Gate Quest (Star Kingdom Book 5)

by Lindsay Buroker

  “Don’t forget my fecal sample.”

  “I’ll see if she’s willing to part with one.”

  “Most people aren’t that attached to them.”

  Yas snorted. “Maybe I should have said, ‘I’ll see if she’s willing to collect one.’”

  “And ship it to me. Assuming those two men don’t throttle me and Rache lets me off this moon after I waste all of his torpedoes.”

  She fired again. There were only three left. There was probably no point in carrying on, but she wasn’t sure there was any point in reserving any either. So far, the only enemies they’d encountered had been too fast for the weapons.

  “It’s not working, is it?” Yas asked.

  “No. I’m sorry you sedated those men for nothing.”

  “We’ll be really sorry when they wake up.”

  “Don’t forget to blame me,” Kim said. “I forced you to do it.”

  “They’re not going to believe that.”

  “The one I side-kicked across the submarine might.”

  After Kim fired the last torpedo, she settled back in the pilot’s seat and gripped her chin. There was a sizable crater in the bottom of the ice, but it was nothing compared to the ice still above it. And she hadn’t created the crack she had hoped for, not that the scanner could detect.

  Was there anything else she could try? She dreaded the idea of taking the vessel back to the harbor and having to deal with the mercenaries when they woke up. Unfortunately, the submarine didn’t have the kind of DEW-Tek energy weapon that the Fedallah had likely used.

  “We could go back to the original entry point and try to comm people,” Yas said.

  “That was hours away.”

  “If the submarine has mapped our location, we could send the coordinates up to the Fedallah. If they knew where under the ice the base was, maybe they could—”

  A beep came from the scanner, and Kim leaned forward, hoping it would tell her that a fissure had formed after all. It had just taken a while for the ice to shift and…

  No, it was reading a life form. In the ice.

  “What is it?” Yas asked.

  “Either our explosions woke up a giant whale sleeping in the ice or…”

  “There’s no life on this moon,” Yas said, “aside from the astroshamans’ pets.”

  “Or there’s some other heat source that the scanner is reading and being confused by.”

  “What kind of heat source would there be?”

  Kim was tempted to take the submarine up closer so they could look at the crater through the porthole, but it might be safer to keep their distance.

  No sooner had the thought surfaced than a massive red beam of light burst through the crater.

  She jumped, cracking her knee on the console. An alarm wailed. The water ahead of them was boiling.

  Kim lunged for the controls. They weren’t close, but fear of that much raw energy blazing within sight filled her with urgency.

  But before she could move the sub back, the beam disappeared. The alarm fell silent, as did the scanner that thought it had detected life.

  For the first time since they’d entered the water, light filtered down from above. Not a lot, but it was noticeable after the black depths of the sea.

  “Did one of the spaceships do that?” Yas asked.

  “It must have.” Kim checked the scanner and confirmed that there was now a hole in the ice all the way to the surface. It was eight feet wide, not large enough for a submarine to be lifted through, but she trusted it could be made wider. With that thought in mind, she took them a little closer, hoping they could get a comm through now.

  “Yours or ours?”

  “Let’s find out.” Kim flicked on the comm panel, hoping the astroshamans were too busy to target them, especially now that they’d left the base.

  She also hoped it was one of the Kingdom ships up there and not the Fedallah or some other potential enemy vessel. She couldn’t imagine who else would be flying around above the icy surface of this barren moon, but someone was up there and detected their torpedoes detonating.

  It was only a few seconds before the comm panel beeped.

  “Captain Rache,” a man said. “Captain Rache, please report. Do you need backup?”

  Kim grimaced. It wasn’t the Kingdom. Nor was it anyone she could ask for help, not when she’d stolen Rache’s submarine and knocked out his men.

  “Any chance they’ll go away if we don’t answer?” she whispered.

  Yas gave her an odd look. Right, these were his allies. It was probably who he’d wanted to comm them.

  But Kim needed Dr. Sikou and the Osprey, someone who would care about helping Casmir.

