presence of long weapons on board the unmarked skimmer. The new arrivals were obviously in league with his enemies on board the ice ship. His foreman had assured him there was no way they could win a pitched battle against well-disciplined people carrying rifles. All they could do for now was retreat to the installation and seal themselves inside the mountain.

Corfu accompanied them, wailing and raging at an interfering fate and wondering why they didn’t stay and fight.

“Better it is to die for what one believes in than to run and hide in a hole in the ground!” He was having trouble keeping up with the humans, whose feet were far better designed than his for climbing.

“A foolish and primitive notion.”

“They’ve got us outgunned,” Antal told him. He gestured with his own hand beamer. “I’ll explain it one more time. Our light weapons are not as powerful as theirs.”

“Then what are we to do?”

“First we make sure they can’t touch us.” The foreman nodded toward the entrance to the installation which lay one last switchback ahead. “We lock ourselves out of their reach. Then we bargain. They could probably blast their way in, but that would mean casualties on both sides. I think they’d rather talk.”

“Talk.” Bamaputra wasn’t breathing hard at all. “What is there to talk about? These are not government representatives. I do not know who they are but they are not that. Not that it matters. It is enough that they are friends of those whose destiny we once controlled. Their destiny was our destiny, and now that control has slipped through our fingers.”

“We can still try to strike a deal with them,” Antal insisted. “We can hold out till the regular supply ship arrives.”

“Don’t be a fool.” They had reached the cleared area which fronted the entrance to the installation. As they watched, the huge door rolled up into the solid rock, admitting them to the complex beyond. “We are finished here. The project is finished. They will communicate with the authorities. We will not be given time to reach our own relief ship. Now if there was a way to disable their skimmer …”

“Not a chance. They’ve got rifles down there. They can sit around and pick off anyone, human or Tran, who tries to get close.”

“As I feared.” They were inside the complex now. Curious engineers and technicians looked up from their work as their supervisors walked past. Corfu was already getting hot, but he followed anyway. He had nowhere else to go.

“There’s got to be something we can do,” Antal muttered. “If they take us back, it means mindwipe at least.”

“Better to die. The body lives on but the soul perishes.”

Antal eyed him askance. “What do you mean, ‘soul’? Mindwiping just removes whatever the psytechs identify as criminal tendencies. When it’s over you’re still the same person you were when you went in.”

Bamaputra was shaking his head. “Are you so credulous as to believe the government’s propaganda? They leave you enough to function with, but you are
not
the same person. Something vital has been taken away.”

“Sure. The criminal part. Just the criminal part.”

“But we are not criminals, you and I. We are visionaries. I do not think I could stand to lose the visionary part of myself.”

The foreman frowned, but Bamaputra appeared to be completely in control of himself. “Yeah, well, I’ll take care of securing the station, making an announcement about what’s happened and what we can expect. There’s only the pedestrian entrance and the cargo dock to seal. No matter how much portable firepower they can bring to bear I still think we can keep ’em out long enough to do some bargaining. Meanwhile you can start shutting stuff down.”

“Shutting down, yes, of course,” Bamaputra murmured softly. “There are records to destroy, chips to erase, people to protect.” He turned on Antal so sharply that the foreman jumped in spite of himself. “Whatever you do, do not negotiate with this September person. Try to talk to the scientists. If we are fortunate, there may be a government official among them. Such types will go to almost any length to avoid bloodshed. I will see to the pumps and reactors while you brief the staff.”

“Got it.” They separated, leaving behind a confused and panting Corfu ren-Arhaveg.

Only much later did Antal reflect on his supervisor’s words. Seeing to the pumps and reactors did not necessarily mean shutting such systems down.

There was some desultory resistance put up by the ragtag imperial armed forces of Yingyapin. It didn’t last long. Spears and swords weren’t much of a match for beamers and energy rifles. Despite the pleas of Hunnar and Elfa, Colette directed her troops to shoot only to wound. After all, as Hwang explained to her, the citizens of Yingyapin were as much victims of the visiting humans’ deceit as anyone aboard the
Slanderscree.
Once the truth could be explained to them they should become useful members of the expanding Tran union.

When the last soldier had dropped his weapons and fled, those on board the skimmer considered what to do next. Iriole was studying the entrance to the buried installation through a monocular.

“Door looks pretty solid. I’m not sure we can blast our way past.”

“We shouldn’t have to,” said September. “They know it’s in their best interests to surrender peacefully. They can’t go anywhere. The threat of busting in should be sufficient to induce the lower echelons, at least, to come out with their hands in the air. Can the skimmer make the climb?”

Skimmers were designed to travel no more than thirty meters above a solid surface. They were not designed for ascending steep inclines. They were not aircraft. Still, if they moved slowly, Iriole thought they might be able to make it to the level area fronting the entrance. He looked to his employer for instructions.

“Let’s give it a try.”

Ethan put his arm around her. Somehow it seemed the right thing to do. Didn’t feel bad, either.

“Everybody take a seat and strap down,” Iriole told them. “We’re going to tilt some and I don’t want anybody falling out.”

