113: the operation, part two

the tram rolled through the tunnel almost noiselessly.  for Cillian and Ash, this was a familiar trip; for C’moy Tocts and Tennor Dewn, the Ring was an undiscovered country.  Dewn seemed unaffected; Tocts was visibly anxious.  his left leg twitched nervously, and it was beginning to draw the attention of the other three riders.  as he had done several times during the short trip, Tocts began a conversation when none was needed.

“Ash,” he said bluntly.  “i’ve only heard ya given one name.  i m’self got two — every miner i know’s got two.  you only got one?”

Cillian smiled, and sat back a little further into his awkwardly-shaped seat.  he looked at Ash, who sat with pursed lips.  “well?” Cillian asked.

“your leader has only one name,” Ash said, eying Cillian.  “have you the same questions for him?”

“ah,” Tocts said, “but Cillian is an outworlder, even if he been on Klin fer most his whole life.  many an outworlder has only one name.  but i ain’t never met a born-and-bred, grown-in-the-sand Klinian who’s got but one mere name.”

“you’re point is well taken,” Ash said.  “there is certainly a difference between myself and Cillian.  one of us is born of Klin; one of us is not.”

“he already said that,” Cillian said flippantly.  “that ain’t no goddam secret.  and that ain’t his question, Ash.”

Tocts’s eyes darted from Cillian to Ash.  they obviously both knew the answer, and neither seemed willing to surrender it.  Tocts persisted: “if ya ain’t willin’a tell me your surname, sir, you ain’t gotta.  but we’re gonna be partners in this shit, i’d rather know your full name, eh?”

Ash exhaled through is nose.  “very well,” he said, locking eyes with a bemused Cillian.  “if you must know, my full name is Ash Delmof.”

Cillian choked back a scoff, and Tocts grinned and looked at the floor demurely.  Dewn coughed and covered his mouth with his left hand, painfully stifling a laugh.

Ash folded his arms over his chest and said through his teeth, “it was a common surname a century ago.  in fact, at the end of the Toganimus rebellion, the Delmofs–”

Cillian could not restrain himself, and laughed aloud.  Dewn wheezed an “i’m sorry,” as he began to laugh as well, raising an upheld palm in deference to his superior.  even the timid Tocts could not hold back a rising tide of giggles.  soon, the tram’s cabin was awash with guffawing and knee-slapping.  Ash was singularly displeased.

“Dewn!” he spat.

the man stiffened, brought a clenched fist to his lips.  he spit two spasms of mirth through his lips as the two Gorshen men gradually wound their laughter to a slow halt.  Cillian slapped Ash on the shoulder.  “c’mon, buddy.  it’s just — you know, it sounds a little funny.”  he paused.  then, with a crescendo of comedy, “Delmof!”

everyone — other than Ash — exploded once again into paroxysms of coughing, spattering joviality.  the unusually pale dayside miner leaned back against the hull of the tram, sighed, and waited for the others to expend themselves at his expense.

*

less than an hour later, the group of eight rebels had been reunited, and “you can’t believe what happened” stories had been exchanged.  Cillian had relayed a whisper of Tocts’s question to Sorensen, and even he could not stop from laughing, though he had long known Ash’s surname.  Issac had felt relieved to see Cillian again, and even the familiarity of C’moy Tocts was reassuring to him as they set out from the tram cavern and onto the surface of the Ring.

Issac remembered then how he had come to the tram station the first time: stunned and far from home, he had been wrecked, attacked, tortured and rescued.  and it was his rescuers who he now followed back into the Ring.  they emerged from the tram cavern into a street that was only slightly dimmer than the one they had left from on dayside.  there were traces of green here, plants unaware that they demarcated the line between wealth and poverty.  Issac felt temperature of the open air, and realized how uncomfortably he had been in every moment on dayside.  it seemed to him that they — whoever “they” were; the original colonists of Klin, he supposed — had chosen the perfect line to end dayside and begin the Ring.  there was a breeze here, a gentle wind that seemed to have also abandoned Klin’s sun-facing side in favor of more gentle climes.  without realizing he was doing it, Issac stretched his arms out wide, felt the wind touch his bare forearms and slip along his ribs.  he heard Cillian speak.

“didn’t expect to see you again so soon, you son of a bitch.”  there was laughter in the amber-haired daysider’s voice.

