Blue Remembered Hills (ch9)

[igenlode]

Erik really should have answered his messages...

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Chapter 9: On the Move

Someone was knocking at the cabin door. Blake groaned and rolled over to look at the chrono on his wrist. Half an hour late for the morning watch: he’d overslept—

The jolt of realisation sent him upright in the unfamiliar bunk and reaching down for his boots before he was fully awake. His head struck hard against a too-close ceiling that should not have been present. Beneath his feet there was only a lurch into open air.

Not his cabin. Not the Liberator after all.

Memories of yesterday came back in a rush as he winced, rubbing at a bruised scalp. But the knocking outside had begun again; that at least had been no dream.

“I’ll get it,” Gan said from somewhere underneath him, landing on the floor with a thump that shook the flimsy unit. He keyed the door lock and let it open a crack.

From his high vantage point Blake could make out little of their morning caller save feet: not the polished boots of officialdom, at any rate. By lying on the edge of his bunk he could just catch a glimpse of the man’s face beyond Gan’s massive shoulders. It was a complete stranger.

“Roj Blake — Olag Gan?” A cultured Newparis accent.

“I’m Gan. What is it?”

“It’s on at last; the Operation’s finally making a move. Dar wants to see the two of you, soonest you can manage.”

“What’s on?” Blake said sharply from behind, and the other man looked up, assessing him with a shrewd gaze.

Apparently he passed the test. ”The dockyard op. And that’s all they’re telling any of us so far. You’ll get the rest from Dar, I dare say... if he reckons you need to know.”

“All right. We’ll be along,” Gan said quietly, and closed the door. He looked up at Blake in his turn. “What do you make of it?”

“Some kind of sabotage at the dockyard. At a guess.” Climbing down rather awkwardly from the top bunk — there was barely room for the two of them to stand, at least when one was Gan — Blake worked his way to the other end of the unit and disappeared into the coffin-like hygiene cubicle beyond. There was an automatic light, but that was about the most sophisticated piece of equipment provided. He sighed. So much for freshening their clothes. Well, there were a couple of cleanser spouts at least...

“I’ll wash first. That’ll leave you a bit more space for the moment.” He heard Gan’s rumble of assent from the other room and began to strip off his tunic; the teleport bracelet still fastened securely around his arm was a futile reminder of their predicament. “After that... well, we’ll see what the Operation wants from a couple of stranded fellow-travellers.”

After trying to contact the Liberator again. That went without saying, though he no longer really expected to get through. If— when Jenna returned, the first they’d hear of it would be a call from the ship as soon as the communicators were back in range; whatever had gone wrong, she wouldn’t be hanging around in orbit any longer than she needed, let alone waiting for Blake and Gan to take the initiative.

The cleanser fluid was ice-cold as it evaporated. Blake shivered, directing the spray down the back of his neck with considerable reluctance. Whatever role Dar Ogar had in mind for them, it had got to be better than spending much longer in here.

~o~

In the city above, twenty hurried minutes later, there was a definite air of tension and suppressed urgency. Even in the main streets there seemed to be fewer people out than there’d been on the day before, and those who passed Blake and Gan did so without sparing so much as a curious glance, moving swiftly and wrapped up in their own concerns. It had to be painfully obvious even to the Federation that something was afoot; when a double section of black-clad troopers came down the central roadway at the quick-march, it took all Blake’s store of self-control not to make a bolt for it. But the column hurried past without breaking step, holster-flaps still buttoned down, and he and Gan exchanged a somewhat puzzled look of relief.

It wasn’t until he caught sight of queues at the distant airlock entrance, and saw massive inner doors in place that had not been in evidence the day before, that he connected the changed activity of their surroundings with the changed quality of the daylight beneath the Dome and the promised duststorm. He hadn’t been on the planet long enough to know what qualified as ‘normal’. But the hazy sun of yesterday had given way to a sort of bruised twilight, and a viewport that should have looked back towards the landing field showed them only a whirling poisonous fog.

There was something disturbingly mesmeric about the idea of nature in all its raw power just the other side of the city wall. It was like the snows of Exbar, which he had seen on a childhood visit, and which had fascinated him to his uncle’s great amusement; actual physical specks appearing from nowhere and vanishing again, unpredictable, uncensored and uncontrolled. The ion reefs or radiation belts of deep space might be threat real enough as they sleeted home against unshielded hull plating, but it was an oddly abstract danger. The wind outside, with its howling burden of silica and carborundum, and the deadlier particles that went unseen, was a far more tangible presence that seemed somehow closer at hand. Only the heavier pebbles that it hurled in its wake and the occasional lolloping rock betrayed the true nature of the siege upon their refuge: a cloud of ground-dust whipped to frenzy across the plain.

A larger boulder than usual lurched towards the viewport, and Gan stepped involuntarily back. “They can’t possibly be planning an attack out there... and they can’t expect us to go along, surely?”

Remembering the outbound queue at the airlock — natives and offworlders alike all masked and suited — Blake wondered privately if the Operation’s plan to wrong-foot the occupiers might not rely on just that. Work, for the Newpies at least, was clearly expected to go on as usual in the course of a duststorm. But he was in fervent agreement with Gan on one thing: there was no way either of them was going to be of any use under such conditions. Surely Dar realised that.

