by MJ Blehart
Jace was appalled. “You’re going to start a fire in the tenements? Do you realize how many clones live there? How can you be so callous?”
Nazari laughed without mirth. “It will be such an unfortunate accident. But let’s face the truth, 2247. You and your kind have always been expendable. Nobody will shed tears for you.”
“Mr. Grant,” she said, and one of the three in scrubs who’d accompanied Feroz stepped forward. “Would you please inject our guests so we can get on with our lives?”
Jace had no intention of letting himself be injected. He knew it might be suicide, but dying fighting was damn better than what they had planned for him.
But before Grant could move toward the trio, somewhere in the wellness center, something made a low whoomp sound.
All light in the room abruptly extinguished, throwing them into pitch darkness.
11
Onima braced herself. She’d known what was coming.
The door to the conference room where they were being held burst open. She dropped to the floor and closed her eyes, hoping that Jace and Kara would follow suit, but there was no way to communicate with them.
Something was tossed into the room. Onima saw the flash even through her eyelids. Then there was a bang she felt in the middle of her chest more than she heard.
She was slightly disoriented, but could sense someone had gotten behind her. Her bonds were removed, and they helped her up.
In the low light coming in from the hallway, Onima could see smoke filling the room from the flashbangs. Something that felt like a breather was placed into her hand. She put it in her mouth, and the filter kept the smoke out of her lungs.
Nazari, Bettani, and their thugs may have been shouting, but Onima suspected that they were more disoriented than she was. Whoever had removed her bonds was pushing her toward the door.
When she reached the hallway, Onima discovered it was Teru pushing her. Jace had Hailey behind him, and Kara was being guided by a clone she remembered was named Bean Tushabe.
Teru gestured, and they started to run toward the front of the wellness center. Though Onima had left their hovervan in the back, she trusted Teru to guide them out.
As she ran, Onima removed the breather; the hallways were clear of the smoke from the flashbangs.
Just after Diane Nazari had arrived in the room, Teru had signaled Onima.
“Ms. Nazari suddenly excused herself and left,” Teru had said. “I presume you’ve run into a problem?”
Onima had acknowledged that subvocally.
“Alright. Let me figure out where they are holding you,” Teru had said.
As Ms. Nazari had given her exposition of all that information, Teru had let Onima know that they had made contact with some of the clones and were working on a plan to get the hostages out. They had proceeded to keep Onima ready so she would know when rescue was coming.
Further, Teru was monitoring Onima. Thus, they had picked the perfect time to spring their rescue.
They did not go through the lobby area, which Onima appreciated. Her hearing was starting to come back, and her equilibrium returning to normal.
Teru led the group out a side door. No alarm went off, though it was an emergency exit. Onima presumed Teru had disabled it.
She glanced back. Kara looked almost as disoriented as she was feeling. Jace, however, looked like he always did. Onima wondered if the clone had also been augmented in some manner to lessen the impact of a flashbang and similar devices.
Hailey Wang, Bean Tushabe, and Jane Wang stayed with the group as Teru ran ahead toward a hovervan with the wellness center’s logo on its side. They opened the doors, admitting everyone.
Onima took the passenger seat as Teru jumped into the driver’s seat. They withdrew the cable from their arm and connected it to the hovervan. It started, and Teru began driving.
“How’s your hearing, Marshal?” Teru asked.
“Recovering,” Onima said. She looked back now. “Kara, Jace, you okay?”
“Yeah,” Kara said, but she still looked disoriented.
“I’m fine,” Jace replied.
“Hailey, Bean, Jane,” Onima said, “I’m so sorry you got dragged into this.”
“We made our choice,” Hailey said. “They still need clones, but security will tighten. We’ll need to disappear for a while—but, given how little non-clones can tell us apart, it won’t be so bad.”
“Except that Nazari intended to kill us in a fire that would have killed a bunch of clones, too,” Onima said.
“Then I’m even more glad we chose to help,” Hailey said. “I’d rather go down fighting than anything they would want of us.”
The van rocked oddly, and Onima glanced back. Another van and a pair of hoverbikes were hot in pursuit.
“Damn,” Kara called out. “They took our guns.”
“Jane?” Teru asked.
Onima had not noticed the bundle wrapped in Jane’s arms. Removing the cloth, Jane revealed a pair of laser rifles.
“They use the same code on every lock in the place,” Jane said, “including their armory.”
Onima climbed into the back as Kara took one of the rifles.
“To the back,” Onima commanded.
Kara climbed further back, and Onima turned again. “Not the private spaceport, Teru. Head for the nearer public one and contact Yael.”
