Andromeda Day and the Black Hole (14 page)

Andi stood, feeling a rush of adrenalin
through her body as she fastened the pendant around her neck, where it hung,
warm against her skin. The first thing she had to do was escape from the cell. How
was she going to do that? There was no way she could get the lock on the door
to open, and even if she did, there was probably a guard outside. She had to
find a way to get him to open the door, and then she had to get rid of him…

A few moments later, Andi put her face
close to the door and yelled, “Help! Somebody help me, I think I’m bleeding to
death!”

The view slit at the top of the door opened
to reveal a pair of Hoshaen eyes. “What?” he snapped.

Andi held up a hand, which was smeared with
blood. Then she pressed it against the back of her head. “Sphere hit me hard
when I answered him back, and I banged my head on the table. It won’t stop
bleeding.”

“So?” The guard drew back and went to close
the slit.

“He is very keen to find out why he can’t
read me,” Andi said. “I don’t think he’ll be too pleased with you if he comes
in and finds me dead on the floor.”

The guard hesitated, and she sensed that he
was afraid of what his superior might do to him. Then, grumbling under his
breath, he closed the slat and fumbled at the lock.

Andi moved quickly to the place behind the
door where she had left one of the chairs. She lifted it over her shoulder. It
was made of some sort of metal and quite heavy. As the guard came in, she threw
it at him with as much strength as she could muster. He was unprepared for an
attack by the young prisoner and did not have time to defend himself. The chair
struck his head soundly and he slumped to the floor, unconscious.

Andi dragged his legs inside the room
quickly and pulled him close to the wall, so that he was out of sight if anyone
looked through the view slit. Then she rifled through his pockets for his metal
pass card. Finding it, she took a deep breath, and then stuck her head out of
the cell.

There was nobody in the corridor. Quietly
she slipped out and pulled the door shut behind her. Quickly she walked along
to the next cell. She peeped in through the window to make sure that Deneb was
alone, and then, seeing him sitting on one of the chairs, swiped the card
through the lock.

She opened the door and stepped in quickly.
“Come on,” she said, “let’s get out of here.”

“Andi?” Deneb jumped to his feet. He came
over to her, lifting up her hand that was covered in blood. “What have they
done to you?”

“I did it with a piece of metal from the
table. It’s just a small cut, Dad—I lured the guard with it. How are you?” She
touched the fresh gash on his face that Sphere had told her he had given him.

He winced, but smiled. “I’m fine. Rescuing
me twice in one day, Andromeda? This is getting to be a habit.”

“I hope it’s the last time. Come on, we
won’t have long.”

They peered around the door. “Lydia?” Deneb
asked.

Andi hesitated. “I don’t know. I think we
ought to get Clios first. Lydia’s not well, and I don’t think she’ll make it
down to the mines. We’ll come back and get her later.”

Deneb caught her wrist as she slipped past
him out of the door. “We could go now,” he said. “Just the two of us. We’ll
probably be able to make it on our own.”

Andi smiled. “I know you don’t mean that.”

“Your safety is of paramount importance to
me.”

“I know. But we can’t leave Clios in this
place. We came here to rescue Lydia, and all four of us will be leaving.” Her
voice was firm.

“Okay.” He didn’t argue with her. They
walked down the corridor quietly until they came to the central cavern. A guard
stood at the front of the entrance, facing out, making sure that no one entered
the interrogation area.

“My turn,” Deneb said. He tapped the guard
on the shoulder. The guard looked round. Although he was taller than Deneb, he
wasn’t expecting a fist in his face and he fell heavily to the floor. Deneb
picked up the rifle that he’d dropped.

“Get up,” Andi said to the guard who had
frozen when the weapon was turned on him. The guard rose slowly to his feet. “You’re
going to lead us across the cavern to one of the elevators—and make sure it’s
an empty one,” she demanded. Deneb slipped the rifle inside his prison jacket
so that the barrel was pointing straight at the guard. “One sign to the others,
and he won’t hesitate to fire.”

Deneb just raised his eyebrows as the
guard’s eyes flicked to him. The guard swallowed and nodded meekly, obviously
deciding they meant business.

Her father prodded him forwards. The guard
walked out of the corridor into the cavern. He led them across the large floor
to the elevators on the far side, choosing one that was empty. The three of
them walked into it, and the doors slid shut.

Deneb withdrew the rifle and pointed it
straight at the guard’s chest.

“Don’t kill me,” said the Hoshaen, eyes
wide in alarm.

“Okay.” Deneb swung the butt of the rifle
up abruptly. It met the guard’s chin with a resounding crunch and the guard
crumpled. Deneb looked across at Andi. “What? I said I wouldn’t kill him, and I
haven’t.”

She grinned. Retrieving the card, she went
over to the control panel. “We’ve got to work out how to get the elevator down
because these central ones don’t have buttons. The card should be programmed,
but we didn’t have time to do that.”

“What can we do?”

“Watch and learn, Dad.” Andi felt around
the unconscious guard’s belt and found a knife tucked into a small holster on
one side. She pulled it out and used the blade to pry off the cover of the
control panel. Inside was a mesh of wires, leading to the elevator mechanism. Without
hesitating, Andi took several of them, cut them in half and then twisted them
together. The elevator began to descend slowly.

“How did you know how to do that?” Deneb
asked, puzzled.

Andi stood, tucking the knife into her
pocket. “I guessed.”

“You guessed.”

“No, Dad. It’s a long story.”

Deneb leaned against the elevator wall. It
was growing warmer, and the lights flickered as the metal box sank slowly into
Thoume’s heart. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“What do you mean?” she said as
nonchalantly as possible.

“All this. Flying the Concorde down to
Thoume—I assume that’s how you got here. Getting captured. Escaping from the
cell. How did you do that, by the way?”

