I couldn’t have stampeded the cattle, he thought into her mind, sounding a touch wry. Not all at once.
It isn’t hard. You just have to get the leaders going in the right direction.
I imagine so, but that’s not what you did. I was watching. You touched all of their minds at once. It’s odd to me that you marveled that I could touch a handful of human minds at once when you just manipulated hundreds. He pointed a mental finger at the inner workings of the bomb. Just push that to there, and it’ll blow.
All I did was throw an image of the river and delightful bathing into their minds. That’s not really manipulating. They’re so much happier now, and they knew they would be.
That’s all manipulation is, making someone believe they’ll gain something if they do what you want. I’m ready. Go. The soldiers are running up here again, this time with reinforcements.
Now that Thor had shown her the spot, Jelena had no trouble closing the connection within the wiring and igniting the bomb. She winced as it flared in her mind’s eye and expected a massive explosion that would make the ramp tremble. But Thor’s barrier enclosed it like an ahridium strongbox. She barely heard the explosion, and she didn’t feel a thing. The ship’s hull, though right next to the bomb, wasn’t damaged. The spent casing tumbled to the ground below.
Before she could thank him for the help, Thor spun away from her, running several steps and yanking out his sword. He flicked his wrist, and the blade sprang to its full length, glowing a faint blue in the night.
Eight armored men were charging up the ramp toward them, rifles in their hands, determination in their steps and their minds. Their steps seemed a touch odd, almost sticky, and she realized they’d activated the magnetic feature in the soles of their boots. That was meant for spacewalks on the hulls of ships, but maybe they hoped they’d be able to stay on the ramp if Thor hurled power at them again.
Jelena doubted that would be the case, but she started after him with her staff in hand in case he needed help. Masika, too, came back out, though she had no weapons to use, and her wrists were still bound.
Ready the ship, Thor spoke into Jelena’s mind without looking back. He stood in a fighting stance, his sword raised over his head like the old-fashioned ninjas he seemed to be emulating with his black clothing. I’ll take care of them.
Can you knock them over the side again? Jelena glanced to the pavement below, grimacing as she spotted several armored vehicles charging onto the base and enforcers jumping out. It seemed Regen Sciences had called for the backup.
Yes, but that won’t stop them forever, he replied as the first blazer fire streaked toward him. It bounced off the invisible barrier he’d erected around himself. Ready the ship, and yell to Ostberg to get his ass up here, so we can take off. We can pick him up if we have to.
Jelena hesitated as the first men reached Thor’s barrier. Three bounced off, but surprisingly, one made it inside. Thor lunged at him, his sword a blur as it swept toward the man’s neck. His foe whipped his blazer up in a clumsy block, and the blade sliced through the barrel like a laser cutter slicing through butter. The follow-up attack came so fast, the blade snapping up like a bullwhip, that Jelena didn’t register what happened until the man’s helmet toppled to the ramp and bounced off. The helmet and the man’s head.
“Thor,” Jelena blurted, gripping her staff hard, feeling the need for the support. Logically, she understood that the men wanted to kill them and destroy the Snapper, but she couldn’t wrap her mind around the choice to kill people—and the ramifications and retribution that would come from doing so. “Can’t you just—”
Ready the ship, Thor snarled into her mind as he leaped for the remaining troops, men who’d faltered, staring at their decapitated comrade. Now!
Jelena wasn’t sure if the order contained some mental compulsion, or if she was just reacting to the urgency in his tone, but she whirled and ran into the ship. As she pounded through the hold and toward NavCom, she decided there might be a third reason that she’d moved to obey so quickly. She didn’t want to see Thor killing people.
Masika followed Jelena, racing into NavCom right behind her. Alfie was already inside, hiding under the control console.
“Can I do anything to help?” Masika asked, gripping the hatch jamb as Jelena flung herself into the pilot’s seat.
“There’s a blazer rifle in my cabin if you want to go shoot at people,” Jelena said, fingers flying over the control panel. “At anyone who gets past Thor.”
