by David Ryker
Iona Ridley’s eyes danced as she pulled the shock baton from her hip and activated it.
I told you, said the voice inside him.
“What is she doing?”
“Killing him,” Kergan said simply. “Apparently our attempt at attenuation sparked an insatiable desire to kill someone. If she finally does it, perhaps she can finally focus on other things. Now, we need to talk about how to selectively attenuate—”
“No,” said Sloane.
Kergan’s eyebrow rose. “What do you mean, no?”
“Tell her to stop.”
Ridley ignored the two of them and stalked slowly toward Holden, who had backed himself against a wall in his confusion. The baton swung back and forth past her hip with every step. Her grin was wide.
“I don’t understand you,” said Kergan. “Death is of no consequence; you’ve said so yourself.”
A scream of pain suddenly split the air, and Sloane looked over to the wall to see Holden on the ground, writhing under Ridley’s shock baton. She was giggling as his eye sockets began to smoke, and it gave Sloane a painful feeling in his insides.
What is happening to me?
Duty is heavier than a mountain, the voice inside him cajoled. Death is lighter than a feather. But not this way.
Sloane opened his mouth to say something to Kergan, but he was interrupted by one of the guards who had been standing near a small bank of monitors set into the wall next to the entrance to the bridge.
“I think maybe you should see this, sirs,” said the guard.
The monitor he was pointing at showed a man with a glossy, coppery head running through the corridors of the inmate housing area, slamming his hand against the polycarbonate cell doors as he passed. Inside the cells, the inmates were slamming back.
33
A blow from a metal clipboard, swung with all of Maggott’s considerable might, was enough to disable the camera that was embedded in the infirmary’s low ceiling, which meant that they wouldn’t be observed, at least.
Meanwhile, Quinn, Bishop and Schuster gingerly laid Sally on the gurney Quinn had occupied two days earlier when Chelsea was nursing his nose.
A display panel lit up a few seconds after Sally made contact with the bed. Chelsea peered at it intently.
“Her vitals aren’t good,” she said.
“How bad?” Quinn asked, bracing for the answer.
“Lungs are full of fluid, heart is barely functioning. Her spleen is ruptured and both kidneys are out of place.” She pointed to a three-dimensional rendering of her skeleton. “The sternum is broken into three pieces.”
“Is there anything you can do?” asked Schuster. “She saved the captain’s life. Jumped right in front of a blast meant for him.”
“My God,” Chelsea breathed. “What went on down there?”
“Whatever we dug out for Sloane caused another round of the visions we’d had before,” said Quinn.
“I had one before Kergan locked me in solitary.” Her eyes were wide. “I understand what you were talking about now, believe me.”
“This time, Dev and I experienced pleasant memories,” said Bishop.
“But I had a flashback to an important memory I thought I’d lost,” said Quinn. “And Boychuk had a violent fantasy. In the Raft on the way back, he started to lose it and he attacked us. I know it had something to do with the element we dug up.”
“That’s a hell of a story,” said Chelsea. “But to answer your question, Dev, I don’t think we can save her. Even a team of surgeons under perfect conditions would have a hell of a time with injuries that severe, even in this day and age.”
“And SkyLode couldn’t possibly waste resources like that on prisoners like us,” Bishop sniped.
Quinn had been expecting the worst, but his heart still sank at the verification of what he knew. Unfortunately, now, of all times, was no time for grieving.
“Can you view the security cameras on your terminal?”
She blinked. “I honestly don’t know. I’m so used to my wristband that I didn’t even think about it.”
“Give it a shot. Meanwhile, I need to confab with my men.”
She sat in front of the screen and started manipulating controls while Quinn huddled with the other Jarheads on the floor next to Sally’s gurney.
“Roundtable,” he said. “Go.”
“I did as ye ordered, sir,” said Maggott. “Ulysses is doin’ what he can t’get the Saints riled up. If we c’n get those cells open, they’ll be ready t’fight.”
