by K. D. Austin
“What just happened?” Hanna asked dazedly.
“The hit to my gun overloaded it. It went off like a grenade. Hopefully, it bought us some time. Are you all right? Hold it! Your pack’s on fire!”
Lance beat at Hanna’s pack, putting out the flames.
“Okay! Okay! I’m good already. You can stop spanking me now,” Hanna said. She laughed a little, and Lance thought it was to cover her fright and shock from the attack.
“Come on,” he said and pulled Hanna to her feet and down another corridor away from the direction of the latest attack. He didn’t let go of her hand, since she seemed to be holding on to him as if he were a life raft in a flood.
“You’re lucky to be alive, Hanna.”
“Because of you,” she said, squeezing his hand, and Lance saw real gratitude in her eyes for the first time. Something had been wrong with her this whole mission, but he hadn’t been able to nail it down. She seemed unusually distant. Lance shook off the thought, though. With everything going on, he couldn’t worry about what Hanna might be going through. Sometimes he had learned that people just had off days. Also, every time he’d tried to think about his relationship with Hanna lately, he felt like he was trying to remember a dream. Lance chalked that up to stress and his recent injury.
Hanna returned him to their present trouble. “But my tracker didn’t fare so well,” she remarked, holding up what was left of the templast case that had taken the first blast, which would’ve left her shattered. “This little thing saved my butt, literally, but its tracking days are definitely over.”
“We can only hope that Arden’s or Salvor’s are working better. All we can do is try to get ourselves out now.”
Hanna wondered if they both still had their trackers. Who had given one to the GrayMars? As Lance guided them through the maze using the map she’d sent him, she realized two things: He wasn’t the traitor; he still had his tracker. And he had just risked his life to save her. The mind-hack was working.
The question remained, who had sent the rogues after them? Hanna was leaning more toward Venus, but she didn’t have time to figure it out right now. First, they had to get out of this mess.
Chapter 29
After Lance felt they had put enough distance between themselves and the spot of the attack, he slowed down, not wanting to waste their enhancement suits’ reserves in case they had to run hard for a long distance at some point, like when they exited The Hairy Hand. “Hanna, use those skills of yours and find us a way out of here.”
She consulted her HUD for a few minutes. “It looks like there’s an exterior door in the little finger section not far from here,” Hanna said, and a section of the map on Lance’s HUD lit up.
A booming thump sounded down a hallway to their right. Obviously, they hadn’t gone far enough to lose their pursuers.
“Lead the way,” Lance said. “I’ll keep my attention on a possible attack.”
Hanna pulled ahead of Lance and after a couple of seconds darted away down a narrow hallway to the left. “Wish this map showed the bolt-holes. We’ve probably run over a dozen by now.”
Hanna had no idea why The Hairy Hand band had built this place in such an odd manner, nor did she have time to figure it out at the moment. With one more check of the map in her HUD, she turned and followed a downward-sloping passage on the right that curved into a dead end.
“Bova! The map shows another passage here,” Hanna said, skidding to a stop.
Lance slid his hand up and down the blank gray wall and then smiled at Hanna. “Well, there’s not one. So we can either talk about it or turn around.”
They turned around, but hadn’t gone more than a couple of steps before two GrayMars rounded the corner in front of them. Before the rogues could react, Lance jumped into action. He dropped one with a kick to the knee and the other with a chop to the neck. As they fell to the ground, he stomped on both of them again to make sure they didn’t get back up.
“Bova!” Lance said disgustedly, tossing the weapon he had picked up from one of the downed rogues. “Biometric weapons. They powered off as soon as I touched them.”
Hanna was about to offer to try to hack it, when shouts echoed from farther up the passage. “We're trapped!” she said instead while scanning for any type of cover or escape.
“This could get ugly fast,” Lance said, pointing one of the useless guns up the corridor in an attempt to bluff the coming attackers.
