by Piers Platt
“I’m a paying passenger,” Ed protested.
“You’re an insurance policy, both of you, and don’t fucking forget it,” Auresh told him. “I’ll get you a cabin if you can cough up the cash. Later. Until then, shut up and stay out of the way.” Auresh put a finger in Kuda’s chest, meeting the larger man’s gaze. “You want revenge for your brother?”
“Yes!” Kuda said.
“Then take five men. Get back inside the research center. Sweep it, then clear the ship, too. Kill them all. And this time, do it right.”
“I will,” Kuda promised.
“You’ve got fifteen minutes,” Auresh told him. “And then I’m sending a missile into the Liberty Belle, and another one in through the research center airlock, regardless of where you are at the time. Got it?”
“Got it.”
Kuda pushed Vina and Ed toward a set of stairs, and they emerged into the ship’s cavernous cargo bay. A row of pallets stood anchored to the floor at the front of the bay, and beyond them, two large shipping containers rose up overhead, their gray metal sides gleaming dully in the bay’s ceiling lamps. Kuda pointed Ed and Vina to the row of pallets, and then locked both of them to one of the pallets with two sets of handcuffs, despite Ed’s protests.
“I helped you!” Ed whined. “I’m paying you!”
Suddenly, a noise behind Kuda made all three of them look around – something heavy had rammed against the inside of the nearest cage, and they heard a deep snort of air.
“Those are the dragons you caught?” Vina asked, eyeing the cages with alarm.
“Yeah,” Kuda said. He turned and saw a group of crewmembers descending the stairs into the bay, carrying assault rifles and oxygen masks. “On me,” Kuda called.
The five men assembled in a semi-circle around Kuda. “Captain says we’re headed back outside?” one of the men asked.
“That’s right,” Kuda told him. “But it’s just a short walk to the research center and back.”
“You didn’t see any dragons?” the man asked.
“No,” Kuda said. “It’s like a hundred yards to the airlock. Not far.”
The crewmen shared a nervous look.
“We need a cutting torch,” he said, ignoring their worried faces. “The guys inside the center shut the airlock, and probably locked it, too.”
“We just lost two guys using a welding torch outside,” another of the crewmembers pointed out. “Now you want to use a cutting torch, too?”
“Listen,” Kuda said, moving forward to stand close to the man’s face. “Those bastards just killed my brother. Yeah, I want a cutting torch. But I’m not stupid. We’ll be inside the vehicle bay, with the bay door closed. All we have to do is cut in through the airlock, clear the research center, then cut into the resupply ship if need be and clear it, too. Then we’re done.”
Kuda took a spare rifle from one of the men, and checked that a round was in the chamber.
“Now quit your bitching, mask up, and let’s get going.”
* * *
Muir joined Falken and Raynard at the Liberty Belle’s porthole, as the two men stood watching the Starfarer several hundred yards away, through the fence of the landing pad.
“How’s Talus?” Falken asked.
“Too soon to tell,” Muir said. “Luthena kicked me out of the cabin, said I was gonna get in her way.”
“I know how that goes,” Falken said.
“Any movement on the ship?” Muir asked.
“No,” Falken said. “Oh shit, no – there’s someone now, coming out of the airlock.”
“Several someones,” Raynard observed, as a group of men emerged from the ship, lit only by the Starfarer’s landing gear lights. “Five … six of them.”
“They’re armed,” Falken said, squinting at the dark shapes in the distance. “And they’re probably bringing explosives or something to blast their way into the research center, if I had to guess.”
“Why not come straight here?” Muir asked. “They have to know we’re not still in the research center.”
“Not for sure, they don’t,” Falken said. “And if they come at us through the research center, they minimize the time they spend outside, exposed to the dragons. They’re not stupid.”
Raynard turned to Muir. “Can you take off?”
Muir shook her head. “They took my master key. Auresh has it around his neck, last I saw. I can get us airborne, but I’m stuck using just the atmospheric engines, max ceiling of about sixty thousand feet. Without that key, I can’t light the main boosters, and I can’t get us up out of the gravity well.”
