His momentum brought him entirely through the outer wall, into what turned out to be a courtyard of some kind. Smashing the wall deflected his trajectory downward, driving the nose of the vehicle into the dirt and bringing him to a sliding stop.
The safety system disengaged, and reality returned to its prior time scale, though the peacefulness oddly remained for a moment. His hoversled had shut down. All he could hear was the crackle of the array and the clatter of settling stone. The first reminder of the situation he was in was an angry shout.
One by one, thugs showed up around the wrecked hoversled. They’d abandoned their sniper rifles—which right now were probably scattered about the courtyard from the force of the impact and the desperation of their attempts to avoid it. Instead, they held pistols. Some were energy weapons. Some were the more traditional sort. All were pointed squarely at Lex.
“You get out of there! Get your hands up and get out of there!”
“Hey, give me a minute, okay? I’ve had a little bit of a fender bender,” Lex said, placing Squee aside and working at his harness.
He grinned. Part of it was at the thought that these hardened criminals who had taken over another hardened criminal’s facility were treating him like sitting in a wrecked hoversled meant he was armed and dangerous. Most of it was that they were right. He flicked the emergency cockpit controls.
The panels of the cockpit launched off in separate directions, blasting outward with the force of a rocket. Between the panels themselves and the debris that had been piled atop them, any thugs near enough to be a threat to him were suddenly in no mood to raise a weapon.
He stood and brushed some broken glass and shattered brick from his jumpsuit, then let Squee spring out into the courtyard.
“I don’t know why people always forget,” Lex said, grabbing the shotgun. “The safety equipment in these things is only supposed to keep me safe.”
Chapter 13
“Come on, come on,” Michella muttered, working at a latch that was clearly intended to be operated from the other side.
She tried not to look behind her, as whenever she did she saw the glow of a force field emitter and the unoccupied cockpit of the SOB. It wasn’t pleasant knowing that the only thing keeping her from being exposed to a hard vacuum for the second time that day was a high-tech barrier that she didn’t fully understand, operated by an AI who had only the loosest grasp on what it took to keep a human being alive.
The tube was larger on the inside than they’d expected. That helped in that there was more room to move around, but it hurt in that there was less atmosphere to go around. No matter how deeply she breathed, she felt like she wasn’t getting enough air. Turning on the oxygen mask helped with that, but a stinging pain in her ears reminded her a little too much of the sensations associated with spilling out into space. One saving grace was that she was so close to the interior of the ship that the temperature of the surfaces was not in the danger zone.
Her fiddling and twisting eventually actuated the latch. She shoved hard, but it wouldn’t budge.
She keyed the radio clipped to her belt. “Coal! The door is unlatched but it won’t open!”
“Processing… This is an external door of a space station. As a safety measure, it cannot be manually opened if there is an unsafe pressure differential.”
“English, Coal!”
“It’s an air lock. It can only open if there’s the same pressure inside and out. I thought that was clear.”
“What do I do about it?”
“There should be a pressure equalizer valve near the center of the door. Rotate it counterclockwise.”
She found it and did so. Instantly, a painfully loud whistling hiss filled the tube.
“Please be aware that, depending on the differential, this may produce an unpleasant sound. Hearing protection is advised.”
“Warnings before I do things, Coal! Warnings before I do things.”
“You are the one who is in a hurry,” Coal defended.
“There is no way they didn’t hear that,” Michella said, fighting with a door that was getting progressively looser.
As the hiss was just dying down, she was able to force the hatch open and pull herself inside. She shut it tight, latched it, and closed the valve. Air pumps kicked on to begin to restore the room to the same pressure as the station.
“Okay. I’m safe inside.”
“Excellent. I will disengage the atmospheric retention field,” Coal squawked over her radio. “Signal strength suggests we will have far greater success staying connected now, but please do not venture too far into the station if you wish to remain in contact.”
“I don’t know how much control I’ll have over that, Coal.”
She rubbed her hands together, trying to get some feeling back into her fingers. The number of times she’d alternated between painful levels of cold and punishing levels of heat in just the last few hours was taking its toll on Michella. At least now that she was actually in a location that human beings were supposed to be, she was no longer freezing, but her problems were far from over.
The room she was in was a drone service bay. It was empty at the moment. She supposed the drones had yet to be installed. The door leading to the rest of the station had a small window of thick glass. Through it, she could see that, sure enough, the shrill sound of the vent valve a moment earlier had attracted the attention of three thugs. They were tugging at the door, but the same safety latch that had kept her out was keeping them out. She had until the service bay she was in hit the right pressure to figure out what to do.
“I am going to attempt to locate a means to replenish my atmosphere levels,” Coal said.
“Fine. Fine. Just keep your ears open. I might need your help,” Michella said dismissively, reaching for the pepper spray.
“I will keep the communication line open to maintain a constant dialog. I shall also provide a running commentary of my actions, since you seem to have strong opinions regarding my behavior.”
