The Prison in Antares (22 page)

“All right,” said Pretorius. “No one except Proto speaks, and no one moves anywhere near the camera. Pandora, activate the communication system. Let's get started.”

“Hello, the Mistalidorium mine. Hello, the Mistalidorium mine. This is Traveling Hospital Transport Ship 3011-A. We have received your signal and are on our way.”

Instantly there was a message from the planet.

“Transport Ship 3011-A, we did not send for you. Explain your presence.”

Pandora, unseen, activated a two-way visual contact.

“We received a message that a cave or a passage has collapsed. Some are dead, some buried. We will rescue and tend to the injured.”

“
Again?
Are you sure? I have no report of it.”

Proto repeated what he had said.

“It must be the mine that had the trouble a few days ago. You're better come down. We can worry later about why I didn't also receive the signal. Those damned miners are always summoning hospital ships before they make any kind of report to ground control.”

“I need coordinates,” said Proto. “Must I land on the surface, or can I fly directly down to the mine?”

“If it's as bad as the last time, you'd better go straight down,” was the reply. “Sending the coordinates to your ship.”

“Received.”

“Will you need any help evacuating the wounded?”

“No,” replied Proto. “This is our job. Onlookers will just be in the way.”

“All right,” said the officer. “Good luck.”

“Thank you,” said Proto, as Pandora cut the connection.

“They bought it!” said Ortega, removing the antigravity clamps on the mirror and carrying it back to the bathroom.

“Let's hope so,” said Pretorius. He turned to Proto. “Keep in your Antarean form. If we run into anyone down there, we're going to have to pose as your prisoners.”

“What do we do when we get down there?” asked Snake.

“We try to find out how to reach the jail,” said Pretorius. “There's got to be a connecting passage, maybe more than one.”

“We hit the atmosphere in another twenty seconds,” announced Pandora, who had seated herself at the controls again. “I'm going to put it on visual. You'll see our target pretty soon.” And finally: “There it is.”

“Can we
fit
in that?” asked Ortega.

Pandora smiled. “It's bigger than it looks, Felix.”

“Damned well better be,” he said. “My goddamned arm is bleeding from carrying that mirror. Why couldn't they have hit me in the prosthetic one?”

“I'm glad they didn't,” said Pretorius as Irish began cleaning the wound again. “It would have smashed it, and we'd have only your natural arm to depend on.”

“I'm slowing down to a virtual crawl,” announced Pandora. “We're about to be swallowed up by the shaft that leads down to the mine.”

“I sure as hell hope he's worth stealing twice,” remarked Snake as the ship vanished beneath the surface of the planet.

31

“How far down are we?” asked Pretorius.

“A little over a mile,” answered Pandora.

“Even if they bought Proto's story, there are going to be
some
Antareans when we stop. It's the ingress/egress route, probably where they receive their supplies, maybe even near their living quarters, so we'd better be ready. Felix, how's the arm?”

“Sore as hell,” replied Ortega, “but it won't stop me from using it.”

“All right,” said Pretorius. “We'll start by having Proto become a general. That should get them all to attention and saluting, which gives them one less hand to reach for their weapons.”

“We kill everyone?” asked Irish, frowning.

“Proto's illusion will only last until he has to open his mouth, if that long,” replied Pretorius. “And we
are
at war with these bastards.”

“Besides,” added Snake, “if we don't kill 'em all, you can bet your ass the survivors will radio ahead and they'll be waiting for us at the prison.”

“Always assuming we can get to the prison from here,” said Ortega.

“There's a way,” said Pretorius with absolute certainty.

“What makes you so sure?” asked Ortega.

“Because we're at the same depth as the jail,” answered Pretorius. “Why dig down this exact distance to put your cell block unless you were going to service it from one of the mines?”

“I dunno,” said Ortega. “They could go uphill or downhill just as easily.”

