by S M Briscoe
Jarred lifted himself out of the drainage pipe, Tarik and Elora following. He replaced the solid slab into the pipe’s opening, as he had before, and then removed his breather mask, taking his first breath of un-putrefied air in the last half hour. Elora removed her own, and then immediately vomited. He couldn’t say that he hadn’t nearly done the same. She seemed to compose herself quickly though, wiping her face and tearing eyes before stepping up next to him.
“Where to from here?” she asked, her face drained of most of its color.
Jarred retrieved the positioner again and held it up so that they could both see the display. With a double tap of his finger, he reduced magnification on the floor plan and pointed to the area they had just entered. “We’re here. Ground level.” He then rotated the image from an overview to ground view and began to scroll downward through the facility’s sub levels. “We need to descend levels to this area.” He stopped at the bottom level and increased magnification again. “These large open rooms look to be the most likely place to house large numbers of people. It also looks like the most restricted area in the facility, with only this one lift access point. It’s our best bet.”
“So how do we get down there? The lift? Won’t that be guarded?”
“Most definitely.” He scrolled back up to their current location, tracing his finger along a narrow vertical structure as he went. “We’ll need to travel down this air duct.” He pointed away from the positioner to their actual entry point into the shaft, a large bulkhead built into one wall with an opening occupied by a rotating fan that circulated the air from this level to all of the others below it. “Which we’ll enter here.”
Elora followed him across the room to the fan opening he had indicated, inspecting it for a moment before looking at him. “How do we stop it to get through?”
Jarred answered her question by shooting his hand into the unit, ensuring his timing was accurate, and catching hold of one of the passing fan blades. Exerting himself, he brought the fan to an almost immediate stop, its motor whining with effort as it fought against his hold. Pinning his elbow against the curved edge of the opening, he was able to hold the fan in place while using his free hand to retrieve the miniature grappling gun he’d acquired from Arden’s ample stockpile of gear. Reaching his arm inside the opening, he fired an anchor into the solid ceiling of the bulkhead, letting the attached spool of high tension cable fall down the length of the shaft.
“After you,” he said to Elora, over his shoulder, standing aside to allow her room to pass through. Surprisingly, Tarik stepped forward, grunting as he looked inside the opening, wasting little time before climbing in. Jarred shrugged. “I guess he’s going first.”
Elora followed, Jarred giving her a hand as she climbed up and through the space between the fan blades. Once she was inside, Jarred unslung his rifle and used it, in place of his arm, to keep the fan locked in place so that he could climb through himself. Using his feet and back to pin himself in place in the shaft, he removed the rifle, allowing the fan to resume its rotation.
They then proceeded to descend, using the cable as a support guide and their feet to walk down the shaft wall. Tarik did not seem to require the former, using the claws on his hands and feet to maneuver his way down with ease. It wasn’t very surprising considering his ability to scale the much more treacherous rock formations surrounding his own village. Jarred wasn’t so concerned with the aid in climbing down the shaft, so much as back up, which they might have to do at a fairly rapid pace if being pursued.
Reaching bottom, the shaft spread out in four directions, the ducts much smaller than the main shaft. They would still be able to walk in them, though crouched. Jarred opted for the duct that would take them over the area he was guessing they would be most likely to find the holding cells. From there, they would find a good, concealed vantage point and wait, hopefully, for Ethan to turn up. The situation and variables as they were, it was the best plan he could come up with, that had any chance of success, and if he was alone and this was Mac he was coming for, he would be doing the same thing. He had to ensure that he was treating this as he would any other hunt, well planned out with a cool headed execution. If he played it any other way, there would be too much room for error.
Elora was an unstable element in the equation, in that she was very emotionally involved, which made her a risk. He would need to keep her calm and rational, otherwise she could wind up doing something reactionary and off the rails of their plan, which would more than likely lead to them failing and being captured. He had explained all of this to her once she had made it clear he would not be going after Ethan without her, but saying and doing were two completely different things.
The duct continued on straight across the complex, branching off at multiple junctures. Jarred consulted the positioner regularly, though he had already committed this part of the grid to memory. More than likely, the area where the slaves were being kept would not even be included, with any accurate detail, in the floor plans. Multiple cells in the bowels of a waste facility would be something organic designers and engineers would talk about. Whatever slave holding areas and facilities there were in this plant, they would have been installed after the site’s original construction and there would be no design specs to prove they ever had been.
Coming to the first of the large open spaces indicated on the positioner, Jarred quietly popped open a ventilation grill, the opening leading into an open space, no taller than the shaft they were in, between sections of drop away ceiling grates and the solid foundation of the floor above them. Solid parallel walls also rose up to meet the floor foundation, the crawl space, which was filled mostly with batches of power cabling that ran in all directions and through outlets in the surrounding walls, appearing to run over top of a system of corridors, but not into the surrounding rooms themselves, or cells, as Jarred suspected they were.
