He pulled himself along by his arms, moving his hips to gain some traction, and moved a lot faster than he had a moment ago.
He finally reached Jarvis as more shots started. Even if the shooters had equipment that protected their eyes from temporary laser blindness, the equipment wouldn’t be good enough to let them see detail. They’d see a man leaning upright, nothing more.
And Zagrando could use that.
He slipped in behind Jarvis’s body, propped him up against the corridor wall, and made the body face the shooters.
Then—and only then—Zagrando opened the second cockpit door.
FIFTY-FOUR
THE SOUND OF breaking windows carried across the courtyard—and that was when Koos realized just how quiet this part of the compound was. The screaming, the sirens, and the explosions were more than a kilometer away—distant enough to seem unrelated to what he was doing.
No one screamed inside the dormitory, and his nine team members worked in silence. Except for breaking the windows, they’d made no noise at all.
He climbed in. The room he entered was dark, and no one was in it. There were several empty cribs and a scrunched blanket on the floor. The air smelled of baby powder tinged with burning rubble.
He signaled his team, then went to the left. The building specs he’d found on the net were accurate. Apparently no one thought this place would be raided. There was no real security at all.
He let Nawotka go down the steps first, but Koos went second, the rest of the team behind him. The basement smelled damp, along with a slightly acrid stench that he recognized almost immediately.
Pee. And as he got farther in, poop as well.
The environmental system on this level wasn’t designed to keep up with a multitude of dirty diapers.
He rounded a corner, only to find Nawotka had stopped. An archway appeared in front of him, and bluish lighting revealed ten adults and behind them, babies strapped into carriers.
A few of the babies were crying, but someone had placed noise reducers on the carriers. It was nearly impossible to hear the wails.
Two of the adults had laser rifles trained on Nawotka. His rifle was up as well, but he hadn’t taken a shot.
You said no killing, he sent to Koos. Now what?
Koos ignored him. Instead, he stepped to Nawotka’s side and trained his own rifle, not on the adult woman in front of him ready to shoot, but at the nearest baby.
It looked at him with big, fascinated eyes.
“You shoot us,” Koos said as calmly as he could, “we shoot the babies.”
What the hell? Nawotka sent. You can’t do that.
Koos didn’t answer. This strategy was a risk. These babies were clones, and if their caretakers thought of them as commodities, then the caretakers would shoot at Koos.
But he was gambling that adult humans would react to babies as babies, even if their DNA designated them inferior.
He gambled that the caretakers would take him seriously, and they’d drop their weapons.
He had no idea what he would do if they called his bluff.
He stared at the woman holding a laser rifle on Nawotka. She stared back.
Then she slowly set the laser rifle down.
“Put your weapons down,” he said to the remaining caretakers, as more of his team showed up beside him. “Now.”
The woman nearest him was shaking so hard he was suddenly worried her rifle might go off anyway. He grabbed it and pulled it from her, handing it to one of the men behind him.
“What are you going to do with us?” someone asked.
“We’re taking you with us,” Koos said.
“What about the babies?” someone else asked.
“We’re taking them, too,” he said. “Is this all of the babies in this building?”
“Babies?” asked the woman in front of him, the one who had held the rifle. “Why?”
“Because if I find more, I might just shoot them to get them out of the way,” he snapped.
“Yes!” she said. “Yes! There are no more babies.”
Ten adults, twenty infants, five small shuttles that could normally handle three adult passengers plus a copilot each. He could take two adults, and that would leave room for the babies—if nothing happened to the shuttles on the way out of here.
“You’re all coming with us,” Koos said. “And you’re bringing the babies.”
“W-Where?” the woman asked.
“Just shut up and follow instructions,” he said, and felt a small thread of relief.
The first part of the mission was underway, and while it wasn’t easy, it was better than he had hoped for.
If only the rest went as smoothly, he could report to Deshin that the entire mission was accomplished.
The entire impossible mission.
Koos doubted that would happen.
But he would try.
FIFTY-FIVE
ZAGRANDO HALF EXPECTED someone to shoot him from inside the second cockpit. But as the door eased open, the interior remained dark.
He braced himself for Jarvis getting up somehow and racing in with him.
But Jarvis didn’t move.
The shots continued, and something sparked ahead of Zagrando. He hoped that shot hadn’t hit anything important.
He used the edge of the door to pull himself inside, then let the door slide shut. More shots hit.
He only had a couple of minutes—three at most.
This thing was set up to withstand pirates outside the Alliance, not an Alliance vessel or Alliance shooters equipped with powerful Alliance weapons.
He pulled himself up onto the only chair and slammed his palm on the console.
The stupid second cockpit recognized him and greeted him with some dumb chirpy message that he had always meant to change.
His fingers were shaking.
He had to time everything perfectly, and he could feel shock setting in. He needed to get the second cockpit to separate from the space yacht just after he released the torpedoes.
He had designed this maneuver so that the pilot of the gigantic ship would focus on the torpedoes and not notice that the yacht had split into two pieces.
