James Hogan - Entoverse

There was scuffling and confused mutterings. Then Langerifs voice called out something in Jevlenese from inside the office-he had evidently disposed of his Ganymean communicator. The translation came through the earpiece that Hunt was wearing: “Spread out. Cover all the exits. Abrintz, take three men out to the concourse and secure the elevators.”

Another voice responded. “Werselek, Quon, Fassero, come with-“

Then Langerif again, from inside the office. “I didn’t say that. It’s some kind of trick. Stay where you are.”

Only to be countermanded by, “This is Langerif speaking. Do as I say.”

“Don’t listen. That’s a fake.”

“No, I’m not. He is.”

“What do we do?” a voice pleaded somewhere in the blackness.

Then ZORAC’s voice said quietly in Hunt’s ear, “Move about eight feet to your right along the wall, and then across an alcove to a door in the far wall. It’s open, and leads into an equipment room.”

Hunt began worming his way along the base of the wall as ZORAC had indicated. Sounds of shooting and cries of panic came from the direction of the doorway leading out to the elevator concourse, accompanied by Terran voice shouting commands. A Jevlenese voice shouted, “All right, we surrender!”

“Come out with your hands up,” a Terran voice ordered. “Is that all of them in there, Sergeant?”

“All cleared here, sir. Three hostiles dead.”

“What’s going on out there?” Langerifs voice demanded.

“PAC security is outside,” a voice replied. “They’ve taken over the whole floor. We’re trapped.”

“That’s impossible.”

“That wasn’t me speaking,” Langerif’s voice said again.

Reaching the door that ZORAC had indicated, Hunt felt his way through. Del Cullen’s voice called out, “You calculated wrong, Langerif. Half your men were working undercover for us. We’ve got the rest of the building tied up. It’s over. Throw down your guns and come out.”

“Do as he says,” Langerifs voice instructed.

“Take no notice,” another Langerif said.

Hunt bumped his head painfully on an edge of projecting metal. Feeling ahead with his fingers, he hauled himself carefully to his feet, tracing the shapes of equipment racking and supports around him. It came to him then, what was happening. ZORAC was a ship’s computer. Its first priority was the safety of the Shapieron’s crew. Seeing them being rounded up at gunpoint had spurred it into the only action that it was capable of.

Langerif had grasped it, too. “Very clever, for a machine,” his voice snarled in the darkness. “But if the idea is to protect your Ganymeans, you’d better quit right now. We’ve got two of them here and a bunch more outside the door. If the lights aren’t back in five seconds, we shoot.”

“Hear that, you men?” another voice called out. “There aren’t any Terrans. It was the computer.”

Hunt heard the door close, and then the light came on to reveal him alone in a space crammed with electronics cubicles and cabling.

“Great special effects,” he complimented.

“It was the best I could do,” ZORAC said. “I’ve got some of them shut up here and there around the place, but they’re starting to sort themselves out. Some of PAC security came out on the other side, too.”

“What’s the general situation?”

“A mess.”

“What about the others?”

“Garuth and Shilohin are still there in his office. I got Danchekker into an elevator across the hall while the lights were out. Nixie took off and lost herself somewhere.”

“And the rest?”

“Cullen and his guys are in the middle of a fight down in security. Duncan and Sandy have been grabbed by police in the UNSA labs. Gina got away from her quarters before they arrived. She wants to talk to you.”

“Put her through.”

“And so does Langerif. He’s demanding that you give yourself up, otherwise he’ll shoot Garuth.”

Hunt drew a long breath. There were some things that the Jevlenese might be able to explain away when this got back to JPC, he thought; but not murdering the planetary governor. Even Langerif had to be smart enough to know that.

“He’s bluffing,” Hunt said.

“You think so?”

“Yes. Tell him you’re not getting a response. My headset must have been knocked off in the dark, right?”

“I hope you’re right,” ZORAC replied, in a masterfully contrived you’re-supposed-to-understand-these-people tone of voice. “Here’s Gina.”

“Vic? ZORAC’s told me the score. It’s no use heading this way. They’re everywhere. Right now I’m in an empty suite that ZORAC found.”

Hunt thought quickly. There would be no point in trying to get to any of the Thurien couplers into VISAR, since those would have been the first places to be secured. And the next thing the Jevlenese would do after getting the complex’s backup systems running would be to cut ZORAC’s connection into PAC. He should get to Gina first, while ZORAC was still available to help.

“ZORAC, can you get us together somewhere?” he said.

“You can’t get back out through Garuth’s office. Head through the compartment at the rear. There should be a way down. It looks as if you were right about Langerif, by the way.”

Behind a partition at the back of the equipment room, some runs of cabling and ducting went down a well to the level below, where a maintenance hatch gave access to an engineers’ inspection gallery. From there, Hunt came out through a machinery compartment into a tool room, and thence into a stairway that seemed clear for the moment. One level down, he entered a passage that led to an elevator, which ZORAC already had waiting to take him down to a level where several large dining rooms were situated. A lot of Jevlenese office workers were milling around, while frantic police officers tried to tell the managers what was happening. In the general confusion, Hunt managed to slip through into the warren of kitchens and passages at the rear, where ZORAC had also directed Gina. Hunt found her in a space behind a water-heating system and a pumping compartment. She seemed shaken but in good shape.

“What do we do now?” she asked.

“ZORAC, what are the options? Can we get out?”

“That’s probably the best bet. Look, there are Jevlenese engineers in the control section right now, switching in the backup communications and monitoring systems. I could be cut off at any moment. I’ll give you directions, now, to a way out through the basement that I’ll unlock. It leads into the city’s freight-moving system. First, you need to go down through the back stairs from the passage outside where you are, to a garbage-compacting plant…

They lost ZORAC shortly after, but found their way down through the route that it had described. The exit was unlocked, and they entered a system of tunnels and shafts, much of it collapsing from disrepair, which brought them into the automated sublevels of Shiban. When they had gone what they judged to be a safe distance from PAC, they began ascending via catwalks and stairways to reemerge into habitation. A short distance farther on, Hunt recognized the street outside the hotel that Nixie had taken him to. “Okay, I think I know where we are,” he told Gina.

“That’s great. But where do we want to be?”

The Shapieron was the obvious place-assuming ZORAC or whoever was in charge aboard the ship didn’t decide to take it up from the surface for some reason. But with the police possibly on the alert for them, Hunt put their chances of getting to Geerbaine as slim. And even if they did, access to the pad where the Shapieron stood would surely be impossible.

“Well, there’s only one American I know in town,” Hunt said.