“That’s because your behavior constantly threatens to kill me!”
“That is an exaggeration. Stand by. Engaging tractor beam on exposed hose to test for presence of atmosphere.”
The lights in the whole section of the station clicked off, and the air pumps restoring the pressure fell silent.
“It would appear the exposed hose was, in fact, a power relay,” Coal observed. “Continuing investigation.”
Michella gritted her teeth and lowered the volume of the radio. The thugs outside had clicked on flashlights. They must have had better training on the station’s operation than Michella, because they quickly found and actuated the emergency pressure valve. It released another piercing whistle. Almost immediately, she could see the subtle flex of the window begin to ease.
She tightened the straps on her oxygen mask a little more and readied her finger on the button for the pepper spray. When the hiss died away and the safety lock clicked, the first thug through the door got a face full of pepper spray. She continued to spray until a cloud of the stuff was hanging in the air. The crooks cried out and scattered. She hurled herself through the open door and put as much distance between them and her as she could before they were able to blink the tears from their eyes and begin to regroup.
“Coal, I need to find Preethy,” Michella said.
“Yes, you do. That is the purpose of your current mission.”
“I need help finding her.”
“The SOB does not have penetrating sensors. I cannot tell you much about the contents of the ship.”
“What can you tell me that might help?”
“Processing…”
Michella turned a corner to an adjoining corridor. The lights in the next section of the station were still on, and at the far end of the corridor, another group of thugs was approaching. She ducked into a side hatch and clutched the pepper spray tight. “Faster please?”
“I have made two determin
ations. There is an assortment of radio signals that do not conform to any of the apparent operations of the station. They are too weak to interpret, but not too weak to locate. Are the aggressors on the station presently in possession of their own isolated radio systems?”
“Yes.”
“Then I can track the position of the aggressors. They are converging on your location.”
“I know.”
She reached out with the can of pepper spray and filled the corridor until the can was empty. The thugs approaching ended up drifting right through the cloud. She charged out and thumped one of them into the wall and stole his pistol, then darted as quickly as she could in the direction they’d come from.
“Are there any signals that are not moving?”
“Yes. Two signals have remained roughly stationary since I began tracking. They are present somewhere in the vicinity of sector K-021b.”
“I’m on my way. You said you made two determinations?”
“Correct. This station is very fragile. I would recommend you do not approach sectors between R and V. I may have weakened the superstructure of that section of the station.”
“What did you do?”
“I attempted to mate my oxygen inlet to an external valve. There was a minor incompatibility in size that I theorized could be overcome with force. I was incorrect.”
“… I think I’m going to take a detour to get an emergency survival suit,” Michella said.
A distant creaking noise echoed through the facility.
“That is an advisable precaution.”
#
Lex stalked around the wall of the array building, shotgun in hand. While his now completely totaled hoversled had gotten him through the outer wall, the inner wall was still fortified and solid. It was a narrow courtyard almost entirely hidden beneath the hexagonal antenna. The shade of the antenna left the only light coming from the plasma glow around the perimeter of the antenna, cast in a shallow angle. It caused shadows and reflections on the walls to jump and dance, constantly tricking him into believing he saw motion where there was none. It was a miracle he’d not wasted all of his ammo on random sections of wall.
He’d taken the time to tie up the dazed and disabled people who had felt the wrath of his flying cockpit. That no other bad guys had shown up to fend him off suggested either they didn’t have any more heavies to spare, or they weren’t willing to open any doors long enough to deploy them. It was just as well. Though he had a weapon, Lex wasn’t keen on the idea of using it on anyone. Still, things weren’t going as smoothly as he would have liked.
“Hey. Come on. Keep moving,” Lex whispered to Squee.
Something about the shifting shapes and electronic drone of the transmitter was utterly transfixing to Squee. Whenever he got her attention, she trotted over to his side, but given the chance, her mind would wander and her eyes would slide to the band of shifting lights above the courtyard wall.
“I really need you to pay attention, Squee,” he said. “I don’t know how long it’ll take you to get another spray worked up, but there’s only one of me and who knows how many of them, so an extra set of eyes on my back would be sort of handy.”
Squee pulled her eyes reluctantly from the sky and padded a little closer to him. The pair moved along the walls. Doors were few and far between, and most looked like they’d easily turn away a shotgun blast. His search eventually brought him around to the opposite side of the array node’s courtyard. There, he found what looked like an equipment shed. It wasn’t connected to the larger building, and the door and lock were much less formidable. Or at least they had been. A locking bar had been passed through the door handle. Everything else in the courtyard had a thick layer of dust clinging to it despite the stiff gusts of the nearby dust storm. The bar was notably free of it, and the handle had a very obvious palm print.
“Looks like locking folks out of this thing was a recent decision,” Lex mused. “I wonder what—”
His sleuthing was interrupted by a startling thump on the door.
“Let us out of here!” shouted a voice from within.
“Who’s in there?” Lex called back.
“We’re the crew of the array! A bunch of the contractors pulled guns on us and locked us in here!”
