“Sandy, your stunner!” she cried.
Could Sandy get out a stunner shot in time, at least one to immobilize the arm reaching for the gun, if not to immobilize the woman?
A low, skinny shadow appeared at the open door, and suddenly there was a cat on the bed! Sarah heard the crushing of broken bones as jaws closed over the hand reaching for the gun. Blood spurted, and the woman screamed. The animal let go the hand, and went for her throat, silencing the scream.
“Let's get the fuck out of here!” Sandy said in a shaky voice, giving the half-dressed boy a shove towards the door.
“Yeah, let's,” Sarah agreed.
But she lingered long enough to pick up the gun, a lethal weapon, and toss it under the bed, out of sight.
Outside the room they were met by one of the Guru's compatriots.
“I'll take Jay outside,” he said. “You two can head to the next room.”
He had a wry grin on his face. Sarah rubbed her face and nodded.
“Indeed,” she said. “Sandy and I are for the next hell-hole. And this time we'll look for weapons, first thing!”
**
“Are these people complete lunatics?” Leon was asking Guru Johannes, in the client room across the hall from the one Sarah and Sandy were dealing with.
The scenario which had met them was not all that different from the one the women were dealing with. A naked young man in a fetal position, on a pallet on the floor. This one was one of the dark-skinned ones, from the Guru's home world, Leon realized. A metal collar around the man's neck, attached to a chain which in its turn was hooked to the handle which served as a controller. An older woman comfortably asleep, under covers, in a big bed, this one snoring rather loudly from an open mouth. A gun on the bedside table, opposite the side where the male lay.
Leon, perhaps more attuned to the presence of firearms than the women across the hall were, went over to it, right away, and checked it. It was ready to be fired; he was a peace officer and aware of how most handguns worked. It was this that had prompted his half-rhetorical question; he had trouble understanding why there needed to be a lethal weapon ready to be fired, in a room devoted to sex, even if it was pretty unwholesome sex.
“These Elites live in fear,” the Guru answered as he dealt with the captive's collar. “Not one of them would admit it in public, but they know that they have squandered whatever good will there ever was for them among the population. They seem incapable of changing their bad habits on their own, and, fairly enough, fear that the masses under them will force them to do so. But they don't want to give up their privileged positions, and will kill to keep the status quo going.”
The snoring ceased abruptly, and the Guru turned his eyes to the woman who's eyes opened. She gazed upon the Guru in shock.
“What...what are you doing here?” she asked. “What are you doing to my provider?”
“Taking him home,” the Guru replied evenly.
Leon had set the safeties on the gun, and had tossed it under the bed. He came over to stand, in his considerable bulk, beside the Guru, and the young black man who was struggling up. He leaned over to pick the unitard off the bed where it had been lying and handed it to the one who needed it.
“You are thieves!” shouted the Elite woman. “How did you get in? I need to report your presence!”
She was struggling to get up, hampered by the weight of the bedcovers.
“Don't bother getting up,” Leon said in his most officious Peace Officer tones. “Our presence here has already been reported. It matters not at all—to you. Your fate is sealed. You are going to be feeding the kitties as soon as we get your abused captive out of this room.”
Sure enough, there was a hungry feline waiting at the door when the three men came out, the youngest one stumbling as one drugged—which he probably had been. He was taken in hand by another who had been waiting in the hall; the Guru and Leon headed into the next room, even as a panicky shriek, quickly cut off, emanated from the one in which they had been.
**
Things were worse in the room into which Lindy and Cameron slipped. The Guru had warned them that it would be bad. He had had Dyron's reports to go on, and the awareness of the Greencat who may not have been able to transmit precise human words, but was very good with mental images and emotions.
Lindy used her Agency training to ignore Coryn's form for the first moments while she scanned the room for weapons, and anything that could be used as such. There was a gun on a bedside table—of course there was a laser pistol. Could these Neotsarian Elites function without one of those within reach?
