Operation Orion - Kevin Dockery [121]
“We’re going to try to get you out of here, sir. I have enough coveralls to disguise all the prisoners, and there’s a shuttle arriving at the docking bay to fly us out of here—if we get that far.”
“What about the Pangaea?” the admiral asked, though he didn’t let the question stop him from moving toward the door.
“Recaptured, sir, by the SEALS and a complement of navy commandos. She’s standing by with the Pegasus, ready to get us out of here.”
“Nice work,” the admiral said gruffly. “Let’s spread the word.”
Ballard quickly roused the two generals in the neighboring cabins, and Jackson sprinted into the other wing of the prisoners’ compartments. Fortunately, their captors had left the humans pretty much to their own devices, so none of the individual quarters were locked. Each prisoner released passed the word, and in a matter of minutes the captives had filled the corridors of their prisoner compartment. They were men and women ranging in age from mature adults to the elderly, and they represented the spectrum of races and cultures of planet Earth. They were universally eager to catch a ride back home.
Ruiz tossed stacks of the coveralls to the prisoners, who quickly doffed their black, pajama-like attire in favor of the white workers’ uniforms. Jackson and Ruiz, in the meantime, donned their pressure suits. Before attaching the helmets, each of the two SEALS placed one of Baxter’s copper-weave handkerchiefs over his scalp, attaching the alligator clips to the power source of the suit’s battery pack. The LT felt a small tingle along his close-cropped hair, but the sensation was not unpleasant or distracting.
Although a group of a hundred service personnel might be a little unusual on the Bazaar’s avenue, Jackson had observed enough of the place’s laissez-faire attitude to feel fairly confident that no one would accost them on that basis.
He was more worried about officious Eluoi, but that was a chance they’d have to take.
He was beginning to worry about all the things that could go wrong when he was encouraged by a crackle in his earpiece. “Stonewall? How goes it?”
“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