“Some man attacked me in the kitchen. The dining room. I mean, I was getting some cheese and… coming out of the kitchen… and I crashed into him.” Jamie’s words came in a jumble. Her chest was heaving as she caught her breath.
“Slow down,” Val said, keeping her voice low and hoping Jamie would do the same. “We have an assassin on the premises.” She pointed at the body.
“I know,” Jamie whispered, her eyes round. She barely seemed to notice the guard. “I just killed one.”
“In the kitchen?” Gregor looked down at the body, probably wondering the same thing Val was wondering. Was Jamie talking about the same person who had killed the guard, or was there more than one assassin?
“Yes. He grabbed me, and I thought—it’s stupid but after what we were talking about, I thought he was trying to… force me to have sex. I clunked him in the face with my tray. It was heavy, ceramic or something. It surprised him, but he grabbed me as I tried to get away. I tripped on his foot. But I had grabbed the knife before throwing the tray at him. I wasn’t thinking about anything except defending myself, getting away. When I fell, I was all tangled up with him, and he fell with me. I didn’t mean—it was the craziest accident that would never happen again, but the knife jammed into his chest. I almost didn’t go back to check, but when I was running away, it surprised me that he didn’t follow. He was just lying there, and I thought… I don’t know. I wasn’t sure if I should get help, but I realized I didn’t recognize him, and then I saw he had a patch on his shoulder. Like our Mandrake Company comm patches, but this wasn’t familiar. I thought he might be a spy. Anyway, I grabbed his gun and ran here to tell—I was going to look for the base commander.”
“She’s dead too,” Val said grimly.
“I… was she the target?” Jamie finally calmed down long enough to look down at the guard. “Are they assassins?”
“We assume so.”
Gregor had heard enough, it seemed. He reached for the doorknob. “I’m going to check on the admiral. If it’s not already too late.”
“I’m coming with you,” Val said. “Jamie, why don’t you stay here?”
“Alone?” Though she didn’t add, with the body? Jamie did give the dead guard another long look. “I’d rather go with you.”
Gregor, already out in the hall, frowned slightly, but he didn’t object when Val and Jamie followed him. He probably didn’t think much of having a pair of women trailing after him, especially one who didn’t have any combat experience— barring freak incidents with cheese knives. Too bad. Val knew she could help. And she could understand Jamie not wanting to be left alone too.
They reached the stairs, pausing at the last set of doors before going up. The wall was a darker shade of rock next to the stairs. Maybe it had been harder to tunnel through, forcing the upward shift. Val doubted Gregor had stopped to admire the rock. He had tilted his head, listening to something. Someone at the top of the stairs? Val was already bracing herself for more carnage. She almost waved Gregor onward, but realized his ear wasn’t cocked toward the stairs but toward a door beside them.
For a second, Val was confused, until she leaned closer and caught the thumps and moans. Ah, no, those weren’t sounds of a fight. She would have waved Gregor onward, but he was already shaking his head and starting up the stairs.
He stopped a few feet from the top, and Val squeezed up beside him so she could see too. Another body waited on the floor a few doorways down. Nobody had bothered hiding this one. The man’s hair was dark, so it wasn’t the admiral. Gregor started forward again, his pistol raised. A door near the man stood open, and a light was on inside. Gregor gave Val a significant look. Did that mean this was the admiral’s room? He held up a hand in a wait-here sign.
She wanted to object, but he was a better fighter than she, and probably more practiced at sneaking up on people. Reluctantly, she gave him a nod. She put her back to the wall, so she could watch the hallway and the stairs, and waited for Gregor to sneak forward and have a look. Jamie took up a similar position across from her.
He followed the wall, the same one that held the open door, and kept his pistol pointed forward. Val held her breath as he neared the admiral’s bedroom.
At that instant, an electronic braying started up in the hallway. Val nearly dropped her pistol. Alarm. It had to be. Someone had figured out there were intruders or noticed that someone was missing from a post.
