The Fortress in Orion Read online

  “I don’t know . . .” said Djibmet.

  “Fifty-fifty the situation will never arise,” said Pretorius.

  “And if it does?” persisted Djibmet.

  “Then at the last second you’ll remember that whatever it is he had to tell you is private, and you were to meet him on the seventh level, not the third or fourth.”

  “And if the officer accompanies me to report me to the mythical Lieutenant Drelsung for misremembering the meeting place or for some other real or imagined shortcoming or violation?”

  “We’ll be monitoring you every step of the way,” said Pretorius. “If you bring him up to seven, Felix and I will be waiting for him, and we’ll have yet another uniform for Michkag, even if it hasn’t got enough rank or medals.”

  Clearly Djibmet felt more comfortable with Pretorius’s answer. “All right,” he announced. “I’m ready to go.”

  “Not just yet,” said Pretorius.

  “Oh?” The Kabori frowned. “Why not?”

  “We’ve got to fit you with a camera and earphone first, unless you’d like to wing it.”

  “Wing it?”

  “Go down there with no video or communicative devices.”

  “I most certainly would not like to do that!” Djibmet assured him.

  “All right,” said Pretorius. “Pandora and Circe, will you outfit our expeditionary force, please?”

  In five minutes Djibmet was ready, and a moment after that he was floating gently down the airlift to the third level.

  “What now?” asked Circe as they sat around the images that Djibmet’s microcamera was transmitting.

  “I don’t know about you,” said Pretorius, “but personally, I sure as hell hope there’s not a Lieutenant Drelsung anywhere in the fortress.”

  Nobody laughed.

  26

  “What the hell is that?” exclaimed Snake.

  They all looked at the creature that was approaching Djibmet as he walked down the corridor of the third level. It was tall, almost eight feet in height, with two sets of eyes, one set looking straight ahead, the other positioned over each ear. It didn’t seem to have a nose, but then it turned its head, and they could see a pair of broad slits on each side of its neck.

  “Male or female?” asked Pretorius.

  “Who knows?” said Circe.

  “Whatever it is, it’s well-armed,” added Pandora.

  “I think it’s an advance party from the group Michkag’s here to negotiate with,” said Pretorius. “It’s not paying Djibmet any attention. See? It’s walking right by him. No salute, no indication that it even sees him. And no questions about what he’s doing on that level. Snake, what the hell kind of weaponry is he carrying?”

  “It looks like a variation on our pulse guns,” she answered. “I think it’s also got a dagger tucked into a belt, but if that’s what it is, it’s just for show.”

  A Kabori officer walked out of the room about forty feet ahead of Djibmet and began walking in the opposite direction.

  “Put me through,” said Pretorius, and Pandora made a quick adjustment to the computer she was holding.

  “Djibmet, go into that office that was just vacated.”

  “What if there’s still someone in there?” whispered Djibmet nervously.

  “Then you’re looking for Drelsung, and this is where you think he told you to meet him.”

  “But—”

  “Just do it.”

  They could almost feel Djibmet swallow nervously as he approached the room in question. He stopped and stood in front of the door as it read his presence and slid into the wall. He entered, and it slid shut behind him.

  “It’s empty,” he announced.

  “We can see that,” said Pretorius. “Which doesn’t mean you’re not being watched, so let’s make this fast. Look once around the room—walls, corners, windows, floor, everything. Make it look like you’re confused. Call out Drelsung’s name once or twice, as if you’re very nervous.”

  “I am,” whispered Djibmet.

  “Don’t let your gaze linger. Pandora’s capturing it all. Do what I tell you and be out of there in thirty seconds.”

  Djibmet followed his instructions, even managed to back up to a closet that slid open, which allowed him to jump back and spin around nervously so that Pandora was able to analyze what was inside it. Then he hesitantly called out the name, shook his head in puzzlement, and went back into the corridor.

  “Well done,” said Pretorius.

