by M. D. Cooper
* * * * *
As Jason and the two liberated prisoners were cutting a swath through the veldt, Tobias brought a cloaked and silent Eidolon to a hover just above the clearing that had been their hideout, twenty kilometers away. His passive sensors registered the flickering of energy as the ES field at Gehenna cut out. Shortly thereafter, the shuttle’s optics showed a track of disturbance leading from the camp toward the rainforest.
So far, so good….
Surprisingly, an alarm had not yet been sounded, although he knew their luck would not hold for much longer. He and Jason had agreed to maintain comm silence until he reached the rainforest’s edge, just in case the guards were monitoring for indications of stray transmissions, encrypted or otherwise.
The ribbon of disturbed grasses that indicated Jason’s progress was wide—wider than he expected two humans to make. It puzzled him until it reached the tall canopy of trees beneath him, and his readings informed him that there were not two, but three individuals down there.
Who is that with them?
He saw Jason leave the two and race toward the coordinates they’d been given, where the Godel undercover operatives had said they would deliver the escape craft.
His tension lowered a notch when he saw the craft rise and begin its flight along the edge of the trees, leading north, away from Gehenna. As agreed, Jason flew nap-of-the-earth, his flight course hugging the terrain to avoid detection. This was standard in a high-threat situation like this, but it required skill and concentration—and superb reflexes.
At the prearranged coordinates, the little craft rose above the triple-canopied jungle and turned on a heading that would bring him to the clearing where they had staged this operation.
Suddenly, the shuttle’s threat detection system went crazy as the area was painted by active scan. Tobias was confident that Eidolon had evaded detection; he could not say the same for the little craft approaching him.
In the next moment, scan confirmed the launch of a missile, tracking toward the small airborne vessel.
CRASH AND BURN
STELLAR DATE: 03.14.3272 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: New Pejeta Veldt, just outside Gehenna
REGION: Barat, Little River
Calista, seated on Jason’s right, saw it first.
came the reply.
It was going to be close. Missiles like the one hurtling toward the airframe typically had terminal speeds of up to five kilometers per second; Jason’s craft had just reached that very distance from the prison, and the missile was rapidly gaining on them.
Straightening after they were once more above the savannah, he hammered the collective down, using it to adjust the rotor blades into a position of negative lift that sent the aircraft plummeting.
He ignored the curses of the man on his left and the thump on his right as he leveled out, his eyes on the little craft’s readouts as Tobias fed the missile data to his HUD.
He sent a quick acknowledgement as he shouted to his passengers,
The explosion came, near enough that the targeted EMP fried every speck of unprotected nano, and took out every electronic device inside the Little Bird. Including his optics. The close proximity of the blast felt like runaway thermite, and a blistering whiteness seared Jason’s eyes.
His eyes felt as if acid were etching its way into his brain through his eye sockets, and the whiteness gave way to an impenetrable red that faded to black.
He realized the explosion hadn’t just damaged his optics…. The flash itself, at such close proximity, had rendered him temporarily sightless. He was, quite literally, flying blind, and the airframe had been hit hard, buffeted by the blast wave.
“Dammit!” he swore, gritting his teeth against the pain and trying to ride the turbulence by the feel of it in the seat of his pants. “Calista! You with me?”
Nothing.
“Buddy, you’d better be awake, or we’re going to be very dead, very soon,” he yelled over his left shoulder, every move his head made pounding into him as if a red-hot poker was stabbing into him from where his eyes once were. “I need your help!”
“Help! How?” The voice was threaded with panic.
“What’s my angle of attack?”
“Your…wha—?”
“Am I upright, dammit!” Jason demanded. “I can’t see a thing, so you’re going to have to help me get this bird down.”
“Shit! Okay, you’re, uh, leaning too far my direction. Too much! Too much! Right, yeah that’s good,” the man said, his voice shaken but resolute.
“Okay, how’s my nose?”
There was a pause.
“The nose of the aircraft, dammit! Am I tilted up or down?”
“Uh, you’re tilted up a bit.” The man must be leaning into the cockpit; his voice was right next to Jason’s left ear, but it still sounded muffled and distant—another factor of the blast.
“Level now?”
“A little more…. Shit! Too far! Too far!” The man’s voice sounded freaked.
“Okay, you’re, uh, upright, and the nose is level, but you’re kind of….” The voice dropped off as if the man was searching for the right words to use. “You’re flying sideways. I didn’t know a craft like this could do that.”
