The Callisto Gambit (42 page)

Her colleagues’ supportive murmurs encouraged her.

“Like that guy on TV said, we won this war! So why are we about to surrender Ceres to the Martians? It’s despicable. We have to stop that fleet from landing. Does anyone
not
agree?”

One hand went up. It belonged to Cheraline Ngu. “Oh sure, I agree,” she said. “But we
can’t
stop them. That’s just a fact.”

Andrea disagreed. “It’s a Star Force fleet. And who does Star Force take orders from?”

“The President.”

“And the ISA!” Andrea said. “We’ve got Star Force wrapped around our little finger! All we’ve got to do is fake an unignorable suggestion to stand down. ” She gained confidence as she spoke. Her heart pounded with excitement now, not fear. “We’ll tell them to take the Martians back to Mars. Take them wherever. They breathe vacuum, don’t they? Take them out to Eris and dump them there. We’ve got a facility on Eris, don’t we? They can have that!”

“I agree with Andrea,” Josh said. “If we have a chance of saving Ceres, we have to try. And I think, actually, we have a pretty good chance. We just have to get access to the top-level influence channel.” He held up a hand. “Yeah, I know. But seriously, think about it, guys. You’ve all been inside the Emerson Institute at some point, right? The security team down there is highly
in
competent … compared to us.”

Everyone started to talk at once. Some wanted to rush the Emerson Institute this minute. Others mentioned the orbital gun platforms, the QRF, the Institute’s perimeter defences.

“Wait! Stop,” Josh said. “Think smarter. Andrea?”

“We only need to get a handful of people in there,” Andrea said. “One of them has to be Josh, and the others should be, um, recent winners of the target shooting competition. But the regs are that we’re only allowed to enter singly, and we aren’t allowed to carry our weapons in there. So we need a plausible threat. A reason why we have to be there,
armed,
to protect the ISA’s oh-so-valuable IP.” She ran her thumb over the binding of
All Creatures Great And Small.
“Molly suggested a jailbreak.”

“Um,” Cheraline Ngu said. “Is she going to organize that herself?”

Andrea shook her head. “She knows a guy. He’ll just need a little help from us …”

Kiyoshi walked slowly, taking care to make each pace exactly the same length.

Ahead of him: the bright, inviting corridor that led to the way out.

Behind him: prisoners walking in single file.

Gecko grips made scant noise on the stone floor. Rag sandals were silent. One person had on homemade clogs.
CLACK-clack, CLACK-clack
—their steps echoed in the stone corridor, scraping at Kiyoshi’s nerves. Who
was
that? Someone from the Storage clans.

He really wished he hadn’t told Brian O’Shaughnessy what he was planning.

As it turned out, the Irish had been planning a jailbreak for months—that business about looking for generator parts had just been a pretext to map the underground tunnels. While he was doing that, Brian had gotten buddy-buddy with some of the Storage clans. They were completely fed up with this life, too.

So they were
all
coming.

All except the Galapajin, who’d politely declined to follow Kiyoshi anywhere, ever again.

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, except getting this right.

He counted off five more paces. That made 40 meters from the corridor entrance. He stopped.

Michael trod on his heels. “Sorry.”

One by one, everyone stopped.

Kiyoshi’s breath misted out.

“Hello?” he said.

“OK, hello there, Mr. Yonezawa,” said a female voice in his cochlear implants. “Are you in position?”

“Yes.”

Calm, warm, the voice carried a Luna lilt. It belonged to Andrea Miller, Molly’s friend from when she used to work here. Kiyoshi was about to entrust his life, and the lives of everyone behind him, to a woman he’d never met or even heard of before today. It felt all wrong, no matter how trustworthy Molly said she was.

“We have diverted the nanocopters from your area,” she said. “We’ve also faked a malfunction in the fixed camera in that corridor, creating a hole in the coverage, which means that I do not have eyes on you right now. So I need you to follow my instructions very carefully. First of all, can you please confirm that you’re forty meters from the lower end of the corridor, standing precisely in the middle of the corridor?”

“Yes, I am.”

“OK. Take one step forward, twenty degrees to the right of your current position.”

He did it. “OK.”

“Again.”

