As he caught her, the ground beneath them gave an ominous rumble, and shale began to cascade down the steep slope. Leo steadied himself as the rocks beneath his feet began to slip loosely down the incline. He then rasped Annabelle tightly as the ground beneath him slid away with increasing momentum
"Hold on!" he shouted to Annabelle as she squeezed him tightly.
Together, they rode the avalanche of rocks down the steep incline. It was a wild ride, but Leo kept his footing and successfully surfed the sliding shale down to the valley floor.
"That was nuts..." Annabelle gasped as Leo stumbled over the fallen rocks and led her out onto the valley floor. "We almost died just then, didn't we?"
Leo squeezed her hand. "Not even close..."
The burning remains of Randell's ship stood before them. Alice was already walking through the wreckage as Leoand Annabelle approached.
"Any sign of Randell or Sila?" Leo shouted over to Alice as she knelt to inspect a fragment of the ship's sundered hull.
"Not yet," Alice shouted back.
Leo began to lead Annabelle over to where Alice knelt, but before he had covered even half the distance, he heard something skitter across the ground next to him. He assumed it was a falling rock, but spun around to make sure.
Suddenly, Leo was blinded and knocked to the ground by a piercing flash of light and a ear-splitting explosion. Annabelle fell roughly on top of him, but he still held her close.
He gripped Annabelle's hand tightly as he tried to blink his eyes and recover from the effects of the blast. Before he could banish the white flashes that filled his vision, however, he heard a slimy, condescending voice speak slowly above him.
"We found you..." the slimy voice taunted.
Leo tried to stand and pull Annabelle up with him, but as he got to one knee, something hard struck him in his side, and he fell back to the ground next to Annabelle. The blow knocked the wind out of him, and he let out a ragged grunt of pain as it landed.
"Don't move, or we'll skin your little whore alive!" the voice gleefully ordered him.
As Leo's vision slowly cleared, he turned his eyes to the voice and saw a slim, white-haired man standing above him. The man had a pistol in his hand, and it was pointed directly at Leo's face.
Leo glared up at him, and the pale-faced man looked back with a cruel smile.
"Did you think you could escape us?" the man asked. "We know what you smell like, Leo."
As the man finished his sentence, he twirled the pistol on the palm of his hand. Leo watched the gun spin a few times and prepared to make a move.
But then, out of the corner of his eye, Leo saw more figures emerge from around the burning wreck and knew he would be shot down before he had any chance of getting the upper hand.
Just as the man let the spinning pistol come to a stop, he tossed it up into the air and skillfully caught it. Then, with an evil look, he winked at Leo and smiled.
"We're going to have fun with you, Little m..."
The taunting man was interrupted, however, when a flash of blue light suddenly cut through his head. A blooming mist of crimson blood vaporized into the air as his skull, and all it contained were splattered down onto Leo's face and the ground around him.
Leo stayed close to the ground and looked around wildly to see who had taken the shot. As he looked, he saw three more, similarly dressed and pale-faced people standing around him, looking stunned as they realized what had just occurred. They had no time to speak even one word, however. They each quickly fell to the ground in turn as their heads were blasted apart in a mix of plasma, brain, and bone.
"C'mon!" Leo roared as he redoubled his grip on Annabelle's hand and climbed to his feet. She scrambled to her feet as well, then held on tight as he pulled her toward a large piece of ship wreckage that was mercifully free of flames.
They quickly covered the distance, and there was no hail of plasma bolts that followed them. As they dove for cover, Leo spotted Alice.
She was hiding behind the wreckage with her pistol drawn. Leo thought for a moment that she might fire on them when they came around the corner, but she didn't. She just gave him a quick nod, then popped her head up to get a look at their surroundings.
"Thrall's people..." Alice remarked. "They must have tracked us here. They must've stuck a beacon to the ship when we were on Oberon..."
"And someone just saved our ass..." Leo interjected as he crouched next to her and peeked out over the heaps of burning wreckage. "And, I think I know who it was..."
