On the display, Pelvannor unslung her duffle bag and heaved it with amazing accuracy through the door opening opposite her. The airsled rose. How much had that bag weighed?
Po, instantly outraged, called her the Mandarin equivalent of shit for brains.
Rylando righted the airsled and put every kilo of command he had into his voice. “Dump your luggage, now! We’ll get it later.” He opened the door next to Pelvannor wide enough to push things out.
Wide-eyed, Stramlo clutched his bag even tighter.
Po unhooked the web and stood. Instead of removing his backpack, he produced a beamer and aimed it at Jhidelle’s head. “You! Girl! Out!”
Rylando only had time to subvocalize the word “trouble” to Taz before Po’s gaze swung to Stramlo. “Pull her out and hand her to Pelvannor. She’s leaving, alive or dead.”
Astonishingly, Stramlo only hesitated a moment before doing as he was told. Not even Jhidelle’s expression of shocked betrayal stopped him.
Rylando sent the airsled as close as he dared to the service ladder wall. Kicking himself for not thinking of it sooner, he touched the control to mirror the audio and video feeds from his tech. If Po killed them all, the recordings would help see justice done.
Pelvannor hooked one leg around a holdfast bar, then lifted Jhidelle like she weighed nothing and held her out to the ladder rungs.
Rylando watched his exterior camera display to make sure the girl grabbed on tight. A small brown shadow appeared on Jhidelle’s shoulder and jumped onto the airsled’s roof. Only Pelvannor could have seen it, and she was already turning back to face Po.
Rylando didn’t have time to think about it as the airsled rose again. With all the dust in the air, he couldn’t tell if the aftershock was over or not.
Po turned his beamer on Rylando. “You, Mr. Gee-Sar man. Tell your partner everything’s good if she leaves us alone, then strip off your earwire and toss it to Pelvannor.” Po’s lip curled. “Get us free and you can chat all you want after we’re gone.”
Rylando reluctantly touched his earwire, spoke the required words out loud, then pulled it off. If he’d been smarter, he’d have been subvocalizing to Taz this whole time. He’d been so focused on the rescue and worrying about her and his team that he’d missed all the signs of trouble.
He tossed it awkwardly toward Pelvannor, who snatched it out of the air with blinding speed and tossed it to the back. It landed somewhere behind the stationary equipment lockers.
Po shook his head and spoke a sneering insult in Mandarin. Stramlo winced. Pelvannor’s expression didn’t change.
Only half the top scanners and none of the external comms survived the rain of rubble. Thankfully, the bottom camera eyes survived, allowing him to see Taz connect with Jhidelle and web the girl to the front of her mech suit.
Finally, the lift lobby came into view. He turned into the opening as soon as they cleared the floor height.
Debris on the floor began dancing. The lift opening visibly swayed and warped. In front of him, a blue section of denscrete crashed down to block the hallway exit.
Rylando spun the airsled right to avoid the sudden obstacle, only to find the other hallway already fully blocked from a cave-in.
The tortured left coil flatlined. The best he could do was ground the sled and hope the lobby ceiling held.
A tremendous, deafening crack made him hunch involuntarily. Mariposa clung to his shoulder with her sharp owl claws.
The airsled’s functioning camera eyes recorded the collapse of an enormous block of denscrete that wedged itself into the lift shaft like a cork, blocking the entire opening.
Po shoved Pelvannor aside and climbed out the still-open side door.
A moment later, he jumped back in, rage distorting his face. He pointed the beamer square at Rylando’s chest.
“Get us the fuck out of here right fucking now!”
Taz wished her mech suit had Jumper drugs to manage her runaway adrenaline and nausea. Above her, violence spiked strong enough to wake her sifter talent. The wobbling airsled nearly rammed the side wall, and suddenly, Jhidelle was left clinging to the service ladder.
Rylando’s irritating habit of forgetting to maintain a live comms connection left her ready to bite him. Or at least ask Shen to do it. Everything was as far from “fine” as it could get. As soon as she rescued the girl, she bloody well would not be “leaving them alone.”