“On it!” Teru called.
Jace looked annoyed that he was unarmed, but he said nothing as Onima followed Kara.
There was a larger space in the back, without a seat. The door would iris open, leaving only a narrow shield of metal along its edges.
“Not much cover,” Kara remarked. The hovervan shivered as they took more fire.
“Not much we can do about that,” Onima said. “Ready?”
Kara nodded.
Onima tapped the control to open the van’s rear door.
The door irised open, revealing their pursuers. Someone was leaning out the side of the hovervan with a rifle similar to Onima’s, and both hoverbikes had rifles mounted at their sides.
Without a word, both Onima and Kara opened fire on the van. They didn’t aim for the windscreen but targeted the hover system at the base.
The hover technology vehicles employed across the galaxy used a magnetics system similar to what starships employed to produce artificial gravity. But rather than gravity, in vehicles, it created a zero-G pocket beneath them.
This was advantageous in many ways. Without tires, treads, or tracks of some sort on the ground, it was one less thing to maintain and potentially damage. Hover vehicles were most efficient and rode best on smooth surfaces, but they could pass over bumps and holes and low obstacles without a disruption of the system.
Yet it was an electrical system, requiring power. On a starship, where it produced gravity, it was far more stable and difficult to disrupt. On a hover vehicle, plasma bolts could overload and disable it, at least temporarily.
When you traveled along a road at eighty kilometers per hour, disrupting the system produced one of two effects. Either the vehicle would drop to the ground and skid, or it would be thrown by a power surge.
Most hover vehicles were designed to cut off before a surge might toss them. It was, overall, safer to drop to the ground than the vehicle being tossed.
After several dozen shots from Onima and Kara, that was precisely what happened to the pursuing van. It dropped to the ground and skidded to a halt.
One of the hoverbikes narrowly avoided colliding with the van, slowing it down. The other sped up and continued the pursuit.
Plasma bolts impacted the seat and van walls behind Onima and Kara. She glanced back to see the clones were all using the seats as cover, though Jace was keeping himself between Teru and enemy fire.
Kara leaned toward the open door to fire but was thrown into Onima as Teru dodged an oncoming hover vehicle. One of the pursuing hoverbikes was less lucky and collided.
Kara recovered and rolled back to the ot
her side. Onima sighted on the driver of the other hoverbike and fired.
One of her shots connected with his chest and tossed him off the bike.
Onima and Kara both kept a vigil at the door for a moment before Onima tapped the control. The door irised closed.
“Everyone okay?” Onima called out.
Fortunately, nobody was hurt. But multiple plasma bolts had marked up the seats and interior walls.
“Spaceport is a couple of minutes out,” Teru called out. “Should we ditch this before we get there?”
“Good idea,” Onima replied.
“Yael will need the time to meet us too,” Teru said.
Onima looked to Kara. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Kara replied. “Nothing that can’t be salvaged.”
Teru parked the van. Onima and Kara exited from the rear door as the others climbed out. They left the rifles behind: they couldn’t be concealed and would draw attention.
Cautiously, the group made their way onto the increasingly crowded street and began to walk toward the spaceport, visible about a kilometer away.
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” Jace said.
Onima agreed, but then noticed that they had the only clones on the street. Fortunately, people didn’t seem to be paying too much attention to them.
“Teru, was that van traceable?” asked Kara.
“Yes,” Teru replied, “until I disabled it. I know my shit.”
“That was ugly,” Jace said, then looked to the clones. “We could not have gotten out of there without you.”
“I just hope you guys are worth it,” Hailey said. “Though I admit, you’ve been a surprise. But if you can do something about that virus and really help our kind, any repercussions we suffer from this would be worthwhile.”
Onima considered that. “We could take you with us, Hailey. All three of you.”
Hailey shook her head. “No thank you, Marshal Gwok. We’ll be okay. If it’s true that Ms. Nazari was willing to kill a lot of clones in the process of hiding your death, everyone in the tenements may be in danger. We can’t leave them.”
“Besides,” Bean added, “they might think their security measures for tracking us are great. But the truth is, they can barely tell one of us from another. We’ll arrange a story with Cee-six to handle things.”
Just then, Onima realized she no longer had her datacards. They’d been taken, along with her pistols, when they were captured. “Has one of you got a datacard?” she asked.
Jane passed one to her.
Onima accessed her expense account and transferred funds to the card, then handed it back to Jane. “There should be more than enough ESCA here to cover what we promised Cee-six for the collective. I trust you will get this to him?”
“Of course,” Jane replied.