Slowly, the dense cabling hindering their progress, they made their way down the corridor until coming to a cross junction. They waited there a moment as Jarred considered which of the corridors to follow. He chose to do nothing, motioning to Elora and Tarik to remain quiet as a mech rolled along one of the corridors toward their position, coming to a stop just under them. It waited there for a time, doing nothing, before finally turning and rolling back the way it had come. Jarred remained still, consulting the positioner for a moment.
“Where now?” Elora asked from behind him.
“We stay here,” he said, decidedly. “This spot is near the middle of what looks like the holding area. If there are slaves down here, this will be a good place to spot them when they start moving.”
Another moment passed.
“How long do we wait?” she pressed.
“As long as it takes,” Jarred answered. As it happened, that wasn’t very long. Almost as he had finished speaking the words, a set of doors slid open far up one of the corridors and a multitude of foot steps and voices began to approach. He turned to glance back at Elora, who looked obviously excited, and motioned her to remain still again. “Stay quiet.”
She nodded in response and Jarred returned his attention to the approaching group, a mechanical leading the way. A curious, synchronized tone sounded out at, what seemed to be, long regular intervals from somewhere within the group itself. He stared down through the grating, looking for any sign of Ethan as they passed beneath them. He found none. Once the group had passed completely, he looked back towards Elora again, who’s excitement had diminished noticeably.
“He wasn’t with them,” she said, sadly.
“That’s alright,” he reassured her. “They’re probably split into groups. We’ll follow them to where they’re going.” Jarred was about to start moving along the corridor when he heard another pair of voices back in the direction the group had come from. One of the voices sounded young and he almost immediately recognized it as being Ethan’s.
“It’s him!” Elora nearly exclaimed, though her voice was only slightly above a whis
per.
“Hold on,” Jarred cautioned. Calling out to him or jumping down there right away would give away their location to any mechs in the area. Once Ethan and whoever he was walking with had passed under them, Jarred waiting another few seconds to be sure that no mechs followed, he lifted the grating, sliding it away to create an opening. He then dropped down into the corridor, Ethan and the man with him turning at the noise he had made.
“Jarred!” Ethan nearly shouted, Jarred raising a finger to his lips to quiet the boy who nearly charged down the corridor, colliding with him in an embrace he felt himself welcoming and returning.
“I knew you would come,” Ethan continued, his voice lowered significantly. “I knew it.”
“Where else would I go,” Jarred answered, a bit overwhelmed by the unexpected tide of emotions surging through him. “But I didn’t come alone.” He motioned up to the opening in the ceiling, Elora staring back down through it, tears welling up in her eyes.
“Elora!” Ethan called up to his sister, as she climbed down through the grate, dropping to the floor where she was immediately embraced by him, tears, most likely comprised of happiness and relief, shared by them both.
“You came,” he spoke, his voice muffled by Elora’s shoulder.
“Of course we did,” she answered. “We wouldn’t leave you in this place.”
Ethan pulled back, a strange expression coming to his face as he looked between them both. “You guys smell awful.”
Jarred ruffled the boy’s hair. “Thanks for noticing.”
Ethan smiled, looking back towards the man he had been walking with. “I told you they would come.”
The man’s expression was not very impressed, but he seemed to do his best to put on the slightest of smiles, Jarred surprised at himself for not having noticed who he was earlier.
“Yeah,” Mac answered, his eyes locking with Jarred’s. “You called it, kid.”
“Mac,” Jarred greeted the man, a smirk coming to his own face. “Funny running into you here.”
“I was just thinking the same thing.”
“Come on Ethan,” Elora interrupted. “We need to get you out of here.”
“Is Mac coming with us?” Ethan asked, moving back to stand next to the man.
“Of course,” Jarred answered, keeping his eyes on Mac. “We wouldn’t leave Mac in this place, either.”
“Lucky for me,” the man commented, sardonically.
Ethan put on a concerned look, directed at Jarred. “You’re not going to turn him in, are you?”
“I was considering it,” he answered.
“You can’t,” the boy exclaimed, looking from Jarred to his sister, pleadingly. “He helped me. He looked out for me.” He glanced back at Mac. “He’s . . . my friend.”
Jarred looked from Ethan to Mac. This wasn’t happening. Things finally looked as though they might be turning back his way. He might actually be able to turn Mac over to Taliss, and escape the crime lord’s wrath for having borrowed his ship. It was looking as though his life could actually return to normal, the lynchpin being this kid pulling a guilt trip on him, because he and Jarred’s bounty had suddenly become best friends? He didn’t have time for this.
“We can talk about this later,” he answered Ethan. “Right now, we really do need to get you out of here.” He was about to reach out to take hold of the boy’s arm when he noticed that both his and Mac’s attention were fixed on something past him, down the corridor. He turned to see the mech that had been patrolling the corridor earlier, curiously frozen in position, as though confused as to what they were all doing. Finally, it began rolling towards them.
“Laborers,” it began, in an authoritative, though polite sounding voice. “Return to you cells for-”
Jarred cut the mech short, gripping the rifle slung at his side and turning only slightly to fire a round of energy directly into its head, blasting it to pieces. Alarms started to wail immediately after.
“Alright,” he said. “Now we really have to go.” He took hold of Ethan and lifted him up towards the opening in the ceiling where Tarik waited.
