The Confluence: A Space Opera Adventure Series (The New Dawn Book 6)
Page 22
“Hop in,” Danny said, pointing to the inset ladder along the side of the silver bullet. “Just know that when my crew runs out, you’re walking.”
“Runs out of where?” Cheoff asked, taking the ladder first.
“The Marble. Keep up, Garrett,” Sikorsky ranted. It would take longer to load the three of them than to walk back to the Marble, but they all had a sheen on their skin, saying they’d walked enough already.
“Matthews!” Miguel Santos called, running out of the school and waving his arms.
“General, you’ve decided to help,” Cheoff said proudly.
“Captain Matthews,” Santos said, ignoring Cheoff. “I need passage off Terrana.”
“Are you serious,” Cheoff interjected. Sikorsky pushed him into the back of the Bobsled and told him to shut up.
Danny sucked in his cheeks. He’d turned down Santos before, and after hearing what Solvere did to his kid, he’d expected another plea. He wasn’t expecting to feel sympathy for the man. Santos had nearly killed Alex and Johann, and having a kid didn’t absolve him of his crimes. “My ship isn’t taking off until my crew is back on board.”
“Will you take us with you?” Santos asked.
“Your son’s a luna-born!” Cheoff protested.
“He can’t live here. He can’t live like this,” Santos said, waving his arm back toward the school. Saskia had told him some of Santos’ plight, and seeing that he’d gone into the school in the middle of the day told Danny the kid was suffering. Walter was about Hero’s age, and Danny couldn’t imagine leaving Hero—or any kid—in the place that hurt his family.
“Get in. You help me get my crew back; I will take you to Aquia,” Danny agreed. “Tell your family to get to the ship now. We might be leaving in a hurry.”
“Matthews, you can’t,” Cheoff cried.
“You can get out and walk if you want,” Danny said. He and Chase really needed to build a five-seater version of the Bobsled. Four seats were never enough. Fortunately, his desperate band of misfits didn’t complain. The added weight of four passengers threw off the balance of the craft, and he felt them starting to roll whenever someone leaned to look outside.
“I would never hurt your family to ensure your loyalty. You know that, right?” Cheoff said to Santos.
“That might mean something if you were in charge,” Sikorsky snickered.
“Are you looking for firepower going into the basement, or do you think our path will be blocked by Guard from the start?” Danny asked.
“I can handle the Guard at the main entrance,” Santos volunteered.
“Let’s try sneaking in,” Sikorsky suggested, grabbing Cheoff’s shoulders. Danny felt a slam against the cockpit cover and the ‘sled dropped like a rock. He bounced off the dried branches of a dying tree and managed to settle them on a roof. The surface wasn’t flat.
“What did you do, Sikorsky?” Danny cried.
“Tried to teleport in,” Sikorsky panted, sounding like he was about to vomit. “I thought I saw an opening.”
“Last time you saw an opening, you lost a finger. This thing flies by gravity. Don’t steal my source for your shortcuts,” Danny said.
“Hindsight is twenty-twenty,” Sikorsky said.
“Does this mean you’re not going through the front door, gathering the troops, and storming the basement?” Danny asked.
“They’re still your Guard, Garrett,” Sikorsky said. “You could try his plan.”
“Are they, though?” Cheoff asked half-heartedly.
“Don’t teleport,” Danny said, taking off again. He swung the ship to the Main Plaza side, lined up with Cheoff’s office window, and plowed the Bobsled through. He laughed in disbelief, but it felt good to destroy the symbols of the people who hurt him.
“What are you doing?” Cheoff demanded.
“It’s brilliant,” Turner spoke up, tapping the cockpit cover, ready to hop out. “If there’s a threat in your office, you can run away from it and no one will question you.”
“They’ll lock me in a safe room,” Cheoff growled.
“Not if you’re with me. Come on,” Turner said, springing out as soon as the cover retracted. He ran to the door, weapon drawn, then motioned the others out. The response time of the Guard didn’t leave room for delay. Santos hesitated, and Danny swung a leg over the lip of the cockpit.