Jason eased up on the left foot pedal and felt the uncoordinated turn he’d barely registered ease into proper alignment.
“Yeah.” The voice sounded amazed. “Okay, you’re straight now, and uh, maybe ten meters from the grass.”
“Good,” Jason encouraged, gritting his teeth against a ringing in his ears that had decided to join the party. “That’s good. Keep talking me down.”
The Little Bird was a trooper; with the combined direction of Tobias and Calista’s jailbird friend, he made it to the ground, though he hammered the landing.
He heard the shuttle approaching above the trees to the west, and he fumbled for the restraints, releasing them before reaching around for the pack he’d tossed behind his seat.
He rummaged around inside using only his sense of touch, until his hand collided with the mednano injector. Seizing it, he dialed in another dose and injected it straight into his eye, and…nothing happened.
Dead, just like every other bit of tech around him.
“I’ll unstrap her,” the man’s voice said to his left, and he heard the crashing noise of feet tromping through grass, followed by the snick of a clasp being undone. A groan from Calista informed him she was coming around.
“How’s the eyesight, ESF?” he asked, and heard her draw in a sharp breath, then expel it.
“Seeing afterimages a bit,” she said finally, “but it could be worse. I think I knocked my head pretty good on that last maneuver.”
More rustling, and her voice returned, annoyed. “I can manage, thanks. I don’t need your—”
Her voice cut off with a strangled yelp, and Jason heard a brief scuffle as the man dragged Callista away from the downed Little Bird.
Jason lunged for his E-SCAR only to freeze when the man warned, “Try it, and she’s dea
d.” A short laugh. “Most likely by you, pilot, since you couldn’t see what you’re shooting at anyway.”
“What do you want, Giovanni?” Calista’s voice dripped with scorn. “Freedom? You’ve got it. Now leave.”
The man laughed. “I want what I’ve always wanted—your stasis tech. And you two are going to help me get it.”
The sound of a rapidly approaching hovercraft cut through the night. Its audio signature told Jason it would arrive before Tobias.
Jason turned his head from side to side, the movement fairly splitting his skull, as he blindly tried to isolate the sounds that would tell him the exact location where the man stood. Bracing himself, he planted his feet on the plas frame of the bubble and prepared to move.
A soft cry arrested his plans.
“Don’t try it,” the voice warned. “You move, and I snap her neck.”
“You weren’t really ever a prisoner, were you?”
Calista’s strained voice caused Jason’s temper to flash. He forcibly stomped on it; now was not the time to go cowboy.
Giovanni laughed, the sound harsh. “Smart woman,” his voice approved. “No, my incarceration was my one chance to redeem myself. Which should concern you both, since it means I have nothing to lose if I fail.”
The hovercraft stopped, and the sound of soldiers disembarking met Jason’s ears.
Three, plus one still at the controls, he mentally counted as one approached and hauled him roughly from the downed bird, pressing a pistol up under his chin.
“I’m sure your partner won’t have come all this way just to see you both die,” Giovanni continued conversationally. “So we’ll just wait for him to land and show himself. And then we’ll close our deal.”
Jason could hear the shuttle on final approach, the sound coming from above and behind him. At the same time, the welcome voice of the Weapon Born filled his mind.
Their Links had just reset.
It took a moment for Jason to adjust to the perspective, given that he was unused to seeing himself from a third-person view. But he adapted to it, wincing as the soldier whose weapon was trained on him prodded him forward.
Calista’s mental voice joined in as she, too, received the feed.
He caught a glimpse of the weapon Giovanni had trained on Calista and groaned a mental laugh in her direction.
He highlighted the plasma rifle on the feed, a weapon his soldiers had obviously supplied; the man sure as hell hadn’t had it on him before they’d landed.
He would have laughed if he’d been in any condition to. But each step forced upon him was agony, his inability to see the ground at his feet adding a jarring quality to his movements.
“How’d you get your soldiers here so fast?” he asked, stalling for time as he cast about mentally for a way he and Calista could overcome their captors. “You couldn’t have known where we’d end up.”
Through Eidolon’s sensors, he saw the man smirk. “I couldn’t, but your supplier could.”
Giovanni nodded to the remaining soldier on the hovercraft, and the woman propped up the battered form of the Godel operative who’d provided them information and supplies the day before. By the UV data from the sensors, the man had been killed recently; the body was still warm.
Well, shit. He may have been an asshole, but he didn’t deserve that.