She sprang across the softly carpeted floor to the side of the bed where the gun was, next to a bag of supplies. She peeked into the bag while turning the gun's safety on, and gasped.
“There's a fucking drugstore in there,” she muttered loud enough so that Cam could hear, but not loud enough to wake the sleeper on the bed.
Although, had she been ingesting even some of the stuff in the bag, the woman was not likely to spring to alertness very quickly.
Lindy slid the laser pistol beneath the bed, out of sight, and out of reach, even as the action plan which the Team had devised earlier, called her to do. Then it was time to face the disaster which was Coryn's body, and which Cam was already examining.
“What, for heavens' sake, did she do to him?” Cam asked, his face mirroring shock.
“Turned him into her sex-toy,” Lindy answered harshly. “Using a pharmaceutical grab-bag, combined with all that equipment that seems to be a special feature of this client room.”
Coryn was naked, but not in a fetal position. He had not curled up because he could not. He had a collar around his neck, and a chain from it leading to a gizmo which must have served as a handle, and a controller, no doubt. Moreover, his wrists and ankles were restrained with what looked like leather thongs decorated with pastel ribbons, but certainly were nothing that simple. He lay spread-eagled on his back, his sex-organ erect, welts on his torso, arms and legs. His face was horribly battered.
“That's definitely not a normal erection,” Lindy said, leaning down for a closer examination of her once-boyfriend.
She wanted to cry.
“Good thing Sarah's busy with something else,” she said, steeling herself. “Let's get him loose, and out of here.”
“That handle probably has controls for everything,” Cameron said in a shaky voice.
He was Sarah's brother. He was, without doubt, using a lot of self-control to keep from throttling Evil Evella, the woman on the bed.
“Try it. You're the engineering nerd. I'll look for his clothes, and keep an eye on the monster on the bed. Though, she may be so drugged up that we won't have the pleasure of listening to her scream when the feral cats attack.”
There were two of those already skulking at the half-open door. Two; they must have been drawn there by her and Cam's distress. The Guru had said that they could sense emotions, even human ones. And they had their instructions as to who they were allowed to tear apart.
Cam picked up the gadget attached to the chain and examined it. The off-on switch was easy to find, but there was nothing to tell him what it controlled. Would pressing the button loosen all the restraints, or just some, or even only one, most likely the collar? There were three small meters on the handle, too, for setting the pressure on the restraints, by the looks of things. All were set on high, and Cam wasted a few seconds looking for a way to undo that. He found the levers and flicked all three at once to low. He heard a raspy in-draw of breath from his brother-in-law; then he pressed the off switch.
The collar clicked open, and so did the faux leather and ribbon restraints, all four of them. Cam drew a relieved breath, only then aware that he had been holding it.
At the same time a groan came from the bed, and “Shit, she's waking up!” from Lindy.
“I found what must be his display suit,” Lindy added, “but we'll never get him into it if he's all stiff from drugs and having been stuck in that
awful position.”
She grabbed the top blanket off the bed.
“Let's wrap him into this and carry him outside. I'm taking Evella's drugstore, in case there's something in it that she uses to counter the worst effects of her fun.”
The woman on the bed had dragged herself into a sitting position. Her expression was a mixture of shock and fury.
“What are you doing here, whoever you are?” she demanded, sounding considerably more coherent than Lindy had expected her to be. “You are both going to die!”
Her eyes fell onto the empty bedside table.
“Where's my gun? And my stuff? Did you two take them? You are going to die!”
“Of course I took them,” Lindy said coldly, leaning down to help Cameron wrap Coryn up. “And you're the one who is going to die. A nasty, brutish death.”
She and Cam managed to wrap the man on the floor into an amazingly neat package with the thin blanket while the naked Evella struggled out of her blankets, and began to look around for her laser pistol. Not quite as alert as she had sounded, Lindy decided. She grabbed the bundle that was Coryn, by his legs, leaving Cam to take the upper body. The face, which had been left uncovered for unimpeded breathing, looked tortured, and Lindy did not doubt but that this final rescue was painful to the mangled body. There was no help for that; they had to get him out to the rendezvous area.