“Come on.” He put the spectacle firmly behind him, leading off back down the street. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

The rendezvous point they’d been given the night before was not Ogar’s Bar but an address over in the eastern rim of the city, only a few blocks away. The street-code resolved to an oddly off-white building in a block of new construction. Unlike its neighbours, it was still unfinished, and appeared to have been suspended in this state of half-existence for some time. Blake, familiar with Federation bureaucracy, suspected an unseen hand adjusting the records behind the scenes; provided the system recorded work in progress, no inconvenient inspectors were likely to be dispatched to check up against reality.

Streaks above the windows betrayed a large transient population who had evidently been taking illegal shelter — and venting their cooking — and a half-flap of greasy sacking covered the door. Gan pushed it aside; froze. Blake, behind him, felt a sudden ominous pressure at the back of his own neck.

“Roj Blake — to see Dar.” He got his wits about him enough to remember the passcode Dar had mentioned, and rattled off the list of digits. The knife-point lifted a little.

“Who are you and what do you want?”

As his eyes adjusted Blake could see a dark hallway beyond, full of movement. Pale faces glimmered for a moment as those within cast suspicious glances at the door; despite the unpanelled walls and exposed access shaft above them, he glimpsed the sleek casings and lights of technology that had no place in this seemingly derelict site. No wonder they were paranoid.

“My name is Roj Blake and Dar wants to see me,” he repeated patiently, raising empty hands in response to a further insistent prod from behind. “As soon as possible, we were told. I don’t know why, and I suggest you ask him.”

“All right, bring them in here.” An unexpected interruption from a side-passage further down the hall; a sandy, greying head of hair appeared around a door-frame on their left as Blake and Gan were thrust into the building.

“Sorry about that, you two: Dar will see you presently. Things really are a bit urgent at the moment.” He grinned. “My name’s Wintiss, by the way. I’m sure you’ll forgive me if I don’t tell you quite what I do around here.”

The room was as unfinished as the rest of the building, and dimly lit by a pair of portable light-tubes rigged on a stand. Blake could just make out unpleasant stains on the walls behind the tottering piles of crates on all sides, most of them sealed and suspiciously new in appearance. Wintiss pulled out a couple of basic stools from behind another stack, offering them apologetically, and Gan shook his head. “Thanks, but I’ll stand.”

A sudden babble of voices emerged somewhere further off as a door slid open, and a look of palpable relief spread over Wintiss’ features. “I think Dar’s finished for the moment. Just hold on a minute.”

He raked hands backward through tousled hair in what was evidently a habitual gesture, and leaned out to stick his head back into the corridor as Blake and Gan exchanged somewhat bemused glances. Muffled conversation. “Dar, they’re here—”

“Roj Blake.” Dar came into the room with a decisive tread, shaking off the last of the aides or colleagues who’d been with him. He gestured to Wintiss, who hurried out, closing the door behind him. “Olag Gan. Does your offer of assistance still hold?”

“Naturally... if we can.” Blake hesitated. “But we don’t know the Operation, or its methods. If you could—”

He broke off. Dar had reached out to touch a seemingly anonymous crate in a nearby stack, and the air tensed suddenly with feedback from the familiar forcefield-aura. Gan drew breath to protest; Blake caught his eye with a shake of the head. He’d seen Dar’s face in that little pool of light. The man looked ten years older than he had yesterday, and the grim set of his mouth was not directed at them.

“It is precisely because you are not known in the Operation that I need your help.” Despite the shield around them, Dar’s voice was very quiet. “I need someone who can go up against the Ghost.”

“But — the dockyards—” Gan was clearly struggling with the same confusion that Blake felt, and Dar, watching him, gave a somewhat bitter laugh.

“I have called out this raid on my own authority and without authorization, because in my judgement the Ghost’s decisions are no longer to be relied upon. The Borda will be leaving in a matter of days, perhaps hours, but any attack has been constantly delayed. Morale has been suffering for weeks, while Erik—”

“Erik?” Blake said softly, aware of the sudden sheen of sweat at the older man’s temples.

“Erik... has concerns of his own, and neither time nor interest for the work of the Operation, it seems.” Dar met his eyes with conscious resolve, a willed act of betrayal and regret. “Erik. The Ghost — my friend.”

“But last night...” Blake frowned. “The execution?”

“That was no execution.” Teeth showed briefly, without humour. “That was an abduction: a staged abuse of his own power for his own purposes. That girl has dominated his every thought for weeks— months. I’ve been watching her; I tried to warn her. I’ve seen her and that Federation lieutenant together at Ogar’s and heard them talking when they thought they were alone. She was the one Erik was training for the dockyard job, his personal prodigy as an inside agent... and now I’m certain he has her shut up in that lair of his beneath the Garnier while everyone believes her dead. He refuses to talk, he refuses even to listen, and he refuses to act where action is needed; and there are men in place here risking their lives with every day of delay. I want her out of there.

“Let her leave the planet with that boy of hers... for her sake. For the sake of the Operation. And for friendship and the sake of Erik’s sanity — because back when I first knew him, that was none too secure...”