by Jake Elwood
Kaia could die alone. Or she could die with a crowd. Those were Cassie's choices.
The ground rose and farmland swept past on either side. The flitter touched down on the outskirts of the city, close to a waiting taxi. Cassie switched vehicles and gave the name of a downtown hotel.
"You're making the right choice," Hearne assured her over the bud in her ear. "You're helping to free everyone on Zemoth."
Cassie didn't reply, just raised her middle finger and waved it in front of the cameras on her chest.
The taxi drifted to a stop. She didn't go into the hotel. The parcel she needed was in the back of an unlocked ground car a block away. Cassie found the right vehicle, shouldered the duffel bag she found inside, and set off down the street.
After that she killed time. She found a café with outdoor seats and a good long view in every direction, stuck the duffel bag under the table, and ordered a cup of coffee.
"What are you doing?" Hearne hissed in her ear. "I swear by all that's unholy, Marx, your brat is going to pay dearly if you betray me."
Cassie raised her cup to hide her lips and murmured, "Shut the hell up. I know what I'm doing."
"Shouldn't you get there early? What if there's a delay?"
"No, I shouldn't get there early," she snapped, glancing around to be sure no one was in earshot. "I'm going to get there at the last possible instant. If I trip an alarm I'll be finished and out of there before anyone can respond. You wanted a bloody professional. Now let me do my job. Let me focus."
Hearne went silent and she leaned back in her chair, sipping the hot coffee and trying to relax. She had done what could be done. Now she could only wait.
Singh Plaza was a squat office building in the heart of the city. Only four stories tall, it contained the offices of a farming cooperative and the local branch of an interstellar shipping line. The top floor was vacant. Cassie took a bounce tube to the third floor, then stood in the corridor as she opened the duffel bag.
A door hummed open behind her and the floor creaked under heavy footsteps. Cassie didn't turn around. The first step in getting people to ignore you was not to react to their presence.
"Whatcha' doin'?"
Cassie glanced over her shoulder. The woman behind her was heavy-set, middle-aged, and placidly curious. "Maintenance," she said curtly, and turned away.
"Oh." There was a long silence while Cassie pretended to rummage in the bag without letting the woman see any of the contents. She found the butt of a stunner by touch and got ready to drop the pest in her tracks.
The floor creaked again, and Cassie glanced back. The woman was trudging toward a bounce tube, her curiosity apparently exhausted. As soon as she stepped into the tube Cassie let go of the stunner and finished unsealing the bag.
She pulled on an antigrav harness, tried to fit the stunner into a pocket, and finally stuffed the weapon back in the duffel bag. Then she sealed the bag, slung it over her back, and turned up the harness until her feet barely touched the floor.
And stepped into the down tube.
She sank slowly, twisted the dial on the harness, and began to rise. The tube went dark as she rose above the level of the third floor.
When she reached the fourth floor the only light came from pale strips of safety lighting along the carpet. Cassie hit the "Neutral" button on the harness, which made her float in place, and pulled herself forward into the corridor. She shut down the harness and went in search of an east-facing window.
The collapsible laser rifle would work perfectly well through glass. She found an empty office, a scruffy-looking space with loose panels hanging from the ceiling and carpet that was dog-eared in the corners. The window extended all the way to the floor, so she lay down, assembled the rifle mostly by touch, and used the scope to scan the open park below.
Down at ground level she could see a tidy green space, a rectangle of grass with a few shade trees and plenty of fountains. Temporary seating surrounded a raised stage with a banner that alternated between "Welcome Skylanders" in meter-high letters and panoramic vistas of Zemoth and Skyland.
A few early arrivals sat in chairs or milled on the grass. Cassie could see a mix of Skyland and Zemoth security forces as well. She hoped that meant the speech would go off as planned. If Jerry had blown the whistle, Lark was doomed.
Over the next five minutes the seats filled quickly. Cassie set up a little inflatable cushion for the barrel of the gun, nestled down, and dialed up the magnification on the scope.