As he looked up the steep shale embankment next to the wreckage, two figures crested its edge, then stumbled down toward them. One was dressed in a bright green dress, and the other in a black trenchcoat. Leo recognized them instantly. It was Randell and Sila.
Sila led Randell down the slope, a large plasma rifle held at the ready in her arms. As they stumbled down, a cascade of small rocks tumbled down around them, but they reached the bottom without falling.
"Randell! Sila! It's us! Leo, Alice, and Annabelle! Hold your fire!" Leo yelled up at them.
"Y'all better come out and get clear of that mess!" Sila yelled back as she and Randell marched toward them. "There be all manner of volatiles in that wreck that might go up as next happens!"
Leo ducked down and shared a concerned look with Alice.
"Let's go..." Alice ordered with a serious nod.
As one, they rose from behind the wreckage and began walking toward Randell and Sila. Leo looked around cautiously as they moved, but no other assailants emerged. After a short walk, the two groups met on the ground between the two largest burning ship fragments.
"What the hell happened to your ship?" Leo asked Randell as they stood before one another.
"Well..." Randell jovially replied. "Best I can tell is the little nano-tech cancer got into an electron bomb I had been fiddling with and made it go boom..."
"An electron bomb?" Leo incredulously exclaimed. "You had one? Are you completely insane?"
"Well, I was building one, to be true," Randell admitted. "But 'twas just a bit of hobby... Never expected it to work, and to also be true, I don't see as it actually did. If it had, we wouldn't be here talking to you. I think the cancer just hit the detonator and made it blow alone, then maybe there were some other reactions with other things I had onboard."
Leo took in Randell's explanation with disbelief. It had been lucky that Randell and Sila had been there to take out Thrall's latest batch of would-be ambushers. However, seeing the scale of the blast that had destroyed the ship, it didn't seem possible that they would have been able to get clear of it.
"How did you get clear of the blast?" Leo demanded. "Did you know it was going to happen?"
"Well, pure luck that was..." Sila answered. "We spotted a ship... An amazing looking thing it was, and it landed a little ways away. So we went over to it, and as we were, our old gal here 'sploded. Made quite the bang! Implants have been acting rather silly ever since..."
"Other ship?" Alice asked as she injected herself into the conversation. "Was it the people who ambushed us? Was it their ship?"
"Nope," Sila revealed. "We found that one too, but it's a real hunk o' junk. Just a shuttle, and a small one. Not worth the metal it be made out of, in my humble opinion. No, the ship I speak of was a real treat to be sure. The tech inside... My goodness, awesome to the core, and all run by the nicest A.I. Yes, very nice to us, she was... To be sure..."
Leo and Alice exchanged a suspicious look. Randell and Sila seemed odd. Their demeanor was oddly cheerful, considering the circumstances, and they had an identical glazed look in their eyes.
"Where is this ship?" Alice demanded.
"Oh, she will be here soon, surely," Sila happily replied. "She wanted us to find you. Keep you safe, she said, and so we have, and so we will be happy. As it is, she said to us!"
Leo felt his instincts serve him a dire warning, but even though he had raised his guard, he couldn't move quickly enough to defend himself.
> All he saw was a flash of movement. Then, he blacked out.
Chapter 46
"Are they here?" Thrall demanded of his slave science officer. She was a piece of meat by the name of Sarah, and she cowered in fear as he stared at her venomously.
"Sir, the pressure in the core..." Sarah implored.
Thrall didn't like that answer, so he cleared his throat, took a deep breath, and spat sticky phlegm all over her face.
"That's not what I asked you, you fucking moron!" Thrall roared.
Sarah timidly wiped his mucus from her cheek. "Th-the last l-location transmitted by the beacon was on Desdemona, in the middle of the northern c-continent."
"And?" Thrall pressed, keen for her to get to the point.
"The transmitter stopped functioning over an hour ago. All I can tell is that the ship the transmitter was attached too was destroyed. Most of my other readings are being scrambled by some unknown type of interference from the core of Desdemona. I'm lucky to have the readings I do..."
With a roar of anger, Thrall bashed his stump into the side of Sarah's head. It was a hard blow, but not hard enough to knock her out. Still, she squealed like a little pig when it landed.
