“If I ever see you again, I’ll kill you,” she said, hearing the translator repeat her words, and slowly backed up. Outside the office, she began flipping switches, found the main control for the cell doors, and pulled it down. Doors all along both hallways opened, and prisoners poured out. She pulled the rifle, or whatever it was from one of the dead guards, and, wondering if it was a good idea or not, flung it at the nearest escapee. The native took it, flipped it over, turned on something, and held it up to her, in a form of presentation. Lori pointed up and down, and started toward the air car, climbing over the rubble, it sharp on her bare feet.
As she passed the other doors, something splintered and shattered as a shot sounded, and she spun and turned to see the prisoner shooting into someone there. She swept the door with her needle gun, producing screams and a burning guard, as more rushed forward, and she cooked them all, the needle gun flashing beams of deadly light. More prisoners rushed into the fray, grabbing the remaining guns. She heard screaming, and looking back, she saw several beating the hell out of the interrogator. She let them. Giving the gun to the prisoner had probably saved her life.
Eagle One hung outside, tilted upward, firing its HiE lazers at something.
“Get closer,” Lori said, and it moved against the wall, and slid the steps open and down. With one look back inside, Lori bent and climbed into the welcome warmth of the air car, and the steps closed behind her. The air car darted away, through a blizzard of colored streaks, tracers in the dim.
“Oh, god, Lori, what did they do to you?” Hunter said.
“Not half of what I’m going to do to them. Give me the com,” she said, dropping the small package of her stuff and taking off the needle gun.
Hunter hurried out of the seat, and Lori slid into it. “Eagle One, more heat, I’m freezing. Hunter, get me the water hose. You still have the cambot inside?” she said, nodding back toward the prison.
“Yeah, why?” he said, as he pulled the water hose out for her. She was curving up and away, and heading back toward the prison again. “Hey, where the hell are you going?”
She took the water hose in her mouth and said, “Back to even the odds a little for the poor bastards inside. Access the cambot, give me reports. And strap yourself in tight. Eagle One, battle status, tactical screen. Any air activity?” She sipped the cool water.
“Negative.”
“Where the hell’s the rest of the fleet?”
“Standing by, but I kept them out of sight. Need them?” Hunter said.
“Maybe, Eagle One, call them in, get them down here, now. Get Morales, too.”
She slowed, and returned toward the prison. With precision, she began firing the HiE lazer and energy weapon at the center of each of the floors of the prison, blowing out the guard rooms on each one. But she had to keep moving, dodging streams of tracers, and an occasional rocket or something.
“Where are the guns?” she asked Eagle One.
“Four guns in all. One on the roof of each corner of the building.”
“Take them out now,” she said, jamming the sticks forward, jumping upward, and instantly downward again as she cleared the walls, and fired at the first of the gun points on the far corner of the prison. It blew up as she turned right and hit the next one in line, then climbed, and turning, dropped back, to shoot the third. As she turned to the forth and last, she saw the gun crew running along the parapet on the top of the wall. She blasted the gun, too, it blew up in a shower of exploding ammunition.
More tracers raced by them, individual guards firing at her from the walls of the parapet. She swung around and raked the top of the wall with a continuous stream of HiE lazers, leaving behind burning roofing and pieces of bodies. As she swung to the next section, prisoners, she thought, raced out an entry way in the mid point of the roof, rushing the remaining few guards, firing at them, and soon overran them, tossing bodies over the edge. Eagle One slowed, and the prisoners waved and shouted at her. She stopped, and they gestured downward into the courtyard, and several fired at a squat building there. They shouted again, and pointed.
Lori tilted the air car downward, pointing it into the courtyard, and fired at the top level of the blockhouse inside. The first plasma charge exploded at the near end, lighting all the windows, blowing part of the roof up and off, and sending flaming debris all over. The second shot did the same part way down, the third even more damage. A fourth and final shot was probably not necessary, but she fired anyway, and saw the right end of the building fly outward, partly collapsing the entire end of the structure, while fires gathered ferocity elsewhere. Glancing at the prisoners on the roof, they cheered and waved, and rushed back inside, to continue the fight there.