Issac inhaled deeply through his nose.  there was a familiar smell in the air — tobacco, and a tobacco that he had smoked recently.

“well let’s not stand out here like a pack of marks.  come on.”

Issac spotted the speaker, and identified the source of the tobacco smoke.

“Yandrake!” he called.

the rough-skinned Klinnian turned towards him, breathed a cloud of smoke that trailed from the hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth into the air.  his flowing white robe twisted in the gentle breeze of the Ring.

“Issac,” Yandrake responded, humor in his voice.  “what do ya want, outworlder?”

Issac closed the gap between them, passing Joyn and Tocts without a thought.  he stopped three feet away from him, and gestured towards his burning cigarette.  “can i have one of those,” Issac asked with a smile.

Yandrake flipped him a cigarette, held out his pocketlighter. Issac inhaled smoke for the first time in a week.  he held it in his lungs for a moment, closed his eyes, felt the burning in his lungs.  he owned it, let it make him feel alive.  with satisfaction, he exhaled noisily, opened his eyes, saw the craggy, smiling face of Yandrake.  “well, ya ain’t dead yet,” the defected Ringman said.  “c’mon, kid,” and, turning back to Cillian, “c’mon everybody.  i don’t want somebody seein’ me here with a buncha dirty miners.”

* *

she brought the paper cup to her lips, sipped.  even the small amount of water could not make it down her throat easily, and she coughed, wheezed, coughed again, held the paper cup out helplessly.  Issac took it from her, and she collapsed back onto her bed, surrendering the six inches of elevation she had gained by will alone.

“it’s okay, mamma,” Issac whispered.  “just breathe.”  the life support system beeped, assuring any bystanders that her heart was still beating, that medicine was still dripping into her bloodstream.

she did breathe, but it was a harsh, rasping attempt at breath, nothing more.  her eyes were a plastic glaze, deadened by cancer and painkillers.

cancer, Issac thought despicably.  when he had left home for his last year of university, she had been a healthy woman, filled with — and giving freely of — life.  and yet, somehow, cancer had stricken her.  cancer. a cell mutation that had claimed perhaps one thousand lives in the last one thousand years, and that on tens of thousands of worlds housing tens of billions of people.  and that figure may have been generous toward the disease; Issac had not checked the statistics since he’d heard the news, but if his memory served, it was a sickness so nearly eradicated that it was rarely spoken of.  it would have been fully cured but for the decisions of those who refused standard treatments.

the man who had refused such treatments then entered the room.  “can i have a moment, Issac?” he asked.  Issac turned to face him, tilted his head up slightly in greeting.

“sure, dad.”  Issac turned back to his mother, ran a hand over the stubbly hair that covered her head.  her hair was surprisingly soft, growing the few fractions of an inch that it could in utter denial of and rebellion against her sickness.  his hand stopped where the top pillow met her neck.  his hand pealed off automatically, but a pinky caught the asymmetrical bulge that he had felt many times on the back of his own head: an inherited trait that he had only encountered now on his mother for the first time.  Issac stood, exited the room.  he touched shoulders with his father, whisked past his ruby-colored robes, ignored his long and unkempt beard.  he clenched his teeth and resisted the urge to kick the knotted wooded cane out from under the old man’s arms just to prove that he’d been faking an injury for publicity’s sake.  in fact, Issac didn’t know if the cane was needed or not; if he was wrong, and the old man was actually supporting himself on the oaken stick, Issac would not mind seeing him fall.  neither result occurred, though; Issac passed by Mellor without a single word.  he stepped through the dining room and though an automatically opening door onto an expansive wooden porch, painted green and disturbingly clean despite the obviously minimal amount of human traffic the veranda received.  he looked back through the glass door and saw the heavy elm door to his mother’s room swing closed.  he fished into the deep left pocket of his trousers and produced a crumpled pack of cigarettes.  there were two left in the folded carton, and Issac withdrew the sturdier-looking of the pair.  he shot one more glance over his shoulder before placing the stick of tobacco on his lips and, seeing no eyes upon him, lit the cigarette and gave it an encouraging puff.  he’d been at his parents’ establishment for seven days, and this was only perhaps his third cigarette since leaving the university a month ago.  he was almost sure he would get busted, but he hardly cared now.  his mother was too far gone to criticize, and it would be difficult to give half a shit what his father thought after all this.  Issac inhaled smoke for the first time in a week.  he held it in his lungs for a moment, closed his eyes, felt the burning in his lungs.  he owned it, let it make him feel alive.  with satisfaction, he exhaled noisily, opened his eyes, saw the deep, green growth of one of the large protected wildgrowth reserves of Dulvern.

