The War Machine: Crisis of Empire III Read Online Free PDF

careers were really just the KT putting their own man forward? Spencer felt like a pawn in the KT’s game, and knew that it was a pretty accurate analogy.
    No, he didn’t have much to be proud of. Not when his fingers still curled around an imaginary feel-good control whenever unhappy thoughts came to his mind. But if he wanted to survive, and stay off Penitence, he would have to put the best possible face on the situation. He’d have to act proud, at least.
    He smoothed the uniform jacket down over his blouse as best he could, turned, and stepped out into the hallway. He had orders to depart this morning at 0900 hours, and the time had come. He had no bags with him, nothing to carry away with him but his AID. It banged against his hip as he walked. The damn thing had saved his life, but he still didn’t like carrying it.
    He looked up and down the hallway at the ward. As usual, the place was deserted. Spencer had not laid eyes on anyone but the nameless KT man since his arrival. No patients, no doctors, no nurses, no staff. There were three other rooms for patients, a nurse’s station, a diagnostic control pod—but there was no one there to cure or be cured. Just the medical and maintenance robots. They did all the work. A wholly automated ward, run that way for security reasons, no doubt. This was obviously some sort of KT facility. But was it an entire KT hospital, or just one small clinic inside a larger complex?
    Not even the KT man here to see him off. Typical. No doubt the watchers were on duty, the surveillance AIDs recording his every move. Spencer raised a hand, waved good-bye to where he thought a camera might be. But then how to get the hell out of here?
    It turned out to be simpler than he thought. All the doors but one were locked, and that led out onto a blank hallway full of doors—only one of which would open. That led out onto a stairwell. He followed it down to another doorway, and so on through a whole rabbit’s warren of tunnels, stairwells and droptubes that seemed like they must lead him halfway across the city. There was never more than one door that would open, and every door locked quite firmly behind him.
    At last he found himself decanted out into a dark, dank narrow alley. It was a fetid, nasty place—but he could see the sky from here. Al looked straight up, and saw the gleam of stars. Stars? How could that be? Al glanced at his watch. It wasn’t even ten in the morning. Unless the watch had been damaged. “AID, what time is it?” he asked.
    “It is 0957 hours planetary standard, and late evening local zone standard.”
    Al blinked, feeling badly disoriented. He was on the other side of the world from his home city.
    “Where the hell are we?”
    “I am not permitted to answer questions of locale until we are returned to your own home.”
    Typical, Al decided. His own AID was taking orders from the KT. Clearly, they wanted him to get home without knowing where he had been. Another damn test, this time an exercise in keeping his own knowledge limited. There were certainly ways he could figure out where this was. Walk out from here until he found a street sign. Memorize the star positions overhead, and then compare that to the exact time to get a longitude. But no, his AID had simply said it was “late evening”—no doubt on the KT’s instructions to be vague. Without knowing the local celestial time, he couldn’t use the sky. Never mind. He could simply walk out from here until he found a citizen to ask where he was.
    But they didn’t want him to know, were challenging him to get home without finding out. He was getting tired of these little pop quizzes. Nevertheless, he was obviously being watched, somehow, so he’d better play by the rules. “AID, call me a cab,” he said in a tired voice. “And see if you can charge the fare to the Kona Tatsu.” Al Spencer knew his credit balance wasn’t up to paying for intercontinental cab fares. He didn’t mind dancing to the KT’s