Finally an armored hovercar came gliding up, security officers clustered around, the hatch slid open, and the dignitaries appeared. President Highstar was first, a tall, beaming figure whose eyes looked cold above the smile through Cassie's scope. Three more well-dressed and important-looking people climbed out, along with a plainclothes security officer who scanned the crowd and murmured into a throat mic.
Kaia Highstar came out last. She wore a long coat of dark green, and she looked nervous. Was that because of the crowd? Or had Jerry told her what was coming? Cassie watched how the fabric of the coat moved over the girl's chest and told herself it looked stiffer than it should.
A local official bustled up to the front of the stage as the Skyland dignitaries lined up behind him. This would be Cassie's best opportunity, now while the girl wasn't moving. She lined the scope up on the kid's face.
The girl didn't really look like Lark. She was older, with a longer face and a darker complexion. But she was a kid, and that was enough. Cassie watched Kaia bite her lip, then glance at her father for reassurance.
"Think about Miss Carmody," Hearne said in her ear. "Do what you have to do."
Cassie thought about Lark, trapped with a pitiless terrorist, utterly dependent on Cassie. Depending on others was something Cassie had never been able to do, and allowing others to depend on her was something she'd always managed to avoid. Until Lark.
And now, Cassie had to do something truly awful, something that would destroy her life, take her away from Lark, and make Lark look upon her with horror and revulsion. There was only one tiny, miserable scrap of hope left. She had to make a leap of faith. She had to do the one thing she'd never learned how to do in all her hard-knock years in the backwaters of the galaxy.
She had to trust Jerry. Not to help her. Not to be there for her. No, this went far, far beyond any kind of reasonable expectation. She had to trust Jerry to, first of all, not be dead. Not be in a prison cell somewhere. To be free, to have overheard enough before he escaped to know where Cassie would strike. To be cold enough and brilliant enough and persuasive enough lay the groundwork for an assassination that couldn't be stopped.
"Miss Marx. Take your shot. If you value the life of the brat in the next room, take your shot!"
"Oh, piss off," Cassie muttered, and lowered her aim until the scope put a shimmering red circle on the green coat right over the girl's heart. Then, before sanity could return and freeze her finger, she took a deep breath, let it trickle out, and squeezed the trigger.
Flame erupted on Kaia Highstar's chest. She flopped back, and Cassie caught a split-second glimpse of the girl's face, eyes wide and mouth slack, in the scope as she fell.
Cassie set the rifle down, stood, and turned away from the window. All she could do now was give Hearne as little information as possible. And try to remain at large.
She was reaching for the seals on the jumpsuit when a shape loomed in the doorway in front of her, a huge man in Skyland armor with a shock rifle in his hands. The weapon, designed to bring down insulated battle robots, wold electrocute a human being. Blast her right out of her boots, in fact. She started to lift her hands, opening her mouth to tell him she surrendered. The barrel of the shock rifle glowed and the world exploded in a flash of blinding white.
Episode 6 – Valley of Heroes
Chapter 20
Lark could cross from one end of her prison cell to the other in four brisk strides. Strictly speaking it was the lounge of a fairly comfortable long-range skimm
er, but she thought of it as a cell. Hally was her jailer, a mean-faced woman who seemed to want an excuse to stun her. There was one other person on the skimmer, as far as Lark knew. Hiram Hearne. He scared her. He would have scared her even if she didn't know about the people he'd killed.
The lounge featured soft benches along two walls and a giant vid screen. There was a terminal, connected to cached net content with no live link to the rest of the planet. A tiny kitchen kiosk provided water and very simple boxed meals. A cramped bathroom completed the room's amenities. She could survive indefinitely if she needed to.
Not that she'd get the chance. They were going to kill her. Slowly, in all likelihood, unless someone rescued her. They had Cassie. She knew that from listening through the flimsy walls of the house she'd been in a few hours before. Lark was a hostage to force Cassie to do something, Lark wasn't sure what.
