24. Operation Uranus.
Yarina could do nothing but look on as Utia nodded and then collapsed in an undignified heap in front of her door. She immediately checked his pulse and came up with nothing. She took her personal com unit and opened a connection to the guard while starting CPR on Utia. A female voice responded.
"Officer on duty, Lieutenant Hralka."
"Hralka, I need a stretcher down to my location now with a full medical crew. Inform professor Raewon that we need to do the body swap now."
"I do not understand."
"You do not have to understand Hralka. Do what I said. Code Kappa niner niner four."
"Yes ma'am."
The connection died and left Yarina alone with Utia and her feeble resuscitation attempt. In less than two minutes the medical crew had arrived to take over and she just hoped that it would be enough to save Utia's mind. She followed the stretcher up to the surgery where Raewon was waiting with the medical staff.
"Report Ms Yarina."
"Professor, we had just eaten dinner when Utia collapsed with no warning at all. Looks like a heart stop to me."
"That is what the doctors have agreed upon. We will swap him into the generic body immediately and hope that he will be able to fasten in it in spite of his mind alterations. You should go get changed Yarina unless you plan on working like that?"
She looked down at her golden silk dress and back to Utia. She turned to walk away.
"Yarina."
She looked over to the professor.
"We will do anything to save him. You go change and come back. We will have started then and you can't do anything before anyway. Now go on."
The fatherly concern in his voice made her trust that Utia would be all right and she walked off to her room.
###
Brix sweated as much as he had frozen before, now dressed in a full body protection suit and working inside the xithricite roid. His tongue kept prodding the hole that was instead of his lower left molar. That was before the guard found out that he had a gold filing in it. He winced from the pain but kept on working to keep the guards from using his cortex inducer. The roid shook a bit and he grabbed the wall for stability. In the week he had been here it had never moved the slightest, and weighing in at around ninety thousand mega tonne it would have to be an immense force to make the roid shake. He waited a second and was about to start again when the air inside the tunnel started blowing towards the entrance. The small light inside his helmet blinked on and he started protesting loudly at the pain that was about to ensue. Nothing, instead words seemed to be directly forced into his mind as if they were words from God.
"Mr Brix, move forward towards tunnel 9 and then turn right into that tunnel. Walk on until you meet an airlock on he left. Go inside and wait. You cannot reply to this message."
Brix grinned; the path to freedom had been shown to him. He started moving and did as he had been told. The darkness inside the airlock was no worse than the darkness he had seen in the tunnels and slowly he drifted to sleep.
###
The heap of human refuse turned out to be a man in a boiler suit and when Riddik pushed him slightly he gave a large snort and spat something abominable that could probably kill an entire planetary population without even trying, against the bulkhead impacting with a metallic sound. A smell of dust and oil was around the old man and Riddik couldn't help notice the grime that covered his hands colouring them grey.
"Are you okay old timer?"
"Ah hae ne'er felt betta."
Riddik grinned and helped the man up. To his surprise the old man stood as tall as himself and had an air of power around him. The old man smiled slowly and extended a hand.
"Cheers fur helpin me."
Riddik took the hand and shook it, surprised by the strength of his shake.
"No problem, I don't think they would have hurt you but you would have been out of cash for sure."
"Whit, those yoong ones?"
The old man started laughing.
"Those wee shits waur in th' wey o gie gubbed. Ah was bletherin abit ye helpin me up."
Riddik took a step back and looked at the old man again, observing the slight swaying and large grin on him. Then he saw the nametag and the large golden starburst insignia on the neck of his boiler suit.
"Ecka Estenk, commander of The Guild of Free Traders. Yeah, I guess they would have been hammered Sir."
"Twas but a query ay time son. Wanna hae a bevvy?"
Riddik considered for a thousandth of a second before nodding. It was probably not the worst drinking buddy he could scrape off the deck plates.
"Barry. I'll caa aheid an' teel John 'at he is wanted fur serioos skitin'."
Riddik had a sinking feeling that he had opened a particular large and dangerous can of worms but it was too late. Ecka had grabbed his arm and was slowly and only slightly wobbly walking towards the bar area.
"Hae Ah ever tauld ye abit 'at bonnie yoong quine Ah kent in Sedina?"
Riddik decided to just give in and follow. He had heard a lot of good things about TGFT from his time on SCAR; maybe they could help him out. If he at some point deciphered that crazy Nyrius dialect.
###
William frowned; he had found the initial initiation on the CPU after a couple of minutes and use the remaining twenty to search for faults. He had sweeped that sector himself earlier and it came up clean. He had never seen that before in a hive bot. Every time the collector bots offloaded at the hive queen, they were erased and re-initialised to prevent their small systems from overloading. And these two had been initialised in an empty system. His watch beeped, it was time for his patrol and he would have to look into this after it. Besides, he might come up with a perfectly good explanation while he was flying the boring security mission around Tellus station. He sneaked out of the door to avoid waking Janice.
###
"All fighters this is lead. Stand to, stand to. We are GO for insertion, repeat GO for insertion. First and second squadron jump initiation in ten seconds on my mark. Third and fourth in sixty seconds on my mark. Mark in ten...five... two, one mark mark mark. All pilot respond receiving mark."
Cat punched the time and ensured she had the correct time. A single string of data acknowledged the commander's order and she readied for jumping in the first wave. A quick look confirmed that all systems were operational and her battery was completely full. The jump engines were primed and ready for jumping upon her command. When the timer reached zero she gave the command via her neural jack and the SVG dumped the stored power of her Ultra Charge battery directly into her jump engine, tearing a whole in reality and forcing her ship through to the other side and Tellus Station. They were committed.
