Chapter 30

Home, Family Red Ridges

Corey studied her cell. The door had an old-fashioned lock, one that needed a key. There was nothing else in the room or cell, just the bed, which was fastened to the floor, the sink, and the toilet. She got up and listened at the door. She could hear the murmur of voices, but after a comm buzzed, the voices died away.

She could stay here, all nice and docile until the hearing in the morning, assuming there was a hearing; she wouldn’t put it past whoever was doing this to have the hearing without her. The other alternative was to leave. If she left, she’d have to get to First Landing. She could stay with Sonia and Heather, and she could contact the Navy’s Legal Affairs Department. They would start an investigation, and, if necessary, they’d bring in the Inter-Families Courts.

That would make this a very public case, and everything that had happened to her since she got home would come out in the open. Great Aunt Joanne wouldn’t like it, and while she was dealing with the mess, Corey would get off planet. There’d be no way she’d get anywhere near Home again as long as Great Aunt Joanne was involved with the Family.

Corey studied the structure around the lock; it was wood and susceptible to breakage. She’d heard a story that one Family Eldest with a clunker much like hers had demolished a podium during a meeting of the Families Council. If somebody could do that to a podium, then she could wreck a mere door.

“It’s a good thing these clunkers don’t have nerve endings,” she muttered. It wasn’t as good as the one the Navy had issued her, but for what she was going to do, it would be more than sufficient. She made a fist and punched the door, making a hole. She waited to see if anybody had heard her, and then did it again, widening the hole still further. One more punch, and she could hook a finger in the lock. A sharp tug, and the door sprang loose. She slipped through and pushed the door shut behind her.

There was nobody in the Constabulary office. She saw her scooter in the corner. They’d expect her to take it, so she’d stay on foot instead. It would slow her down, but there were more places she could reach that way. She locked the machine in a maintenance closet; there was no sense telling any searchers more than she wanted them to know.

She considered the stairs at the end of the hall; she could just see herself trying to climb all those flights up to the apartment she shared with her sibs. Not with her leg already hurting, despite the cast. Instead, she went across the building to a small freight elevator. It was normally used to haul linens and furniture up and down the building; she knew from her experiences of the last few days that it wasn’t used much in the evening.

“So now I’m a fugitive in my own home,” she murmured as the elevator lifted her into the residential wing. “Well, not for long.”

There was nobody on her floor. Once in her room, she threw the most important things in her bag. Because she planned to go straight to the base in First Landing, she decided to put on her uniform. Somehow, she wasn’t surprised when she couldn’t find her undress uniform. She had seen it that morning in the closet, along with her magsole boots. Those boots, used for microgravity work, were missing, too; she made a mental note to have Heather file a robbery report. She dug her dress uniform out from where she’d hidden it and struggled to get into it.

She paused before leaving. She’d had some Navy paperwork on her desk. That was missing. She smiled. Those were classified documents, and even if someone in the Family caught her, they’d investigate what happened to those papers. And when they caught that person, it would go pretty hard on them.

That was something she’d figured out with the children. Give the enemy multiple attacks that they had to answer. They’d have to choose which one, and when they did, you’d use a different one and turn their decision against them. This was going to get so big nobody could hush it up.

She saw the letters that had come for them and picked them up. The one for Heather bothered her. Heather had said Gran Marie had approved the pregnancy, and yet the Family Eugenicist was having reservations. At any other time, the professional could be trusted, but with everything that had been happening lately, she had to wonder if this message was really from the Eugenicist or if somebody was just using her. That sort of doubt felt unclean. If the letter was real and the conclusions valid, Heather had to know. If it wasn’t real, somebody with a lot of authority would need to act quickly and decisively to stop anything from happening. She had to get this letter to Gran Marie. She snorted. Either way, it should make interesting fireworks.

She took the freight elevator down to the same level as the aircar garage. She approached the garage cautiously, and it was a good thing she did. A constable was standing at the entrance; they must have noticed she was no longer in their cells and were blocking off her escape routes.

