by Darren Beyer
“Here it is. It went through the directional microwave emitter.”
“Then it would have been aimed at a transceiver on the other end. We should have the bearing.”
“It will probably just point back to New Reyk.”
“No.” Grae’s voice was firm. “Too much of a chance for intercept. Something this sensitive would have to go to a remote transceiver—just like we use. The bearing?”
Ivey expanded the record. “Two eight three point seven.” She pulled up a map and plotted the line as a narrow cone off the transceiver. It led nowhere near New Reykjavik.
Grae studied the map closely. “It must be a transceiver on the other end, and it’s somewhere in this cone. What was the elevation?”
“Negative point zero two three degrees.”
“Can you overlay the distance and elevation drop, and plot the terrain intercepts?”
“Okay, hang on just a bit.”
Ivey worked the calculations into the mapping application. A few yellow blobs appeared on the top-down display.
“Can you turn it on its side?” Grae asked. “Give me the 3D view?”
“Damn, you’re demanding.”
A few seconds later, the map pivoted, showing the three-dimensional depiction. Grae walked around it to study it from different angles.
“Here.” He pointed to an area on a mountain. “It’s mid-slope. And this.” He pointed to another area. “That’s some hills and the valley they surround. Not good placement for transceivers. But these three.” Grae pointed to three mountain peaks. “They’re all in the cone and make sense. If they’re like our remote stations, they’ll have logs—and we’ll know where the message went.”
“You’re not suggesting we try to find this.”
“Suggesting? No. It’s not a suggestion. It’s what I’m going to do.”
“You?” Ivey smirked. “You couldn’t decipher a system log if you had a magic decoder ring. Not to mention you’re in no condition to fly.”
“We’re not going to have this argument again. We don’t have the time to wait for me to be a hundred percent.”
“Oh, I’m not arguing about if, I’m arguing about who. If I have to get Doc to revoke your medical, I will. You’re not going to fly. I am.”
Chapter 25: Ouricscen Station
The long, dingy corridor was empty at this early morning hour. The only hint of movement came from a flickering light halfway down its length. Doors lined the left wall, and intersecting corridors crossed every twenty meters or so. Mandi continually eyed them, expecting someone to enter the hall. No one did—and that concerned her.
“Jans, I don’t like this. I know it’s the middle of third shift, and not to sound like a cliché, but it’s too quiet.”
“I’ve got the same feeling.”
Mandi bit her lip. “What do we do? Go back to the room? Go on?”
Jans looked up and down the barren corridor. “Shit, I don’t know.” He cued his comm. “Ouricsen Station operations.” No one answered his call. “Ouricsen Station operations.” Again, no answer. Turning back toward the way they’d come, he tried again. “Ouricsen security, are you there?” He shook his head at Mandi. “Okay then. Back to the room.”
They hadn’t taken two steps before a familiar man stepped out from a crossing hallway. He had messy dark hair, a few days’ worth of stubble, and a scar across his eye. Mandi grabbed Jans by the elbow to stop him, but he was already turning back. They spun around, only to encounter two more men blocking their way, looking no more congenial than the first.
“You can make this easy on all of us.”
Mandi turned to look at Scarface. His eyes betrayed both hardness and intelligence—a dangerous combination. In his right hand, he held an elongated, odd-looking pistol buttressed against his forearm with an integrated brace.
“We’d like you both to come with us… but we only need you, Mister Mikel.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jans said. “I’m not—”
“Please, no charades. Come quietly and we won’t push Miss Nkosi out of an airlock.”
Mandi’s heart skipped a beat. She looked for an escape, but they were trapped between the men and flanked only by doors that, according to the red lights on their access panels, were all locked.
“Who are you? What do you want?” Jans stepped in front of Mandi, and she turned sideways to keep an eye on the two men behind them.
“I’ve already told you. I want you.” Slowly, Scarface walked forward. “Alive, preferably, but I’ll take what I can get.”
