“Well, congratulations. When’s the event?”
“We’ve set the date for the sixth Sunday in July,” Lindsay said. “You and Rebecca will have to come. How can we reach you?” Once again Colt marveled at her presence of mind.
“Jeff and Rebecca Lippmann at Dragonshead Mail Service,” he replied. “I look forward to it.”
At that moment a tall, slender, blonde woman wearing a long white sheath stepped onto the landing. As she spoke to one of the hostesses, Lippmann saw her and stood. He said, “That’s Rebecca.” She looked in their direction and waved. She nodded to the hostess and walked toward them. When she saw Lindsay, she broke into a broad smile and began walking faster.
Colt and Lindsay also stood as Rebecca greeted them, “Lindsay Hansen, is that you?” and threw her arms around Lindsay. She pulled back, still grasping Lindsay’s arms. “It’s great to see you. It’s been years. I never expected to see you again after school, but here you are. I mean, I knew you were on the same planet, but what are the odds of both of us being in Sykesville at the same time? I just can’t believe it. How’ve you been? I mean, I heard about Edward. I’m really sorry. I … Oh, listen to me, sometimes I don’t know when to stop.” Finally, she became aware of Colt standing nearby.
“Rebecca, it’s great to see you too,” Lindsay said. Then turning to Colt. “This is my fiancé, William August.” She held up her hand, displaying the ring.
“Congratulations, Lindsay,” Rebecca said, gaping at the ring. Then she turned to Colt. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Bill.” She extended her hand.
Colt smiled and said, “My friends call me Gus.”
“Gus. I hope you realize what a treasure you have here. We were dorm mates at Hudson. If Lindsay hadn’t been so wrapped up in her studies, she would have been the most popular girl on campus.”
She turned to Lippmann and kissed him passionately. “It’s good to see you, too. I’ve missed you, honey. When are you going to get out of this military business?”
Lippmann didn’t answer her directly. Instead he took her hand, turned to Lindsay and Colt, and said, “Nice seeing you again, Lindsay, and nice meeting you, Gus. We’ll be waiting for that announcement.” Then he led Rebecca away from the table.
Before he sat back down, Colt said, “Fascinating. I feel like we were just hit by a typhoon, but somehow she’s actually quite likeable.”
Lindsay smiled broadly. “She has that effect.”
###
“You know, this bracelet sure makes it hard to talk,” Colt said as he and Lindsay walked out onto the street.
“Tell me about it,” Lindsay agreed. She glanced at the engagement ring on her finger.
Colt struggled to keep his expression bland, but he winced inwardly. He stepped in front of her and turned to face her. For a moment he took both her hands and looked directly into her eyes. Then he dropped her hands, and put his finger to his lips.
Reaching into his pocket he pulled out a battery and the crumpled wiring gadget he had put together after lunch. He held it next to the bracelet on his arm and touched the wires protruding from the gadget to the exposed battery terminals. There was a bright spark and smoke rose from both the gadget and the bracelet. “I’ll be right back,” he said.
He raced down a nearby alley, tearing the gadget into pieces as he ran. When he reached a dumpster, he scattered the pieces about inside. Then he ran back to Lindsay. “That should take care of this bracelet.” He held up his wrist with the no-longer functional bracelet. “Now, let’s get out of here before the separatists show up to check on what happened to it.”
As they hurried away, Lindsay said, “You were about to say something back there. If that bracelet isn’t working any more, you can say it now.”
“I wish …” He stopped speaking but continued walking in silence. His mind churned. Here I am a fearless warrior, and I can’t tell a beautiful woman how I feel about her.
When he looked back, Lindsay had halted and stood watching him. He walked back to her. Taking her hands and looking into her eyes, he said softly, “Let’s keep walking. I want to put as much distance between us and where I blew out this tracker as we can before the rebels arrive.”
“Not till you answer me.”
“I’ll answer you while we walk,” he said. “I’m just having a hard time saying it.”
