by JJ Green
According to the results of Carina’s Cast, the Dirksens had the Sherrerr boy in what seemed to be a staff locker room on the first floor. The room was central, which meant another deep infiltration from the perimeter of the building. Approaching the front entrance was out of the question. They had no reason to be there as the place had closed down for repairs, and they would be recognized immediately.
Carina’s idea was to approach at night from another direction and enter the site through a breach in its fence.
“They won’t be expecting us,” she said. “They won’t think we’ll return to the same place.”
“They might if they find out the intel about the kid was leaked,” said Atoi.
A look passed between Carina and Speidel. “I’m confident that won’t happen,” the captain said. “But I have another proposal,” he added. “I don’t doubt that the Dirksens will have alerted the planet authorities about us. If we land at the spaceport, we’ll likely be arrested on a trumped up charge. Instead, we’ll catch them by surprise. We tell Stevenson to fly us right onto the plant roof. We fight our way down to the room where they have the kid, grab him, and fly right out again. They don’t have any spacecraft on site to pursue us. If we’re fast enough, it might work.”
“What about ships orbiting the planet?” Smitz asked. He was chewing his disgusting herb again.
“If the Dirksens had a starship in the vicinity that stood a chance of defeating Duchess,” said Speidel, “we would have been under attack by now. I’m guessing they didn’t want to draw the Sherrerr’s attention to Orrana by stationing one of their better ships here for no obvious reason. But that isn’t to say that one isn’t on its way to force us out of the area after our escapade.”
“Will the roof withstand a shuttle landing on it?” Carina asked.
“Enough to not collapse,” Speidel replied. “And that’s all that matters for our purposes. We’ll be suited up, so we’ll have some protection from the heat.”
No more questions were forthcoming, and time was of the essence. Within quarter of an hour, they were in the shuttle and descending to Orrana’s surface.
The descent was rapid. Stevenson swept them in at maximum speed. Carina and the others gripped webbing above their heads for extra stability as the ship tilted at a forty-five degree angle. The speed lifted them out of their seats, then they were thrown forward as the pilot employed reverse thrusters hard. The shuttle dropped precipitously to the smelting plant roof.
Before the shuttle had fully touched down, Stevenson opened the ramp, and the mercs ran out onto the smoking hot roof. The door to the building was locked, but in a heartbeat Smitz burst through it and led the charge down the stairs.
The mercs’ attack was so fast, the first Dirksen guards they met were taken completely by surprise. Concentrated pulse fire from the mercs’ Jensen rifles was sufficient to penetrate their armor, and some weren’t even suited up.
By the time they reached the second floor, the news of the attack had arrived, and they met stronger resistance. Turning a corner on the stairs, Smitz ran into a shot from one of the Dirksens’ advanced weapons. He was thrown back and lay unmoving on the steps.
His chest plate bore a melted patch from the glancing hit. Carina lifted his visor. Above his mask, the man’s eyes were open. “M’okay,” he said. “Just gimme a minute.”
While Atoi sprayed pulse fire down the stairs, Speidel started the twenty second delay on an explosive. Through her comm, Carina heard him counting down. As she helped Smitz up the steps, away from the blast zone, she mentally counted with him. Six. Five. Four.
Speidel set the explosive rolling down the steps and sprinted up them with Atoi.
Three. Two.
The explosion roared up toward the mercs, sending a cloud of smoke and debris with it. Having no choice but to abandon Smitz for the moment, Carina, Atoi, and Speidel hurtled down the stairs and into the blast area, which was thick with a smoky haze.
Unable to see where she was going, Carina collided with a Dirksen guard and found herself sprawling on the floor. A muzzle appeared in her vision and she grabbed it, hauling the guard on top of her where the close quarters would prevent him from firing. She tried to wrestle the gun from him.
Letting go of the weapon, she jumped up and kicked it from his grasp. The gun went skittering down the stairs, and the guard tried to go after it, but Carina jumped on his back and wrenched open his visor. She ripped off the man’s breathing mask and tried to throw it, but he tackled her from behind, grabbing her around the knees. Carina’s helmet hit the edge of a step. The cushioning absorbed most of the blow but she remained tightly held as the guard fought to free his mask from her hands.
