Silhouette by Arthur McMahon Read Free Book Online

appeared to travel under the compound. Silhouette rolled out of the compartment before the bus had reached the tunnel and she ran for cover.
    She found a dark place and used her Ocu to scan the grounds, seeing that there was not much movement. Two guards stood at the gate where the bus had entered the Burmin stronghold, and a couple more patrolled the perimeter. The only other bodies outside of the walls were clustered together inside some kind of barn. Must be livestock .
    Silhouette popped the compound layout into her vision, and now that she could see the place in person she better understood how large it was. She pinpointed her location on the map near the freight loading zone, which X described as one of the highest Burmin activity areas of the compound, but it was quiet and apparently shut down for the night. Silhouette looked with her thermal vision toward the building itself and saw that most of the Burmin bodies were sleeping with little movement otherwise, and she could see that X’s estimation of nearly 300 resident Burmin living inside of the place was accurate.
    X marked several locations as hiding spots, but they were used by the human slaves in the compound, those trying to find momentary escape from their duties. Those places would not do. She could not risk being seen by anyone, not even the other humans. From what she could surmise from X’s data, Burmin at the compound tended to stay where they were assigned all day and every day, spending most of their free time at night in the nearby towns. The command center, mineral processing areas, airfield, barracks, and other offices would be too dangerous to reside in, as would be gathering places like the cafeteria or gymnasium. The prison would always have eyes guarding it, of course.
    She hustled over to a doorway near the freight garage and found that it was unlocked. Light security and unlocked doors, the Burmin did not seem to be too worried about anyone planet-side waltzing onto their property. Silhouette surveyed the complex through the night. Most places were dark, empty, and the doors were always unlocked. There was little activity during the night with few bodies moving around to cause her any concern, but every location she visited appeared to see heavy foot traffic during the day, and as the daytime hours approached she still found herself without a good place to hide.
    Silhouette had to resort to one of the locations provided by X, a storage room off to one side of the compound’s heat exchanger which was rarely visited. At least if she was discovered it might be a good location for hiding a body. Making her way to the room was simple enough. Inside she found wire shelving on wheels holding large boxes and heavy machinery pieces, providing her with plenty of coverage to hide behind. She glanced up at the ceiling and noticed that it was made of white tiles, and they looked like they could be moved. Almost everywhere else in the compound was covered in sheet metal. She climbed one of the wire shelves and pushed up on a ceiling tile, lifting it with ease. She pulled herself up and into the ceiling, sticking to the cross beams which were strong enough to support her weight.
    Looking around, she realized that she had found a vast crawl space, and there was nothing about it listed in X’s detailed information, not in this section anyway. Perfect .

    * * *

    Silhouette spent weeks exploring the compound and monitoring movements with the help of her Ocu. While inspecting the crawl space she discovered several maintenance hatches and more removable tiles above some offices and in the kitchens. She followed the patterns of Burmin and human alike, monitoring popular passageways and noting the quieter halls. She was able to sync up many Burmin to the labels and information provided in X’s notes, identifying the leaders and memorizing their daily routines. It would be all too easy to pick them off, one by one, but that was not her mission. She needed to find