Free Prisoner 52 by S.T. Burkholder Page B

man by mention of him.
    "Hotchkins," He said and pointed with his rifle. "He's Leargam."
    "You took damn long enough. Any more and the instruments would have started freezing over. Conduits bursting, flaps icing up." He said and took a dirty shammy cloth from his belt and wiped with it his dirty face. "Ah, to hell with it. There's your man anyway."
    Leargam looked past him at the platform for a second time and still the storm occluded the outside world with white. But through the ice and wind and snow he could make out the tall, broad shape that was grey-black in the colourless nothing which swirled around it.
    "Don't see anybody apart from the soliders, guy." Leargam said. "And that thing they're all standing around."
    "He's there alright." The man said and brushed past him. "I got work to do. Just make it quick, alright? Or the-"
    "The instruments will freeze over." Leargam said. "Yeah I got you."
    "You'd think they didn't want anybody to take him." He went on in the absence of the machinist. "I'll be fucked if we ever get this guy out of here if all those soliders want to give the long and short of it too."
    "Something isn't right." Tezac said and did not go ahead with him toward the wall of the blizzard.
    "You mean my suit'll freeze up before we get back to our post?" Leargam said and his words began to be smothered by the howl of the wind the further he went before he saw that the rookie had not followed him. "Well what the hell do you mean?"
    "That guy," He said. "You don't talk like that if you got some place to be. I saw it dozens of times in the wars."
    "We aren't in the SepSecs here." The old man said and studied Tezac's face as he said nothing of it. "What're you thinking, then?"
    "I think that thing out there on the pad with them is an obelisk." He said. "And you'd better be careful about what's inside."
    Leargam eyed him and then turned away and brought his wristband round. Tezac watched him manipulate its hardlight screen impassively and then stared out into the flurries at the hardly there figure of the black containment tower therein. Indeed, he peered at it and peered beyond it and so searched the most darksome of what his mind had chosen to remember.
    "Yeah," He heard the old man say into his bracer. "This is Leargam. Down in the hangar bays. Enforcer Code: 23900541212. Connect me with Captain Mullins. No I won't wait. It's important. Tell him a military vessel has docked with his containment sector and he'd probably like to know why."
    Leargam fell to muttering to himself and keyed off the transmission and joined Tezac again far back from the open bay doors, the soldiers yet waiting beyond.
    "Captain Mullins is already aware." Leargam said. "Cleared the transfer himself this morning. Shit. They have their own facilities for this."
    "I can tell you that your captain didn't have much choice."
    "Well," Leargam said and keyed his visor to lower again.
    They went away at last to the threshold of the landing pad and beyond it the soliders stood yet as stoic as statues left in some bygone palace to weather what they will. They stirred at their approach as waking temple guardians and one stepped apart to hail them. Bulky as they in his exo-suit, but self-contained and immune to the harrying elements. Tezac and Leargam drew to a stop before him, ramshackle in ramshackle suits and so much the primitive visited by a long absent progenitor.
    "Morning," He said, distorted through the sealed helmet, and he then looked about himself as the ice crystals broke across his visor. "Least I think it's morning."
    "Close enough." Leargam said to the giant. "What you got for us?"
    "Maerazian." The man said and took his trigger hand away from it and held the palm out to them, prompting the holoprojector bulb therein to broadcast.
    Tezac looked at Leargam out from the corner of his eye and the old man did the same, the one knowing and the other knowing that he did.
    "Zhouferon Zhoudai," The soldier said to him. "Height: 3.2 meters;