The chamber under the floor wasn’t huge, less than two meters long and a meter wide, not even deep enough for me to stand up straight in without my head and shoulders sticking out above the floorboards. It was enough to hold a large, metal cargo container though. A Tahni one, curved at the edges and flattened on the ends, a cylinder built to fit into slots in their freighter holds. This one had a security lock fitted at the center where the four folds of its top panels met, and Kan-Zin Tel knelt at the edge of the chamber, hanging onto one of the table legs to steady himself while he tapped in a code.
The lock opened with a snap of electromagnets and the petal-like sections of the pod’s hatch peeled backward. Within the metal container were four sets of Tahni body armor, four KE rifles, and a couple dozen spare ammo drums for the electromagnetic needlers.
“Holy shit,” Deke said, nodding appreciation. “Looks like a score at the Imperium thrift store.”
Marakit glared at the two Tahni adults like they’d spit in her face.
“How could you do this? Did none of you trust me?”
Kan-Zin Tel and Matlin didn’t meet her eyes, but I wasn’t as interested in their feelings of guilt as I was the weapons. The KE guns fired tantalum needles at a velocity that could penetrate body armor without the downside of a blinding flash that led the enemy right to your position. I knelt beside the big Tahni and pulled out one of the rifles, checking its condition. Like new.
“Hey, look, lady,” Deke told Marakit, chuckling, “let’s not take this personally. Mendicants can’t be choosicants, or so I’ve heard.”
“Are there more of you?” I asked Kan-Zin Tel, looking up sharply from the rifle. “More like you two, who’ve… had the procedure? Who live together?”
“Dozens,” Matlin confirmed. “Many of us came here with Marakit because the Tahni communities on Hudson Bay wouldn’t accept our decision, our rejection of the old ways.”
“And are they all as well… equipped as you two?” Deke wondered.
“There is a general feeling,” Kan-Zin Tel said, “among those of us who fought in the war that it is unwise to be disarmed.”
“Then there’s just one big question left,” I finished up. “Will they fight against Pol-Kai or join him?”
Neither of them answered immediately. Tahni, I’d noticed in the time I’d spent among them on Yfingam and aboard the Orion, didn’t dither and umm and ah the way humans did when they weren’t sure of an answer. They just clammed up and didn’t reply until they had something definitive to say.
“Pol-Kai is a traditionalist,” Matlin told us after a few moments. “So are his followers. They tolerate us and those who live as we do, but they’ve never accepted it. I believe, once he’s finished off his Evolutionist opposition and made sure the Cultists are, at least, neutral, he’ll come after us next. Others likely realize this as well.”
“I will not be separated from my family,” Kan-Zin Tel declared. “We’ve both survived too much to allow that to happen.”
“What did you mean,” Deke asked him, “when you said you used to work for our boss?”
I thought it was a strange question to be asking now, but it seemed important to the man.
“I was Fleet Intelligence asset at one time,” Kan-Zin Tel replied. “After the war. I reported to a Colonel Murdock.”
“No shit?” Deke laughed softly. “That’s just like him, to pull something like that and never tell me about it.”
“We will ask the others to join with us,” Matlin said, dragging us back to the subject at hand. “I can’t promise they all will, but some would rather act than sit around and wait for Pol-Kai to decide our fate.” She focused her gaze on me. “But join us to do what?”
“We won’t have enough people to attack him directly,” Kan-Zin Tel warned, pulling out one of the rifles and loading a drum magazine into it. A flash of green on the small display above the drum indicated the charge was still good after all these years. “The people who would join us are honorable warriors, but they all have life-mates and children who they hope to raise. They’ll risk their own lives, but they won’t risk their loved ones being left to the mercy of Pol-Kai.”
“We have to get to that imprinter,” I declared. “Where is it stored, Marakit?”