After strapping Jhidelle to her suit like she was a casualty, Taz had intended to go up. The shower of debris from the largest aftershock yet changed her mind. That, and her scans warning of the imminent failure of the pins holding the shaft’s capstone.
Climbing down took all her concentration. The crates on her back couldn’t take much abuse. Squashing live rescue targets was considered bad form. Groaning from above overloaded her audio and triggered her noise-canceling implants. Dust swirled everywhere, impairing visibility and making Jhidelle and the animals cough. Inside her suit, all she could smell was her own sour sweat.
The pivot-swing back into the basement hallway wasn’t pretty. The last ladder rung gave way. She stumbled forward, then scrambled to keep her footing on the slick floor as the aftershock finally dissipated.
Anger at herself for not listening to her instincts about the targets warred with terror that her failures might have gotten Rylando hurt or killed. He wasn’t answering any of her pings.
The basement seemed to weather the aftershocks better than the shaft. As soon as she got well past the dust, almost to the cursed storage unit where the trouble began, she stopped. Freeing Jhidelle took just a few moments, giving Taz the chance to retract her armor and step out of her suit.
Taz took a long moment to put her chaotic feelings in a box to sort later. “First off, are you hurt?”
“No,” said Jhidelle. She opened her coat and looked down at a creature she was carrying in a sling. A tiny orange-and-white foxlike head sported ears big enough to fly with. “Farenoso is okay, too.”
Truth, according to Taz’s sifter talent.
“Okay, tell me what happened up there.”
“The airsled was too heavy and they didn’t want to let go of their bags. Po made me get off. He threatened to shoot me if my father didn’t hand me off to the woman Pelvannor so she could shove me out.” Despair laced her tone. “My father had no choice.”
“Holy chaos, what is in those bags?” She should have scanned them when she had the chance, regardless of GSAR privacy regulations.
“I don’t know.” Her shoulders hunched tighter. “I came here to save him, but I just made things worse.”
Taz kept a lock on her temper as she caught the girl’s eye. “Save him from what?”
“Po. Pelvannor.” She pointed up. “All I could do was send Tzima back to the airsled to look after him.”
Now Taz was confused. “Who is Tzima?”
“My kinkajou. She’s very good at jumping and good at getting into things. I can see through her eyes. Hear through her ears.”
It took Taz a second to realize what that meant. “You’re an animal-affinity minder, like Rylando.” When Jhidelle nodded, Taz continued. “Let’s go back to the saving part.”
“Father brought me to Salamaray to do some shopping. In the middle of the night, four people broke into our condotel. Po and Pelvannor took my father. The other two stayed with me to hold me hostage.” She frowned. “They took my percomp and comms, locked me in my bedroom with water and a mealpack, and told me to keep quiet. They didn’t know I had my pets with me. Farenoso is a fennec fox. He can hear a whisper from a kilometer away.” The fox looked up at Jhidelle’s chin when he heard his name. “The two who stayed didn’t even check my room before they locked me up, and they complained about everything. Having to guard a stupid kid instead of going to the CAC with Po, who had instead taken stupid-as-stardust Pelvannor. What they’d do with their share. What Po would do to my father if he didn’t cooperate. What they’d do to me.”
“I see. What did
they want your father to do?”
“Help them steal from the basement storage units. That’s how I knew where to go.” She blew out a sigh. “I couldn’t let them use me as leverage, so I escaped out the window and came here. I thought if my father saw I was free, he could get away. The earthquake changed everything.”
The girl’s story sounded like a tri-D adventure thriller plot, but Taz’s talent said she was telling the truth as she knew it.
Half the rescuers in her unit wouldn’t have been so resourceful. “How old are you again?” asked Taz.
“Almost sixteen.” Subtle annoyance threaded the words, like she had to answer that question a lot.
“But why your father, particularly?”
“I haven’t figured that part out.” Jhidelle shook her head, frustration evident. “He’s a design engineer for asteroid mines, not a thief.”
Taz rolled her shoulders back and took a deep, calming breath. “Why didn’t you tell us this immediately?”
Jhidelle shrugged sheepishly. “I was afraid you’d wait for law enforcement instead of helping my father. Po and Pelvannor would have killed him to hide their crimes.” Abject remorse settled on her face. “I’m sorry I got your partner in trouble. I messed up.”