This would definitely be easier with a wormhole, she thought, but unless somebody’s changed a few physical laws, that isn’t going to happen. She sighed. She’d just have to find another way. She walked back to the elevator, thinking. In the last two tendays, she’d learned every odd byway that was out of the main flow of traffic. She’d have to use those. With any luck, she could slip right past anyone looking for her. That would almost be like using a wormhole.

On a hunch, she took the elevator to the floor above the main dining hall. If she recalled correctly, there was another elevator backstage of the dining hall. It could take her nearly to the basement. From there, she should be able to get to the aircar garage without being seen.

A few minutes later, after she’d laboriously worked her way down the stairs, she cracked open the door to the backstage area of the dining hall. Down the hall to her right, she could see a constabulary officer standing next to the freight elevator she wanted to use.

She edged to the left, away from the freight elevator, and eased the stair door closed behind her. It latched with a soft click that sounded much too loud. She saw a darkened alcove ahead of her and slipped into it. The room was filled with cables, sound equipment, and lights. She took the opportunity to sit and rest her leg. She could hear voices, but they were distant and didn’t seem to be coming any closer.

After a couple of minutes, she took a look around the corner. The backstage stretched to her left for at least a dozen meters. The curtain separating her from the actual stage was just in front of her. She started forward and froze as a pair of constables met only a few meters away.

“ ... don’t think she’d be stupid enough to come here,” one of them said. “I think she’s headed for the aircar garage.”

“Anything’s possible,” the other replied. “My sib was in a class with her at the Navy’s Command & Staff School. Kitra says she’s unpredictable. I just checked her room; somebody packed her bag and took off with it. It was probably her, but I can’t tell how long ago that was.”

“I hope we don’t have to do a room-by-room search. That would take forever. Where else could she be?”

“It’s got to be some place with wheeled access. At least we have that much advantage on her. Come on, there’s an alternate way into the aircar garage, one most people don’t know about. It’s an old elevator that they used to use to haul parts, and...” Their voices faded as they walked away.

That definitely ruled out the aircar garage. “Stop reacting and think,” Corey muttered. “Think of it as a tactical problem.” She remembered something from her orders and dug them out of her bag.

Admiral Carter, Eldest and Admiral Commanding of the Families Navy, is pleased to inform you that you are being awarded a birthright for your actions in the system of K-303. The award will be presented in the Red Ridges Family Home Main Dining Facility on Tenthday-second, Seventhmonth, immediately after the evening meal. You are hereby requested and required to be present at that ceremony. Full dress uniform will be worn.

Corey smiled. If the ceremony was still on schedule, Admiral Carter would soon be on the other side of that curtain. Why try to sneak away when she could leave with a military escort? She’d like to see Great Aunt Joanne confront Admiral Carter. Those fireworks would be second only to the ones between Great Aunt Joanne and Gran Marie.

She needed a diversion, something to draw the Constabulary and Great Aunt Joanne’s ‘helpers’ away from the ceremony for a few minutes, but she couldn’t think of how to create one. The constabulary was all over the building. Could she turn that into an advantage? Maybe she could make sure it was nearly impossible for them to concentrate where she didn’t want them. That seemed promising.

She mapped it out in her mind, just like she’d done when planning an action on the tactics table. There was at least one place where things might go wrong; she was counting on the constables hesitating. Would she have to hurt someone? It was possible. She remembered the fumes in that warehouse; and the threat to Heather’s babies; she was past caring about hurting people who seemed determined to hurt her.

Corey took a deep, settling breath and left the alcove, heading for the freight elevator she’d previously avoided. The constable guarding the elevator heard her steps, turned, and smiled when she saw her. The woman spoke into her radio and then began walking forward, drawing her stunner.

“There you are,” the woman said. “We’ve been looking all over for you.”