Falken swore. “And Vina’s still stuck on board the Starfarer.”
“We can fight them,” Muir pointed out. She held up the pistol she had taken from Shep.
“One pistol against a half dozen men armed with assault rifles and grenades? Not for long, we can’t,” Falken said.
“What if we take off and try to hide the ship somewhere … on another continent, maybe?” Raynard suggested.
Muir rubbed her chin. “Might work … but we’d need to get a big jump on them to have any hope of outrunning them. We’d have to get airborne before the Starfarer does.”
The whine of rapidly accelerating engines caught their attention. As they watched, the Starfarer lifted smoothly off into the night sky.
“Well, there goes that plan,” Muir said. “That thing’s already got the drop on us. It’s packing ship-to-ship missiles, and I don’t know what else.”
Falken’s eyes narrowed. “I know something else that’s on board that ship.”
“What?” Raynard asked.
“Muir, stay here – if all else fails, you can try to hold ‘em off with that pistol of yours,” Falken said. “And they might not attack you once they find out Shep’s on board. Raynard, are you up for a quick trip back into the research center?”
Raynard frowned. “You want to go back in there. The place the bad guys are about to assault?”
“Yeah,” Falken said.
“I can’t walk very well,” Raynard told him, indicating his injured leg.
“I don’t need you to walk,” Falken said. “I just need you to take a little ride. Come on.”
Chapter 31
“That’s it,” Falken grunted, pushing Raynard up from below. “Pull yourself up, and take a seat.”
With a final effort, Raynard hauled himself into the cab of the funicular, and took a seat on the narrow, two-person bench. Through the cab’s windshield, he saw a short, narrow tunnel cut into the rock of the mountain face, and beyond, the sheer sides of Mount Olympus stretched up and up. A thin ribbon of steel tracks led straight up the mountainside, glinting gray-white in the moonlight.
Falken climbed up the final rungs of the ladder, and then resettled the oxygen mask over his face – Raynard had knocked it loose in their efforts to climb the boarding ladder.
“Okay, controls,” Falken said. “Pretty basic, okay? This lever controls motion. Move it in the direction you want to go – up for up the mountain, down for back down.”
He pointed to a lower setting on the lever. “Press the button in and then slide the lever all the way down to set it for emergency descent,” Falken told the journalist. “You’re gonna want that one. It’s basically a free-fall descent at that point, like a roller coaster, no brakes until you hit the very bottom. But then it brakes hard. So make sure you’re strapped in tight. Got it?”
“I think so,” Raynard said. “How fast will it drop?”
“About thirty seconds, top to bottom,” Falken said. “Compared to maybe three minutes to get all the way up at the start.”
“Is that going to be fast enough?” Raynard asked. “What if they find a way in while I’m in here?”
“Sit tight, and hope they don’t think to look in here,” Falken said. He handed Raynard a noise cancellation staff from the research center’s supplies. “Good luck,” he said.
“You too,” Raynard said.
Falken patted
him on the shoulder, then climbed back down the ladder. Halfway down, he stopped and swung a circular hatch closed, sealing the funicular access shut. Then he dropped the rest of the way down to the floor and dashed down the research center hallway. He paused for a moment at the inner airlock hatch – through the porthole, he could see the airlock was filled with smoke, and a bright orange line snaked a jagged cut nearly halfway around the outer door frame.
Shit. They’re working fast. Not much time.
Falken turned and ran back through the research center, hooking left down a side corridor and into the sensor displacement room. He hauled up the lid to one of the units, checked that it was ready to go, then peeled his oxygen mask off. He took a deep breath. The air tasted thin, and slightly acrid.
Brondi said there were only a few minutes of air left in here. Let’s hope that’s enough.
Falken slid the sensory displacement helmet on, then climbed into the pod and booted it up. He lay back as the warm gel flooded into the pod, buoying him up. As usual, he had the distinct sensation of déjà vu, of being simultaneously in two places at the same time. Then the connection firmed up, and the sensations of the pod disappeared.