  “We’re close enough to the hole that they’re probably going to pick us up,” Yas pointed out.

  “Can you talk to them?”

  “Me?”

  “You are the highest-ranking man from your ship here.”

  “I’m the only one conscious.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “Captain Rache?” The comm officer’s voice took on a suspicious note.

  “Maybe the Kingdom got him,” someone said in the background. “We could drop a couple of bombs down that hole.”

  Yas’s eyebrows flew up. He lunged in and hit the reply button. “Neimanhaus? This is Dr. Peshlakai. I’m down here and would appreciate it if you didn’t drop any bombs.”

  “Doc!” That was the speaker who’d been in the background, the one suggesting bombing. He sounded relieved to hear Yas.

  Kim relaxed an iota. Maybe Yas was more popular among the mercenaries than she would have guessed, and he was her ticket to safety.

  “Remember that funky mole you removed?” the speaker added. “That spot is itching a lot. Is that normal?”

  Yas dropped his forehead into his hand. “Some itching as a wound heals isn’t atypical, but I can look at it when I get back up there. Can you fellows widen this hole so you can extract the submarines when the captain is ready? We’re close to the astroshaman base.”

  “Where is the captain?” the first speaker asked, the more suspicious one.

  “He took most of the men inside. He hasn’t updated us for several hours, but there are lots of explosions going off. I assume he’s going to want a closer backdoor out once he’s ready to leave.”

  “You’re not trying to leave without him, are you?”

  Yas grimaced. “No, if I wanted to part ways from his delightful personality, I would have stayed on Tiamat Station. We’re going back into the harbor to wait for him now. I wanted to make contact and arrange a pickup for when we’re all ready to get out of here.”

  “Why are you doing that, Doc? Where are the team leaders? Which sub are you on? Where’s Hocking?”

  Yas and Kim looked toward the unconscious men in the back.

  “He wouldn’t have gone in to fight,” the speaker added.

  “He’s indisposed. The astroshamans figured out how to attack those of us with cybernetic implants. I’m the only one on the sub who wasn’t affected.”

  The speaker swore. Kim couldn’t tell if it was because he was terrified of the idea or if he thought Yas was lying.

  “You better not come back without the captain, Doctor,” someone else said, the male voice cool. “You should have been at his side down there.”

  The channel closed, and Yas sighed.

  “It’s hard to win the love of mercenaries,” he said.

  “Unless they have itchy moles?”

  “Yes.”

  The alarm on the console blared again. The mercenary beam weapon had started up, increasing the size of the hole.

  Kim watched bleakly. As long as the Fedallah was right above them, she wasn’t going to be able to get a message out to the Osprey. For all she knew, the Kingdom ships weren’t even on the same side of the moon as the base.

  And with the mercenaries suspicious of Yas, she doubted she would find safety on the Fedallah, even if sh
e somehow managed to retrieve Casmir and a sample of Rache’s blood. She needed Rache to survive too.

  Casmir came to, groggy and with ice picks stabbing at his brain behind his eyes. He knew right away he’d had a seizure. What took longer for him to remember was where he was. And why he was dangling above the floor instead of being in a bed. Or even on the floor itself.

  Back when he’d been a kid and the seizures had occurred more frequently, he’d had one when his parents hadn’t been around, and he’d woken up on the floor. But usually, his mother and father had been there, gathering him in their arms and telling him they would go back to the doctor and keep trying medications until they found one that worked.

  Angry voices reached his awareness. He had the distinct impression that everyone and everything was not all right, but he struggled to focus his thoughts. And his eyes. They were open, but all he saw was white, like the inside of an old freezer in need of defrosting. There was a blinking red alert on his contact, but everything was so blurry. He couldn’t read, couldn’t think.

  “Don’t do this Asger. I don’t have a quarrel with you, but I’m not letting you take him.”

  That voice was familiar. But it wasn’t his mother or father. Where was he?

  “Zee is taking him, not me. And good luck stopping him. One of those robots blew him up, and he’s back in one piece again.”