When they were walking again, he started, “I’ve spent the past five years grieving over Rachel and Caitlin. Because I blamed myself for their deaths — I know, I didn’t do anything to cause them, I’ve avoided getting involved with women. Then I met you.”
He looked at her. “I really like what I see, and once you got past my being navy, I think you like me too.” He paused. “This is where you tell me how you feel.”
She laughed. “Yes, I like you, but I’m not ready to commit to anything long term. Ed’s memory is still too strong — No, that’s not it. I think I’m afraid to open up, afraid of being hurt. And I have some reservations. Navy people, even when they’re stationed somewhere, don’t stay around for long. They spend more time away than they do in port. I’d want someone who would be there for me. On top of that, I’ve invested enough years in the farm that it’s my home, and I’m not ready to give it up. Of course, the natives may have taken care of that.” She gave him a brilliant smile. “But I am open to getting to know each other better.”
Colt stopped and took her hands again. “Okay, then we’ll leave it at that for now.” He hesitated. When he spoke it was almost a whisper, “Except I have to say I’m glad you’re a part of my life, however briefly.” He dropped her hands and in a normal voice said, “Now, we need to get moving.”
He began walking again, and, after pausing, Lindsay hurried after him. “What exactly are we doing?” she asked.
Colt led the way across an empty bridge that spanned the Sykesville Creek and stepped off the road into the Commons. “That was one of the problems with having this bracelet hot. We couldn’t really talk about what we’re going to do. Fortunately, other than short-circuiting this thing, we haven’t had to do much improvising.
“Now, we’re going to walk back to the other end of the park, go to the church to look for the stylus you dropped, switch into our night gear, and try to get inside the relay station.”
“I didn’t drop a stylus,” Lindsay objected.
“Check your handbag. It fell out while we were touring the church this afternoon.”
She quickly searched her purse, frustration obviously growing. “That stylus, Ed gave it to me for tutoring him. I can’t believe I dropped it.”
“Actually, you didn’t. I did, and I know where it is. I needed an excuse to go back to the church, but I couldn’t tell you while the bracelet was live.”
He switched gears. “As for what we’re doing. I have a device that will, hopefully, freeze the sensors that are protecting the relay so that anyone watching the monitor screens won’t be able to see us. All we have to do is avoid the live guards. At a guess, they depend almost entirely on the sensors, so they probably aren’t too careful with their foot patrols.”
They hurried up a pathway that circled the lake about fifteen meters out from the shore. Random trees, shrubs, and flower gardens grew around the path. Flocks of birds in or near the water, many of them of Earth origin such as the Canadian geese, flapped and squawked noisily as they passed. The pale glow of Selene shining through clouds in the east shimmered and broke into thousands of flickering points on the choppy surface of the lake.
Several minutes later they reached the loop road and followed it to the street that led to the church. Colt had to consciously slow down and walk in as if this were a routine visit. Once inside they checked in with Victoria to tell her they were there to look for Lindsay’s stylus and not to worry about them. At the end of the hall Colt checked to make sure no one was watching and tried the closed door to the south belfry. It opened easily. They stepped inside a stairwell and closed the door. Colt went behind the stairs and brought
back the two plastic tubes he had bought at the farm supply.
“Are you sure you’re a naval officer and not a magician?” Lindsay asked. “I saw you come in here, but I didn’t see those tubes.”
“We could hardly have carried these into the restaurant,” he commented.
He looked up the stairs. “This is where it gets tricky.”
“Shut up and get going,” Lindsay gibed.
At the top of the stairs was a small square storage room. Along one side, the amplifiers and switching relays for the internal sound system stood in a rack. Each wall held a small window, and a metal ladder in one corner led to a trapdoor in the ceiling.
With only the ghostly light of Selene coming in the eastern window Colt quickly stripped off his evening clothes down to a full bodysuit of black nylon. He stretched the sleeves down to his wrists and covered his legs to the tops of his dark socks. Donning black gloves, a black stocking cap, and black slippers, he prepared to climb the ladder. Meanwhile Lindsay undid the tab under her left arm, split the left side of her dress, and let it drop to the floor. For a moment Colt eyed her appreciatively. “Don’t look,” she demanded and then grinned.