Pretorius shook his head. “They could have
dug
uphill or downhill when they were building it, but if they're ever under attack, they use a lot less power transporting things from the mine to the jail and back if they're doing it on level ground.”

“I hope you're right,” said Ortega. “But at the very least, we're going to put one mine's worth of these bastards out of commission.”

“You sound a little bloodthirsty today, even for you,” commented Snake.

“I've probably lost a pint or two of blood in that fight,” growled Ortega, holding up his bandaged arm. “Someone is gonna pay dearly for that.”

“We touch down in ten seconds,” announced Pandora. “I assume they're monitoring us.”

“Okay, Proto,” said Pretorius. “Time to become a general.”

The alien instantly appeared as an Antarean general.

“Looks good,” said Snake. “And I'll bet they're not using scanners down here.”

“They probably are,” said Pretorius. “If it's worth mining, it's worth protecting.” He turned to Proto. “Don't worry. They'll be so surprised to see a general down here, especially one they don't recognize, that even if they have a scanner they'll forget to look at it before we have time to get out and go into action.”

“I hope you're right,” replied Proto nervously.

“Just walk out when the hatch opens, and look smug and superior, like any general of any race.”

“There are only three of them waiting for us,” announced Pandora, checking her viewscreen.

“Good!” said Pretorius. “The rest are probably all working.”

“Or just uninterested,” added Irish. “I got the distinct impression that hospital transport ships are regular visitors here.”

“I only know the sentences Irish taught me,” said Proto. “How do I respond if one of them asks me a question, like what I'm doing here?”

“Not to worry,” said Pretorius. “We'll do the responding for you.”

“You're going to kill them all?”

“They
are
the enemy,” replied Pretorius. “And more to the point, this may be our only escape route. I suspect any way up out of the jail is guarded and booby-trapped. I don't want any survivors calling for help or backup.”

The hatch slowly opened.

“Go!”
whispered Pretorius.

Proto stepped through the hatch, surveyed his surroundings, and stepped down to the ground. The three Antareans stood some fifty feet away, at what seemed to be the entrance to a cave or tunnel. Proto saluted them, they seemed confused but saluted him back, and then, before their arms could drop, all three fell over, the victims of laser fire from Ortega's and Snake's pistols.

“You okay?” asked Pretorius, jumping down to the cavern floor as the others climbed out of the ship.

“Yes,” said Proto. “Just as well we shot them when we did. I must confess that I couldn't remember a word of Antarean once I confronted them.”

“You'd have remembered if you had to,” said Pretorius. He turned to Snake and Irish. “Better go pay the insurance.”

“The insurance?” repeated Irish, a puzzled frown on her face.

“He means to spend an extra credit or two worth of power and make sure they're dead,” said Snake, walking over to the three dead Antareans, putting the muzzle of her weapon up against each one's head in turn, and pressing the firing mechanism.

“What now?” asked Ortega.

“Now we hunt around for some way out of here on level ground, hopefully with some form of transportation we can use.” He turned to Pandora. “How far would you say we are from the prison?”

She shrugged. “Perhaps fifty miles, maybe a little more.”

“That's a long walk,” said Ortega. “We
better
find some kind of train or shuttle.”

“Start looking for it,” said Pretorius. “Where the hell did these guys emerge from?”

“I think I found it,” said Irish, indicating a narrow passage that led to a cavern that was illuminated by walls of some glowing mineral. “It's beautiful.”

“Let's see if we can find anything resembling a map of this subterranean system,” said Pretorius, following her into the cavern.

There were four awkwardly shaped desks made of alien hardwoods, each with an outmoded computer, each with an oddly structured chair created for Antareans.

“Not very up-to-date,” noted Pandora.

“True,” agreed Pretorius. Then he shrugged. “Still, how up-to-date do you have to be to dig a hole in the ground, or extract your cancer drug from . . . from wherever the hell it gets extracted from: walls, floors, whatever.” He looked at the barren walls. “What we need is a map, something that'll tell us how to get to the jail. I suppose it's got to be in the computers, since these guys don't seem to have printouts of anything.”

