by M. D. Cooper
In the pit of her stomach, she felt the car slowing down. Light from the station touched the windows at the front of the car, then the dock slid completely into view as their door lined up with the exit ramp. Through the wide car window, Brit locked eyes with a young guard with a rifle slung on his shoulder.
Grabbing her bag, Brit was through the door as it opened, rushed the guard as he struggled to get the rifle into a firing position. Striking a pressure point on his shoulder, she slid around to wrap him in a sleeper hold. She walked the soldier back as he struggled, kicking, then went limp. Brit loosened her grip, reminding herself that the soldier hadn’t done anything, was just pulling guard duty. There was no reason to punish him. She laid the man down beside two shipping crates and pulled her rifle out of her bag.
“Clear,” she called.
Burroughs and Fletcher were the first out of the maglev car, rifles at their shoulders, scanning the dock. The stop was only thirty meters wide, bathed in harsh white light and designed only for small deliveries. Brit checked the area and walked across the open cargo storage area, headed for the interior door.
Petral strode past Brit to the door. She hadn’t bothered to pull her pistol though she cradled the case with Tristan’s seed against her side. She assessed the locking mechanism and then shrugged with surprise. Tapping the door, it slid open to allow entry to a wide corridor.
Brit moved to Petral’s side, ready to take lead into the corridor, when a woman in gray utility uniform walked around a corner at the far end of the hallway. They stared at each other for a second, before the woman lurched toward a nearby wall, slapping an emergency alert panel before running away.
The white lights in the corridor flashed to yellow, followed by an ear-splitting klaxon.
Brit glanced back at Burroughs, Fletcher and Starl.
Pushing ahead, Brit fell into a slow jog. She hugged the edge of the corridor, threading an optic around the corner where the worker had fled before making the turn. They moved in a stick formation down corridors stacked with shipping crates, creating dead spaces where Brit expected weapons fire at any moment. The crates were marked by logos Brit had never seen before, until several with the Heartbridge corporate brand appeared in a stack.
Petral checked each door they passed, finding only storage areas and a latrine.
After another corridor lined by what looked like examination rooms with workbenches and multi-level platforms, Brit started to think they were getting closer. They passed one open crate on the side of the hallway heaped with mech parts. The next set of doors opened on a firing range, its far wall scorched by weapons fire.
Petral said.
The others crouched against the sides of the corridor, taking cover behind crates.
Sliding her optic around the door’s edge, she saw the same mechs crouched on the work platforms, jaguar-shaped with flat black heads. She waited, but none seemed to note her presence.
Petral had barely entered the room when cracking weapons fire filled the corridor. Brit turned toward the sound and hit the floor, flattening herself behind a metal crate.
Fletcher announced.
“Hey there!” the crime boss shouted from behind a stack of crates. “Why are you shooting at us? We’re lost. We’re just looking for directions. And damn I could use a restroom.”
Brit couldn’t decide if she was irritated or relieved by the humor in Starl’s voice.
“This is a restricted facility,” a gruff voice answered. “We are authorized to use deadly force. Show yourselves and we will respond accordingly.”
“ ‘Respond accordingly’, eh?” Starl shouted. “I don’t know if I like the sound of that. I’m just trying to find a drink, friend. I don’t know how I ended up here, honestly. Does ‘respond accordingly’ mean you’ll get me a cold one?”
From the other side of the corridor, Fletcher unhooked one of the grenades, tapped its round body to adjust the settings, and lobbed it down the corridor at the TSF squad.
“Grenade!” one of the soldiers shouted.
Starl told her, a grin evident in his voice.
The smoke grenade hissed and made a loud popping sound. The hallway was immediately filled with roiling black smoke. Fletcher didn’t hesitate. She slid around her crate and started firing pulse rounds.
Random fire pounded at the end of the hallway as the TSF regrouped.
Fletcher announced.
Brit followed behind the bodyguard, scanning the cloud with her optics for IR signatures. It appeared the remaining TSF had pulled back to the far end of the corridor behind a repulsor shield.
Starl laughed with irony.
More shouts of “Grenade!” filled the corridor and this time two grenades were lobbed back in answer.
Brit grabbed Starl by the collar and yanked him back behind the crate with her. Two explosions filled the hallw
ay even as the EMP flashed. In the falling dust, a few seconds of silence followed, and then came what sounded like the clatter of equipment hitting the ground. Brit hoped that was the shield assembly collapsing.
Starl rolled onto his stomach beside her, giving her a mock salute before staying low and crawling forward. His green bow-tie was the only splash of color in the dust and debris.
Someone cried out in pain in the smoke, and then Fletcher answered,
The two body guards had the TSF squad in temporary restraints and propped up against the wall when Brit and Petral walked into the second lab. In the middle of the room, surrounded by workbenches, was a massive jaguar-mech, easily twice the size of Tristan’s original construct.
Burroughs and Fletcher posted outside the door as Petral set Tristan’s seed on a nearby workbench and approached the mech. She searched among the panels in its side before finding an access port.
“Cross your fingers,” she told Brit and Starl. After a few seconds of checking the control system, she stepped back to let it run start up diagnostics.
The mech sat up higher on the platform, startling Brit. She raised her rifle instinctively, then relaxed as the monster settled back down, other servos working its neck, shoulders and legs. A series of hardened claws on each foot extended and retracted.
“Looks good,” Petral said. “All right, Mr. Tristan, let’s get you plugged in.”
Taking the cylinder-shaped seed from the workbench, she slid back a panel placed higher on the mech’s side. The seed slid into the socket and locked in place. Petral closed the panel.
Moving with surprising grace, the mech sat up and swiveled its head as if looking at each of them.
he said, sounding serious now.