He flicked his left wrist, and a telescoping black bar sprang into place, with blue electrical pulses dancing along its length. The movement made his jacket sleeve ride up slightly, exposing a portion of a tattoo. As Mandi’s gaze fell upon it, she recoiled. It was the symbol that haunted her dreams; the symbol that Erik Hallerson wore; the symbol that had forced her from Helios. The symbol of the ouroboros.
As Scarface stepped toward them, panic grew within her. Nervously, she glanced again at the two men behind them. They now brandished weapons of their own. Above the background hum of the complex, a muted beep sounded from a door just a couple of meters down the hall. Mandi stole a glance at it, and saw the panel turn green. She narrowed her eyes, then looked to Jans.
“The door,” she whispered.
Jans’s eyes darted toward it, and he returned an affirmative grunt.
“Your hands,” Scarface said. “Up.”
Mandi was bracing herself, tensing her muscles in preparation for the lunge toward the door, when an ear-piercing, warbling alarm split the air. Loud to the point of pain, Mandi had to cover her ears to block its assault. The assailants did the same and hunched down, searching for the source. An instant later the main lighting went dark, and blinding strobes burned their retinas. Red emergency luminaries added a surreal hue to the mix.
Mandi didn’t need more of an invitation. Kicking off the floor in the station’s low gravity, she leapt toward the door. Before she reached it, the fire suppression system engaged, flooding the corridor with a thick white gas that clouded her vision. Unable to judge the distance, she slammed her shoulder into the top of the door jamb. With a cry of pain, she crumpled to floor, gasping as she breathed in the burning, caustic gas. Between the bleatings of the alarm, she heard something that sounded like a cross between a whisper and the flutter of rapidly beating wings, followed by a rapid succession of light thuds. Looking up, she saw a wavy line of what looked like razor-sharp arrowheads embedded in the door and wall.
Jans appeared next to her. He too, had flattened against the floor, covering his nose and mouth with his sleeve. Mandi reached up to the door latch. At first it didn’t give, and her heart sank. But with a little extra effort, it moved, and the door slid open a hand’s width.
Again, Mandi heard that terrifying flutter, and she jerked her hand down just as more razors thudded into the door above. Or at least, she tried to. One of the arrowheads sliced through the sleeve of her uniform, pinning it to the door, cutting her arm in the process. Grunting with determination, she yanked her arm away, ripping the uniform and causing blood to spatter against the wall.
She quickly assessed her injury. The cut wasn’t deep, and it was clean—the cut of a razor blade. It would heal. She held her arm tightly as she and Jans squirmed across the floor, pushing the door open. As soon as they were through, they slid it closed again and engaged the lock. They’d bought themselves some time—but how much was anyone’s guess.
Red emergency lamps, similar to the one in the corridor, were strobing dimly, but the fire suppression system hadn’t fired in the room, so at least the air was clear. Mandi stood and took a couple of tentative steps before tripping in the near darkness and slamming her knee into the corner of something hard.
“God damn it!”
As her eyes adjusted to the dim red light, she was able to make out her surroundings. They were in a store room, full of equipment and storage crates, sca
ttered about haphazardly. Holding the cut on her arm with one hand and rubbing her throbbing knee with the other, she cursed under her breath at the unorganized sot who was responsible for the mess.
Jans shuffled over to her. “We’ve got to move,” he said. “How’s your arm?”
Mandi released the pressure and raised her arm to look. “It doesn’t hurt, but it’s still bleeding.”
“Keep the pressure on.”
“What the hell are they shooting at us?”
“I don’t know. They look like arrowheads.”
A pounding sounded at the door.
“We need to see if there’s another way out,” Jans said.
A quick survey of the walls proved there were no other doors apart from the one through which they entered. So Jans looked to the ceiling, and Mandi followed his gaze. Decorative tiles hid the true ceiling from view.
“There should be a crawlspace up there. And it might connect to other storerooms.”