six minutes later, the tobacco had burned itself out, and Issac snubbed the glowing cherry on the sole of his shoe.  for a moment, he considered flicking the smoldering butt into the woods.  the thought felt dirty, and so he held the stub between his fingers as he entered the house.  (he had grown far too accustomed to casually flicking cigarette butts while at university, but somehow an uncorrupted forest pled to be left alone while a paved and magnetically-charged roadway made no such claim, or, if it did, made it much more subtly.)  Issac opened a few nearby cupboards in search of a hidden incinerator can.  he found none near the glass door, and ventured further back into his parents’ house.  he crossed the dining room and headed for the kitchen, a room that he knew to house a waste can.  he didn’t notice the chanting when he crossed the carpeted floor, but as soon as he put a foot on the tile, he felt an impossible impression of silence.  he knew that he had tuned out something he’d heard a thousand times in his life, but what exactly the sound was, he could not determine.  he took the two remaining strides to the incinerator can, opened the lid silently, deposited his cigarette butt, and waited.  as if the incantations were fed by silence, they slowly regained force while Issac stood, frozen.  Issac could not identify or translate the words, but they were familiar to him — an ancient language Mellor had once tried to teach him, a dead and useless version of Galactic — though it was, according to Devers, much older than the standard language spoken on nearly every world in the galaxy.  in any case, Issac followed his compulsion towards his mother’s door, which he now realized was open just a crack.  he leaned up to the elm door and peered through, listening closely.

the machines that monitored his mother’s vital signs were all chirping and squawking violently.  alarmed, Issac flung the door open and gaped at what he saw: Mellor had disconnected every node and connection from his dying wife’s body, leaving a blossom of wires jutting into the air around the sickly woman.  he held hands over her, reciting phrases with an eternally-increasing fervor.

enraged, Issac kicked the door against the wall.  Mellor spun to face him.  the old man attempted to speak, but Issac cut him off.

“you son of a–”

**

Issac awoke with a start.  Sorensen looked at him queerly.  “you must have been dreaming, Issac,” he said.

Issac inhaled deeply, rubbed his eyes with the backs of his palms, took stock of his surroundings.  he was in the third bank of seats in Yandrake’s large grouncar, sandwiched between C’moy Tocts and a rattling glass window.  slowly, he reacquainted himself his environment, extricated himself from his somnambulant memory.

“how long was i out?” he asked.

“nearly an hour,” Sorensen said.  “we’re almost there.”

the rest of the group was quiet.  there was a somber air in the groundcar; Issac thought he could sense nervousness among most of the passengers, and wondered if Cillian and Ash were simply doing a better job of masking their anxiety.  Cillian, seated a row in front of Issac, tapped out a complex rhythm with the tips of his index fingers on the seat in front of him.  Issac saw him stop, consider for a moment, then resume, as if he were contemplating the next verse of a new song.  it seemed to Issac that his attention to music was an act of deception: whether Cillian was deceiving himself as to the danger of their mission or he meant to give the impression that he was not afraid, Issac was not sure.

Ash, on the other hand, seemed unnaturally stoic, even for him.  the nervous fidgeting, the pursed lips, the excess perspiration — characteristics obviously present in the others — were conspicuously absent with Ash.  he stared straight ahead, loudly stating his silent impassivity.

Sorensen had not lied: Yandrake’s bulky groundcar rolled to a stop perhaps ten minutes later, and Issac followed the others as they unloaded themselves from the vehicle.  it occurred to Issac that on an ordinary planet, they would carry out such an operation under the cover of darkness.  they could wait a thousand years, though, and night would never fall on Klin’s dayside.  and so, plans that one wished to hide in shadow, one was forced to carry out under the glaring intensity of never ending sunlight.

it also occurred to Issac that these plans were ones that he only understood vaguely.  he had advocated for this action without fully understanding its intricacies.  to an extent, he had done so willfully: he was no strategist, and even if he were, his understanding of Klin’s geography, politics, and social structures would have rendered such a skill completely inert.  but, as had been the case since he had crashed on this world, he had no choice but to trust the people who led him, and had the power to — if all went according to plan — get him home.