  “What now?” whispered Djibmet.

  “This long corridor you’re in is intercepted by half a dozen cross corridors. As you come to the first of them, look to your right and left and see if anyone’s leaving one of the rooms. If so, perform the same routine. If not, go to the next corridor, and so on, all the way to the last of them.”

  “You want me to enter an office in each corridor?”

  “No, just one more. If the security is identical, we’ll assume it’s pretty much the same throughout the fortress.”

  “All right,” said the Kabori. “Proceeding.”

  A Kabori officer began approaching from the opposite direction.

  “Salute, damn it!” snapped Pretorius.

  Djibmet saluted, the officer glared at him for a moment, then kept on walking.

  “Try to remember,” said Pretorius, attempting to keep his anger out of his voice. “You’re an enlisted man—well, an enlisted Kabori—and that means you salute everything that moves. Got it?”

  “Yes. I hadn’t thought of that. I won’t forget.”

  “You’d better not,” said Pretorius. “We’d all like to see you again.”

  Djibmet continued walking, came to a cross corridor, looked down to both ends of it and didn’t see anyone emerging from any of the rooms, and continued walking. Another Kabori officer approached him, and he snapped off a salute.

  “Just a minute, soldier,” said the officer.

  “Oh, shit,” muttered Snake.

  “I don’t believe I’ve seen you before,” continued the officer. “Where’s your station, and what are you doing on this level?”

  “I have just been transferred here,” replied Djibmet nervously, “and I do not yet know my duties. I am supposed to report to Lieutenant Drelsung on the third level.”

  “He’s shaking like a leaf,” noted Ortega.

  “That’s okay,” replied Pretorius. “He’s lost, and he’s being questioned by an officer. He’s allowed to be nervous.”

  “I assume he gave you an actual location,” said the officer.

  “Zab 23,” answered Djibmet.

  The officer shook his head. “This corridor is Luj. You were doubtless heading to Luj 23.” He turned and pointed. “Zab is three more corridors down from here.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Djibmet. “I appreciate the help, sir.” He saluted so nervously that he almost poked his eye out. “I’m sorry to have bothered you, sir.”

  “Just go!” said the officer wearily. He continued on his way, and Djibmet began walking toward the Zab corridor.

  “That was terrifying!” he whispered.

  “No problem,” said Pretorius. “He was satisfied with your answer.”

  “You’ve been trained for this,” continued the Kabori. “I have not.”

  “Then you’re going to get some valuable on-the-job training.”

  Djibmet muttered something the machine couldn’t translate and kept walking.

  “Hey!” said Pretorius as the Kabori passed a cross corridor. “Where the hell are you going?”

  “To Zab,” answered Djibmet.

  “Why? The officer’s gone, and you weren’t really going to try to enter Zab 23 without knowing it was empty, were you?”

  “I’m . . . I’m sorry,” stuttered Djibmet. “I’m so terrified I’m not thinking clearly.”

  “All right, I’ll direct you,” said Pretorius. “No, don’t turn and go back to the corridor you just passed. That’ll draw attention. Go to the next one. That�
��s right. Here’s another officer. Salute him. Smile at him if you can. Two more. Salute them. Good! Corridor coming up. Come to a stop in a few seconds . . . now. Okay, look to your right. Anyone leaving?”

  “No,” said Djibmet.

  “I know. We can see everything you see. Now look to the left. Damn! Empty.”

  “What now?”

  “No one’s coming. No one’s behind you. Just stand there with a puzzled or thoughtful expression on your face.”

  “For how long?” asked Djibmet.

  “Until someone leaves a room, or soldiers start coming down the main corridor.”

  “I feel very open and unprotected like this.”

  “That’s because you are open and unprotected,” said Pretorius. “After all, you’re a member of the military, safe in the best-protected building in the Coalition . . . just a minute. There, off to your right! Seven or eight doors down!”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “Don’t move yet. Wait until he comes up to your corridor and turns one way or the other. We don’t want him seeing you entering his office.”

