She rolled him over, produced one of her water bags, and poured a few drops into his mouth. He relaxed as the nanos went to work healing him.
“Way to kick that hunk of fucking metal's ass!” Bethany Anne clapped until she saw Terry Henry on the floor. “TH, what the sweet hell are you doing down there?”
Char listened to his chest. “Yes.” She sighed in relief, rubbing her face against TH’s perpetual stubble. “He’s going to be okay.”
“Give it a few, and he’ll be back in the land of the living. I’d say he had a little too much AC/DC, but then we’d have Thunderstruck in our heads for the rest of the day.”
Char continued to cradle her husband’s head.
“What has it been, TH, a hundred and fifty-six years since you received your nanocytes?” BA asked as if Terry Henry weren’t unconscious. “But you two have created something special. I think Ted is trying to patent your modified nanos.”
“Ted is doing what?”
“I’m only pulling your leg, or at least I think I am. Who knows with Ted?” BA waved one hand indiscriminately.
Terry moaned as he opened his eyes, but the corners of his mouth twitched up in the best smile he could manage.
“How much did you pay for this amusement park ride, because I want our money back. That fucker drilled a hole through my chest.”
“What?” Char was confused.
“Didn’t you set this up?”
“No. If I could have, I would have, but there is no secret exit and no safe word. We are trapped who knows how far underground in an abandoned Kurtherian complex. We are knee deep in the shit, TH, which for us is business as usual. I have high hopes that we’ll find a way out, but if it gets any more dangerous, we may get killed before we see daylight again.”
Terry struggled to stand, even with Char’s help. “BA,” he grumbled, “we could have used your help.”
“Sorry, TH. Got here about five seconds too late.”
“Where were you?”
“I wish I could answer that. I was on High Tortuga, then all of a sudden I was here, a shitload of light years away. Then I wasn’t here, and then I was again. Fuck if I know. When you two cracked the seal on this place, it sent shock waves through the Etheric. Way to go, fuckstick.” Bethany Anne turned to Char to spread her annoyance. “You too, Mrs. Fuckstick.”
“How in the hell was I supposed to know?” TH argued. “This place was dead. D.E.A.D, Dead.”
“I’ll let it slide this one time,” Bethany Anne quipped. “But don’t do it again.”
“I promise. Until then, I’m going to take great pleasure in taking their greatest secrets while also fucking shit up, like that ass-monkey.” Terry nodded toward the dead robot.
“Who took down the bot while you were taking a nap?” BA chided.
Char waved the handheld laser. “We have a weapon.”
“At least one.” Terry smiled at his wife. “Any ideas what this place is?” Terry asked.
BA’s head tracked around the room. “Looks like a lab,” she offered. “Science shit.” BA nodded in the direction of the bot. “Anything running besides your buddy?”
“My buddy met an untimely end, but its very existence suggests that there are other things down here with power. We probably have to find those while also avoiding them.” Terry looked at the floor as his breathing slowed with his healing lung. “We need to turn the lights on so we can find the stairway out of here. There has to be an emergency exit. If not, we need the elevator we rode down to go back up.”
“Who says it hasn’t already?” BA asked.
Terry’s face dropped and he hurried for the door, and Char ran after him. Shining their one flashlight before them and running like their hair was on fire, they covered the ground quickly.
Chapter Four
The War Axe, Keeg Station, Dren Cluster
The Pods that the Bad Company’s Direct Action Branch called their dropships reloaded into the launch tubes. The shuttles usually used to transport warriors on liberty were still involved with the reconstruction of Keeg Station.
The menagerie of humans and aliens marched out the back of the Pods, down the ramp, and into the hangar bay. Most had backpacks or small duffels. A couple looked like someone had picked them up out of a bar’s cleaning sump and dragged them face-down to the station’s transit bay.
Which may have been the case.
“Cap?” Kimber inquired. “Got everyone?”
“Eighteen for eighteen, Major,” Sergeant Capples replied.
“Dump their trash in their rooms and get them back down here to be fitted for their parade uniforms.”
“I’m not sure most of them are fit for anything right now, but I’ll have ‘em back in ten,” the sergeant joked.
“Eight,” Kimber countered.
“Eight it is.” Capples ran to the hatch to get in front of the mob before they disappeared from sight. “Listen up, you gutterslugs! The major has given you eight minutes to dump your shit and get back here. Clock starts now!”
The three who carried nothing leaned against the bulkhead, then sat, and finally curled up and went to sleep.
Capples followed the others into the ship, and footsteps pounding up the stairs echoed from the open hatch.
Christina joined Kimber in the hangar bay where the rest of the Bad Company were taking a break. They had already started drill practice, and none of them were happy.
“There’s no rush,” Christina said.
“I know.” Kimber smiled devilishly. “But nothing cures a hangover like an adrenaline rush.”
“Tried and true. By the way, I thought the station was all construction all the time and there was no partying going on.”
Kimber rolled her head sideways to look at the colonel. “I’ve been with the Force de Guerre and then the Bad Company for almost as long as both have existed. I’ve never seen a warrior who couldn’t find a party.”
