“What’s this?” he asked, turning it over. “Where did you get a book? The Poems of Emily Dickinson?”
“That’s mine,” Tim said. “The doctor gave it to me.”
“He gave it to us,” Cara said. “I said you could have it.”
“I like it better than you do.”
“When was Jickson here?” Andy asked.
“We’ll talk about later,” Andy said. “Have you got everything? We’re not coming back here. We’re going straight back to the ship.”
“That’s everything,” Tim said, then, “Wait!” He crawled under the bed to pull out a last space ship that somewhat resembled Sunny Skies, with a long body and wheel-shaped habitat near the midpoint.
“Come on,” Andy said. He pushed them through the doorway in front of him. In the main room, he knelt and pulled them in close.
“Listen to me,” Andy said. “Petral and Karcher are going to lead the way and I’ll be behind you. At least that’s how we’re going to start. Things might get mixed up. You need to pay attention to us and where we’re going. If we tell you to run, you don’t think about it, you run. Do you understand?” His gaze bored into each them until he had solemn nods.
“You don’t think about it,” Andy said. “You run. You’re little robots and I’m sending you orders. Even if you have to leave for a little while. I’ll follow as soon as I can. You understand?”
“Are people going to be shooting at us, Dad?” Tim asked.
“I hope not, buddy.”
Cara only nodded, her face set in a determined mask.
Andy took her hand and placed it over Tim’s. “No matter what happens, you two don’t get separated. You got it, Cara?”
“Yes,” she said.
“All right.” Andy nodded to Petral. “Let’s go.”
Dull thuds came from the other side of the door as Karcher launched smoke grenades.
The front door slid open and a wall of smoke rolled into the room. Karcher’s waving arm was barely visible as he stepped into the doorway to urge them out.
“Follow Petral,” Andy said. “Let’s go. Run!”
The expression on Cara’s face went from determination to terror as the billowing smoke made what was happening outside the door real. She quailed, looking around the room, until her gaze locked on Petral.
“This way, sweetheart,” the tall woman said, holding out a hand. Andy thought he was going to have to push Cara, but she finally reached out for the offered hand, grabbing Tim behind her. Together, they stepped into the smoke.
Andy raised his rifle and followed.
Karcher led them through the smoke to the corridor where Andy had been crouching earlier. More debris covered the ground, making Tim nearly fall until Cara caught him and pulled him upright. He dropped his bag and Andy scooped it up and shoved it back in his hands.
Tile exploded all around Karcher as he took incoming fire. He rolled backward and came up firing, following his rifle bursts with grenades. From where Andy was crouched with Tim and Cara, he barely made out the face of an apartment on the second floor exploding outward.
They followed him through the dust and sulfur-tainted smoke, around the play structure in the middle of the park and into a corridor on the other side. From there, the path opened into a small market area with storefronts and a dry fountain in the middle of a cross formed by intersecting corridors.
The ground shook from the impacts. A wall fell open next to one of the store fronts, showing a room full of couches with people splayed across them, intravenous lines running into their arms and necks. Several screams followed the collapsing wall and a woman in a white shift stumbled into the corridor, gasping and trailing an IV from one arm.
Karcher stood and waived for them to follow. He ignored the crying woman and moved down the clear hallway, keeping close to the right side.
They kept a good pace, with the kids nearly running the whole time. Tim kept dropping his bag and scrambling to pick it back up. Finally, Andy put the strap over his neck and told him to hug it. That worked until he tripped on a brick from a blown-out stretch of wall. Before Andy could reach him, Tim was rolling on the floor wailing from the pain of a scraped knee.
Small weapons-fire barked ahead of them.
“Get down!” Andy yelled. He landed next to Tim and pulled his son beneath his body as bullets filled the hallway. Karcher and Petral answered with more fire. There was no cover; just the low pile of plas and steel from the smashed wall.
Petral shifted immediately into irregular bursts, giving Karcher time to sprint to the other side of the wall and send two grenades into the intersection where the angle of fire suggested their attackers to be. The blasts shook the windows around them, followed by smoke and dust rolling back down the hallway. Andy felt Cara pressing herself against him as the air became barely breathable.
