by S. J. Bryant
"We can help you," Atticus said. "But only if you come up now."
The patients moved into the corridor and headed for the elevator.
"That's it," Kari said. "Move. Faster."
She wanted to shove them, to make them run instead of shuffle, but she worried that if she tried that, they'd all come to a stop and then Piper would probably refuse to leave.
Kari ran down the corridor toward the elevator, glancing into rooms but they were empty. The last of the patients were just getting inside, squeezed so tight that their shoulders pressed against each other.
Kari pushed Piper in with them and squished in last. The elevator door closed so close to her that it brushed against her back. The elevator shot up to the airlock where Kari, Piper and the patients spilled out into the landing bay.
The patients staggered to a stop just outside the doors, gaping at the dead bodies.
"Don't look at them," Kari said. She had to get them out of the elevators because there would still be people on the other floors. There could be hundreds still stuck down there and time was running out. "Don't look at them."
She hauled people out while Piper tried gentle coaxing. Finally the door was clear and the small compartment shot down to collect more people.
Kari pushed and threatened until all the prisoners had moved through the airlock and into the stealth ship. From there they were Ryker's problem.
A moment later, the elevators returned with even more people that Kari had to drag out. Couldn't they sense the danger? Didn't they know that every second they wasted put someone else in danger?
"Is this everyone?" Piper said.
"Yes," Kari answered automatically.
"But what about the people that are scared?"
"We can't help them."
"We have to go down and convince them—"
"No!" Kari roared, rounding on Piper. "No. We have done enough. I've already lost you once, I won't do it again. If they come up then we save them, if they don't… well they're on their own."
Piper's lips trembled. It looked as though she were going to bolt for the stairs.
Kari threw her helmet free, locking eyes with Piper. "If you try to run, I will carry you back to the ship and fly away and we won't save any of these people."
Tears trickled down Piper's cheeks but she didn't run. She stayed and helped patients across the bloody floor to the waiting airlock.
"Kari, we've got hostiles. Two minutes out." Ryker's voice came over Kari's communicator. Her shoulders tensed. Two minutes? But people were still pouring out of the elevators, and how many more were trapped down below, waiting for their chance to come up? They couldn't fly off and leave all these people who were willing to help themselves. Kari didn't feel much sympathy for those trapped by their own fear, but those trying to come up? How could she abandon them? But if she stayed in the facility too long then the reinforcements would arrive and their whole fight would have been for nothing.
Kari moved in a daze as she tried to urge people to move faster, to get onto the ship. What should she do? Fly and leave people behind, or risk them all getting caught?
She tensed her jaw and heaved the last of the patients out of the elevator so it could shoot down for the next load. She wouldn't leave, not until the very last second. She would save every person she could, dammit, and let the Imperium be dammed. Despite her resolve, Kari could sense the enforcers closing in, like the ticking of some invisible bomb. Faster! They all had to move faster.
The elevator reopened but this time only a few people staggered out, most of them old or injured. Kari helped them into the lobby but the elevator didn't close.
"What's wrong with it?" Kari said. Banging her palm against the door. It couldn't break now, it just couldn't.
"There's no one left," said an old man with a limp as he hobbled past.
"What?"
"Like a ghost town. I let the young ones go first, figured they had more of a chance, but there's no one left there now. Or if there is, they don't wanna be found."
Kari looked between the empty elevator and the old man. What if there were people trapped somewhere?
"We've got to move, now," Ryker said.
Kari blinked away her mental images of patients trapped below and instead hooked her arm around the old man's waist and hoisted him forward. "Faster!" she bellowed at the stragglers. They hobbled, limping over the prone bodies on the floor, and finally making it into the stealth ship.
Kari slammed her palm onto the door's locking mechanism and it hissed shut, blocking the view of the blood and bodies beyond.
"Kari. They're coming."
Kari released the old man and sprinted through the ship. She had to shoulder through a crowd of patients who stood blocking the hallway and squeeze through the door into the control room.
Kari's stomach dropped. "Where's Piper?" Somehow she'd lost track of her sister when the elevator didn't go down again. Dammit! What if she'd gone back into the facility? What if she was—
"I'm here."
Piper lifted a blood-stained hand over the heads of the crowd but didn't look up from the man she was tending—an open wound leaked blood down his arm.
"We have to move," Ryker said.
Kari initiated detachment from the airlock. At the same time, she watched three red dots on the scanner getting closer. Enforcers, and they'd be well armed and ready to shoot to kill. They couldn't be more than thirty seconds away. Shit.
As soon as the airlock detached, Kari hauled the stealth ship away and shoved the engines into full power. They surged forward and a series of cries echoed through the ship as the patients were knocked against each other or against the walls—a small price to pay for freedom, Kari figured.
"Atticus, please give me some good news," Kari said.
The tinker huddled in a corner of the control room, bent over something in his hands. "Working on it."
"Atticus!" The red dots drew closer. "They're going to blow us to hell."
"I'm working on it!"
Kari's grip tightened on the controls as she urged the engines to move harder, faster, but there was no way a stealth ship—with a bulky transporter hanging on like some kind of barnacle—could outpace an enforcer gun ship. Shit. All that work and they were going to die anyway. Why had she let Piper talk her into this ridiculous plan?
