Asgard's Conquerors

22

You will, no doubt, remember my four criteria for maximising the success of an attempted jaibreak. You can imagine, I am sure, how confusing it was trying to weigh up our situation in the neo-Neanderthalers’ prison camp hospital in terms of those criteria.

I could see immediately that criteria one and two would be fairly readily met. The invaders, unlike the inhabitants of Goodfellow, were sufficiently slavish in their devotion to habit to maintain regular hours, and did not take the trouble to be overly vigilant in the hours of darkness. In addition, the epidemic which we’d brought with us was just beginning to break out among our genial hosts, and would presumably be causing a reasonable measure of chaos in the ranks. I had every faith in our ability to reach the relevant airlock easily and safely.

Criteria three and four, however, were the jokers in the pack. Did we have somewhere safe and cosy to go? Did we have anywhere to go? What sort of anywhere could there possibly be? It was all very well for our cryptic correspondent to assure me that a homing device would be provided along with suits to protect us from the alien atmosphere— but where was “home” supposed to be?

In addition to all these puzzles, I had also to worry about the identity of the man who had undertaken to assist us. As far as I knew, there was only one person outside of our sickroom who could write in English, and that was Aleksandr Sovorov. I could not think of any less likely person to mastermind a jailbreak. In the no-hoper stakes, Alex could give John Finn a hard race, and maybe beat him. At least Finn was devious; Alex had not even dishonesty to recommend him.

At the first opportunity, I slid out of bed and passed the note to Susarma Lear as covertly as it had been passed to me. I glanced in Finn’s direction, to indicate my suspicion that we needed to be discreet even among ourselves. Finn had not yet raised his ugly head to take notice of the rest of us, but I had observed when he took his food that he did not seem to be in any worse state than I was, which presumably meant that he was only pretending to be unconscious. Deceit came as naturally to him as breathing.

While the colonel read the note I moved into a position where I was between her and Finn, so that she could move her lips without being in his line of sight. That way, I figured, a whispered conversation could not be overheard.

She began with the obvious question: “Who sent this?”

“I don’t know,” I muttered. “Unless they’ve shipped more English-speaking prisoners down in the last couple of days, it can only have come from Aleksandr Sovorov. I can’t believe that he’s behind it, but he may be the middleman. If I had to guess, I’d say the Tetrax have arranged the break, and he’s relaying a message from them.”

“Why should the Tetrax want to spring us?” she asked.

“Who knows? Gratitude, maybe. They do have a strong sense of obligation, even to their slaves and other assorted catspaws.”

“You really believe that?”

“It’s not easy. I’ve met 822-Vela, and he didn’t seem to be a mastermind. But who can tell with the Tetrax? Anyhow—somebody sent it. Do we really have that much to lose?”

She pursed her lips. There was more than one possible answer to that.

If we jumped, we’d be leaping in the dark. We had to ask ourselves the usual questions: How bad was the frying pan we were in? And what sort of fire might we end up in?

“Do we go?” I asked. For once, I was looking for a second opinion. I guess being in the Star Force was beginning to pollute my soul. Instead of making up my own maverick mind, I was actually waiting for guidance from my superior officer. It can really take it out of you, being ill.

“Damn right we go,” she said. “How the hell else do we find out what’s going on? I’ll tell Serne.”

“What about . . . ?” I tossed my head slightly to indicate the guy behind me.

She favoured me with one of her best smouldering glares. “I don’t think we can trust the bastard,” she opined, in a fashion which suggested that Finn might be too ill to travel, whether he had recovered from his fever or not.

“It may be better to take him with us for precisely that reason,” I pointed out. “If he’s with us, we can keep an eye on him. If we leave him behind . . . who knows what he can get up to?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I guess he’s still in my command,” she said. “But I don’t know how long he was in their hands before they shipped him down here, and I don’t know how much he might have told them. We should never have brought him, in spite of his experience in the levels and his supposed knowledge of Tetron surveillance devices. We should have sent him to the penal battalion, where he belongs.”

I wasn’t about to quarrel with that. Had we but known why the Tetrax really wanted us. . . .

“What do you think is happening up above?” she asked.

“At a guess,” I said, “a pitched battle. The Tetrax in Skychain City—and anyone else they can trust—will be making the most of the epidemic. They’ve had months to figure out where to cut the invaders’ supply-routes. Starships will be landing to give support. For all we know, the Tetrax have plans to take control of ten or twenty of the levels below the city. Maybe they even know a way to get down here—and bring us out. I’m not prepared to underestimate their ability to wage effective war—not any more.”

“And we thought they might want to hire the Star Force,” she said regretfully.

“We always knew what they thought of the Star Force,” I reminded her. “Clumsy barbarians.” I didn’t add that we now knew what they thought the Star Force was fit to be used for—there was no point in rubbing it in. I could imagine the kind of feeling that must be roiling around inside her. She was Star Force through and through, and the insult the Tetrax had hurled at us must hurt her far worse than any mere physical injury. Her pride would make her hate the Tetrax for this—and that hatred would be increased rather than diminished if they casually secured our release now. There was no point in my pointing out to her that the Tetrax had done what they had done entirely because of their own sense of pride.