“No. You need to get your vehicle out of here,” Santos said, pulling him in.
“I need to get to the basement and help my crew,” Danny snarled.
Santos shook his head again, his face paling. He was going to get them killed. “Danny, I can barely tolerate that basement and I haven’t been chained to those walls like you have. You will be useless to your people there,” Santos said.
The mention of those shackles made Danny’s bones hurt. He could hear them breaking, but he tried to repress the trauma. “I’m not abandoning my crew.”
“Of course we aren’t,” Santos said. “But we can accomplish more if we enter from the ground floor, and you’d still have access to your escape vehicle.”
29
Benedict’s head throbbed, and his arms felt like they’d been yanked out of socket. His pants were damp and clung to his burnt skin. The stunner blast was an injury he’d treated, but hadn’t experienced before now.
“Wake up!” he heard Hawk’s weak voice in his ear. “Help.”
Fighting off the headache and a wave of nausea, Benedict lifted his head. Only then did he realize he was already sitting, back against the wall, legs extended. The light was dim and his eyes burned.
“Bébé,” Hawk murmured, sinking to his knees. He braced himself by the overhead shackles, but he wasn’t bound by them. Benedict didn’t want to think what information Hawk had traded for their lives, but he worried for the unnamed woman he’d seen on the ship.
“Where are we?” Benedict asked. His wrists were bruised, but he wasn’t shackled either.
“One level down from main,” Hawk said. “Can you walk at all? Can you see if Coro is still alive?”
“Coro?” Benedict asked, following Hawk’s finger. Damien Coro was strapped to an interrogation chair across the room. “He was so surely on the ship. Are you sure you want to wake him?”
“We can’t leave him behind,” Hawk said, offering Benedict a shackle for support.
“Working on an escape plan?” Benedict huffed. He didn’t want to touch the restraint. He was surprised they could. He’d heard stories of electrified walls.
“I got you free. And now you’re awake. Things are looking up,” Hawk said, kissing Benedict’s nose. “Can you stand?”
Rubbing his eyes, Benedict took a closer look at Hawk. The back of his pants were burnt off, and his twitching legs bore the scars of contact with an electrified wall. “Oh, Zive. You’re asking because you can’t,” he said, cradling Hawk’s cheek and checking his pupils.
“Coro,” Hawk said, his eyes drifting closed. Benedict dragged him a few feet from the wall just in case it turned on again, then hobbled over to check on Coro.
He’d been knocked out by a stunner, but not electrocuted like Hawk. The ache in his shoulders said he’d been dragged and possibly hanging from the shackles before Hawk freed him. Benedict touched Coro’s chest, then pulled back an eyelid. The room was too dim to trigger a significant pupil reaction. “Breathing,” he reported. “Possibly sedated.”
Next to the bed was a small stack of drawers, but they were locked. He rattled them anyway.
“Locked?” Hawk asked, reaching out a hand.
Benedict gave the handle a shake to show Hawk and the drawer opened. “We got lucky,” he said, surveying the supplies: vials of trauma medicines and truth serums. He found a Detox vial and gave Coro as small a dose as he could. He had no idea what he was up against, but figured it was what the Guard would have used when they’re ready to interrogate him again.
Searching the next drawer down, he found disinfectant and gauze. It was meant for the torturer, in case t
hey got sprayed by their victim’s blood. He took the gauze and a jet of morphine back to Hawk, giving him the morphine dose first. If he focused on the medical situation, he could ignore the fact that they were prisoners in the Marble and the new Head of the Terranan Guard had shot him twice in the last hour.
Hawk cried out when Benedict’s hand touched the clasp on his pants, but he let himself be stripped. Benedict wiped Hawk’s skin clean. He’d need skin grafts to heal properly.
“This isn’t quite how I pictured you getting me out of my pants,” Hawk joked, his hand sliding up Benedict’s thigh.
