by M. D. Cooper
Lyssa sent a description of the people up ahead and Fran immediately stopped to look at a merchant’s booth hung with plas bags full of bright red spices. The saleswoman leapt off her stool to engage Fran.
“You like briki?” she asked.
Fran pulled her hand back. “That’s briki? I thought it was a flower.”
The woman gave her an appreciative nod. “You know your briki, then.”
“No,” Fran said. “I just thought it was a flower, not a powder like this. This looks fake.”
The accusation was enough to get the woman worked into a righteous speech about the quality of her products. A few people stopped to listen. Fran pulled Andy closer to her, which kept Cara nearby as well. Lyssa watched the group checking the crowd, trying to determine if they were moving toward them or just keeping that particular doorway secure. As she observed, the ping of a second active scanner from the direction they had come hit one of her borrowed sensors.
“I don’t like this person’s tone,” Andy said.
“It’s fine,” Fran said. She took his free hand in both of hers and held it against her lower abdomen. “I’m learning all about briki.”
“Hey,” a heavy voice said from behind Andy. Fran and Fugia both turned to look, as Andy continued to frown at the merchant. The man pushing his way toward them was nearly seven feet tall, with muscled forearms and a think black mohawk.
“Did you say something?” Fugia asked the big man. As she faced him, he was easily a meter taller than her.
Fran didn’t let go of Andy’s hand. She continued listening to the merchant though she turned her head slightly to take in the adjacent threat.
“Here’s what I don’t understand,” Fran told the merchant, pointing at one of the bright red bags. “If this was real briki, this is enough to make this whole station high for days.”
“Yes, it is,” the merchant said joyfully, beaming.
“Isn’t it a little dangerous to let it just hang there in bags?”
The man with the mohawk pushed past Fugia and put his hand on Andy’s shoulder. “My boss wants to see you,” he said.
He wasn’t paying any attention to Cara, who stepped back and drew the pulse pistol at her hip.
“Cara!” Fran shouted.
Fugia raised a hand but couldn’t reach her in time. Cara tapped the side of the pistol with her finger three times, setting it for lethal, and pulled the trigger three times.
The pulse blasts hit the big man in a line from his crotch to his throat, knocking him back with arms outstretched. Fugia dodged as he fell into a knot of onlookers.
“Come on!” Fran shouted. Reaching past the wide-eyed merchant, Fran yanked down one of the bright-pink bags and lobbed it into the crowd. It hit another security guard running toward them squarely in the face and exploded in a cloud of pink dust.
Fran grabbed Andy’s forearm and pointed him back in the direction they had come.
Lyssa overloaded the power circuits on merchant booths as they ran past, creating overflowing hot oil cookers and showers of sparking used electronics. Behind them, the pink cloud of briki dust settled over the milling crowd but didn’t have any effect that she could tell.
Lyssa told Fran.
Caught up in the fleeing crowd, they reached the secondary lift section and rode down to the shuttle docks. While the others enjoyed a moment of peace in the car, Lyssa roved among her borrowed sensors. The NSAI throughout Traverna station were trying to figure out what was going on and implementing contradictory safety protocols. One corridor was full of fire retardant dust while another had been sealed off and its airlocks placed on emergency lock out.
Cara stared straight ahead as the lift fell, holding her father’s hand again.
When the lift opened, they found the transport terminal apparently unaffected by the chaos above, like it was any other day on Traverna. Lyssa hopped among port authority checkpoints and found only bored employees. Still, Fugia and Fran moved the group quickly across the terminal to where their shuttle was docked. Fran paid the dock fees and unlocked the shuttle’s security system. She turned to pull Cara into a hug as the door cycled.
“Crap,” Fugia said.
Andy twisted to look into the opening shuttle door, and Lyssa experienced his memories as they flashed through his mind, moving almost as fast as hers and echoing her shock and confusion. A thin man in a purple suit stood in the shuttle’s door, smiling broadly. He looked exactly the same as he had on the Resolute Charity before it was incinerated by an exploding Proteus.
It was Xander.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
STELLAR DATE: 01.15.2982 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Raleigh, Heartbridge Corporate Headquarters
REGION: High Terra, Earth, Terran Hegemony
Struggling under Petral’s weight, Brit heaved herself over a crumbled pile of plascrete and metal sheeting that had been a wall before Tristan tore through it. She adjusted her grip on Petral’s legs—the woman’s head bouncing against the small of Brit’s back—and moved sideways to follow what remained of the wall and the scarce cover it provided. Starl crouched ahead of her, checking the way for Heartbridge security.
Somewhere in the dust and smoke ahead, Tristan ripped through walls and attacked security emplacements. Without Petral, he seemed to have forgotten there were other people to worry about.