Cassie wouldn't do anything really bad. Lark was sure of it. She'd probably agreed to whatever they asked, then circled back and attacked the house on the edge of the mesa. But Lark wasn't there anymore. She wasn't anywhere in particular. The view out the lounge window showed endless kilometers of empty sky with the ground, a scruffy green wasteland, far below.
Hearne had found the perfect hideout. He was out beyond the mesas, floating over a sea of hydrogen sulfide. There were no landmarks, no points of reference. No way to find the skimmer at all. It was a speck at a random spot in the middle of nowhere.
Which meant Cassie couldn't find her. Lark was on her own.
The door slid open. After a long moment Hally appeared, shoving a stunner into her belt. The woman was wretchedly careful, staying well back from the door each time she opened it. The only plan Lark had come up with, charging Hally as she came in, wouldn't work.
The door slid shut. Hally gave Lark a suspicious stare, then gestured her out of the way and sat down at the terminal.
"You should let me go," Lark said. "It's the best way to avoid a long prison sentence."
Hally didn't speak, just drew the stunner and gave Lark the stink-eye.
If I don't try something, I'm in for a lot worse than a stunning. "Seriously. Too many people know about you. The whole planet is stirred up over you guys attacking the princess. You can't ever go back to your old life. You can be a hero, though. It's your only chance."
Hally swivelled her chair around until she faced Lark. She took careful aim with the stunner. Lark gulped as she found herself looking down the barrel.
"Say one more word," Hally said. "I dare you."
Lark made a face, but kept her mouth shut.
"Wise choice." Hally set the stunner on the counter beside the terminal and resumed whatever she was doing. Ten long minutes dragged past, while Lark sulked and Hally tapped icons and brought out a PAD.
"Hally." Hearne's voice echoed through the wall. "Check our fuel levels, will you?"
"Okay," Hally shouted. She gave Lark a spiteful look. "You stay out of trouble." The spiteful look changed to a smirk. "Not that you have much choice." She grabbed her PAD and hurried out, pausing just outside until the door sealed.
Lark trudged over and pressed a hand to the door panel, just in case Hally had forgotten to lock it. No luck, of course. The woman wouldn't be locking the door manually. Hearne no doubt had it set to recognize his goon squad. Still, it didn't hurt to try.
She turned away from the door, feeling despair dragging at her.
And froze.
Hally's stunner lay forgotten beside the terminal.
Lark spent several seconds grinning in delight, her heart beating faster and faster, until the next wave of depression came crashing in. Hearne ran a tight ship. There was no way the stunner wouldn't be bio-locked.
Still … you never knew. Lark picked the weapon up, pointed the barrel at the seat of the chair, and pulled the trigger.
Nothing.
She tossed the weapon into the back of the cooking unit and closed the door. When Hally came storming in looking for it, Lark decided, she'd play innocent. Stunner? What stunner? I haven't seen a stunner.
Maybe she'd cook the damned thing. Give them one less weapon to threaten her with. It wouldn't do much good, Lark knew, but it would annoy her captors, and that made it worthwhile.
Pity she couldn't unlock the thing, Lark mused. She wouldn't even know where to begin. Her gaze fell on the terminal, and she pursed her lips thoughtfully. The skimmer's data banks held a massive cache of net data. If anyone out there knew how to crack a locked stunner, the net could probably tell her.
She dropped into the chair, opened a query tool, and got to work.
It didn't take long to lose hope. Stunners, it seemed, were absurdly well-protected. If she could persuade Hally to hold the gun while Lark connected it to a PAD she'd be able to pretty much do as she pleased. Otherwise, though, she would need a top-of-the-line dark AI.
"Rats," she muttered, and looked over at the cooking unit. "Back to petty vandalism, I guess." She stood and crossed over to the cooker. She paused with her hand over the dial, though.
What if she took the stunner apart? What if she pulled out the coils, or whatever it used to stun people, and connected them directly to some other power source? Maybe she could improvise some kind of setup that would be good for a shot or two.
Really, how hard could it be?
