Part 10 (1/2)
The supervisor was frowning now, trying for a better look at Blue Max's guts. ”No, computers are two levels up. But they won't let you in unless Hirken verifies it. You're not cleared, and you can't go into a restricted area if you're un-badged.” He leaned closer to the scanner. ”Listen, that really looks like some kind of computer module to me.”
Han chuckled casually. ”Here, look for yourself.”
He stepped aside. The tech supervisor moved closer to the scanner, reaching down to work its focus controls. Then his own focus went completely dark.
Han, rubbing the edge of his hand, stood over the unconscious tech and looked around for a place to stow him. He had noticed a supply closet at the end of the scanner room. Han fastened the man's hands behind him with his own belt, gagged him with a dust cover off a scanner, and lugged the limp form into the closet. He paused to take the man's security badge, then closed the door.
He went back to the little computer-probe. ”All right, Max; perk up.”
Blue Max's photoreceptor lit up. Han removed his own sash and stripped the gaudy homemade medals and braid off his outfit. He yanked the epaulets and piping away, too, and what remained was a black body suit, a fair approximation of a tech's uniform. He placed the supervisor's security badge prominently on his chest, took Max up again, and set out. Of course, if anyone were to stop him or compare the miniature holoshot on his badge to his real face, he'd be tubed. But he was counting on his own luck, a convincing briskness of stride, and an air of purpose.
He went up two levels without mishap. Three Espos lounging in the guard booth near the elevator bank waved him on, seeing he was badged. He fought the impulse to smile. Stars' End was probably an uneventful tour of duty; no wonder the guards had gotten lax. After all, what could possibly happen here?
At the amphitheater, Pakka's amazing deftness hadn't even drawn an approving look from Viceprex Hirken. The cub had been using a hoop while rolling a balance-ball with his feet, doing flips.
”Enough of this,” Hirken proclaimed, his well-tended hand flying up. Pakka stopped, glaring at the Viceprex. ”Isn't that incompetent Marksman back yet?” The other execs, conferring among themselves, managed to reach a group decision that Han was still gone. Hirken's breath rasped.
He pointed to Atuarre. ”Very well, Madam, you may dance. But be brief, and if your sharpshooting gaffer isn't back soon, I may dispense with him altogether.”
Pakka had removed his props from the arena floor. Now Atuarre handed him the small whistle-flute Han had machined up for him. While the cub blew a few practice runs on it, Atuarre slipped on the finger-cymbals Han had fas.h.i.+oned for her and clinked them experimentally. The improvised instruments, even her anklet-chimes, all lacked the musical quality of Trianii authentics, she decided. But they would suffice, and might even convince the onlookers that they were seeing the real thing.
Pakka began playing a traditional air. Atuarre moved out onto the arena floor, following the music with a sinuous ease no human performer could quite match. Her streamers blew behind her, many-colored fans flickering from arms and legs, forehead and throat, as her finger-cymbals sounded and her anklets rang, precisely as they should.
Some of the preoccupation left Hirken's face and the faces of the other onlookers. Trianni ritual dancing had often been touted as a primitive, uninhibited art, but the truth was that it was high artistry. Its forms were ancient, exacting, demanding all a dancer's concentration. It required perfectionism, and a deep love of the dance itself. In spite of themselves, Hirken, his subordinates, and his wife were drawn into Atuarre's spinning, stalking, pouncing dance. And as she performed, she wondered how long she could hold her audience, and what would happen if she couldn't hold-them long enough.
Han, having found a computer terminal in an unoccupied room, set Max down next to it. While Max extended his adapter and entered the system, Han took a cautious look in the hall and closed the door.
He drew up a workstool by a readout screen. ”You in, kid?”
”Just about, Captain. The techniques Rekkon taught me work here, too. There!” The screen lit up, flooded with symbols, diagrams, computer models, and columns of data.
”Way to go, Max. Now spot up the holding pens, or cells, or detention levels or whatever.”
Blue Max flashed layout after layout on the screen, while his search moved many times faster, skimming huge amounts of data; this was the sort of thing he'd been built for. But at last he admitted, ”I can't, Captain.”
”What d'you mean, can't? They're here, they've gotta be. Look again, you little moron!”
”There're no cells,” Max answered indignantly. ”If there were, I'd have seen them. The only living arrangements in the whole base are the employees' housing, the Es...o...b..rracks, and the exec suites, all on the other side of the complex-and Hirken's apartments here in the tower.”
”All right,” Han ordered, ”put a floor plan of this joint up, level by level, on the screen, starting with Hirken's amus.e.m.e.nt park.”
A floor plan of the dome, complete with the garden and amphitheater, lit the readout. The next two levels below it proved to be filled with the Viceprex's ostentatious personal quarters. The one after that confused Han. ”Max, what're those subdivisions? Offices?”
”It doesn't say here,” the computer answered. ”The property books list medical equipment, holo-recording gear, surgical servos, operating tables, things like that.”