I returned to my bed with a disturbing feeling that we might all be in the process of being led up the garden path. It was hard to make sense of this proposed jailbreak, and thinking about it threatened to renew my headache. I decided to get some sleep and recuperate as fully as possible. There was, after all, a certain truth in what Susarma Lear had said. If we wanted to know what the hell was going on, we had to follow the bouncing ball.

Just before I went off to sleep, I remembered the figure I’d seen from the observation window while I was talking to Sovorov. All of a sudden, the idea that it was a man in a spacesuit began to seem rather encouraging. Was it possible that we had friends out there?

I woke up again for the evening meal, and for once found myself with a ravenous appetite—a sure sign that I was well and truly on the mend. The nurse seemed grateful to be able to hand me the bowl and spoon, instead of having to help out. I saw that all three of my fellow patients were now sitting up and taking notice. The food was the same kind of broth they’d been serving to us all along, with lots of unfamiliar vegetables and lumps of third-rate meat, but for once I wasn’t too bothered about the taste.

Afterwards, I stayed sitting up, wondering whether it would be possible to have a harmless conversation. Serne got out of bed, looking ridiculous in a nightshirt that barely came down to his thighs. I wondered what our chances were of getting hold of some decent clothes before we made our break.

I checked under my bed, and was pleased to see that my comfortable Tetron-issue boots were there, but my one-piece was nowhere to be found. It was probably in the laundry. The idea of having to make our great escape clad in nightshirts, boots, and spacesuits was sufficiently incongruous to be funny, but not too attractive. I hoped that the someone who came for us would bring the proper accoutrements.

Serne went over to talk to Susarma Lear. Finn got out of bed too, and wandered over to join in. Then the door opened, and he started guiltily. Serne just looked round, his face impassive, as a couple of orderlies wheeled in a fifth bed. Following behind it, looking ready to collapse at every step, was Aleksandr Sovorov.

He gave me a poisonous look of pure resentment as the rubber-gloved attendants helped him off with his trousers and on with the nightshirt. Unintimidated, I waited calmly until the coast was clear, and then hopped out to visit him.

“Sorry Alex,” I said. “How was I to know?”

“There’s a rumour going around that this is an act of war by the Tetrax,” he croaked. “Are you responsible for that?”

“Not exactly,” I told him. “They worked it out for themselves.”

“It’s not true,” he said defensively.

“Oh sure,” I told him. “Finn and I probably picked up the virus on Goodfellow. It’s probably been lurking in the Uranian rings for four billion years, waiting for someone to come along and be infected. And now it’s free at last— saved from the ignominy of having to stay deep-frozen until the sun goes nova.”

As I said this, I looked around at Finn, but he was studiously looking the other way. I took the opportunity to mutter under my breath: “Who told you to send the note?”

He was in too much discomfort to conjure up much of a look of blank incomprehension, but he did his best.

“What note?” he asked. Luckily his voice was too hoarse and his breath too feeble for the question to be loud.

“Nothing,” I said, quickly. “Forget it.” I turned round to face Susarma Lear. She was watching me like a hawk, and though she couldn’t hear what had been said, her powers of deduction were easily equal to the task of figuring it out. “By the way,” I added, “have any more humans arrived in the camp—more of the Star Force people, perhaps?”

“I’ve seen no one,” Sovorov assured me. “And I really don’t care.”

“Do me a favour, Alex,” I said. “Go to sleep—just go to sleep, and ignore everything that happens.”

“I intend to do just that,” he informed me miserably.

The way he looked, there was little doubt that we could trust him to do it.

I waited for another opportunity to talk to Susarma Lear while Finn was lying in his bed and taking no notice. He had probably guessed by now that something was up, but he didn’t know what. It didn’t seem to be a good idea to tell him.

“Alex didn’t write the note,” I told her—confirming what she’d already guessed.

“It doesn’t change anything,” she said. “We still have to go. There may be other humans here—ones that neither you nor he knew about. Hell, it might be one of our boys— we don’t know how many were picked up, where, or when. Serne and I were ambushed along with Joxahan when we went to a meeting-place we’d named on one of those stupid handouts Tulyar prepared. I knew that was a ridiculous idea.”

She was right, of course. There could be other humans here. There certainly seemed to be humans collaborating— or pretending to collaborate—with the invaders. Maybe Sigor Dyan had other informants here, who were trying to play a double role just as I had. There must have been two hundred humans in Skychain City when the melodrama got under way, and there was just a chance that one of them had enough up top to be the Scarlet Pimpernel. If so, I couldn’t wait to meet him.

No doubt we would find out the truth, when the time came.

In the meantime, though, there was nothing to do but twiddle our thumbs and try to build up our strength for the coming ordeal.