by Glenn Smith
“Doctor Baxter,” one of them shouted. He sounded like he was still a good distance back, but the acoustics in the corridors of an empty ship could be deceiving. Chances were he was a lot closer than he sounded. “We know you’re wounded, Doctor,” the SP went on. “I saw you get hit in the leg and go down. Tell us where you are, so we can take you to the medbay for treatment.”
He was getting closer… a lot closer… creeping slowly forward as he spoke, trying to use his voice to mask the sounds of his and his comrades’ footsteps.
“You can’t get off the ship, Doctor… if you even are really a doctor. The only way out of here is through the airlock, and it’s guarded.”
Much closer.
“Give up now. Don’t make things harder for yourself than they already are.”
The SPs were nearly upon him. Dylan certainly didn’t want to hurt them, but what choice did he have? He couldn’t allow himself to get caught. His mission depended on it. The future of mankind depended on it! He raised his left fist, cocked it back by his right shoulder, and waited. A hand slid around the corner of the wall, feeling its way along. Then another appeared, barely a foot beyond, holding a pulse pistol at the ready. Finally, the SP’s face loomed before him. “If you don’t come out right now and...”
Dylan lashed out with lightning speed, striking the man hard across the bridge of his nose with the blade of his hand while at the same time being careful to angle his strike downward to avoid forcing any bone fragments up into his brain. The man dropped his weapon and cried out as he fell backwards to the deck, clutching his face in both hands and shouting an endless string of profanities at the top of his lungs.
His partner jumped clear of the corner and fired twice at where Dylan had been hiding, but the rounds only found the bulkhead. Dylan had shifted all of his weight to his right leg when he struck and had collapsed again, landing just inches from his victim’s feet.
“Where the hell are you?” the second SP demanded. “Come out with your hands where I can see them! Now!”
He couldn’t see! His own muzzle flash had temporarily blinded him!
Dylan’s wounded leg was starting to throb with every beat of his heart. Good. That meant the numbness was beginning to wear off. But would he be able to run on it when that throbbing turned into pain? He’d soon find out. In one fast, fluid motion, he jumped to his feet and lunged at the second SP, and tackled him to the deck before he had a chance to react. Then he grabbed up the first SP’s weapon and escaped as quickly as he could down the corridor.
“Stop right there!” the second SP shouted, punctuating his angry command with what had to have been a blind shot into the darkness, as it missed by several feet.
Dylan spun around and returned fire, purposely aiming high over the man’s head, hoping to discourage him from continuing his pursuit without taking a chance that he might actually wound him, or worse. But he knew even as he squeezed the trigger that it probably wouldn’t work. The military police corps that he’d belonged to would never have given up on a pursuit that easily, and their security police predecessors, he knew, had been no less committed to their duties when they policed the fleet. The most he could hope for was that once the man made the inevitable decision to leave his partner behind and follow his prey down the corridor, he’d do so much more cautiously. That would slow him down considerably, and might… just might… give Dylan the extra edge he’d need to get away. He fired again, then turned and fled.
Favoring his now painfully wounded leg, he reached the end of the corridor, rounded the corner, and approached the lift doors ahead. They parted for him, admitting him into a waiting car. “Damn it!” he exclaimed. And then he remembered where he was. Deck eight, where both exits from the shaft had been blocked by lift cars. He’d trapped himself, and with an armed and angry SP practically breathing down his neck, turning back wasn’t an option. “Now what the hell do I do?” he asked, looking up to the heavens as the doors closed behind him.
He couldn’t actually see the heavens and he didn’t receive a response from the Almighty, of course, but he did suddenly realize that the answer to his question was hovering right there before his eyes, just a few feet above his head. The car’s ceiling and the shaft beyond. It was the only way. He had no other choice.
He activated the manual door lock, then increased the pistol’s power setting and aimed up at the back section of the ceiling. Then, shielding his eyes behind his left forearm, he squeezed the trigger and blew a hole through the top of the car.
He engaged the safety and tucked the pistol into his waistband at the small of his back, then leapt up and grabbed the still warm edge of the hole. Grimacing against the pain that shot through his leg when he jumped and grunting repeatedly with the extraordinary effort he had to put forth to pull himself up, he barely managed to escape from the car before the SP finally blasted his way through the doors. Before the resulting smoke had even begun to clear, the SP fired up at him, just missing his foot as he squeezed through the narrow gap between the top of the car and the shaft’s ceiling. Dylan scrambled away from the hole as quickly as he could before the SP had a chance to zero in on him and take another shot, then slid off the top of the car and landed in a heap on the shaft floor.
Not his most graceful landing, he knew, but at least he hadn’t broken anything. Not that he was aware of anyway... yet.
He sat up and scratched and squeezed and slapped various parts of his wounded leg, and felt everything. All traces of the initial numbness that might have been lingering over the past few moments were gone, as was the throbbing that he’d felt when it first started to wear off. All replaced now by dull, aching pain. It felt weak as well, and as he struggled to stand up it seemed as if every nerve from his hip to his toes was firing repeatedly in protest.
He turned, intending to keep running, or at least to hobble away as quickly as he could, but the full weight of the SP suddenly came crashing down on top of him and he crumbled back to the shaft floor.
