“We number 519,278,” she said, pulling a number from thin air. In reality it was a fraction of that.
“Impossible, your ships are few.”
“Those you see. Others are nearby, watching, and ...”
Another sharp blow, to the back of her legs brought her stumbling down.
“Is this the honor of the exalted T’ming,” and she mangled the name, she knew, “To strike guests from behind like cowards?”
One to her side raised his weapon, a long stick, and with a backhanded motion slashed it toward her. She dodged backward and away, but caught the end of it across her right chest and side, and she cried in surprise and pain.
Defiant, she said, “I see you, the vassals of the Hierarchy, have no honor,” and her eyes darted, as she tensed for another blow. But none came.
“How many, then, are your ships?” the interrogator said.
Lori turned to face him, but watched the others. “They number six in all in orbit. We are traders and explorers.”
“So you say. Your weapons on board?”
She began to say, “More terrible than...” but changed it and said, “Each vessel has a different array for defense. Two have ten guns. Two have missile batteries of six each. Two have both, plus HiE lazer guns, infrared guided destructor beams, and electron guns. One has the colossal rail gun. All have several batteries of defensive missiles, heavy shielding, and attack sleds.” And hell of a lot more, if you add it all up, but what she told them was obvious from even visual scans. Who knew what sort of other scanning devices they had, or what they understood of what she said.
On the table, behind the native, the query light on her radio glowed once, and faded.
“How many soldiers?”
“You mean, ground troops, people to fight on the planet...” Another wack, this time to the side of her head, stunned her.
“Bastards,” she screamed, whirling to face the shithead who’d hit her. She pointed a long hand and finger at him and said, “Do not do that again.” Turning to the interrogator, she said, “Tell your people to leave me alone, or you will learn nothing more from me.”
Silence for a time, but they left her alone for a while after that. She went on, “Only 36 soldiers we have for ground defense on my ship. Not many more on the others. We do our fighting in the air. We did not expect to have to battle on the ground.”
Questions came at her for almost an hour. She answered using general exaggerations, trying to instill a measure of invulnerability to her forces, a casual attitude, and remain un-impressed by the bad treatment. How it worked, she did not know.
Abruptly, the questions ended, as the interrogator stood, walked over to her, and began to pummel her with his fists. After knocking her down to the ground, kicking her a few times, he said, “This is how the Hierarchy of T’ming shows its displeasure to the arrogance and lack of respect and cooperation from our uninvited guests. Next time we will not be so hospitable.” He stomped off.
She tried to get to her feet, but the others took a few whacks at her, the snarling near-dogs from hell trying to get at her from the corridor, too. Finally, it ended, they kicked at her until she staggered up, and pushed her off and out of the room, prodding her down the hallway, the near-dogs growling and trying to bite at her legs all the way.
The cell was darker than before, and as soon as the door closed, the lights in the hallway went off. Standing in the cell, she felt abandoned, lost, and hurt. Breathing was painful, even with shallow breaths. She rubbed at her wounds, some bleeding, blood running from the one on her chest leaving a long dark smear on her abdomen. Her nose bled, too, she pinched the nostril in an attempt to stop it. She ached all over.
On the floor to the side of the door of the cell, a small pad leaned against the wall. In the middle of the floor, a pail held water, or something, vile looking, but wet. They weren’t there before. She pulled the pad out, it was as filthy as anything else here, but she beat it against the wall for a few hits, and sat on it to keep her ass off the cold floor. Peering into the pail, she tried to figure out what it was. She dipped a finger into it, to see if it was acid, or something, but it felt and looked like water. A glob of something floating in it might be a bread or roll, or maybe a fruit.
“Dinner?” she said. She cupped a handful of water. It looked fairly clear in the dim light, but she couldn’t tell for sure. Knowing she’d pay for it later, but desperately thirsty, she washed her hands, then her face a little, splashing the water up and out of the pail, and onto the floor. Cupping some, she sipped the liquid, a little at a time. Braving the cold, she started to wash her other wounds, and thought better of that, and stopped. She did not eat whatever floated in the pail.
