It’s right there! Just in front of my foot.
Feigning a fresh bit of imbalance she stumbled forward slightly, landing her foot on the key right by her big toe.
“Hold still,” was all Bert said.
As fast as she dared Morgan picked up the key with her toes, jamming it at far back as she could between the big toe and its neighbor, squeezing them together to keep it in place.
“Turn back around.”
She did so, holding her breath to see if she could do so without losing the key.
It worked!
Bert pulled out a strip of cloth, a new blindfold for her, as Lanky slid by him to check the hallway. When he turned back around and saw the blindfold he grunted.
“The handcuffs I get, but a blindfold?”
“You don’t care that she’s seen you. She’s already seen me, for that matter. What about the others, though? You think the others will take it well, bringing along an outsider who can identify them? This will avoid another argument we don’t have time for. We probably didn’t have time for the last one.”
“Fine, give it here,” Lanky said, holding out his hand.
Bert muttered something about Lanky, and the word ‘soft’ but he did as was asked.
Lanky put it up to her eyes, reaching around to tie it securely in place, tight enough to be secure, without being tight enough to hurt.
This was a much better blindfold than the one they’d used in haste before. She couldn’t see anything except a thin strip of the floor from where the blindfold was pushed away from her face by her nose.
“All right, let’s get a move on,” Bert said.
She could hear the door opening, and Bert walking out into the hallway.
CHAPTER 12
All of this is not to say that there are no criminals with a sense of honor – real honor – or that none of them can ever be ‘good’ people. Generalizations can tell us a lot about a group, but very little about an individual. There is an old, old saying. ‘Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.’ While it is true it applies to other things too, including a life of crime. Those born to it can occasionally surprise us, and even themselves.
- Dr. Susan Baptist, Head Profiler for Landing, planet Calvin
‘LANKY’
LANCE KNEW there was no way Morgan was going to be able to navigate the hallway blindfolded, especially with the urgency they needed to do it. So he reached out to grab her shoulder, mentally preparing himself for her to flinch again.
It hurt him, every time, to see, though he knew she was right to recoil away.
We’re supposed to be fighting for the people, aren’t we? And yet I can’t even tell her my name. When she’s not shrinking away from me, she calls me Lanky. I can hear the anger in her voice.
Surprisingly she didn’t and he took a moment to look at her face.
She seemed… distracted? Focused? He wasn’t sure, but Lance always tried to be honest with himself, so he had to assume it wasn’t that she was finally losing her fear of him.
Or maybe it is just that she fears me a lot less than she does Bert. He was the one who grabbed her off the shuttle pad, after all, needle stuck in her neck. Hell, I’ve always been a bit afraid of Bert, and I knew he wouldn’t really hurt me. He’s too afraid of Mother.
They filed out into the hallway, and he led her to the right, towards the main entrance and where he assumed his mother was.
“No, this way,” Bert said, darting off towards the back shuttle bay, just a few meters down the hallway.
“We need to get my mother,” Lance said, correcting course and turning Morgan around with him. She stumbled a bit, her face a mask of concentration, or at least what he could see of it.
I thought she was getting a little steadier on her feet than that?
“I know,” Bert said, pausing for a moment so the pair could catch up to him. Grimacing, he added to Morgan, “Girlie, you need to speed it up, or you’re getting left behind.”
She started to reply, but Lance cut her off. There was no telling what she’d say to anger Bert next.
“Considering the busted head, she’s lucky she’s moving even this fast.”
He doubted Bert – or her for that matter – really understood how bad her head wound had been. They didn’t have everything the doctor had wanted in the base, but what they did have was very sophisticated. Without those tools and medicines she almost certainly would have died. Lance didn’t have much more than basic field medicine training, but head wounds were never things to take lightly.
They were almost to the back entryway.
I wonder why Mother was here, and not in her office?
Bert opened the locker next to the door as they reached the exit. He pulled out a pistol in a gun-belt, which he handed to Lance before grabbing a rifle for himself. Taking his hand off of Morgan to put it on, Lance kept a keen eye on her, watching for another fall.
She seemed steady enough and, gun securely in place, they headed out onto the landing level.
There were a good two dozen fighters rushing about, mostly prepping the air cars or filling them with the essentials kept stored at the rear of the level for just such an emergency.
What he didn’t see was his mother.
“I thought you said she was out here,” he angrily said to Bert.
“No, actually, I said ‘this way’ and ‘I know.’ I know you wanted to get the Old Lady, but I also knew that wasn’t possible, so I ignored you.”
“You...” he started to yell, moving in to punch Bert, but this time he knew it was coming, and he landed a solid blow to Lance’s stomach before anything more than the single word was uttered.
He fell to his knees, accidentally taking Morgan down with him. She grunted as she landed painfully on her back, unable to break the fall.
Bert sighed, grabbing him by the arm and yanking him up.