Christina accepted the naked truth.
“This gig.” Kimber changed gears. “Five hundred grand just for showing up? There’s going to be one hell of a bash when we get back to the ship.”
“Given they’re offering that many credits, there’s something they aren’t telling us. I think we should fly our fighters over the formation, and half the formation should be armored.”
“The RFP was clear—just us in dress uniforms.”
“What if their show of force is wiping out the Bad Company’s Direct Action Branch?”
Abandoned Kurtherian Outpost, Okkoto, the Fourth Moon Orbiting Cygnus VI
Terry and Char arrived at the elevator shaft to find the door closed. Terry jammed his fingers into the seam and pulled, but it refused to give.
“Should have blocked it with something,” Terry noted.
“Makes it more imperative that we restore power.”
Terry pursed his lips. “Dammit! Where’d BA go?”
“I’m not sure she’s really here. I think she’s in and out of the Etheric dimension.”
“But the Etheric is real. It provides power for a lot of our stuff, so if she’s in the Etheric, she’s still real and I’m not making up our short conversations.” Terry waited a moment before adding, “Am I?”
Char snorted. “I hear her too. She called us knuckleheads, so I think it’s her.”
“Maybe it’s an exotic defensive program designed by the Kurtherians to give us something we respect. What if she asks us to jump off a ledge as a leap of faith? I’d love to follow her orders, but she’ll need to understand that we may be skeptical.”
“Then you won’t be following her orders,” Char countered.
“Fuck me.” Terry ran his hand through his hair and scowled at the floor. “You’re not yanking my chain?”
“No. I set up the tour and even the obnoxious concierge to plant the seed, but nothing else. No one knew this place was here.”
“It looks more twenty-first-century human sci-fi than Kurtherian. I would have thought it would be more...” He s
earched for the right word. “Advanced?”
“More science fiction than science fiction?” Char offered. She started to head back down the corridor. “We better find some water, too. I don’t think we’ll be leaving anytime soon.”
Terry’s scowl changed to a look of grim determination. With conspiracy theories and imaginary Queens in his rearview mirror, he could focus on the task at hand. “We need to get out of here, and the exit is up that shaft.” He nodded over his shoulder while shining his flashlight past Char.
She didn’t see the nod but was of the same mind.
“Goddammit, TH!” Char blurted. “We’re supposed to be on fucking vacation. I’m supposed to be getting a massage and a coffee scrub while you go snorkeling or something.”
“I’m sorry,” he muttered, unsure of what changed in the last four seconds.
“No, you’re not. To get you to relax, we can’t do normal relaxing stuff, like shop for shoes or sit on a beach and sip Mai Tais.”
“We did the Mai Tai thing for a long damn time,” he argued. “Fifty years. I’ve had my last Mai-fucking-Tai!”
He hurried to get in front of his wife and turned to face her, blocking the passage with his body.
“This isn’t helping us escape.” She glared at him.
“We’re different, but better together, Char,” he said softly. “I like this shit—as long as it doesn’t kill us. I can’t stand shopping for shoes, but you and Cory are more than welcome to do as much of that as you can handle. Don’t take that as a challenge, by the way.
“I’m not sure what the balance is. We work a lot because the Federation is huge and there are too few of us who can be trusted with keeping the peace. Maybe we should turn it all over to Christina and retire, but without the Bad Company, I don’t know what I’d do with myself. Maybe become the next All Guns Blazing brewmaster and beer magnate?”
Char shook her head. “If there are any Kurtherians down here, they are going to be appalled that they are losing the war against fucked-up people like us.”
“And that is the sweetest victory of all,” Terry declared.
“I forgive you for being you.”
“I’m not sure that’s what I was going for.”
“I’m just mad because we’re stuck down here and my plans for a great vacation are shot to hell.”
“That is something we can agree on.” Terry turned around and walked side by side with Char as they returned to the one door they could open. It was now closed, too. “For fuck’s sake! Get your laser pistol ready.”
Terry’s face turned red as he pried the door apart. This time, he was ready for when it released and didn’t fall through. When the interior lights came on, he dodged out of the way.
The War Axe, Keeg Station, Dren Cluster
“How can we make this suck more?” someone up front asked. Kimber stood stock-straight. The extra space in her collar relieved the chafing, but it did nothing to ease the general discomfort.
“The good ol’ days of the Corps,” she mumbled so that only Christina could hear.
“Shared misery to build the team. Is that the only lesson TH took away from his time in the Marines? We share an absolute butt-ton of misery around this place.”
“We have great parties!” Kimber declared.
“Can’t argue about that. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. Seems like our people are very popular at the seediest dives,” Christina remarked.
“I think that is a constant through the ages. The harder the rite of passage to get in, the more they eschew the finer things in life.”
“What do you think your parents are doing right now?”
Kimber winced. “Jumping snack packs! They’re on their nine hundredth honeymoon. What do you think they’re doing?”
