by K. D. Austin
Lance, Salvor, and Hanna ran to catch up with Arden. His long strides kept him well ahead of everyone. He turned suddenly up a street. As the trailing three turned onto the street, they just caught sight of him ducking down a side alley. This pattern repeated over and over. Arden would occasionally pause just long enough to see if they were still behind him. Then he’d dash off again.
“Couldn’t we have hired a cab?” Salvor panted. His remaining weapons and gear were clearly weighing heavily on him even with his enhancement suit.
“That would’ve been nice,” Hanna tried to agree, though she was panting worse than Salvor.
After nearly thirty minutes of constant running, they exited the city and stood at a bridge spanning a deep gorge.
“The location should be a couple of kilometers past the river here,” Arden said once everyone had caught up to him.
Below, they could see the blackish water of the river. Hanna hunched over, hands on her knees, desperate for breath. She had never been a runner, and the EXS hadn’t fully kept her from fatigue, though she could already feel it increasing the oxygen in her system and removing the acid buildup in her muscles. Without the suit, she’d never have kept up. She wasn’t surprised to see that Lance wasn’t even sweating.
“I think it would be wise to approach cautiously,” Lance said.
“I fully agree,” Arden said, looking pointedly at Salvor, who was readjusting the numerous weapons he had not expended during the earlier fight.
“I can be cautious,” Salvor said as he finished assembling a massive gun that was half as long as he was.
Hanna and Arden both laughed. Lance looked at the weapon appreciatively. “A GMX Armor Piercer. Nice.”
The group worked their way slowly across the bridge, with Salvor taking point and Lance pulling rear. Arden and Hanna moved side by side. The bridge ended in a pass cut into a steep cliff.
“This would be a perfect location for an ambush,” Lance said, scanning the tops of the steep sides.
“Nothing to do but move forward,” Arden said, urging Salvor forward. “Let’s just not linger long in here.”
They picked up their pace to a slow jog through the potential valley of death. As they exited the pass, Salvor stopped in shock. No one ran into him because they were all frozen in shock.
Chapter 24
An obsidian cliff rose out of the dead-end road. The glassy black rock shone in the afternoon sun. The cliff alone was enough to inspire awe, but the structure protruding from it captivated Arden and his pirate band.
“It looks like a hand,” Lance said quietly.
Salvor finally got his mouth moving. “A gigantic hand reaching out of the cliff. Who makes a building shaped like a hand?”
“The Hairy Hand, I assume,” Arden said. “I’d heard they’d gone to ground, but this isn’t a typical pirate hideout.”
“Not very subtle,” Hanna said, agreeing.
Arden realized she had gripped his hand at some point in her shock. He squeezed it gently and then let go. Though Salvor clearly knew he had a physical relationship with Hanna, he felt it was wise not to flaunt it in front of Lance, who believed he had such a relationship himself. Though Hanna had commented—joked?—about having both of them together, he didn’t know what she’d actually programmed into the ex-GalMar. And while Arden would personally welcome the opportunity if it arose, he doubted they would have such a chance again. He might get to continue fucking Hanna, if things went his way in the next hour or so, but he doubted the GalMar goon was long for the world. It was a shame. He really was anxious to try out some of Hanna’s hacking on someone disposable during sex. The possibilities were endless. However, he had much more important things to attend to now than fulfilling his sexual fantasies. There was a treasure to be recovered.
Hanna brought him back to the present. “That is a fascinating use of permaplast. I’ve never heard of anything larger than a shipping container being made from the stuff. The programming involved to shape it into any habitable structure, much less one shaped like this, is insane.”
“What a waste of money,” Salvor said disgustedly. “I could’ve put that to much better use.”
“Buying more weapons, I’m sure,” Arden said and walked past his first mate toward the index-finger section of the hand. From thumb to pinkie, it spanned at least half a kilometer, protruding palm up from the obsidian cliff. Its fingers were slightly curled like it should be holding a ball.