“Blazer fire won’t do much against combat armor.” Despite the words, Masika jogged down the corridor to the cabin.
“Swords shouldn’t, either,” Jelena muttered, amazed and horrified at the weapon Thor had created.
Jelena! Erick barked into her mind.
There you are—good.
I’m coming as fast as I can. Do you need help? Are you all right?
“Cameras.” Jelena looked at the exterior displays when they popped up. Between Thor’s barrier, his sword, and the rest of his powers, none of the troops had made it past him yet, but a squad of enforcers was charging up to reinforce the hired men. A couple of them carried grenade launchers. No, those were rocket launchers, huge ones. Would they think to attack the ship and not just Thor? He wouldn’t be able to shield the entire Snapper from attacks.
For the moment, Jelena replied, but you should definitely hurry. We need to take off as soon as possible.
I had no idea you planned to move from scheming and skulking to a frontal assault so quickly.
Neither did I, but Thor wasn’t interested in lingering romantically on park benches. She would explain Masika later, once they were safely away from the planet.
I hope that’s a joke. I don’t think your mom wants an assassin for a son-in-law.
Jelena glanced at the camera display again, at three downed men at Thor’s feet and at the blood dripping from his eerie sword. It’s a joke. Hurry, Erick.
The squeal of blazer fire reached her ears, the clang of metal against metal, and the enraged shouts of men. She eyed the enforcers in the back, the ones with the rocket launchers. There were more than twenty men on the ramp outside the Snapper now, laying siege to Thor and the cargo hatch. Was he aware of the men with the rocket launchers? He seemed too focused on fighting the ones at the front, of alternately deflecting their blazer fire and attacking, to notice someone in the back.
“Ship’s ready,” Jelena muttered, thumping her fist on the console. “What do you want me to do now, Thor?” She didn’t ask it telepathically, not wanting to distract him. But those men with the rocket launchers made her nervous. If they targeted the ship . . . well, she couldn’t raise the shields while the hatch was open and they were attached to the dock.
Be there in two minutes, Erick informed her, his words sounding breathless, even though they rang only in her mind.
An idea jumped into her head.
Don’t come up the ramp, she told Erick, leaping from her seat and running to the cargo hold.
Yes, I can see from here that it’s a cluster of chaos. Any suggestions for an alternative route?
We jumped on that cattle freighter, then climbed up from below.
Erick’s tone turned wry. I’m carrying pizza boxes.
Dinner isn’t our top priority right now. A stray blazer bolt streaked through the hold and bounced off the side wall as Jelena ran toward the ladder that led up to the gun turret. Despite still being cuffed, Masika stood at the hatch, returning fire, and she shouted a curse at whoever had shot.
Speak for yourself. I’m tired of ration bars and quick meals.
Climbing the ladder and hoping not to be shot, Jelena did not answer. She flung open the roof hatch and pulled herself into the compact space. She yanked down the pullout chair and grabbed the cannon control grips, swinging the rotating gun toward the ramp and hoping she’d have line of sight to the enforcers. The turret provided a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view around the top of the ship, and could be angled upw
ard or downward, but the roof of the Snapper cut off the possibility of firing at anything under it.
She spun in the seat to face the ramp. Thor and the men closest to him were out of sight, but she could make out the enforcers setting up their big rocket launchers on tripods. The broad muzzle of one pointed at the ship, not at Thor.
“I knew it,” Jelena growled, powering up the star cannon and aiming it. Seeing them trying to take out the Snapper stole her compunctions against possibly killing any of them. She would just have to deal with the ramifications later.
For such a close shot, she didn’t turn on the targeting computer. As the soldiers finished setting up their rocket launcher and one reached for the trigger, she told Thor, Brace yourself, and fired.
The star cannon, intended to fire at ships across hundreds of miles, slammed into the ramp like a meteor.
The explosion of white made Jelena fling up her hand to protect her eyes. Clatters and cracks echoed in her ears, along with the terrified and pained screams of people. Armored men flew away from the Snapper like toy soldiers. Her weapon left a gaping hole in the ramp—and the level below it. Then the entire ramp buckled and collapsed.
