In the engineering bay’s background drone, Fitzpatrick felt he could speak confidentially with his fellow prisoners. So long as he and his EDF comrades appeared to be working, the Roamer supervisors allowed them to fraternize.
Over the past two days, though, their captors had treated them differently, glaring at the hostages as if they had done something wrong. The seemingly benevolent watchers now simmered with anger. Was it the discovery of the destroyed Roamer ekti ship? But they had known about that for quite a while.
Fitzpatrick finally learned, through muttered comments and whispered complaints, that the EDF had finally struck back against the insidious Roamers and their sneaky bases. One of their depots had been taken over, the supplies confiscated and the facility destroyed.
“Serves them right,” said Shelia Andez. “They provoked the King—what did they expect would happen? I hope the Roachers learn their lesson and stop their stubborn little fit.”
“It proves the Hansa is willing to enforce their demands,” Yamane said.
“It proves to me that we shouldn’t just be sitting here.” Fitzpatrick glanced meaningfully at his companions. “Maybe the EDF is already out there looking for us. If my grandmother knew I was alive, she wouldn’t sit still.”
“Or maybe it’s in our own hands,” Shelia said.
“We should consider our options,” Yamane said, tinkering with a damaged compy. “Perhaps we can even find unexpected allies.”
The Soldier compies salvaged from wrecked EDF battleships had been put to work out in the industrial yards, where they performed tasks too difficult or dangerous for Roamers. As a cybernetics specialist, Yamane was one of the few people at Osquivel qualified to perform maintenance on the Soldier models. He used the opportunity to study how the sophisticated compies adapted to their forced reprogramming.
Fitzpatrick helped him probe one of the combat-designed machines, studying its instruction modules and programming implants. This one had suffered a brief collision out in the rockyards, but the scrapes and discolorations were merely superficial.
“The Roachers already wiped the obvious military programming from these machines, but their memory structure goes deep,” Yamane said quietly. “Soldier models are designed around Klikiss instructional modules. It looks like there’s a hidden partition that can’t be erased with standard routines. It’s still all in here somewhere, if I can figure out how to activate the core programs.” His lips formed a thin smile. “Then things will change around here.”
Fitzpatrick leaned closer, pretending to help as soon as he saw one of the Roamers watching them. He whispered, “What do you mean?”
“Then we’ll have an army of a hundred or so Soldier compies—if we’re willing to trigger the core programming.”
Bill Stanna arrived carrying a bulky box. The burly soldier had been given duties as a loader, carrying equipment and supplies. Stanna had basic training, knew how to run weaponry and fly standard ships, but he was a traditional heavily muscled grunt, never meant to be a brilliant tactician.
“I wish I could pull an assignment to help analyze that hydrogue derelict they found in the rings,” Fitzpatrick muttered. “Can you imagine how much General Lanyan would love to get his hands on that?”
“Unless that crazy Roacher scientist ruins all the decent evidence first. It just burns me—” Shelia said, bending to help Stanna lift a component.
Sighing, the big soldier straightened and stared out the narrow windows of their work asteroid, past the fuzzy limb of the gas giant to the open stars beyond. “If only we could get out there, I could take a Roacher ship and just fly away.”
Fitzpatrick shook his head. “You’d never make it, Bill. You heard Kellum. None of these ships is qualified for interstellar flight. They’re all in-system transports.”
“Doesn’t mean I couldn’t try.”
Shelia nudged him with her elbow. “It would take you a thousand years to get anywhere, Bill.”
“Who says? What if I just took a ship and . . . and flew up to the comet cloud? The Roachers have ekti-processing facilities up there, so they must have interstellar ships. Otherwise, how would they transport their stardrive fuel?”
Yamane chuckled. “That’s a good point.”
“So, once I got up there, I could make a new plan, steal one of their fast cargo haulers. That’s all it would take.”
“Quite a few uncertainties there,” Fitzpatrick said, not sure Stanna had thought everything through. “I wouldn’t advise it—”
“Why not try, if I get the chance?” the big soldier insisted.