Hanna scanned the wall again hoping a door had magically appeared. As the footsteps and voices drew closer, she remembered the fight in the transit-hub locker room and smiled. “I’m about to do something. Get ready to run.”
“Run where? We’re at a dead end.”
“Out of the corridor. Trust me.”
Lance looked skeptical but nodded.
Hanna could hear the pounding boots coming closer. She hacked into the fire-suppression system, and a sound like air escaping into a vacuum filled the hall.
“Now!” Hanna pushed Lance forward the second the noise stopped.
Lance and Hanna rounded the corner and found an expanding foam mass wriggling on the floor. Hanna couldn’t tell how many GrayMars were trapped underneath the fire-retardant foam, nor did she plan on waiting to see how many escaped. The pair wiggled between the wall and the trapped rogues and soon made it back into the main corridor they had left earlier.
Consulting the map, Hanna led them to the right.
“Nice work,” Lance said.
His compliment made Hanna smile in spite of herself, but the warm feeling didn’t last long. Angry shouts followed them down the hallway.
“Either the rogues escaped more quickly than I would’ve thought possible or another group has discovered them.”
“Either way, we need to move,” Lance said. “Where to?”
Hanna glanced at the map and turned to the left, into a slightly narrower passage. “This way.”
As soon as they were both through, Hanna used her hack into the safety systems to close an emergency door behind them. Soon pounding fists clanged on the door behind them, followed by gunfire.
“That won’t hold them long,” Lance said as they kept running, “but it did a nice job of slowing them down.”
“So will this,” Hanna said.
Another door closed behind them, and after ten more strides, Hanna closed another one. She had no idea why this corridor had so many emergency doors, though she assumed Lance could probably tell her if she asked.
“Okay, it looks like there’s a room up here that we’ll need to cut through to get to the exit.”
“I don’t know how they keep following us,” Lance said, and Hanna could tell he was keeping some thoughts to himself.
The door was locked, but it took Hanna only a few seconds to open it. As soon as the door opened, Lance sprang inside. Oddly, three GrayMars were sitting around a table in the middle of the room. Lance was on them before they had a chance to stand up.
Launching himself sideways into the air, Lance crashed into the two closest GrayMars, smashing their faces into the table. He continued his roll across the top of the table and shot to his feet. The third rogue stood up, drew his side arm, and tried to blast Lance, but the mind-hacked GalMar was just too fast. Before the rogue could aim, Lance leaped into the air again. As he passed over the attacker’s head, one of his arms snaked around the man’s throat beneath the helmet. The force of his landing nearly bent the GrayMar in half backward as Lance kept his grip around his neck. His free hand clamped down hard on the rogue’s blaster hand. Using the extra strength his enhancement suit gave him, he forced the man to point his weapon at the other two rogues.
They had only just begun to recover from the thrashing Lance had given them, pushing their chairs back and trying to stand, when Lance blasted them both. The pair dropped back down into their chairs and slumped onto the table. Neither one of them moved again.
The last rogue was struggling for control of the blaster, but Lance still had th
e GrayMar bent in half. The unfortunate rogue had no leverage and no chance. Gradually, Lance forced the weapon toward his struggling victim. When it was lined up, he jammed his finger into the tight space around the man’s grip on the weapon’s trigger. The blaster went off, and the last GrayMar stopped struggling.
As Lance released his grip and let the man crumple to the floor, he looked up at Hanna. His face was cold, without expression, and his green eyes seemed to stare right through her. Hanna was still standing in the doorway with her jaw hanging open. Even without a weapon, Lance was one seriously dangerous man. Hanna was glad the mind-hack was holding. If it ever failed, she wouldn’t last long.
Lance ran right up to Hanna and grabbed her hand. “Come on, we’ve got to get out of here.” He hauled her toward the other door, breaking her shocked reverie.
“What? Why?”