Of course, if the pilot of the gigantic ship had the yacht’s specs—and of course he would; how else could Jarvis have found Zagrando?—the pilot might be expecting the separation.
Zagrando would have been.
But he didn’t think anyone would expect the explosions.
He hoped they wouldn’t because the splitting process wasn’t easy and it wasn’t fast. The little bullet ship that the second cockpit turned into didn’t have its own weapons system, either.
At least the bullet ship was quick—once it separated from the larger yacht, anyway.
Despite the need to hurry, he made himself concentrate, take his time, do this absolutely right. He created a mental bubble around himself, almost as real as the bubble the yacht could built with its shields (which had proven worthless, since he’d been using the damn shields when the damn gigantic ship had taken over his yacht, but oh, well, he couldn’t think about that. He didn’t dare think about anything else—he had to focus, because his brain was going, his body was shivering now, and the nanohealers were trying, but they weren’t succeeding in keeping at bay the physical reaction to his injuries, which had to be a lot more severe than he thought…).
Five steps. He had to execute five steps.
The door to the second cockpit glowed red. Whoever was out there wasn’t fooled by Jarvis’s body—or maybe they had been for that silly minute, but they weren’t any longer.
Five steps.
Step one: Zagrando had to activate his identification (finished. Oh, yeah. He had already forgotten that).
Deep breath. Concentrate.
Step two: Activate the separation protocols.
Step three: Shut down the environmental controls in the yacht.
He did steps two and three together, wishing he had shut down the environment before the invaders had
started to burn their way into his secondary cockpit. Now they would just focus on getting in, and he couldn’t remember if they were wearing environmental suits or body armor that turned into environmental suits and…
Concentrate.
Step four: Set the speed at which the bullet ship would travel (fast as possible).
Done.
Step five: Finalize.
He slammed his palm against the console. Finalize, finalize, finalize.
A voice—the bullet ship’s voice—told him the procedures, but he couldn’t concentrate on those. He had to give himself something to clear his head or make the pain recede or deal with his feet.
He looked down. His pants had burned away, and his skin was red and black and crusty, almost like magma he had once seen on a volcano on a job, and it felt like magma too, steaming and hot and—
He staggered to the medical supplies, then said screw it, maybe out loud, and demanded that the medical assistant appear, and hoped to hell the assistant worked in this part of the ship and wasn’t tied to the yacht.
It was a feature, an automated doctor that took care of a person with minor medical issues or major ones if they were common (please, let laser pistol burns be common) and the yacht would assist.
The assistant appeared—a woman, hair pulled back, lab coat, nice face, and she said, Oh, dear.
And he said—or maybe he thought through his links at the damn second cockpit—I can’t pass out. Tend to me. Let me get us out of here.
I’ll do what I can, she sent. She didn’t seem hopeful. I’ll just do what I can.
FIFTY-SIX
TWO HOURS LATER, Koos had just fired near the boots of an unruly teenage boy clone when the emergency sirens went off. It took him a moment to realize those sirens were inside his links, and they weren’t sirens, but alarms he had set.
The attack ships he had been anticipating had finally arrived.
He was standing inside the school cafeteria. Maybe a dozen teenagers were holding him off, mostly with knives and cleavers. Two boys actually had laser rifles, although Koos had no idea where they had come from.
He had lost track of how many trips his people had taken but they followed Deshin’s instructions—babies first, toddlers second, under-fives, under-tens. The children who really couldn’t act for themselves were already scattered among the cargo vessels, and one of Deshin’s other ships had shown up to guard everything, which was good, since ships were starting to crowd the space around Hétique.
The fighting in Hétique City had gotten severe, and most of the buildings inside the industrial park were burning. The air was thick with smoke, but the screams of the dying had stopped maybe thirty minutes ago.
Koos had a team of six with him, and they were facing off the teenagers, who had watched most of what was happening.
These kids weren’t trained for combat, but they were scared, and large enough to do some damage.
The alarms inside Koos’s head were making him nervous, but he didn’t shut them down. He couldn’t. But he could feel the seconds ticking away.
“An attack on Hétique is about to start,” Koos said. “It’ll be from orbit, and it’s going to destroy this entire compound. We only have a few minutes to get out of here. Either you let us rescue you or you die.”
“You’re lying!” one of the boys yelled.
“You don’t have time to figure that out,” Koos said. “Either you trust us and live or you stay here and die. Your choice.”
Then he signaled his team. They were leaving with or without this batch of kids.
The three team members nearest the door backed out of it, then started to run. The remaining three did the same.
Koos looked at the teenagers, all staring at him with terrified expressions, and then he backed away from them.
The alarms were making his head ache.
He pivoted and ran for the shuttles. As he did, he saw other teenagers coming out of the bushes.
His heart sank. If all the kids came out of the cafeteria and joined these kids, there were too many for the shuttles.
He couldn’t pick and choose. There was no time.
