Fools Rush In (The Interstellar Rescue Series Book 3)

by Donna S. Frelick

  But it couldn’t last. They had no time.

  He pulled back. “Where is he?”

  She nodded. “There. With Gabriel.”

  The two men stood facing each other on the factory floor, feet braced and eyes closed. Their muscles tensed and rippled as if they ran in their dreams, and their faces grimaced in effort. Sweat ran from Gabriel’s temple and stained his shirt, and his hands were balled into fists, his forearms taut with steel. With robotic steps he lurched forward. Kor slowly backed up a step.

  Sam leaned closer, his weapon trained on the Thrane. “What’s happening?”

  “I’m not sure.” Rayna watched them, fascinated. She’d heard about the Thrane ability to engage completely on the mental plane, to fight entire battles with their minds, but she’d never seen such a thing. Surely Kor was vulnerable on this plane, though? “Shoot him.”

  “Right.” Sam lifted his stunner and fired. The energy from the weapon hit some form of shield around the two men and fragmented in a flash of sparking light. Some of it bounced back in their direction. Sam shoved Rayna behind a control panel and shielded her with his big body.

  “What the hell was that?” He stared at her, his eyes round with shock.

  She just shook her head, too busy trying to stay conscious while the deep, grinding pain in her gut threatened to drag her under. Moving was becoming more and more an act of courage.

  “What kind of mind can he have to maintain that shield, fight Gabriel and keep us under all at once? Portal’s balls!”

  “Well, he did lose us.” She considered Sam. “You’re resistant.”

  His jaw tightened. “Yes. I wouldn’t be here if I weren’t.”

  “You’ll have to tell me about that some time.”

  There was a long pause before Sam finally nodded. “Everything, Little Bit. I swear. If we make it out of this hellhole.”

  That appeared to depend on Gabriel now. He was trembling, every muscle locked with tension. Still he advanced, step after step. And Kor was crumbling, sinking to his knees, his face contorting in pain. At last he collapsed, and Gabriel fell in front of him.

  The tracker turned his head. “Now, Sam! Fire! The shield is down.”

  Sam scrambled to his feet and positioned himself over the fallen body of his enemy. Rayna forced herself to go after him. He was standing there, not shooting. Why wasn’t he shooting?

  He kicked at the motionless Thrane. “Get up, you piece of shit.”

  Gabriel, sweat pouring off him like he’d run ten kilometers in jungle heat, lifted his head to growl at him. “For the gods’ sake, Murphy, shoot the mulaak bastard. I can’t hold him much longer.”

  “Keep the shield down, but let him go.” Sam’s face showed nothing of his intention.

  His friend slowly got to his feet. “You are the craziest sonofabitch I have ever had the misfortune to know.”

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Rayna tried to get him to look at her, but his attention never wavered from where Kor lay. “Shoot him, and let’s get out of here.”

  “I want him to know who’s killing him. And for what. Hold this.” He handed his stunner to Rayna.

  He bent down and grabbed a handful of the Thrane’s uniform, hauling him to his feet with one hand. As soon as he was in contact with the man, Sam staggered and seemed to falter. God knew what he was seeing now, what terrors Kor was showing him. Rayna glanced at Gabriel, but he shook his head. He was out of this fight.

  Kor grinned. “Will you never learn, Captain? You don’t have what it takes to defeat me.”

  “It’s true you’ve won a few battles.” Sam’s voice grated with the strain of this latest bout. “But I’m about to win this war, Thrane. This is for my crew. And for all the pain you’ve caused my woman. And just in case you put a scratch on my ship.” He didn’t even bother to look behind him. “Go ahead, Ray. And make sure the stunner is set on Kill.”

  She didn’t hesitate. She put the targeting beam dead center in Kor’s chest and squeezed the trigger. The Thrane crumpled, a look of incredulous shock on his face.

  Sam turned to her—and caught her just as she fell.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Sam lowered Rayna to the floor and put a shaking hand to her throat. Her pulse was weak, but steady under his fingers. The bandage around her belly was secure and still dry; she was likely just dehydrated and suffering from shock. He had to get her back to the ship.