“OK.” As he took his second step, he looked over his shoulder and saw Michael mimicking his first step, placing his feet exactly where Kiyoshi’s had been.

“Can you feel the gravitational field?”

“No.”

“Good. This might actually work.”

“Huh?”

“Mr. Yonezawa, this is a three-body system. The gravitational attractors are located behind each wall and above the ceiling. They move around all the time, but their movements are
not
random. They follow a preprogrammed course which changes once every twelve hours. In any gravitational system there is a null line where the bodies cancel each other’s gravity out. I am going to guide you along that null line.”

“I understand.”

“It zigzags.”

“Gotcha.”

“One step is to equal 80 centimeters. When I say ‘Low!’ you need to squat down so your head is no more than 140 centimeters above the floor.”

“Got it.”

“Take one step, forty-five degrees left.”

He had a compass overlay enabled on his retinal implants. He aligned his leading foot with the 45° mark and took one step. “OK.”

“One point five steps, seventy degrees right.”

“OK.”

“Three steps, thirty degrees left.”

Michael trod on his heels again.
He
couldn’t hear the guidance. Only Kiyoshi had been given a wifi connection. Too many people suddenly accessing the network would raise flags.

“Four steps …”

Behind him, Kiyoshi heard a cry and the crunch of breaking bones. A man lay on the floor. He must have accidentally stepped out of the null line. The woman behind him leant over to help him—and leant out of the null line. She went down head-first. When her head hit the floor, it made a sound like wood being split by an axe.

In fascinated horror, Kiyoshi watched the skin and flesh of her face stretch downwards, transforming her face into a nightmare mask with all the slack puddled at the bottom.

The person behind her resolutely stepped over both bodies, determined not to lose the null line.
CLACK-clack.
That was the clogs-wearer, a teenage girl who could well have been born and raised in here. The Storage clans went back fifty years.

“Mr. Yonezawa, are you still with me?”

Behind Kiyoshi was Michael. Behind Michael, Molly. Behind Molly, Wetherall. Behind Wetherall, the clogs-wearer. After that it was strangers.

Further back, a wall of people lined the edge of the gravitational field, waiting their turn, as quiet as a congregation in church.

“Mr. Yonezawa!”

“Sorry, could you repeat that last instruction?”

★

Alicia Petruzzelli wandered through the mist of spray around the lake. No one was fetching water right now. No kids were swimming.

She knew where everyone was.

Where
he
was.

Escaping.

With
her.

Petruzzelli didn’t care that Kiyoshi had found someone else. It didn’t even bother her that his new squeeze turned out to be that blue-dreadlocked heifer from Callisto. He was a free agent. He could do whatever he liked.

Including risking his life.

Go right ahead, Yonezawa. Knock yourself out.

But he should
not
be risking the lives of everyone else in this jail.

When the wannabe escapees got caught—and they
would
get caught—collective punishment would rain down upon the entire population of the prison. That was how shit worked in the real world, as Petruzzelli well knew from her time in Star Force.

Now she was going to get punished,
again,
for something she hadn’t done, didn’t approve of, and could not control.

She paused by the lake’s edge and stared at the ripples washing up on the rock. The despair in her heart counseled her to wade into the lake and allow the waterfall to carry her under. Dying in black water shouldn’t feel too different from dying in the blackness of space.

She’d always expected to die in space. It was just a mistake that she’d survived this long.

★

“Twenty degrees left, one point five paces.”

“OK.”

“Fifty-five degrees right, three point two paces.”

“OK.”

Sweat poured down Kiyoshi’s face. The exit now loomed much closer, but stil not close enough. He didn’t dare to look at it. He had to watch his feet. Sweat stung his eyes. He palmed it away, careful to keep his arms close to his body.

“Two steps, thirty degrees left, and LOW!”

Squatting awkwardly, he glanced back. Wetherall and Molly were still keeping up. But behind them, the clogs-wearer
had
gone down. A man with DIY tattoos had moved up to take her place.

Bodies now littered the corridor, stranded, unrecoverable, in the gravitational field. But in a macabre twist, the bodies of the fallen showed the living where not to walk, so the chain remained unbroken.

