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—Raja Flattery, The Book of Ship
FROM THE instant the Redoubt’s first hatchway exploded, Jesus Lewis stayed within arm’s length of his bodyguard, Illuyank. It was partly a conscious decision. Even in the worst of times, Illuyank inspired a certain confidence. He was a heavily muscled man, dark-skinned, with black wavy hair and a stone-cut face accented by three blue chevrons tattooed above his left eyebrow. Three chevrons—Illuyank had run outside around the Colony Perimeter three times, naked, armed only with his wits and endurance, “running the P” for a bet or a dare.
Testing their luck, some called it. When the hatch blew, they all needed luck. Some of them were barely awake and had not yet eaten their first dayside meal.
“The clones got a lasgun!” Illuyank shouted. His clear, dark eyes worked the area. “Dangerous. They don’t know how to use it.”
The two men stood in a passage between the clones’ quarters and a random huddle of survivors who waited behind them near a half-circle of hatches leading to the core of the Redoubt. Even in this moment of peril, Lewis knew how he must appear to the others. He was a short man, thin all the way—thin straw-colored hair, thin mouth, thin chin made even more so by a deep cleft, a thin nose, and oddly dark eyes which never seemed to reflect light in the thin compression of his lids. Beside him, Illuyank was everything Lewis was not.
Both stared toward the core of the Redoubt.
There was a real question in their minds whether the core of the Redoubt remained secure.
Knowing this, Lewis had deactivated the communications pellet buried in the flesh of his neck and refused to answer it even when insistent calls from Oakes tempted him.
No telling who might be able to listen!
There had been some disquieting indications lately that their private communications channel might not be as private as he had hoped. By now, Oakes would have received word about the new Ceepee. Discussion of that and the possible breach of their private communications system would have to wait.
Oakes would have to be patient.
At the first sign of trouble, Lewis had hit an emergency signal switch to alert Murdoch at Colony. There was no certainty, though, that the signal had gone through. He had not been allowed time for a retransmit-check. And the whole Redoubt had gone onto emergency power then. Lewis had no way of knowing which systems might be working and which not.
The damned clones!
A loud whirr sounded from the direction of the clones’ quarters. Illuyank flattened himself on the floor and the others were showered with shards of passage wall.
“I thought they didn’t know how to use that lasgun!” Lewis shouted. He pointed at a gaping hole in the wall as Illuyank leaped up and spun him around toward the others at the hatch circle.
“Downshaft!” Illuyank called.
One of the waiting group whirled the downshaft hatchdogs and opened the way into a passage lighted only by the blue flickering of emergency illumination.
Lewis sprinted blindly behind Illuyank, heard the others scrambling after them. Illuyank shouted back at him as he ran: “They don’t know how to use it and that’s what makes it dangerous!” Illuyank tucked and rolled across an open side passage as he spoke, firing a quick burst down the passage from his gushgun. “They could hit anything anywhere!”
Lewis glanced down the open passage as he ran past, glimpsed a scattering of bodies blazing there.
It soon became apparent where Illuyank was leading them and Lewis admired the wisdom of it. They took a left turn into a new passage, then a right turn and found themselves in the Redoubt’s unfinished back corridors, skirting the native rock of the cliffside into the small Facilities Room on the beach side. One plasma-glass window overlooked the sea, the courtyard and the corner where the clones’ quarters joined the Redoubt itself.
The last of the followers dogged the hatch behind them. Lewis took quick stock of his personnel—fifteen people, only six of them from his personally chosen crew. The others, rated reliable by Murdoch, had not yet been tested.
Illuyank had moved to the maze of controls at the cliff wall and was poring over the Redoubt’s schematics etched into a master plate there. It occurred to Lewis then that Illuyank was the only survivor from Kingston’s mission to this chunk of dirt and rock named Black Dragon.
“Is this how it was with Kingston?” Lewis asked. He forced his voice to an even calm while watching Illuyank trace a circuit with one stubby finger.