“I will also make sure that the food processing machines and solar panels we agreed to provide get to you,” Onima said. “I have no doubt we have resources for that.”
“Oh yeah,” Teru said. “I can totally make that happen, no problem.”
Onima appreciated that her trust in Teru, so far, was not misplaced. Though they’d not been in on the negotiations with the clones, their willingness to help and take help from the clones had saved her life.
As the group reached the spaceport, Teru said, “Yael has just landed. She’s sending me the bay info.”
Onima offered Hailey a handshake. “Thank you. Thank you for all you’ve done for us.”
Hailey shook her hand. “You’re welcome. Good luck.”
Then Onima shook hands with Jane and Bean as well.
Jace came up before Hailey. “We really appreciated your hospitality. I hope that I get the chance to return it sometime.”
Hailey smiled. “This is a lot more fun than shooting at each other across some unnamed battlefield, right?”
“Right,” Jace agreed. “Less structured, but yes.”
The clones went on their way, and Teru led Jace, Kara, and Onima to the bay where Yael sat in the Minotaur.
“When we face Bettani again,” Kara began, “can we please not let him capture us?”
“It can’t be good for our reputation,” Jace chided.
“It’s doing nothing for my ego,” Kara said.
They walked into the open bay where the Minotaur sat on its landing gear, engines still running but in standby.
“My hope,” Onima said, “is that next time it’ll be us capturing Mr. Bettani, rather than the other way around.”
12
Jace again found himself in the medical bay.
Granted, he had not previously visited the Daedalus’ medical bay. But the act of being in a medical bay and receiving a checkup of any sort was still odd to him.
Although Jace had breathed in hardly any of the gas from the flashbangs, Dr. Patel wanted to make sure everyone was unhurt. She was also checking the team over for any unexpected microorganisms. Kara and her injectable subdermal tracker were not wholly unique: the cuffs could easily have put trackers on the three of them.
While they all received a clean bill of health, Jace was still concerned about the virus. If, as Ms. Nazari had implied, they still meant to use it against the clones, it remained a central issue.
Given that there were now two suspected labs where work had been done on this virus, Jace thought it was possible they were continuing work on it. Did they hope to still use it to control clones? Were they looking to do something other than kill clones affected by the virus? Or were they trying to find a way to make the virus even more lethal?
Jace was no expert, but based on the conversations they’d had and the information he’d seen, killing clones via the virus was something of a side effect. Yet it was killing clones across the galaxy, and Jace didn’t like that it was clearly still out there and in who knew how many hands.
He worried about what Ms. Nazari had told him about the plans for the virus: It is still going to serve our plans. In many respects, it may serve better than creating a mindless army that would have led to some ugly fighting.
When a whole slum of clones dies....Well, that will be another matter.
Jace worried about that. She was right. Nobody would care about the deaths of all the clones in a given slum—except that it would draw attention. Particularly if no bodies remained. A virus wiping out a clone or two was ignored. But something that killed dozens or hundreds all at once would warrant investigation and concern.
The team left the medical bay and took up seats around Teru’s station. They all clearly had things on their minds.
“That didn’t go how any of us expected it to,” Kara said.
“Ms. Nazari did fill in a lot of the blanks,” said Onima.
“If we could prove it.”
“It’s recorded,” Teru cut in.
“What?” asked Kara.
Teru grinned. “Marshal Gwok and I had an open channel between us. I was background recording everything you heard. It would, unfortunately, be inadmissible to the courts, but it gives the Bureau sufficient material to continue pursuing this line of investigation. And if Ms. Nazari decided to file a complaint against any of us for this, it would trigger a broader investigation.”
“She’ll do nothing of the kind,” said Onima. “She won’t care to draw further attention to herself.”
“We know too much already,” said Kara.
“Yes,” Jace said. “But there isn’t a lot we can do with it, right?”
“Right,” Onima agreed.
Jace sighed. “I’m worried.”
“What about?” asked Onima.
Jace explained his thoughts about the virus and what Ms. Nazari had said.
When he finished, Onima said, “I agree this is still an ongoing concern. The virus is also what ties all of this together. What’s more, the virus is what ties Gray and Chuang to all of this.”
“You think so?” Kara asked. “You don’t think Gray and Chuang’s just a subsidiary simply working with the likes of Nazari a
nd Bettani?”
“No,” Onima said. “First, this is all way, way too big to be that simple. The kind of money that goes into bankrolling an operation such as this needs to be difficult to trace and veritably unlimited. Gray and Chaung is one of only a few companies that could. And we have a whole lot of circumstantial evidence to that effect.”