  Gabriel joined him, holding a tiny comp pad. “We have to move.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The Thrane’s cheat sheet. It’s encrypted, but there’s a map indicating where the nanolinks are.” He pointed to blinking red lights on a tiny grid. “The problem is, I can’t tell how long we have, and I can’t deprogram the links. The only thing I can tell for sure is that they’re set to auto-detonate. Those things will go off without him. We have to get out of here.”

  Sam scooped Rayna into his arms and stood, then followed Gabriel out through the long rows of machinery and into the corridor. Alarms blared in the dim hallway, and a string of green emergency lights snaked along the base of the wall, meant to guide survivors through smoke and dark in a crisis. The “crisis” in this case had done its job; they encountered no one until they’d almost reached the corridor outside the kitchens.

  “You, there! Stop!”

  Sam kept walking. How many?

  Two. Let me handle them.

  Gabriel slowed and faced the guards that had emerged from a side hallway. “Gentlemen, please. My friend is helping the girl. She’s been overcome by smoke in the factory fire. We’ve been ordered to evacuate to the yard.”

  Sam kept walking, not looking back, not slowing down. He knew the tracker was quite capable of killing both guards if he had to. But he had other ways of defusing the situation.

  The guard repeated his order. “You’re not workers! I said Stop!”

  Sam risked a look back and saw Gabriel take both men by the arm and turn them in the opposite direction, speaking in a low voice as if he was explaining a difficult situation to them. In the end, they both nodded and walked back the way they’d come.

  “Really? It was that easy.” Sam waited for the tracker to catch up.

  Gabriel shrugged. “Some minds are simpler than others.”

  They made for the kitchens now and the exit beyond, Sam’s heart thudding with every step. The heavy double doors that led to the food prep area were in sight, not five meters away, when the hallway before them shattered in an explosion of white fire and deafening sound. The kitchen walls blasted outward, then the ceiling fell in to fill the hole, leaving nothing but a mass of saw-edged metal and pulverized thermocrete, choking dust and flaring heat.

  Sam found himself on the floor again, his head spinning. The Thrane was dead—he was dead, dammit!—so this could be no dream, no vision.

  “Rayna!” The sound came out as little more than a gasp. He coughed and tried again. “Ray!”

  “What the hell?” Weak, but he heard her, just to his right.

  He reached out and found her. “Are you okay?”

  “Fuck, no. I’ve been kidnapped, stabbed, almost murdered by mind control and now almost blown up for real. I’m definitely not okay. You?”

  “I’m . . . in one piece. Gabriel!”

  “I’m good.” The tracker staggered over and held out a hand to help Sam up. The two of them got Rayna up. “But you remember the little red dots on that map I showed you? They’re going green. This place is coming down around our ears.”

  Going out through the kitchen was no longer an option. “The yard. Now.”

  They ran back through the corridors, Rayna again in Sam’s arms. Though she protested, it was faster that way. The hallways were increasingly crowded, with lines of workers herded through by panicky guards, the alarms making it impossible to hear their shouted orders, and individual members of the factory staff running for the exits without a thought for anyone but themselves.

  No one challenged Sam and t
he others as they maneuvered through the chaos; the guards had too much to do to avoid a full-scale riot from the resistants in the crowd. With every deep shuddering boom! within the bowels of the factory, panic grew. And not only in the mob around them. Sam’s chest was so tight he could barely breathe; his heart squeezed with fear. Not for himself, but for the woman he held in his arms. What if he failed to get her out of this stinking hellhole? Shalssiti pultafa, can’t these bastards move?

  They were within sight of the door when the fight started, resistants pushing their way through the few guards trying to keep the exit from the prison “orderly.” The guards tried to force the mob back with whipsticks, but they were too few against too many. The workers overwhelmed them, punching and kicking and eventually stomping them into the ground. The crowd behind the vanguard surged forward, carrying Sam, Rayna and even Gabriel with it. Sam put Rayna’s feet on the ground, and he and Gabriel formed a protective cage around her, bulling through the smaller people in front of them, fending off attacks with fists and elbows and, in Gabriel’s case, a slap to the forehead.