  Zee. The crusher’s amorphous facial features formed in Casmir’s mind. Zee. His buddy Zee.

  More recent memories trickled into his conscious. The crushers chasing him. The flight from Odin. Meeting his clone brother, Rache. That had been his voice. And the other voice… It was familiar too. A knight. A knight he knew. Asger.

  “Casmir Dabrowski is awake,” Zee stated from right above him. “If he orders me to remove him from here, I will do so.”

  Ah, that was why he was dangling. Zee was carrying him like a baby. Casmir was disappointed that his parents weren’t here, or someone else who cared for him as much as they did, but he was glad for Zee.

  “Casmir?” Asger asked, the back of his helmeted head easing into Casmir’s view. “Are you all right?”

  “Just tired,” Casmir said, though the words came out slurred, and he didn’t know if anyone would understand them. He was nauseated, too, and hoped he didn’t throw up. “So tired.”

  Why did he feel so bad? This was worse than any seizure he could remember. He wanted to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.

  “What did he say?” Rache asked.

  The blinking warning on his contact finally came into focus. OFFLINE.

  Why was his chip offline?

  Then the memory of fighting with Moonrazor through the network returned. The rest of his memories unfurled slowly, the mission, the submarines, the gate, that robot with its deliberate strobe light.

  He grimaced and closed his eyes, realizing that his new enemy—she must have realized by now that he wouldn’t say yes and join her—knew his weaknesses and had no problem exploiting them.

  “Wonderful,” Casmir muttered.

  “Put your halberd down, Asger,” Rache said, his voice closer this time.

  “Screw you. All you care about is him being able to work on that stupid gate, a gate that you can’t possibly have any use for as a mercenary. Your thugs aren’t going to use it to explore the galaxy. You’re just going to sell it to the highest bidder, you traitorous ass.”

  “Easy, Asger. You might say something that will hurt my feelings, and then I’ll have to challenge you to a duel.”

  “Gladly,” Asger snarled.

  “Step aside,” Rache said, his voice icy. “Or I might remember that you punched me.”

  “Come any closer, and I might remember that you’ve killed hundreds if not thousands of Kingdom soldiers.”

  Casmir was still groggy and confused, but even he could recognize the tension crackling in the air. “Stop,” he mumbled, and then repeated himself, focusing to make the word come out clearly. “Stop.”

  The arguing halted, but he feared his order wasn’t enough to make that last.

  He patted Zee’s shoulder. “Put me down, please.”

  Zee lowered him carefully to the floor but kept his hands on him for support. Which he needed. He teetered and only found his balance with Zee’s help, but he was able to look at Rache and Asger, who were less than two feet away from each other, glaring like mortal enemies.

  Casmir wobbled forward and spread his arms. “My friends,” he said, putting an arm around Asger’s shoulders and stretching so he could do the same to Rache. “There’s no time for fighting. I have a plan.”

  Did he? The words sounded honest, but he couldn’t think of what his plan might be.

  Then he spotted the gate, hundreds of pieces looming in high stacks in the back of the chamber, almost tottering—or maybe that was his perception, which was skewed in the aftermath of the seizure. It didn’t matter. He didn’t need to climb the stacks. He hoped. Just figure out how to deactivate the security system.

  Ah, yes. He remembered that now. The reason he was here surrounded by all of this ice.

  Ten of Rache’s men were lined up, rifles pointed toward his group, and he remembered the other reason he was here, with these mercenaries instead of with the Kingdom troops.

  It didn’t matter. His plan could work no matter who had brought him here.

  “What plan?” Rache asked.

  “I will demo— demon…strate.” Casmir grimaced at how difficult enunciation was. “After everyone stops fighting with each other and lets me go to that gate. That’s my job, yes?”

  A job he would have found daunting even if he hadn’t been postictal.

  Neither Rache nor Asger pulled away from Casmir’s hug. Asger gripped his pertundo, but he lowered it to his side. Rache lowered his pistol.