Thor! Jelena blurted, afraid he’d been knocked off—or worse.
She didn’t get a response, and she dropped out of the seat, jumping instead of climbing down the ladder. She landed on the cargo-hold deck and sprinted for the hatch. Masika still stood there, her rifle lowered, her mouth dangling open as she stared out into the night. As Jelena ran to look for Thor, a thunderous snap came from below them, and the deck shifted. She lurched, almost toppling. An ominous groan followed the snap, not from the frame of the Snapper, she trusted, but the entire docking structure sounded like it would give out below them.
She sprinted faster. The ship was ready to take off, but she needed Thor and Erick before she could leave.
“Thor?” she called, running out onto the cargo hatch’s ramp. Before, it had rested on the ramp leading to their dock, but now, it simply extended out over open air like a diving board. The armored men were all gone. But so was Thor.
“Thor!”
Yes? came his dry reply in her mind.
A single hand came up and gripped the end of the ship’s ramp.
She ran forward to help him up, but his other hand came up before she reached him, and he pulled himself up, landing in an easy crouch. He’d folded his sword up and returned it to his belt. He glanced over the side at something, and she feared some of the troops had managed to hang on and were also climbing up. Another hand appeared, clasping the lip of the ramp. But the hand wasn’t armored, and Thor knelt down, offering help.
Two pizza boxes came up from below to rest on the ramp. Jelena would have laughed at a sight that seemed so ludicrous amid all this, but the cries of hurt men drifted up from below. She did not laugh.
Thor helped Erick, who had a bag of drinks and other snacks dangling from his wrist, the treats decidedly battered, but he’d refused to leave them behind. Jelena, not feeling that useful, grabbed the pizza boxes, and the three of them jogged inside again.
Another snap came from below, and the deck quaked underfoot. Jelena thrust the boxes at Masika and raced for NavCom, trusting the others to pull in the ramp and close the hatch. It was more than time to get out of there.
Chapter 16
Jelena ignored the piece of pizza balanced on her stallion mug—the ravenous Erick hadn’t deemed plates important enough to hunt down when he’d been distributing shares of his pies—in favor of coaxing as much power from the engines as she could.
The grasses and trees of Upsilon Seven were receding in the Snapper’s rear cameras as they arrowed through the thinning atmosphere, but she worried the Alliance would have orbital ships monitoring the planet and that there might be pursuit. For the most part, they’d been squabbling with some corporation’s hired guns down there, but the enforcers were another matter. And then there was the portion of the space base they’d blown up in order to escape. The Alliance government probably owned and operated that base. What kind of repercussions could she expect? A bill for damages? An arrest warrant? And did the Alliance know that Thor had flown away in the Snapper with her?
Thor had warned her about being seen with him, and she’d talked him into coming anyway. Just as she’d prodded Masika into wanting to come with her.
“You’re a suicidal maniac, Marchenko,” she muttered. What had her mother been thinking in allowing her to captain a ship? Jelena wasn’t nearly mature enough to be in charge of anything. Maybe by the time she was seventy or eighty, she’d be able to plan a mission to liberate some animals without getting everyone she knew in trouble.
“Giving yourself a pep talk?” Masika asked, walking into NavCom.
“I could certainly use one.”
Masika sat down with a groan in the co-pilot’s seat. She must have stopped at sickbay, because a bandage was wrapped around her hand. A large purple lump darkened her temple. At least she’d found a way to cut off the intellicuffs.
Jelena was surprised she had managed to get through the night unscathed, aside from weariness. Her legs ached from that top-speed race through the grasses to help a man who didn’t need any help.
“Was Thor in sickbay when you popped in?” Jelena asked, remembering he had been wounded before they got to the space base and he fought off all those troops. And had a ramp blown out from underneath him.
“No, but he looked like he should be. He’s helping Ostberg scan the entire ship to make sure there weren’t any more explosives or booby traps planted while you were gone.”