Shelia scowled at Fitzpatrick. “You prefer staying here, Fitz? Rather settle down with a nice Roamer wife and form a clan of your own? I’m starting to wonder about you.”
Stung, Fitzpatrick turned away, ashamed that an image of Zhett had immediately come to mind when Shelia had spoken. “That’s not it at all. I want to escape as much as you do, but we shouldn’t try anything foolish. It would be suicide. We have to wait until the time is right.” He turned back to help Yamane work on the Soldier compy, slamming the robot’s access port closed.
Stanna said, “You think too much, Fitz.”
The opportunity arose unexpectedly five days later.
Inside a dense cluster of shipyard facilities, the grav-tether broke on a tug hauling an incoming rock to the smelters. The drifting slab of debris smashed into the side of the automated ore processor, causing damage as it careened off into an admin dome. The outer rock shielding protected most of the people inside the offices, but emergency systems activated. Access hatches crashed down or jammed into place. A handful of people, including Zhett Kellum, were trapped inside.
Alarms went off throughout the shipyards, summoning rescue workers to the damage site. By long habit from living on the edge, the Roamers kept detailed and well-practiced emergency plans, and they all responded whenever they were needed. Ships flew in; engineers dropped their normal duties. Grappler pods and other craft converged at the site of the accident. For a short while, everything was in chaos.
Bill Stanna, working beside Fitzpatrick, looked up suddenly. “This is our chance. I’m not going to waste it.” He grabbed the other man’s sleeve. “Cover me, Fitz. I’ve already picked out my ship.”
Docked to their working asteroid was a small prospector scout, a single-passenger craft designed to fly through the rings in search of dense ore concentrations. Stanna knew he could fly it.
Alarms continued to ring, and not many Roamers were in sight. The Soldier compies went about their programmed labors without pause. Stanna sprinted to an emergency locker and grabbed a suit, pulling it on as if it were an EDF drill from when he’d been a kleeb.
Though he was uneasy, Fitzpatrick didn’t dare try to stop the man. If Stanna did succeed in escaping, he would send a signal to the EDF and somehow bring help. Then they could all get out of here.
“Just keep an eye out, Fitz—make sure I get a chance to fly away.” Stanna clomped awkwardly forward in his environment suit. He sealed his helmet. Fitzpatrick slapped him on the back. “Good luck, Bill.”
Stanna hurried to the airlock to cycle himself through. Fitzpatrick checked to make sure that the Roamers were still studying their screens, responding to the emergency at the admin dome and the automated ore processor. The activation of the airlock would show up on their status readouts, but the Roamers would probably think it was someone on the emergency response team.
The external airlock door opened, and Stanna launched himself through space like a projectile. Fitzpatrick watched him drift toward the docked prospector scout, catch himself on the vessel, then work his way to its entry hatch.
Inside the work bay, three Roamer workers reacted curiously, as if they sensed something wrong. One of them went to the inset window screen and peered out at the small ship. They were close to noticing Stanna.
Knowing he had to do something, Fitzpatrick ran to the wall controls and activated the emergency fire signal. Since all air inside the enclosed asteroid habitats was recycled and replenished from tanks, fire was always a terrible hazard. To maintain his cover, Fitzpatrick opened the supply room door, grabbed a fire-suppression pack, and sprayed foam on several crates sitting in the corner.
As Roamers came running, he looked up at them, feigning panic. “I saw smoke in here, but I put it out!” He looked at the foamy mess on the floor.
The three Roamers looked at him, skeptical. “We’ve got other emergencies to deal with. Behave yourself.” They went back to their stations while Fitzpatrick diligently mopped up the spilled fire-suppressant.
He looked through the inset windows to see the small prospector scout streaking away, just another ship in the flurry of activity. Fitzpatrick covered a nervous but satisfied smile and returned to his task.
In the chaos of rescuing the people trapped inside the damaged admin dome and repairing the automated ore processor, it was some time before anyone sent out prospectors to map the ring field again.
It took the Roamers four full days before they even noticed that the small ship was gone.