Lex considered their words. It could be a lie or a trap, but locking their own people in an equipment shed during an apparent attack seemed like a questionable gambit. He looked over the lock and door.
“Okay, back away from the door. I’m going to try to blast it open.”
He heard the shuffling of an awful lot of feet within the shed. Lex crouched and tried to cover both of Squee’s ears with one hand, pinned his own ear against his shoulder, and fired the shotgun. It was more than powerful enough to blow open the locked door. It was so powerful, in fact, that attempting to one-hand it had meant that the recoil thumped him in the shoulder and sent the whole gun spiraling off into the courtyard.
“That never happens in the movies,” Lex muttered, watching it clatter to the ground several meters away.
He pulled away the twisted remnants of the locking bar and hauled the door open. When he stepped inside, eight employees stared back at him with uncertainty. The shed was unheated and barely ventilated, and judging from the looks of the people, they’d been inside for a while. Their clothes were soaked with sweat from what must have been a near-lethal amount of heat during the day. Now that night had fallen, if not for the heat thrown off by the churning energy above, they would have been suffering from biting cold.
Only one of them appeared to have been spared the ravages of heat and cold, though he had his own problems. Fresh bumps and bruises covered his face, and he’d been bound and gagged with strips of torn clothing.
“What happened to him?” Lex asked.
“That rat. That’s Tech Anand. He was working the people inside until they decided he’d outlived his usefulness a couple minutes ago,” said one of the workers.
“How’d he get so beat up?”
“He deserved it,” said another, delivering a kick to the gut.
“Who are you?” said the first worker.
“Lex Alexander,” he said.
“… The racer?”
“Yeah.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I tend to end up in places like this. Now stop looking the gift horse in the mouth and come with me. I’m going to save you.”
He turned for the door. Squee, who was waiting at the door, pivoted her ears and turned. She planted her feet and bared her teeth, releasing a few warning yips. He snatched her out of the doorway.
“Back, back, back,” he warned.
The whole group huddled away from the door just before an energy bolt hissed through, biting a chunk out of the far wall.
“Looks like we got their attention,” Lex said.
He held tight to Squee. The little funk was spoiling for a fight.
“Who else is with you? How many of you are there?”
“Just me,” he said, flinching as another blast struck the doorway. “I mean, Nick Patel sent the cavalry, but there’s a great big dust storm stretching pretty much the whole way back to his place. I doubt anyone else is getting through anytime soon.”
“How did you get here?”
He spat his gum on the ground. “Very, very quickly.”
Two more shots struck the doorway, obliterating the hinge and knocking the door to the ground.
“If there’s a storm, how are you going to get us out of here?”
Lex edged closer to the doorway. “I don’t know. I didn’t think that far ahead. I sort of forgot there would be hostages. It’s just as well. I wrecked my hoversled on the way in, so I don’t really have a way out at the moment.”
“Why did you come here if not to rescue us!?”
“I need to get control of this array again since they’ve conjured up a storm already and I can’t imagine they’ve got
altruistic plans for it. How many of them are there?”
The prisoners murmured among themselves.
“Nine. At least nine. Plus one of ours, who they’ve got working the array.”
“Oh, good. Because I’ve got six of them tied up next to the wall.” He looked over them. “Anyone here feel up to helping me storm the castle? There’s some guns around front, if we can get to them. Me and Squee against three thugs isn’t the best odds. You guys pitching in could help.”
No one scrambled to volunteer.
“Yeah. I figured.” He tipped his head, listening. “Been a while since they took a shot. I think they’re back inside. You guys all work here, right?”
They murmured in agreement.
“If I can get you to one of these other nodes in the array, can you get this place back under your control?”
“No. The primary controls are only in this node,” said one worker.
“And besides, the first thing he had Madeline do is change all the codes. For the door, for the system. Everything,” remarked another.
“Who’s Madeline, and who’s the ‘he’ who made Madeline change the codes?” Lex said.
“He’s some big contractor. Real sweaty. He’s the one in charge.”
“And Madeline’s one of ours. Madeline Ecks. She’s an engineer. She’ll be able to get things back under control if you can clear out the contractors,” added another worker.
“If they haven’t killed her,” added another.
“But to do that, you’ll need to get inside.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Lex leaned out the doorway. “Looks like they blasted my gun into a heap of slag before they ducked back inside. Maybe I can get a gun from one of the guys I tied up. And if I can get one of those vans running, I can ram my way inside the main facility.”
“No, don’t!” a worker warned. “If there’s already a storm raging, you can’t risk it. Ramming the main facility could shut the whole thing down, and then there’d be no way to stop the storm.”
“Or you could damage the control circuitry,” another chimed in.
“Great. So this is an infiltration, not a smash-and-grab. Man, I wish Garotte was here.” He scanned the facility, his mind clicking through the possibilities. “Say… This place has probably got a killer air-conditioning system, right?”
Indra Station Page 21
