Operation Orion - Kevin Dockery [116]
“Parvik! Excellent, now that you’re here. You are here, aren’t you?”
“Parked, with the air lock connected, and fully fueled. We’re in dock number seven six six zero, right in the hub of the Bazaar. How long are you going to keep me waiting?”
“No more than ten minutes if I can help it. Can you stay put that long?”
“Certainly. We’ll fire up the engines just as soon as your people are on board. Over, for now.”
“Thanks, Olin. Out.” The LT signed off and looked over the situation inside the door.
The two original Eluoi guards had been bound securely with strips of torn uniform material. They laid the pair off to the side and, when the last of the prisoners had donned the white coveralls, made ready to leave.
“Everyone move casually,” Jackson said, conscious that some of the people receiving his orders outranked him by about twelve grades. Admiral Ballard seemed to set the standard as he showed his willingness to comply with this SEALS officer’s commands, at least on a tactical basis. “Don’t run and don’t stay too closely packed. Just follow the two soldiers outside the door. They’re dressed like the Eluoi, but they’re my men in disguise.”
With that, he opened the door. Teal and Baxter immediately started sauntering toward the lift to the hub-positioned docking bay. The prisoners, true to Jackson’s plan, moved casually along behind them.
None of the merchants or pedestrians seemed to pay them any mind as the white-clad humans made their way down the midlevel’s crowded avenue. The did a good job of moving in small groups so that they didn’t look like some kind of column formation but like random bands of workers who presumably had just finished their shifts of work. The route appeared to curve upward in front of and behind them, because they were walking along the inside of a circular ring. Yet despite the illusion of climbing, at every spot along the ring the deck underneath felt like it was straight down and the ceiling overhead appeared to be straight up.
Jackson, in his pressure suit, ambled along beside the file of prisoners, trying to look nonchalant. He could see the entrance to the transport shaft up ahead. He knew that even the big lift cars of the Bazaar would be able to carry only half the prisoners at a time. His greatest fear was that something would disrupt the escape attempt while half the humans still were standing around waiting for the elevator.
The screech that suddenly penetrated the street of the Bazaar was not so much a sound as a subsonic wave. It came from an unseen source and struck like a physical attack. The prisoners staggered and, to the last man and woman, tumbled to the deck. Many of the civilians and merchants on either side of the avenue also were knocked off their feet, and those who were still standing bolted from their stalls, vanishing into the depths of the station.
Jackson, too, was lying on the deck. He recognized that sensation from his first meeting with Tezlac Catal and was not surprised to see an approaching phalanx of Eluoi commandos.
In the middle of the formation stood the savant himself.
Tezlac Catal was there.
Twenty-two: Unwelcome Interference
Jackson flipped off his communicator in disgust. He had been trying for more than four hours to raise Captain Carstairs on the Pegasus but had been rewarded only by a whole galaxy’s worth of static. The range was too great or the power of his personal comlink too limited for the connection to be established. Whatever the reason, a previously reliable means of contact was failing him when he most needed to make a coordinated plan.
The SEALS lieutenant was becoming increasingly frustrated with his isolation. He had located the VIP prisoners being held hostage and was progressing with a plan to effect their rescue. But all his preparations would come to nothing if he led the hundred humans to the docking bay of the Bazaar only to have no way to get them off the station and quickly out of the Darius system.