by S. J. Bryant
Ryker was still standing, although his suit was covered in dents and scorch marks.
Kari turned to thank Wren, but the other woman was already gone.
Kari's vision gradually cleared, although the pain remained. She couldn't remember ever having a headache so bad. It was as if her brain were going to explode and the feel of warm blood on the side of her face made her wonder if it already had. But she didn't have time for that. She had to save the prisoners. She had to act.
She scanned the room beyond and frowned. Was it just her imagination or were there fewer enforcers than before? Surely they would have sent up every guard they had in the facility, and yet she was sure there were less than before. Maybe this was all they had… they hadn't been expecting an assault after all—it was an evacuation, not a war.
The thought gave her new strength and she turned her attention to the prisoners. The one she'd noticed before, who'd torn the hand off the man he'd been handcuffed to, looked like he'd cut a swath through the fighting, leaving broken bodies in a bloody trail behind him. He'd killed enforcers and prisoners alike, but now he'd made it to the elevator.
Two enforcers turned on him.
He roared and charged, hands outstretched.
The guards fired. The prisoner slammed into one and they went down in a ball of flailing limbs. The prisoner's chest was a smoking, bloody ruin, but he still managed to grapple on top of the guard and grip his throat, squeezing. The guard's face turned purple and his eyes bulged in their sockets.
The other guard hesitated, then fired into the prisoner's chest a second time.
At close range, the force of the shot knocked the prisoner off the guard he'd been strangling. He landed hard on the floor between the bodies of two prisoners he'd killed. He writhed, braced a hand on the ground to get up again, but the guard fired two more shots, one into his head, and the prisoner lay still.
Kari's stomach rolled. They were supposed to be saving the prisoners, but that one had been… more animal than human. What if they saved the prisoners and got killed for the effort? That was too complicated to think about now. For the moment she just had to focus on surviving.
Some of the prisoners remained cowering on the floor, most of the ones who'd been standing had either been killed or dragged down by the people around them, but a few had grabbed weapons from the fallen and were fighting back.
Kari watched a thin woman with short, gray hair grab up a gun from a fallen enforcer. She turned it on the closest guard and fired. Before the shot reached its target she was moving, leaping across fallen bodies and darting across the room to get a clear shot at another enforcer. She fired, ran, fired, ran. Her movements were so fast that Kari struggled to keep track of them—faster than any human had a right to be.
Uneasiness crawled across Kari's skin, but she couldn't very well complain when the woman was almost single-handedly helping to turn the tide of the battle.
"Grab weapons," Kari said. The effort of yelling made her head spin. "Those of you that can fight, fight."
A few of the prisoners peeked up at her from beneath their arms, but most of them didn't even look up. One or two, however, crawled to the nearest fallen guards and took up their weapons.
"You can do it," Kari said, forcing herself not to give in to the dizziness. If they were going to win this and save the prisoners, then they needed every bit of help they could get. "Fight."
More prisoners took notice and grabbed weapons. Some of them couldn't reach guns so instead they took knives, or whatever else they could find, and moved on the guards.
Kari fired over their heads, taking out another three enforcers before the prisoners blocked her view. They descended on the guards with strained roars, weapons swinging or firing. Those without weapons reached out with their bare hands, tearing and scratching.
Perhaps with the prisoners rising up they had a chance… Kari's gaze caught on a familiar face in the fray. She staggered, gun dropping a few inches.
Piper.
Covered in blood.
CHAPTER 29
Atticus' fingers burned as he forced the final wire into place. Sweat trickled down his forehead and stung his eyes. He blinked, trying to see, and flexed his aching wrist. How much longer did he have? He could hear the battle raging just outside the ship, screams and people groaning and always the constant chatter of gunfire.
This wasn't what he'd wanted. He'd come on board Ghost looking for a way to make the Universe a better place, and here he was, rigging up explosives to kill even more people. Did they deserve it? Could anyone be the judge of that? Least of all him?
He looked up to give his eyes a break from the straining work of staring at circuits and wires.
Rusty sat against the opposite wall looking miserable. He'd finished all the coolant he'd brought with him and had been complaining about it ever since. He'd even started going through the Imperium ship to see if he could find any stores, but so far had had no luck.
Atticus frowned. "Where is Piper?"
Rusty's head rolled toward Atticus. "What?"
"Where is Piper?" Atticus said, placing the bomb he'd been working on on the floor by his side. His heart pattered faster.
"Ran away," Rusty said with a shrug.
"Why didn't you stop her?" Atticus stood, turning in a rapid circle.
"Went out there, didn't she?" Rusty waved in the general direction of the exit door and the sounds of screaming.
"Why didn't you get her?" Rage rose inside Atticus' chest. What the hell was Rusty thinking? His one job was to keep Piper safe and he'd failed! He should have been out there holding a gun, but he was too much of a coward, and so he'd been told to look after Piper. And now…
"I'm not going out there," Rusty said. "Too dangerous."
"You useless machine. You had one job. Can't you be trusted with anything?"
Rusty shrugged and his head drooped to face the floor. "I've told you all a hundred times that I can't be trusted."
"You just had to keep her safe!"