A thought struck Han. ”Max, what's Hirken's t.i.tle? His official corporate job-slot, I mean.”
”Vice-President in charge of Corporate Security, it says.”
Han nodded grimly. ”Keep digging; we're in the right place. That's no clinic up there, it's an interrogation center, probably Hirken's idea of a rec room. What's on the next floor down?”
”Nothing for humans. The next level is three floors high, Captain. Just heavy machinery; there's an industrial-capacity power hookup there, and an air lock. See, here's the floor plan and a power-routing schematic.”
Max showed it. Han leaned closer to the screen, studying the myriad lines. One, marked in a different color and located near the elevators, attracted his attention, He asked the computer what it was.
”It's a security viewer, Captain. There's a surveillance system in parts of the tower. I'll patch in.”
The screen flickered, then resolved into the brightness of a visual image. Han stared. He'd found the lost ones.
The room was filled, stack upon stack, with stasis booths. Inside each, a prisoner was frozen in time, stopped between one instant and the next by the booth's level-entropy field. That explained why there were no prisoner facilities, no arrangements for handling crowds of captive ent.i.ties, and only a minimal guard complement on duty. Hirken had all his victims suspended in time; they'd require little in the way of formal accommodations. The Security Viceprex need take prisoners out only when he chose to question them, then pop them back into stasis when he was done. So he robbed his prisoners of their very lives, taking away every part of their existence except interrogation.
”There must be thousands of them,” Han breathed. ”Hirken can move them in and out of that air lock like freight. Power consumption up there must be terrific. Max, where's their plant?”
”We're sitting on it,” Max answered, though that anthropomorphism couldn't really apply to him. He filled the screen with a basic diagram of the tower. Han whistled softly. Beneath Stars' End was a power-generating plant large enough to service a battle fortress, or a capital-cla.s.s wars.h.i.+p.
”And here are the primary defense designs,” Max added. There were force fields on all sides of the tower, and one overhead, ready to spring into existence instantly. Stars' End itself was, as Han had already noticed, made of enhanced-bonding armor plate. According to specs, it was equipped with an anticoncussion field as well, so that no amount of high explosives could damage its occupants. The Authority had spared no expense to make its security arrangements complete.
But that helped only if the enemy were outside, and Han was as inside as he could get. ”Is there a prisoner roster?”
”Got it! They had it filed: Transient Persons.”
Han swore under his breath at bureaucratic euphemisms. ”Okay, is Chewie's name on it?”
There was the briefest of pauses. ”No, Captain. But I found Atuarre's mate! And Jessa's father!” He flashed two more images on the screen, arrest mugshots. Atuarre's mate's coloring was redder than hers, it turned out, and Doc's grizzled features hadn't changed. ”And here's Rekkon's nephew,” Max added. The mug was of a young black face with broad, strong lines that promised a resemblance to the boy's uncle.
”Jackpot!” Max squealed a moment later, a very uncomputerish exclamation. Chewbacca's big hairy face flashed on the readout. He hadn't been in a very good mood for the mugshot; he was disheveled, but his snarl promised death to the photographer. The Wookiee's eyes looked gla.s.sy, and Han a.s.sumed that the Espos had tranquilized him as soon as they'd taken him.
”Is he okay?” Han demanded. Max put up the arrest record. No, Chewbacca hadn't been badly injured, but three officers had been killed in apprehending him, the forms said. He hadn't given a name, which explained why it had been difficult for Max to locate him. The list of charges nearly ran off the screen, with a final, ominous, handwritten notation at the bottom listing time of scheduled interrogation. Han glanced at a wall clock; it was no more than hours before Chewbacca was due to enter Viceprex Hirken's torture mill.
”Max, we're up against it. We have to do something right now; I'm not going to let them take Chewie's mind apart. Can we deactivate defensive systems?”
The computer replied: ”Sorry, Captain. All the primaries are controlled through that belt unit Hirken carries.”
”What about secondaries?”
Max sounded dubious. ”I can get to the standby, but how will you deactivate the Viceprex's belt unit?”
”I dunno; how's he wired up? There must be ancillary equipment; the d.a.m.n box is too small to be self-contained and still control this whole tower.”
Max gave the answer. Receptor circuitry ran through Stars' End, built into the walls on each level.
”Show me the top-level circuitry diagrams.” Han studied them carefully, memorizing points of reference-doors, elevators, and support girders.
”Okay, Max, now I want you to cut into the secondary control systems and rearrange power-flow priorities. When the secondaries cut in, I want that umbrella s.h.i.+eld, the deflector directly overhead, to start load-shedding its power back to the plant, but I want you to prejudice the systems' safeguards, so that they notice the deflector droppage but not the feedback.”
”Captain Solo, that'll start an overload spiral. You could blow the whole tower up.”
”Only if I get to Hirken's primaries,” Han said, half to himself, half to Max. ”Get crackin'.”
High above, Viceprex Hirken had realized that he was being played for a fool.