Infrared overlay, I instructed the AI.
"Can you move?"
"I don't know," Shri said, her voice weak.
My HUD showed that the hallway door was considerably hotter than the walls of the room and heat waves were billowing in from the crack beneath the door. It was hot enough that the hallway must be on fire. It would be a matter of a few short minutes before the fire spread to Shri's bedroom.
I flung off the blankets and jumped out of bed, stumbling on the bag I'd left on the floor. I kicked it out of the way and scooped Shri from the bed. She was so light, it was as if I were lifting her in .2g.
"My legs," she said, pointing to a night stand.
Ordinarily, I'd have denied any personal requests when running from fire, but I couldn't leave her prosthetics behind. I set Shri back down and grabbed the blades, returning to the window to see that we were ten meters in the air and the ground below was anything but flat. I felt a burning sensation on my arm, saw a flash and the glass of the window was blown outward. The fresh air provided fuel for the fire and the inferno roared to life behind us.
We were out of time. I placed the blades on her chest and picked her up. The fire exploded through the door behind me and flashed up to the ceiling. I could feel the heat on my back and knew I had only a few moments to exit the room.
"Second floor," Shri coughed, choking on the smoke.
"Frak it," I said.
I leapt through the window and bent my knees. I would have to roll on the ground if we were to survive the fall without broken bones. The shock of hitting the ground wasn't anywhere near what I'd anticipated, although Shri had somehow landed on the other side of a low hedge.
A moment later, a clump of grass exploded behind me and I heard the unmistakable sound of blaster fire - it sounded close. Instinctively, I reached to my side for my own blaster only to realize it was upstairs in the bag I'd so nonchalantly kicked out of my way when rushing to escape the fire.
"The shooter's on the hill, behind us," Shri yelled.
I dove into the hedge next to Shri and looked around wildly for better cover. If she was right, they had a perfect line of sight on this side of the house. We were pinned down, our only cover a thick hedge. It wouldn't take long to figure out where we were located and they'd be able to flush us out by simply firing randomly into the hedge.
"We gotta move," I said.
"Aye," she said through gritted teeth. It was a better response than I'd expected, but then she'd survived a naval battle where we'd had ninety-eight percent casualties.
"On my word, we're going to move around the front of the house. Shooter's up the hill behind us," I said.
She nodded sharply.
We needed a distraction. I mentally kicked myself for leaving my go-bag beside the bed. I'd have had more than a distraction if I had brought it along. The roaring of the fire intensified behind us and time was up. We had to move.
Self-destruct earwig with maximum light display at apogee of flight, I instructed my AI.
"Four seconds for capacitance overload," the AI replied.
I pulled the earwig away from my head and started to count out the seconds. Blaster fire ripped into the hedge and I felt a burning sensation crease my arm. I winced in pain but finished the four count.
"Go!"
I flung the earwig over the hedge toward where Shri had indicated the shots were originating. It exploded brilliantly just as it started to fall back to the ground. We had our distraction and needed to move.
Shri was already scrabbling forward. I scooped up her lightweight, prosthetic blades in one hand and grabbed a handful of her pajamas in the other. We stumbled around the front of the blazing house, avoiding any further blaster fire.
"That won't hold 'em for long," I said and knelt down in front of Shri. "Put your arms around my neck, I'll carry you."
"You go, you'll be faster," she said.
"Not how we do things, seaman."
I knelt down in front of her, she pulled herself up and wrapped her partial legs around my waist. I stood up and took off at a run toward the small outbuilding where I'd parked the grav-bike.
"No. That'd be the first place they'll look," Shri said, her voice breathy.
"Where?"
"Port, thirty degrees," she said.
I turned left and dashed ahead into the orchard.
KEYHOLES AND CAVERNS
"Wait! We have to go back," Shri said as I made the second row of trees.
"Don't be crazy," I said.
"My mom was in there."
I stopped and looked back through the trees. The house was fully engulfed in flames.