“But then what?” asked Bishop. “Will it do any good? You heard Sloane—they’re going to use that element to boost whatever the hell it is they used on us.”
“That’s why they gathered all the SkyLode staff except Dr. Bloom in the bridge,” said Schuster. “Kergan and Sloane need to keep an eye on them. They locked up the inmates because that way, no matter what happens, they won’t be a threat.”
Quinn nodded. “Except recon has made it clear they’re not concerned about anything except a few key areas. That’s Kergan’s hubris.”
“I don’t know if that’s right, sir.” Dev frowned in deep concentration. “I got the sense from Sloane that they’re all getting more and more distracted. Like they can’t separate their own thoughts from their hosts.”
“That’s what I think, too,” said Chelsea. “Just based on some things Kergan has said. I can’t base this on any one thing, but I get the sense that they had a big plan when they came here, but now they’re having a hard time sticking to it.”
“Sloane seemed pretty determined when he left the Raft,” said Quinn. “In any case, that’s semantics. We need to be prepared for when they try the full attenuation. Hell, they might be in the process right now, for all we know.”
Bishop leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees. “So let’s say we manage to break everyone out of their cells. What then?”
“We fight,” Quinn said simply.
“You… will die…” said a soft voice from behind them.
Quinn spun to his right and sprang up to Senpai Sally’s bedside.
“Sally,” he said, forcing himself to grin. “About time you joined us. You need to stop goldbricking and get to work.”
Chelsea peered at the vitals monitor and shook her head gravely.
“I have one thing left… to do in this world,” Sally sighed. “You must release my Yandares. Free them for glorious battle.”
“I’d like nothing better,” said Quinn. “But how do I get them to believe me? They don’t know any of what’s happened. Hell, even we don’t believe half of this, and we lived it.”
“To a true warrior… the reason for the battle… is irrelevant.”
“Okay, but I still picture them ripping us to pieces while they ask us where you are.”
Sally’s surgically-altered grin widened, but now it flinched in pain. She pulled Quinn to her and whispered in his ear.
When she was done, he cupped her cheek in his palm and watched the light fading from her oversized eyes. He’d never thought of them as anything other than crazy before, but now he thought he might actually see a sad beauty in them.
“Arigato, Senpai,” he said in a low voice.
“Do not waste my sacrifice, Quinn,” she hissed, and then she was no more.
34
Ulysses Aloysius Coker first shaved his head and eyebrows when he was fourteen, after the death of his cousin on the filthy streets of Baton Rouge. That had been almost eighteen years earlier, and he had spent all of his waking moments since then as a Southern Saint, working the streets, playing the game, and occasionally ending a life to get ahead. By the time he landed on Oberon One, he had worked his way to the organization’s top echelons.
In short, when Ulysses spoke, Saints listened.
And when he yelled, Saints prepared for war.
“Y’all know I ain’t playin’!” he cried as he paced outside the cells of Ruiz and his other lieutenants. “Them bastards are plottin’ s
ome kinda weird shit!”
“Yeah!” came the answer.
“They been messin’ with people’s heads!”
“Yeah!”
Ulysses was testifying like a revival preacher now. “We gotta protect ourselves,” he said. “It’s our right as human bein’s to do that!”
Yeah!”
“We gonna bust heads?!” he hollered.
They were.
“We gonna make em pay?”
They would.
“Let us loose, Ulysses!” Ruiz called. “We’re ready, jefe!”
“Soon,” he said, pacing. “And when it happens, it’ll be fast. You gotta be ready to move. Them Yandares is gonna try to eat your lunch, take out all the guards. You gonna let that happen?”
“No way!”
Ulysses could see their eyes beginning to take on a wild edge, and he started to wonder if any of this was going to make a difference. But what choice did they have? Bend over and take it up the corn chute? That wasn’t going to happen, not to Southern Saints. They might not have fought in the war, but they knew battle, and they knew death, and neither held any terrors for them.