  Even so, it was like riding a wild, unpredictable wave in the oceans of Praetorix, something many a man had died trying. When the three of them finally broke free and stumbled out into an open area of the yard, Sam felt as if he’d been saved from drowning.

  “Jesus, Murphy, when you break into a prison, you don’t do it quietly, do you?” Rayna gasped for breath, her face pale, but she kept her feet, one hand clutching his sleeve.

  “This is just a little more distraction than I bargained for.” The yard was a heaving, shouting free-for-all, made violent and dangerous by the resistants who saw an opportunity and the guards fighting to maintain some semblance of control. Individuals were making a break for the walls or the gates, which were still locked, and were being shot for their trouble. The mindwiped unlucky ones hunkered down in miserable clumps or circled like flocks of stampeded sheep. And all the while the explosions were growing louder and closer, blowing away walls, collapsing roofs, raising wails among the workers in the yard.

  “Gabriel, is the shield down yet? Can you get a signal to the ship?” He fended off two men in mid-fistfight with a shove and turned Rayna into his body to protect her.

  “I have Mo.” Gabriel looked up at Sam. “He says a Gray destroyer just came through the jump. Less than two hours until contact.”

  “Perai! Where’s the Rescue ship?”

  “In orbit. Mo’s ready on the gates when you are.”

  Rayna shook her head. “You can’t just open those gates now. We have to get a handle on this first or people will die.”

  “Where the hell is Daniel?” Sam looked up at the sheer amberglas-encased office tower that overlooked the yard. “You know he can see what’s going on out here. He should have had that slime lizard on the loudspeaker by now.”

  “I can’t raise him on the comm.” Gabriel’s face was grim. “Maybe we underestimated the Director.”

  “Daniel knows what he’s doing.” Rayna may have jumped to the Pataran’s defense, but her eyes reflected her worry.

  Whatever hope they might have had in Chang’s skills was lost in the next second as the top of the tower erupted in a fiery ball of flame and smoke. Shards of glas and metal, chunks of thermocrete rained down on the naked crowd below, causing a mad scramble for cover. Sam took Rayna down to the ground with him, tucking her under his body, covering his head with his arms. He felt Gabriel’s heavy body land on top of his. He could only hope it was deliberate.

  In seconds, the deadly hail had passed. Gabriel rolled off and let him up. The tracker was bleeding in a half-dozen places, but otherwise seemed okay. He shook his head at Sam. No signal from Daniel. A hole opened up in Sam’s chest as he remembered Mae Chen had been with Daniel in that office. Chen, who’d been part of his crew since he’d taken over the ’hawk.

  Rayna, shaky with shock, grabbed his arm. “If Daniel was in there—” She stopped, swallowed, started again. “We have to think of something else to stop this riot. Every labor camp I’ve been in has kept sleeper gas on hand.”

  Perai! “Why haven’t they used it?”

  Gabriel gestured at the chaos. “Do you see anyone in charge? They’re waiting for orders.”

  “Well, I say we give ’em some.” Sam took quick stock of the immediate vicinity. A group of five guards battled hand-to-hand with a larger band of resistants—and looked to be losing. Too dangerous to step into. Several guards and more unlucky ones lay motionless in scattered heaps on the ground. And, there, not too far from them, one terrified guard hardly old enough to shave watched over a huddled mass of mindwiped UO’s, sitting together with their backs to a tool shed. Perfect.

  “Gabriel.” He inclined his head to the youngster.

  The tracker nodded and circled around behind the guard.

  Sam and Rayna approached him from the front. “Help! Please, help! She’s been hurt!”

  The kid raised his stunner. “Stay back!”

  “But she’s hurt, can’t you see? We need help!”

  The guard had time to take one step before Gabriel had his hand on his shoulder and he went slack. The tracker took the stunner from his limp hands.

  “Now, you can leave these people where they are,” Gabriel said, his voice low and soothing. “You’re going to show us how to deploy the sleeper gas.”

  “We’re going to use the sleeper gas?”

  “Yes, son. Don’t you think that’s a good idea?”

  The boy nodded. “I wondered why no one was using it. This is a riot.”

