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pots, where outlanders and slaggers lived. They swarmed with the cheap labor,
and random movement between the Enclaves and Pit was tightly controlledonly a
Magistrate on official business could enter the Pits, and only a Pit dweller
with a legitimate work order could even approach the cellar of an Enclave
tower. However, Kane knew of at least one undetected route into the Enclaves.
The population of the Pits was as strictly and even more ruthlessly controlled
than the traffic. The barons had decreed that the villes could support no more
than five thousand residents, and the number of Pit dwellers could not exceed
one thousand.
Kane retained vivid memories of making Pit sweeps, seeking out unauthorized
outlanders, infants and even pregnant women. He did not relish those memories.
Seen from above, the Enclave towers formed a latticework of intersected
circles, all connected to the center of the circle, from which rose the
Administrative Monolith. The massive, round column of white rockcrete jutted
three hundred feet into the sky. Light poured out of the slit-shaped windows
on each level.
Every level of the tower was designed to fulfill a specific capacity E, or
Epsilon, Level was a general construction and manufacturing facility; D, or
Delta, Level was devoted to the preservation, preparation and distribution of
food; and C, or Cappa, from an American version of the Greek Kappa, Level held
the
Magistrate Division. On B, or Beta, Level was the historical archives, a
combination of library, museum and computer center. The level was stocked with
almost five hundred thousand books, discovered and restored over the past
ninety years, not to mention an incredibly varied array of predark artifacts.
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.
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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
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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
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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
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out of the other," Pollard replied in his booming voice. A black-and-purple
bruise showed on the side of his right knee.
"The medics have him in surgery already," MacMurphy offered. "They can maybe
save one of his eyes."
Kane grimaced in sympathy, but it wasn't as if the man had a family to
support. Magistrates were allowed to marry and produce legitimate offspring
only when they held an administrative post. For Carthew, even if he made a
full recovery, such a transfer was at least two decades away.
Becoming an administrator in the division wasn't a promotion exactly, nor was
it completely based on age, though that was certainly a factor. The quality of
service was the most important considerationsupposedly.
However, in the past fourteen years of his active duty, Kane had seen a number
of men, admittedly only a few, with less experience and younger than he,
assume administrative posts. He wasn't annoyed by it, only vaguely curious.
While the other men were busy dressing themselves, Kane quickly removed the
compact disk from his belt and slipped it inside the pocket of his black,
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