Kepper pulled his facemask on and waited patiently for the gas and smoke to bring the entire battle into a confused state. The shooting nearly ceased because neither side could be sure of what was going on. Coughing and choking came from both groups.
Which meant his window was open.
Protected by his mask's breather unit, Kepper rushed in. The IR overlay on the eyepieces helped him identify everyone through the thick haze, and he could see the specific build and form of his mark. The smoke gave him cover on the approach. His hand reached into his vest pouch for the injector he'd placed there.
His mark's gun was up, swinging around while she coughed and stumbled to try and get out of the cloud of gas. He kept himself from facing the gun, weaving his way through the smoke in that pursuit.
The mark clearly heard his approach. "Jim! Miri! Are you there?!" she called out. Their voices responded, assuring Kepper that he still had his opening.
When he was in arm's reach, he slipped around the mark and brought his free left arm up to confine her left arm. She struggled against the grip and started to pull free when his right hand zipped up and pressed the injector to her neck. A low hiss came from her throat. She pulled away completely.
But it was too late. She barely took a free step before the sedative hit and she fell over, unconscious. Kepper leaned over and placed tie straps around her wrists and ankles before lifting her onto his shoulders. With professional satisfaction building, he rushed from the smoke with his captive and ran for the hangar exit.
* * *
Once the smoke and gas rose, Miri felt vindicated for her earlier concerns. This was bigger than a criminal gang looking for a score.
Such knowledge didn't help immediately, of course, not when she was choking and tearing up from the combination of inert smoke and tear gas. With her pistol in hand, Miri tried to get away and clear her vision. She heard Tia's distant call and shouted, "I'm over here!"
There was no reply. At least, not at first. After another half a minute, Cera's voice sounded over her link. "Some sassenach made off with Tia!"
That was what this was for, Miri realized. Despite her eyes stinging and watering, she finished pushing through the gas clouds. She found herself near the gang. Half of them were on their knees, debilitated by the gas as well. The other half were befuddled and uncertain. She had an opening.
She took it.
Miri dashed for the first one and quickly wrenched his gun from his hand. She twisted around another gang member and forced the gun from his hands as well. Her foot hooked under his feet and tripped him, toppling him onto his back.
On his belt was an activation key for a hoverbike. Miri snatched it up and rushed to the front door of the hangar. A collection of machines were just outside, the gang's means of arrival. She rushed to the group and used the key's activation button to bring one to life, jumping on it the moment she heard the engine start up. "Cera, did you see where he took her?!" she asked.
"Out the stern hangar door. Th' bastard had an aircar waitin'!"
"Help the others subdue the rest of the gang. I'm going after them!" Grabbing the handles with her gun still in one hand was awkward, but she managed the grip. She used the reverse function to pull the bike out from the others and turned it toward the roadways linking the hangars. A pull of the alternate throttle set the hoverbike racing forward.
They came through the other hangar. For a snatch job like this, they probably have a ship ready. Considering the layout of the hangars of the station, Miri turned her bike to the left through one of the linking paths between hangars. She emerged on the other road and swept her head in either direction. A visible aircar passed her eyes coming from the direction of their hangar. There he is. She turned the bike to intercept.
* * *
One thing all professionals knew was that the job wasn't truly over until you and the mark were away from the site. Kepper lived by that rule.
His careful attention to his surroundings meant he saw the hoverbike rushing after him via his mirrors. The driver didn't have a helmet, showing the haste involved in the gesture, and Kepper immediately recognized Miriam Gaon as his pursuer. A sly grin came to his face. Might be the first time a former mark's chased me.
Without any warning, he switched his pistol to his left hand and pointed it out of the window. His finger tightened around the trigger and sent rounds at the hoverbike. A spark indicated he made a hit of some kind, but not enough to stop the vehicle.
One of Miri's hands briefly came up from the handlebars. Charged particle bursts flew through the air, nearly impacting on the aircar if not for Kepper's swerve to the right.
