The Lead Cloak (The Lattice Trilogy Book 1) by Erik Hanberg

Author:Erik Hanberg [Hanberg, Erik]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Side x Side Publishing
Published: 2013-10-07T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

Annalise’s tour of the Walden was long and full of the tiniest details. Her love for the ship was plain in every remark, and Shaw did his best to ask questions that showed he was an attentive listener.

His earlier guess had been right: the great room took up a full quarter of the space aboard the Walden. The floor of the room was a perfect cross-section of the sphere, splitting it into an upper and lower half. Elsewhere on that same level was the small mess hall he’d seen, as well as small bunkrooms.

Outside his own room, Annalise pointed up toward a vertical hallway that went up into the sphere, a ladder built into the side of it for use when the Walden wasn’t in orbit. Off of the hallway were more bunkrooms. Everyone had found their own favorite way to sleep in micro-gravity. Taveena and Erling preferred a sleep sack. Helix liked to sleep unencumbered, with only a light fan pushing her against a wall. Tranq and Kuhn … “Well,” Annalise said, her eyebrows arched, “I’ll let your imagination fill that one in. It’s a lot easier with two people.” Everyone else used the belts.

Below decks, as Annalise called everything below the middle floor of the sphere, she showed Shaw the solar engines, the quantum stabilizers, and their storage rooms. Food, gear, and several large printers.

“Kuhn’s the quartermaster. If you need anything, just ask her.”

Great.

“You still haven’t seen the most interesting room,” she said, a glimmer in her eye as she led him down another narrow hall. “It’s gotten kind of cramped,” she said as the door slid open.

To Shaw’s amazement, it was the only room of the Walden that he’d imagined perfectly. A small cubbyhole, the room was filled on three sides with shelves, and those shelves were filled with small black spheres.

Erling was in a thick chair in the middle of the room, reading his wrap.

“Hey Byron!” he said, unbelting from the chair and getting up.

“There are so many,” he said to himself.

“One hundred forty-two, I think, at last count.”

“I had no idea your network was so big.”

“It’s shrunk, actually.” Erling’s eyes flickered to Annalise. “We’ve lost a lot since your conversation with Wulf in that hotel room.”

“Really? I would have thought you’d have gained some.”

“We gained allies, that’s for sure. But we exposed a lot of people, too. People realized that the innocuous sphere their husband or wife had wasn’t just a piece of art. A lot of people got turned in. Most of the people who were turned in hadn’t actually done anything yet.” Erling shrugged. “But enough people had them that Lattice Security, with help from the corporations, is finding patterns in how we operate—how we recruit.”

Shaw felt a tinge of pride that his old teammates were making some headway. He couldn’t quite believe that he was here with the raiders, while they were still groping around in the dark. He looked at the spheres and imagined an Ono, or a pilot, or a plastic surgeon on the other end of each one.

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