Larry Niven - The Moon Maze Game

Suddenly, muffled sounds from the bubble above her. Pirates?

Terrified but determined, she triggered the data transfer, keeping her breathing shallow until an UPLOAD COMPLETE message flashed.

She wiggled back through the spaces, until she reemerged at 100-G, the gamer bubble. She knocked three times, and the door lifted out.

She sealed the door behind her. “I did it.” She rolled over on her back, gasping open-mouthed.

“Good girl,” Scotty said.

The gasps turned into shivers. Darla rolled onto her side and clutched herself. “Give me a minute, hon? I think I’m gonna throw up.”

Wayne’s fingers brushed her cheek. “I’ll buy you a gold-plated barf bag later. What’s our next step?”

Darla swallowed air, forced herself to calm. “We have to let Heinlein know that it’s done,” she said. “Then it’s up to them.”

The Moresnot pirates had combed their way through the rubble of bubble 62-E without finding either gamers or evidence of their passage. In the last hours Thomas Frost had pinballed through a series of emotions: tension, joy, frustration, fear. Anger at Shotz and the mercenaries he had hired. And finally cautious optimism that they had behaved in a professional fashion, creating alternate plans when the old ones went south. They did not fall apart, and that gave Thomas hope.

“Celeste?” Shotz asked. “What do you have on the monitors?”

Thomas watched the big woman check a handheld monitor, switching rapidly from view to view around the dome. Viewing over her shoulder, the monitor displayed rocks, the curve of domes and spidery collisions of light and shadow. The line of her jaw was too strong, too masculine. He couldn’t imagine being in bed with her, although he had the sense that she and the intimidating Shotz were lovers. Nothing said. Nothing in their body language. Just a sense. And that put a picture into his head that churned his stomach.

“Nothing,” she said. “No changes. But no bad news, either.”

“Small favors. Thomas?”

“Right here,” Frost said, grateful that the image of a quarter ton of writhing beef was stricken from his mind.

“Contact your brother, ask if he has received any word.”

Thomas tapped a code sequence into his sleeve’s com link, and waited.

In Doug Frost’s cell, a rusty voice began to sing “No High Ground.” His wallet and its built-in communicator lay in a basket on the table, along with the other contents of his pockets. A star-shaped light glowed on and off and on again, in rhythm with the song.

“No high ground, no high ground, no high ground anymore…”

He looked up, but could do nothing.

“Kendra,” the security guard barked into his communicator. “Mr. Frost is receiving a message from inside the dome. What should I do?”

“I’ll be right there.”

Doug looked up at her with no expression on his long dark face as Kendra entered, breathing hard from her half-kilometer sprint around the dome’s rim.

“What does your brother want, Douglas?”

He peered up at her, expression unreadable. He gestured toward the wallet. “You would have to let me answer to find out.”

She shook her head. “I’m sure you’d like that. Too risky.” She turned to the guard. “Keep him isolated.”

Thomas Frost punched a slender finger down at his PDA, ending its attempt to reach his brother. “I’m getting nothing,” he said.

“What does that mean?” Shotz asked.

“They may have captured him.”

Celeste nodded. “I agree that we should assume the worst. That just makes it more important to catch the Prince.” She turned to Stavros, their communications man. “I want you to open the emergency channel, see if we have any word. Perhaps we cannot speak, but we can still listen.”

“At once,” Stavros said, and hunkered in a corner of the room.

She turned back to Thomas. “We will capture the Prince. And once we do, we can force Heinlein base to free your brother.”

He hadn’t the slightest illusion that this gargoyle gave a damn about Douglas as a person, but it made good operational sense to pretend to. Bitch.

She turned and glanced at him, almost as if he had said that word aloud. Her face was neutral, but somehow he felt as if she was grinning inside. A death’s head grin. God, this woman frightened him

“Nothing from the external feeds?” Shotz asked.

“Nothing,” she replied. “I guess Douglas remained silent, after all.”

Thomas stiffened. “Of course he did, but I could not expect mercenaries to understand such a thing. We are patriots.”

Shotz smiled thinly. “Of course. She meant no harm.”

Thomas hoisted his air gun. “Let’s get them.”

Thomas opened the bubble door, exiting to the next chamber. After he left, Shotz turned. “Stavros,” he said. “What do you have for me?”

The Heinlein base motor pool was a flurry of activity as Piering’s volunteer brigade checked their weapons, experimented firing pitons and lasers against makeshift targets. Some tinkered with their suits, trying to get a bit more flexibility and mobility out of the polyplastic joints.

“We have the go-ahead,” he said. “Our people have cut into the communications lines, and right now these bastards are blind. Let’s hit them.”

“Yes, sir!” the brigade called. And if they didn’t snap to attention as might a more practiced unit, enthusiasm compensated for group experience.

They piled into the Scorpion transport, and the pressure seals battened down. The Scorpion hissed and then levitated on the track, and slid forward into an airlock, which sealed behind them.

“This is Scorpion two three three,” Piering said. “Awaiting permission for egress.”

“This is control. You are cleared for egress through to maintenance track two-two. Good luck.”

“Amen to that,” Piering said.

The airlock lights cycled between red, yellow and green. The outer door opened, and the Scorpion slid forward. Eight men and two women looked out at the lunar landscape as the Scorpion progressed. It swung around the track and headed toward the dome. Ground level. Level G.

Although he did not need to, Shotz stood near Stavros. He stood straight, hands clasped behind his back, lecturing an unseen audience.

“Attention, Prince Ali,” he said. “This message is being sent over all communications frequencies within the dome. Your father has requested that we convey the following message to you: ‘Death does not sound a trumpet.’”

“What does this mean?” Stavros asked.

“A Congolese saying,” Douglas replied. “And evidently a code phrase of some kind.”

Crouched in their bubble, Angelique suddenly raised her hand. “I’m getting something,” she said.

“Me, too,” Mickey said. “It’s coming over the gaming channels and the emergency com.”

“What is it?” Scotty said.

Angelique frowned. “It sounds like ‘Death does not sound a trumpet.’”

Scotty was baffled, but Prince Ali reacted violently, and at once. “My father!”

“What?”

He cradled his head in his hands. “It means that he has left Kikaya. I am to do whatever I must to survive, and need not resist to save the crown.”

He sobbed. “He did it for me. My father lost the crown… for me.”

Scotty rubbed the Prince’s shoulder. What in the world do you say to something like that?

“What happens to Kikaya now?”

“I don’t know. It depends on who was responsible for the coup. There is a man named Motabu, a general quite popular with the people. My father would have removed him, or jailed him, but for that popularity. He might have the support to do such a thing.”

“And what do you do now?”

“I surrender,” Ali said. “There is no need for the rest of you to place your lives at risk protecting me any longer.”