Giovanni’s smirk widened as he realized Jason couldn’t see who he was indicating, but didn’t bother to correct the problem.
The soldier marching Jason forward yanked him up short at the sound of the shuttle’s approach. He ground to a halt as Eidolon landed, its thrusters kicking up loose particulates in the grass and hitting them all in the face, though Jason barely felt the sting for the unrelenting fire burrowing into his brain.
As the shuttle powered down, Giovanni called out. “I know you’re in there, and I know you can hear me. Get that stasis unit unloaded if you want your people back alive.”
There was a pause, and then Tobias’s voice projected from within the shuttle. “It’ll take me a moment to get it ready.”
“Don’t take too long.” Giovanni’s smirk grew ugly. “The longer you wait, the worse shape they’ll be in when you get them back.”
He nodded at the soldier holding Jason.
Through the feed, Jason could see the man’s hand pull back, and caught the glint of a knife as it drove forward toward his thigh. He had a split second to shift the slightest bit and lead the blade, although he didn’t dare reveal he could avoid the strike altogether. He did what he could to mitigate its impact before the blade slid home, but it still hurt like a mother.
He allowed a groan to escape his lips and bent forward, gripping his bloodied leg.
* * * * *
Calista drew in a sharp breath as she caught the glint of a CNT blade in the soldier’s hand. With a quick thrust, the Baratian’s weapon sliced through Jason’s chameleon suit, past his base layer, and deep into his thigh.
She thought she saw Jason shift minutely right before the blade struck home, but she couldn’t be certain. If he did, it hadn’t been enough to avoid the blow altogether. The EMP had deactivated the nano woven into his chameleon suit, and she could clearly see the red stain that darkened the desert camo pattern of his fatigues as it spread.
Jason shouted in pain as the soldier pulled the knife out. His hand gripped the wound reflexively, blood welling up to drip down his fingers onto the grass beneath him.
A sound from the shuttle had her turning just as the ramp began to extend.
“Enough! I’m coming out!” Tobias called sharply from inside the ship. “But this equipment is delicate and heavy. I need to load it on a skid in order to get it down to you.”
The AI’s reference to delicate equipment caused a distant memory to surface. Calista shut out the scene before her as she chased the maddeningly elusive thought. Frustration mounted as the quagmire her captors had induced in her mind refused to relinquish the details of the event.
It’s important, dammit. It concerns the stasis tech. Something about an erratic and temperamental relay….
Her eyes snapped open, and she straightened.
Excitement coursed through her as the memory solidified. The MFRs—Matchbox Fusion Reactors—powered everything aboard the Avon Vale, including the ship’s battery of eight engines. And she’d been in charge of their design.
Calista felt a smile tugging at her lips.
Good old Jonesy. Of course he did. Best thing I ev
er did was steal him away from the Space Force….
The code appeared on her HUD, and she considered it a moment. Clever but uncomplicated—and set up in such a way that it was impossible to trigger accidentally.
She connected with the pod and began an assessing probe. After a quick review of Jonesy’s modifications, she was ready to pronounce it fit for duty.
The hatch on the shuttle cycled, and she saw Tobias exit, clad in an organic frame that she knew should pass as human. She watched as he maneuvered a lightweight, self-contained maglev frame down the ramp. Inside the frame rested the stasis pod.
“That’s far enough!” Giovanni’s voice rang out, and Tobias stopped the pod’s advance. The Baratian’s hand tightened on her arm as he motioned two of his soldiers forward. When the one guarding Jason hesitated, he waved the man onward impatiently. “He’s completely blind, you ass. Now bring that thing here.”
“He saved your worthless life, you ass,” she retorted before she could censor herself.
She knew her barb struck home when he gave the arm he held behind her a vicious twist.
“You’ll shut up if you know what’s good for you,” Giovanni snarled. She went up on her toes to relieve the pain, breathing through it until he released her with a shove.
The soldiers approached the pod with an abundance of caution, and this seemed to anger Giovanni. He snapped at them to hurry. They did, double-timing their payload to the man’s side.
He leant in to examine it more closely, and then with an abrupt motion, gestured them toward the waiting hovercraft.
* * * * *
Jason used the diversion to palm the CNT blade he'd used on the prison fence. He closed his eyes, readying himself, willing the pain in his head to recede as he performed a quick internal evaluation. He'd need to compensate for the spatial difference between Eidolon's visuals and the inputs from his own optics. His leg was inconsequential; the wound burned, but didn't impede his abilities.