After the swerve, he checked toward his front again. An ore hauler truck was taking the crossroad ahead. He grinned and accelerated toward it. With all of the speed he mustered from the vehicle, he shot in front of the truck and rounded it. His speed carried him on to the next turn and he took it, eager to see if the pursuit continued. It'd been quite a while since he faced such fierce competition.
Yet it had to end before he got to his hangar. The timing of the extraction demanded it.
"Car, auto-drive," he said, and the car activated the auto-drive software at the verbal command. He reached down and pulled his grenade belt off. With a sweep of his hand, he pulled the trigger pins of each grenade before tossing the entire belt out of the window.
* * *
At the sight of the ore truck, Miri veered the hoverbike to the left, evading the craft. She accelerated through the turn while keeping her forearm balanced on the handlebar should she get a shot from her sidearm.
No such shot materialized. Luck came to her side anyway, as she saw the aircar before it turned a corner. She followed, accelerating further to regain the lost ground, waiting for her opening to return fire once again. As the aircar swerved in front of her, she took a shot, trying to hit the air-thrust system that kept the vehicle aloft. The shot went wide and scorched the metal skin of the vehicle instead.
I wish one of the others was riding with me. I can't shoot straight while handling this thing. She considered just following until they got to the kidnapper's destination, but that could quickly turn against her if they had a waiting support team. I need to stop them!
She fired once, twice, and still managed no hits, but her aim was improving despite the awkwardness demanded by the hoverbike controls.
Objects flew from the car window. In one big burst, a large cloud of gas and smoke formed ahead of her. She veered to her left to avoid the cloud, but it was expanding too rapidly to be evaded in such a fashion. The smoke and gas entered her nose. She coughed harshly, trying to keep it from her lungs. A pang of frustration drew a slight snarl to her lips. I need to get through!
She realized her mistake just as she emerged from the cloud, and at her speed, it was too late to stop. Ahead of her was the aircar, now turned to the side and forming a barrier in the road. She hit the brake on the hoverbike just as the craft slammed into the aircar.
The impact sent her flying from the vehicle. With no helmet, she was in grave danger of a fatal head injury, and in mid-air, curled herself up to try and protect her head as much as she could. The maneuver worked, causing her to land on her side with her arm protecting her vulnerable head.
But nothing could prevent the impact from injuring her. The bone-jarring landing sent a vibrating ache through her body. She lost her grip on her gun while rolling to a stop. A low groan filled her throat. It took a lot of will to order her body to begin standing.
There was a crack in the air. It caught her mid-movement. Pain flared in her right hip. Metal ripped through her flesh and she fell back to her belly. She looked up toward the source of the shot and saw Tia's kidnapper, a man in a breather mask, with a gun leveled on her. Movement meant immediate death, and she still couldn't see her own firearm, so she froze in place. Her eyes focused on the mask and the face behind it. Specifically, on the intent eyes showing through the mask.
Fear and surprise bolted through
her heart. She knew those eyes. She'd seen them plenty of times in her dreams and nightmares. "Kepper."
For a moment, she thought it was over. That he would pull the trigger again and put a bullet in her head. But no second shot came. He returned to his aircar. Miri briefly noticed the slumped form of Tia in the front seat before the door closed and the aircar sped off.
4
Kepper left his wounded pursuer behind with satisfaction. She would pose no further threat to his escape, and he considered the act of sparing her life to be preserving her as a potential mark in the future should the right offer come along.
Freed from the pursuit, Kepper still kept his car going at a high speed until he arrived at his rented hangar. Inside was his stolen League courier ship, a specialized vessel that once belonged to a League External Security operative. The silver-sheened vessel was a sleek, aerodynamic model with a special extra: its own Lawrence drive, an uncommon feature for such a small ship.
Kepper pulled on his equipment bag over one shoulder before lifting his captive onto the other. The burden was significant, but he had no time for a second trip to his vehicle. His left hand came up and typed in the unlocking sequence, opening his ship.