“Whoa,” Ethan said, in surprise.
“That’s Tarik,” Jarred assured him. “He’s with us.”
“Wait,” Ethan hesitated, before Tarik could pull him through the grate. “We can’t go.”
“Why not?” Jarred and Elora both asked together.
Ethan raised his arm to display the metallic wrist band attached to it, the familiar tone from before sounding out as it had with the passing group of slaves. Jarred had barely heard it in all of the commotion. “If we leave, these things will fry us.”
“Vaporize,” Mac seconded.
Jarred brought Ethan back down, taking hold of his arm to examine the flashing, beeping wrist band, the tones seeming more frequent now than when he had heard them before. He was by no means an explosives expert, at least when it came to disarmament.
“They’ll do the same if we don’t get back to our cells,” Mac added. “And soon.”
Jarred cursed inwardly, considering the options, or the lack there of. He didn’t like it, but there was only one thing they could do right now. “Alright,” he said, finally. “Get back to your cells.”
“What?” Elora cried.
“We can’t get them out with those things attached to them,” he explained. “And we don’t have time to figure it out right now. They need to get to their cell and we need to clean up that mech so no one else finds it. Then we’ll hide back up in the ceiling until I can come up with a way to disarm those things.”
“Hold on,” Ethan interrupted, running off down the corridor towards the remains of the mech.
Jarred followed. “We don’t have time. You need to go.”
“No,” Ethan protested, crouching down at the mech and lifting one of its arms, examining it. “I saw one of the mechs turn a bracelet off with this thing on its arm.”
“How?” Jarred asked, suddenly interested.
Ethan shrugged. “I don’t know. It just . . . ran it over the bracelet like this.” He simulated the movement as he spoke, receiving a single chime from the wrist band in response. It then clicked open and fell free from his arm. He and Jarred looked to one another, surprised.
Jarred’s grin quickly transformed into a grimace as, over Ethan’s shoulder, he glimpsed a set of doors open down the bisecting corridor, a half dozen bulky security mechs storming through the opening. His movements were fluid as he used one hand to push Ethan out of their line of sight, while raising his rifle to fire off two quick rounds, both finding their marks in the face plates of two of the security mechs.
Jarred reached down to take hold of the downed mech’s arm and tore free the device Ethan had used to release his bracelet. “Get down the corridor,” he then ordered the boy, sternly, handing the device to him. Ethan did as he was told and ran off towards his sister, Jarred dodging back out into the corridor to fire off another sequence of precise shots at the oncoming security mechs, dropping the remainder of them. He then turned and moved back down the corridor where Elora met him. “More will be coming. We need to move.”
Ethan was just using the device to remove Mac’s wrist band and Jarred took hold of him. “It’s time to go,” he said, as he lifted the boy up to Tarik, who pulled him into the ceiling crawlspace. He then turned to Mac. “You’re next.”
Mac hesitated. “I’m not sure I wouldn’t be better off staying.”
Jarred pulled him towards the opening. “You don’t have a choice in the matter.” Letting out a breath, Mac reached up towards Tarik’s outstretched hands and was lifted to where he could climb through the opening.
Jarred looked to Tarik. “If he tries anything . . . you can eat him.”
Mac glanced nervously at the Toguai, who growled at him in return.
Jarred gave Elora a humorous look, and was about to help her up to Tarik, when he felt a burst of white fire shoot through the rear of his shoulder, the sharp scream of the blast reaching him
a split second later. The shot sent him spinning to the floor and as he came around he attempted to simultaneously switch hands with his rifle while bringing it up to fire on his attacker.
Elora beat him to it, taking aim and firing an energy round into one of the handful of security mechs just rounding the two corners of the corridor cross junction. Coming up to one knee, Jarred loosed his own volley of rapid shots, glimpsing another group of security mechs passing through a set of doors at the far end of their own corridor. Even if he survived a firefight with so many armed mechanicals, Elora probably wouldn’t, and if they both made a move for the ceiling crawl space, they would all be headed off and captured. There was only one option for the moment. Jarred looked up through the grate at Tarik and Ethan who were staring back down at him, the Toguai looking as though he was preparing to leap back down to join in the fight.
“Close it,” he called up to them both, tossing his supply satchel up to Ethan.
“What?” Elora asked, incredulously, between shots down the corridor.
“Get them back to the ship,” Jarred ordered Tarik, who looked hesitant, probably due to whatever duty he felt he had to him. “We’ll meet back up with you.” He fired another spread of shots that took out the remainder of oncoming group of mechs, though he could hear more nearing the corners of the other corridor, then looked back up towards the open grate. “Go!”
Tarik blinked once and then complied, sliding the grating into place, though Jarred could still hear Ethan’s protests. He took hold of Elora’s arm and began pulling her down the corridor, away from the mechs just rounding the corners of the cross junction, arming and throwing another pulse grenade as they went. At a run, they reached the end of the corridor and rounded its corner as the grenade detonated. It wouldn’t have gotten them all, but it would slow them down. He needed to buy them some time.