"They're locking on," Ryker said from the far controls. "Better brace yourselves."
"Brace ourselves?" Kari said. "We'll be disintegrated! Atticus, come on."
"I'm not sure if it will be enough. I need more time."
"We don't have more time."
Atticus looked up from the device, face white and eyes wide. "But—"
"We don't have time," Kari said, voice lower. She didn't give a damn if she frightened the patients, they deserved to be a little scared. It was their fault that she and her friends were all going to die.
Atticus staggered through the crowd.
"Do you need help loading it?" Kari called.
"No. I've got it."
"Good."
Kari tried to keep her face impassive but it was hard when her life, and the life of the only person she cared about, depended on Atticus and a device he'd put together from little more than scraps.
"They've got us locked," Ryker said.
"Atticus!"
"Loaded and firing."
A notification scrolled across Kari's screen, informing her that a rear weapon had fired. She clutched the controls, holding her breath. It had to work… it just had to.
A sudden shockwave rocked the ship. Kari's screen flashed off and then back on. She scanned the readings, there'd been a blip, but had it done what they needed?
"What are you seeing?" she said to Ryker.
He shook his head. "They're… they've lost us."
Kari's heart resumed beating as she glared at the red dots on her scanner as if she could make them disappear with just the power of her mind. "They've stopped. They're not following us."
&n
bsp; Ryker sagged and pulled his helmet off, wiping his broad hand across his sweaty forehead. "It worked."
Kari grinned. "It worked." She leaned hard on the controls and turned them ninety degrees from their previous heading. Even if someone on board those ships remembered which direction they'd been going, they'd be wrong.
"Then get us the hell out of here."
CHAPTER 31
"Damn… I can't believe you actually did it," Eta said.
"Believe it," Kari said. "And hurry up. The longer we stay here, the more chance that someone will recognize us."
"And you reckon my ship wasn't tagged?"
Kari fidgeted. They stood just inside the entrance of the transport ship, in the shadows so that the people outside couldn't see them clearly. They'd chosen an out-of-the-way transfer moon, but that didn't mean the Imperium didn't have eyes. And it would be just Kari's luck to have survived everything so far, and then get recognized here.
"I don't think so. The tinker put together a scrambler, should have fried their scanners."
Eta gave a low whistle. "I could do with a tinker like that."
"Sorry, he's taken. Now can we get a move on?"
"Fine, fine. I'll drop you back to your ship." Eta sauntered on board the transporter and raised her eyebrow at the filthy, injured patients that filled every spare piece of floor. "So many people."
"You're going to look after them?" Kari said.
"We'll find families for those that need it." A sly smile crept over Eta's face. "Although some of them might like to join the cause."
Kari couldn't argue with that. If she'd been held prisoner by the Imperium for most of her life, she'd probably join the rebellion too.
"Did you see them fight?" Eta said.
"Some of them."
"And?"
"They can hold their own." She didn't want to tell Eta everything, about how some of them moved faster than any human should, or that others could lift many times their own bodyweight. Eta could figure that out on her own, without forcing the patients to be soldiers. It was all fine if they wanted to join the rebellion, but they'd spent enough time following orders against their will.
Three rebels followed Eta on board. They squeezed through the crowded transporter ship to the rusted control room. Most of the prisoners huddled in the storage bay, pressed so close together that there was no room to move. But they'd spilled out into the corridors and hallways and some of them sat at the back of the control room.
Most of them stared with drug-glazed eyes into the middle distance which made Kari's skin crawl, given the near-death experience they'd all just had.
"Take us up, Antonia," Eta said.
One of her companions—a thin woman in a skintight suit—stepped forward and took control of the ship. That was fine with Kari, the transporter drove like a fat-bellied whale.
They'd left the stealth ship behind on the transfer moon. Some of Eta's people would take care of it, probably scrub it and reuse it in covert missions or something. All in all, Eta and her rebellion had done pretty well out of Kari risking her and the whole crew's lives. Especially considering all she'd done was loan out a whale of a ship that should probably be turned into scrap anyway.
They spent most of the journey in silence. Kari was too tired to speak, and anyway she didn't have much to say. Ryker slumped against the wall, looking exhausted. He still hadn't taken off the crystal hunter suit, so his bulky body stood at least a foot taller than the people around him. Kari couldn't understand it—she'd taken the suit off as soon as she'd been able to leave the controls. She didn't want to think about crystal hunters, or about the suffocating helmet around her head.
Hours later they pulled up alongside Ghost and Kari and the others trooped out of the transporter.
"Look after them," Piper said to Eta.
"I'll treat them like my own," Eta replied.
Kari didn't look back as she entered Ghost and drew a deep breath of the cinnamon-scented air. Despite everything that had happened, she was glad to be home.
They traipsed to the dining room and Kari poured a round of iced brandy—she'd taken a lot of supplies from the Imperium stealth ship before flying it to the facility, including enough katium to get them to the next system and back—and slumped into a chair.