Carina was lying face down, head downward on the steps and her blood was rushing to her brain. She held the mask and her Jensen under her and was kicking backward to force the guard away. Suddenly, she felt the man’s full weight upon her. She wriggled out from underneath him. He was dead, his face a melted mess, and Smitz was standing over him.
They continued to the bottom of the steps, where Speidel and Atoi had their backs to a corner wall. They were at the corridor that led to the locker room and the Sherrerr child.
Speidel lifted his weapon. Carina, Atoi, and Smitz nodded, then all four ran simultaneously around the corner, laying down suppressive fire as they went. Two Dirksen guards were in the corridor. The mercs’ pulses focused on the first, penetrating his armor. He fell. The second guard fired at Smitz and hit him, the shot sent the man spasming to the floor. Speidel, Carina, and Atoi turned their weapons on the remaining guard and killed him.
Speidel lifted Smitz’s visor. He was dead.
His voice strained, Speidel said, indicating a door, “The kid’s in there.”
They burst through, expecting to meet more resistance, but the room was empty save for the Sherrerr child. A sound from the corridor drew Speidel and Atoi outside again, leaving Carina alone with the boy.
Chapter Twelve
The child was smaller than Carina had expected, or maybe it was only that he was hunched in the corner of the room, his head bowed and turned to the wall. He was visibly shaking, plainly terrified.
Carina realized she was still holding her weapon ready. She slung the Jensen over her shoulder and went over to the kid. He shrank against the wall and squealed at her approach.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m here to rescue you.”
The boy didn’t seem to hear. He pressed himself harder into the wall and moaned in terror. He was wearing a child-size CO2 filter mask. Carina suddenly realized how scary she had to look to him, suited up in armor and with a tinted visor covering her face.
She put down her gun and unsnapped the locks on her helmet. Lifting it off, she squatted down a short distance from the boy and held out a hand. “Don’t be scared. We’re here to take you home.”
This time her words seemed to penetrate. The boy peeked at her from underneath an arm, and for the first time Carina saw the child’s large, deep brown-black eyes.
“Carina,” Speidel said, bursting in again, “what are you doing?”
The captain’s abrupt appearance undid all of Carina’s work at calming the boy down. He flinched and turned away again, sobbing and moaning.
“Grab him,” Speidel said. “We have to get out of here.”
“Okay, I’m coming.” Carina put on her helmet and picked up her gun. She also scooped up the child, who wriggled and fought and bit her armor. With horror, Carina saw the cause of his terror. The boy’s fingernails and toenails had been ripped off. The Dirksens had been torturing him.
Holding the struggling child firmly over her shoulder, she ran down the corridor, following Speidel’s echoing footsteps. In her other hand she held her Jensen, muzzle up. The hiss of pulse rounds came from up ahead. Speidel and Atoi were in a firefight.
Carina brought down the smelting plant’s blueprint on her helmet overlay and searched for another escape route. She didn’t want to abandon Sp
eidel, but taking the unprotected child near weapons fire would be insane. The blueprint was complex and she had no time to figure it out. Spying what appeared to be a different route to the roof, she turned down a narrow corridor on her left. She followed the next turning too and the next, going deeper into the complex.
The boy seemed to have gotten the idea that she was trying to help him. He’d ceased struggling and hung like a limp rag over her shoulder. He was small for his age and Carina hardly felt his weight as she ran.
She turned another corner and abruptly stopped. She was at a dead end.
“What the...?” Carina checked her visor overlay. She was sure she’d seen another corridor leading from the one they were in. Her heart sank when she saw that what she’d mistaken for a corridor was an air duct. Spinning around, she saw the access point: a square wire grid in the wall, behind which a fan whirred.
The sounds of battle were drawing nearer.