A door clanged open on the floor below. The whole base would be awake soon. Would that stop the assassin? Or make him act more quickly?
Gregor had disappeared into the admiral’s room. Val was about to start in that direction—it wasn’t as if stealth mattered now—but Jamie blurted, “It’s one of them.”
She flung her hand toward the bottom of the stairs. Only two doors were visible, two doors that had been closed. One was open now, still swinging on its hinges.
“He went in there,” Jamie added in a whisper.
It was the room where the people had been having sex. Val didn’t know who they were or why they might be targets, but she gave Jamie a nod and charged down the stairs. At the worst, they would be mistaken, but maybe they could save someone.
Taking the last four steps in one jump, she landed and ran through the door. It was dark inside, so she paused, but a surprised yell propelled her farther. As she fumbled for the palm switch, a streak of crimson lit the air. Laser beam. Hell, the switch wasn’t activating the lights. Someone must have disabled it. Val did her best to guess where the shot had been fired from and blasted the spot with her stunner. Unlike with the laser weapons, it didn’t matter much if she hit the wrong person.
A grunt came from her right, and she fired over there too. By the time she was done spraying stunner blasts, she had probably hit everything in the room. Belatedly, she hoped Jamie hadn’t misconstrued what she had seen and sent Val in to stun half of the officers on the base.
The alarm continued, reverberating through the walls like the gongs of some massive old bell. Shouts sounded, too, as well as more door slams.
“Where are the damned lights?” Val demanded, wanting to know what she had done in the room.
“I’m trying to bring them up,” Jamie said over the clamor from the hallway. “Someone shot the panel.”
“Bloody hell.” Val patted down her clothes, trying to remember if she had her tablet with her. Yes, there it was. She pulled it out, unfolded it, and the hologram display brightened the air around her. That was already enough for her to make out the outline of furniture and people—unmoving people. “Lamp,” she said, and the hologram turned into an image of an old-fashioned light bulb. The illumination highlighted two bodies tangled on a bed and a third person wearing black and lying in the middle of the floor, a pistol clenched in his grip. That was the one she must have hit with her first shot.
“That’s him,” Jamie said grimly, removing the pistol from the unconscious man’s hand. “He’s wearing the same outfit as the one who attacked me.”
The “outfit” was nothing but tight black clothing with a utility belt that held a rappelling kit and a couple of other tools. Val pointed her light toward the bed. She had already discerned that the entangled bodies were naked—it seemed a lot of people had sex on the mind tonight—but needed to identify them. She didn’t recognize the woman, but that was—
“Uh,” Jamie said, “is that the admiral?”
“Yes. Horny bastard.” Val snorted, realizing his oversexed tendencies might have saved his life. This wasn’t his room, so the assassins must not have known at first where he was. They would have been looking for him in his room.
Val’s head jerked up. The room Gregor had last been seen going into.
“Move,” she barked, charging for the door. “We have to—”
The whine of laser fire came from the hall at the same time as an orange beam burned through the air, not a foot from the doorway. Val halted herself on the jamb an instant before she would have been skewered through the head.
“Now what?” she demanded, though possibilities spun through her mind. The one or ones who had been in the admiral’s room, who might have already killed Gregor, were trying to fight their way out.
“Should I stay with them?” Jamie asked.
Val barely heard her. She waved an affirmative, but was focused on the hallway. Answering laser fire came from the opposite direction, this streak tilted downward. Coming from somewhere on the stairs? Maybe the first shot had come from the direction of the intersection.
When the beams stopped for a second, Val risked poking her head across the threshold, glancing in both directions lightning quick, then pulling back inside. A good thing, because someone was on the stairs, and he aimed at Val immediately. The red beam blasted into the doorjamb, burning into the stone and hurling shrapnel toward her. She scrambled back, nearly tripping over the end of the bed. The scent of burning stone filled the room, and smoke hazed the doorway.
