I thought about that. If that was their goal, were there any men out there like her? Kore was formidable, but a man might be unstoppable. She had said that there were no others like her, but did she mean only females? I asked her, “Are you sure that you are the only one of your kind?”
“I already told you, I never saw anyone else besides Council members.” She was irritated with me as she peeked around the corner to see if anyone else was coming.
I had heard Kull's version, but now I needed to listen to hers. "How did you escape from Kull?"
Cage whistled low and said, “I don’t care how she escaped from Kull, you should have seen how she handled Unger and Polo. Wham! Bam! And then it was over.” I followed his line of sight to the corner of the room where I saw two men slumped over each other.
“Are they dead?” I asked as I shakily stood up.
“Once she crippled them, I finished them off.”
“With what?”
His face turned red and said, “With your plazgun.”
“Give it back.”
“Not until I can trust you.”
At this point, Kore went into action. She sped through the room with silent footsteps, much faster than he could turn around and react to her assault. She grabbed his head and swept out the back of his knees. When they both went down, she said quietly, "Hand the weapon back or I will snap your neck." The gun slid across the slab floor, and I nabbed it, putting it back in its holster.
“I wasn’t going to do anything against you,” Cage whimpered.
She released him and then returned to her post. Just before she got there, she turned around and asked, “Now is the time, if we are going to steal a vessel.”
"Too late!" said the man with the longish hair. "Incoming!" A few arcgun shots were blasted off into the hallway.
“What do you mean, too late?”
“A large vessel is landing in the yard,” another man said as he entered the room. “Probably holds a hundred or more people.” He had hair the color of burnt sienna sands found deep in Aoki. Our war party was complete.
I stood and asked, “Any recognizable insignia?”
"Nope, not a one. It has been painted over, and there are a few patchy welds on it. "
That was a relief. The Overseers would have arrived in opulence, and if they were the Ouders, their ride would have been somewhat more unusual, I imagined. That left either Kull or some other faction we did not know.
Cage said, "If the others don't join us, we're done for."
"Communicate with them what is going on. Have them meet us here." As I checked my weapons, I next asked, "Who are our current comrades?"
The man with the dark hair with even darker skin turned around and said with a flash of white teeth, “I’m Graff, Ty just came in, and Lark is helping you.”
I nodded at them and said, "I am Jett, and that is Kore. She is the payload. Protect the payload at any cost."
“Payload?” Kore asked in a plain tone.
“That is the easiest way to communicate that you are the most important thing here,” Lark attempted to explain.
“I can take care of myself,” she muttered in reply.
We chose to ignore her. “Where is the other vessel?”
“They are offloading now,” Graff said at the same time as Cage answered my question, “Opposite side of the loading dock Beta.” I doubted that the docks had changed much since I had left, so I knew this was going to be dangerous. Our vessels were currently in bay Alpha.
“Cage, are we shooting for Hejira?” I asked.
"No, the smaller guard vessel, the Safina.”
“Can you tell who they are yet Graff?”
“Only soldiers for hire thus far.” Then not the Ouder.
We would not reach the ship before they invaded the bay. I doubted anyone here wanted to be a decoy for us, and if the rest of the people under Malik did not evacuate the bay, they would become collateral damage. Whoever they were, they were most likely well-armed, and if they were colluding with the aliens, then they might even have advanced technologies.
“Is there another route to the bay?”
“There is, but first, someone needs to hand me their oculus.”
Graff and Ty stared at each other. Cage nodded, and Ty handed her his. She began working with it.
“What are you doing?” I asked Kore as I approached her.
“I’m manually overriding the locks leading into all the bays.”
“That will take too long,” Cage insisted.
Ty moved to take it away from her, but she stopped him and said, “Done. Now they won’t know which of the four bays to search first.”
“Unless Malik is helping them,” I said. Cage nodded his head in approval.
“Regardless, it will at least slow them down. Only I have the command protocols to open the bays now. Let’s go through the kitchen to the men’s sleeping quarters. There is a storage closet. If we cut the back wall out of it, then we should be at the bay before a quarter of an ora passes.”
"Where is the ship cutter?" Ty asked Graff. He did not reply but instead ran out of the room.
“What about using the plazgun?” Kore asked.
"A ship cutter should cut the plazcutter’s time in half,” I explained.
“The rest of the crew isn’t sure which side they are going to take yet,” Cage informed us.
“Well, they better hurry and make up their minds. Everyone off that ship is well armed with something, most of which I can’t even identify.” Coming from a pirate like him whose job it was to be prepared for anything with everything, his comment was disturbing. The Overseers could have funded an operation like this, but who else knew Kore was here?
“Has anyone recognizable emerged yet?” I asked again.
"Looks like they just closed the hatch. Search and destroy crew only." Exactly what I did not want to hear. At least it sounded like everyone was human. I decided to pick up the other unwanted oculus from the downed thug and tune it into the security vid players.