“I have the main power source, shall we disable it?” Eagle One said.
“No, the prisoner will be in the dark and blind then. We need to make them some escape paths,” she said, and flew up and over the outer walls, receiving a smattering of small arms fire.
“The prisoners appear to have taken control of that floor you were on, and are heading downward,” Hunter said.
“Stay with them,” Lori said.
“Incoming aircraft. Hostile intent. Targeting systems seeking this air car,” Eagle One said.
“ETA?”
“Twelve seconds,” it replied.
“Damnation,” Lori said, looking at the screens, “No time...situation in the prison?
“Same, prisoners are fighting the guards. C’mon, you’ve done enough, get out of here now, Lori,” Hunter said.
“Inna minute. Eagle One, engage,” she said. “Where’s everyone else?”
“On route. ETA two minutes,” Eagle One said.
The air car swung around, as several dart symbols appeared on the screen on the dash. “Missiles launched,” Eagle One said.
“Stealth mode?” Lori said, looking out.
“Engaged...” Eagle One said, as three bright lights flashed by them, high and to the side. “Firing,” it said, as the HiE lazer blinked three times, and three globs of flame erupted ahead.
Lori swung the air car around as the blips on the screen broke apart and disappeared.
“Let’s go, let’s go,” Hunter said. “We can go now.”
“No, not before I help those poor devils in the prison...damnation,” Lori said, as the air car flashed and called an alarm, and new lights flared up at her. “How the hell are they seeing us?”
“Unknown,” Eagle One said, sliding away from another SAM, rising from one of three ground vehicles approaching the prison on a narrow roadway below.
Lori dove at them, firing, hitting the first vehicle, setting it afire as it slewed into a building. The second crashed into the first as Lori hit it with the HiE lazer. Swapping ends, she fired on the third, the HiE lazer and the energy gun, and saw it explode, too. Now a pillar of black smoke rose from the first two vehicles and the burning building, to drift off and mix with the thick plume from the prison. Lori jammed the sticks backward, slowing the air car in a rush of deceleration, and pushing them forward to attack the building again.
She fired at the main entrance, blowing the door off and open. She jumped up, firing into the guard rooms on each floor of this wing as she rose, then dropped on over the far side, hitting the first floor door there, smaller, too. Swinging to the right, she began pounding that end of the building asking Hunter what was happening inside.
“Hard to tell. Lots of smoke, and confusion. Prisoners are running all over, some escaping out the doors. Some have weapons. They look like they’re killing every guard they see...”
“Can’t say I blame them...”
“Lorelei, large number of aircraft are scrambling, two groups, from east and south,” Eagle One said as the screen seemed to shrink, showing an enlarged area. “Commands?”
“Lori, you’ve done enough, let’s go,” Hunter said, his voice getting anxious.
“There’s still one wing to go,” she said, swinging around. “Eagle One, let me finish this,
then we take on the bandits. Tactics?”
“Lure together, and up and over,” it said.
“Where’s the calvary?”
“Inbound, ETA sixty seconds. More aircraft lifting from the base south.”
“Ask the bigboys to put a couple of hell burners on those air bases, will you?” she said, as she pounded floor after floor of the last wing of the prison building, ending with a double blast at a door at ground level.
“Main entrance is still blocked,” Hunter said, “Secondary door is intact. Guards are holding it.”
“I’m on it,” Lori said, swinging up and over the heavily burning building.
“Bigboys say railgun in action, payloads away.”
Through billowing smoke, she fired into the dark opening at the main entrance to the prison, sending a single plasma ball disappearing into the smoke. She glanced at the screen, the scene from inside, from the cambot, watching a troop of guards firing in several directions when the doors behind them suddenly glowed yellow, the screen went to white, the image wavered and jumped, and when it recovered, a circular hole appeared, flames all around, and not a guard seen still standing. Yelling of some sort was carried to them from the cambot, and prisoners began running into and through the flames, racing out, toward freedom, or at least, a taste of it.