The pounding at the door grew in intensity as Jans climbed a stack of storage crates and lifted the closest tile. It hadn’t raised more than twenty or thirty centimeters before it met with resistance. He wiggled the porous tile until it came free, then threw it to the floor. A tangled mess of conduit, fluid lines, and air vents took up most of the space above.
“We’re not getting out this way,” he said with a sigh, jumping back to the floor.
The fire alarm outside stopped, and ordinary white lights turned on. For a moment at least, the pounding on the door ceased. Mandi took the opportunity to get her first good look at her wounded arm. With her uniform torn and bloodstained, she looked like something out of a bad zombie film. But her clothes looked worse than the actual injury.
The pounding started again. Jans and Mandi put their backs against the room’s rear wall and slid to the floor.
“What now?” Mandi said. “I don’t—”
A loud tapping sound came from the floor in front of their feet. Mandi and Jans stared. A few seconds later, a portion of the floor popped up and clattered off to the side, and quicker than Mandi would have thought possible, she was staring down the barrel of a pistol—a very large pistol—held by a man wearing a black, full-faced mask.
“Your comms,” the masked man said. “Toss them to me.” It was not a request. The pounding on the door continued, and the man glanced over his shoulder. “Now!”
Mandi and Jans removed their earpieces and threw them onto the floor in front of the man. With his free hand, he retrieved a device from his pocket and held it over each in succession. Then he turned his attention back to Mandi and Jans.
“Who are you here for?”
“What do you mean?” Jans’s steady voice exuded confidence.
“You know. I need to hear you say it.”
Jans paused. A cracking sounded from the room’s door.
“Nassir!” Mandi blurted. “We’re looking for Nassir.”
“Who sent you? Who told you to come here?”
Mandi looked to Jans, who stared squarely into the masked man’s eyes. Another crash, louder this time, echoed through the room.
“Dagan,” Jans said. “Danny Dagan.”
The man lowered his weapon. “Follow me. Quickly.” He disappeared beneath the floor tiles.
One more series of cracks left little doubt as to the integrity of the only thing standing between them and the fluttering whispers of the insidious weapons and the men outside. Jans’s curt flick of his head was all the direction Mandi needed. She scrambled into the hole.
Even in the low g, Mandi stumbled when she landed on the grated floor three meters below. A strong blast of cool air caught her in the face. She was in a narrow tunnel illuminated by dull yellow lighting. Pipes, large and small, ran the length of the wall on one side, and electrical conduit, data lines, and fiber lined the other. Beneath the grating under her feet, a single massive pipe took up the full width of the tunnel.
The scene took Mandi back to another time, shortly after her odyssey had begun. Only then it had been the handsome, gray-haired Ernesto guiding her and Grae through the tunnels under the Quito airport to an aged orbital shuttle that would carry her away from Earth. She had no way of knowing at the time that this would be the beginning of a journey that would take her to the edge of known space. She wondered if she’d ever again see her home. She wondered if she’d ever again see the man she loved.
“We must hurry,” the masked man said as Jans landed heavily on the grating.
Jans and Mandi followed the man down the tunnel. They’d crossed only a few dozen meters when they hit a four-way intersection. The masked man turned right. Jans was on his
heels. But just as Mandi was about to follow suit, she heard the echoing clang of boots landing on the metal grating behind them. Through the dim lighting she could make out the stout shape of Scarface, raising his arm and pointing it at her.
She froze.
Suddenly her arm felt as if it was being pulled from its socket. As the masked man yanked her around the corner, she felt as much as heard the razor-sharp blades flying past her, cutting the air. They pinged as they ricocheted off pipes and walls farther down the tunnel. The masked man slid his pistol around the corner and fired a series of blind shots in the general direction of their pursuers. The loud report filled Mandi’s ears with ringing. Disoriented, she felt herself being pushed down the tunnel by the masked man’s strong hands.
As the ringing subsided, she heard a loud mechanical hum. They turned another corner, and a pair of large fans, one stacked atop the other, blocked their passage. Both spun so quickly that their blades were just a blur.