Once inside, he dropped his equipment bag in place and carried Nguyen into the living area. He secured her shackles to restraints set into the floor for such jobs, a titanium-based alloy she'd need a plasma torch to cut through, before returning to the cockpit. With a few keystrokes, he triggered the ship's engines to activate from standby mode and set it for spaceflight.
He wasn't surprised when the comm system lit up. He expected that Allentown Traffic Control would pick up his startup sequence. "Vessel Nimrod, be advised that all departures are canceled until further notice. Please cancel launch preparations immediately."
Kepper grinned. His systems showed all green, so it was time for his final play. "Attention Traffic Control, this is the Nimrod. I'm going to launch now. If you don't open the launch doors and let me out of the station, I'm going to make my own exit by initiating the nuclear charge I placed at Section G-48 of the dome support structure. It'll blow a nice big hole through your dome and vent your atmosphere right into space. You've got two minutes until I'm at the door. The choice is yours."
* * *
The Allentown police filled the Shadow Wolf's hangar. Normally, such a presence would not have been welcome to Henry, but given the situation, he was happy they were getting the gang that attacked his crew out of his sight. Given their role in Tia's abduction, he didn't trust himself in their proximity.
The head of the police detachment, a broad-shouldered bearded man named Inspector Markson, looked up from his digital tablet at the sound of the approaching hoverbike engine. Henry's eyes moved toward the source as well, giving him a view of Brigitte returning with Miri on her rear seat. His gut twisted at the lack of Tia. They didn't get to her. She's gone. The twisting became a painful void inside of him.
Brigitte brought the bike right up to them, weaving around a pile of ore crates to do so. "Get Oskar!" she insisted. "She's been shot."
He turned toward Oskar, who was still stabilizing Yanik, given the mess made of the Saurian's shoulder. "I'll be right over," Oskar promised. "Just make sure she's not bleeding." Henry checked and noted that the tourniquet and bandaging on the wound were intact, if still bloody.
Markson was all business. "Did you get a good look at the kidnapper?"
Miri nodded at him. Her eyes met Henry's. "Kepper," she said.
Markson glanced curiously at Henry, who knew the man could see the recognition that showed on Henry's face. "You're sure?"
"He's hunted me before," Miri remarked. "And I recognized that same look in his eyes."
"Who is this 'Kepper'?" Markson asked.
"A bounty hunter and assassin we've crossed paths with before. He's a stone cold killer. Sociopath, too."
"That's not good." Markson held his finger to his ear. His face paled before their eyes. "Traffic Control's spoken to him. He's demanding launch clearance, or he'll set off a nuclear charge on the dome." His voice betrayed an unmistakable horror, justified by the scope of Kepper's threat.
Henry swallowed at that. Kepper would do it too. He'd kill everyone on the station to fulfill his contract. "So you're letting him go?"
"Sorry, but we don't have a choice. We're confirming the charge's presence now. If we're lucky, a disposal team can disarm it quickly."
"He would account for that," Miri said. "Even if you can, you won't be able to do it before he's clear of the station and burning for the limit."
"Possibly. But it doesn't matter. We can't risk every life in Allentown for one spacer."
Henry gritted his teeth and forced his anger down. Markson was right, of course, and he couldn't blame him. He could only blame himself for not dealing with Kepper before now. Not that we had much of a choice last time. Without Kepper, we'd have never stopped the League's plot to take over Lusitania.
Now the son of a bitch was making off with one of his crew. With his hand-picked XO.
And all he could do was watch.
To hell with that, he decided. "Get everyone back aboard," he ordered Brigitte and Miri.
"Captain Henry, we can't allow you to launch," Markson warned. "Not until that charge is dealt with."
"I know that, but I don't want to lose a second when we're free to pursue. It could give us a chance to make the intercept."