“Yeah, kid, you did.” Taz waited until Jhidelle looked up. “I did, too. So let’s figure out how to fix it.”
Her eyes widened. “You’re not mad?”
“Oh, I’m mad as fire. We’re stuck down here because of those assholes.” Taz pointed toward storage unit 79. “Makes me want to find out what was in there that Po wanted so bad.”
Jhidelle’s eyes widened, then darted to the animal crates that were still strapped to Taz’s mech suit. “Could Farenoso and I say hello to your animals?”
“They’re Subcaptain Delroinn’s, not mine.” Taz hesitated. “Have you been around other animal-affinity minders before?”
Jhidelle nodded. “My father is gone a lot. When I’m not taking classes, I volunteer for an animal-rescue group. Several of us are minders. All my pets are rescues.”
“First, promise me you won’t order his animals around, or try to bond with them.” Rylando would never trust her again if the girl hurt his team.
“Yes, Subcaptain, I promise.” Jhidelle’s sincerity rang as true as her other statements.
“Call me Taz. Come on, I’ll make introductions. You can entertain them while I pop that misbegotten door.”
She spoke Jhidelle’s name warmly and patted the girl’s shoulder to show the animals that she wasn’t a threat. Even the cats seemed interested in checking her out.
Unsurprisingly, the building’s AI was back to monosyllabic insensibility, but she had a GSAR mech suit with customized capabilities all its own.
Two minutes later, the ring-light flashed and the door irised open.
“How did you do that?” asked Jhidelle.
“Telekinesis,” lied Taz.
GSAR’s best-kept secret was the existence of their vast hypercubes of access codes. GSAR strictly monitored and reviewed each use to deter rescuers from abusing them for personal motives. Rescuers kept the secret because no one wanted to be held hostage and forced to open every lock in the galaxy.
Taz stood at the threshold for a brief look into the room. One empty set of shelves and dust. No sign of the explosives that Otak had alerted Rylando to. Kem-X packages had to be bigger than a backpack to work, and they were too easy to get to be worth threatening a child’s life over.
The dust caught her attention again. A bloom came from the doorway where it had undoubtedly blown in over the threshold. Oddly, another bloom came from the back corner of the unit, beyond the shelves. Now that she was looking for it, she saw the shadow of another doorway and what might be a powered lift ladder.
Damnit, why wasn’t Rylando answering her pings? Had Po and Pelvannor gotten away yet? And what about Stramlo? Her stomach roiled with images of Rylando injured and without her or any of his team to help him.
“Subcap… er, Taz?”
“Yes?” Taz turned to look at Jhidelle, who had pushed her dusty, torn coat off her shoulders, probably because the hallway was hot and stuffy. She looked nothing like her father, but that meant nothing. Considering what body shops could do these days, no one with funds had to keep the appearance they were born with or aged into.
“I can still connect with Tzima from here. I asked her to hide and listen. Her eyes are bad, but her hearing is good. Po is yelling at everyone.”
Taz made herself ask the bad-news question. “Can you tell if anyone is hurt?”
“No, but Po’s giving them orders. ‘Stramlo, sit. Pelvannor, search the sled. Gee-Sar man, stay where you are.’ That sort of thing. I think they’re trapped in the lift lobby.”
Taz double-checked her comms, but nothing from Rylando. She hooked her thumbs into her utility belt and drummed her fingers on it, thinking hard. Finally, she focused on Jhidelle.
“You’re old enough to have a vote in this. The storage unit has a power ladder that leads up. If we’re lucky, it’s an emergency exit to the first floor, or at least to someplace that has working comms. On the other hand, it would likely be safer to stay here and wait to be rescued. This is where our pilot, Captain Wa’ara, will look first.”
Jhidelle glanced down the hall toward the shaft, then at the suit, before returning her gaze to Taz. “I vote for the ladder. If we get out, we can get help. Down here, we’re not helping anyone.”
An almost-sixteen-year-old’s sense of adventure wasn’t always supported by good judgment, but Taz hoped an almost-thirty-nine-year-old’s experience could keep them both out of trouble.