“Bandits on closing run,” Eagle One said, and Lori told it to engage.
They rose through the smoke, and flew off northwest, none too fast. On the screen, a double line of small daggers closed in on them, she watched, letting the air car choose the time to move. Tiny needles began to race in toward them, and Eagle One said, “Heavy acceleration, on my mark, three, two, one,” and a thunderclap seemed to blow them upward, up, and over and around onto their back, and Eagle One swung downward again, firing repeatedly at aircraft barely seen ahead, the screen a jumble of darting shapes, some disappearing as orange flashes appeared ahead, others scattering away in jagged patterns, some of those to intersect and disappear in bright glows, too.
Eagle One raced past the first of the aircraft, and fired a series of HiE lazer shots at unseen targets rushing at them, zipping past in a twinkling, tracers, missiles and more flashing by.
Lori said, “Return?”
“Help arrives. Illi-illi and bigboy lead the pack. Morales comes, too.”
The screen showed a dozen blue dots, in a tight pattern of twos, descending into the melee, and orange dots began to disappear.
On the southern horizon, a flash, and a glow began, it built like a sunrise, but a little sunrise, yet mammoth for the size of the planet. Another suddenly appeared to the east. The glows steadied, and held, twin yellow arcs on the horizon line.
“More help,” Eagle One said, as more air cars streamed in, from the opposite direction, began chasing down, or dogfighting the remaining aircraft.
Lori pulled back on the sticks, and headed for the prison again. She drifted in, watching the tactical screen. A few shots pinged on the air car, she rose to the roof to engage them, but saw guards going down in a twin rush of armed people there, which quickly stopped, the former prisoners turning to her again, holding up weapons, and waving at her. She dropped back toward the ground. A group there pointed to a garage like structure, below the level of the first floor, almost a bunker, with bay doors and loading docks, and weapons firing out from windows and portals. The attackers fired at it, and Lori stopped, and did, too. One by one, into the doors. First the HiE lazer. Then the energy weapon. One by one, the doors blew open. Morales and his battle lighter appeared, drifting over the roof, and started raking the place with his twin 50 Cals. Fresh smoke billowed upward, and a fuel tank or something exploded, sending an orange-red ball of fire up and out through the roof to rise into the air, scorching the side of the prison, and immediately burn out and turn black and grey. More cheering from the ground, and attackers rushed into the flames and smoke. Others outside turned and waved to her, cheering. But more were streaming out the wrecked prison, some carrying others with them.
Lori stopped, and looked at the scene before her. The building poured smoke into the air, every floor on three wings on fire, it seemed, black, wavering curtains into the dimness. Morales’ battle lighter rose, firing here and there at an odd target or two, and disappeared into the smoke over the jail.
She sat, breathing deeply. She picked up the dropped water hose again, and sucked at it.
“Bastards,” she said. “Cock-sucking bastards.” She took long pulls of water from the tube.
Overhead, a fair of air cars screamed by, wheeled and turned, and hovered protectively a hundred meters behind her. Morales returned. And others. She turned to look south at the horizon. The glow had faded, but still lit the sky there, a thick plume of black smoke congealing at cloud level. She looked back at Hunter. His face was passive, his eyes on her.
“OK, now we can go. Eagle One, tell Morales to recall the cambots. Then take me to the nearest ship, in orbit. I’ll need medial attention. Tell the other air cars we’re leaving.”
She closed the safeties over the firing buttons, dropped her hands from the controls, and leaned back. Suddenly, the adrenalin rush gone, her body reminded her of the agony it experienced not so long ago, and she felt sick. She leaned forward, hugging her stomach, as the air car began accelerating upward. Fresh waves of pain reared on her body.
“Lori, are you OK?” Hunter asked, his hand reaching for her.
“No,” she said with a groan, but then changed, it, saying, “Yeah. I am now. Thanks to my guys. Thanks to you. And Eagle One.” She put her dirty, bloody hand on the screen on the dash, and held it there.