When the awkward climb had been accomplished and they landed outside the massive doorway, Grurwelk Seesfar wanted to go back down and make the exhilarating ascent all over again.

“Mr. Antal, sir?”

The foreman turned to the young technician who’d barged in on him. “What is it? I’m busy?”

“I think you’d better come with me, sir.”

“Can’t. I’m trying to do a dozen things at once right now. Didn’t you hear me over the com system? Don’t you know what’s going on?”

“Yes, sir. But I still think you’d better come with me. It’s Mr. Bamaputra, sir.”

He removed his right hand from the sensor screen and turned to her. “What about Mr. Bamaputra?” he asked quietly.

“You’d better come quick, sir.” That’s when he noticed that she was so frightened she was shaking.

A crowd had gathered outside the central control room. It contained the master panels for programming reactor output. Armored glass enclosed it on all four sides, standard protection for the sensitive heart of the installation. Except for Bamaputra the room was deserted. It was also locked from the inside.

A single speaker was set in the glass next to the transparent door. “Shiva, what are you doing in there?”

The supervisor turned to smile back at him. “Preserving a vision, perhaps. Surely you recall our discussion wherein we talked about greatly accelerating the melting of the ice?”

The technician who had fetched Antal pointed into the room. As the foreman scanned the readouts she’d indicated the small hairs on the back of his neck began to tense. The figures he read belonged only in manuals, not on green screens. They continued climbing even as he stared.

“Shiva, you’re going to overload the whole system! You’ve probably gone beyond several limits already. You need to let us in so we can emergency override and shut the system down.”

“If we do that now, we will not be able to start up again,” Bamaputra explained quietly. “I have ample food and water in here with me. I really can’t allow override and shutdown at this point. It would interfere with the vision.

“I believe you underestimate the system’s integrity. It will hold at these levels and we will accomplish fifty years’ work in a few months. I am counting on you to bargain with these people to buy me that much time.”

“You’re going to blow the whole place!”

“I am not. Talk to the engineers.”

Frantically the foreman sought out one of the installation’s chief techs, asked her for an unbiased appraisal.

“He’s right,” the woman said. “Nothing will explode. It will melt. Not just the reactor cores: everything. If containment fails, there’ll be a short, quick release of heat. It will dissipate rapidly.”

“How much heat?”

She didn’t bat an eye. “Millions of degrees.”

“What do you think the chances are of maintaining containment?”

The woman turned to the older man standing behind her. His jaw and neck displayed the marks of an addict. “I’d say about one in ten.”

Antal whirled back to the speaker. “Did you hear that? Your chances of bringing this off are one in ten.”

“A better chance than a Commonwealth court would give us.”

“The opposite side of that,” the foreman shouted, beyond frustration now, “means there’s a ninety percent chance you’re going to turn the inside of this mountain into slag.”

“Then you’d better hurry and leave, wouldn’t you say?” Bamaputra’s tone was icy.

“He is crazy.” Antal stepped away from the speaker and the transparent wall. “He’s gone crazy.” He turned to the engineers. “What do you think we ought to do?”

The older man was sweating profusely. “I think we ought to get the hell out of here.”

The foreman hesitated a moment longer, then jabbed the red alarm button nearby.

Bamaputra watched calmly from the director’s chair as the panicky exodus commenced. He was not surprised. You couldn’t blame them. None of them, not even Antal, was a real visionary. Throughout history those who had made the great discoveries, accomplished the memorable scientific feats, never had better chances than one in ten. Most of them began their experiments with worse odds.

This was the only way. The calculations had to be adjusted to take into account the greatly reduced time factor. He turned to the multiple readouts. The ice sheet would begin melting rapidly now. Very rapidly. At the same time, the quantity of water vapor and carbon dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere would rise twenty fold. The system would hold. A magnetic fusion containment field wasn’t like a stone or metal wall.

Let them all leave. He could hold out alone, if need be. Despite the interference he would accomplish everything he’d set out to do. If you had vision, you sometimes had to take a chance. Turning dreams into reality always entailed a certain amount of risk.

Better to depend on machines. The instrumentation surrounding him functioned silently and without complaint, doing its job in a predictable and dependable manner. He’d never liked people much. Come to that, he’d never been very fond of himself.

Better to risk one’s life in search of the perfect abstract than to surrender to temporal temptation. He might die, but his vision would live on in the form of a transformed Tran-ky-ky. The money had never meant anything to him. Revelation lay only in achievement.

The skimmer hovered just off the ground as a squad of Colette’s bodyguards climbed over the side. Those remaining aboard kept their weapons trained on the entrance to the installation.

Ethan began examining the walls on either side of the door. “There should be a speaker here somewhere. Surely they put in something that would enable them to talk with any Tran who might come up here.”

Before they could locate the hypothetical speaker the camouflaged door began to open.

“Back to the skimmer,” snapped Iriole. The squad retreated. Fingers tensed on triggers.

There was no fighting. The technicians and engineers, support and maintenance personnel who came stumbling out of the tunnel in their survival suits weren’t armed. They kept their hands in view at their sides or held above their heads. As those on the skimmer looked on, the evacuees began staggering down the trail leading to the harbor below.