Only fear and adrenaline kept Val from dwelling on the fact that Gregor had to have been… dealt with if someone was firing at her from the stairs. She didn’t think there was another way out from that passage up there.
She clenched her jaw and returned to the jamb, though she didn’t stick her head out again. More shots fired from the other direction. People must be standing in the doorways farther back, trying to hit the person on the stairs. And what was he doing? He couldn’t possibly escape past what had to be half of the base by now. Maybe he was buying time for something. What? Did he have a buddy back there trying to burn an escape hole? Val wasn’t sure if there were any levels above this one.
When the red beam fired again, the one from the stairway, she risked leaning out again. He should be intent on another target. Now was the time. She squeezed the trigger, firing a burst toward the stairs before ducking back in. The beam of red jerked in her direction again, but a cry of pain sounded at the same time. The laser winked out. She couldn’t be sure it wasn’t a ruse, but she dropped into a crouch, adjusting where her head would poke around the corner, and leaned out to fire again.
It wasn’t a ruse; her attacker was grabbing his side and trying to scramble back up the stairs without turning his back on the hall. She shot again. He was almost out of sight, but she caught him in the leg. Another cry came from him as she was ducking back in. She was about to lean out to check again, but two people charged past in the brown clothes most of the base personnel wore. They led the way with big laser rifles.
Normally, Val would have been content to wait out of the way while they took care of everything, but if there was a chance Gregor was up there and still alive, she couldn’t simply stand here in a room. She stepped into the hall, but almost crashed into two more men. One planted a hand against her shoulder, pushing her backward.
“Wait in your rooms while we check the rest of the facility,” he yelled over the still-braying alarm.
More people were jogging down the hall with weapons. Val huffed in frustration and backed away. She would wait until they passed, but not a second longer. That was her thought, anyway. Two of the men stopped in the middle of the hall. Judging by their words and gestures, they were in charge of making sure people stayed in their rooms until everything was resolved.
Light flooded the room behind Val.
“Got them working.” Jamie pointed to the panel for the room controls; it was almost as melted as the doorjamb.
“Good.” Not that Val cared. She itched to run out. It wasn’t as if the base personnel would shoot her in the back. At least she was fairly certain they wouldn’t.
A groan came from the bed. A masculine groan. Val bared her teeth. After witnessing the last time Summers had roused from unconsciousness, she didn’t want to be here this time. He probably wouldn’t even be embarrassed to have been caught in bed with some random person he had known for less than two hours.
Summers blinked bleary eyes, wincing at the headache the stunner would have left him. He stared down at the naked woman in his arms and checked her pulse—well, he wasn’t completely self-absorbed then—before frowning around the room. His gaze skimmed over Jamie, then settled on Val. He scowled.
Val looked toward the hall. Maybe it would be worth risking a shot in the back to escape this room before the interrogation started.
“What the hell is going on?” Summers demanded.
Too late.
13
Gregor patted down the unconscious man on the floor, searching the pockets in his black clothing for clues as to his mission. Killing Admiral Summers might be his only goal, otherwise why would he be in his bedroom, but the assassins might have other orders as well, especially given the size of their team. Gregor had knocked out this man, surprising him by bursting into the room as that alarm had first sounded, but the laser fire squealing in the nearby hallway promised he wasn’t the only intruder left alive. And then there was the man Jamie Flipkens had found. Had they all been out, sneaking around in the halls, because they were looking for the admiral? Or was there more going on?
Shouts echoed from the direction of the stairs. Gregor wanted to run back and check on Val, but this would only take another second, and he believed her capable of handling herself. The pockets gave up nothing, but when he tugged off the man’s boots, looking for secret compartments, he found a silver-blue residue on the heel. He scraped off a smear and sniffed it. It smelled similar to old-fashioned gunpowder, but Gregor recognized it as a much newer explosive: Flash-5. As with gunpowder, a spark could ignite it, but a far smaller amount could do far more damage. It could be encapsulated in bombs, but it could also be smeared across a surface and lit with a match or a laser tool. Either way, a couple of ounces of the substance could take down the mountain, crushing everyone inside of it.