“Okay, the ladder it is. Let’s wedge those shelves in the doorway so it doesn’t stick again.”
Jhidelle pulled her coat back on. “I can do it while you get into your mech suit.”
Taz checked that the crates were still secure and thanked the animals for their patience. They’d be happy to be reunited with Rylando. Not that she could ever tell him, but she would, too. She wanted to see him safe and smiling again.
Taz’s suit and crates were a tight fit in the power ladder’s tube. She hugged the stepped rungs and rode them up, with Jhidelle right below her.
The end of the tube was too short to be the main-floor level. Instead, the access way opened into a darkened room.
Stepping into it tripped motion sensors and triggered a small circle of overhead lights.
“What is this place?” Jhidelle looked down at her little fox. “Yes, baby, I know it’s cold in here.” She pulled her coat tighter.
Whatever it was, Taz’s comms were still blocked. Damnit.
The scans from her suit were so unexpected that she ran them a second time to be sure. “I’ve only seen training holos of these. It’s a galactic hypercube node.”
Jhidelle walked to the edge of the darkness. “Like a comms node?” More lights flicked on. Three-meter-tall equipment stacks looked like rows of tall buildings in a planned corporate district. The room had a quiet underlying hum of chilled air circulation.
“No, a data storage node. It’s a redundancy relay for the galactic net. It has direct comms with the planet’s net and the solar system’s comms nodes.” Taz frowned. “Or it did, except the other end of the building collapsed and took the comms with it. Probably why the stacks are quiet now.”
“Why would they put a node in Salamaray?” Jhidelle’s tone suggested she didn’t think much of the town.
“Who knows?” A slow-blink floor light caught Taz’s eye. She stepped sideways and crouched to get a better angle.
Scans confirmed her visual. Now she knew where the scent of explosives came from. Without even trying, she saw three more of them spaced at regular intervals. She had a twisted feeling in the pit of her stomach that those were the leading edge of the meteor storm.
7
Salamaray Citizen Activity Center, Perlarossa • GDAT 3242.334
Sweat trickled down the back of Rylando’s neck as h
e sent soothing thoughts to Otak, still hiding in his pouch, and to Mariposa, perched on the far side of the airsled’s roof. He sensed the girl’s kinkajou—it miraculously survived the landing—but he couldn’t tell where it was.
No circulation made the lobby’s air smell stale and increasingly hot. The heavy, indestructible GSAR uniform and the warm rat on his chest weren’t helping.
Stramlo, perched nearby on a chunk of denscrete, hugged his messenger bag like a shield. He twitched with each noise, whether from the ruined lobby or from Po swearing.
Rylando was better at projecting calm for the sake of his animals, but not so good at stopping himself from worrying about them or Stramlo’s daughter. Or Taz. So far, he’d not been able to make mental contact with his team and had no way to talk to his partner. The overheated lift coil cooked the airsled’s comms when it died.
The room’s emergency lights were plenty bright enough to illuminate the depth of their predicament. All the ceiling decorations and a third of the roof supports now littered the floor. The beat-up airsled sat in the middle of the lobby. At least the final lurch had shed the heavy piece of denscrete that had weighed it down. More caved-in rubble from the building’s roof layer blocked both ends of the lift lobby. The corner of a giant block of denscrete protruded from the lift shaft behind him to his left. That entire wall bulged out from the pressure.
Pelvannor stood in the open doorway of the airsled, alternating between holding the beamer on the prisoners as ordered, and following Po’s subsequent orders to lift or move things as he pawed through the sled’s contents. So far, they’d found and unloaded two bins of food and water, medical supplies, water-protection suits, climbing gear, and one box of spare parts.
Rylando had already told them the airsled’s only useful tools for freeing them from the lobby cave-in were shovels and pry bars, but it had been a waste of breath.
Po appeared in the doorway, brandishing a wand-like tool with the yellow and red GSAR logo. “What’s this?”
Galactic Search and Rescue: A Scifi Space Opera with Adventure, Romance, and Pets: A Central Galactic Concordance Novella Page 7