Dylan struggled furiously to escape from underneath him, but the SP proved to be a much stronger man and managed to maneuver him onto his stomach and pin him down with his hands behind his back. Unable to move, Dylan feigned surrender, but only until his opponent eased up on him and reached for his handcuffs. The second he broke concentration, Dylan rolled onto his back and started swinging. He struck the side of his opponent’s head with his forearm, then launched a back fist at where the man’s jaw should have been, missing it cleanly. Then all the air suddenly rushed from his lungs as his opponent plunged his fist up into his gut as though it were a sledgehammer.
Dylan grabbed for the SP’s forearm, but it wasn’t where it should have been, either. He slammed his left knee up into the man’s buttocks and knocked him forward, off balance, then slipped out from under him before he could recover. Finally, he jumped onto the man’s back, grabbed him in a choke hold, and squeezed with every ounce of strength that he had left.
The SP grabbed Dylan’s wrist and forearm and pulled desperately against his vice-like grip, but Dylan only squeezed harder. He reached back, grabbed Dylan by the back of the neck and tried to flip him over his shoulder, but Dylan leaned back, preventing him from getting the leverage he needed to do that. The SP’s strength began to wane. His hand slipped from Dylan’s neck. He slapped twice at the side of Dylan’s head, too weak to have any effect. Then, seconds later, his efforts to break free ceased and his knees buckled as his body fell limp.
Dylan relaxed his hold, slowly at first, just in case the man was only playing possum. No sudden movements, No signs of consciousness. He laid the man face-down on the floor, gently, then knelt beside him and checked his pulse, just to make sure that he hadn’t accidentally killed him. Strong and regular, thank God. The man was out cold, but still alive.
Satisfied that the man would be all right, Dylan struggled to get back up to his feet, then reached into his pocket for his respirator—he’d need the extra oxygen to regain his strength as quickly as pos
sible—as he headed down the shaft. It was gone. He stopped and checked his other pockets, but didn’t find it. “Damn it!” he exclaimed, though he did so quietly. He dropped to his hands and knees and felt around for it. He even checked underneath the unconscious SP, but still didn’t find it.
The urgency of the situation forced him to give up his search. That extra oxygen would have been nice, but he was simply going to have to make do without it. He stood up again—his wounded leg hurt like hell, and his good one wasn’t feeling a whole lot better—and slowly, cautiously, made his way down the long, dark shaft.
A hard thud echoed from behind him, and then a familiar voice shouted, “Zack!”
The SP whose nose he’d probably broken! He was awake—back in the fight!
“Halt, you sorry son of a bitch, or I’ll shoot!”
Dylan heard the shot, ducked and rolled as the pulse went just wide of where he’d been. A second shot hit the wall of the lift car that stood just beyond the vertical shaft, and as Dylan crawled along the floor toward that shaft, a third shot missed him by mere inches. Clearly, the guy only wanted him to stop to improve his chances of hitting him. He wasn’t going to let him surrender, even he tried to.
The sound of running footfalls drew closer. “You’ve had it, you sorry...” he shouted.
“Jerry, no!” a panicked voice shouted from farther back. “The shaft!”
The SP tripped over Dylan and screamed as he tumbled head first into the vertical shaft. A horrifying, wet, crunching thud followed a couple of seconds later, and then nothing.
Whoever Jerry was—Dylan hadn’t met everyone in the unit yet—he was out of the fight for good. Dylan could only hope that he’d survived the fall, but he didn’t have time to worry about that now. Jerry’s partner, Zack—he didn’t know him, either—had regained consciousness, and judging from the sounds of his footfalls he was approaching as fast as he could while still being careful to avoid his partner’s fate.
“This is your last warning, Baxter, or whoever you really are!” Zack hollered. “Stay right where the hell you are and don’t move or I’ll blow your fucking head off! And you’d better pray that my partner’s still alive!”
Zack couldn’t possibly know how badly Dylan wanted his partner to be all right. But, his ‘last warning?’ Dylan doubted that very much. More likely, Jerry’s partner had revenge on his mind. There wouldn’t be any more warnings. But where had he gotten a weapon, assuming that he really had one? Dylan had taken Jerry’s back in the corridor—he checked, and found it still tucked into his waistband—and Jerry had just been firing what had to have been Zack’s when he fell into the shaft. A backup then? That would have violated standard procedures, but was still a very real possibility. Especially during an intruder alert.
He needed to know for sure.
He pulled the pistol from his waistband and switched off the safety, then rose to his feet and hobbled straight toward the advancing SP. He fired two quick shots into the darkness, high enough to be sure that he wouldn’t hit him, then dropped back to the floor as three return shots whizzed past in rapid succession, no more than a couple of feet over his head. His question had been answered. Zack had a weapon.
A fourth shot glanced off the floor beside him, as though to punctuate that answer. Dylan rolled across the hot spot as another shot hit where he’d just been laying. Then came that all too familiar echo of scrambling footfalls.