“Carina,” Speidel said through her helmet comm. “Where’d you go? We have to leave. Stevenson heard from Duchess that Dirksen ships are on their way.”
“I’m making my way to the shuttle,” she said. “I didn’t want to take the kid within range of fire. Give me two minutes.”
“You got it,” Speidel said. “Don’t keep us waiting.”
“I won’t,” Carina replied, wondering desperately how she was going to make her way to the roof in time.
Her gaze returned to the wire grid. She could melt it and the fan behind it with a pulse from her Jensen, but that would leave the metal too hot to touch, and the kid had nothing to protect him.
Carina put the child down and pulled her knife from its sheath. At the sight of it, the boy took a breath as if to scream. Carina clamped her hand over his mouth. “For the last time, kid. I’m not gonna hurt you. I’m here to take you back to your family. Now can you be quiet?”
The boy swallowed and nodded. Carina removed her hand and went to the grid. She pushed the knife blade behind it and prized the cover away from the wall. The fan was only slotted in place. Carina lifted it out and peered into the dark tunnel. The boy could fit in, but it looked impossibly small for her. She had no choice. She had to try to squeeze inside.
Hastily, she began to unclip her armor. “Get in the tunnel,” she said as she worked. The boy looked from the dark opening to her. He shook his head.
“Get in,” she repeated. “It’s the only way. If we can make it up to the roof, we have a ship waiting for us, but they’re leaving soon.”
The boy still didn’t move.
“Come on,” she said. “Please.”
He hesitated but then finally padded on his wounded feet over to the black, square hole. With a final look at her, as if checking that she wasn’t tricking him, he climbed inside. Carina had nearly removed all her armor. She unclipped the legs and stepped out of them. Crouching down to enter the shaft, she rued the fact that she had no way of reattaching the wire grid once she was inside, nor of making her pile of discarded armor disappear. Where they had gone would be glaringly obvious to anyone trying to find them, but it couldn’t be helped.
She picked up her helmet and put it on. The internal gel that molded around the back of her head would hold it in place, and she needed it for light in the tunnel and comm with Speidel.
The soles of the kid’s bare, dirty feet were all she could see of him. He was moving fast. Was he trying to get away from her?
“Hey,” she called. “Wait up.”
The feet paused. Carina was relieved. The kid seemed to trust her after all. His resilience impressed her. He’d been taken from his family, kept hostage, and tortured—tortured! What kind of sick fuck would torture a six year old? And why? Did they think a little kid had secrets worth telling? Or had they done it for kicks?
She blinked the blueprint into view again, overlaid on the inside of her visor. “Helmet,” she said, “shortest route to the roof.” A red line threaded through the mass of green ones. An arrow pointed at the next turn. “Go left,” Carina called.
A flashing clock on the helmet display made her heart sink. Estimated time to destination: 10m 23s.
“Shit,” she breathed. She stopped crawling. “Hold up,” she called to the kid. Going faster wasn’t going to help. She needed to think.
Somehow, the boy had managed to turn around in the narrow tunnel. His dirty, tear-streaked face, topped with shaggy hair came toward her. He hadn’t yet said a word to her, Carina realized. He was probably too traumatized.
Carina was on her front, facing him. She knew there was only one way out of the situation for both of them, but still she balked at it. If the kid blabbed, she would be at extreme risk. But if she didn’t do what she had to, she would be captured and killed by the Dirksens, and the boy would have lost his only possible chance of escape.
She debated trying to explain away what was about to happen, but decided to just do it. Later, she would figure out how to deal with whatever interpretation the kid made of it.
Carina reached into her shirt and brought out the elixir canister, which had been painfully squeezed between her and the metal floor of the tunnel. The boy’s eyes grew round.
“Just wait a minute,” Carina said. “I need to take a sip of this.”
She swallowed a mouthful of elixir. “Hold my hand,” she said. “You’re coming with me.”
Chapter Thirteen
Carina appeared in a corner of the roof at just the point she’d aimed at according to the blueprint. She was relieved to find that the boy, his eyes wider than ever, was still holding her hand tightly. The shuttle was there, and Speidel was pacing impatiently in front of it.