“Kingston cried and hid behind rocks while his people died. Runners got him. I cooked them out.”
Cooked them out! Lewis shuddered at the euphemism. The grotesque image of Kingston’s head crisped to char grinned across his mind.
“Tell us what to do.” Lewis was surprised at his control under this fear.
“Good.” Illuyank looked directly at him for the first time. “Good. Our weapons are these.” He indicated the power switches and valve controls around them. “We can control every circuit, gas and liquid from here.”
Lewis touched Illuyank’s arm and pointed to a one-meter square panel beside him.
“Yes.” Illuyank hesitated.
“We’re blind otherwise,” Lewis said.
For answer, Illuyank tapped out a code on the console beneath the square. The blank panel slid back to reveal four small viewscreens.
“Sensors,” one of those behind them said.
“Eyes and ears,” Lewis said, still looking at Illuyank.
The dark man’s expression did not change, but he whispered to Lewis: “We also will have to see and hear what we do to them.”
Lewis swallowed and heard a faint snap-snapping at the hatch.
“They’re cutting in!” a voice quavered behind them.
Lewis and Illuyank scanned the screens. One showed the rubble that had been the clones’ quarters. I’M HUNGRY NOW!, the new rallying cry of the clones, was smeared in yellow grease across one wall. The adjoining screen scanned the courtyard. A crowd of mutated humans—E-clones all—scoured the grounds for rocks and bits of glass, anything for a weapon.
“Keep an eye on them” Illuyank whispered. “They can’t hurt us with that stuff, but all that blood out there will bring demons. There are holes all over our perimeter. If demons hit, they’ll catch that bunch first.”
Lewis nodded. He could hear some of the others pressing close for a better view.
Once more, there was that snap-snapping at the hatch.
Lewis glanced at Illuyank.
“They’re just pounding at us with rocks,” Illuyank said. “What we have to do is find that lasgun. Meanwhile, keep an eye on the courtyard. The blood . . .”
The lower left-hand screen showed the clone mess hall, a shambles of security hatches broken open in the background, a turmoil of clones throughout the area. This screen suddenly went blank.
“Sensor’s gone in the mess hall,” Lewis said.
“Food will keep them busy there for a time,” Illuyank said. He was busy searching through the Redoubt on the remaining screen. It
showed a flash of the courtyard from a different angle, then a broken tangle of perimeter wall, cut to pieces by the lasgun and swarming with clones coming in from the outside where Lewis had ejected them, the action which had ignited this revolt.
We have to cull them somehow, Lewis told himself. The food will go only so far.
He turned his attention to the screen showing the courtyard. Yes . . . there was a lot of blood. It made him aware that he was badly cut himself. Celltape stopped his major bleeding, but small cuts began to ache as he thought of his condition. None of them was without injury. Even Illuyank bled slightly from a rock cut above his ear.
“There,” Illuyank said.
His voice coincided with a new thump and crackling agitation at the hatch. But the COA screen Illuyank had been using now showed the passage outside their hatch. It was filled with a mass of clone flesh: furred bodies, strange limbs, oddly shaped heads. At the hatch two of the strongest clones were trying to maneuver a plasteel cutter, but their actions were impeded by the press of others behind them.
“That’ll get them in here for sure,” someone said. “We’re cooked.”
Illuyank turned and barked orders, pointing, waving a hand until all fifteen were busy in the Facilities Room—a valve to control, a switch to throw; each had some particular responsibility.
Lewis keyed for sound in the screen and a confused babble came over the speakers.
Illuyank signaled to a man at the remote valve controls across the room. “Dump the brine tanks into level two! That’ll flood the outer passage.”
The man worked his controls, muttering as he followed the schematics at his position.
Illuyank touched Lewis on the elbow, pointed to the screen which showed the courtyard. The clones there were looking away from the sensor, all of them at full alert, their attention on a broken segment of wall which led to the perimeter. Abruptly, almost as one organism, they dropped their rocks and glass weapons and ran screaming off-screen.
“Runners,” Illuyank muttered.
