“One step at a time.”
“Is it typical to reserve gratitude only for anthropomorphic individuals? Or do you only receive gratitude if you’ve made a mistake that precipitated a potential tragedy?” Coal asked.
“Thank you for your help, Coal,” Michella said flatly. “Have you been able to identify a threat?”
“I am only able to determine that there are three survival suits active. Processing… Please state the model number of the survival suit. This may narrow the search parameters.”
Michella glanced down at the markings on the back of the glove. “It looks like it’s a VectorCorp Model VCSS-1081.”
“Accessing… May I ask why you haven’t activated the distress beacons? The VectorCorp equipment manual suggests they have been standard on all suits since the VCSS-520.”
Michella looked to Preethy. Preethy looked to the computer and pulled open the emergency options.
“There are beacons,” Preethy said. She tapped the command. Two periodic strobes activated on their helmets.
“Processing… The third beacon is located twelve meters down corridor 03. Its radio is manually disabled.”
Michella and Preethy looked to the entry hatch that had been shredded. It was indeed corridor 03.
“Do we go after him? Or do we wait here and hope he’s not hatching some plan?” Michella said.
“I could go after him,” Coal offered.
“No!” both women insisted.
“We’ll wait here,” Preethy suggested. “I want to be here the moment the full power transmission resumes.”
“Sounds good to me. Keep us apprised, Coal.”
“As you wish.”
#
Lex trundled along in the maintenance van that he’d been able to salvage from the roadblock the gangsters had set up. The stolen slidepad had gotten him access to use it, but it was almost perfectly wrong for the situation. The hovervan was slow, poorly maneuverable, huge, and boxy. He pushed it as hard as he could, but it didn’t really matter how good of a driver you were if you were at the controls of a vehicle completely designed around the concept of “slow and steady.”
A gust of wind caught the broad side of the hovervan, fishtailing it and causing him to slide sideways for a few meters. He turned the involuntary drift into a graceful turn and boosted out of it just in time to avoid being struck by a lump of falling slag.
The roof of the van looked like a strainer already, little flecks of molten stone having eaten through it in a dozen different places, but he’d yet to be hit by one of the more devastating blobs.
“I never thought driving on Big Sigma would have trained me for anything,” Lex said, deftly avoiding another plummeting blob in much the same way he would have avoided one of Karter’s planet’s frequent debris drops.
He glanced down to the laminated guide pinned to the seat beside him. All but one of the nodes had been crossed off, their power restored with the equivalent of a flipped circuit breaker or a quick clamp of jumper cables.
“Here we are,” he said, eyeing the node that was sliding out of the dust ahead. “What are the chances I can get a clean sweep?”
He slapped a button on the dashboard. A door slowly ground open in the exterior wall. Lex guided the van into the courtyard of the node. Now protected by the umbrella of the belching radio waves, his nerves eased a bit. The relaxation lasted for all of ten seconds.
“Yeah, it figures,” he said through gritted teeth.
Lex didn’t know if the crew member who had sabotaged this particular node hadn’t been informed that he or she could just flip a switch or cut a cable. Maybe he or she was just an overachiever, but the amount of mayhem laid out before Lex suggested someone had hooked a tow cable up to the power relay and just dragged it off the building. The main cables were entirely torn away, and a huge trough had been gouged out of the ground where the underground cable had been ripped up.
He tapped his slidepad. It complained about signal quality and aborted two connection attempts before it finally connected him to the engineer.
“We’ve got a problem,” he said.
“What’s wrong?” the engineer said.
“The power system looks like it’s missing.”
“Do you have any jumpers left?”
“I’ve got plenty of cables, but there’s nowhere to hook them up.”
“Look up at the top of the wall. Is there still a big white box there?”
“Uh… Yeah.”
“Is there any wire at all sticking out of it?”
“Barely.”
“You’ll have to get wires to whatever’s left. The node and the motor should have a common ground. You’ll just need to hook up the positive lines, then clamp the negative to anything grounded. Without the power module to regulate it, there might be a surge, though. Maybe I can get the power shut down on this end for now.”
“Will that slow things down?”
“By a few minutes.”
“Then skip it.”
He set the hovervan down where the power module should have been. With an armload of jumper wires, he scrambled up to the roof. He clamped one of the leads to the case and the other up to the positive wire. When he was sure they were secure, he hopped down and started frantically linking the ends of jumper wires to fabricate something that could reach the broken end of the live cable. He ran out of cables just a bit more than a meter short of the sparking power line.
“Of course,” he growled.
Lex dropped the loose end and turned to the node’s supply shed to get more, but something caught his eye. The churned up soil was still dark. Darker than it should have been. Even if it had been exposed for just a few minutes, it would have collected a layer of the windblown dust. This was freshly torn up.
“Of course,” he said more harshly.
He raised his eyes and swept them around. Whoever or whatever had done this couldn’t be far, and he had a feeling he knew just who to blame. There was nothing to see. But there was something to hear.