“I’ll have to intercept him and divert him to sickbay once we’re clear of the planet.” Jelena eyed the sensors again, expecting ships to veer in their direction at any moment. “And we’re certain nobody’s following us.”
Masika gazed glumly at the various holodisplays and the view screen showing the stars ahead. “I’m afraid they’ll keep following to get me back. If not Regen Sciences, then Stellacor. Maybe I should have just let them have me.”
“Uh huh, you’re welcome for the rescue.”
“I shouldn’t have needed to be rescued. I thought I was turning myself in to Stellacor, so you people could get away and wouldn’t be harassed anymore.” Masika slanted her an indecipherable look. “I was trying to be selfless.”
“Do you want me to take you back?” Jelena reached for the controls, as if to turn the ship around.
“No.” Masika grimaced and looked away. Her voice lowered to a whisper. “I don’t want to go back. To either corporation. I want . . . I don’t know what I should want anymore.”
“How about a job as a security officer and painter on a freighter?”
“You have low standards when it comes to hiring.”
“In hiring security officers? Since we don’t have one, or anyone lining up to apply, there’s not much competition for the job.”
Masika snorted. “Painters.”
“Why do you say that? The mural is beautiful.”
Masika shook her head. “With a broad brush and a huge canvas that forgives flaws, I’m all right, but it’s nothing compared to what I used to be able to do. To create.” She spread her palm and looked down at it. “I once carved an intricate mural on a grain of rice. And I painted . . . I was considered one of the best young artists coming through the program at Giotto di Bondone University. It came easily for me. Whether I was looking at anything or not, I could see what I wanted to paint in my mind, knew exactly which brush strokes would result in what picture.”
Jelena expected to see a tremor or something that would indicate some disease, something that would be affecting her fine motor skills. “What happened?”
“This.” Masika gestured at her torso, herself.
“Your, ah, not-a-cyborg surgery?” Jelena guessed. She had yet to see Masika in anything except the unrevealing military fatigues, but there was no doubt that she had enhanced muscles. Still, she wasn’t ridiculously brawny, not like so m
any of the male cyborgs Jelena had seen.
“My not-a-cyborg surgery, yes.”
“What happened? How did you end up working for Stellacor? Or was it being worked on by Stellacor?” Jelena hadn’t pried that much thus far, and she wouldn’t now, but in addition to being curious, she felt she had a right to know why Stellacor—and Regen Sciences—wanted her passenger so badly.
“Both.” Masika leaned her head back and closed her eyes.
Would she answer further? Jelena was tempted to poke into her thoughts, especially since the answers were probably near the surface of her mind now, but if Masika did not want to share, it wasn’t within her right to steal the information.
“Five years ago I guess it was now, I was looking into how much it costs to get cyborg implants. They’re out there, available for civilians, but they’re expensive. You can get them off the black market, but they’re still expensive, and then you have to find a surgeon willing to implant them, and only the sketchy, disreputable ones will do it if they know they were illegally obtained. Either way, it was far more than I had as a student attending school on a scholarship. Then I found an ad on the sys-net, a medical research facility looking for volunteers for genetic manipulation that could give a person cyborg-like strength, among other traits. Faster healing. Greater speed and agility.” She shrugged.
Jelena made an encouraging noise, hoping she would continue.
“Genetic engineering for humans is nothing new, but usually, as far as I was told, altering the DNA has to be done to embryos. If the military wanted genetically engineered soldiers, it would have to fund the project for eighteen to twenty years before getting its super men and women. Stellacor has been tweaking living people, using a retrovirus to alter their DNA and, in my case, they took away a gene that limits the development of muscle mass and strength. Among other things. I’ve also had numerous injections of who knows what property compounds, and now, they’re monitoring me to see if everything sticks, or if I revert back. Or if there are other complications.” She grimaced. “I gathered they wanted to make super soldiers without having to breed them from scratch or spend huge amounts of money on state-of-the-art implants. The cyborg surgeries for the military are extremely extensive, and apparently, there are some dangers. That part doesn’t get mentioned in the recruiting posters, but people can die or their bodies can reject the implants, causing all kinds of health problems.”
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