Outside, a scuffing noise arose, as a dim light returned to the hallway. She stood and looked out. Two natives, bent over, swept the halls, brooms swishing back and forth. A guard hung back, watching them half-heartedly. As the sweepers approached her cell, one looked back. The guard was peering into another cell down the hall, in conversation. A hand brought something out from beneath a fold of skin, and flipped it up into the window in her door in a motion Lori almost missed. Without a glance at her, the sweepers moved on, as she caught the unexpected item, a ripe piece of fruit, something she recognized as likely edible.
How’d they know? she wondered, immediately sitting down again, as she heard the guard approach. She sat there, her back to him, when he stopped outside, peering into her cell. She did not move. Only when he’d gone on, did she slowly peel and eat the fruit. The tell-tale pit and skin she dropped into the hole in the floor, and painfully urinated after it. Looking down, she saw her stream dark with blood. Still damp, and moving slowly, she returned to the pad, and sat, and waited again.
Hugging herself, she tried to keep warm, her body aching, getting stiff as she sat there. Lying down on the frigid floor only drained warmth from her faster, so she tried to remain sitting. She dozed a little, jerking awake as she leaned over.
After a time, a gradual increase in the light outside, or a lessening of the dimness, showed her one of the other suns had risen. Rising, it eventually began to shine into the cell, a reddish light on the fall wall. She moved into its thin beams, a barely perceptible warmth there. But the arc of its passage soon brought it past the window, and dimness returned. She went back to her sitting mode, and tried to sleep again.
A loud yammering, the sound of gunfire, jarred her instantly awake. Are they coming for me? she wondered, going to the window, and trying to see out. Nothing there, just the usual dimness of the nocturnal hours on this planet. Then, a dark shape flicked by, and another gun opened up, tracers following the path of the object.
“An air car, they are looking for me,” she said, in despair, how could they ever find her? They’d think the damn com-radio was her location, but maybe not given the massive, brooding presence of this place. And nothing to signal it, should it return. She waited, watching. She knew what to look for, and her eyesight was far better in the night than the damn natives, so she saw it again, a dot a half a kilometer away. She signaled it the only way she knew, with herself.
Pulling her aching body upward with both hands, she held her head at the window. Cold air pushed in at her, cold damp stone chilled her body. Holding onto the bars with her left hand, she stuck her right hand and arm outside, as far as she could, and opened her palm, spreading her fingers, and holding them toward the air car.
It saw her immediately, and raced toward her, slowing to pause a dozen meters away.
“Hunter,” she said, her voice a soft, pained cry. He sat there in the control seat of Eagle One, facing her, staring at her. Before she could wave, the machine gun started again, streamers of tracers tearing through the air where Eagle One had just sat, but it was gone, moving along down the line of cells at the same elevation, darting away and back, as if looking for her. Her arm muscles screaming, she tilted her head hard against the edge of the window, trying to follow the air car, as tracers chased it, and Eagle O
ne moved on, zipping out of sight.
She released her grip, crashing to the floor, stood there dazed, but reacted as the lights came on, and she heard the pounding of feet in the hallway. Quickly, she sat down in the middle of the floor again, facing away from the door as she always had, and dropped her head. The door crashed open, she jumped up, moving away, to the corner. A guard pointed at her, jabbering something, another held two of the damn near-dogs on chains, as they snarled and jumped, trying to get at her.
The guard kicked the bucket over, ignoring the small pad, and approached her. She couched slightly, raised her fists, extended the forefinger on her left hand at him, and glared. With more yelling, he backed away, slammed the door, and left. The lights went out again.
Lori pushed the water on the floor toward the hole with her foot, cringing at the coldness of it. She hoped the actions of Hunter and the air car would deceive the jailors into thinking they hadn’t found her, otherwise they might move her. Or kill her, who knows? Now, it was only a matter of time, holding on, until they got her released, or rescued. They knew where she was, and would soon be here.
She waited, fearful of every noise, every little rattle around her. But no one came back.