Salvor caught up to Arden. “Let me, Captain.” He approached what appeared to be a door set into the knuckle of the finger.
In the meantime, Lance kept his gun at the ready. Arden hoped Hanna hadn’t done anything to interfere with the man’s training. It wouldn’t do to have a trigger-twitching solider behind them.
“Hey, Hanna, can you give me a hand here?” Salvor said. “Get it? A hand.” He doubled over laughing at his own joke.
“It would be hard to miss,” Hanna said, not cracking a smile.
Arden was again reminded why he both loved Salvor and hated him. Nothing bothered him. Everything was just fun and games. Even when they were walking into a potential trap at worst or a rival pirate base at best, with a mind-hacked GalMar looking for treasure that had been stolen at least three times since Potts had discovered it, each time resulting in the death of the thief, Salvor joked. He was laughing so hard, he had to lean against the structure for support to keep from falling over. At that moment, right behind Salvor, the door slid open rapidly.
Salvor jumped and barely avoided falling through the sudden opening. A short, round man with no hair and coppery skin stood in the doorway, glaring at Arden. Salvor’s smile disappeared, and his GMX moved a fraction closer to the man.
“Who are you?” the bald man said in a guttural voice that betrayed that he’d grown up on one of the polluted gas-mining worlds of the galaxy.
Arden stepped up and extended his hand. “Arden Mann, captain of The Scourge of the Stars.”
A huge smile lit the round man’s face but didn’t touch his eyes or his voice. “Trigger Lee. It’s always a pleasure to meet fellow pirates. Welcome to The Hairy Hand. I apologize that Styx didn’t tell me you were on your way.”
“If Styx was the fellow who met us at the transit hub, he’s dead,” Arden said, keeping all emotion from his voice. As he expected, Trigger didn’t seem surprised. They would be a poor pirate band indeed if they hadn’t been in communication with the man, if not within physical sight of him. Now just to determine whether they had sacrificed a patsy or if the attackers were someone else. Based on their easy approach to The Hairy Hand, he guessed the latter.
“That is unfortunate. How did it happen?”
“We were ambushed at the transit station,” Arden said. “Whoever did it stole the treasure. We barely escaped with our lives.”
“Ambushed? Oh my! Hurry and get inside.”
Chapter 25
Trigger ushered the pirates into a shimmery silver-and-black hallway that slanted slightly upward. The door whisked behind them, nearly catching Hanna’s heel as she brought up the rear. She stumbled into Lance, who caught her easily. His hands wrapped around her waist, and again she was reminded how naked she actually was. Lance winked at her, and she realized that he knew her clothes were simply illusion. Heat flooded her face, and she silently cursed Arden for convincing her to put the thought in Lance’s head that they were occasional lovers.
“Do you know who attacked you?” Trigger turned back to look at Arden but did not slow his pace. He accurately took side passages without looking where he was going.
Arden shook his head. “They were well trained and well armed. I’m guessing maybe the same guys you stole it off of in the first place.”
Trigger stopped walking so suddenly that everyone had to slam on the brakes to keep from piling onto each other. This time Hanna found her hands on Lance’s waist. She could feel the taut muscles even through his enhancement suit. Just as abruptly, and without saying a word, Trigger st
arted walking again. Salvor and Hanna exchanged glances. Arden laughed aloud.
Trigger kept the pace up for several more meters in silence. The Hairy Hand pirate stopped in front of a door that shone with a blue luminescent security field. Trigger’s hand hovered over a control pad beside the door. As he began the process of disabling the security, alarm klaxons blared, and the lighting in the corridor flickered to red and began flashing.
Trigger jumped and shrieked like a young child. “We’re under attack!”
“Again?” Hanna said.
Chapter 26
The eerie red light made the corridor look like something out of a bad dream. It seemed like all Hanna had done for the last two days was fight one battle after the other. If she’d wanted a life of constant battle, she would’ve become a GalMar. This wasn’t what pirating was supposed to be about.
