Soulless
Page 21
He’d been able to pick the lock on a door on the south side of the building. It was too dark to get a good look around outside, but he hadn’t heard any guards or animals. His own bio-scanner didn’t pick up any Polans, though he did scan other alien life in the area.
It was too big to be an escaped pet, and he’d heard of the large felines that stalked the Polan highlands. It was possible one had come down from the mountains looking for food. His blaster would be defense enough against any wild animal, and as long as the Polans didn’t catch him, he’d be fine.
The station had been powered down before it was sealed up for the summer. That meant no light, no temperature adjustment system, and no electronic security. He wore night-vision goggles to see down the dim hallways, everything cast in an eerie orange glow.
The halls were narrow and the ceilings low to accommodate the short, lithe Polans. Detyens all stood tall and broad, which meant that Ru needed to stoop so that his head didn’t brush against the roof.
According to his map, the control room was located in the center of the building. He’d need to follow the central hall until it intersected with the cafeteria. From there, he could cut through a series of small offices and meeting rooms to reach his destination.
But his first order of business was to find the control room power breaker. He didn’t need to power up the entire facility, but he needed those computers turned on and connected. He headed to the central power station located near the cafeteria.
The power breakers had all been shut off and secured, but he was able to use a circumvention method that he’d picked up on another job. He bypassed the passive security measures and the independent alarm that was supposed to trigger when he switched on the power.
When he heard an engine spin up, he knew that he’d been successful.
But he froze when he heard a clatter from within the kitchens. It sounded like a person or possibly an animal had stolen away inside. Ru bit back a curse. He should have checked more thoroughly before switching the power on. It shouldn’t have affected the cafeteria, but if someone was in there and wandered any further into the facility, they’d see the lights and know he was there.
He needed to handle the situation.
Ru slid his blaster out of its holster and backed away from the breaker box. He slipped out of the small utility closet and took two steps down the narrow hallway to the cafeteria. He tried to get a good look at the room through the window in the door, but all he could see were a dozen long tables bolted to the ground and stacks of chairs piled up against the walls. Beyond those tables he spied an empty food dispensary, but there was no one in the room.
He pushed the door open and entered, moving with caution through the empty room. He made his way to the storage room behind the food dispensary. That was where he found her.
Ru froze where he stood. Something within him cracked. The room suddenly brightened, white light nearly flooding his eyes. It had nothing to do with his goggles. He forgot that those existed.
Everything was secondary to the woman crouching in front of the storage closet in front of him. She wasn’t Detyen and she certainly wasn’t Polan. He could tell from her hair and the beige skin peeking out from the tattered edges of her dark jacket. Human, he thought, based on the ones that he’d met in his travels. A hardy species, similar to his own in so many ways.
She turned toward him and Ru was conquered. Suffering and desperation were painted across her beautiful face, her skin nearly gold and eyes wide and dark. Brown hair tumbled down over her shoulders, some matted and tangled from time lost in the wild. Shock suffused her face, her mouth falling open and eyes getting impossibly wider.
This was not possible. His fate had been sealed a century ago, long before he was even born. But the planet shifted beneath him, the stars realigning, until the only thing that mattered was the woman before him.
“Denya.”
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