Piper sat beside her but didn't touch the drink while Ryker plonked himself—still in the suit—into the chair on her other side. Atticus took the seat at the head of the table while Wren perched in her customary position in the darkness at the edge of the room. Rusty didn't join them, instead taking the chance to rummage through the cupboards for more coolant. Kari couldn't begrudge him that, she needed a drink as well.
"What now?" Ryker said.
"We have to abandon ship," Wren said. "Preferably fake our own deaths."
"No," Kari said. "I'm not leaving Ghost. I'll drop you all where you want to go, but I'm not leaving Ghost. Besides, it wouldn't make any difference, they'll have our faces by now."
"We won't be safe anywhere," Ryker said.
"Great," Wren said. "That's not what I signed up for."
"You didn't have to come," Kari said. "You could have got off on Zenith or anywhere else."
Wren didn't reply and Kari couldn't read her expression in the darkness.
"There are a lot of escaped prisoners now," Atticus said.
"You think they'll stop looking for us?" Ryker said.
Atticus shrugged. "Maybe. Or at least it will keep them busy, less focused."
"Maybe," Kari said. "But unless we spend the rest of our lives hopping asteroids, we only have one option."
"Which is?" Ryker said.
"We make a jump for the next system."
"You think the Imperium won't look there?" Wren said.
"They will," Kari said. "Eventually. But at least it will give us some breathing room. We might find some jobs, maybe hitch a warp to the next system after that. They won't be able to chase us forever."
"Of course they can," Wren said. "They're the Imperium."
"You can get off anywhere you want," Kari said. "You don't have to come with us."
"That's not what I said."
Kari studied her companions. "That goes for anyone. Piper and I will be taking Ghost to the next system but I'll understand if you want to leave, want to make your own way."
Ryker shook his head. "What for? All these years you've been telling me the Imperium is broken. I never believed you… Now? What have I got to go back to?"
Kari nodded, sympathy welling in her heart. Ryker had devoted most of his free time to trying to reconcile the Imperium and the rebellion, to finding ways of making things better or getting a place on Albion so he could make a difference. She couldn't imagine how much he must be hurting, to find out that everything he'd believed in was a lie.
"On my own, I'll just get killed," Atticus said. "I'd rather stay with you. If it's all the same."
"Of course," Kari said. "You saved us all back there."
Atticus nodded but didn't smile.
"And I meant to say," Kari said. "Thank you for saving Piper."
"Of course."
Kari's face darkened as she turned on Piper. "Which reminds me, what the hell were you thinking?
Piper frowned. "I had to help them."
"You nearly got yourself killed."
"I couldn't do nothing."
Kari threw up her hands. "You have a damn lot to learn about the Universe. And you…" Kari turned on Rusty who'd found two gallons of coolant and was pouring it down his throat as fast as his tubing would allow.
"What?" he said.
"You let her go."
Rusty shrugged and kept drinking.
Kari erupted out of her chair and knocked the bottle of coolant out of Rusty's hands. It flew through the air and landed on the floor with a wet splat. Coolant shot out of the opening, making a bright green puddle over the floor.
Kari leaned in close to Rusty's face. "I put up with a lot of shit from you. But that is the
last time I will tolerate you putting her in danger. Do you hear me?"
"I told you, you shouldn't trust me," Rusty said.
"Enough!" Kari said. "You're always saying that but I've had enough. You get away with a lot of shit, Rusty. But this time you went too far. If you put Piper in danger again, you're gone. You hear me?"
But she didn't wait for Rusty to reply, instead turning and dropping back into her chair.
Rusty snatched the half-empty bottle of coolant from the floor and returned to his usual corner, looking sullen.
"What's it going to be, Wren?" Kari said. "Are you coming to the next system with us?"
Wren's face remained shrouded in shadows. "I—" Wren's communicator rang, she glanced down at it and slid off her stool. "I have to take this."
CHAPTER 32
Wren slipped out of the dining room, down the hallway, and into her sleeping quarters. She pulled the door shut behind her and then answered the communicator. Guildmaster Silvan's face appeared with her usual tight-lipped greeting.
"Wren."
"Guildmaster."
"We have another job for you."
Wren hid her surprise—usually the Guild only gave her jobs every few months, this would be three in the space of just a few weeks. "Who is it?"
"This is a delicate job. It's another rebel."
"Another job for the Imperium?"
Silvan raised an eyebrow. "Is that a problem?"
"No. No problem." Uneasiness twisted Wren's stomach. It was fine for the Guild to take the occasional job from the Imperium—provided the money was right. But to agree to kill at least two rebels in the course of a week? It wasn't right. Those kinds of targeted attacks could tip the political balance, and that was one thing the Guild was supposed to avoid.
"Like I said, this one is delicate," Silvan said. "They've caused the Imperium a lot of trouble and have made a name for themselves. They're hard to find which is why I'm putting you on it. If anyone can track them down, it's you."
"Yes, Guildmaster."
"I trust you'll be discreet?"
"Of course."
"Good. I'm sending you the information now. This is the highest priority. There is no time for delays, no time for wasted travel. You find the target, and you kill them."