Trigger ran to the side of the hallway and swiped his hand across a large view screen. It immediately switched on to reveal ten soldiers in familiar full combat armor attacking the main entrance.
“It’s our friends from the transit station, all right,” Hanna said.
“You’ve led them here!” Trigger said with angry panic. “Now they’ll kill us all! I was a fool to trust you.”
He probably would’ve had even more unpleasant things to say, but a thunderous explosion rocked The Hand. When Hanna looked at the view screen, she saw smoke pouring from a huge hole where the door had been and the armored attackers hustling inside. A rush of smoke choked the hallway. Lance and Salvor drew their side arms in one smooth motion and began firing through the smoke. Trigger didn’t wait to see who the visitors were. He sprinted down the hall as fast as he could go.
“Follow him!” Arden said as he ran through the same exit. “It’s our only chance to get out of here.”
Hanna didn’t need any more convincing. She took off running after Arden and Trigger. Salvor and Lance were hot on her heels, running backward and continuing to shoot through the smoke at the deadly force behind.
The interior of The Hand was a giant labyrinth. The corridor kept twisting and turning in random directions, with numerous corridors branching off to the left and right, while other intersections spun out at unusual angles and grades. Hanna found the layout confusing and hoped it would slow their pursuers.
Every corridor was the same size and shape and the same shade of dull gray. Hanna realized she’d never be able to find her way back if they had an opportunity to turn around. As Arden had said, they were dependent on Trigger to lead them out of this maze.
Salvor passed her and caught up to Arden. Both of them were just inches behind Trigger and sticking to him like glue. Lance continued to run behind Hanna with his weapon out and pointed diagonally down toward the floor, ready to fire behind at any moment.
“Do you think we’ve lost them?” she asked Lance.
As if summoned by her question, a group of armored attackers popped around the corner they had just turned. Lance reacted faster than thought. He spun on his heel, brought his gun in line, and started blasting the attackers Hanna had begun to think of as GrayMars, though she knew they weren’t really a rogue Galactic Marine unit. The question still remained, though: Who were they?
Lance hit the first two who had come around the corner before they had a chance to react, and they slumped backward. The moment of safety didn’t last long, as an egg-sized silver ball flew around the corner and clattered at Hanna’s feet.
Lance lowered his gun, spun back around, and charged ahead, yelling at Salvor and Arden, “Grenade!”
Before Hanna could process that, Lance hit her with a flying tackle and knocked her into a corridor that led off to the right and slightly down. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Salvor knocking Trigger through another side passage off to the left. Hanna hoped Arden was in that pile, too.
Lance landed hard on top of her. As he rolled off, he raised his gun and blasted a small panel beside the entrance they’d just passed through. Instantly, a heavy door slammed shut across the entrance, just barely missing their boot heels. A concussive blast beyond the door bent it toward Hanna and Lance like a giant inverted steel drum head. Red light leaked around its dented frame.
Hanna glanced from the door over to Lance, who was crouching over her, still holding his gun and looking dangerous.
“Looks like it’s just you and me, Hanna.”
Hanna looked back at the door and realized there was no way they could go back through it. Lance’s desperate leap had saved them, but now they were separated from Arden and Salvor. Hanna was alone with Lance in an insane maze with a well-trained band of killers after them. Not to mention that all of Lance’s memories and beliefs of his life were a lie she’d created. And since she’d never mind-hacked someone so fully before, she couldn’t help fearing it would wear off at some point.
Chapter 27
“Are you okay?” Lance asked her.
“Yeah. Thanks for saving me,” Hanna said.
“We’re not out of the woods yet, Seldon,” he said with an edge in his voice. “We need to find the others and get out of here.”
As if to prove his point, someone began banging on the damaged door.
“Maybe it’s Salvor,” Hanna said hopefully.
“Not likely,” Lance said, offering her his hand.
“I know.”