  “Good friends.” He patted them both on the shoulder, though he doubted that would do much. He needed to do what they had both brought him here for, and he needed to do it before Moonrazor showed up with more people and robots. Especially since his chip was offline until he could figure out why. She must have gotten through with one of her viruses, and it had shut itself down as a defensive measure. “Good friends. Help me over there, ’kay?”

  “Casmir,” Asger said. “I don’t think you can do your job right now. You need to rest.”

  “But no time for rest, Asger. That way, go.”

  Rache shifted to guide him toward the gate. Asger either had to let go—Casmir still had an arm slung around his shoulder—or walk with them. He grumbled something under his breath, but he went along, supporting Casmir from the other side. Which was good, because his muscles were as stiff as if he’d been sleeping all night on that ice floor.

  Casmir ached to be healthy and to have all the pain go away, to not need to lean on others. He stumbled as he abruptly remembered why he felt so much worse than usual after a seizure. The Plague.

  Rache’s and Asger’s grips tightened, and they kept him upright. Casmir made his legs work and kept walking, even though fear burrowed its way back into his belly.

  He remembered Kim’s words, that there might be hope. Rache’s blood might help him. He needed to tell Rache about that. And he needed to fix the gate so he could leave and get the help he needed. But how could he make his plan work?

  Casmir paused as they passed another group of Rache’s men. They were assembling a large tool, and he remembered his earlier suspicions.

  “Ah, you are going to drill.” Casmir thumped Rache’s armored shoulder. “Good, good. A hole straight up? So we can lift the gate out?”

  We. Rache and the Kingdom, and dare he hope more? He smiled to himself. His plan.

  “Yes,” Rache said, continuing past the big tool.

  It was almost assembled, a Stellar Drill. Good. Casmir just had to figure out the gate. There was hope.

  His helmet display warned him of an energy field ahead, between them and the stacked pieces.

  “What is that?” Asger must have gotten the s
ame warning.

  “They’ve rigged a high-powered magnetic field around the gate,” Rache said. “I ran through it during the fight and half my systems went offline.”

  “What for?” Asger asked.

  “Protection.” Casmir nodded his approval. “Against the pseudo radiation.” He grimaced, knowing he’d mangled those words, but Rache and Asger both seemed to understand. “Stay outside, and you won’t be affected. Until we drop it to move the gate pieces.”

  He peered around, looking for whatever generator was creating the field. There, in the back, a dark case hummed softly against a wall. There was a DEW-Tek bolt hole in the corner. Casmir hoped the stray shot hadn’t damaged anything.

  “It’s right here.” Rache stopped, waving ahead of them, though nothing was visible.

  Casmir could feel the magnetic field through his suit. He halted and placed a hand on Asger’s torso.

  “You have to stay on this side. If you go in there, you’ll be exposed.” Casmir waved at the gate. The closest piece was by itself, and several sections were translucent, showing what lay under its housing. Strange. What had the astroshamans done?

  Even though he felt lousy, he looked forward to investigating it. He wished there had been time to learn more before coming.

  “I understand,” Asger said. “I’ll stay out here and keep our enemies away.”

  “I will go in with Casmir Dabrowski and protect him,” Zee stated.

  “Good,” Asger said.

  “I need my tools,” Casmir said. “And a painkiller. And caffeine if you have it.”

  “Is that wise?” Rache asked. “Could it give you another seizure?”

  “It’ll be fine. I need it. Maybe ten shots of Kim’s espresso will do.”

  Rache snorted. “I’ll get some wake-tabs and your tools.” He jogged back toward the tunnel where the ceiling had collapsed and started digging.

  “Sorry,” Casmir said. “I think I dropped my tool satchel when that fell on us. I was so busy trying to keep the robots offline.”

  “Casmir.” Asger put hands on both of his shoulders. “You don’t have to apologize because the enemy attacked us.”

  “I just don’t want to incon… inconven… bother anyone.” That word was hard too. He willed his speech to return to normal. Maybe the wake-tabs would help. They sounded like something that might be equivalent to ten shots of Kim’s espresso.