The sputtering rumble of another utility van drew his attention just in time for him to dive aside. It swept past and smashed into the one that had brought him here. The rogue van sputtered and died. From the looks of it, the pilot of the vehicle hadn’t had nearly the luck Lex had when it came to avoiding the rain of stone. Most of the hovervan’s roof was gone, and it had taken so much damage that the relatively minor impact was enough to cause the much-abused vehicle to completely shut down.
A battered but enraged mobster lurched from within. It was Milliner. He brandished a short length of pipe in his hand in lieu of a weapon.
“Oh, come on,” Lex groaned.
Lex felt for the gun he’d stolen from the crew. He’d known better than to come this far without a weapon. Unfortunately, it turns out he hadn’t known better than to not leave it in the passenger seat of the van.
“Okay, fine,” Lex said, swinging the length of jumper cable like a flail. “You want to do this? Let’s do this.”
“You’re a racer…” Milliner shouted, stalking forward. “Why are you so hard to kill?”
Lex circled him. “People have been trying to take me out for years, but I keep surviving. Practice makes perfect, I guess.”
The thug charged forward. Lex rolled to the side and flipped the wire up. It caught his foe’s ankle. The bruiser stumbled without falling.
“You’re in over your head, Lex.”
“I’ve got a lot of practice with that too.”
The man charged again. This time Lex was a step too slow. They collided and both fell to the ground. Arms and legs swung and grabbed in a less than graceful scrum. Lex took solid blows from the man’s pipe before finally managing to roll aside and get to his feet. Now he was unarmed.
Lex held his ribs and coughed. “Okay. That was a good shot. I kind of forgot I wasn’t wearing a nanolattice rig.”
“Next time, don’t lock horns with someone who
knows how to fight.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Lex said. “There won’t be a next time.”
The threat caused the thug to glance down. He found that in the confusion of the clash, Lex had managed to loop the exposed end of the wire around his ankle. He reached to unfasten it, but Lex took advantage of the distraction to charge at him, driving his shoulder into the thug’s midsection. Off balance from the blow, the thug took a handful of steps backward to try to steady himself. Lex kept shoving until the wire ran out of slack. He dove aside while his opponent’s leg was yanked out from under him and he came crashing down.
Right on top of the sparking end of the live wire.
Lex turned away as the sound of arcing electricity and escalating cries signaled the completion of the circuit. As the charge passed through the suit, as well as the thug’s body, the man went rigid. When the motor redirecting the array finally spun down and the power flow shut off, the thug wasn’t going to be giving anyone any more trouble.
Lex winced as he looked down at what remained of the gangster. “Look. I realize this is the part where I have a clever quip. But I think you broke a rib.” He nudged the smoldering form with his boot. “And you’re very dead. So I think we’ll skip it.”
With the final array repositioned, Lex’s job was done. Picking his way through the wreckage of the two utility vans, he found a functional communicator.
“Okay. Job’s done,” he said. “But I’m going to need someone to pick me up.”
#
“I’ve got it. I’ve got full power,” Preethy said. “Directing it all to the suppression systems.”
They turned their eyes to the screens. Barometric pressures responded immediately. Wind speeds started to tick down. The storms were beginning to subside, and doing so even more quickly than they had formed.
Preethy breathed a sigh of relief. “We did it.”
“And you’ll wish you didn’t,” came Hatch’s voice over the radio.
Preethy and Michella snapped their heads around, as though his voice on the radio placed him somewhere in the room.
“Coal, where is he?” Michella snapped.
“His position is relatively unchanged. … Correction, he is accelerating toward the control room. Impact in—”
A heavy piece of equipment smashed through the hatch, launching it aside.
“—negative point six eight seconds,” Coal said.
The equipment was a large junction box that Hatch must have disconnected from the wall of the corridor. He’d used it as a battering ram and drifted into the control room. He was dressed in an identical survival suit. It had shrink-wrapped itself around his body as well, and he’d taken the care to slip the brass knuckles onto his glove.
“You’ve got two options,” Hatch said. “You can turn control of this station back over to me, or you can be the new leverage I have over Nick. The choice is yours.”
“I’m not giving up this station, and I’d sooner die than be your prisoner. You’re not leaving this station with any form of leverage, Hatch,” Preethy said defiantly.
“He’s not leaving this station at all,” Michella added, grabbing a strip of debris drifting before her.
She brandished it. He grinned.
“And here we are. On one hand, a businesswoman. On the other, a reporter. And right in the middle, the only one in the room who actually earns his living breaking bones and bloodying noses. I like my chances.” He focused on Michella. “And I don’t like yours. Because Preethy is still valuable to me. You, I’m better off without.”
“If you think you can take me, try it.”
“Oh, I intend to.”
He pushed himself off the wall, barreling toward her. She took a mad swing with her improvised weapon. He caught it easily, wrenching it aside and hitting her full force with his forearm. She rebounded backward and struck the far wall hard. His momentum carried him the rest of the way to her. He grabbed a handrail with one hand and grabbed her raised hand with the other.