“I didn’t mean that. You know your dad. There’s no way he’s hanging out by a pool while your mom gets a massage.”
“He did it for a long, long time way back when, and he swore he’d never do it again. I believe him. Mom? She’s wily. I’m sure she had something planned.”
Christina shook her head as the warriors tumbled through the hatch by the stairs on their way back into the hangar. “Cap was right. This bunch isn’t fit for anything.” She stormed toward them. “Hey, motherfuckers!”
Abandoned Kurtherian Outpost, Okkoto, the Fourth Moon Orbiting Cygnus VI
Char dove to the left of the open doors, snatching glances inside. No one shot at her and no new bots appeared.
But the lights were on.
“Somebody knows we’re here,” Terry said softly, stealing his own furtive looks into the laboratory. He finally stood and walked through the door, but with knees flexed and his paces short so he could react more quickly. His eyes darted everywhere and back again. “What’s different besides the lights?”
Char followed him in, laser pistol in her hand. She went right and Terry left and they scoured the room, looking for a terminal or place from where they would interact with the system.
Maybe even find a map.
“Mr. Kurtherian Outpost, could you please tell us how to get back to the surface?” Terry asked, an eyebrow raised and his head cocked as he waited for an answer.
Continued silence was what he had been expecting. The outpost would give him no help. Terry leaned close to the destroyed robot. “There are things like beakers, but no tools. Nothing to stir chemicals, no measuring containers, no burners, and definitely no hardware like hammers or screwdrivers. It’s like they prepared the lab, but the scientists never moved in.”
He checked the pockets of his jacket for a multi-tool and was surprised to find one. He knew he shouldn’t have been. The jacket was designed for survival, and a standard multi-tool was a must-have.
Terry used his tool to dismantle the bot, finding a critical section that had been crushed in his attack using the metal table. He wanted to take something from the complex to give to Ted and the other researchers at R2D2 to see if there was anything they could reverse-engineer. He waved Char to him. There were no wires inside the creation. Together, they still had no idea.
“This part?” Char asked doubtfully.
Terry told Char, “As good as any, but I don’t know how that’s helping us get out of here. In my mind, getting out is a foregone conclusion. I don’t want to go empty-handed since I suspect when we find the way out, we’ll take it and not be able to come back for anything.”
“I hope that’s true. Grab it and let’s go. Maybe the place will start lighting up on its own. I’d like to see what’s behind some of these doors.”
“Me, too, lover,” Terry agreed after ripping the technological heart out of the robot. With other equipment in the room but nothing that could be easily carried, they left the rest of it behind. “Staying to the left, just like when I used to play Castle Wolfenstein.”
Char was in front of him, and he didn’t need to see to know how hard she rolled her eyes.
He trolled along the left wall, but there weren’t features or alcoves, just a smooth wall of a material Terry couldn’t identify. They passed the T intersection and continued down a hall with three more sets of doors opposite each other but no end door. Terry and Char tried each one, but nothing moved. When they reached the dead end, they backtracked, trying the doors that the other had tried.
When they reached the T, they turned down it. “That’s one down and who knows how many left.” The light of their one flashlight remained stalwart through the darkness. “No dust.”
“I don’t hear anything, but the air handling systems have to be working. The air is clean.”
Terry sniffed first before closing his eyes and listening carefully.
“I don’t hear a thing. Everything has to be automated. There can’t be anything alive down here. There’s no dander. No waste, no dust. Maybe this place was sealed so well that the air is clean, but not because of air handling...” Terry’s thought drifted where he didn’t want to go—another threat to their lives.
“Then
we have a limited air supply, depending on how big this place is.” Char put their predicament into words.
“How long will our nanocytes keep us alive without air to breathe?”
“How long did you have when you lost your suit containment back on that station, you and Dokken?” Char asked.
“Minutes.” Terry pursed his lips and took slow, deep breaths. “I guess we better pick up the pace, then. I miss Dokken.”
Dokken was a sentient German Shepherd thanks to the Pod-doc injecting him with nanocytes and implanting a communications chip in his brain. He was a son of Ashur, Bethany Anne’s dog.
Char nodded and Terry stepped off first, taking a left at the intersection that had they turned right, would have taken them back to the elevator shaft.
Doors were spaced regularly on both sides of the corridor, and Terry waved his hand at the first one on the left. When it opened, he jumped back, and Char brought her pistol up.
Chapter Five
The lights came on as the door slid to the side. Terry risked a glance, but only saw heavy cabinetry within. Char looked through the doorway from the other side, craning her neck to see from different angles.
The door started to slide shut, and Terry’s hand shot out to grab it. It dutifully retracted back into the wall and Terry eased himself around the corner, the door pocket at his back. The room was austere except for the cabinets, which upon closer inspection appeared to be casings.
“These look like those power supply boxes that we found on the abandoned Benitus station,” Terry said.
“Where we learned how long Dokken could go without air.”
“But we saved him!” Terry declared while studying what was in the room. No control panels, no decorations, no way to access information from the boxes.
Discovery Page 4