He found himself staring through the open eyes of the proxy he had left sitting at the rear of the Starfarer’s cargo bay. He could feel the ship’s deck rumbling beneath him as its thrusters pushed it higher into the atmosphere.
At the far end of the bay, past the two dragon cages, Falken saw Vina handcuffed to some kind of shipping pallet, along with Ed. Captain Auresh stood talking to them. Other armed crewmembers stood in groups around the bay. Falken counted them quickly.
One, two, three … four, five, six … seven, eight … and Auresh makes nine.
He stood up slowly, carefully, and flexed the proxy’s powerful limbs.
Here we go.
* * *
The funicular climbed with surprising speed, the cable hauling it upwards along the steep incline of the rail tracks. Raynard glanced over his shoulder – already the Liberty Belle and its landing pad appeared to be far below him, and he quickly lost sight of the wrecked Ecolympus truck sitting outside the research center’s vehicle bay. Of the Starfarer, there was no sign.
Let Falken worry about that, Raynard told himself. You’ve got your own shit to handle.
He turned and faced forward again, wincing at the pain in his leg – the painkillers Luthena had given him back in the infirmary had recently worn off, and under the dressing, his wound throbbed with each of his heartbeats, aching in rhythm.
The funicular’s clear canopy passed through a narrow slit in the rock, and then Raynard spied another tunnel a few hundred yards ahead – the track seemed to disappear back into the mountainside just as it reached the peak’s summit.
I wonder if this thing makes a lot of noise, Raynard thought. Are they gonna hear me coming? Probably.
The moon disappeared from view again as the cab slid into the final tunnel, and for a few seconds Raynard found himself riding blind – the only thing he could see was the softly glowing control panel next to him. Then the tunnel ended, and the funicular leveled off, emerging back into the moonlight. It eased to a gentle stop alongside a metal platform.
The aerie lay spread out below him – a wide, conical crater, bowl-like, nearly a mile across. Hundreds of irregular boulders dotted the loose shale landscape, and Raynard could see bones strewn across the ground as well.
Okay, I’m here. But where are the dragons …?
He peered around the crater, searching for signs of the creatures, but everything was still, and the night sky was empty, too. Then he saw a boulder move, and with a shiver of surprise and fear, realization dawned on the journalist. The dragon unfolded its wings, stretched its neck with a yawn, then tucked itself back into a tight ball, wrapping its wings around its body.
Ah. They’re everywhere. Hundreds of them, all sleeping. Got it.
Raynard reached a trembling hand out and set it on the funicular’s door handle. He took a deep breath, making sure his oxygen mask was firmly in place. Then he remembered Falken’s words, and double-checked that his seat belt was still on. It was. He glanced at the nearest dragon-boulder, noting its long tail, twitching slightly as the beast slept.
Raynard released the door latch, and slid the door back along its rails, opening the cab to the outside. A ripple seemed to pass along the dragons – they stirred suddenly, and Raynard saw several lift their heads up, questing in his direction.
He released the door handle, and picked up the noise cancellation staff. Raynard glanced down at it quickly, setting his thumb on the device’s activation button. He closed his eyes for a moment.
Oh my god, this is stupid. This is so stupid.
Raynard jammed the switch to the Lure position. At once, every dragon in the aerie jerked upright, and Raynard heard a chorus of snarls and screeches ring out across the crater. The nearest dragons took to the air, launching themselves toward the funicular.
Shit!
Raynard grabbed the control lever for the cab, and jammed it into the emergency descent position. The cab jerked, and for a split second, it rolled leisurely back toward the entrance tunnel to the aerie. Raynard’s heart raced at the unexpectedly slow movement – he nearly panicked, but with a force of will, managed to keep hold of the staff, holding it out of the side of the cab, even as the dragons dove toward him.
But then the vehicle tilted and hit the main slope of the track, and Raynard felt his stomach drop with a lurch as it plummeted downward through the tunnel near the peak. He kept the staff held in the door, broadcasting its wounded faun signal to the night air.