Burroughs and Fletcher were dead, lost in the engagement that got them out of the network node that Petral had thought was directly above the Special Projects Division control room. She had been wrong, and instead of shutting down the clinics, she seemed to have activated a defense mechanism stronger than anything she had encountered before. The force of whatever the attacker had sent through her Link had even burned her hair.
As Brit crouched behind Starl, the smell of Petral’s scorched scalp and hair reached her nostrils again, bringing simultaneous feelings of anger and bitterness. What was the point now? Jirl had betrayed them.
She kept turning over what the woman had said in their hurried Link conversation. Why would anyone need the technology associated with the Weapon Born program? It all had to be destroyed. No one should ever benefit from the fruit of such a poisoned tree. Brit cursed herself for ever thinking they could destroy all the Heartbridge facilities from a central point. It was a fantasy to begin with. Reality never worked out so neatly. She saw years ahead of hunting down Weapon Born seeds on the black market as the abandoned clinics were looted and their contents distributed across Sol.
Lost in her rage and struggling with Petral’s weight, Brit had stopped paying attention to the larger plan. She focused on Starl, watching for his hand commands and following when he indicated the way was clear.
They were following a ragged path deeper into the support levels of the Heartbridge spire. There were utility transports down in the sewage sections designed to move large chemical tanks and repair materials, and Starl figured they could either catch a ride on one of the automated trains or follow the maintenance side paths from the spire into the Raleigh public works, where they’d be clear to c
all for help.
“I can carry her for a ways if you’re getting tired,” Starl offered.
“I’m fine.” Brit’s voice was toneless.
“You’re grunting like a hog. Any louder and you’ll give our location away.”
Brit shot him a resentful glare but Starl wasn’t looking at her. He remained focused on the path ahead. He hadn’t smiled since the network control center. Once he seemed assured that Petral might truly be dead, Starl’s demeanor had changed completely. He was cold and focused in a way that made every other time she’d talked to him seem like a game. He moved with practiced tactical awareness, never losing sight of her while maintaining cover.
Dropped another three levels, Starl directed her into a shadowed alcove off an access corridor and helped her lay Petral on her back. Starl dropped his knees next to Petral and started running his hands down the sides of her head, checking her neck with probing fingers. Lowering his ear to her slack lips, he listened for a long time before straightening with a grimace.
“I don’t know,” he said to Brit’s questioning look. “There could still be neural activity. If she’s breathing or if there’s a pulse, I can’t tell. I’m not an autodoc.”
“Has Tristan answered you?”
Starl shook his head. “You?”
“No.” She fully expected the Weapon Born to have disappeared, freed of the person he’d made his deal with.
Starl slid against the wall and straightened his legs out, massaging his sore muscles. His dapper suit was filthy.
“Why do you dress like that, anyway?” Brit asked.
“Because I’m not an animal,” Starl said. He stretched his neck and then rolled his shoulders.
“Are you worried someone will mistake you for one?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time. Look, once we get out of here, I plan on getting back to Cruithne as soon as I can get to the ship. If you come with me, I’ll do my best to get you a ship bound for the Cho.”
Brit frowned. “Why would I want to go to the Cho?”
“Your family is inbound, yeah? The Cho is the biggest target. And it gets you around the mess at Ceres.”
“Maybe,” Brit said.
“For somebody with so much treasure,” Starl said, “you act like a poor person.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Your children. I don’t care if you and Captain Sykes don’t get along. You should go back for your children.”
“I don’t know if you noticed,” Brit said, “but I’m not exactly a positive influence. They’re better off with Andy.”
Starl shook his head. “If you believe it, then it’s true. As I said, I’ll help you if you come with me to Cruithne. If you choose to stay here, I won’t interfere. I’m afraid we’re entering a time of reinforcement. I’ll need to take stock of where Cruithne shakes out in all of this.”
“Like what you’re going to do if just ten missiles were waiting to take out Cruithne after Ceres?”
“Yes,” Starl said soberly. “I’ve been away too long as it is. This seemed like a good plan. But I need to get back now.”
“So that’s it. You’re going home. No more worry about the clinics?”
Starl gave her a humorless smile. “Before, there were opportunities with the Mars 1 Guard and the TSF—not to mention a little plunder from the clinic. Now there’s nothing. Things change. We survive.”
“Spoken like a true idealist,” Brit said.
Starl shook his head again. “So much treasure and yet you act so poor.”
Brit stretched her shoulders and let her head fall back against the plascrete wall. She imagined she could feel the weight of the Heartbridge spire on top of her, three hundred levels to the top, and felt another wave of bitterness that it would carry on. Nothing she had sacrificed had made any difference at all.
“I had a mission,” she told Starl in a low voice. “Apparently you don’t understand.”
Starl raised his eyebrows. “You think I don’t know what it’s like to have a mission? I’ve got a whole community looking at me, Major Sykes. I don’t know what drove you to choose this path when it started, but you reach a point where you need to decide if it makes sense to keep walking.”