“from here, we move by foot,” Ash said, slinging a mesh bag over his shoulder.  the rest of the men took similar bags out the groundcar’s rear hutch.  Issac noticed then that none of the men’s guns were visible; he had slipped his own small weapon into the waist of his pants, and he speculated that the larger guns were stowed in the bags the men carried.

“here,” Sorensen said, handing Issac what appeared to be an identity badge.  “it won’t pass close scrutiny, but it will be enough to make you blend in.”

“blend in?” Issac asked, accepting the badge and clipping it to his shirt.

“you’re not a citizen of the Ring if you don’t have one of these.  “every man, woman and child in the Ring is contracted, for life, to a corporation.  typically, children are contracted to the corporation their parents work for, but there are exceptions.”

“what corporation do we work for?”  Issac examined the badge.  there was a picture of him — he couldn’t remember it being taken, which worried him — a long number preceded by the word identity, a logo that was unfamiliar to him watermarked on the background.

“Sancon.”  the name sounded familiar, but before he could ask, Sorensen thumbed the top of the card.  the name read Cassis Reved.  “that’s your name for today.  it should be easy enough to remember.”  he smiled, and Ash called for the group to follow him.

“good luck, fellas,” Yandrake called from the driver’s seat of the groundcar.  “pick up time still the same?”

“yes,” Sorensen responded.  “thank you again, Tarshall.”

“sure, sure,” Yandrake responded gruffly.  “just don’t get killed.  i ain’t interested in pickin’ up a dead guy.”

“oh, you’re too kind,” Cillian joked, turning a shoulder to the groundcar.

“yeah, get outta here,” Yandrake laughed as he backed the groundcar away.

the group of eight had been dropped off in what appeared to be a general-use parking area.  they had not needed to produce credentials of any kind, but it was clear that many Ringmen utilized the area.  glancing at the nearby structures, Issac surmised that the closer to the center of the Ring one was, the more above-ground buildings one would see, and the larger these buildings would be.  it made sense, of course: the center of the Ring, the so-called evenstrip, would be the ideal location on Klin, and thus was occupied by its most wealthy inhabitants.  the wealthy citizens of course worked for the most successful businesses, the largest of which was a household name across the galaxy: StarEx.  as the effects of the sun decreased (or, the effects of lack of sun on nightside, Issac imagined), so also the wealth increased, and these two related but separate factors contributed to the increasing density and sophistication of the structures.

the group of eight spread out as they entered the dusty street.  unlike the streets in Gorshen, the streets here — did this place have a name?  it did, Issac found out: Wessex — were paved with a black tar.  but even these streets had been stained brown from sand and dirt.  the streets were tighter, the buildings more dense.  there were more people about, and Issac noticed the identification badge pinned to the shirt of each passerby.  the difference between the people on the street in Wessex and the those he had encountered in Gorshen was striking, but it took him a moment to identify exactly what that difference was.  or, differences, to be more accurate.  of obvious note, the people in Gorshen were much poorer than those is Wessex.  Issac did not imagine that Wessex was by any means among the wealthiest towns in the Ring, but the people here clearly lived on a higher standard than their dayside counterparts.  what made their wealth evident was not immediately clear to Issac — their clothes were of superior quality, but only marginally so.  more, it seemed, it was their demeanor, an attitude communicated through nonverbals, gait, facial expression.  quiet desperation was replaced by hopeless placidity.  these Ringmen did not seem any happier, only more pacified.

as they walked, Issac took the cue that the rebels were to act as if they did not know each other.  each took a particular distance from another, so that visual signals could be easily made, but that an uninterested pedestrian would not see an obvious connection between any of the men.  Issac slipped his hand to the belt of his trousers, squeezed the grip of his handgun.  though he had only used the weapon once, its presence gave him a sense of safety.

