Chapter 25

Pan quickly settled into a routine. He would stump around the ship after breakfast, trailed by his keeper. He was exploring the limits of his allowed territory. Then back to his room where he would play some mindless bit of holo drama fluff that he could completely ignore while reviewing each step in his mind. He was firmly fixing a map of this part of the ship in his mind.

After lunch, he would take a similar walk-about, but vary his route, memorizing the placement of various restricted areas and trying to calculate how large they were, based on the outside dimensions. He knew that his estimates were probably far from accurate, but it allowed him to add more areas to his mental map.

When he returned to his room and was, as always, locked securely in his well-appointed cell, he would exercise. He had devised a routine that would allow him to work out one particular set of muscles each day. One day he would do squats on his one good leg, and vary that with calf lifts, balancing all of his weight on the toes of his remaining foot. The next day he would do sit-ups and leg lifts, concentrating on his abdominal muscles. The third day he concentrated on pushups, pull-ups and dips to work his upper body.

His after dinner trip was more relaxed. He made sure to greet people he met in the passageways, smiling and being pleasant. He rarely got more than a disinterested nod, but every now and then, he could sense interest in the eyes of the crew.

Some days, to vary his routine, he would spend time going over the room, inch by inch, trying to identify any surveillance devices. The cameras were easy to spot, but he had found only two listening devices and he was sure there were more.

Every night, before he went to sleep, he would spend going over what he had learned during the day. After a week, he was certain that he had the known layout correct, and was able to start extrapolating the unseen portions based on what he knew of similar ships.

In the wee hours of the morning, he dreamed.

Most nights, he dreamed of walking and running, even dancing though he had never been one to willingly get on a dance floor. He dreamt of stairs and ladders, of new shoes and old boots. All the things he supposed that anyone who had lost a limb would dream about.

He also had dreams about Kat. The way she smiled and ran her hand through her closely shorn hair. The sheer poetry of Kat in motion on the training mats, the way she moved from attack to defense and back again with exquisite grace. So fast and smooth, excitingly dangerous. That distinctive perfume that she preferred, when he was close enough to catch a whiff. Very delicate and very alluring. Even her voice. It was surprisingly low and sultry for someone so dainty.

In the morning, as he lay in bed, he wasn't sure which dreams bothered him more. He could understand the dreams about his missing foot, but the dreams of Kat were unlike any he had before. She had never evinced even the slightest interest in him as a romantic partner. In fact, it seemed like she went out of her way to be friendly without leaving any doubt that her interest was platonic. Still, the dreams continued.

The next day would be very like the previous one. He continued his walks, trying to take different routes each time. Eventually, he began counting paces and memorizing the counts. His attempts to befriend the crew met with very little success. He knew a few of them were open to conversation, even willing to be friendly, but the presence of his constant companion, his keeper, kept them from tarrying.

Pan tried to take it all philosophically, though it grew harder as days turned into weeks. He took inspiration from a story he had read as a boy in school.

It was about a prisoner who had been in a situation not that dissimilar to his. He was trapped by an alien being. His cage, the bars electrified, was suspended over a pool of acid and the only access, a ramp that was controlled from the far side of the pool. Each day, the alien would come twice to deliver food, taunting the man about his inferiority, his helplessness.

The prisoner was patient, never responding to the barbs, he just waited and watched. One day, the alien appeared with the prisoner's food and the man was gone. Just vanished. The alien, realizing that the prisoner had somehow outsmarted him, spent years reviewing the surveillance tapes, trying to figure out how.

The man had, in the dark of early morning, forced himself to regurgitate part of his meal. He had patiently painted the bile onto the bottom of three bars behind the spot where he spent his day. For the first month, he received painful shocks, but he persevered, until the corrosion caused by the stomach bile insulated him from the flow of electricity. After applying the bile, he would spend the remaining time, until the lights came on, doing isometric exercises. He was strengthening his arms and shoulders until, ever so slowly, his shoulders were massively defined.

The change in his physique had been so slow, so gradual, that his jailer had never noticed the difference. Then, when the bile had done its work, he used those muscles to break the bars free and bend them enough for him to slide through. He used that strength to easily swing himself over the pool and to the safety of the solid ground, then just walked way.

Pan took heart from that story and swore to imitate the prisoner. He would be patient, chip away at the reticence of the crew, lull his keepers into a false sense of security. Eventually there would be a chink in the armor, a chance that he could latch on to with both hands.

His story was going to end differently. He was not going to just walk away, he was going to take these people down.

On Aste, Kat and Bob were feeling some of the same determination, but, unlike Pan, they were free to act.

They circled the camp carefully, staying back in the woods and away from the open area, on constant look out for sensors or an alarm net. Either they were very well concealed or the pirates were depending on the remote location to keep them unnoticed.

They stopped first at the motor pool. While Kat kept watch, Bob disconnected the control harnesses on the mules and the bikes, and then set a large chunk of plastique on the generator, connecting a remote detonator so that they could set it off on command.