  “Yes. Yes, it is.” Gabriel squeezed his shoulder. “And we’re supposed to use sleeper gas in riots, aren’t we.”

  “Yes!”

  “Okay, now. Do you know where the controls are?”

  “Security shack.” He pointed to a low building not twenty meters across the yard.

  “Let’s go,” Sam said, and led the way through the mob.

  Five meters from the door, the right half of the building blew apart. The little group was knocked flat. Sam rolled to his knees, ears ringing.

  With a curse, he staggered to his feet and gestured to the others. “Stay here!” Gabriel, tell Mo to have a Security squad standing by outside those gates. He ran for the shack and forced his way through the mangled door into the former office, now filled with smoke and dust and fragments of what had been furniture. He pushed into the inner office and looked for the control panels on the outer wall. Still intact! But they were locked and passcode protected. Still, cops were cops. They always thought they were secure in their own house. His head swiveled, scanning the space. There! The passcodes were tacked to a dust-covered bulletin board next to the door where he’d come in.

  He entered the codes and the panel cracked open. Inside the pads and settings were clearly marked; these were emergency controls, meant to be used by anyone at any time. No one in a place like Kinz had time or use for complicated instructions. The sleeper gas controls had settings for Yard, Factory, Dormitories or Mess Hall and for time in increments of ten minutes. He hit “Yard” and “ten minutes”. If the people in the yard were asleep any longer, his crew would be removing bodies from the rubble of what was left of the Kinz arms works.

  Before he hit “SET” he searched the equipment lockers for breather masks. He grabbed a pack of the little filters, hit the pad to start the gas and scrambled out the door to his people. They slipped on the masks just as the gas hissed out over the battling crowd from nozzles hidden in posts and eaves surrounding the yard. Guards and resistants dropped in mid-punch. Huddled UO’s fell over in heaps, their guardians slumped next to them. Escapees trying to climb the walls lost their grip and crashed to the ground; since most of them hadn’t made it more than a few feet, Sam assumed they’d be okay.

  In a few seconds, the yard was eerily quiet, bodies sprawled everywhere now that the battle was over. The gas dissipated, the yellowish cloud lifting and becoming indistinguishable from the dingy LinHo airmix.

>   Sam shifted his mask and took a tentative sniff. When he didn’t feel like taking a nap, he removed the mask altogether. Rayna and Gabriel followed his lead.

  “Your people are standing by outside the gate,” the tracker told him. “Mo wants to know if you’re ready?”

  Sam nodded. “Open the gates. Have the Rescue ship stand by to receive the lucky ones in ten minutes plus one.”

  The gates swung open and his uniformed Security squad marched in, most of its members grinning ear-to-ear. He gave orders to the squad leader to disarm all the guards and ring the yard in preparation for the time when its occupants would awaken. The team rushed to get its job done in the remaining time.

  Sam turned to Rayna. “We need to get you back to the ship.”

  “I want to see this through.” She had a stubborn set to her jaw.

  Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “I’ll, uh, go help with the disarming.” And he walked off.

  “Rescue all the way, huh?” Sam crossed his arms over his chest.

  Her mouth quirked. “Why should I let a pirate get all the glory?”

  Something warmed deep inside him when she said that word “pirate” now. It wasn’t quite the insult it had once been on her lips.

  He grinned back at her. “Well, I might let you take some of the credit. You did kill the bad guy, after all.”

  She tilted her head, might have said something, but instead her eyes got wide and her mouth dropped open. He turned to follow her gaze. A tall, dark male, a short, trim female and a stockier older female, all of them covered head-to-foot in thermocrete dust, escorted a tiny Gray out of the ruins of the Kinz interior at stunner point.

  “Daniel,” she breathed.

  “And Chen,” he added, his voice no louder. He swallowed.

  “Is that Brilly with them?”

  “Yeah. And they’ve got the little slime lizard. Holy shit.”

  The team limped to a halt in front of them. “Captain.” Daniel gave him a tired salute.

  Sam hardly knew what to do with the gesture, so he gave it back. “We thought you were up there.” He pointed at the blasted office tower. “Chen?”