“I’m a coward, I know,” Bert said, shrugging. “And you don’t listen to reason, boy. She wants you out of here, and I want me out of here. Works out for…”
Another explosion sounded through the building. It wasn’t nearly as strong as the first ones had been, but this one was a lot closer. The door leading to the storage areas and hydroponics bays blew outward, scattering debris all over the nearest air cars. Before the smoke had even cleared a shot rang out and the man nearest to the shattered doorway fell, a bullet to the chest.
Lance froze, unable to think, let alone do anything else.
Bert was already shouldering his rifle, firing blindly towards the door, hitting… nothing, something, no one could say.
Over the loud bangs of Bert’s weapon, another shot rang out from the other side. A second of the revolutionaries fell, this time screaming as blood spurted out of his side.
Still Lance stood there, staring dumbly.
Bert was yelling something, but Lance couldn’t make it out.
What do I do? Should I fire back? Should I get behind something? What do I do?
The next thing he was aware of he was staring at the ceiling, the back of his head aching from where he’d smacked it against the ground.
“Am I shot?” he said… or did he just think it?
A short, grunting laughter was the only reply. Look down towards his feet he saw Morgan, partway under him where he had landed on her.
Wait. No, from where she had tripped him.
“Your hands are free,” he said, confused, noting the single bracelet of the handcuffs on her left hand, the other half dangling, open. “How did you do that?”
She grunted again.
“Is now really the time?” she asked, looking up at him as she shoved his legs off of her. He thought he saw a glint of metal between her teeth as she spoke.
The key? How did she get that? How did she even get her hands in front of her?
“Umm, no, no,” he stammered, still not processing very quickly. “Why am I on the ground?” he asked instead. It seemed to be a more sensibl
e question, at least.
She actually rolled her eyes at him! Turning away she started crawling towards one of the stacks of crates.
Oddly enough, that sight was enough to cut through his confusion, though it did also distract him in a different way.
“You were standing there like a statue. Good way to get yourself shot,” she called out over her shoulder.
Shaking his head, he started crawling after her. Now that he was actually paying attention, he realized that the crossfire had gotten a lot more intense, with most of the remaining men having armed themselves. They were all scrambling for cover, some behind air cars, others behind crates, like Morgan and he were doing.
“Why did you help me?” he asked once he had gotten behind the crates, sitting up against them, his back to the fight for the moment.
“It seemed the thing to do at the time,” she answered, shrugging. A bullet pinged off the floor next to them, along with a couple others whizzing by. “You are more useful alive.”
“I shouldn’t think this means you like me, right?”
“Exactly.”
“It is too bad we met how we did.”
She rolled her eyes again.
“Are you going to keep talking, or are you going to use that thing?” She gestured at his waist. He was puzzled for a moment, and then remembered that he was in fact armed. “Because if not,” she continued, “Can I?”
“You know how to use it?” he asked, finding that rather doubtful.
She looked sad for a moment, rubbing the back of her head.
“Yes, I’ve… used them before.”
He pulled it out of the holster, fumbling a bit with the safety.
“Careful!” she yelled, startling him. He didn’t understand what she was referring to, not until she reached out and pushed the gun down… so it wasn’t pointed straight at her anymore.
He could feel himself blushing.
“Sorry.”
“Basic safety rules. Didn’t they teach you that?”
“Uh, they taught me how to shoot it.”
Her next reply was cut short as they both reflexively ducked as a bullet hit the edge of the crate they were hiding behind. It shattered the edge, sending little bits of the metal frame flying about. He felt a few bounce off his clothes, and she hissed in pain as one cut across her bare shoulder, leaving a long and thin cut.
He looked down at the pistol in his hands, now safely pointed at the ground.
Am I seriously considering giving it to her? That has to be about the stupidest idea I’ve ever had, and yet…
“No?” he paused for a moment, taking a deep breath. “No, I don’t think that is a good idea.”
“Fine,” she said, ducking down low as another bullet flew by close enough to be heard. “Then do something!”
Taking a deep breath he popped up over the top of the crate, trying to get a feel for how the fight was going.
There was still smoke billowing out of the far door, keeping him from seeing anything of the attackers.
Can’t just be from the explosion then, a smoke bomb or something?
He ducked back down, heart racing.
Did I really just do that?
“How many are there?” she asked.
They were both having to yell to be heard over, well, everything. And still it was tricky to make out some of the words. The echoes bouncing off all the walls in the mostly empty cavernous room didn’t help either.
“I can’t see, too much smoke.”
“And your people?”
“I, uh, didn’t see.”
She shook her head. Keeping her back against the crate she pushed off the ground with her feet, easing her head just far enough above the top that she could look around.
“How many people were in here when we came in?”
“I don’t know, at least twenty?”
“Well, there’s only ten now, at least that are standing.”
He popped up back again, trying to hold his hands steady as he aimed at the door.
His first shot was so far off that he couldn’t even tell if it had hit anything, the second he thought hit the wall… four or five meters to the left of the door.
“It’s too far. I can’t, not with a pistol.”