“Quick,” Carina whispered, “come on.”
She ran out a little way onto the roof. “We’re here, sir.”
Speidel turned. “Where have you been? And where’s your armor? Never mind. Get aboard the shuttle.”
He cried out and collapsed to his knees before falling forward on his face. A guard had emerged from a doorway behind him as he was speaking and shot him in the back. Carina leveled her Jensen at the guard and fired off a round that hit the man’s visor. The plexiglas darkened and sagged from the blast, and the guard dropped his weapon, yelling with pain.
“Go up the ramp,” Carina told the boy, who was frozen, staring at the guard who was clawing at his melted visor. She gave the child a push, and his trance broke. He ran aboard the shuttle. Carina tried to haul Speidel up, but his body was heavy and entirely limp. Turning him on his back, she opened his visor. The captain’s face was still and peaceful. Her heart stopped.
Sounds blurred and her vision swam. Time seemed to slow down. He couldn’t be dead. Carina blinked away hot tears that were dropping onto her visor and scanned the older man’s face for any sign of life, but there were none.
“Lin, get aboard.” It was Stevenson, the shuttle pilot. His words pulled her out of her frozen state. In the corner of her vision, she saw movement. More Dirksen guards were arriving.
With a terrible wrench, she let go of Speidel’s body and ran up the shuttle ramp. As she reached the top, agony exploded behind her knee. Her legs collapsed. She’d been shot.
The ramp closed, and pain tore through her. Without her armor’s pain-suppressing injector system, she felt the full effects of her wound. She lay on her back, trying not to scream. All she could see were the ceiling lights and the concerned face of the Sherrerr boy hanging over her.
What seemed an age later, Atoi appeared, staggering in the shuttle’s rocky flight. She pressed an anesthetic gun to the inside of Carina’s wrist, and the cold, cool feeling of relief flooded through her. The drug made her groggy and confused too. She said to Atoi, “Where’s the captain? We forgot him. We left him behind. I have to go and get him.”
Atoi placed a gentle hand on her stomach. “Stay right where you are, soldier. An auto-gurney’s waiting for you.”
Carina’s head flopped to one side. “Where’s the kid?”
“He’s right here,” Atoi
replied.
The child was sitting on his haunches against the bulkhead, watching her. He had an inscrutable look on his face. She wondered vaguely what he was thinking. What had he made of their impossible transference from the cramped tunnel to the rooftop? He was only six. Hopefully, his young mind would find a way of explaining it away.
A low hum signaled the arrival of the auto-gurney. They seemed to have made it back to Duchess, though to Carina only moments had passed. Atoi stepped out of the way as the device lowered to the ground and secured Carina’s neck and spine before lifting her onto its base. The hum started up again as the vehicle moved away.
Carina could see only the corridor ceiling as she was carried along.
“Hey, kid,” she heard Atoi call. “Come back here.”
“I want to go with her,” the boy protested. They were the first words Carina had heard him speak. The pain relief was clouding her senses, and she didn’t hear if Atoi relented and let the Sherrerr accompany her.
The next thing she knew, she lying on a soft medroom bed surrounded by curtains.
Carina tried to sit up, but her right leg was restrained somehow. Her memory of the mission came flooding back, along with the knowledge of Speidel’s death.
She lay down and wept, her tears running down the sides of her face and into her hair. After a long while, she lifted her head and looked down her body. A cylinder of transparent plastic encased the middle section of her leg. Restorative gel filled the plastic, working on the wound she’d received. Her nerves in that part of her body were numb.
On the edge of her vision, she noticed the Sherrerr boy was sitting down nearby. He came closer when he saw her notice him, and a pair of large, brown-black eyes stared into hers. The kid had been cleaned up and his hair was a little less shaggy.
“I saw what you did,” the boy said.
Carina’s chest tightened. Through a gap in the curtains, she could see the doc on the other side of the room. He didn’t seem to have heard the child.