Pandora and Irish each activated a computer and began rummaging through the machines' memories.

“This would be a lot easier if they were programmed for Terran,” said Irish after a few minutes.

“It's not that difficult,” said Pandora, suggesting a different approach to her. “Piloting their ships has helped me understand something of their technology.”

“It
is
easier when you've been flying an Antarean ship,” agreed Irish. Then: “Wait a minute! I've got something here.”

“What?” asked Pretorius.

“I'm not quite sure. Pandora, how do I transfer it to your machine?”

“Don't bother,” said Pandora, getting to her feet. “I'll just come over.” She walked across the room to where Irish sat and learned over her shoulder. “You're close,” she said. “Very close.”

“But how do I get past this defense wall?”

Pandora uttered a series of commands that had no effect, frowned, then uttered some more—and suddenly a hologram of a map hovered above the computer.

“There it is,” announced Pandora. “The gold line seems to be the route for whatever supply vehicle can be accommodated down here. These four purple points are clearly mines, and that means that the single red point is the jail.”

“Which mine are we in?” asked Pretorius.

She uttered another command, and finally one purple light began blinking.

“So if your estimate of fifty miles is right, each inch is about twenty miles,” said Pretorius.

“So we're ready to bust him out!” said Ortega.

“Soon,” said Pretorius. “We've got two things to do first.”

“What are they?”

“We've got to bury the bodies, or at least stash them where they won't be found until we've freed Nmumba. There can be a number of reasons why they're missing, but only one why they're all dead from a laser pistol.”

“Okay, we'll find a storage space to hide them,” said Ortega. “What's the other thing we have to do before busting Nmumba out of jail?”

“Find out how the hell to get there,” answered Pretorius.

32

“Here's the entrance,” announced Pandora, leading them to a tunnel at the back of the mine. “But as you can see, it presents a problem.”

“The ship will never fit,” remarked Ortega.

“That's the problem,” she agreed.

“Clearly
something
traverses this tunnel, servicing the mines and the jail,” said Pretorius. “Probably something that transports food and basic supplies.” He frowned. “It makes our job a lot harder, because once we break Nmumba out of the jail, we're probably going to have to bring him back here to the ship.”

“There might be ships at the jail,” suggested Snake.

“I'm sure there are,” answered Pretorius. “But the odds are that they'll be heavily guarded. This is just a mine;
that's
a jail, and it's holding what is, at least to the Antareans, the most important Man in the galaxy.” He turned to Pandora. “Have you been able to pull up a
schemata
of the prison?”

“Not yet,” she said. “I have a feeling there's some stuff they simply didn't want to put on a computer. But I'll go back and try to find it.”

“I'll tell you what else we could use,” said Pretorius.

“What?”

“The schedule for whatever's running through the tunnels. Can we summon it, or do we just wait for it to stop here on its regular route? And
does
it stop here? It's been almost an hour, and no miners have shown up. Maybe they've got a week or a month's worth of supplies down wherever they're digging, and just call for more when they need them.”

“Right,” said Pandora, nodding her agreement “I'll check on that, too.”

Pretorius turned to Irish. “See if you can hunt up another computer here, and try to find anything that Pandora's not looking for—where the miners are, how many of them there are, and the shape of the transports, which I'll call trains for convenience.”

“The shape?” repeated Irish, frowning.

“I want to know if we can hop off or climb out maybe half a mile from the jail. There might be a back door, and even if there isn't, I don't want us getting off at what passes for their station or loading docks.”

She nodded. “I see. Okay, I'll find out what I can.”

“I'm sure they've got dozens of security devices in the shaft from the surface to the jail,” he continued, “but I have a feeling that they're less likely to anticipate a jailbreak engineered from the tunnel connecting the mines.”