The police inspector seemed to consider the point for a moment. "Alright. We'll have Traffic Control free you to go through the airlock as soon as we've secured the dome. That's the best I can do for you."
"Hopefully, that's all we'll need." Henry tried to feel the same hope that went into those words, with little success.
* * *
The moment of truth was approaching for Kepper. Under his steady hand, the Nimrod approached the four-sectioned portal of the station's inner airlock. "Traffic Control, I'm ready to enter the airlock. Open it now."
There was a pause at the other end. Kepper nearly reminded them of the stakes, but was preempted by the voice over the link. "Roger, Nimrod. Opening now."
The airlock opened. Kepper brought the ship into the chamber before firing the engines to a hover configuration. A monitor on the airlock interior wall mirrored the data showing on his status screen, showing the lock being de-pressurized.
It was a tense wait to see the process finish. Even now, Allentown's security services were likely locating the charge. It would take them some time to disarm it or remove it safely, but they might gamble and delay him until then. If they refused to open the doors, he'd be trapped.
But they won't. They can't, he reassured himself. They won't risk dying for one spacer.
That judgment was vindicated when the systems confirmed the airlock was depressurized. The door ahead slid open. Kepper brought his ship through. The moment he was clear of the airlock, he triggered the ship's drives to full and accelerated, hard, for the system's Lawrence limit.
As his speed built, he pondered the device. A part of him relished the idea of hitting the initiation key. The sight of the dome being blown open, the debris and the bodies coming through. In a single stroke, he'd become the Destroyer of Allentown Station.
No. With that thought, Kepper focused and pushed away the urge. Professional courtesy demanded he obey the terms he'd laid down. They'd let him go after all.
A sensor from the charge went off. The temperature fell drastically. Kepper checked the feeds from the charge and found them unresponsive. Liquid-nitrogen container, he thought to himself. Floods the charge, keeps the initiator from activating. Clever.
If the charge was disabled, that meant he'd gotten clear just in time. He started keeping an eye on the sensors just to be sure.
He wasn't disappointed.
* * *
The outer airlock door slid open on Allentown Station and the Shadow Wolf shot out of the airlock, engines going to full as quickly as Cera could push them.
&n
bsp; From his command chair, Henry watched the holotank plot the location of Kepper's ship. "The sensors barely read the ship's there," Piper said from her station. "If he wasn't burning at full power, I'm not sure we'd be seeing him."
"It might be nice to steal a top-of-the-line League spy ship," Miri murmured. She was at Tia's usual seat. Her leg was wrapped in bandaging.
Henry heard her words, but his eyes were fixed on the holotank plot. The distance wasn't decreasing nearly enough. He ran the calculation in his mind and knew they'd never make it. Kepper would jump out with Tia before they could get in range to shoot or grapple him.
That left just one option to prevent his escape.
Henry's finger found the ship intercom key on his chair. "Attention, all hands. Brace for high G conditions."
Miri and Piper turned their heads toward him. "You're not going to use the fusion drive, are you?" Piper asked, some incredulity and fear in her voice. "What about the damage?"
"If we don't, he gets away," Henry said. "And we lose Tia."
Piper needed no further encouragement. She settled into the seat and braced herself.
"Captain, we're ready," said Pieter over the intercom. "But I can't promise she'll keep together for long."
"Do what you can. Cera, now."
At the stroke of a key, Cera brought the Shadow Wolf's backup drives online. In the rear two holds of the ship, pumps moved deuterium and helium-3 from their storage tanks into a central reactor vessel, where the elements were fused together. The resulting plasma was fed to the Shadow Wolf's engine nozzles by way of specialized manifolds with electro-magnetic fields.
With the fusion drives active, the Shadow Wolf's acceleration spiked. Henry felt something like a heavy weight push him further into his chair as the acceleration overwhelmed the ship's inertial compensators. From her seat, Miri reported as they went past 2Gs, then 2.5.
Breach of Trust: Breach of Faith Book Four Page 4