“That was a Command Trio. They would’ve been coordinating a section of the attack, filtering all the communications between units and issuing orders to keep everyone organized. Their absence will be noticed by the troops they were responsible for. And every single one of them is going to head straight to this spot. We’re about to be in the center of a meteor collision.”
He told her all of this while yanking up a chair and herding Hanna out the door on the other side. Her curiosity about the chair dampened her mounting fear at what Lance had just revealed.
“I lost my side arm,” Lance said as if reading Hanna’s mind. “Any weapon’s better than none.”
“None doesn’t seem to be a problem for you,” Hanna said.
Lance winked at her. “Maybe it’s for you.”
They hurried down the hall toward the exit Hanna had identified, expecting an attack at every corner. Hanna was watching the little red dot on her HUD get closer and closer to the exit. They were almost there when someone stepped out of a side passage to their left. Lance jumped in front of her and swung his chair high. His opponent was swinging a massive gun up to blast him. Hanna had fallen onto her butt when Lance pushed her backward, which gave her a unique view of the situation.
“Salvor,” Hanna said just in time to keep Lance from conking him with the chair and to keep Salvor from blasting Lance with his massive blaster. The two men lowered their weapons slightly but remained ready to use them if someone less friendly appeared.
“Hanna! Lance! Am I glad to see you alive!”
“Where’s Arden?” Hanna asked.
“I don’t know. I thought he was with you two. I haven’t seen him since we all got separated.”
“I can’t believe you’ve been alone this whole time.”
“Oh, I had that useless Trigger with me at first, until he darted around a corner and disappeared. Down a bolt-hole, I’m sure, but I sure couldn’t find it. Not that I had a long time to look with those rogues shooting everything in sight.”
“Hanna’s found us a way out,” Lance said.
“Bova! But what about Arden?”
“We can only hope for the best, but we won’t be of any help to him if we all get killed in here,” Lance said and then turned to Hanna and nodded for her to lead on.
“I tried to use the tracker to find all of you, but it doesn’t seem to be working,” Salvor said as the three started moving.
Lance nodded. “That confirms my fears. I’d hoped it was just mine that wasn’t working.”
“What about Hanna’s?”
Hanna held out the scorched tracker that had saved her life earlier and quickly relayed the story to Salvor. She almost told them at that point about seeing one of the trackers with the GrayMars at the transit station, but decided against it. The three of them all had one, but did it really prove anyone innocent? Information was power, so Hanna decided to keep this to herself a bit longer. If they found Arden and he still had his, then she would tell.
“How far’s that exit, Hanna?” Lance asked as they rounded another corner and turned into an even narrower corridor that inclined slightly.
“We should come to a cross corridor in about twenty meters. The exit is on the left down that corridor,” Hanna said after confirming the directions on her HUD.
“Then let’s hurry and get there.” Lance suited action to words and began running until the sounds of battle echoed down the hallway. He slowed and held up a hand to signal the others to do the same.
“Sounds like we may have to fight our way out.”
“I could try to find a different exit,” Hanna said, already scanning the crazy map.
“Go ahead and look for one, but they’re all probably covered,” Lance said grimly.
“And we’d likely have to fight more to get to another one,” Salvor said, smiling. Hanna had believed the man a bit crazy, and the eagerness she saw on his face at the thought of fighting these killers again confirmed it but also probably explained how he had survived by himself in this deathtrap.
“So unless there’s a tank or something worse at this one, we’re going to take it,” Lance said, moving slowly forward again.
“Here. You might need this,” Salvor said to Lance and pulled a small hand blaster from a pouch on his lower thigh and handed it to him. “It’s just a Mark 3, but it’s a tad better than a chair. Sorry I don’t have another fusion rifle for you. That’s my last gun, Hanna.”
“That’s okay. Guns have never really been my thing.”
“Thanks,” Lance said, quickly checking the weapon’s charge and settings. From the poor reputation of the tiny blaster, Hanna thought the chair might have been a better weapon.
As the trio drew near the cross corridor, the battle sounds had ended, but there were voices. And they didn’t sound friendly.