The funicular blasted into the open, and then through the slit trench a second later, and Raynard risked a glance over his shoulder. A flock of dragons had taken to the skies over the aerie, and he saw a dozen of them tuck their wings in close, dropping into a dive in pursuit of him.
Shit, they’re gaining on me. They’re faster …
He forced himself to turn back, facing forward – the ground was rushing up to meet him, and in the distance, he could see the final, protective tunnel that housed the funicular base station, its dark entrance gaping invitingly.
Come on, come on!
Raynard tapped on the computer terminal in the cab, accessing the controls for the research center. Then he cocked his arm back, preparing to throw the staff.
* * *
In the research center’s vehicle bay, the crewman shut the cutting torch off, and pulled his visor up.
“That’s it,” he said, sweating under his oxygen mask.
Kuda, standing behind him, lifted his rifle, pointing it at the door. The other four crewmen stood to either side of the hatch, weapons at the ready.
“Ready?” Kuda asked.
“Ready,” they echoed.
“Remember: they have a pistol, and they may have some other improvised weapons, too. They’re gonna be waiting for us. We go in hard and fast. Grenades first, then sweep and clear. Shoot anything that moves.” Kuda gripped his rifle tighter. “Okay, pull it open on my mark,” he said.
The crewman took a grip on the door, bracing his feet against the ground in the vehicle bay.
“Five, four, three, two …” Kuda said, but then the outer bay door rattled and slid upward, disappearing into the ceiling.
Kuda and the crewmen turned around, startled, gazing out into the darkness beyond the bay.
“They must have opened it from the inside,” one of the crewmen guessed.
Kuda frowned. “Well, it’s not gonna do them any good now.”
Suddenly, a short, thin rod speared into the ground outside the vehicle bay. Kuda could see a leather strap dangling from one end of the device – it took him a moment, but then he recognized it as a noise cancellation staff.
“What the …?” the crewman muttered.
Kuda’s eyes went wide.
A dragon landed on the staff with a hiss, crushing it into the earth. Then another landed beside it,
flapping its wings and snarling. Two more landed beyond them, and then two more, until Kuda lost count.
The first dragon swiveled its head, pointing its ears at the group inside the vehicle bay. Kuda could see the gills along its neck opening and closing as the beast sniffed the air. Kuda eyed the bay door switch – it was all the way across the bay, right next to the open door itself. The dragon opened its jaws, and took a step toward the bay.
The crewman next to him, hands trembling on his weapon, took a step backwards. Three other dragons heard the movement, and crouched down, stalking toward the bay. One of the crewmen panicked and opened fire, and then all hell broke loose. Kuda heard other guns joining the fray – he ignored them, and ran for the door switch. He was within arm’s reach of the switch when a dragon pounced on him, pinning him to the ground with its full weight. Kuda shrieked in pain. Back by the airlock, the firing continued for another few seconds, and then it ended in a series of brief, agonized screams. Then the only sound in the bay was that of the dragons, fighting over their prey.
Chapter 32
Inside his proxy, Falken crept forward along the Starfarer’s cargo bay. He had nearly slipped between the two dragon cages undetected when a crewman finally spotted him. The man frowned, then lifted a hand, pointing.
“Hey …,” he said.
Falken broke into a sprint, disappearing between the cages, heading directly for Vina and the men around her. Auresh had his back to Falken, but he turned at the sound of boots on the metal deck, reaching for the pistol in his belt holster. He yelled in alarm, raising his weapon, but Falken grabbed him by the wrist and the gun discharged a single round into the floor. Falken twisted the captain’s arm brutally, and felt a pop as several bones broke. Auresh shrieked, dropping the pistol. Falken grabbed the master key dangling from Auresh’s neck and tugged it free with a jerk. Then he kicked Auresh in the stomach – with the proxy’s extra mass behind it, the kick sent the captain flying several feet across the bay. He slammed into another one of the crewmen, knocking them both to the floor.
