Integrated weapons. Destra wondered briefly about them, and suddenly another pair of alien displays appeared projected inside of her helmet. Something began moving against her arms and tickling her skin, and then glowing red apertures appeared in her own gauntlets.
Torv looked up at the sound, and pointed at her. A loud hiss sounded beside Destra’s ears, and she jumped with fright. A second later she realized it was Torv speaking to her over comms, and she felt like a skriff for being startled.
Easy, Des, she told herself.
Torv pointed to himself and held up his forearms, rotating them for emphasis. The glowing weapons disappeared, and the air around him shimmered. Then he disappeared, too. Torv had cloaked.
Destra got the message. They needed to use stealth, not brute force. But how would they coordinate with each other while cloaked?
Even as she wondered that, Torv reappeared, this time as a contoured shadow, as if he and his suit were somehow made of brackish water. Destra thought about cloaking herself, and in the next instant her own armor shimmered and disappeared, replaced with the same contoured shadow as Torv’s. Destra spent a moment wiggling shadowy fingers in front of her eyes. Once she was satisfied that the ghostly apparition was really her, she turned to look around for Atta.
She found Farah instead, not yet cloaked. The other woman tapped her helmet with one armored hand, as if trying to get her comms to work.
“Hello?” came Farah’s voice.
A small shadow appeared behind Farah, and Atta’s voice bubbled over the comms, “You have to think about what you want to do.”
Farah jumped and spun to face Atta, but instead of seeing her, she began looking around the storage room as if she were blind. “Atta? Where are you?”
“In front of you,” Atta said, de-cloaking right under Farah’s nose.
“Frek!” Farah jumped back, springing a few feet higher than she should have been able to jump. She landed with a noisy thud.
An angry hiss slithered into Destra’s helmet, and Torv began gesturing at Atta and Farah impatiently.
Atta explained the Sythians’ intuitive technology for Farah’s benefit. Moments later, Farah’s armor shimmered and she became a watery shadow, too.
“We have to go,” Atta said, pointing to Torv as he slunk off toward the door. “He’s going to rescue the other Gors before we escape.”
Destra tried a reply, “Can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear,” Farah said.
“Good.” Destra hurried after Torv, her footsteps whispering against the castcrete. She found the Gor staring at the door, as if he could see straight through it, apparently waiting for something.
Suddenly his hand shot out and stabbed a key on the control panel. The symbol didn’t correspond to either Versal or Sythian. Destra guessed that Torv must have experimented with the controls earlier to know how they worked now.
The door slid open, revealing a dim hallway. Torv held up a hand in front of her face. She had to wait. Then he crept out, crouching low, but moving fast. Destra poked her head out the door to see Torv rushing up behind a pair of armored Sythians. All the Sythians she’d seen so far were the size of adult humans, but these two looked like children, and they waddled strangely as they walked.
Torv reached the first one and snapped its neck with a vicious twist. The Sythian crumpled to the floor. The second one sprang away, its legs unfolding to twice their length. A pair of papery black wings spread out from the alien’s back, and the Sythian flew down the corridor, quickly putting distance between it and Torv.
Destra heard the Gor hiss over the comms, and then came a sharp crackle of weapons’ fire. A shining purple beam shot out of Torv’s gauntlet and the flying Sythian fell with a clatter of armor.
Torv turned to them with glowing red eyes and waved them over. Destra grabbed Atta’s hand and ran. Farah brought up the rear once again.
Torv didn’t wait for them to catch up. He raced down the corridor, a blur of inky blackness.
“So much for stealth,” Farah said as they passed the fallen Sythians.
“He didn’t leave any witnesses,” Destra replied.
“That doesn’t mean someone isn’t watching this corridor.”
Destra shook her head. “This isn’t a Sythian facility.”
“They installed lights, why not surveillance?”
“Well, it’s too late to worry about it now,” Destra said.
Torv skidded to a stop as the corridor reached a T. He held up a shadowy hand once more, and they stopped behind him, watching as he peered around the side. A dazzling purple beam sizzled by in front of his face, and he leapt back, hissing.