Benedict smiled, comforted by Hawk’s calmness. Hawk’s pelvis from hip to navel was marred by electrical burns, and the scarring extended like a spider web down his right thigh. Benedict put his hand on Hawk’s thigh, touching the end of the burn marks. “Can you feel my hand on your skin?”
“Yeah,” Hawk said. His legs contracted, and he kicked sideways, his knee catching Benedict in the groin. “Sorry.”
“It’s normal. It’s not good, but it’s normal,” Benedict assured him. He needed clean bandages and clothes—not something he’d find in a torturer’s tool kit.
Hawk pulled him into a kiss, and Benedict’s fear melted. The morphine kicked in and Hawk relaxed with a contented sigh.
“Feel better?” Benedict smiled, running his fingers through Hawk’s bright, red hair.
“Janiya!” Coro sputtered, puking as the Detox reached full effectiveness in his system. Benedict hurried over to keep him from choking.
“Hello, sir,” Benedict greeted.
“You,” he growled, feebly fighting his restraints.
“I’m not your enemy. I’m a prisoner, like you,” Benedict said, using the wipes to dab Coro’s face clean.
“Where’s my wife?” he asked.
“I haven’t had the grand tour, yet,” Benedict said.
“Is the door locked?” Coro asked. Benedict gave him a look, but the old man waggled his brow. “They get arrogant when we’re unconscious and bound. They lose track of time. I’ve lost a handful of my own pets that way.”
Benedict shivered at the implication, but checked the door anyway. The physical handle required a handprint to open.
“I got it,” Hawk said, reaching out a hand, then falling forward. Benedict took half a step to help, then realized the door was open.
“What?” he gasped, but Hawk was delirious. Benedict looked at Coro. “He …”
“He’s one of them,” Coro said, smiling softly. “Panoptica.”
“Parker was right about you?” Benedict couldn’t believe it. “That’s how you got us out of the shackles. That’s why the wall isn’t electrified. What else can you do?”
“Trip locks. That’s it,” Hawk said.
“Go, boy,” Coro encouraged. “Find what you need. Or just run. I wouldn’t blame you.”
Benedict peered into the hall, and saw a long, dim corridor. There was an elevator lobby at one end, and the other had a large, foreboding metal door that looked like it only opened to dump bodies out. He could see into the rooms. The trick of the walls meant there was no element of surprise. Their captors could see in and would know they were free of their chains.
Several rooms down, he saw a woman in a cage, and ducked instinctively. Then he remembered that she couldn’t see out. Peeking over the split wall again, he surveyed their situation. No Guard. He looked up and down the hall, double-checking, paranoid that the elevators would slide open at the wrong moment. He tried the door, but it required a handprint. His attempt triggered an alarm. Strobe lights came on full blast, making it almost impossible to see. Desperately, he felt his way back down the hall toward his room, but then the strobe light steadied and Colonel Rhodes glared at him.
“How did you get out?”
Tray used to enjoy fiddling with computers, hacking through security systems on competing companies, and finding out their trade secrets. The proud look in his father’s eyes whenever he delivered a crucial piece of information was something Tray used to live for. Now Tray used those skills to make video games for his son, that didn’t even work properly.
“Tray,” Morrigan croaked, keeping a hand on the wall as she staggered up the stairs.
“Morrigan. What’s wrong?” he asked. He would have jumped up to help her, but his body was still frail. “Is it Chase? Is he—”
“I can’t fix his hand,” she said. “And we can’t go to the hospital. We can’t stay on Terrana any longer.”
“Is it bleeding? Is it going to fall off?” Tray asked.
Morrigan shook her head. “The bones are broken. The tendons snapped. I can knit it, but it’s going to be weeks before he can even hold a fork, let alone a tool. He won’t be able to fly the ship. He won’t be able to tinker with machines. I’m so stressed on his behalf that I—I—I—”
“Drugged yourself?” Tray asked.
Morrigan slid into the seat next to his and took a carrot from his plate. Tray looked sadly at his half-eaten meal. He couldn’t tell if he was hungry, and he didn’t want to waste his favorite food on mindless snacking. He offered her his tea, and she took the cup.