Hunter began to administer to her wounds, but she waved him off, saying, “We’ll have to go to quarantine, wait till we get to the ship. I even had to drink some of their filthy water, and eat their food. No telling what I got inside me now. Man.”
Eagle One said, “The Pokoniry ship, the Scabiosa, awaits, expecting you. They are ready.”
She arrived twenty-seven minutes later. At the ship, they quickly sent her through the air lock, toward a Q-station. Air filled the empty place, and bio-suited figures rushed in to help her. One held a blanket up for her, and she reached for it as soon as the canopy opened, and let in a rush of cold air. Standing up, she reconsidered, and dropped the blanket. Nearby, two cambots hovered at eye level.
“Lori, what?” Hunter said.
“No, let them see what those bastards did to me.”
Hunter was appalled, seeing her ravished body in the bright lights and everyone there just staring at her. They saw her bare skin streaked with grime, and dried blood. Purple blotches and bruises discolored her skin on her back, her legs, her arms. Her face was blooded, hair matted, clotted with blood and grime here and there. Several cuts and scrapes still oozed thick, red material, and streaks of red ran from others. Her entire lower right side was covered in dark blood from a slash across her upper breast. She walked slowly, limping, Hunter at her side, looking at her, as she stared straight ahead, heading for the decom booth.
Several stevedores stood in frozen animation, watching her as she passed. No one else seemed to be moving, either, and the place was filled with people, for some reason.
The med team, fully gowned, met her inside. She endured the first of countless little insults, scrapings from her skin, her blood, her hair, her mouth, nose, fingernails, even her labia.
“Sample,” a female said, holding up a long thin bowl.
Lori nodded, squatted a little, and peed. The bowl withdrew, and she saw it yellow and dark.
“Good, enough. Shower now?”
“Yeah, please.”
Hunter, exposed to her in the air car, and to the alien atmosphere, endured the same exams, might be a control of sort.
Together, they went to the shower, trailed by a couple of cambots, and an Anawoka and a Pokoniry medical tech. Hunter stripped and got inside with her. At first, the hot water stung her. She stood in it, groaning, as Hunter, afraid to touch her, stood next to he
r, the techs hovering just out of the water. She lowered her head into the shower, handed him the medicated shampoo. He began to lather it into her scalp, very slowly and tenderly, and she put her arms up, and leaned into him. His arms went around her, and drew her to him, and the hot water poured onto them both. He hugged her tightly. She began to weep, to cry there in the shower.
“Lori, I’m sorry,” he began to say. Outside, the techs stood back, nervous in the face of human sorrow.
She wept for a moment, aching and sore and hurt all over. “It’s OK. Thank you for coming for me, for rescuing me. My guys. My heroes.”
“Anytime. I’m sorry it took us so long.”
“It’s OK,” she said again, and the tears slowed.
She hung onto him, and they hugged until the water stopped.
“Ah, shit,” she said. Shouting, she said, “Turn the water back on.” Nothing happened. “Turn the fuckin’ water back on, now,” Lori repeated. She just took a breath to say it again, when the water resumed. “They’re afraid of diluting their precious samples,” Lori said. The two techs moved in, beginning to carefully and slowly lather up her legs and back. Hunter began, too, gently washing her front, afraid to push too hard. She half squatted and peed again. Hunter pulled the shower head off the holder, and rinsed her all over, her feet, legs, crotch, back and front, face and hair. Some of her wounds reopened, especially the long gash on her upper breast, but they stayed in the shower until the water shut off again, and then left.
Lori’s cuts oozed blood once more, and a medic team attended to her outside the shower, drying her off with soft warm air and softer towels, patting her skin, then sitting her on a table, and slowly spray gluing and bandaging her wounds, while an Anawoka doctor directed her treatment, asking her question after question, reading and watching the AG monitors circling around her. Hunter stood nearby, now in a gown, listening and watching. He answered a few questions, too.
T-47 Book II (Saxon Saga 6) Page 31