Strictly speaking, Michella didn’t have any hand-to-hand combat training. She certainly didn’t have any zero-g combat training. But she had desperation, fury, and an encyclopedic knowledge of the tenderest pieces of the male anatomy to work with. Three punishing knees to the groin persuaded him to release her and back away. She launched herself for the weapon again. Each time he tried to restrain her, an elbow or knee taught Hatch how little protection an emergency suit truly offered.
Had they been on the surface, Michella might even have won the battle. But Hatch had clearly been in a fight like this before. After absorbing a few blows that would probably have him coughing blood, his size finally got the better of her. A firm thrust off the wall sent both of them hurtling to the far wall. Michella struck first, and the full force of his weight and hers forced the wind from her body. He braced himself to keep the pressure on, making sure she couldn’t get a deep breath.
“Oh, if only that helmet wasn’t there. It would be so rewarding to wrap my fingers around your throat.” His mad smile widened. “I wonder how much I’ll have to work at these latches before I can get it off. Just how good is VectorCorp’s safety lock?”
He grabbed one of the release latches. Michella wrapped both hands around his wrist, trying to wrestle his hand away.
“Let her go!” Preethy ordered, hurling herself into the fray.
Hatch pivoted and caught her by the arm with the nonlatch hand. The three of them were now drifting, none of them anchored to anything. Michella could hear the latch creaking. Surely it wasn’t designed to be opened in a vacuum, but surely it wasn’t designed to resist a lunatic with a viselike grip trying to force it open either.
Her desperate struggling and fighting against him ended up unzipping her purse. Its contents spilled out, drifting in a constellation of assorted accessories. Preethy’s eyes practically sparkled as she saw her opportunity.
She snatched one of Michella’s pens. With all of her might, she jabbed it into Hatch’s back and yanked it free again.
He cried out, but the cry was cut short. The puncture to his back may have been the reason for his cry, but the rupture it caused in this suit was the reason for his silence. The precious oxygen rushed out—slamming him forward into Michella. His eyes bulged, and his fingers gave one final squeeze. But just as it had done to Michella not so long ago, the shock of decompression robbed him of his consciousness. Without intervention, the vacuum finished its job not long after. Hatch was no more.
Preethy shakily looked at the bloodied writing implement.
“Wow. You weren’t kidding about being good with a pen,” Michella said breathlessly.
“Why are you talking about pens? What is going on?” Coal asked.
“Nothing. It’s fine. We’re fine,” Michella said.
“I see. I am pleased to announce that the transmission from the surface is no longer diffused. It should be entirely possible to reach the surface safely. Additionally, the focused transmission is no longer interfering with my sensors and communication. There are six ships on the way from the surface, all with Operlo Military designations. Stand by… I am also receiving a transmission from Ma, inquiring after the current status of the mission. Shall I inform her that I have succeeded brilliantly?”
Michella tried to wipe her forehead, forgetting that she was wearing a helmet. “Your performance was… unique, Coal. Any way you can get us down to the surface now?”
“You will need to remain in your survival suits, as I have failed to restore my atmosphere supply. But that can be arranged.”
“Good. I don’t want to spend another minute up here.”
#
A little over an hour later, Lex was limping his way into Nick Patel’s villa. The cavalry had arrived shortly after the storm had cleared up, and while they were too late to save the day, they were useful for securing the gang and evacuating the injured and dehydrated crew.
Back at the villa, the rising sun rev
ealed Nick fully dressed and barking orders. His seldom seen administrative side had a way of explaining just how he’d managed to wrangle an organization from such an underpopulated and ignored planet into something of interplanetary notoriety. The villa had some wind damage, and everything was covered in a layer of dust. The stuff reached half a meter deep in some places. The place had survived, though. Something akin to triage was happening as those in need of medical treatment were hurried into the house while the able-bodied were directed to free up more equipment to help with rescue and repair.
“There! There’s the man of the hour,” Nick called, trotting up to Lex.
“Go easy on the back slaps,” Lex said, sidestepping as Nick got closer.
“How bad is it?”
“Nothing critical. Just my ribs.”
Nick snapped his fingers. “Get this man something to take the edge off the pain, then get the paramedics over here for some imaging.”
His people snapped to work. Two uniformed medics arrived and produced an autoinjector. After a spritz of painkiller, Lex found he could straighten up again without pain.
“I swear I could take more hits the last few times I did this.”
“There comes a point in a man’s life where his body lets him know it’s time to slow down, Lex.”
“I’m bad at slowing down.”
“Trev!”
Lex looked up to find Michella rushing toward him. She was covered in bandages from a dozen little injuries. They threw their arms around each other, then each groaned as the embrace found various bruises and breaks.
“Are you okay?” each said to the other.
“Oh god. I’m so glad you’re alive,” Lex said, pressing his forehead to hers.
“Me too. When I saw that storm on the screens, I didn’t know what to think.”
“Where’s Preethy? Is Preethy okay?”
“I’m fine, Lex,” she said.
He turned to find her approaching. He pulled one arm away from Michella and snared Preethy into the hug as well. Not to be left out, Squee sprang from the nearby vehicle and managed to squeeze herself into the center of the love fest. They didn’t separate until the medics required them to do so.
Indra Station Page 24