Cam pushed the sliding door wide open to allow exit, and the two cats slipped into the room before the humans with their burden had started moving. Lindy grabbed the drug bag off the floor, and followed Cam out, glancing behind to see the animals begin the attack. Evella managed a croak, her eyes bulging at the beasts. Then the blood spurted from the torn throat; Lindy turned away, any sense of triumph that she might have felt having already turned to ashes. There was a sick churning in her stomach.
One of the dark ex-slaves was waiting to help them with Coryn's weight. He looked at their faces.
“I know,” he said. “Vengeance is not worth it. It never is. As telepaths, my people are very aware of that.”
“Only sometimes,” said Cam, his voice heavy, flat, “revenge is necessary.”
There seemed to be nothing to add to that.
**
Outside they lay their human burden on the grass.
“Oh my goodness,” whispered one of the ex-slaves when he saw who was inside the blanket. “Evella really went to town this time.”
“She was probably mad because she had been thrown out of her own home, for the night, by her husband and his cronies,” said another one. “So she didn't bother to be careful with him, the way she had been told to.”
“Or else, she had been given permission to do—whatever.”
Lindy dropped Evella's bag on the grass beside Coryn.
“If anyone of you knows anything about the antidotes that might be in here—it's Evella's drug bag—please feel free to help,” she said. “I'm an Agent, not a Healer, and useless in a situation like this.”
“If Ariane was here, she would know,” said the ex-slave who had been the first to speak. “It wouldn't be the first time that she had to do her best to clean up Evella's mess.”
“Ariane, the so-called Keeper?” Lindy asked.
“Yeah,” replied the second ex-slave. “She's not a bad sort. She's under the Elites' thumbs as much as anyone else, but she never hurts us unless she really has no choice. I don't think she likes hurting people.”
Lindy heard another ex-slave nearby laugh. He was staring towards the door.
“Speak of the not-devil,” he said. “Here's Ariane, now.”
The dark-haired woman, about Lindy's age, was quickly surrounded by the ex-slaves. The young men apparently were asking her to help Coryn; they led her over to where Cam was still kneeling beside his brother-in-law.
“Gracious!” Ariane exclaimed when she reached the scene. “What did Evella do this time? Oh no, I have no medications!”
“There might be something in that bag,” Lindy said, toeing the tote. “It's Evella's drug stash.”
“Yes, there's probably something useful in there,” Ariane said, falling onto her knees, next to the bag.
She immediately upended it on the grass, and began to paw through the contents.
“You people need to know that the Law-Enforcers have arrived,” she added as her fingers searched. “The fellow with the sleek cat was going to meet them, but there's four of them, plus the local security guard. Five armed men against one man and a large cat doesn't sound like the fairest odds to me; maybe you better send reinforcements to the door by the landing pad.”
“We have no weapons!” one of the ex-slaves cried.
“There are a half-dozen stunners in the top drawer of my desk,” Ariane said. “It's unlocked now that everything is unlocked!”
“Cam, you and I have stunners! And six of you fellows, if you're willing!” Lindy was already on her way to the door. “Come on, let's go!”
Inside the door she ran into Sandy and Sarah, with the last of the slaves that they had rescued. Lindy made a split-second decision.
“Sarah, you need to come help us defend against invaders,” she said. “Sandy, can you lend her your stunner before you take the boy outside?”
Sandy gaped. Lindy could tell that she almost asked “Why her and not me?” but she was a disciplined peace officer, and shut her mouth and swallowed.
“I don't need her stunner,” Sarah said. “I took one from one of the rooms.”
“Good. Sandy, take your protege to the group on the grass, and then make sure that everyone who is to be transported is there. Gather the stragglers if need be.