But Rusty wasn't listening and Atticus couldn't stand there yelling at him—he had to get Piper back.
He turned and ran out of the control room toward the sound of battle. He passed a shabby group of people in white hospital gowns gathered near the door but ignored them. At the entrance to the airlock the sharp smell of burning plastic combined with charred flesh hit him, overlaid with a roar of sound.
People lay sprawled over the ground, some of them shivering, others dead. Blood pooled in crimson puddles between the bodies and in some places spattered the walls. Kari and Ryker stood not far from the airlock, still wearing the crystal hunter suits and firing across the entrance room toward a line of enforcers.
Crouched near the middle of the room, bent over a bloody body, was Piper, oblivious to the plasma blasts that flew over her head and crashed into the ground around her. Blood coated her arms up to the elbows..
"Piper!" Atticus called, but his voice drowned in the cacophony. What the hell was she doing? She could be shot at any moment. And what would Kari do then? Probably kill them all, and then herself.
Atticus couldn't let that happen. Piper was a good person who'd spent most of her life a prisoner. She deserved better than to be abandoned in the middle of a battlefield.
Atticus braced himself, crouched, and then ran, bent over, through the mayhem. He passed Ryker and Kari but couldn't be sure if they recognized—or even saw—him. At least he didn't feel the hot burn of a plasma blast in his back.
The enforcers grew larger as he ran across the room, the light from their plasma pistols growing bright and spreading heat through the room.
Atticus tried not to look at them for fear of being frozen in place. Instead, he focused on Piper.
Her thin arms trembled as she pressed a wad of torn clothing down on the man beneath her. Blood leaked out from beneath the cloth, bubbling each time the man breathed.
Tears streaked Piper's cheeks and she kept whispering something that Atticus couldn
't hear over the shouts and gun-blasts.
He slid to his knees at Piper's side.
The wad of clothing hung sopping wet with blood. The man's pale face twisted and his breath came in short, gasping spikes.
"Piper," Atticus said. "You can't be here."
"I have to save them," she said.
"You can't. You've got no armor, no weapons. You'll be killed."
"I have to save them." She looked around at the dozens of bodies that covered the floor and her lips trembled.
"You can't, they're already gone." Atticus didn't need to examine the man before them to know that he was only moments from death. He'd lost too much blood and was probably far from consciousness.
"No!" Piper said. "Stop the blood flow, stitch the aorta, restore oxygen. Aortic arch, brachiocephalic, right subclavian." Piper's eyes shone with frenzied madness as she dipped out of current awareness, to some other place.
"Piper!" Atticus said, shaking her shoulder. "Piper, we have to go."
A red plasma blast passed so close to Atticus' face that he felt the heat of it. Just another foot to the right and he'd be dead. But he couldn't leave Piper alone, he had to get her back to safety.
"But…"
"Come on, now." Atticus wrapped his arm around Piper's shoulders and dragged her away from the dead man. He'd stopped breathing sometime during Piper's ramblings.
She struggled but Atticus kept pulling and managed to get them both to their feet. He then half carried, half dragged Piper across the room, toward Kari and Ryker and the open airlock.
"What the hell are you doing?" Kari said as they went past, but he couldn't waste time on conversation.
He shepherded Piper through the door and into the cover of the stealth ship. They stopped, panting for breath just inside the door, surrounded by the first set of prisoners, the ones Kari had managed to coax on board.
"Look," Atticus said between breaths. "There are people here you can help."
Piper lifted sad eyes from the floor to study the desperate, drugged, faces.
"Help them," Atticus said.
Piper nodded, drew a deep breath, and straightened her shoulders before she knelt beside the first dazed prisoner.
Atticus watched her for a few moments but his eyes were drawn back to the carnage just beyond the airlock door.
While he'd been busy with Piper, more enforcers had poured out of the elevators. They'd killed a lot of prisoners but they couldn't fight against Kari and Ryker in their suits, as well as the combined strength of the surviving prisoners.
Streams of plasma fire zipped across the room and an enforcer fell. Then a nearby prisoner took up his gun and fired into the elevator. Two more enforcers went down.
Atticus itched to go and join them, to help the battle. As much as he hadn't wanted to fight again, the sight of those enforcers mowing down unarmed prisoners brought a fire to his belly that demanded to be satisfied. How could they do that to innocent people? Innocent people that they'd kidnapped when they were just children?
Atticus' fingers twitched. He could handle a gun, better than most people suspected he could, but now wasn't the time for that. He had a weapon of a different sort to finish.
He tore his eyes from the battle, glanced at Piper—she was deep in conversation with one of the prisoners—and hurried toward the command pod.
Either they won soon, or Imperium reinforcements arrived and they were all dead.
CHAPTER 30
Kari's heart pounded against her ribs—what the hell had Piper been doing out in the middle of the room? She could have been shot a half-dozen times by accident. Thank the stars Atticus had managed to get her back inside the ship. As soon as things cooled down, Kari would give that man a hug. She'd been too hard on him. He might be stupid for trying to see the best in people, but that didn't make him a bad person. And hell, he'd pretty much saved Piper's life; he deserved a bit of forgiveness in Kari's eyes.
