The work of the administrators was conducted on the highest level, Alpha Level. Up there, in the top spire, far above even the Enclaves, the baron reigned alone, unapproachable, invisible.
Kane had no clear idea what went on in A Level. The secrecy surrounding the baron and the administrators’ activities was deliberate and jealously guarded. Almost everybody in all the other divisions was kept in ignorance about the actual number and identities of the administrators.
Fraternization between division personnel was strongly discouraged, presumably so no one would know anything that the administrators didn’t want them to know.
Midway on the side of the monolith, a flat, massive slab began extending like a monstrous, squared-off tongue. A circle of fluorescent light blinked rhythmically on the exact center of the slab. Grant angled the Deathbird down toward the landing pad projecting from the level housing the Magistrate Division and its dozen subsections.
Mechs scurried out of the cavernous opening on the side of the tower, securing the landing skids with cables attached to eyebolts sunk in the rockcrete. Medics rushed out and put Carthew on a wheeled stretcher, quickly rolling him inside. Kane and the team walked inside the monolith as giant groaning gears and squealing pulleys withdrew the landing pad.
The Magistrate Division level was huge, containing classrooms, a weapons range, a vast armory, wardrooms, a cafeteria, a gymnasium and a computerized Intel center. It also held dormitories for recruits.
Kane thought of his first morning at the divisionwhen he was twelveand how he awakened on his bunk before dawn, cold, frightened, yet strangely eager for the day to begin. Nineteen years had conditioned all childish fears and frailties from his mind and body. He remembered his final examination when he was sixteen, a day that marked his last day as a recruit and his first day as a badge-carrying Magistrate. There was no such thing as failure of the examinationthose who survived it were the ones who didn’t fail.
Following the standard procedure after a foray into a hellzone, the team filed into a cubicle and removed their armor, handing the pieces to techs who stood by for that purpose. Then, naked, each man waited his turn to enter the Medisterile Unit.
Kane was the first to step inside the man-size, bullet-shaped chamber. Dozens of nozzles studded the tiled walls.
When the door sealed behind him, high-pressure jets of warm disinfectant sprayed from the nozzles. The streams of fluid covered him from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. Kane worked the decontamination spray into his body to help penetration into every pore. The monthly immunity boosters all legal ville residents received weren’t powerful enough to protect them from long exposure to hellzone levels of ambient radiation.
Outside, in another cubicle, the techs were washing down his armor and ordnance with a similar decontaminate. He wasn’t worried about one of them rifling through the compartments of his belt and finding the compact disk. They were Pit dwellers, outlanders hoping for citizenship, and such a brazen act of disrespect would never occur to them.
The spray ceased, warm air whipped around him and dried him completely. When he stepped through the far door of the chamber, into the ready room, his decontaminated armor and weapons were neatly stacked in his locker.
Kane removed his duty uniform from where it hung and quickly slipped into the pearl gray, high-collared bodysuit. He was tugging on his black calf-high boots when Grant emerged from the Medisterile Unit.
“Just heard,” he said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder. “We can go off duty.”
“What do you mean? When’s the debrief?”
Shrugging his broad shoulders, Grant opened his locker and took out his own bodysuit. “Don’t know, but it’s not scheduled for tonight.”
“Why not?”
“How do I know?” he asked peevishly. “I’m just glad to go home. I’m beat down to my arches.”
Kane frowned. A debrief was SOP, especially after a deep penetration. Even after completing a routine Pit sweep, a debrief was always required.
He opened his mouth to mention it, but Pollard and MacMurphy entered the ready room. Pollard was about Kane’s age, MacMurphy a little older. Of all the men on the team, Grant was the oldest, a year away from a mandatory administrative transfer. “How’s Carthew?” Kane asked. “Blind in one eye and can’t see shit out of the other,” Pollard replied in his booming voice. A black-and-purple bruise showed on the side of his right knee.