Gregor kneeled back. He had to find the admiral and figure out what the intruders had rigged to explode.
Though these needs filled him with urgency, he forced himself to clean every hint of the residue off his finger before leaving. The last thing he needed was to forget it was on there and touch something with a charge. He shuddered.
He was about to step into the hallway when the sound of boots pounding toward the room stopped him. It was probably people from the base, but he stood to the side of the doorway, Val’s pistol ready in his hand.
Two men in brown miners’ garb ran into view. Their strides faltered when they spotted him. Yes, he was supposed to be locked in his room, not roaming around the base.
Gregor lowered his weapon and spread his free hand. “The admiral isn’t here, but I have temporarily nullified one of the assassins.”
The men frowned suspiciously at him, but they looked inside the room.
“Another one, damn,” one said.
“Where’s the admiral?” the other demanded.
“I don’t know,” Gregor said. “I only recently escaped my own room.” He eased toward the doorway, eager to reunite with Val. And, despite his current predicament, he felt compelled to join the search for Admiral Summers. These people needed him.
“Stay here,” one ordered, and they both ran back into the hallway.
That was poor form. They should have searched the body, and they certainly shouldn’t have left him alone here when he was, in their people’s eyes, an escaped prisoner. Gregor slipped into the hall. He would take advantage of their ineptitude.
Two more men in brown ran past him, barely blinking an eye. Maybe they didn’t recognize him. Another black clad man lay crumpled on the stairs, smoke still wafting from his uniform. Gregor gave him a quick search, but since Val wasn’t at the top of the stairs where he had left her, he was more eager than ever to locate her. Also, since she had been the one to let him out, she might know more about where the assassins had come from—and where they might have gone to set explosives.
He spotted Squadron Leader Zimmerman in the intersection at the far end of the hall and almost jogged past an open door at the bottom of the stairs. Since it was the room where the sounds of copulatio
n had been coming from before, he couldn’t imagine it would hold any interest for him, but he did glance in as he ran. He halted in mid-step, spotting familiar unruly brown hair. Val. And Jamie was there, too, looking the other way as a naked gray-haired man pulled a set of trousers down from a sprinkler head on the ceiling. A strange place to store clothing.
Gregor ran inside and would have hugged Val, but the naked man looked at him, and Gregor nearly cursed in surprise. “Admiral Summers.”
“There’s the fine eyesight pilots are known for,” Summers growled, then dropped onto his knees, fishing for something under the bed. There was a fourth person in the bed, a pretty young woman with the blankets pulled up to hide her nudity.
“I was just explaining to the admiral…” Val waved at the pale butt sticking in the air—ah, that was a shirt Summers was pulling out. An even more bizarre place to store clothing than a sprinkler head. “His sexual exploits have likely saved his life because there are assassins on the base.”
“Now we’re guarding him while he dresses,” Jamie said, gazing up at the ceiling as she spoke.
“I didn’t ask for guards,” Summers growled, climbing to his feet with his shirt and boots in hand. “Where’s my underwear?” He looked at the woman, who only shrugged and glanced toward the doorway. She probably wanted everyone to leave. Or maybe she wanted to leave.
“I found Flash-5 on one of the assassin’s boots,” Gregor said. The admiral’s presence and state of undress had distracted him momentarily, but this news must be shared so a search could be started immediately.
“What?” Summers cursed and stuffed his legs into his trousers, sans underwear. “Anstrider!” he bellowed.
“She’s dead,” Val said.
“I’m going to look for the explosive.” Gregor pointed to Val. “You were the first to discover the assassins, right? Do you know where they came from or where they might have been already?” He had studied a map of the complex when they first arrived, and he could make some guesses as to structurally likely places to set explosives, but it would be most useful to know the intruders’ incursion route.
Mandrake Company- The Complete Series Page 47