And definitely not for Ulysses Coker.
Get these things open, he thought, bouncing from one foot to the next as his agitation reached a fever pitch. Just get ‘em open, that’s all you gotta do. And do it soon, ‘cuz there’s no way they ain’t seen me by now.
“Okay, stupid question,” said Bishop. “How are we going to open the cells?”
“I don’t know just yet,” said Schuster. He was fiddling with the wristband Ulysses had left with them. “I’m having a hard time finding the code for opening the doors one by one. Each one seems to have its own, which makes sense since they’re only ever opened in blocks of four at a time. But if we do it that way, they’re going to notice on the bridge, and they’ll shut us down from there. If they all get out at the same time, there’s nothing they can do.”
“Wish I could help,” said Bishop. “But you know I’m a lover, not a thinker.”
“You could’ve gone with Quinn and Maggott to talk to the Yandares.”
“Yeah, no,” said Bishop. “I have this sinking feeling that the moment we let them out, those women are just going to turn on us like wasps that’ve been shaken out of their nest.”
“Trust in Quinn,” Schuster intoned. “He’ll pull it off.”
“Here’s hoping.” He let out a deep sigh. “I don’t mean this the way it’s going to sound, but the last time we thought that, we ended up in here.”
“I found it!” Chelsea cried from her terminal. “It’s an override emergency code! It was in the maintenance manual, just like you said, Dev!”
“Perfect.” Schuster brought the wristband over to her. “Nice to see at least one of you two has a can-do attitude.”
Bishop grinned. “I’ll make up for it in the fight, Dev. You know I’m good for it.”
Schuster read the screen in front of Chelsea and entered the code into the wristband as she watched.
“Timing is key,” she said. “The manual says that, because it’s an emergency override, once the command is entered, it’ll set off an alarm in the bridge.”
“Okay,” said Schuster. “That should do it. As soon as we get the signal from Quinn, I can open the doors. Ulysses and the Saints are champing at the bit to go already.”
“Then let’s watch for the signal,” said Chelsea, tuning in to the video feed from outside the main Yandare cells.
Bishop took a deep breath. “And if anyone wanted to send up a little prayer while you did it, I’m sure no one would mind.”
Quinn was glad he had Maggott at his back as he approached the Yandare cells. Even behind the polycarbonate, they were oddly intimidating. So small and lithe, yet, he knew from personal experience, so deadly. Like black widow spiders. And the fact that none of them seemed agitated, especially when the feed from the Saints’ cells showed a pack of wild animals, was downright eerie.
The women were packed four to a cell like all the prisoners, but because of their relatively small size, they had more room inside. Quinn saw two of the two women he was looking for, one blonde and one with bright pink hair, playing a game of chess on the little table in the middle of their space.
“Thas them,” said Maggott. “Lovely lasses, really. I mean, for Yandares. They were a great help in us getting our intel. Dinnae do fook all fer me when I was captured, but ye take whet ye c’n get wi’ the Yandares.”
“Sally told me that Yukio was her chief lieutenant, so I’d best go to her.”
“Aye, the blonde. You want me to talk to her in yuir stead?”
Quinn shook his head. “No, I was the one Sally saved. Plus, just because they know you doesn’t mean they won’t rip you apart.”
“Or try to,” the big man said, drawing himself to full height.
“I seem to recall one of them climbing you like a tree and almost breaking your nose not that long ago.”
Maggott slumped again, deflated. “Ye’re right, as usual. Best get on wi’ it, sir. Time’s wastin.’”
Quinn stepped around the bend and into the corridor, exposing himself to whoever might be watching in the bridge. He knew that action alone was going to make time move faster, one way or the other. Attenuation could come at any moment, so he couldn’t waste a single one.
“Yukio,” he said as he reached the cell door. “I’m Napoleon Quinn. May I talk to you?”