“Told you,” Farah said.
Destra shook her head, feeling dizzy with despair. The walls seemed to be closing in on her; the air inside her suit was suddenly too stuffy and hot. She tightened her grip on Atta’s hand and turned to look behind them.
No one there. Not yet.
“We need a plan,” Farah said. “Atta, tell Torv—”
But the Gor was already de-cloaking and jumping out into the corridor, weapons blazing. Bright purple beams flashed out from his palms, crackling like electricity as they were released. She heard armor clattering in the distance. Return fire shivered back, tracking Torv in a blinding stream, but the Sythians’ shots weren’t as focused as Torv’s. Only one beam found a glancing mark. Torv hissed with the impact and fired back in a steady stream. Armor clattered once more, and the enemy fire grew silent. Torv raced down the corridor. Destra grabbed Atta’s hand and ran after him. They came to a staircase with no less than half a dozen Sythians lying crumpled on the steps. One of them was still moving, and Torv stomped on its neck with a sickening crunch.
Destra winced and turned to see if her daughter had seen the vicious move. To her dismay, she caught Atta staring in morbid fascination at the dead Sythian under Torv’s boot.
Torv interrupted Destra’s thoughts with another upraised palm. She saw him staring off into the distance again, and she guessed he was using sensors to scan for more enemies.
Suddenly he spun around. Echoing footsteps reached Destra’s ears, and then a dozen Sythians came boiling into the corridor from the other end. Bright purple pulse lasers crackled out, lighting up the gloomy corridor. Destra just stood there, frozen in horror and shock, until strong hands dragged her away.
“Come on, Destra!” It was Farah. “Snap out of it!”
Farah threw her around a corner and pinned her against the wall. Torv stood in front of them, flattening himself against the opposite wall as a torrent of lasers flashed between them. Here the corridor widened just enough for them to shelter from enemy fire.
“We have to fight, Des,” Farah said.
“Mom, I’m scared,” Atta said, squeezing her hand.
Destra turned to her. Seeing Atta standing there in Sythian armor, with a deadly battle raging around them, Destra felt suddenly faint, and her eyes drifted out of focus. She wondered if this were all just a bad dream.
“Mom?”
“It’s going to be okay, Atta,” she said. “We’re going to wake up soon…”
“Destra! Don’t fall apart on me now!” Farah said.
Laser fire screamed through the corridor, washing everything a dazzling lavender-white. Torv was still not cloaked, and his black armor gleamed wetly in the laser light. Destra wondered about that; then she noticed the ragged hole in his side—the source of the wetness.
Torv’s glowing red eyes were locked on hers, as if in silent condemnation of her cowardice, but maybe it wasn’t condemnation. Maybe it was pity. Destra couldn’t decide which was worse.
She wasn’t a soldier. She wasn’t cut out for war. The Gor inclined his head to her, as if acknowledging her weakness, and then his palms glowed to life, two bright red apertures to match his eyes.
The torrent of pulse lasers streaming between them quieted, and Torv jumped out, palms raised and flashing with dazzling purple stars—miniature pirakla missiles.<
br />
Destra heard those tracking packets of energy slam into walls and explode with a thunderous roar that shook the entire compound. Castcrete trickled down from the ceiling, and residual vibrations came rumbling underfoot like an earthquake. Farah sprang out next, firing bright purple lances of light and screaming incoherently.
Return fire crackled back, and Destra cringed, her eyes slamming shut to block it all out. She squeezed Atta’s hand tightly. Torv gave a hissing scream, like a giant shellfish being boiled alive. Farah panted raggedly, cursing and calling Destra a coward. Destra willed herself not to hear any of it. Then a few stray crackles of laser fire silenced both Farah and Torv.
Silence rang like a crystal bell, and for a moment Destra dared to believe that it was over, that they wouldn’t find her or Atta.
Then footsteps sounded on the stairs—clack, clack, clack. Destra opened her eyes in time to see two armored Sythians picking a path through their fallen comrades at the top of the stairs. Destra’s heart leapt into her throat.