“The rest of you, follow me and Cam. We're a troop of nine; Shellion makes us ten; plus the Greencat is worth several humans. We'll grab the six stunners from the Keeper's office, and get ready for battle! I trust that Shellion and the Greencat have managed to hold the fort 'til we get there.”
**
Shellion and the Greencat had managed. They had done so simply by manually bolting the door to the landing strip. Shellion had been surprised and pleased to discover the bolt, probably a vestige from some different use for the building at an earlier time. The bolt made no sense in the context of slaves being kept inside the building, but it was a great help in keeping the Law-Enforcers and the one Security man out. Shellion, however, was not a man given to illusions; he was quite aware that the men outside would shoot through the door soon enough, or decide that it made more sense for them to circle the building, to find a more amenable door.
So far they had concentrated their efforts on the bolted door. He had determined that, by taking a moment to slip into the nearby Keeper's Office to check the information displayed on the desk screen. It's controls were not complex so he had had no trouble setting them to display the feed from the camera outside. The Greencat could have relayed the information to him, too, had he had the requisite talent to communicate with her, but he lacked that. No matter, he was certain that the animal was communicating with the Guru Johannes, and if the two defenders could just hang on a little longer, reinforcements would arrive.
How long did it take to corral all the ex-slaves on the grassy knoll, he wondered. That had to be done before the team members were free to come to help him keep the intruders at bay.
He listened, with the Greencat, to the sound of blasters attacking the metal door, wondering how long it would hold against the assault, when the sound of running feet alerted him. He turned to look, counting on the animal to let him know the moment the first fire would make it through the metal. Lindy, Cameron and Sunny (he found it hard to think of her as anything but Sunny), followed by a group of the ex-slaves were hurrying towards him. He was surprised that the Team members were already there.
“Ariane said that there are stunners, six of them, in a drawer in her Office,” Lindy said. “So I collected us a few recruits. Where's the Office?”
“We know,” said an ex-slave with dark skin and curly black hair, heading the ri
ght way. “We'll find them and be back in a second.”
There were two of the dark-skinned fellows; they would be from the Guru's home world, and were supposed to have ESP. They looked much like the darker Terrans—except that there was something undefinably different about them, just as the Guru was somehow, undefinably different.
“Those guys are not exactly dressed for soldiering,” Shellion muttered to Lindy and Cam in a low voice.
Lindy sniggered. The unitards which apparently were the courtesans' uniforms were definitely not armed forces wear.
“Those stupid suits were all the clothing they were allowed to have,” she said. “All the more reason for them to be keen to help us.”
“Makes sense.”
Shellion turned his attention back to the door.
“Oh-oh. I think I see some fire coming through, at the bottom of the door. They'll be through soon, though I can't figure out why they haven't—at least so far—thought of the fact that this place has more than one door, and they might not all be barred. If it had been me in charge of that squad, we'd have circled the building before attacking any one door.”
“They've been drinking beer all evening—the four Law-Enforcers, that is.” The first of the ex-slaves was back, the same dark one who had spoken earlier.
He had a stunner hanging from his fingers, as did the ex-slaves who were coming behind him. He glanced at the red heat at the bottom of the door, apparently deducing that it would hold a bit longer.
“I'm Dyron,” he said. “And you with the double identity,” he nodded at Sarah. “can help Ramon, me, and the Greencat monitor those fools on the other side of the door. And keep alert for whatever reinforcements they may get.”
Sarah nodded and grinned at him. “I remember you from some long-distance mental travels,” she said. “I haven't broken out my Stone yet.”
“You will, soon.” Dyron turned his attention to Shellion and Lindy. “Do you battle-scarred veterans have a plan as to how we should deal with this scenario?”
“First thing we do is retreat to at least as far as the Office door,” said Shellion. “Some of us will go farther. We need cover. We're fighting with stunners while those idiots have blasters, and laser pistols, and who knows what else.”
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