Graff came back in with a machine on wheels. It was the industrial ship cutter. He bulldozed it through the room, and we followed him through to the kitchen, getting doors for him and moving obstacles when we could. Once out of the kitchen, we heard an explosion from where one of the docking stations was located.
“Not ours,” Kore told us, and then we pushed onward to where she was leading us.
Once we opened a small portal, that would no longer accommodate the size of our cutter, she said, “This is the room, but the machine can stay out in the hall. Aim it towards the back wall it, the one it shares with the dock.”
“What about the shelving in the back,” Ty said. “I don’t want to walk through fire to get to my freedom.”
I peeked my head through and said, “The shelving is empty, except for some metal buckets and a few tools. We should be fine.”
We heard noises coming from the kitchen, with one voice, in particular, rising above the rest. I said, "I thought that you said that you finished Malik off."
“He went down,” Cage offered to placate me.
That meant he was not dead but had been merely knocked out. I sighed and said, “What are you waiting for, use it.”
Graff geared up the machine and the laser sliced through the shelf, causing it to crash to the floor. We all cringed at the noise it made. Then it began slicing through the metal wall.
“Jett, you still have a full charge on that plazgun?” Cage asked.
I checked it and replied, "Yeah."
"Why don't you make yourself useful and seal up the entrances to this space, here and over there too?" Cage asked, indicating the two doors on each end of the narrow hallway in which we were camped.
“On it.” After I soldered the doors shut in under two tigs, I heard people running through interior corridors, but not ours yet. They must have been searching for us. Fortunately, we were pretty deep into the maze of this complex. Kore had picked this location well.
&
nbsp; I felt an incoming message from the stolen oculus. It was Malik. “Anyone else getting a message from Malik?” Everyone shook their heads no.
I set the vid off so he would not know immediately where we were or identify if it was me. I flipped on the audio but sent a standard non-audio message greeting. I quickly received a response, "I know you think you know what is going on, but you are mistaken." Should I just let him talk or ask strategic questions? In the end, he took away my choice.
"I know you are listening, Jett. Your mistake was holding the oculus. It has a biorhythm identifier on it. Your second mistake was working for me. I can identify your rhythms a mile away." Huh? That was some expensive extraneous equipment he had for being purely a merchant runner, but in retrospect, it did not really surprise me, since I knew he was a paranoid son-of-a-hock.
“What do you want?”
“Nothing. I just want to help you.”
I took a step or two back from them. Something was off. Malik was not dead, yet they had not found us yet. Who was still out in the main hanger? I scrolled through the security vid and viewed the ship outside. It was unmarked just like Graff and Ty had said, but there was someone now standing outside of it that was easily recognizable – Kull.
“Who will be waiting for us when we cut through that wall?”
They all shifted uneasily, with Kore heading straight towards me. No one lifted a finger to stop her.
I pointed my plazgun at Graff while looking at Cage. “You have some explaining to do, so stop cutting that wall right now.”
Cage looked at Graff and nodded his head once. The laser went out, and Cage cautiously approached us. “I can explain.”
We had been double-crossed. I couldn’t wait for his explanation.
Chapter 19
“Only the ship is waiting for us on the other side of the wall.”
“Where will you take us once we are on board the Safina?” I asked.
“Away from here and Kull,” he told me nervously.
“Are there really aliens looking for her?”
“I told you, didn’t I?” His tone was turning vicious, so it wouldn’t be long before he snapped.
“How many of you are aware of his alien conspiracy theory?”
No one answered. All kept their gazes riveted on me. I was about to help him carry out what he wanted all along.
“Flight or fight?” Kore asked.
I looked at her and everyone else. We were all walking on razor edges. Fight or flight? Trust or distrust? Two sides of the question, both of which lead to our doom. I closed my eyes and did what Damus always said I did best, and I let instinct take over my judgment.
“Cut off his arm,” I told Kore.
She did not react in any rational way that one might have expected. She quietly asked, "Which one?"
“Cage’s arm.”
“Again which one?”
“Let him choose.”
“Wait here,” Cage said. “No one is cutting off anyone else’s arm.”
“Can you hear anyone in the hanger next door?” I asked her.
She paused in her approach towards Cage and tilted her head, listening for any microscopic noises. Cage minutely motioned to Graff, but before Graff could act she dashed forward and grabbed Cage’s elbow. She flipped behind him using her momentum and jerked his arm back, and while it did not break it, the dislocation rendered it useless.
She held him tightly to her and asked, “There is no one currently on the other side of the wall. Finish boring with the laser.”
Cage whimpered, “Why did you do that then?”
“You are not being completely truthful with us.”
I could imagine all sorts of reasons as to how she might have been able to determine this, but I did not ask a single one of them. Right now, all I cared about was leaving this planet before the gravitational pull of Aka made that impossible.
“You heard what she said. Go ahead and finish the opening,” I reiterated as I pointed my plazgun at him.
He started the laser back up, and as we watched the hole get larger, I made my way to the machine and Graff. There was no reason for him to get any ideas when the hole was done.