Those two were followed by another two, and then four more. Glowing red eyes found them, somehow seeing them despite their cloaking shields.
One of the Sythians raised his arms, and glowing red apertures appeared in his palms. One arm aimed at her, the other at Atta.
“Run!” Destra leapt in front of her daughter just as the sharp crack of laser fire sounded. The world flashed lavender-white. A searing pain erupted in Destra’s chest, and she crumpled to the floor, suddenly unable to breathe. Another crack sounded, and a small shadow clattered down beside her, alien armor flickering blackly as the cloaking shield failed.
Tears filled Destra’s eyes, and her mind wailed impotently. She had no air to scream. Then came another crackle and flash of lasers. The searing pain in her chest exploded into blinding agony, but a spreading numbness quickly took its place, and her vision grew hazy with encroaching darkness.
Destra surrendered to it.
I’m going to wake up now, she decided, her eyes drifting shut. That thought chased her down a dark tunnel toward a dazzling white light.
“So beautiful…” she whispered as she raced toward the light.
Chapter 12
Ethan sat behind the wheel of his air car, staring at the solid wall of tail lights, unbroken lines of red shining feebly into the never-ending night of the Null Zone. Apartment windows glowed in rows of gold to either side. Ethan sighed, rolling his neck and shoulders, trying to work some of the tension out of his muscles.
Traffic had been stuck for half an hour already, with no signs of letting up. While waiting, he’d tuned into the news nets for an explanation. Enforcers had set up blockades all over Sutterfold District, looking for a pair of children who had been abducted from the district councilor’s home a few hours earlier. Theories abounded about who had abducted them and why, but Ethan didn’t have time to worry about their fate. At the moment, he had his own child to worry about.
A tiny cough interrupted his thoughts.
“Her fever isn’t going down,” Alara said from the backseat of the car. “We need to get her to the hospital now, Ethan.”
He shook his head and gestured helplessly to the traffic. “How?” Ethan twisted around to look at his wife. Tears glistened on her cheeks, and her face looked ashen.
Trinity coughed again, drawing both of their gazes to her. Her car seat wasn’t facing him, but Ethan could imagine her tiny cheeks flushed and blotchy, her body burning itself up from the inside. By now the medication they’d given her should have worked.
“Why isn’t she crying?” Alara asked. “She should be crying! We should have called an ambulance,” she said, looking at him as if the traffic were his fault. “We can’t just wait here until Enforcers search every car in the city!”
“No, we can’t,” Ethan said, turning back around. He disengaged the lane-lock setting of the autopilot and set the car over to full manual control.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m getting us to the hospital,” he said, dialing the car’s inertial compensator up to 100%. That done, he pulled up and gunned the throttle. The car’s thrusters roared and they rose swiftly above the endless lines of traffic. Dead ahead lay the hazy blue ceiling of the Styx, cutting the city off at level 50.
A crackle of static roared through the car’s speakers. “Stop your car and submit to inspection immediately!”
Ethan spared a hand from the flight yoke to reply. “I have a sick baby on board. I need to get her to the hospital.”
“You are not authorized to leave the inspection area. If you don’t comply, we will disable your vehicle. I repeat—”
Ethan muted the comms, and pushed the throttle into overdrive. They jetted up through clear air, racing between a pair of foot bridges crossing the elevated streets on level 45.
Flashing lights strobed through the car’s rear window, and a pair of dazzling blue lasers flashed by.
“Frek!” Ethan pushed the car into a sudden dive. Airspeed quickly climbed past 700 kilometers per hour, and the car shuddered as windshear threatened to rip something off the fuselage.
“Ethan!” Alara yelled.
He pulled up and flipped the car on its side to skate through a narrow alley between buildings. Windows raced by in a blur of golden light. Collision warnings blared, and Trinity began wailing with them.
At least she’s crying now, Ethan thought.