Something scuttled into the corner behind the boxes. Lindsay jerked at the sound. “Zealots!” she muttered.
“What about zealots?” Colt asked.
Removing a small plastic bag from her purse, she replied, “They’re like Earth spiders only bigger. Obnoxious, but not dangerous. They like churches because they eat paper, and churches are one of the few places you can still find real paper.” She opened the bag and took out her own dark clothing, gloves, cap, and slippers and was soon also dressed all in black. “Ready,” she said.
“One more thing,” Colt said. “Those tranquilizer darts.”
Lindsay pulled the packet of darts and tranquilizer out of her purse.
“Great! Fill them with a strong enough dose to knock a man out without killing him.”
“How big a man?”
“The size of an average guard.”
“That’s not a lot of help. How many are we going to need?”
“If we have to deal with more than a couple of guards, it’s all over,” Colt responded. “Make it four, in case we miss.”
She drew a half cc into each dart, reinstalled the covers over the points, and handed two to Colt. He handed her one of the improvised blowpipes he had made from the plastic pipe.
They tucked their clothing into bags and left them behind the boxes. Then Colt led the way up the ladder. He said, “Maybe the zealots will scare the curious away from our clothes.”
At the top of the ladder, he unlatched the door and pushed it open. He climbed out onto the belfry platform surrounded by a railing with four corner posts supporting a sharply peaked roof. A weatherproof loud speaker system nestled under the center of the roof hung like an enormous bat.
The ridgeline of the south wing roof came up to the platform, level with its surface. Colt climbed over the railing and turned to stand with his feet on either side of the ridge. He offered to help Lindsay over the railing, but she ignored his hand and climbed over on her own. Colt nodded approvingly and maneuvered along the roof to the end of the building where a single metal ladder led down to the second floor landing of a fire escape.
When Colt lowered the fire stairs they squealed. In the quiet it sounded like a siren. He stopped and looked around to check if someone had heard. Then he started again, lowering them centimeter by centimeter to avoid making noise. Once he and Lindsay were on the ground, he attached a fine black wire to the bottom and eased the stairs back up. The black wire blended into the shadows, disappearing from sight but waiting to bring the stairs back down when they returned.
At that moment a ground vehicle rounded the northwest corner of the park, its headlights swinging toward them. “Down!” Colt half shouted. They both dropped to the grass. The lights swept over them and stopped.
Chapter 23
A voice from the vehicle carried across the open space, “Nope. Must have been my imagination. I don’t see a thing.”
The vehicle continued on. As soon as the light had cleared away from them, Colt looked up in time to see an open troop carrier with a couple of men seated in back. It drove away down the street until the church blocked it from view.
“Do you think they saw us?” Lindsay whispered.
“I hope not, but we’d better move while the church blocks us from view.” Colt sprang to his feet. “Let’s go.” He sprinted for the street.
Moments later they arrived at the L-shaped relay building. They approached it from the north using a neighboring building as cover. The relay building sat back from the north loop road and the centerline road far enough to have a broad, dense flowering hedge on all sides. Lying at the bottom of the hedge they were out of the light and out of view of the sensors on the building. Two guards walked into sight from in front of the building, carelessly flicking the beams of their lights from side to side, clearly not paying much attention. Colt waited with increasing impatience as they took almost fifteen minutes to complete a circuit.
The second time the guards moved back to the front of the building, Colt activated the sensor-freezing device. He signaled to Lindsay, and they jumped to their feet. They raced to the back door of the building. The message from Fitzhugh had indicated that there had never been a reason for locks on the building, and there were none now. With Lindsay watching behind them Colt opened the door a crack and quickly checked inside. The hallway stood empty and quiet. They slipped inside, closing the door behind them.