Kore made one more move on Cage and twisted back his other arm which emitted the desired moan. “They are both only dislocated, if one of you knows how to put them back into place, you may do so after we have taken the vessel.”
The laser-powered down, the sparks stopped spitting, and the only thing left to do was to take our ride out of here. I hit the control panel of the cutter with my plazgun, and black smoke rose up into the air. I turned to Kore and said, "Go ahead and knock it down."
Keeping my plazgun trained on them, they made no move to hinder our progress, and when the metal sheet fell through to the other side, Kore hesitated at the makeshift entry.
“What is wrong?”
“Something is in there.”
“Is it Kull?”
“No.”
“Then who is it?”
“I did not say it was someone.”
“What do you mean?” As if on cue, the people that had tried to make us believe they were our friends exited out of the hallway the way we had entered, some faster than others, leaving us alone with Cage.
“Remember what I told you,” he said, and then he was gone too.
“Come closer,” echoed strangely from the hanger. "I know she is in there," stated the eerie double voice from the vid replay Cage had showed me earlier. No emotion, no reflection tainted the words. They were merely words but did we want to accept its invitation?
She took a step towards the hole and peered deeply into the black abyss, and when she stepped back, I asked, “Do you want to go in or not?” In the end, it was her decision.
She stepped in, and I followed her without a moment's hesitation. I knew I always would too, whether or not she wanted me to or not.
She hit a button on the wall, and flickering green-hued lights came on high above us. A smothered ticking sound accompanied it indicating that it was on a timer. A figure slowly resolved in front of the ship we needed to get to.
He certainly appeared to be Kull, wearing robes that befitted his high rank as Councilman. His hair was exactly as I remembered it from his secret location at the observatory. It was clean and pulled back in a sweep of hair that brushed his shoulders, which should have been impossible with the high winds and dust swirling around outside this hold.
“Who are you?” Kore asked. What? She had spent annos with him, did she not recognize him? I looked him over more closely.
"The question is, what are you?" he replied, and then a shot of light flashed through the room so fast that if I had blinked, I would have missed it. "Ah, now I know what you are."
“What do you want?” Kore asked.
“You.”
Then Kore rushed it and the illusion that it was fell apart, leaving nothing in the room besides us, the ship, and the flickering lights. A voice came from behind us from the makeshift entryway. “I told you they were looking for her,” Cage said. Guess he had not gone far enough.
Noises from outside the hanger were coming closer, as the real Kull was steadily making his way to us. “Is Kull trying to take her to them?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but I think it would be for the best if we turned her over to him." Apparently, he did not know all the increased augmentations to her body, or else he would know that would be impossible unless she desired it too.
“We are leaving this strathole of a planet.”
“And where will you go?”
“Anywhere other than here.”
“He is right,” Kore said.
I looked at her incredulously, while Cage smirked. “What do you mean?”
"He is right. This ship is not meant for long-term, deep space flight and even if it was, I doubt we would be able to evade their technology for very long. This ship is not meant for stealth and it is only a matter of time before they will find us. We might be able t
o subsist on another planet for a time, but with the way they are searching for me, we would not be able to hide forever."
“What are you saying?”
"Kull is either a friend or a foe, either way, he has information and possibly technology that we need," she said logically, even though I did not like what I was hearing.
“We turn ourselves over to him?” I asked.
“We will let him think that we have turned ourselves over to him.”
• ѻ ● Ѻ • ○ ☼
“He will not hurt me.”
“I know that Kore, but he might hurt me, which is why we are going to meet him in the ship. I can control the situation better in a confined space.”
After powering up the comm panel, I activated the ship to ship channel. The light switched colors from red to blue, indicating that contact had been successfully established. “This is Jett, let me speak to Kull.”
“Do you have the parcel?” an unknown man asked.
I stared at Kore for a moment, and she nodded her head. "Yes, we are on an outbound ship in the facility. Cage will lead you to the vessel. You will board alone and then we three will negotiate Kore's delivery."
“Prove to me that she is on board.” This time is was Kull’s voice.
I swiped another panel and established a visual connection. Then I waved Kore over to me. As she drew closer, an odd thing happened, the outgoing signal began to scramble until it was lost entirely. I thought that the other vessel was going to cry foul, but instead, we heard a curt, "I'll be right over."
Kore sat in the co-pilot seat and said, “They could still destroy the vessel with both of us in it.”
“That would certainly foil everyone’s hopes of acquiring you, especially the aliens.”
“I overheard Kull call them Ouder.”
“Yes, I have heard that word used for them too.”
I glanced at the viz screen that spanned the outside of the vessel and watched as the first of many armed men encircled the ship. I ratcheted up the internal mantra that I kept mentally saying to myself. We could take off at any time we wanted. We could take off at any time we wanted. The only problem with this line of thinking was that the ship was surrounded by not only people, but people holding high-powered weapons. If I was not mistaken, one could even disrupt the electrical impulse connectors located onboard, making flight impossible. There were even weapons that I could not name, but I bet Kore could.
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