The metal door screeched and whined as the GrayMars began using some weapon to turn the door into Swiss cheese. Lance grabbed her arm and pulled Hanna down the long and winding corridor at a run.
“Those rogue GalMars have some serious weaponry. I wonder how long they’ve been amassing supplies,” Lance said as he pulled them down a left branch, then a right, then another left.
Finally, they arrived at a large rotunda with hallways branching off in every direction. “This is something different,” Lance said, spinning slowly with his gun at the ready.
“And there’s a net terminal!” Hanna rushed over to the panel on the wall and jacked herself in. “The least I can do is find a map of this complex so maybe we can find our way out of this crazy place.”
“Maybe we can find where the Hairy Hands have all disappeared to? I’m sure they have some bolt-holes.”
As Hanna started blowing past The Hairy Hand’s security protocols, Lance pulled out his tracker that Arden had given each of them. “If this thing works like Arden said, we should be able to find him and Salvor on our way out.”
Hanna launched a Trojan virus to get access to the building’s security systems. While that was running, she kept busy by trying to find a site map or anything else useful in The Hairy Hand system’s massive pile of data. Not surprisingly a nice, easy map of the complex wasn’t labeled in an easily accessible folder. That would be the case in any public building or vessel, but a pirate base didn’t care to have intruders pulling up maps with “X marks the spot” on them no matter what you saw in melodramatic holovids. But unlike the average person, or even the typical hacker, Hanna understood the original programming language of the Galactic Net. So once she could successfully dig through enough layers of encryption, she entered a request, and a complete map of The Hairy Hand popped up on her HUD. The original designs of all buildings were hidden in the code of their intranet. She had learned that at an early age and had used it to steal not a few items as a teen. In fact, it had actually led to her life of piracy.
“I got a map,” she said, sending it to Lance. “This place is a crazy maze. Looks like a drunk two-year-old designed it.”
“Drunk two-year-old? Where do you get these phrases?” Lance asked, chuckling.
Hanna shook her head at him. “Whatever. All of the passages circle around and cross through each other without any obvious purpose. I’ve seen some crazy paranoid-pirate hideouts before, but this one takes the cake.”
“Even with this map, we’re going to have a hard time finding our way out,” Lance said, agreeing with her.
“Maybe not.” Giving up on visually mapping the layout, Ha
nna changed tactics. She cross-referenced the serial number of the terminal she was using to all the terminals marked on the map, allowing her to pinpoint their current location on the map. She then launched a navigation program and watched as a little red dot began blinking on the map on her HUD. She sent the new navigational map to Lance and smiled. “Now we can figure out where we’re going in this crazy place.”
“You’re a genius,” Lance said and swept her up in a hug before she knew what was happening. His sudden move startled Hanna, and she stiffened. Lance put her down and looked at her questioningly.
Hanna covered her fright quickly. “Sorry, I’m just so on edge. People keep trying to kill us.” She forced herself to hug him back. “Thanks for taking care of me.”
“What are friends for?” he said and pecked her on top of the head. “Now let’s get moving before those rogues catch up to us.”
He looked back down, with a worried expression, at the tracker he’d been fiddling with before Hanna had sent him the maps. “Nothing. I know they worked at short range at least. I tested mine on the ship.”
“Could be interference in here,” Hanna said.
“Let’s try yours as we move,” Lance said, tucking his own tracker away and reaching for Hanna’s.
Hanna disconnected from the wall terminal and started to reach into her pack for the tracker when the first blast hit her.
Chapter 28
Hanna bounced off of the hard permaplast terminal and slumped to the floor. The next blast flew over her head, destroying the terminal. Lance pulled up his weapon and jumped in front of Hanna. The next blast caught Lance’s gun. He hissed in pain and tossed the sizzling weapon down the hall toward the attackers. Then he dove on top of Hanna as a loud explosion rocked the hall, and a blast of heat caused sweat to break out on their bodies.