“I took a bra from the museum and used the
wire from the cups.”

Deneb blinked at her ingenuity, but was too
puzzled to smile. “Finding your way to me. Escaping from the other cell. Fixing
the elevator. This isn’t the Andromeda Day that I know.”

“Are you sure?” Andi smiled softly. “Perhaps
you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”

Deneb looked at her for a moment. She
couldn’t read what he was thinking. Then he looked up as the lights flickered
again. “Now’s not the time,” he said. “But if we ever get back to the
Antiquarian
,
I expect a full report. No lying, Andi.”

“Yes, Dad.”

Together, the two of them sat on the floor
facing the doors, keeping one eye on the motionless guard. It took an age for
the elevator to reach the bottom levels. Andi even found herself nodding off at
one point, and it was only when Deneb started to get to his feet that she woke
up and heard the now-familiar squealing of the elevator mechanism and realized
they had at last reached the mine.

“Get ready,” he said, raising the rifle in
case someone was waiting to come into the elevator. Andi pulled the knife out
of her pocket and waited breathlessly as the doors slid open.

Outside, however, was only the
semi-darkness of the prison depths. They stepped out, noticing immediately the
dull purple glow of the rock around them.

“How do we find her?” Deneb asked as they
began to walk down the tunnel.

“I don’t know. Find a computer station, I
guess.”

At the end of the tunnel was a junction. There
was no point in using the card, as it wasn’t programmed to lead them to a destination.
Instead, Andi looked up at the Hoshaen symbols above each tunnel. Closing her
eyes, she recalled the copies of the plans of the prison that had flashed up on
the screen as she had programmed them in when she and Clios had first tried to
find Deneb. Although she had only seen them for a fraction of a second, she
could remember them exactly.

“This way,” she said, proceeding down the
furthest tunnel. Deneb said nothing, following her silently along through the
gloom.

It was very warm in the lower levels. Andi
looked up at the ventilation shafts that occasionally punctuated the walls. The
fans spun swiftly, but didn’t seem to get the air moving much. For the first
time she wondered how the electricity that ran the prison was generated. Gas? Oil?

Water. The answer came to her instantly. On
the plan of the level at the absolute bottom of the prison there had been a
double line of blue snaking through the mine. There must be a diverted
underground river, she thought. And the flow of the water must be generating
the electricity that runs the lights, the fans, the computers, and the locks on
the doors.

“What are you thinking?” Deneb whispered as
they crept along. “I know that look. You’re planning something.”

“I don’t know. It’s just a possibility…” Andi
held up her hand. Ahead of them was a computer station. She nodded to Deneb. He
slipped in front, peered around the lip of the tunnel, waited a second and then
moved quickly.

“Drop it!” he snapped as the guard raised
his own rifle. The guard ignored him, bringing the weapon up to point at Deneb.

“No!” The word escaped Andi’s lips as the
laser blast erupted from the barrel. Her hand flew to her mouth, and then she
watched the guard slump in his chair.

Deneb looked over his shoulder at her. “I
had no choice, Andi, it was me or him.”

“I’ve no quarrel with that,” she said,
coming around the station and pushing the guard in the chair aside with a
grimace so she could face the computer screen. She studied the text and pressed
a button for the location menu. She now had a working knowledge of the Hoshaen
language, and had no problem in locating Clios. “She’s listed as working in
section G4 of the mine today.” She cleared the screen. “Come on.”

“Aren’t you going to program the card?”
Deneb said as she left the station.

“No need. I know the way.” She led him down
one of the tunnels. She smiled to herself in the semi-darkness as they walked. She
knew that he was curious about her sudden remarkable memory and other skills. She
would have to explain everything back on the ship, of course—that was
inevitable. But first they had to rescue Clios and get out of here.

“Andi!” Deneb reached out a hand and
grabbed the back of her outfit suddenly as she exited the tunnel. In alarm she
looked at the waist-high railing in front of her. She had nearly toppled over
it. Together they leaned carefully over and looked down.

They stood on a platform at the top of a
pair of staircases that lined the walls of the central heart of the mine. Down
below them, Andi could see Ruvalians working on other platforms at various
levels. Tunnels carved into the rock curled in every direction as far as she
could see.

“Where’s G4?”

“This way.” They descended the steps to the
next level, where a huge trolley stood against the wall, stacked high with
small packets of food.

“Lunch,” Deneb guessed. He opened one and
pulled a face. “Almost as bad as Taurus’s attempts at burgers.”

“Come on,” Andi said. “We’re the waiters.” She
picked up a large pile of the packets and began to walk along the lines of
Ruvalians chipping at the walls. Deneb did the same, distributing the food as
he walked.

Deneb had told Andi that the Hoshaens took
the new prisoners to the shallowest mine tunnels while they become acclimatized
to the pressure. Andi was relieved by this news. She had been worried that the
convoluted maze of tunnels would make Clios hard to find, but in the end it was
surprisingly easy. Before they had gone far, she found the Ruvalian girl in a
small group who were working on a section of the wall, placing chips of Indigo
Quartz into a large wagon. A guard stood at the edge of the level, looking out
with boredom across the mine.

Andi walked up to her friend. “Lunch?” she
asked softly.

“Thank you.” Clios half turned, accepting
the packet, then raised her eyes. She gasped. “Andi?” Her gaze flicked past her
to see Deneb, quietly handing out other food. “How?”

“Don’t ask now, Clios. Grab a couple of
packets and come with us. Quickly.”

The Ruvalian girl dropped the small laser
tool she had been using to gouge out the rock. “It’s not sharp enough to cut
butter,” she grumbled, accepting a handful of packets from Andi. Together they
made their way out of the small tunnel.

“Dad? Come on.” Andi frowned at her father,
who was lagging behind.