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Page 19.
Chapter 6. Denla Whirrit—Escape from Aerag-78
 In the cargo hangar at the Aerag-78 airstrip, Amela Brunvik found herself being strong-armed in the dark. The rest of her work battalion had already marched away into the frozen wilderness to gather bird eggs.
Amela threw one of her attackers against the wall, where she struck hard and collapsed in a heap. Amela grappled with the other, but lost her grip and slipped.
The assailant straddled her and pinned her face-down. Amela had one arm pulled painfully behind her back, and the other woman's elbow on the back of her head, pushing her face into the dirt. She smelled diesel, and freezing foul milk, and spilled grain.
"No, no," said the firm voice of Vigri in the darkness, "she is the one."
Immediately, the uniformed woman who knelt on Amela's back released Amela's arm and rose.
Amela pushed herself into a standing position and dusted herself off. She spat out bits of straw and reeking mud. She eyeballed her assailant angrily.
The assailant helped her companion up. The two women limped out of the hall. A different woman stepped out of the shadows.
Vigri's pale, aged face floated in a bar of sunlight in the dark warehouse. "Sorry about that, Amela. Can't be too careful. This is cargo pilot Denla Whirrit. She's licensed by Sekurita. She will fly us out of here."
Amela looked sidelong at Denla Whirrit. Sekurita? Might as well be dead already.
"I will fly you to the equator," Deni said. She was a bit taller than Amela, cute in a wiry, boyish way, with dark eyes. She had dark page-cut hair that flounced around her shoulders. She wore the bleach-blue flight jumper of Sekurita, with aviator wings over her heart, and epaulets with chief warrant officer rank (two white bars on a black background). It was a coloring that puzzled Amela, who was a warrant officer first rating herself in the Treaty Bund. "Let's go. We don't have time to waste."
"Don't be surprised," said Vigri. "After so many years here, I'm not only trustie, but I'm well connected. I can pull wires you don't even know about."
The three women strode through the darkness. As Amela's eyes became accustomed, she could see a dim path among yellow-marked concrete aprons all around. The smells changed to those old oil, wood, and cloth.
Vigri wore a dark jumper, with a pink scarf tucked into its collar.
They emerged in twilight on the airfield side of the long row of cargo hangars. The sky was beginning to take on a lighter blue color streaked with blackish lines of cloud. The light was amplified locally by balls of of high-lume lighting on tall poles, each surrounded by a gradient ball of fog. Much as life here was a struggle between life and death, between scant warmth and deadly cold, so it was also an elemental struggle between dark and light.
Amela felt an odd mix of feelings. She felt lightened by having escaped the daily POW camp routine of fear and boredom, mixed with hard work and fatigue—and pointlessness. She felt numb, even suspicious, at the idea that escape was this easy. She was afraid to think more than two minutes ahead, much less dream of running along a balmy beach to a large round space craft that would take them to orbit and beyond.
The airfield consisted of a huge, flat expanse of black circles rimed in white. The black circles were landing pads on tarmac, where skimmers came and went. The white was snow and grit, blown into stove rings by skimmer exhausts. One skimmer was just taking off in a cloud of ice crystals and white steam, while two the size of dots rapidly approached from the south. Almost all traffic was to the south, to or from the warmer continents. On a black landing pad nearby sat an olive-green skimmer showing signs of much wear: orange rust streaks down the sides, black lube streaks weeping from its exhaust vents, small dents rippling its rounded center. It rested on eight short, fat legs of the same hue. A side portal was open, and three gray robots articulated like people, but with eight arms and insect-like heads, were busy bringing cargo out. The cargo was packed in a variety of grayish ceramic cubes with rounded edges. Each cube was four heads long on each side, glowed dully, and had black calligraphy on its surfaces. Amela got it: supplies for the POWs, paid for with OHD tax money.
As Amela, Vigri, and Denla approached, the robots finished their work. A flatbed driven by two similar robots approached. The five turned their backs on the skimmer—finished with it—and loaded their truck with the two dozen or more ceramic containers.
Seen in this brighter light, Denla Whirrit was a trim, tall woman with reddish hair hanging straight in a page cut.. She was beautiful, but did not seem to be a joyful person. Then again, who would be in this place? In her blue uniform, she carried herself with no-nonsense military bearing. Her expression was somber—except that her lively dark eyes and thin mouth suggested a touch of wry.
Amela moved as if underwater or in a dream. The three women walked at a professional pace, in step with Denla.
Signal lights around them pulsed quietly and regularly in machine-readable amber, and in blue patterns.
Amela felt oddly detached from her extreme fear. Any moment, Sekurita would come roaring up with guns, lights, and barked commands. But nobody stirred. Only the wind, blowing up grit under distant balls of light and fog. At the far edge of the field, Amela caught sight of trudging, shadowy figures: wolvines on the hunt, probing the outer edges of a camp that smelled of blood and meat in their snouts. When the wolvines barked, the camp-broken wolvinels responded in ominous conversation.
Nearby, the five robots finished loading. The robots clambered in and out of the skimmer carrying gray ceramic cubes. One of them drove the flat-loader away toward a hangar.
Far down the line, a control tower loomed out of the darkness, visible mainly by the band of soft light emanating from its air traffic management deck near the top.
The three women approached their intended craft. With Denla in the lead, they walked unchallenged up the sandpapery ramp, and into the amber-lit interior of a utilitarian cargo space intended mainly for robot use.
Amela let out a sigh of relief as the ramp ground shut, forming a sealed portal for the pressurized interior. The domed space inside smelled of oily rope, rubber insulation, and more exotic chemical byproducts from the battery drives.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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