Dozing, she sensed a dark shape move against the faint glimmer of the square in the window, and jumped to see something turn and slither through the metal bars there. Not knowing what it was, she backed away, but a cambot settled toward the ground, and slid closer to her.
“Lorelei,” it said, in a voice hardly above a whisper. “We have found you at last.”
“Eagle One,” she whispered in reply, leaning toward it. Then added, “Hunter?” She looked back over her shoulder, and said, “Be quiet, they’ll hear you.” She sank to the floor, relief seeping into her aching, chilled body.
The cambot approached, and the two halves of the top eased open. Inside, a small light glowed, showing a container of water, and several energy bars. Better still, a headset lay there, with a cable connector to the cambot. She put it on, and opened the water as she said, “Hunter?”
“Lori, what have they done to you? We’ve been worried sick. You look like hell.”
“Beaten, cold, hungry–it’s bad here.” She took a long drink of water, some running out of her mouth and down onto her chest. Knowing how her words must be hitting him, let alone the visual images, she pulled it away and added, “But otherwise OK. You gonna get me out?” She took another long slug of water.
“Yeah, Morales is ten minutes away.”
“No!” she hissed quickly. “No, don’t try a frontal assault, or anything. By the time he could gain entry, they’d get to me, and kill me, I’m sure. Keep him in reserve, for now, please.”
“OK,” Hunter said.
A moment of silence, and Eagle One said, “Lorelei, the walls are thick at your position. Cutting through will take too long, and explosives sufficient to do the entry will likely injure you. What do you suggest?”
“No hope of getting me released?”
“We’ve been unable to contact anyone with any sort of authority over this place, and we’ve tried.” Hunter said. “Can you hang on a little longer?”
“Yeah. What do you think?”
“We can try infiltrating a small squad, be an hour or so...”
“No, I want to get out of this place now. Don’t leave me here.”
“What can we do?”
“OK, you need to get to me quickly, and I need a gun. Half way down this level, there’s a room with a double window of sorts, a guard room. If you can neutralize that, and cut an opening, and get me a way to blow the door off the cell, I can probably get to that.”
“I see it, with the windows. The guards?”
“Four or five, I think. Mostly, they hang around in that room. Don’t spare any of the bastards, kill them all,” she said, and wished she hadn’t. “But try not to damage any of the prisoners, if you can. They’ve helped me, a couple of them, at least, and they don’t know me from Adam.”
“Roger, we’ll work on a plan, get you...”
“Someone’s coming,” Lori said, hearing footfalls in the hall. She pulled the com unit off her head, dropped it into the cambot as it zoomed upward. She’d not even gotten a bite of the energy bars.
Again, she was pulled out of the room, but didn’t worry so much this time. Maybe the interrogator sensed the change in her attitude, he was more belligerent than earlier, and questioned her on the floating thing outside earlier, moving the translator closer to her on the table.
“What thing?” she said, to another stinging blow to her back.
He produced a pretty good video of the air car, dimly seen, dodging the tracers.
“A scout ship,” she said. “Surveying the place.”
“Looking for you?”
“Probabl...” and she dodged around, sensing, rather than hearing, the start of a swing. It stopped in mid arc, as she jammed a fist at the guard. “Stop that!” she screamed, noticing a small micro-bot on the ceiling outside the door. But the swing continued, and she tried to fend it off, the guard hit her arm, knocking her back into another, who kicker her upward again.
She didn’t know how much more of this she could take, and needed to stay alive a little longer, at least, give the boys a chance to get to her.
“Yes, looking, for me,” she said, to spare herself another hit.
“Did they find you?”
Lori let her head fall. “If they did, they would be coming in here for me,” she said. Raising her head, she said. “No, they did not find me. Your walls are too thick.”
The interrogator conferred with a few of the others, called someone on a phone or something, his back to Lori. She wanted to turn to look at the micro-bot again, but dared not. She wondered if it was armed. One shot would not do her much good here. She stood, shivering again, waiting.
The interrogator pointed at her. “When they find you, if they do, we will catch them all, more guests to receive. And then we will kill you, you will be of no use to us.”