“There’s a control room for the atmospheric mining equipment,” she told me, the sullen note in her voice an indication that she still hadn’t gotten over the sense of betrayal from Kan-Zin Tel and Matlin hiding weapons. “It’s at the center of the facility, at the highest point, with a hardline connection to the transmission dish.” She shook her head, and I noticed that she used body language a lot more than the Evolutionists which was, I suppose, another indication that her replacements were perforce rather than a philosophical statement. “But if I had to guess, I’d say that’s where Pol-Kai and most of his troops are holed up now. We’ll never force our way in there, not with the numbers we can recruit from the outsiders.”
“What about the tunnels?” Deke asked her. “Could we get there through them?”
“Maybe,” she acknowledged. “But they must know about them by now. They’ll be watching the entrances.”
“Unless we keep their attention focused somewhere else,” I suggested, hefting the KE gun. I’d fired one before but its balance felt wrong, designed for a Tahni physiology. “You said the lockout code would keep them busy for a few days?” She nodded and I smiled thinly. “Maybe that’s long enough that he’d be interested in getting his hands on someone who could move that timeline up for him.”
Marakit walked through the corridors at the center of the facility, and I walked with her. Virtually, anyway. That had been the tricky part. Internal comms were still down, but that was the hardwired system. Pol-Kai had neither the equipment nor the expertise to jam wireless signals and probably hadn’t thought he’d need it since the rock walls blocked most EM except at extremely short range.
Like right on the other side of the wall in the parallel tunnel. The tricky part had been finding me goggles to receive her video signal. Kan-Zin Tel hadn’t had any in his stash, but one of their neighbors did, and it had only taken a half-hour of wheedling to get the other Tahni to hand them over and then fifteen minutes to rig the strap to the right size for a human head. They weren’t comfortable, and watching through Marakit’s cybernetic eye meant I couldn’t really look where I was going and I had to trail a hand across the wall to keep myself from bouncing off one side and into the other.
That still didn’t keep me from bouncing off Deke’s back when he slowed down, and his exasperated sigh cut through the audio input from Marakit’s transmission.
“You know,” he reminded me, “I could have tracked her without fucking around with outdated Tahni gear… and I wouldn’t have any trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time.”
“You’re also the most dangerous weapons we have,” I said quietly. The Tahni out there probably couldn’t hear us on the other side of the wall, but there was no point taking chances. “I’d rather have you paying full attention to the tunnel and making sure no one ambushes us. Now be quiet. Some of us can’t juggle all that shit at once.”
You could if you just gave me control of your balance and motor functions, Jim said petulantly. He’d suggested it before and was still miffed that I’d said no.
I think that would be establishing a dangerous precedent, I told him. Now you shut up too.
“You!” The exclamation was in Tahni, but thankfully, among Jim’s many other talents, he could translate the language for me instantly. I mean, I’d picked up some Tahni when we’d been working with Zan-Thint, but that had been a while and I was out of practice.
The Tahni who’d yelled the accusation was young and belligerent, looking like a child playing war in his black armor, swinging a laser carbine around like it was a toy gun.
“We have orders to kill her on sight!” the young Tahni said, rushing up to jam his laser carbine into Marakit’s chest. A large Tahni hand wrapped around the barrel and pushed it aside, and the kid with it.
“She’s my prisoner,” Kan-Zin Tel said, his voice muffled by the visor of the helmet he wore. “Commander Pol-Kai wants her alive so that he may question her.”
More of the young wannabe warriors rushed up behind the first kid, pouring out of the entrance to the control room, sweeping each other with the muzzles of their weapons like Boot Camp newbies who’d been handed rubber guns and told to clear a room. I couldn’t look away, waiting for the negligent discharge that would set off a circular firing squad and do our job for us, but eventually someone older and better trained stalked out into the entrance corridor, yelling and pushing.
“Stop pointing your weapons at each other, you ignorant pups!” the middle-aged Tahni bellowed. “I’ll rip the damned guts out of the next of you I see with his muzzle aimed at anything he doesn’t want to shoot! Do you understand me?”