"No chance," I said. "There's nothing we can do. No one could survive that."
"We can't leave her," Shri said. "I won't be able to live with myself."
"Give me a sitrep, Petty Officer," I said sternly.
"What? It's all gone to crap, Midshipman," she said, her body trembling. She'd barely survived the explosions and fire onboard Dunham. I could see in her face that she was having a flashback.
"Petty Officer, we're under fire. Now, give me a plan out of here," I snapped. "Are you listening to me?"
Shri adjusted her legs and pulled closer to me for comfort. "I'm sorry, Mom," she whispered.
I turned from the fire and jogged deeper into the orchard. Unlike the forests around the naval base near Coolidge, the orchard was filled with short trees neatly lined up in rows. I didn't think it would take our attacker long to figure out where we were and the orderly nature of the trees didn't provide good cover.
"Petty Officer, report!" I barked. I hated taking advantage of her PTSD, but she'd been drilled to respond to superiors in the heat of the moment. I'd worry about the rest of it if we survived.
"The cave," she said.
"Where?"
"End of the row and turn," she said.
We'd been crossing rows so it wasn't enough information.
"Left or right?"
"Port, middie," she said chuckling. I wasn't sure if that was a good sign or not, but I turned left, staying close to the row of trees.
The path she'd chosen was rough and I stumbled more times than I'd care to admit, but was amazed at my endurance. I was jogging with a woman hanging on my back and felt like I could keep it up for hours.
We turned left again onto a path parallel to one that would lead us back to the house. I noticed something I'd failed to recognize up to this point. We'd been going downhill as we raced away from the shooter. Now, going uphill, my new legs were starting to feel the strain. We broke free of the orchard, catching a clear view of the blazing house.
"How far?" I asked. I'd slowed and was trying to keep a low profile. Fortunately, we were running next to a fence which provided a small amount of cover.
"Fifteen hundred meters. It's going to get rocky, though. You should leave me," she said.
"Knock it off and stay sharp," I snapped.
I jumped a little to adjust her position on my back and jogged up the ever-steepening hill. Our route quickly turned from rolling hill to a boulder-strewn path and my jog turned into a fast walk. My legs were initially grateful for a change from the jogging motion, but soon became challenged by the climb. Two hundred meters up however, the influence of the homestead's gravity generator gave out and we returned to Mars' natural .38g.
"The keyhole is there," Shri said, pointing into the blackness on the side of the mountain. "Do you see it?"
I strained my eyes, wishing I hadn't given up my earwig. "No," I said, but moved in the direction she'd indicated anyway.
Her cave turned out to be a narrow crease between two towering red boulders. There was barely enough room for one of us to squeeze through, I couldn't imagine how we were both going to make it.
"Push me in. I can slide across," she said.
"Are you sure it's safe?" I asked.
"Has to be better than sitting out in the open."
She was right. If our pursuers had access to an anti-grav
transport of some sort, they'd find us easily with any basic HUD. Our heat signatures would stick out like a sore thumb. I set her on the ground and she handed her prosthetic leg blades to me.
"Lift me up," she said.
I picked her back up and helped her into the gash in the mountain. To her credit she used her legs and arms to wriggle back and forth and soon disappeared from sight.
"You okay?" I asked.
"Throw the blades in."
I tossed her blades through the hole and heard her grunt at about the same time they should have landed on the ground. I followed by jumping up into the hole and shimmying through.
"Back here," Shri whispered. "Be careful, lots of rocks on the floor."
I crawled on my hands and knees. I had no idea how tall the cavern was and wasn't about to smack my head on a low hanging ceiling. I ran into the back of Shri, my hand coming to rest on the stump of her left leg.
"Follow me."
We crawled for forty meters when she finally stopped moving.
"What?" I asked.
"We're here."
"Where?"
"I used to call it my fort. Look up," she said.
Directly above us, I could see starlight. It wasn't bright enough to illuminate the cavern, but it was beautiful, nonetheless.
