Larry Niven - The Moon Maze Game

“You think we were doing it for you?” Wayne said. “Kid, you’ve got a lot to learn. The world doesn’t revolve around your throne. We’re running because we don’t trust those murderous bastards.”

“If they are hunting or fighting you, they will be more tense, more likely to overreact.”

“They can sue me,” Scotty said.

“I’m turning myself in.”

“I don’t work for you.”

“My father abdicated!”

“He didn’t cancel my contract, or was that part of the code words, too?”

Ali tried to puff himself out to be more threatening. “Yes, it was.”

“Hands here?” Scotty asked. “Hands? Anyone believe that?”

“Please, help me,” Ali said. “I want to turn myself in.”

“They won’t hurt you,” Angelique said, gently now.

“But they might hurt you. And I couldn’t stand that.” His eyes widened. “I know. If we survive this, I will still be rich. Anyone who helps me turn myself in, I will give a hundred thousand New dollars.”

Sharmela blinked. “Let me understand this. You want to bribe us to help you sacrifice yourself to save us. That is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Prince Ali groaned, and sat, heavily. “You are all insane,” he said.

Wayne ruffled Ali’s tightly curled hair. “Yeah. Ain’t it cool?”

“Any answer?” Shotz asked.

“Nothing, but…” Stavros frowned. “I’m getting a signal from the motor pool,” he said, touching a finger to his ear. “A vehicle has been released from the northern bay.”

Shotz froze, then turned his head almost as if it balanced on a pivot. “Is it heading toward us?”

“I can’t see it, or track it.” Stavros looked up. “I should see something, dammit. Either the monitor is malfunctioning, or…” His voice trailed off, brow furrowing.

Something was wrong. None of the Beehive’s monitors indicated a problem, but Celeste was taking nothing for granted. She snatched the monitor from Stavros’ hand. If he’d seen a Scorpion leave the northern bay, and then turn east or west, she might have relaxed. But instead she saw nothing on the monitor.

“Yes. The other hand is always possible. Alert alpha and bravo teams. And inform me if the situation changes.”

The Scorpion had reached the Beehive’s eastern edge, the dome’s G level. The ten men and women fastened their own pressure suits, then checked each other’s gear soberly. When the twelve-point survey was complete, each gave a “thumb’s-up.”

“We can’t do this blind,” Piering said into his microphone. “We need those deep-scans. Where are the hostiles?”

Kendra’s voice was a welcome sound. “Infrared shows them on E and F. Our people are on G.”

“Couldn’t be better. Is there any way to communicate with them?”

“Not at the moment. But they’ve been told to hunker down.”

“Then I think it’s time.” Piering clicked the com line off, and turned to his nine volunteers. “Let’s move. Group A?”

The guy everyone called Gypsy stood first, five foot two of pure flex-steel, and mean as a snake. The other five stood up after. Jankins, the miner, said “Good luck,” and then joined Gypsy and the others in the airlock. Just before the door closed behind them, Piering said: “Take the Scorpion around to the next door. And… good luck.”

Waiting for the lock to cycle to green felt like the longest minutes of his life. One of his compatriots, an ex-police officer named Chambers who had retired to Luna, spoke first.

“If the atmosphere is good… I mean if the dome still has integrity, do we shuck suits?”

“I don’t think so,” Piering said. “What if they depressurize the dome? It’s their best threat. Remove that, and they might back down.” He didn’t like the unspoken possibility: That in the next minutes, every unsuited human being in that dome might die.

Kendra stood in the control center, examining the holographic model now shimmering on the stage.

“We’ve retasked the mining satellites,” she said. “But I really didn’t expect to have the images so quickly-or with such clarity.”

“That,” Xavier said, “is because you were not expecting me. Then again, how could you?” There was just enough self-mockery in his voice to take the edge off. A miniature gaming dome shimmered in the air before them like a floating crown. “I’ve created a map,” Xavier said with a hint of real pride. “Mining deep-scans, some infrared information, reports from this Kowsnofski woman.”

With a wave of his hand, the dome’s outer skin peeled away. Tiny human figures in red and green were clustered in various bubbles. “Our best guess. We must accept that they’ve probably screwed with the inputs. I would. However, if the information is accurate, then our people are down here ”-he indicated something near ground level-“and our antagonists are here.” He indicated two levels up.

“That’s good,” Kendra said. “And that means that our best bet is to insert our people between… what did Angelique call them? Pirates? Fine. Pirates and gamers. At the very least, we slow them down. And maybe we stop them completely.”

She took a closer look. The dome had seven public entrances and three service entrances. “We’re assuming that they’ve mined some but not all of the entrances. Piering is going for door six.”

Magique’s fingers flurried with sign. Wu Lin watched, and then interpreted. “Why don’t you think all of them were mined?”

“Because we know the pirates probably acquired their explosives here, and we’ve run inventory. About enough missing material to make four or five explosive devices. There is a very good chance that here on level C, where Asako Tabata’s body was left, might still be clear. We can reach it up an access ladder from a service entrance on ground level G. We have no data suggesting that more entrances have been mined since the gamers broke free, and we have to assume that our gamers put a crimp in the pirates’ plans. We’ll split into two teams. One will go in at F, the other at C. And then we’ll see what happens.”

“We have movement in the dome.” Kendra’s voice in Piering’s ear. “Power surges.”

“Which doors?”

“ Maintenance two and three.”

“What about door seven?” Piering asked. He could smell the chicken sandwich he’d had for lunch, his own sour breath bouncing back at him from the faceplate. Nerves.

“Nothing so far. We picked up security camera blips, just after the attack went down. Look-they wouldn’t be able to do everything at once, and when the gamers complicated things, it may have changed their focus.”

“We’ll find out in about sixty seconds,” Piering said. “Let’s get ready to move, people,” he said, trying to shut the doubt out of his head. “We better have three ‘esses’ on our side: speed, silence and surprise.”

“And serendipity,” muttered Hazel Trout, the round woman from Communications.

“And shit-storm,” Chambers said. “We’d better bring the pain.”

The four heroes of group B opened the inner lock. The access ladder was only a meter away, and Piering grabbed a rung and began to climb.

It took about five minutes to crawl from ground level to C, and another minute to locate the correct maintenance doors. Piering punched in a code, and the door slid up. The first thing Piering saw in the lock was Asako Tabata’s pod. It crowded the little room, so that they had to squeeze past, but none of the four rescuers could resist looking in through the polyglas lid. Her face was turned to the right side, pale and slightly bluish. He didn’t know her, had never met her. But she seemed so small and vulnerable, so much like a sleeping child that his heart almost broke.