"Answer! My! Fucking! Question!" he screamed.
"I-I'm sorry, sir!" she stammered as she cowered away from him and raised her hands to protect herself. "Th-there are life signs on Desdemona, but there's too much interference to know if it's them!"
Thrall sighed in frustration and reared back to strike her again, but before he unleashed the second blow, he thought better of it. Sarah was almost useless, but she was well acquainted with the systems aboard Thrall's new ship, and he needed her alive to operate those systems.
The fact that he couldn't kill Sarah was just one of many faults in Council technology. The complex A.I. that operated the systems on Council ships were linked to individual operatives, and Sarah was the operative linked to Thrall's new ship. If he killed her, he would have to go through the arduous process of linking someone new to the A.I., and that would take too much time.
Instead of hitting Sarah, Thrall leaned down and whispered into her ear. "So, let me make sure I understand what you're telling me... This is one of the Council's most advanced ships, and within all the myriad technology aboard this hulking monstrosity, nothing can perform the simple task of identifying who exactly is on this goddamn moon?"
Tears streamed down Sarah's cheeks as she stammered her response. "I'm sorry, sir. This ship would normally have a crew of forty, but you... You killed all the others, and now it's just me... And... I'm doing the best I can! I'm sorry! The people you are looking for may be among the life signs I can detect, but the explosion may have also killed them. There's no way for me to tell, I'm sorry... The interference..."
"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Thrall suddenly roared.
He slowly bent down and looked into her eyes. As he stared at her, he placed his stump on her chin, then caressed her jawline gently and wiped away the tears that ran across it.
"Poor Sarah... Your whole crew is dead, at my hands, and now you're afraid I will kill you too. Well, don't you fret, because I will... I'll beat you to death right there where you're sitting if you don't find out what I want to know..."
"Okay... Okay..." Sarah gasped. She was absolutely petrified, and that, at least, made Thrall very happy.
She looked down at the screen on her control panel as he pulled his hand away from her chin. "I... Cant... There's too much interference f-for accurate biometric d-detection... It's impossible."
Thrall shrieked in frustration. Stupid, fucking, Council ship! If it weren't capable of lightspeed, it would be useless to him.
It took him a moment to calm himself, but he was able to control his anger. "My kin followed the little rats I'm looking for down onto that moon... Can you find their ship, at the very least? Can you tell me if it's been blown up as well, you stupid, pathetic bitch?"
She nodded fearfully. Then, her eyes went wide with shock. "Sir! The core pressure of Desdemona is increasing. If it continues, the moon is going to rupture. It's not safe to land there... It might even be unsafe to maintain our current orbit..."
Thrall glared down at her, holding his eyes upon her for thirty tense seconds before finally speaking.
"Ugh, you dumb cunt... Fine! If they're alive down there, they aren't going to stick around for long... Take us a safe distance from Desdemona and wait. Any ship that tries to leave that moon is mine. Scan for any ships trying to leave, and inform me if you detect any. Do you understand?"
"Y-yes, sir," Sarah stammered.
"Good girl..." Thrall growled. "Now, I'm hungry, so I'm going to go and eat your Chief Engineer. What was her name? Jessica? When I'm done, I'm going to decide if I should keep you alive, or turn you into a meal as well."
Without another word, Thrall turned and walked away from the petrified woman who controlled his new ship. He then walked through the door to the command center and made his way to his quarters.
His new ship, the Resilience, had been easy for him to take back on Osiris. The Council had clearly been up to something when they sent the ship to his station. It amused him to think of how irritated they would be when they learned he had stolen one of their prized vessels. Unfortunately, they might never learn of it. It seemed to Thrall that something might have happened to the Council, and perhaps they wouldn't prove to be as big an obstacle as he had once assumed.
Further amusement fluttered within Thrall as he reached his quarters in the rear of the ship, opened the door, and laid eyes upon the little morsel named Jessica.
She sat in the corner, bound and terrified, while tears streamed down her pink cheeks. When he entered, she looked up at him fearfully and shied away as far as her restraints would allow.