I heard rustling and then saw the glow of a small lantern that Shri had illuminated and placed on a flat rock. She'd pulled herself onto an old blanket and was searching through a bag.
The cavern was roughly rectangular - two meters deep and three meters wide. Its ceiling was irregularly shaped and funneled up into a narrow chimney. The room wasn't a dead end, although the only exits required you to crawl through narrow passageways.
Shri handed me a bottle of water, which I accepted gratefully. I drank half and gave it back.
"You're bleeding," she said, looking at my right arm with concern.
"So I am," I said looking at it. I'd felt a burning sensation while we'd been on the run, but it hadn't seemed that critical. The wound, however, was a deep slice through the skin and hadn't yet closed.
"At least clean it," she said, handing me a rag she'd wet with water from her bottle.
I wiped away as much blood as I could reach. The synthetic skin wouldn't get infected easily, but I'd need a special med-patch to repair the damage. That and eat a few thousand extra calories.
"What's this all about, Shri? Septicemia? People shooting at us. Your house on fire? I don't even know how someone with as much synthetic skin as you have can even get Septicemia," I said.
"I don't know," she said.
"You're going to have to do better than that."
"Shh," she said and doused the light.
"What?" I whispered.
"Someone's at the keyhole," she said.
"Do you have a weapon?"
"No."
I stood up. If the gunman had seen us come in here, we'd be sitting ducks. I needed to do something to even the odds. I looked up into the chimney. While the light wasn't enough to illuminate the room, I was able to see what I was interested in. I jumped up as hard as I could. In the .38g and with my powerful new legs, I propelled myself up three meters. At the top of my jump, I reached out with my arms and feet and locked myself into position.
GLASS HOUSES
"You?" Shri asked.
Light flooded the chamber beneath me, illuminating Shri. Instead of fear, her face showed anger. I could also just see the barrel of a blaster rifle pointed directly at her.
"You should have stayed dead." The voice belonged to Berant.
Rage boiled within me. Shri had been through hell enough already and now her jackass of a brother was threatening to kill her? And I thought my family was dysfunctional!
I released my hold on the chimney and dropped. At .38g I didn't fall as quickly as I'd have liked, but it did give me extra time to make sure that my foot came into contact with the end of the blaster rifle.
As expected, Berant prematurely fired his weapon. I suppose he wasn't used to a half-naked woman falling from the ceiling and stepping on his weapon. Unfortunately for me, I wasn't able to recover gracefully from the additional contact and fell in a heap, with the blaster rifle trapped beneath me.
"Well, isn't that perfect," he said, drawing a knife from a sheath on his belt.
"You'd murder your own family?" I asked, gaining my feet.
"You're one to talk, is that why you came here? To do what Shri couldn't? Or did you do it together?" he asked, jabbing the blade at me, forcing me back.
I stumbled on the uneven floor of the cave. It was a smart move on his part, as it separated me from the gun. Taking advantage of my misstep, he lunged to grab the blaster. If he gained control of it, I'd lose whatever small advantage I had.
I barreled forward and caught the glint of light off his knife as he raised it up to meet my charge. I was already moving and wouldn't have stopped if I could. I caught his knife with my left hand and felt the blade slice deeply into my palm. I screamed in agony. Unlike my synthetic skin and new muscles, the nerves in my left hand were original equipment.
I blinked back the tears and lowered my shoulders into his body, continuing to drive my legs forward. We crashed into the wall and the breath expelled from his body. He let go of the knife that was impaling my hand.
As I stepped back, he regained his wits and delivered a strong uppercut to my stomach.
"You like?" he asked with a sick grin.
"Give it up and I'll let you walk out of here," I growled.
He answered my threat by straightening up, pulling his arms in to his sides and taking a boxer's stance.
"Berant, stop," Shri said. "You've hurt her."
"Shut up, Shri. Mom's dead and it's your fault, the two of you have to be stopped," he said.