  “Right.”

  “And salute him.”

  Djibmet saluted the officer, who returned the salute, gave him the Kabori equivalent of a smile, and turned to his left.

  “Wait . . . wait . . . okay, now turn into the corridor and go to his door.”

  Djibmet did as Pretorius instructed, the door slid open, and he gave the office a thorough but brief inspection, looking into every corner and crevice on the assumption that Pandora could freeze and enhance any image at her leisure.

  “Anything else?” he whispered as he turned and faced the door.

  “No, that should do it.”

  “Now what?”

  “How brave are you feeling?” asked Pretorius.

  “Not very,” admitted the Kabori.

  “All right,” said Pretorius. “Go on back to the airlift and come up to the seventh level.”

  “I’m not feeling brave,” repeated Djibmet, “but I will do what must be done. Where shall I go next?”

  “Just stay where you are for a minute. I need to think.” Pretorius signaled Pandora to kill the sound system. “Okay, I can’t send him down to two, which is clearly the operative level on this place. I mean, hell, three is almost as deserted as six was.”

  “Then you have no choice,” said Snake. “Like it or not, you have to send him down to two and hope he doesn’t faint.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Pretorius.

  “What are you getting at?”

  “We’re all in agreement that it’s obvious two is the main level. As Michkag and his fleet get here, the other levels will get a lot busier, but the mere fact that they’re so empty now means that no one’s preparing a meeting or a celebration on any of them. There may be some minor meetings between lesser officers on both sides on the higher levels, but clearly two’s where the major speeches and business will take place.”

  “So two is where he’s got to go,” insisted Snake.

  “No,” said Pretorius firmly. “We plan to snatch Michkag, but preferably not in front of a few thousand armed followers.”

  “Maybe we can get both sides shooting at each other,” suggested Snake.

  He grimaced and shook his head. “Not until they’ve finished shooting at us.”

  “Then what the hell do you have in mind?”

  “If we’re going to make the switch,” he explained, “we are sure as hell not going to do it in front of an audience.”

  They all turned to look at him, curious as to what he was thinking.

  “There’s one group in the fortress who already know where Michkag’s room will be, and that’s the service robots. And I think Djibmet will cause a lot less suspicion if we give him a reason to question the robots than if we send him down to inspect where Michkag will be speaking and working and maybe even eating on the second level.”

  “Makes sense,” agreed Circe.

  “Yeah, I suppose so,” said Snake grudgingly.

  “All right,” said Pretorius. “Give me sound again.”

  Pandora flipped a switch. “It’s on.”

  “All right, Djibmet,” he said. “New assignment. Ask some low-level soldier—not a general, commander, or captain—where the service mechs are stationed.”

  “You mean the service robots?” replied Djibmet. “They’re everywhere.”

  “You want their headquarters, the room they keep their supplies in. You’re recovering from an injury inflicted by Men in some minor border action, and you need something—an extra pillow, a heating pad, I’ll leave it to you—to ease your pain when you’re trying to sleep. If anyone suggests that the robots just put it in your room, you’re still looking for Drelsung, who’s got your orders and knows what room you’ve been assigned, but you’re in enough pain that you want to make sure you get whatever it is you need now and don’t have to demand it in the middle of the night.”

  “I can do that,” replied Djibmet after a few seconds’ silence. “Then what? I assume you want me to find out where Michkag will be quartered?”

  “Yes, but you’re going to have to do it very indirectly. After all, you can’t just ask for the room number of the most important leader of a totalitarian society.”

  “So what do I do?” asked the Kabori.

  “Cause a little problem for them,” said Pretorius. “Accidently lean against a pile of something—towels, sheets, water pitchers, whatever.

  Then, while they’re cleaning up—and they won’t blame you for your clumsiness; they’re robots, and their function is to clean up—find a place to hide the microcamera you’re carrying. If you can aim it at a computer screen, so much the better.”