“We’re trapped!” Jans said. He stepped forward and placed his hands on the fan grille.
“Move aside,” the masked man commanded.
He spoke a few words into his comm in a language that sounded like Arabic. After a few seconds, the lower fan began to slow, and the man removed its grille. The fan blades slowed further, and he placed his palm against them, arresting their rotation until they stopped altogether.
“Go. Quickly!”
Mandi dropped to her stomach and crawled through the space between the blades. Jans followed, and then the masked man. The moment he was through, he shouted into his comm, and the lower fan began to spin again, gradually building up speed. Mandi looked through it as Scarface and one of his men turned the corner on the opposite side. Scarface ran forward and slammed his hand against the quickening fan in attempt to stop it, but it was already moving too fast. With a yell of pain and frustration, he jerked his hand away.
“Go!” the masked man commanded.
As he ushered them down the passage, Mandi heard the whisper gun spewing its arrows of death. Instinctively, she ducked even as she continued to run. Dozens of metallic pings echoed down the tunnel as the darts richocheted off the fan—but a few made it through untouched. One grazed Mandi’s hip, but did not cut her. Jans was not so lucky. He cried out as he tumbled to the grated floor.
The masked man dropped to a knee and aimed his pistol back the way they had come. Flashes and bangs filled the tunnel, and the whisper gun momentarily ceased its flutter.
Mandi helped Jans to his feet. Grunting, he staggered to the nearest corner with Mandi supporting his arm. As soon as they had rounded it, Jans slid to the floor, grasping the back of his blood-soaked thigh. The masked man rejoined them a moment later, just ahead of the whispers and clicks of wayward darts speeding by.
“We must go.” He looked down at Jans’s wound. “We have no time.” Jans tried to stand, but immediately fell back.
“I can’t make it,” he said. “This thing in my leg—”
“Roll over.”
Jans grunted as he turned over on his stomach. A knife appeared in the man’s hand, and he cut a slice down Jans’s pants leg. Blood flowed from a wound that was all but invisible. As a reporter, Mandi had seen the damage a bullet did when it struck a human body, and she knew at once that this was no bullet wound. It had formed
a perfect X on the back of his leg, as clean as if a surgeon had taken a scalpel to his skin.
The masked man stared at the wound for a few seconds before abruptly standing. Reaching to the small of his back, he retrieved a fresh magazine for his pistol and reloaded. Then he edged his way to the corner, dipped his head around it, and quickly pulled back. Pausing to take in a deep breath, he leaned out once more, brought his pistol to bear, and let loose a volley of shots. The action was met with another round of fire from the whisper guns. A few of the darts lodged in the wall, and the masked man slid close to one to get a better look at it. Through the mask, Mandi saw his eyes narrow.
“You won’t be able to move with that inside you,” he said. As he returned to Jans’s side, he retrieved his spent magazine. He wrapped it in one of the torn shreds of Jans’s blood-soaked pants. “Bite down on this.”
Jans dubiously looked at it then took it in his mouth.
The man looked up at Mandi and handed her his pistol. “Make sure no one comes around the corner.”
She took the weapon. Even in the low gravity, it felt bulky and heavy. Imitating the man’s earlier action, she took a quick look around the corner. It was difficult to make out much in the dim light, but she could tell that their pursuers had yet to make it past the spinning fans. And yet… were the blades of the lower fan slowing?
Just as she turned back to look at Jans, he let out a muffled scream. The masked man had used his knife to cut into Jans’s leg and was now aggressively probing the wound with his fingers. Mandi had to look away as Jans writhed in pain and his screams grew in intensity. She waited until his cries ceased before turning back to look once more. Jans had spit out his makeshift gag and was taking in huge gulps of air. The masked man was holding up something that looked like the tip of a broadhead arrow.
“May I have that?” Jans asked. His voice was hoarse.
The man handed it to him, then cut off the remainder of Jans’s pants leg and began making it into a bandage.