The mech jumped down from the platform, making the floor shake slightly. Once in motion, the heavy paws barely registered any sound in the room, despite the thing’s size.
The flat head swiveled back to face Petral.
Petral grinned.
With a swiping motion, Tristan cut two long gashes in the wall, showing another room on the far side. In seconds, the mech was through the wound and tearing into another surface Brit couldn’t see.
Starl clapped his hands. “That was impressive,” he said. He laughed. “I think he likes you, Petral.”
“I’d rather he liked me than didn’t,” she said. In the distance, the tenor of the warning klaxon changed to a higher pitch.
“Come on,” Brit said. “Let’s get back to the maglev before they shut everything down.”
“Yes, major,” Starl said, giving her a mock salute. “I’d rather not be here when Tristan sets the whole place on fire.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
STELLAR DATE: 01.15.2982 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Raleigh, Heartbridge Corporate Headquarters
REGION: High Terra, Earth, Terran Hegemony
Standing in the lobby of the Heartbridge corporate headquarters, Jirl gazed up at the three-story fountain in the center of the space, a cascade of twisting water and white light made to resemble the ancient medical symbol of serpents intertwined around a winged staff. Now, she couldn’t help thinking of the wings as attack craft and the serpents as Weapon Born mechs.
Forcing herself into motion, she passed through the main security checkpoint, which she knew would alert Arla and probably others of her return. She had an instant of worry about the data stick tucked inside her waistband, but the guard only smiled at her and waved her through. Jirl nodded in return and walked quickly to the main lift. In another few minutes, she was caught up in a crowd of visitors and employees rising in the lift. She did her best to keep her breathing steady, brushing the data stick with the inside of her wrist to remind herself it was still there.
All she had to do was exit the lift on one of the administrative levels, find one of the many unused office spaces and insert the stick. Once that was done, she would find another lift and go meet Arla. She made her face consciously more pleasant as she waited, running through scripts of what she might say, the stories Arla would want to hear about her visit to Cruithne. Or no, all that might come later. Arla might want to talk about Ceres or the mysterious armada.
Jirl silently practiced a series of reaction stories she might share, carefully choosing details that wouldn’t suggest she knew more than she did. Her mind kept sliding to Rick Yarnes with his uniform half-off and she pushed the thoughts away, focusing on the problem in front of her.
Jirl wished she knew where the others were but couldn’t risk reaching out to Petral or Brit to learn their status. She had to count on them performing their part of the plan, and then she would carry out hers. If everything was following the general timeline Petral had laid out, Tristan would be hitting Heartbridge soon.
The thought of one of the terrifying shipkillers scrabbling around the lobby she had just left filled her with horror, but it was exactly the kind of distraction they would need. And if Petral’s network infiltration didn’t work, it would fall on Tristan to dig his way down to the central control node. If that didn’t work? Jirl closed her eyes, thinking about Bry, wondering how far she was willing to go.
She also couldn’t stop going over the conversation with Yarnes. “I know Heartbridge has something to do with this,” he had said, pointing at the icons of the armada. “You conveniently lose one of your largest hospital ships, which isn’t fooling anybody with its offensive capabilities, and that ship arrives at Neptune just in time to destroy Proteus. At the same time, I conveniently coordinate with a Marsian general who ends up dead, killed by your clinic exploding. Everything is pointing back to Heartbridge.” He’d leaned in closer to her. “Now I want you to convince me you aren’t a corporate spy.”
What if she was? What if she had played into Arla’s plans all along? Would the woman be sending Jirl to meet with Kathryn Carthage next? Some kind of exchange program?
Jirl blinked, swallowing her anxiety. The wall panel said she was nearly at her stop.
“Will we be above the clouds?” a little boy asked his mother, who was wearing a visitor badge from the security checkpoint.
The lift chimed as it slowed to her leve
l. Jirl eased between bodies to get closer to the door, keeping her arm against her stomach to protect the data stick. She stood behind a tall man in a gray suit, ready to follow him out once the doors slid open.
The lift signaled the stop and the man stepped out, his shoulders forming a wall that blocked Jirl’s view of the waiting corridor. Jirl left the lift as he turned away, and she found herself facing Arla.
Her boss was wearing a pearl-colored suit with sharp lapels that made her neck look like the stem of a flower. She’d styled her hair in a crisp gray bob that was only slightly different than what Jirl remembered. Her slate-gray eyes were unsmiling, though her lips had curved in greeting.
“Hello, Jirl,” Arla said. “I missed you. I couldn’t wait to come down and see you back.”
Jirl quelled the surprise she felt and pushed all the emotion exploding inside her into a tiny little ball in the bottom of her stomach. She put on her best newsfeed smile and stepped toward Arla.
“Well, thank you,” she said. Beyond Arla was one of the offices she had intended to enter with the data stick. A few other random employees walked in the hallway. “I could have come up to meet you in the office.”
“I got the alert that you were coming here and just couldn’t wait,” Arla said. She looked around as if noticing where she was for the first time. “This is a strange place to make your first stop. Why didn’t you just come up to the office? If you’d let me know you were back, we’d have planned a little party.”
Are you a spy? Yarnes had demanded.
Jirl listened to Arla’s words, separating them from her facial expressions and body language. Arla was nervous. She saw it immediately. More nervous than her? And why, aside from all the other chaos in Sol?
“We can wait for the next lift and head up,” Jirl said, keeping her voice casual. “Unless you wanted to meet down here first? There are unused offices where I come to think and answer messages sometimes.”
Arla looked at her, then adjusted her shoulders, relaxing visibly. “Yes,” she said. “I would like that. How was your trip?” She turned to walk alongside Jirl.
“Cruithne was its normal level of wild,” Jirl said. “Then Proteus exploded, Ceres received that girl’s message, and the intensity increased by about ten levels.”