“Yes,” Corey said, stepping within arm’s reach. “Here I am.” She grabbed the stunner, squeezing with her prosthetic, crushing it in her metal fingers. She felt a jolt of electricity as the stunner sparked. The startled expression on the constable’s face was worth every erg of discomfort.

Corey spun the woman around and kept her pressed against the wall with her arm. She took the woman’s radio and crushed it with one squeeze.

“Can’t have you telling your friends where I’ve gone,” she said as she pressed the back of her clunker against the elevator’s shunt plate. Despite smashing a door and absorbing a stunner charge, the prosthetic shunt contacts still worked. She pushed the woman into a nearby room, closed the door, and wedged it shut with a piece of the crushed radio. The constable should be able to get free, but hopefully not for several minutes.

Corey took the elevator down to the level of the Constabulary offices. This was as far as that elevator could take her. She had to go through there to get to the stairs down to the utility rooms. She took a quick glance in the Constabulary office; it was empty. Everyone was probably out hunting her, and nobody was serving as a central contact point. That was sloppy work on their part. Poor tactics, bad management; what were these gals able to do right?

The stairs to the utility rooms were on the other side of the Constabulary office. These rooms held the sludge pumps she’d spent hours repairing, the phone switching bank, the manual controls for the building’s power, and, what she wanted right now, the maintenance controls for every elevator and door in the building. The manual controls in these rooms would let her override any commands from a control room. To fix what she was about to do, somebody would have to come down here and reset everything.

These rooms weren’t locked; in an emergency, the shunt system might not be working, and you didn’t want to have to find a physical key to open up the place. When she pushed open the door to the elevator controls, the emergency lights came on. There was a schematic on the wall showing the control circuits; beneath it was the control panel that would let her manipulate the system.

The control panel looked just like one of the damage control stations that dotted a ship. There was a shunt glove, switches for each elevator, and the separate switches that controlled the power to the system. There was a clipboard hanging from the end of the panel with the maintenance status of each elevator, and a list of the control words to override the system.

She slipped her hand into the glove and relaxed, letting the input from the system flow through her. It wasn’t anything like the Glory, but she had more than enough Damage Control training to recognize what she needed. She ‘saw’ lines with white blobs representing control nodes. The elevators looked like small boxes; red if they were occupied, green if they weren’t. Most of the elevators were green, but there were two that were headed down; both were red. One of them was the elevator that let out in the Constabulary office.

“We’ll fix that,” she murmured. She opened her eyes and read the commands, selecting the ones she was after.

“System override-- maintenance priority.

“Freeze system below level four--maintenance priority.”

She closed her eyes. One of the descending elevators had stopped at level four. The other, the one that stopped at the Constabulary office, had stopped at six and was now empty. But as she watched, three cars stopped at level five and filled up. All three started down.

“All cars stop--maintenance priority.” This was fun, she thought as the elevators halted. “All cars, rise only and freeze at 44-- maintenance priority.” Anyone taking an elevator would only be able to go up, and once started, the cars would go all the way to the top, level 44.

Somebody pressed the emergency stop button in one of the occupied cars. She overrode that command and kept it moving up. She didn’t know that it was full of Constabulary officers, but it seemed likely.

She would need a car for herself. “Unlock 16--maintenance priority.” The car for the Constabulary office stopped. “Lower 16 to bottom and revert to manual controls--maintenance priority.”

She thought through her next move. “Manual System Bypass, change 16 to local command--maintenance priority. Manual System Bypass, change 16 to alternate command authority--maintenance priority.” There, that would let her control the system through that elevator’s control panel. Fire crews did that when they were testing the building’s fire system.

“System priority--command sequence change: ‘Pretty Please’.” She smiled. Whoever controlled the system, even from here, would have to use the words ‘pretty please’ instead of ‘maintenance priority’; otherwise, the system would ignore them.

She wrote the new command sequence phrase on the clipboard. Satisfied, she worked her way back up the stairs. Elevator 16 was waiting for her when she got to it.