“Rogues,” Lance mouthed. Then he turned and whispered directly into Hanna’s ear. His breath on her skin caused goose bumps to rise on her entire left side and sent a flutter through her stomach. Hanna tried hard to ignore the unexpected reaction. “Stay back and keep up,” he said. “We’ll clear the area, but who knows how many are behind us somewhere.”
Hanna nodded, and as Lance pulled away, she released a breath she hadn’t known she was holding. She forced herself to remember that the only reason Lance was killing these rogues now instead of her was because of the mind-hack. But another part of her brain wondered why that mattered. She had hacked him and at Arden’s urging had made the extremely sexy man believe they had a friends-with-benefits type of arrangement. Now that she’d spent so much time with him not trying to kill her, she could admit how attractive he really was. So what would be wrong with taking advantage of that when they got out of here? Hanna shook her head. If they got out of here was the reality of the situation. She needed to concentrate on that first. Everything else could wait.
Lance and Salvor exchanged a look that somehow allowed them to agree on a plan of action. They crouched at the corner—Lance low, Salvor high. Lance rolled across the opening with his Mark 3 blaster blazing as Salvor bombarded the hallway with booming shots from his heavy weapon. Lance continued the roll to the other side of the entrance, finishing on his feet in a crouch. When no return fire answered, he and Salvor charged up the hallway. Hanna scrambled to keep up.
“Open the door, Hanna.”
Lance motioned her forward while he and Salvor stood guard. It took only a few seconds for her to open the door.
“Got it,” Hanna said triumphantly.
Lance and Salvor burst through the door, weapons ready. As Hanna dashed through the exit, she took a second to look at the four downed GrayMars and gaped. Each had a neat pen-sized hole in their unarmored necks. Lance had hit them all while rolling across the hallway, using only a notoriously weak Mark 3 blaster. Her fear of Lance continued to war with her increasing attraction. He was frighteningly dangerous.
Her eyes were torn away from Lance’s handiwork by the man’s sudden shout. “Watch out!”
Hanna turned around in time to see Salvor bash a rogue in the head with first the barrel and then the butt of his fusion rifle. Lance delivered one of his sig
nature kicks to the knee of another before firing one quick shot that ended the struggle. Lance grabbed her arm and yanked her out the door, and then they were running.
Salvor chucked his gun as they ran.
“Bova thing burned out,” he said disgustedly, as if the weapon had intentionally and personally offended him.
Just then, an explosion rocked the ground, knocking Hanna off her feet. Smoke rolled thick and black from inside The Hairy Hand complex and billowed out over the group’s heads.
Chapter 30
Hanna coughed and choked from the smoke rolling over her from out of the little finger of the permaplast complex.
“I thought permaplast was fireproof,” Lance said, sputtering through the smoke.
“It is,” Salvor said, seemingly unaffected by the thick smoke. “It’s the interior insulated foam. I noted it sprayed around several sections. Stupid Hairy Hands were just asking to roast inside that place one day, but it’ll burn itself out. The building’s not coming down. So, hopefully if Arden’s still in there, he’s in a different section.”
“I hope so,” Hanna said, wiping the tears that the smoke had created from her eyes. Her hand came away streaked with soot, and she imagined her face wasn’t much different.
They took off again toward the river, ducking and dodging behind every sage bush and large, glassy rock that composed the landscape outside the large hand.
“There!” Lance said, pointing through the clouds of smoke.
Hanna struggled to see anything. Her eyes continued to burn and tear up from the smoke.
“Come on!”
Lance grabbed her hand and pulled her through some bramble bushes. Salvor emerged right behind them. “Yes!”
Salvor pushed past Lance and Hanna toward what the former GalMar had seen: a Nebula rocket car. Hanna hadn’t seen one of these beauties since she was a child. They had been outlawed on most planets due to the number of deaths associated with them. It was the fastest in-atmosphere vehicle ever produced.