The prisoners fought tooth and nail, rising up against the guards. The guards turned and fired, killing a half dozen in the first wave, but there were too many prisoners and the weapons of the fallen were taken up by those behind.
The guards tried to fall back into the elevator, but bodies blocked the door.
With a final yell and surge, the prisoners rushed forward and overwhelmed the guards, sending up fountains of blood along with a few stray plasma shots that blasted into the ceiling and left black circles of soot.
Kari braced her gun against her shoulder, aiming at the enforcers, but the surviving prisoners had risen up and swarmed over the enemy so she couldn't get a clear shot. The enforcers went down screaming as some of the prisoners attacked with their bare hands, tearing the enforcers' helmets off and clawing at their eyes.
The last guard died with a strangled choke.
Kari had to look away until the last of the screams stopped.
"We've got incoming," Ryker said. "Won't be long before their reinforcements arrive."
"Get everyone out," Kari said.
She hooked her gun to her belt, the weight of it dragging on her already exhausted body, and dashed to the nearest prisoner. She grabbed his shoulders and spun him toward the open door of the stealth ship. "Go! Go on through. There's a transporter on the other side."
The prisoner blinked up at her, his faces dotted with blood, as if she'd spoken an alien language.
"Go," she said, shoving him.
He stumbled, but once moving, kept going, staggering toward the open airlock. Others followed.
"Make sure they get through to the transporter," Kari said.
"Got it," Ryker said, following the first ragged group of patients into the stealth ship and waving them on.
Out of the crowd emerged Piper, her arms stained with dried blood.
"Get back inside," Kari said.
"We have to get them all out."
"I am. Go back inside. What the hell were you thinking, coming out here in the middle of the fight?"
Piper's eyes took on a glazed look. "I had to help them."
"By getting yourself killed?" But Kari knew she didn't have time to argue. She kept moving through the crowd, hauling those that could stand to their feet and shoving them toward the ship, hoping they had enough strength to get to Ryker.
"There will be more on the other levels," Piper said.
Kari nodded. The facility was huge and they had maybe ten minutes to get everyone out. Their chances didn't look good.
"I can get these," Ryker said, striding out of the ship. "You lot go to the other floors, get them into the elevators. We have to move. Atticus says fifteen minutes at most before reinforcements arrive."
Kari hurried to the elevator and hauled the dead enforcers out of it. The doors kept dinging because of the blockage. She dragged a half-dozen suited enforcers out, leaving trails of blood across the floor, and stepped inside. Before she could press the button for the lowest level, Piper slipped inside.
"No," Kari said, trying to push Piper out again.
But the door clicked shut and they dropped.
"I have to help them."
If they'd had the time, Kari would have dragged Piper to the top floor and tied her inside the stealth ship, but they didn't, so she pursed her lips and said nothing until the elevator opened on the lowest floor. Medical equipment and clothes lay scattered across the ground as if everything had been abandoned in a hurry. In a few rooms scientists and doctors huddled together.
When Kari and Piper entered, they cowered toward the back. "Don't shoot!"
Kari's trigger finger itched. These were the people who had taken her sister. "You experiment on people."
"We were just doing what we were told."
Kari flicked her gun up. She could kill them all—it would only take a few moments. Her breath came in ragged gasps and every muscle in her body screamed at her to shoot. But she didn't. She forced the gun down and turned away. "Stay out of our way."
"Take us with you," said one man. "Do you know wha
t they'll do when they find all the patients gone?"
Kari sneered. "I'm sure they'll do what they're told."
She stalked down the corridor to the next door. The first five rooms were empty, but in the sixth a young girl hid under her bed.
"Come out," Kari said. "We have to leave."
"No. It's loud out there."
Kari strode forward, meaning to drag the girl out from under the bed and carry her to the elevator, but Piper blocked her way. "No. Not like that."
Piper knelt beside the bed, whispering to the girl. Impatience made Kari tap her foot. They didn't have time to counsel every patient. They had to leave or they were all as good as dead.
Kari felt her patience slipping and so turned and strode to the next room. Here a group of patients had gathered. They looked up at her, scared and dazed.
"You're free," Kari said. "Go to the elevator, now."
They hesitated.
"Either go to the elevator or be taken prisoner again as soon as the enforcers arrive."
That moved them to action and they shuffled out of the room and down the hallway. The little girl that Piper had been talking with joined them.
Kari activated her communicator. "How much time have we got?"
"Minutes," Ryker said. "If that."
"We're not going to be able to search the whole place. Hell, at this rate we won't even get back to you in time."
"Atticus reckons he can get into the facility's communication channel."
"So?"
"So, get ready for an announcement."
Static crackled through the air, followed by Atticus' familiar voice. "Excuse me, sorry. Hello? This is a message for all patients. You've been kept here against your will, prisoners, and possibly experimented on. I wish I could explain everything, but there isn't time. Come up to airlock A. Now. We can set you free, but only if you come up now."
It wasn't much of a call to action but Kari heard movement stirring throughout the complex and then faces emerged from the doors along the passage.
"Keep going," she said into her communicator.