“Short breaths, honey,” he whispered. “Short little breaths. Just enough to keep you going.”
“Come on,” Andy said, pulling Tim to his feet. “It’s time to run again. Stay with me.”
The maglev station was a narrow chamber lined with evenly-spaced pillars between the platform and the back wall. As they crept down the stairs into the station, it became obvious they had just missed a firefight. Several concrete walls were cratered and still smoking, and bloodstains were smeared across the floor where wounded had been dragged back behind fallen sections of the ceiling.
Karcher and Petral rolled to either side, taking up positions behind nearby pillars.
Petral answered. She was breathing heavily, sounding as if she might have been hit.
Karcher sent a grenade over the left side of the concrete planter box. Andy watched as the two soldiers in black body armor
spotted the incoming grenade and tried to run to the right, only to find themselves directly under fire from Karcher’s second grenade. The planter box exploded, spraying dirt and green leaves in all directions.
The far end of the platform erupted and the air around them filled with buzzing rounds. Concrete splintered and popped, sending shards in every direction. Andy held Tim and Cara just beneath the upper edge of the pile of bricks, hoping it might provide concealment. It certainly wouldn’t provide adequate cover from a mini-tank. The pillars around them disintegrated as rounds tore them apart, wearing them down like Tim chewing a carrot.
The mech didn’t seem able to track him fast enough. Craters appeared in the floor a meter in front of him as he ran. Each new grenade he sent at the tank slowed its response.
More rifle fire filled the gaps between the mech’s response to Karcher’s grenades. In the middle of the second set of bursts, Karcher caught his breath, cursing.
A low hum coming down the tracks behind them announced the arrival of the maglev car. Hearing the direction of the sound, Andy realized they were going to have to pass the mech to escape the train station. He still hadn’t seen the mini-tank, only felt its presence. There wouldn’t be anything they could do once they were behind the thin wall of the train car. They could only hope Karcher had disabled the tank enough to get them by.
“When the door opens,” he breathed to Tim and Cara. “We’re going to run. You understand?”
He felt their nods against his chest. Truly, he planned on picking them up and throwing them through the open doors if they didn’t move fast enough.
The floor rumbled as the mech pushed forward with thundering steps. The sound of soldiers scrambling over debris, boots scraping on concrete, and sporadic rifle fire drifted with the smoke and dust. Karcher’s rifle answered with a few bursts, drawing them closer.
The entire terminal rocked when the mine went off. The maglev car swayed on its magnetic rails so much that Andy was worried it was going to dislodge. Dust rained from the ceiling and a huge cloud of smoke rolled from the direction Karcher had run.
Andy waited for more rifle fire but the only sounds were cascading bits of concrete from the walls and ceiling.
Andy allowed himself a deeper breath. He let it out slowly. There was still no answer.
Petral looked back at him from the stub of a pillar she was hiding behind. She nodded, her expression worried, but resolute.
Andy waited another second for some indication of life from the other side of the terminal. Nothing.
“Go,” he whispered sharply.
He pushed himself to his feet and caught both kids under the arms, pulling them in close as he charged across the open space to the rail car, heart pounding in his ears. He jumped over the threshold and hit the floor, pulling the kids down with him, ready for the rain of bullets that would tear the car apart.
Petral leaped into the car a second after him. She crouched beside him and slid his rifle next to his head.
Andy blinked, not remembering when he’d set it down, or how he had forgotten it. All he could think about was getting the kids in the car. He looked at Tim, who was biting his lower lip and squeezing his eyes closed, hands clenched over his ears.
There was a grinding noise as the doors slid closed. The car vibrated as it pulled itself forward along the magnetic rails. Twice it ground its way over debris, and Andy held his breath, praying the maglev’s safety systems wouldn’t kick in and halt the car. The maglev began to build up speed and they rushed straight into the cloud of dust still filling the terminal from the mine’s explosion.