Thrall smiled and licked his lips as he gazed at her. She was young, and she looked very tender.
Chapter 47
"Now, Idi wants you safe and sound, Alice," Sila warned after knocking Leo out with one well-placed blow. "She wants you on your ship, and she wants Leo and Annabelle on there too. That be all that matters!"
Adrenaline coursed through Alice as she prepared to disarm Sila. But then, a ship suddenly crested the horizon. As it sped towards her, its smooth flowing lines revealed its identity. It was the Epiphany.
"What the hell is going on?" Alice demanded as the ship slowed, hovered for a moment, then quietly landed near them.
"Leo is disagreeable," Randell replied. "We can't have him throwing any wrenches at us. We have to get all three of you into quarantine so Idi can have a look at you. There is no time to waste! This place will soon be gone!"
"Did Idi get inside your brains?" Annabelle asked as she knelt next to Leo and placed her hand on the back of his bleeding head. "Is that why you're acting like this?"
Without warning, Sila lashed out again, this time targeting Annabelle with a vicious blow to her temple. Annabelle didn't see the strike coming and fell limply on top of Leo the instant it landed.
Sila reared the rifle back again. "In case you didn't hear, Alice! GET ON THE SHIP!"
Alice didn't move as she tried to make sense of what was transpiring. Randell and Sila had clearly been compromised. Perhaps, it was by the same methods that had been used on Annabelle.
Alice's hands twitched as she considered reaching for her last remaining pistol. However, as she looked at Sila and Randell, she knew she didn't have the right to take their lives. They were not themselves, and the only moral choice was to try to remedy their condition.
Idi, even if she had been programmed illegally by the Council, should still be most concerned with preventing an outbreak of Exony's agent, and that is why she would stoop to such violent measures to subdue Leo and Annabelle. Idi wanted them in quarantine, and Alice couldn't deny the sense of that goal.
As thoughts raced across Alice's mind, the ground beneath her suddenly gave a momentous heave. She stumbled, but kept her balance as a loud crunching erupted from the ground next to her
, and a huge crack opened up in the rock she stood on. The moon was coming apart, and the Epiphany was the only functional ship within an arm's reach.
"Okay, I'll go! Bring Leo and Annabelle!" Alice finally agreed.
"Of course. That's the plan," Sila replied as Randell bent down and scooped up Leo.
Alice quickly jogged toward her ship as its entry hatch opened. The ground beneath her cracked apart around her as she ran. With a titanic rumble, a deep crevice opened between her and the Epiphany, but it wasn't too wide, and with a committed leap, she was able to jump across. The sundered ground crumbled and cracked with increasing intensity, but Alice was able to reach the Epiphany safely.
After jumping through the entry hatch and into the ship, Alice looked back and saw Randell carrying Leo, and Sila carrying Annabelle close behind her. They jumped over the cracks in the ground effortlessly, and reached the ship just seconds after she had.
Alice stood there at the entry and waited for them to board the ship, then watched as they carried Leo and Annabelle down the passage leading to the medical bay.
Alice was about to follow them, but before she took a step, the entry hatch closed smoothly next to her, and Idi spoke.
"Council Operative Alice. My scans are not functioning reliably. Report mission status!"
Alice turned and began walking toward the command deck. "Exony is dead, but I think she was able to trigger the release of her agent. I think that's what's happening."
Idi's voice was slightly garbled when she replied. "Exony is dead. For that accomplishment, you should be congratulated. However, the Council has given me an immediate recall directive, and I have been programmed to achieve this recall by any means necessary. Please proceed to the command deck for your emergency briefing."
"I'm already here..." Alice replied as she stood before the hatch to the command deck. Care to open the hatch?"
"What? You are?" Idi mumbled as the hatch jerked open. "My apologies, Alice..."
Alice felt the ship give a slight lurch as she stepped onto the command deck. The Epiphany was taking off, and they would soon be on a course to wherever the Council wanted them. With a feeling of growing helplessness coming over her, she walked to the center of the control room, sat down in one of the seats next to the control terminal, and listened to Idi speak.
The Ganymede Legacy Page 40