I heard Shri answer, but had a difficult time understanding her. My focus was on Berant. He was playing a dangerous game and I was our only chance of getting out of this cave alive.
He moved in and took a couple of test swings. I'd seen Liam fight the same way - it was overly defensive.
"Screw it," I said and once again barreled forward.
Berant met my charge by opening his arms. Perfect, he'd decided to grapple. I came in low and as I made contact with his body, pushed up as hard as I could. Low gravity and my overpowered legs sent me flying upward, this time with Berant along for the ride. His head contacted the top of the cavern with a sickening thud and he went slack.
I let him fall to the ground beneath me and then sat on his chest with my right arm drawn back. If he came up for air with anything but an apology, I was prepared to put him down.
"Tabby, stop. He's down," Shri said.
I looked back at her. She was holding the blaster rifle, not exactly pointing it at me, but torn by what she should do. My heart softened. The asshat beneath me was still her brother and she thought I was going to put him down for good.
I stood up shakily and backed away, retrieving his knife as I did. With the immediate threat to her brother gone, Shri lowered the rifle.
"I'm sorry, Tabby, I couldn't…"
"We're good, Shri," I said. "Sorry, I had to take him out." And while I'd said it, I wasn't really sorry at all.
I pulled the rifle from her loose grip and leaned against the wall, next to where she sat.
"You're bleeding again," she said.
"Yeah, it hurts a frak tonne."
"I don't have any bandages," she said.
"We'll have to improvise," I pushed away from the wall and walked over to where Berant lay, still unconscious.
Grabbing his left cuff, I used his knife and slit Berant’s pants from bottom to top, twice, essentially making long bandage strips. I made sure to leave him adequately covered, although if he moved, I wasn't sure he'd remain that way.
Shri cleaned and wrapped my left hand to the best of her ability as I looked back to Berant.
"Why do you suppose he did it?" I asked.
"He's violent, but in a creepy
, kill your dog way - not in a burn your house down way. I have trouble believing he did any of this," Shri replied.
"That's because I didn’t," Berant said, still not moving. "And, I only killed that dog because it attacked my hauler."
"You were on their land, Berant," Shri said.
"They should have had better control of their dog."
"I hate to interrupt your family counseling, but … the frak you didn't do it!" I said. "Someone was shooting at us from the hillside with a blaster. You're the only one I've seen around here with one of those."
"Check the AI. The only shot that rifle fired was when you jumped me," he said.
"I don't have a HUD," I pointed out the obvious.
"I've got a mini-pad," he said. We watched as he pushed himself up onto his elbows. "What the frak happened to my pants?" Berant had shifted his body to sit up, but what was left of his pants hadn’t moved with him.
"We needed bandages. You stabbed me, remember. Now hand over the pad … slowly," I said. He modestly bunched up the material to cover his front and pulled a five centimeter square reading pad from a pocket, tossing it to me. I adjusted the blaster rifle so I could easily fire on him if he got cute. "I thought you all weren't into technology. Looks like someone's been cheating."
I pulled up the rifle's history. Berant was mostly right. He'd been out earlier in the day, taking pot-shots at small rodents that lived in the mountains, but otherwise the gun hadn't been fired until he entered the cave.
I sent a quick message to Liam saying I'd run into some trouble, but was handling it. I didn't want him cutting his delivery short, but he'd be pissed if I didn't give him a heads up. Then I sent a message to the local sheriff. Requesting assistance.
"Incoming comm request from Olympus Mons District Sheriff's Office."
Accept. "This is Tabitha Masters," I said.
"Go ahead, Tabitha Masters. You have an emergency?" A man wearing a sheriff's uniform appeared on the screen.
"Shri Ganguly and I are at the Ganguly family farm. The house is on fire and we're not sure where Mrs. Ganguly is. Also, someone was trying to shoot at myself and Shri when we tried to exit the house. We took cover in a cave and need help," I said.
Out of the Tank (Privateer Tales Book 7) Page 4