“Karcher!” Petral yelled as they went into the cloud. “Karcher! Can you hear me?”
The inside of the car filled with yellow dust, hiding the rest of the terminal from view. Karcher didn’t answer. No one answered.
The windows went dark as the maglev car flew into the tunnel on the other side of the terminal. White lights flickered on inside the car, revealing their dust-covered faces to each other.
Cara sat up slowly, still holding her bag tight against her chest. Tim rolled onto his back and crossed his arms over his chest. Andy stayed on his stomach for another minute, feeling the thrum of the magnetic forces vibrating through the floor of the car, barely believing they were moving.
Petral shrugged. she said.
Chapter Twenty-Three
STELLAR DATE: 08.27.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Night Park
REGION: Cruithne Station, Terran Hegemony
Leaving the terminal, the maglev car entered a Cruithne on fire. Each break in the tunnel offered a glimpse of street-fighting, smashed housing areas, fire and the crisscrossing flashes of kinetic rounds sprinkled with beamfire. Blast doors had come down on various sections, shutting off vacuum and whoever might have been trapped on the other side.
Andy held the kids against him, staring into each new potential danger, uncertain when the car might hit a break in the tracks and tumble end-over-end.
“I don’t know how Starl didn’t see this coming,” Petral said, eyes wet. “This is worse than anything we thought the Havenots might ever do. We all live here. This is our home.”
The car blew through a terminal still erupting with active combat. A squad of mercs held a kiosk while Lowspin and what looked like Station Security moved between benches, ceramic planters, and an overturned transport vehicle. Bullets careened off the car as they passed, surprised faces frozen, watching, and then gone behind them, another tunnel leading away into the dark.
“How much farther do we have to go?” Tim said.
“I don’t know,” Andy said, smoothing his hair back. “Not too much farther. Keep a good hold on that bag.”
He caught Cara’s gaze and she gave him a small smile. Andy squeezed her closer against his side.
The wheels squealed and they emerged in bright light, open space on either side of the car.
“Night Park,” Petral said in a low voice. “Keep your heads down.”
Night Park was an open-air bazaar that looked like a tornado had swept through a battleground. Wide swaths of destruction had cut through
the market, littered with smashed goods and at least one wandering chicken, who pecked at a crushed melon.
“Night Park is where the fountain is,” Cara said, spotting the hen. “Where they have all the parrots.” She seemed to immediately forget Petral’s warning and craned her neck to see out the window. Andy made her sit back down.
“Not now, kiddo,” he said.
“You think they’re hiding?” Tim asked.
“I would be,” Cara said. “Parrots are smart.”
In the distance, Andy heard more gunfire and the heavy footfalls of a mech. The thundering concussion of rounds striking concrete vibrated through the car and the hen squawked, fluttering out of sight.
“We’re almost there,” Petral said. “Probably another minute.”
“What’s the terminal look like?” Andy asked.
“We’ll take a side tunnel. It ends on the secondary dock. This car was one of Starl’s personal escape routes.”
“Is there any info from the rest of Lowspin?”
“It’s all a mess. The ships are waiting. For now, it sounds like the fighting is only on the ground. Heartbridge private security is slowed down searching apartment blocks.”
“They’re looking for us?” Andy asked.
Petral shook her head, pulling the action back on her rifle to check the chamber. “They’re still looking for the canister Jickson used to transport Lyssa. They also don’t know that he’s dead, so most of them are looking for him specifically. They apparently poisoned the poor sap with some kind of radioactive element that also serves as a tracker. It’s probably what led them to Fran’s shop. The attack that took Starl was a fluke.”
“So Jickson lives on, sort of?”
She grimaced. “Sort of. They’ve moved his body to one of the freighters called High Outburst.”
The car raced around a long curve that made Andy wonder if they were somehow following the overall arch of the ring surrounding the original asteroid at Cruithne’s center. Then he saw rock walls flash past and knew they were still surrounded by rock. The thought only reminded him how disoriented he had become. Somehow, they had traversed a long circle from the housing area back toward the repair docks and Sunny Skies.
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