She took the stunner out and set it beside her at the terminal. The brand name and serial number went into the query tool, and before long she was looking at schematics of the weapon.
It was appallingly complicated, and every part seemed to be permanently bonded to every other part. She kept reading, without much optimism but hoping for inspiration. Then the word "Danger" caught her eye.
DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME, the article said. Lark smirked and kept reading. There was nothing about unlocking a stunner. Instead, some suicidally-minded person had posted a guide to taking a stunner apart and changing key components. Most of it involved tools Lark didn't have, and all of it sounded dangerous, judging by the endless parade of grim warnings that accompanied the article.
"Resonating crystals are the simplest component for the home user to replace," she read. She perked up when the writer added, "Replacement requires no specialized tools beyond a simple driver."
She didn't have a driver, but there were kitchen tools that would work in a pinch. This was a pinch.
In the accompanying diagrams she saw that resonating crystals were little pink polyhedrons that could be found just ahead of the trigger guard. They would last pretty much forever, having no moving parts and no points of friction, but that didn't stop the writer from showing a step-by-step process for replacing them.
"Just make sure you put the crystals back in facing the same way," the article exhorted. "Round end forward. Pointy end toward the butt. If the crystals go in backwards, the weapon could dangerously malfunction."
Frustratingly, he didn't specify HOW the gun might malfunction. Dangerously, but for whom? Every scenario Lark could imagine had Hally pointing the gun at Lark when she tried to fire it. The last thing Lark wanted was to be killed by a shot from a malfunctioning stunner. What she really needed was for the gun to backfire, and stun Hally. Would it do that, with the crystals pointing the wrong way?
Lark looked at the stunner, which of course had a barrel only on one end. Firing backward seemed pretty unlikely. Still, it wasn't as if she had any GOOD ideas.
"Don't worry too much if you get it wrong," the article said toward the end. "If the resonating crystals are reversed or there is any other serious hardware issue, the safety light on top of the weapon will go on, and the trigger will lock."
"Well, poop," said Lark, and flipped through the article, looking for a description of the trigger lock. The lock, it turned out, was a simple bit of plastic that would slide into place where the trigger was hinged inside the case.
She took apart the stunner. Without a driver it was a messy job, requiring her to dig around at the heads of several small screws with the tip of
a kitchen knife. By the end of it the case of the stunner was badly scratched and the screws were gouged almost beyond use. She would have to keep Hally distracted, she decided. If the woman took a good look at the weapon, the game would be up.
The first thing Lark did was locate the trigger lock. She wedged the tip of her knife against the plastic knob above the trigger hinge and slammed her hand down on the end of the knife handle. The knob broke off with a satisfying pop and bounced across the floor.
After that, all she needed was a moment to find the resonating crystals. It wasn't difficult. The inside of the stunner, so complicated in the diagram, was pretty much a uniform mass of white and silver once the case was open. It was a solid mass, except for a narrow channel with three little pink lumps in it.
They were smaller than Lark had expected, half the size of her baby teeth. She poked at them with the kitchen knife, achieved nothing, and finally turned the stunner upside-down, shaking the crystals into her palm. One tumbled onto the floor and it took her three tense minutes to find it, her hands sweating as she imagined Hally wandering in.
At last she found the errant crystal. Getting them back in was an even bigger challenge. Tweezers or a force driver would have made the task simple. With only her fingers it was quite a chore. Her fingertips had never seemed so fat.
When two crystals were in place there wasn't room for a third. She used the tip of the knife to push the crystals along the bottom of the groove, imagining the shock she might get if she touched the knife to the wrong spot. With no idea whether it was dangerous or not, all she could do was poke away with the knife and hope for the best.
After an endless time the last crystal dropped into place, pointy end toward the barrel of the stunner. Lark put the case back together, doing her best to tighten the damaged screws.
That just left the safety light. It glowed on the top of the stunner, a red circle the size of Lark's smallest thumbnail, impossible to overlook. She would have to smash it, she decided. The broken light would be noticeable, but less obvious than if it glowed.