Behind them, the Enforcers’ flashing lights were back. Another pair of blue lasers flickered by, hitting the building to Ethan’s left. They were shooting to disable, not to kill, but at this speed disabling their car would be deadly anyway.
The car’s headlights lit up the end of the alley. Flashing red brackets highlighted the gap, and an accompanying alarm screeched from the car’s collision warning system. The alley narrowed to a thin slice at the end. It wasn’t wide enough.
“Ethan!”
“I see it!”
He rolled back to level and pulled up hard, applying dorsal maneuvering jets to nose up further. Firing the grav lifts, Ethan bounced the car off the end of the alley and raced straight up, riding on a thin cushion of air.
A dozen floors up, the space between the buildings grew, and Ethan flew out into the clear. The rear-view display showed that he’d lost his pursuit.
Ethan grinned and risked a glance over his shoulder to make sure Alara and Trinity were both fine. As he did so, he saw the headlights of an approaching vehicle heading straight for them.
A loud blast from the other driver’s horn emphasized the danger. Another warning screamed from the car’s collision warning system. Adrenaline sparked in Ethan’s fingertips, and he slammed the flight yoke forward, diving straight down. Alara screamed, Trinity wailed, and then the lights were gone. The approaching vehicle roared overhead, rattling their windows with its passing.
“That was too close!” Alara said, sounding breathless.
Ethan swallowed thickly and nodded. He raced back up to the streets on level 45, keeping an eye out for stray traffic this time. He used the car’s nav system to guide him to the upper levels hospital where Alara had given birth just a few short months ago.
Enforcers found them again just as Ethan hovered down in front of the ER. “Get her to a doctor, Alara; I’ll deal with this.”
“Deal with it how? They’re going to arrest you!”
Ethan shook his head. “I’ll make a call to my boss. She has connections.”
Alara looked uncertain, but she hurried to unbuckle Trinity and climb out of the car. Behind them, Enforcers climbed out of their vehicles, too, sidearms at the ready.
“Come out with your hands up!” one of them said over his vehicle’s PA system.
Ethan complied, but Alara ignored them and raced toward the crystal pillars flanking the entrance of the hospital. A pair of EMTs went to greet her.
One of the Enforcers called for Alara to stop, his voice simultaneously muffled and amplified by his helmet as he stepped out of his vehicle to give
chase, but when he saw the baby in Alara’s arms, he decided to focus his attention on Ethan instead. The district councilor’s missing children were older than Trinity.
Ethan greeted the Enforcers with a smile. One of them came and bound his hands with stun cords.
“Sorry about the chase,” he said. “But as you can see, I wasn’t lying about the sick baby.”
“You should have called an ambulance,” the Enforcer replied.
Ethan smirked. “Funny, my wife said the same thing.”
One of the officers led him to a patrol car, while the other began a perfunctory search of Ethan’s vehicle for the district councilor’s missing children.
Ethan caught Alara’s eye as he was pushed down into the patrol car. She made a move to go after him, but he shook his head.
“Look after Trinity!” he said. “I’ll see you soon.”
* * *
The wait was long and agonizing. Not knowing how Trinity was doing made every second seem like an hour. Ethan’s brain buzzed with worry as he lay on the bunk inside his cell, desperately wishing Admiral Vee would wake up and find the message he’d left on her comms. As the night grew impossibly long, Ethan felt his eyelids growing heavy. Despite all the adrenaline and stress, he drifted off into a troubled sleep.
He dreamed that he was lying in the back of an ambulance with EMTs attending him. Neither his wife nor his daughter were anywhere to be seen.
“What happened? Where am I?” Ethan croaked. His heart pounded, and his head throbbed painfully with every beat.
“Don’t move, please,” one of the EMTs said.
Ethan rocked his head from side to side. With that movement, he felt a stab of pain go shooting through his neck. He winced with the pain, and something pulled tight on his forehead. Ethan reached up and found that it was a bandage. Horrified, he pulled on it, and his head throbbed more insistently. Something warm trickled past his ear, causing a maddening itch.
“I said don’t move!” the EMT said, slapping his hands away from his head.
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