Lori resisted the retort she formed in her mind. She hoped it was just an idle boast. But she knew they’d heard it on the air car, and that was good. With a yank, they pulled her backward, shoved her along the hallway again, the near-dogs from hell lunging at her, she evaded them as they pushed her down the hall, toward another cell, she feared, but they put her back in the old one, kicking her as they did. She fell heavily on the floor, the guards jabbering, and she feared they would come in and beat her again some more. But they left, the door closed, the lights dimmed, and she was alone again.
The cambot drifted down to her, re-opened the shell. “Take the energy bars,” Hunter said, “and the water. And hang on, we’ll be right back.” The coldness in his voice was something she’d never heard before.
She sat and ate the energy food, and just finished the water, when the cambot returned. Opening it again, she found a Pokoniry needle gun inside, with two power packs, a package of explosives, and more water. She put a new com-unit, a wireless model, back on her head, and listened as Hunter began telling her what they were going to do. She strapped the power units to her right wrist, picked up the needle gun, and snapped the connection to the power units. She flicked the switch to “High.” The ready light glowed blue.
She said only, “OK, I’ll tell you when I’m ready.”
The extra water tasted very sweet, must be fortified, she sipped it as she carefully unwrapped and stuck the long coil of uni-directional explosive along the seams of the door. She inserted the small cap, extended the thin antenna, and moved to the side corner, crouched into the smallest ball she could, jammed her hands against her ears, and put her face into the dirty pad on her knees. “Ready,” she said.
“Standby,” Eagle One said.
She waited for a few, long minutes. Even with her eyes closed, she saw the bright flash of the powerful HiE lazers from the air car, and simultaneously felt the heat and blast of the explosive in her room. The door banged out, then bac
k into the room with a crash, and fell to the floor, tart, grey smoke and stone dust drifting around in a thin cloud. From down the hallway, a flash and another explosion showed the energy weapon’s impact. The hall lights came on, and a warbling siren started up.
Lowering the pad, Lori turned toward the door, the needle gun ready. And immediately, she fired it at the shape of horror rushing at her, the two near-dogs from hell, mouths open, lunging upward. The shot tore the chest of the first one open, splaying it around, it fell and writhed on the top of the door on the floor to her side. The second, mouth closing as she swung the pad up and it bit into that hard, clamping on her left hand in the process. She slid the gun under the chin of the near-dog and fired again. The top of its skull came off and a shaft of light splatted gore upward. The dog fell down and off, and Lori dropped the pad.
Cautiously, she peered into the hallway. Two guards lay on the floor part way down, two others stood dazed nearby. They turned and saw her, and started toward her. She held up her left hand, and said “Stop.” One did for a second, then stepped forward, swinging the shaft it held. Without hesitation, she raised her right hand and shot him in the chest, a flash of light, and he fell over backward, away from her, bubbling fluids and steam rising from his fatal wound. The second stared at the fallen one, looked at her, and turned and ran.
Now she moved more quickly, hurrying down the hall toward the small fires burning on pieces of rubble. As she passed other cell doors, she noticed faces there, and heard voices calling out. Smoke already hung at the ceiling when she arrived at the end point, with the two offices. The one toward the outer wall was totally wrecked, several bodies mangled inside, the exterior wall blow in, debris everywhere, two small fires burning. Eagle One waited outside. The hall station was smashed, a corpse draped over the console, partly blown away. But lights still remained lit, tiny blips of color here and there.
Hunter yelled into her ear to hurry up, but she told him to wait a minute.
The interrogator stared at her through the broken panel of his door. He raised something toward her, and she shot at his arm, spinning him around, the weapon flying away. She ran into his office, collecting her stuff, what of it was still there, all her clothes, little else, picking up the translator, the rest of her comgear and pack gone, her watch and jewelry, too, damnation. Looking at the interrogator, she saw him trying to crawl away, toward the weapon. She shot him in the forelegs. First one, then the other. Now he screamed in pain, turning, pushing with his rear legs, trying to get away. He stopped as she bent and pointed the needle gun between his eyes.
T-47 Book II (Saxon Saga 6) Page 30