A sterile, gray-walled corridor led to a brightly lit but empty reception area that occupied the front of the building. On either side of the hall closed doors stood every three or four meters.
Half way up the hall the door to the transmitter room proclaimed, “Authorized Personnel Only.” Despite the warning, it had no lock. Colt cautiously opened the door just enough to look inside. The room was dark and unoccupied. Using the light from his communicator screen, Colt led the way between racks of communicator relay transceivers and web servers to the back of the room. The subspace transmitter had its own rack and a small workbench next to it.
The bay that normally held the transmitter was empty. “Damn!” Colt muttered. Checking the workbench to the right of the rack, he found the transmitter. It was partially disassembled. No way could they put it back together in the short time they had. In fact, time had run out.
Colt heard voices in the corridor. He waved Lindsay behind a communicator relay rack and turned off his communicator screen. The door from the hallway opened, flooding the transmitter room with light. Two guards stood silhouetted in the door for a moment. Then the shorter one announced, “All clear,” and started to close the door.
The guard’s communicator crackled, “Hey, Dubresky, who are you guys trying to fool? The door didn’t open.”
“What do you mean the door didn’t open?” The taller guard asked.
“I mean I’m looking at the room on the monitor and you haven’t opened the door. There’s nobody in it.”
“That’s ridiculous,” the tall man responded. “We’re both standing just inside the door, and it’s wide open.”
“Son of a―,” the communicator said. “You’re right. The hall sensor shows the door open, and I see one of your backs.”
“There must be something wrong with the room sensor,” the shorter man said. “We’d better take a closer look.” He switched on the room lights. His eyes went wide just before the dart caught him in the throat. The other guard was already sagging to the floor.
“Good shot,” Colt whispered. “Let’s move.”
On the way out of the room he leaned over both men and retrieved the darts. Then he and Lindsay headed down the hall, running silently to the outside door. As they started to open the door, they heard the guard’s communicator, “What the hell? Dubresky, are you guys okay? Dubresky?”
Colt pushed the door open and checked outside. “You�
��re clear. Go.” he whispered to Lindsay. She darted out the door and ran to the bushes, plunging into them as the surveillance lights flared. Colt dashed out right behind her, slamming the door behind him. As he sprinted to catch up with Lindsay, he said a fervent prayer that Fitzhugh was right about the range of the sensor interference. He grabbed her hand and shouted, “Move. We have to get out of the light before someone sees us.”
Sprinting between buildings, Colt had a hard time keeping up with Lindsay. Both of them were gasping by the time they reached the road north of the relay station. Exhausted, Colt pulled Lindsay around the corner of the building and into its shadow and collapsed onto the grass. He was tempted to stay there and rest, but he knew the militia would be on them in minutes. He struggled to his feet and for several seconds they both stood with their hands on their knees trying to get enough air. When he could wheeze out a few words, he urged Lindsay on and, still panting, led the way toward the church at a fast walk.
When the station was out of sight, between gasps Lindsay nervously laughed, “God, I was scared.”
“Hang on, sweetheart. We’re not out of the woods yet. Let’s get to the church first.”
A few minutes later, Colt saw lights rapidly approaching and hurried Lindsay into a gap between buildings. They both dropped to the ground and held their breath as the ground car swept through the intersection and continued down the street. They could hear it slowing as it approached the relay station.
As soon as the ground car had passed, Colt and Lindsay got to their feet. Colt signaled Lindsay to stay back and, keeping flat against the wall, eased up to the corner of the building. From the shadows he watched the car pull up at the station. Six men carrying assorted weapons scrambled out and headed for the building. Two went inside. The other four fanned out around the building.
As soon as they were out of sight, Colt barked, “Now!” They ran across the street and halfway down the next block. Then they slowed to a panting walk. Before they had gone far, they heard another ground car rush up to the station, but no one came near them. In a few minutes they were climbing back up to the roof of the church.
Peacemaker: The Corona Rebellion 2564 AD Page 18