Back at the edge of the gravitational field, Elfrida Goto waved. She was trying to catch Kiyoshi’s attention, holding something up. He shrugged. Taking that as an affirmative, she passed the item to the person just now starting the walk.

A coiled rope.

Kiyoshi smiled to himself. Good old Elfrida. A rope wouldn’t do a whole lot of good if and when someone fell. But it was a nice thought.

The end of the rope moved up the line, getting shorter as each person in turn passed it around their waists. There was enough slack for Wetherall, and just barely enough for Molly, but that was all. Michael and Kiyoshi were out of luck.

“Three paces, fifty degrees left, and LOW! You’re almost there.”

★

Up to her knees in the lake, Petruzzelli changed her mind.

The water was so damn cold. She’d imagined drowning as a peaceful, dreamlike exit from her pain. It turned out to be just another ordeal she couldn’t face.

She shambled away from the lake. Her waterlogged boots squelched on the gravel. On Main Street, those who’d stayed behind sat in their shaded front rooms. The street was so quiet that they looked up fearfully at the sound of her footsteps.

It was just so wrong to put everyone through this!

Petruzzelli squinted at the faraway sun, a point of light haloed by the condensation on the roof. Tears came to her eyes as she remembered the big, bright, warm, yellow sun of Idaho. She’d never see Earth again, and it was all
his
fault.

She filled her lungs and yelled, “Hey! Can anyone hear me? Are you listening? I KNOW you’re listening!”

She stopped for breath. Mouth open, she heard the faint whirring of drones swarming around her. Loud noises attracted them.
Good.

“What are you doing up HERE?” she shouted. “Go look underground! They’re
escaping,
you stupid fucking machines! They’re getting away!”

★

“One point five steps, twenty degrees right.”

“OK.”

For the twentieth time, Michael trod on Kiyoshi heels—and lost his balance.

Stumbling, he bumped into Kiyoshi’s legs. One hand went down to break his fall. It landed on the floor outside the null line. He screamed.

Kiyoshi pivoted. He grabbed Michael around the waist and lifted him, grunting,
“Yoooi-sho!”

The old Japanese
ki-ai
worked. Or maybe it was the meth. Or maybe it was just a regular old miracle. Michael’s fingers peeled off the floor, bending the wrong way as the unnatural gravity released them. He whimpered in Kiyoshi’s arms.

“Are you OK there, Mr. Yonezawa?”

“Fine,” Kiyoshi grunted. It would be easier to carry Michael the rest of the way than make him walk. “Gimme the next step!”

“One step, thirty degrees left.”

“OK!”

“Two steps, ten degrees right.”

“OK!” He was going to drop Michael,
would not
drop him—

“That’s it! You did it! You’re out!”

Kiyoshi dumped Michael onto his feet. He did a couple of jumping jacks, just because he could. He laughed mirthlessly, tension going nowhere. “How’s your hand, Mikey?”

“Not gonna kill me,” Michael said. He sidled towards the exit. It was a pair of double doors with interlocking jaws. These now began to slide open.

The lights went out.

Three heavy slams shook the corridor, one after another.

In unison, dozens of throats uttered coughing screams, as if the air had been forcibly expelled from their lungs.

More thumps rained into the dark: the sound of fifty bodies hitting the stone floor at once.

A dizzy moment later, the people left alive at the far end of the gravitational field began screaming. They yelled the names of their friends and loved ones. Elfrida’s voice rose above the bedlam. “Pull on the rope! Pull! Pull!
Pull!”

… any funny business would automatically trigger a power cut.
Asada’s words replayed in Kiyoshi’s head.
The attractors would fall towards each other, creating a gravitational field so intense it would instantly kill anyone who entered the corridor. Nifty, huh?

He crawled back the way he’d come, one hand questing ahead. Molly had been only two steps behind him. Colin had been one step behind her. He couldn’t see a damn thing—

An invisible force slammed into his fingertips. It felt like they’d been cut off. Jerking them back, he had to touch his fingers to make sure they were still there.

Nifty, huh?

Oh yeah, Asada-san. Nifty as hell.

Kiyoshi threw his weight backwards. He couldn’t fight
that.
He scrambled to his feet and ran for the exit. Michael stood dimly silhouetted in the gap between the toothed doors.