twenty minutes later, Issac was a foot behind Sorensen as they entered a nondescript building from a side street of Wessex’s main avenue.  the building was dim and vacant.  it appeared to be an office floor, and temporary partitions segregated a dozen or so individual work stations.  at first, Issac found it odd that no one manned these stations, as they seemed designed and adequately equipped to handle a full compliment of office personnel.  he realized shortly that his expectation as based on the early-afternoon light that flooded in through the building’s windows.  on Dulvern, an office this illuminated by natural sunlight would be in its busiest hours.  but what time was it? he wondered.  just as he thought this, he caught glimpse of a timestrip above one of the cubicles: it was ten pm, standard Klinian time.  though he had already spent some time on Klin’s perpetual dayside, he had still not wrapped his mind around a society that lived in continuous sunlight but that still maintained ordinary day-night regimens, as would be held on other worlds.  the concept of Bywel as a “nightclub” became a bit more clear to him then: these people saw this moment as the middle of the night, regardless of what the sun indicated.  it was almost stunning how strong cultural traditions might be, even in absence of an arbiter like the rising and falling of the sun.  the character of the Ringmen he’d seen outside also came further into focus: these were not women on their lunch break: the were tired workers, finding their way home at the tired end of a long day.

in any case, the group proceeded through the empty office to an unremarkable door at the end of a hall.  the door was locked by a palmscanner, and Ash placed his hand on the reader.  after a shimmer and chirp, the reader accepted his imprint, and the door slid open.  Ash turned to Cillian, said, “did i not assure you they’d have the program in place?”  he did not attempt to hide the smugness in his tone.

“yeah, yeah, let’s get to it,” Cillian said with the wave of a hand.  he shot Sorensen a look.  yeah, he’s just got it all figured out, it said, while simultaneously (but silently) conveying an admission of admiration.

the eight rebels strode down a narrow hallway and crowded into a narrow gravlift.  as the door slid shut, Issac found himself next to Sorensen once again.

“where is this taking us?” he whispered.

“this structure is only a short distance away from the Wessex spaceport.  that this gravlift is connected to the base is not a well-known fact.  but the people who manage this office are not only sympathetic to our cause, they are also very well connected.”

“seems like you have a lot of well connected and sympathetic guys in the Ring,” Issac rasped, simultaneously impressed and dubious.

Sorensen smiled.  “that is why this is the right time.  sadly, Cillian was right.”

Issac had not felt the gravlift shift directions, but Issac guessed that it must have: there would be no reason for them to travel this far below the surface of Klin, and they needed to move laterally, in any case.  a minute or two passed silently, and Issac felt a slight shift that must have been the gravlift decelerating.  a moment later, the door slid open silently, and the group emerged into a cavernous room.  the room was unlit, and the blackness was all the more impressive for its contrast to dayside’s permanently brilliant light.

“where are we?” Issac whispered.

“shh!” came the terse response from an unidentifiable member of the group.  Issac followed the sound of his shuffling compatriots as they made there way across the high-ceilinged room.  there was a trace of light trickling into the room from a source whose distance Issac could not estimate.  there was enough light to detect the subtle outlines of the other rebels, and Issac could make out a few indistinct shapes in the room, though he had no idea what they might be.  after perhaps ninety seconds of walking, the light seemed much closer, as if they were approaching a door, they keyhole of which transmitted light from a connecting room, or perhaps even the outside world.

as they were nearing it, Issac heard a loud metallic clap, as if an enormous switch had been flipped.  a bank of lights flashed to life on the ceiling of the far side of the room.  another clap followed, and another bank of lights flickered on, closer to the group.  Issac froze and looked first at the ceiling, then at his surroundings.  out of the corner of his eye, he saw other members of the group reacting quickly.  guns were drawn before he realized what was happening, and it occurred to him that he should draw his as well.  he groped at the back of his trousers and fumbled for his handgun.  it slipped out of his hand and clattered on the concrete floor of the room.  another metallic clank, and another bank of lights illuminated.  Issac dropped to one knee and scrambled for his gun.  as he was doing so, he realized that the room was an enormous hanger, and several air- or spacecraft (he could not immediately tell the difference, though he would have guessed they were not intended for travel outside the atmosphere)were parked in an orderly fashion, one after another, all facing a massive rolling door on the far side of the hangar.  another clap, this one louder, and the row of lights just above the group turned on.  they were now fully illuminated.  Issac found his gun, gripped it with both hands.  he pointed it at nothing in particular, and swept his hands from left to right across his body until he spotted something.

it was a man.

a soldier, by the looks of him.  he was perhaps twenty yards distant from the group, and he pointed a c-ray blaster squarely at Issac.  it only took a second for Issac to realize that he was not alone.  there were perhaps a dozen other soldiers — no, more, he realized as he continued to spin to his right.  there had to be twenty men, clad in grey suits, all holding c-ray blasters.

they were surrounded.