“What do you want me to say? ‘I won’t tell anyone if you won’t’ or ‘I’m calling your brother right now’?” Tray asked.
“Do you think so little of me?” she asked.
“I think so much of what you’re up against. Sorry if your silence led me to the wrong conclusion,” he remarked.
“Chase keeps asking for Danny,” Morrigan said, taking another carrot.
Tray pointed to the screen. Danny’s location was the only one he could track. Everyone else’s signal had disappeared inside the Marble. “Danny’s a little pre-occupied.”
“Did you reach Saskia?” Morrigan asked, waking up a little as she continued to sip the tea. If he couldn’t cook for himself, he clearly needed to do so for her. Tray realized she’d been so busy saving Chase she had no idea what was going on.
“I’m tapping into the Guard secure channel,” he replied. With the scanner frequency Saskia had hacked on the truck, the task was disgustingly easy, though sifting through the hundreds of incoming reports to find something useful was not.
“Is that legal?” Morrigan asked.
“Oh, yes, perfectly,” Tray intoned. “We’ve only falsified travel documents, forged your medical license, and harbored two or three fugitives this week. Oh, and assaulted a Guard. Do you know it’s illegal for a freighter to have an armory? Seriously, where are we supposed to keep our weapons?”
“I get it,” Morrigan interrupted. “Is that Sky?”
She pointed to the screen monitoring the port. A tall, blond woman hobbled toward Oriana, with a little boy in tow. If Saskia hadn’t told him about Santos’ traumatized kid, he would have dismissed them as a random, desperate family seeking passage. “That’s Mrs. Santos. And their kid.”
“He does look like a mini Santos. Genetics are weird,” Morrigan commented, scrutinizing their faces. “I think that every time I see you and Hero sitting next to each other. Even before you met him, there’s this lip quirk you both do. Genetics. Why do you think they’re here?”
“Obviously to flee Terrana,” Tray said.
“And they’re putting their lives in our hands?” Morrigan laughed. “Have they met us?”
“Can you get the door or are you going to make me walk down?” Tray asked.
Morrigan grunted tiredly and shuffled out with half-closed eyes, taking Tray’s tea with her.
“Danny, how’s the coup? Are you in?” Tray vrang. “The others aren’t on my radar.”
“I was in. Then I was out. Now we’re going in again,” Danny said. “Sikorsky’s in. Santos is… helping.”
“His family’s here,” Tray said. “Do you know anything about that?”
“Let them in. Hopefully we’ve created enough of a distraction here to keep the Guard from disturbing you,” Danny panted. Tray recognized the shuddering sound in his brother’s breathing.
30
When the alarm first sounded, Rhodes had assumed Sikorsky had found a way into the basement. He hadn’t expected to find Benedict James free of his restraints. “Carr! I thought you restrained him.”
“I chained them,” Lieutenant Carr cried defensively, favoring a smoldering wound of his own. He wore uniform pants and smeared an analgesic cream over his bare, bruised chest. “Look at the marks on his wrists. He was chained. He’s probably one of them.”
Carr nodded to indicate Janiya’s room. Rhodes caught a reflection in the glass.
“Coro!” Rhodes hollered, spinning around and firing his weapon.
Damien Coro bowled into Rhodes and Benedict, clamping both hands on Rhodes’ wrist and forcing the stunner to go off. Rhodes heard swearing, so he must have clipped someone. He elbowed Coro’s head and the other man kneed him in the gut. A stunner blast hit them both, catching Coro in the chest and radiating through Rhodes’ entire body. Lieutenant Carr stood over them, his face twitching in anger. It was the first time Rhodes had ever seen a fire for vengeance in the otherwise weak soldier.
“That’s two,” Rhodes groused, pushing Coro’s body aside, but taking his time sitting up. “Two escaped. Find the third.”
Carr glared at Coro, looking ready to kill the man who’d shot him in the chest, but he obediently went down the hall to check on the third prisoner. “He’s out, sir. Looks unconscious, but he’s out of his chains.”