  “And if I can’t, or it’s covered up by a pile of something, anything, then what purpose will this serve?”

  “The sound will still be operative. An order concerning Michkag’s room may be announced, or one robot may say something about it to another, or a Kabori officer may enter the place to request or demand something be taken to his room. Now, the robots will certainly know where his room is, but my guess is that the officer will state it anyway.”

  “All right,” said Djibmet. “I will do my best.”

  “Good,” said Pretorius. “And remember to salute every Kabori officer you see. Come back here when you’re done.” He signaled Pandora to turn the sound off again.

  “Well, we should know soon where we’re making the switch,” said Ortega.

  “We may even get down there unnoticed, though I have no idea how,” said Snake, “and actually make the switch. But how the hell will we get back out and off the planet?”

  “I’m working on it,” said Pretorius.

  “Oh, fuck your ‘I’m working on it’ shit!” snapped Snake. “Have you any idea at all of how we even get back to this room with Michkag?”

  “Oh, course I do,” said Pretorius. “And if you think about it, so do you.”

  She frowned. “Can’t you just out-and-out say it?” she demanded.

  “There’s a member of the team who hasn’t pulled his weight yet, but that’s going to change very soon now.”

  Pretorius grinned and turned to look at the member he was referring to, and suddenly all eyes turned to the Michkag clone.

  27

  Djibmet made it back to the storage facility an hour later.

  “All right,” announced Pretorius. “From this moment on, someone is going to monitor that transmission every second of every day until we find out where Michkag will be sleeping.”

  “Have you figured out how we’re going to get to wherever it is?” asked Circe.

  “I’d tell you I was working on it, but it would just set Snake off on another screaming fit,” he replied with a smile.

  Snake glared at him but said nothing.

  “All right,” continued Circe. “Once you’ve got him and brought him up here—I assume you’re bringing him back here—how do we make our escape?”

 
“That’s a little easier,” answered Pretorius. “There’ll be ships docking here at the southern tower once Michkag lands, because they’ll be feeding four or five times as many mouths and supplying whatever else Michkag and his party needs. Our best information back on Deluros is that we can expect upwards of ten thousand military, mostly Kabori, to accompany him, and probably more. That’s going to take a lot of daily supplies.”

  “This isn’t the only tower, you know,” she said.

  “I know. But it’s the one we’re in, they’re only using three for shipping, and we’ll make sure a ship is docked here when we go into action. Pandora, how many ships are on their way in?”

  “Give me a minute,” she replied, putting the question to the proper computer. “More than two hundred in the next four days.”

  He shook his head. “I asked too general a question. How many supply ships?”

  She checked again. “At least six, possibly as many as eight, during that same four-day span.”

  He turned to Circe. “There you have it. Three towers, six ships. We’ll get at least two, maybe three.”

  “But they unloaded the one we came in on in just a few hours,” she noted.

  He smiled. “But we weren’t planning on hijacking it.”

  “How do we plan to do it?” she persisted.

  “As soon as we know which one or two will come to this tower, we’ll have Pandora’s computers dope out the best way to take one over. The only problem will be if it comes before Michkag arrives. We might get it to stay moored for eight or ten hours, but we’ll never get away with keeping it in dock for, say, two days.”

  “Then what do we do?”

  “We find another one to steal.”

  “Out there?” she said, waving a hand in the general direction of the city that surrounded the fortress.

  He shook his head. “No, it won’t be that easy. But once we make the switch, we can have our Michkag arrest us and order Djibmet to fly us to some location that Michkag won’t share with his staff. He thinks there’s a traitor among them, that we’re working with him, and he’s not about to let anyone know where he’s stashing us until he can question us.”

  “Why wouldn’t he just stash us in a room here?” asked Ortega.

  “Only one reason,” said Pretorius. “But a very telling one.”