Yukio giggled, but didn’t look at him.
“The Maggott’s commander,” she said. “So cute.”
“Look, I—I have some bad news to bring you.”
The woman with the pink hair, Hana, frowned and put down the rook she had been holding.
“Where is Senpai Sally?” she asked. “She was on the mission to the surface with you.”
Quinn winced. “That’s what I have to tell you. She was killed.”
The wide smile disappeared from Yukio’s face instantly. The cold look that replaced it turned Quinn’s guts to water.
“How did she die?” she asked.
“Killed by one of the guards, Boychuk. She took a blast that was meant for me.”
The other women in the top bunks hopped down to the floor, while the Yandares in the other cells all flocked to their doors.
“An honorable death,” said Hana. “It is the wish of all Yandares.”
“But in sacrifice for you,” said Yukio. “An enemy. This is not the way of things. Honor demands retribution.”
Quinn nodded. “I know. But hear me out first. You know that something strange is happening on the station. Sally asked you to help Maggott and Ulysses with recon for a reason.”
“We do as our leader commands,” said Yukio. “But I know of what you speak. We have monitored the situation, especially after the disappearance of Keiko and Miko.”
“And no doubt you’re wondering what happened to them.”
“Yes.”
“They’re dead, too. Sally killed them, because their minds were no longer their own.”
The scene that played out in front of Quinn next would have been hilarious under other circumstances. All the women pushed against their clear cell doors, their strange, huge eyes wide and glistening, their pliable mouths drawn into identical moues.
“Did this—did this happen to Sally also?” asked Hana.
“No,” said Quinn. “She resisted, like the Jarheads did, and she succeeded. You know that the guards have all but abandoned you—they locked all the inmates in their cells hours ago and they’ve gathered in the bridge.”
Yukio’s large eyes narrowed. “And?”
“And they plan to do to all of us what they did to Keiko and Miko.”
They were all quiet again, obviously waiting for more of the story.
“So here’s the plan,” said Quinn. “we’re going to open all the cells at once and we’ll storm the bridge where they’re holed up. We’ll take over the station ourselves and stop them from hurting others the way the
y did Keiko and Miko. Can we count on you?”
The others turned to Yukio, obviously accepting her as their new leader. She seemed conflicted.
“I am the heir apparent to Senpai Sally,” she said. “As such, the retribution for her death falls to me. I must kill you at the first opportunity, which would happen if you open this cell. Honor demands it.”
“I understand that. But Sally told me to tell you that she wanted you to help us.”
“You would say anything to be spared the wrath of the Yandares,” Hana said coldly.
“She told me that duty is heavier than a mountain, but death is lighter than a feather. That friends will kill for you.”
The women stood stock still, exchanging glances with each other. Finally, Yukio fixed Quinn with a penetrating stare.
“Good friends will die for you,” she said warily.
Quinn nodded. “But best friends will die with you.”
They all stood in silence for several long moments, Yukio’s gaze never leaving Quinn’s. Finally, she closed her eyes and leaned her head back.
“The Yandares will fight at your side,” she intoned. “You have nothing to fear from us.”
“What about the Saints?” he asked.
She pitched her head forward and fixed him with another glare.
“Don’t press your luck,” she said coldly.
I’ll take what I can get, Quinn thought. He turned to Maggott, who nodded. “No time like th’ present, sir.”
Quinn looked up at the camera that was mounted to the wall midway through the corridor, the one facing the cell doors. The one Dev Schuster was hopefully monitoring from the infirmary.
He raised his hand to the camera and brought it down in a swift motion. It was time to do this thing. Time to open the cells and unleash hell on Oberon One.
A second later, the cell doors were still shut tight, but a piercing alarm almost split his eardrums in half.
35
“How interesting,” said Kergan, staring at the bank of monitors on the wall. “They have tried to open all the cells at once. Obviously it didn’t work.” He frowned. “Shut off that alarm.”