Gritting his teeth against the pain, Dylan jumped back up to his feet and, as best he could, made a run for it. He knew the vertical shaft lay just ahead somewhere, but how far? How far toward the SP had he hobbled? He got his answer just as he started to slow his pace, when his foot found no floor beneath it.
“Control, we need backup!” he heard Zack yell as he fell into the shaft.
Time seemed to slow down as he fell forward into space. The gentle breeze rising up out of the darkness below felt good blowing across his sweat-coated face. His thoughts flashed back to his last jump—the night jump over that dark Cirran jungle island—to those brief seconds of open freefall through the black star-filled sky between the disintegration of his capsule and his parachute’s deployment. It felt a lot like that.
His fingertips brushed against something. Then his fingers hit something. Shit! He was falling! He reached out in desperation, grabbed onto whatever his hand hit next and held onto it for all he was worth. Then his whole body exploded with pain when he slammed into the shaft wall, the impact knocking the wind out of him, but somehow he managed to hold on. Gasping for breath, his feet dangling in space and finding no purchase, strained muscles screaming for relief, he pulled himself back up to the rim and started shimmying around to his left, toward the ladder.
A pulse round struck the base of the lift car close to his hands. Dylan twisted his tortured body, kicked off the shaft wall with his good leg—his lesser injured leg would have been a more accurate description—and then leapt through the air toward the ladder... he hoped.
He found the rungs as he fell and grabbed hold of one and held on tight, nearly pulling his arm out of its socket. Another shot just missed his head.
He swung out to his left, found the next lower deck with his foot, and jumped for it.
“SHIT!” Zack suddenly cried out. Not in anger, but in panic. Then he bounced off the edge of the deck above and fell into the shaft, and landed with another sickening crunch below.
Yes, Dylan realized as he lay there grunting and groaning and squirming in pain, holding his arms tightly against his chest and hoping that he hadn’t just broken half of his ribs. Given the time it had taken them to fall and sickening sounds of their landings, there was no mistaking what had happened. The lift car that had broken his fall earlier was gone. The SPs, Jerry and his partner Zack, had fallen all the way to the bottom of the shaft—most likely to their deaths.
Anger and anguish grew together within him. He’d killed two security policemen… two of his own comrades! He’d never wanted that! That wasn’t what he’d signed up for! He’d come back through time to save lives, not to take them! He hadn’t meant for them to fall...
The car was gone? How could the car be gone unless Dock Control had activated the lifts and someone had taken it? Someone else was onboard! Dylan sighed. All he wanted was to make it off the ship and back to his quarters. Would the nightmare never end?
It hurt like hell to move. It hurt everywhere. It even hurt to breath. He tasted blood in his mouth, but he didn’t dare spit it out for fear that it might be collected and examined later, and then be used as evidence against him. He had to keep going. He had to get off the ship and back to his quarters without being seen.
How was he ever going to explain his beat up condition?
He reached for the respirator, then remembered again that he’d lost it, though he couldn’t remember when or where. It didn’t matter. He struggled to stand up—increasingly more difficult every time he had to do it—then staggered to the shaft doors. Thank God it only took the press of a button to open them from the inside. He didn’t have the strength to do anything more than that. He stepped out into the corridor, paused for a moment to get his bearings as the doors slid closed behind him, and then hobbled sternward toward one of the main gangways by which he knew he would be able to access the next several decks above… assuming that he could trust his memory through the perpetual fog that had been increasingly clouding his mind since the chase began.
Where were all the others—the ones using the lifts? How many of them were there? Did they know where he was?
He found the gangway right where he expected it to be and started climbing. His progress was slow and his pain was only growing worse. He had to support himself on the railing to keep from falling, and no matter how softly he tried to walk, he couldn’t prevent the metal steps from ringing out under the impact of his shoes with every step. Anyone who happened to be nearby was going to hear the noise and use it to zero in on him.
The gangway ended three decks up on de
ck six—still two decks shy of the airlock and escape. He desperately needed to stop and rest, but he didn’t have the time. He headed up the corridor toward the main dining hall where there would be another gangway, one that would take led up as high as deck four. But once he made it to the staging area, assuming that he did make it, then what? The airlock would be guarded, just as the SPs had warned. How much fight did he have left in him? Not enough to fight his way past the guards. He felt sure of that much.
A pair of bright blue-white lights suddenly appeared on the surface of the curved corridor wall up ahead. They started shrinking slowly and moving—sweeping from left to right and back again and bobbing up and down as though… Flashlights! Someone was approaching from ahead!
He ducked down the nearest side corridor and felt his way along the wall to its end, deep enough in the shadows to ensure that he wouldn’t be seen... as long as no one trained a flashlight directly on him. As luck would have it, the door to the small observation room at his back was standing slightly ajar and he was able to slip inside and squat down behind it to hide.
He took a moment to quietly thank God again, just in case luck had nothing to do with it.
He started hearing the muffled voices of at least three different people as they drew closer to his side corridor, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. Then, suddenly, they stopped. Moments later a flashlight beam shone in through the gap in the door and started dancing across the opposite wall and the window that looked out into space.
“There’s a partly opened door down there,” one of them told the others.
“Probably jammed that way when they powered down the ship,” another suggested.
“Think we should check it out?” the third one asked.