“Then we wait here until what? Everyone else is dead?” She poked him the forehead, the handcuffs still dangling from her wrist slapping him lightly in the chest. “Think. If we can’t fight them what can we do? Come on. Aren’t you a big bad revolutionary?”
Yeah, trained… about that, he thought. Admitting to Morgan that he didn’t have the faintest clue what he was doing was scarier than the bullets.
“Is there another way out of here?” she asked.
“Um,” he thought about it for a second, “Not unless you can fly.”
She gestured towards the middle of the room.
“And what are those?”
“Air cars.”
She gave him a look like he was being particularly stupid.
She’s looking at me like I am being particularly stupid, because I am being particularly stupid, he realized as it finally hit him. “Right. If I give you covering fire, can you get over there and get it started?”
“That’s a great plan, with just two flaws.”
“What’s the first?”
“I don’t know how to drive an air car.”
“That’s a pretty big one, what’s the second?”
“I don’t know how to drive an air car.”
“That’s only one.”
“Yes, but as you said, it is a pretty big one.”
A few more bullets smashed into their cover. He could see some cracks forming in the crate. It wasn’t going to hold up forever.
“I’m still not giving you my gun.”
“Your plan meant trusting me to come back for you once I got the air car started.”
So it did, he thought, probably shouldn’t mention that I didn’t think of that.
“Bert!” he yelled instead, looking around to see if the cowardly man was nearby, or even still alive. He’d lost sight of the man when they’d crawled over to their present position.
“Hey, stupid, stop messing around and shoot back!” was the yelled reply, from not too far away. Looking in that direction he could see that Bert was also crouched behind a crate, only he was firing his rifle wildly over the top, without even looking, much less aiming.
He’s just as likely to hit our guys, maybe more likely, since he’s on the other side of whatever cover they have. “Get over here, I have an idea.”
“Good. Tell me what it is.”
Next to him, Morgan lightly slapped herself in the forehead.
“Do you want the bad guys to hear it too? Get over here.”
Bert did not crawl over to them, but hurled himself forward into a sprint, almost crashing into the next nearest crate, yanking himself around it and back into cover.
It took three more dashes to get over to Morgan and him, with at least one bullet grazing an arm as he moved through the open.
Bert grasped at the cut as he hunkered down next to them, wincing in a manner Lance thought was just a bit overly dramatic.
“All right, let’s hear this plan, I hope it was worth getting me shot for,” Bert growled, pulling out a bit of cloth from a pocket to bind the wound up.
“We can’t see them, and they have the range advantage. Trying anything will just get us killed. So, we use your plan. The two of us cover you while you get an air car, you come back here, using the air car as cover, we get in, and we all leave.”
Bert grunted.
“For someone who was calling me a coward that sounds remarkably like running away.”
“Would you rather stay here?”
“Don’t be daft, boy. But there is a problem. You said, ‘the two of us cover you.’ What kind of idiot do you think I am to give her a weapon? Why isn’t she blindfolded and cuffed?”
“If I shoot you in the back I’m still stuck here,” Morg
an pointed out.
Bert grunted, but also nodded in agreement.
“If she does, can you at least promise you’ll shoot her for me?”
He opened his mouth to answer, but just closed it again after a moment.
How am I supposed to even answer that? With her sitting right there next to me?
“Yeah, about what I thought,” Bert said, sighing. “Just… don’t let her touch the rifle,” he held it out while Lance fumbled with his pistol, finally managing to jam it back in the holster so his hands were free.
Showing a surprising amount of guts, Bert then immediately jumped up and dashed for the next nearest cover on a path towards the nearest air car. Unfortunately there wasn’t one very close at all, since they were all parked closer to the far end.
It also showed a bit of foolhardiness, since this meant that neither Morgan nor Lance were actually ready to give him covering fire.
“Blast it,” Lance said, resting the rifle on top of the crate and squeezing off a few rounds towards the billowing smoke that hid the doorway, and beyond the assassins.
I don’t even know how much ammo is left in here…
His thoughts scattered as Morgan just reached behind him and grabbed the pistol out of the holster, her bare arm brushing up against his back and rear. Before he could turn around in his surprise she planted her other hand firmly on his shoulder, keeping him in place.
“I know, I should have said I was doing that first. Your stupid friend is making us rush things a bit.”
Once he relaxed and got back to aiming and firing, she let go of his shoulder, the hand snaking down and snagging the spare magazines on the left side of the belt.
A stray thought went through Lance’s mind as she popped up above the crate and fired, slow, steady shots.
She held me in place with one hand, and it didn’t seem to require much effort at all. She probably could have overpowered me at any time. Why didn’t she?
A bullet ricocheted off the crate, close enough that it nicked his ear as it passed.
Cursing, he dropped back down into cover, then leaned out to the side and fired a few more shots.
Bert better be quick about this. We’re way too exposed out here.
Black Holiday (The Black Chronicles Book 2) Page 15
