"I know that!" Lock said. "But—"
"—and a life sentence to a labor camp," the manager continued. Lundie had led the strikers back to the rotunda, but her chief's crisp voice was still perfectly clear. "Now, during the voyage each two decks of colonists will be separated by a deck of supplies and . . ."
A lift cage arrived. The strikers stepped aboard in unison with Lundie. Daye looked as worried as Farrell had ever seen him.
The only thing that kept Daye going was the hope that his CO had the situation in hand. Farrell knew that was a vain hope if ever there'd been one.
Lundie led them off on the next deck down. "Your quarters are here on Twenty-four," she said, the first words she'd spoken directly to the strikers since introducing them. "Your rations and equipment will be stored with you. The remaining volume on this deck will store colony supplies that won't be needed until after landing on Bezant 459."
She led Farrell and Daye down a corridor. The doors to either side were ajar. The rooms had eight pull-down bunks, a shower stall, a double washstand, and a latrine. The space and amenities were better than those of a troopship and enormously better than an assault vessel's, but Farrell didn't imagine the civilian colonists were going to be happy.
"Ma'am," said Sergeant Daye. "Ah, can I ask a question?"
"Yes, of course," Lundie said. "And please refer to me as you would refer to one of your own officers."
"Yes ma'am," Daye said. Farrell wondered if he was having as much trouble as Farrell himself was imagining the young woman in C41. "What that fellow said about a whole building being turned into a colony—is that true?"
"Yes," said Lundie. "Horizon Towers in the Central Chicago District. Every resident of Earth is subject to Colonization Orders, but this particular technique has never been used before."
"Did some computer blow a fuse?" Farrell asked. "Or did some dickheaded human really think this was a good idea?"
"I can't answer that," Lundie said. When she spoke on most subjects, her voice had the false rhythms of an AI program forming words. This was so flat that perversely it indicated real feeling.
"Rations and other consumables for your company have already been loaded into these two compartments," Lundie continued. "And there's a large compartment here—"
"C41 bunks aboard while the ship's being finished, you mean?" Daye interjected.
Lundie looked at him. "The ship will be finished very shortly," she said. "Liftoff is in six hours, twelve minutes."
She opened the door as she'd started to do. There was nothing to be seen but an empty room. Throughout the vessel, ringbolts on all flat surfaces provided anchors for cargo nets and tie-downs.
"—for your personal stores and equipment. There's a separate compartment for use as an armory."
"We keep our hardware with us in C41," Farrell said flatly. "Is that going to be a problem?"
Lundie's face was still. "That isn't necessary on the voyage," she said carefully.
"It's necessary if I'm going to sleep," Daye said. "I'm itchy right now, ma'am."
"C41's pretty stressed," Farrell said. He didn't know how to explain to a civilian. "I know there's a risk, but I think the risk is worse if I, if we . . ."
Daye grimaced. "Look, ma'am, if you can get us reassigned to something we know how to do, that'd be great. We're strikers, we're not, we're . . ."
"Arrangements for security personnel are yours to determine, major," Lundie said. "Assignments to the Bezant 459 project are of course from higher levels of the government."
She cleared her throat as a period, then continued, "The colonists will be arriving in three hours. Since your helmets have full communications and mapping capacity, we'll use your personnel as guides for corridor assignments. Initially only the upper seventeen decks will be complete, so . . ."
Farrell continued to listen to the young woman. From long experience he'd be able to reel off her statements word perfect when he assigned individual missions to his people.
But Farrell's heart was in a dark place of its own, and his soul was as dead as the strikers C41 had left scattered across a galaxy at war.
The landscape of spiky trees and spiky grass, scattered sparsely over gritty dirt, could easily have been a frontier planet. Abbado hadn't known there were parts of Earth that looked like this.
It was probably news to the colonists being herded off the train by uniformed police, too. The largest expanse of vegetation most of the civilians would have seen before was their apartment building's roof garden.