“You weren’t on 8221,” she said, memories of the labs flashing through her mind, narrated by the pain in Kylan Carthage’s voice as he begged them to help him.
“And Captain Andy was there, too, wasn’t he?”
“Yes,” Brit said. She knew what he was trying to do, and also knew he was right. The problem was that she wanted to burn the building overhead to the ground. She had wanted a final destructive statement to show Heartbridge and people like them that they couldn’t get away with hurting people as they had. The mission had been bigger than anything else in her life, and now it had disintegrated, the pieces falling through her fingers. She had been tricked. She had told herself for so long that she was protecting Tim and Cara only to find that she had lost them.
“My kids don’t want me back,” she admitted miserably.
“Why don’t you let them answer that question?”
Brit laughed. “I have. Cara is just as mean as I am.”
“So you’ve passed on at least a bit of yourself.”
Petral made a whimpering sound and Starl jerked upright. He moved quickly to her side and put his ear by her lips again.
“You really care about her, don’t you?” Brit asked.
“The only woman I have ever loved is Fugia Wong,” Starl said, pulling one of Petral’s eyelids back to check her pupil. “But I love Petral like an Aunty.” He chuckled at some secret memory. “That might be an inappropriate comparison.”
“Fugia?” Brit asked. “You know her?”
“Once,” Starl said.
“And you just admit that so freely. How do your people ever take you seriously?”
Starl looked up at her, flashing a smile. “My people know that I wear my heart on my sleeve. When I commit to something, they know I do it with all my being, and they can trust me. Trust is what I think you’re lacking, Major Sykes.”
“Will you call me Brit?” she said, crossing her arms.
“Gladly,” Starl said. He sat back on his knees and tucked his thumbs in his belt. “We should get moving again. I haven’t heard anything in the distance for a while.”
With care, Starl took Petral’s arms and pulled her over his shoulder in the same fireman’s carry Brit had used earlier. He stood easily and walked out into the corridor.
The low crack of a project rifle echoed in the distance and Starl’s right calf disintegrated. He stumbled, throwing himself back in the alcove with Petral falling on top of him.
“Sniper,” Brit said. She’d drawn her rifle to her shoulder and slid to the corner of the alcove. Snaking an optic around the edge of the wall, she picked out a group of three shapes moving in buddy-team sprints up the bare corridor.
She waited until two were moving together, probably emboldened by Starl’s grunt of pain, and fired three bursts in the center mass of each. She caught one in the chest and drove them back against the wall, while the other attacker dropped to the floor and returned fire from a prone position. Heavy fire answered from behind them as their covering unit closed on her location, forcing Brit back around the corner.
“We’re trapped,” Brit said.
With his calf clamped between two hands to staunch the bleeding, Starl gritted his teeth and nodded.
“Now would be a good time for our friend Tristan to make a showing,” he said.
“He’s gone,” Brit said. “How many grenades do you have left?”
“Two,” Starl said. He nodded at the satchel on his side. “One standard and the other an EMP.”
Brit slid over to reach inside the bag. She felt between the two grenades and chose the standard. She moved back to the wall and crouched with the grenade in her left hand, lightly supporting her rifle’s stock.
Petral groaned again and made a choking sound. In
a person they hadn’t thought dead, the sound would be worrying. Hearing her now, Brit prayed to the stars that she might actually wake up and help.
Brit clipped the grenade to her harness and held the rifle with one hand, finger ready near the trigger. Easing closer to alcove’s corner, she used the optics again and gasped in surprise. Moving automatically, she sprayed projectiles into the corridor at the two security guards who had managed to approach to just a few meters away. Unable to see if she’d hit anything, Brit grabbed the grenade, cycled its timer to three seconds with her thumb, and rolled it out toward the far wall.
As she’d planned, the grenade rolled out of reach of the two soldiers. One tried to fire on it, but the explosive still bounced off the plascrete wall and exploded, sending energy back on them, combined with shrapnel and fragmented plascrete.
Dust and heat washed back into the alcove. Brit filled the corridor with projectile fire. Stealing two breaths, she cycled her optics to infra-red and searched for any additional heat signatures in the debris. A section of the wall slid off and hit the floor, sending another cloud of dust.
Brit waited, listening for the sound of boots in the dust. There was nothing, then more of the wall collapsed, followed by the sound of something metal striking the floor. The strikes became rhythmic as they grew louder. She stole a glance at Starl, his face now ashen from loss of blood. He watched her listlessly.
Dread crushed the hope Brit had felt just a few seconds before.
This is it. This is where I’m going to die. She couldn’t stop repeating what Starl had told her: So much treasure but you think you’re poor. She wished she could go home to Sunny Skies. She wished she could see her family one last time.
There was a scraping sound, followed by a short burst of weapon’s fire. Brit frowned. Why were they firing now?
Brit released her breath, setting her forehead against her rifle’s hand guards.