“Get on board!” he yelled, waving his arms.
His team had the shuttle doors open. Fortunately the teenagers were thin. They could cram into the back until the shuttle hit its weight capacity.
Koos reached his shuttle, climbed in, watched five boys and two girls press inside, and then he closed the door. The other shuttles were doing the same.
Voices he barely recognized were screaming at him through the links.
The attack’s about to start.
Where the hell are you?
Some of the teenagers from the cafeteria were running toward the shuttles.
He started it up. He was going to pilot hybrid—he set the automatic pilot for evasive maneuvers that he could override if he saw something that the sensors didn’t catch.
The shuttle started to lift off, but it couldn’t rise. It wobbled.
Weight limit breached.
His heart constricted. Was he going to have pick which teenager to throw out?
Then he saw that other teenagers clung to the back of the shuttle. One kid had jumped onto the front.
“God! Let him in! That’s Derek!” yelled one of the girls in the back.
Koos’s mouth was dry. The other shuttles had the same problem. They were covered in teenagers who had probably been messaged by the ones inside.
Turn on your shields, Koos sent to his entire team.
Shields weren’t recommended in atmosphere, but they would wipe away any intruders.
He flicked his on, and the kid on the front of the shuttle screamed, then slipped off.
Not that Koos heard the scream. He saw the kid’s mouth open, the terror on his face, the hopelessness in his eyes.
The shuttle went up, followed by the remaining four.
Laser fire rose from the surface—someone was shooting at the shuttles. Some kind of automated, large gun started shooting from the top of a building in Hétique City. Finally, the authorities there realized that the entire area was under attack.
Maybe when they saw the hundred attack ships approaching the planet.
The air was filled with smoke and laser fire. The shuttle bobbed and weaved its way up and out, shots occasionally zooming past it.
Koos was braced for the sound of an explosion as he lost a shuttle, but nothing exploded so far.
The girl behind him was sobbing.
“How could you leave them behind?” one of the boys yelled. “They’re people, you know.”
“We know,” Nawotka snapped. “If you had cooperated instead of fighting us, we might’ve gotten another group of ships to the surface.”
“Shut up,” Koos said to Nawotka.
“You gotta go back!” the boy yelled.
“We’re not—”
“Shut. Up. All of you.” Koos focused on the piloting. The bickering continued behind him.
Pay attention, he sent to Nawotka. We’re not out of this yet.
Koos was heading toward one of the last cargo ships in orbit. The attack ships were lining up. He could see them on his screens, in the guidance system he’d set up in his own vision, and in his mind’s eye.
He knew what it was like to be in one of those forces. You never even saw the ground. Just the targets.
He reached the cargo ship. Its bay doors were open, and he slid inside. Two other shuttles slid in right behind him.
One of the girls reached for the door. “Let us out.”
He looked at her over his shoulder and realized, with a sinking feeling, that these kids had never been in space. No one had educated them about atmosphere and environment.
One more shuttle wobbled its way in, a long scorch mark down its middle.
He searched for the last shuttle on his equipment, saw it, saw some kind of fire weapon pursuing it, watched as the weapon hit and the shuttle exploded—
He closed his eyes, forget
ting that he had the same images on his vision, watched the bits of shuttle expand like a flower in the remaining red light.
Bits of shuttle and bits of his team and bits of teenagers.
He shut down the internal vision.
Close the doors, he sent to the pilots of the cargo vessel. This is everyone.
All that hope he’d had after getting the babies, the feeling like he might be able to accomplish this mission completely, gone now.
He’d done more than he’d thought was possible, but not nearly enough.
Plus, he’d seen that kid’s eyes as he fell off the shuttle.
Hopelessness. Terror.
Koos would be seeing that as long as he lived.
But he would be living.
He’d done the best he could—and Deshin would have to deal with that.
Just like Koos would.
FIFTY-SEVEN
THE YACHT’S AUTOMATED doctor bent down, examined Zagrando’s legs, and then gathered tools. She had limited capabilities of touch. She could do some things to heal and not others. Some she might have to ask him to do, and he was in no shape to comply.
But he didn’t tell her that. He figured she probably knew.
Besides, being healed was the least of his worries. He needed to remain alert, at least until the bullet ship separated from the space yacht.
He moved back to the second cockpit’s single chair, worked the console, saw the separation was happening, and looked at the door.
It didn’t glow red anymore.
In fact, if any of those invaders were near it, they would be experiencing the separation as if they were on the edge of an open door with no airlock.
One of the first things he had done after he bought this ship was redesign the separation sequence—and he had designed it so that no one would be protected as the second cockpit became another ship.
He had figured that if he ever had to separate the yacht and the bullet ship, he was being invaded; and no one outside the second cockpit was someone he wanted to protect.
Good for him, thinking ahead. Yay, him.
And then, with those thoughts, those cheery thoughts, he realized that his judgment had become impaired. He was acting like he did when he was drunk.
Starbase Human Page 28
