by Melissa Good
Jess regarded them both with a mildly bemused expression. “What in the hell is going on here that I’m the optimist in this crate?”
“Jess, those people can do great damage before it could be prevented.” Dev unbuckled herself and got up. “I think there is less chance of that if they were here.” She touched the comms unit in her ear. “This is BR270006. Please present yourself at our hatch for this discussion.”
Jess felt a prickle of surprise as she realized what had just happened, and she saw April’s brows lift as she did as well. Techs weren’t supposed to do that, neither the regular kind or hers. She took a breath to object then internally her psyche shrugged its shoulders and her body followed suit. “All right, Devvie. Have it your way.” She went to the back equipment rack and hitched herself up onto it.
Dev had her hand still on the comms, holding it into her ear. “They are coming.” She sat back down in in her seat and activated scan, focusing on the other craft and the ones now circling overhead, aware of how vulnerable they were sitting there.
“Nice,” Doug muttered under his breath. “Not that I’d have tried it.”
“What?” Dev whispered.
The hatch opened at that moment and drew their attention to the back of the carrier, where hesitantly, two dark clad figures slowly entered. The man in the lead was about April’s height, with curly brown hair and a very muscular body.
The man behind him was taller and had straight black hair with a lighter build and angular face.
They stopped. “Drake?” the man in the lead asked, half turning to face Jess. “Dalton Arp. Senior agent, Northwest.” He turned his head slightly. “This is my tech, John Feld. You’ve got about five minutes to pitch your gig at me.”
Jess regarded him. “Or?”
“Or what?”
“Five minutes or what are you going to do, try and get past me to run into the buzz saw that’s waiting for you over the ridge?” Jess remained relaxed, her arms folded over her chest. “All the surviving from Base Ten are being held there. We did a great job killing each other.”
Arp looked around the inside of the carrier then back at her. “Okay,” he said. “What’s the game?”
Jess got up and walked over to him, studying the square, hard face, and the arrogant lack of fear she understood at a gut level. He was what she was and had as many years behind him. She imagined herself in his place, coming into this situation and considered what anyone could say to her that would get past the automatic assumptions she knew were going through his head and would have been through hers.
It took brass ones to walk into her carrier and face off. Jess had to smile. “No game. Just answer this question. Who gains?” she said. “Who wins from this?”
Arp’s hazel eyes studied her. “If you sell that growing tech to the other side? You do,” he said in a straightforward tone. “Whoever gets it wins. Whoever gets it can be self-sufficient. Owes no one. Drake’s Bay’s been trying that route for generations. We all know it, Drake.”
Jess shook her head. “You’re looking in the wrong place. It’s not about the plants. Never was about the plants. That was just the bait.”
“Jess,” Dev said. “We’re being called.” She got up and faced them. “Long range scan at the Bay has detected a large force approaching from the east.”
Jess took a breath. “End game,” she said. “They make Interforce fight each other. Make Interforce fight the Bay. Then when all that’s left are bodies, they come and take over.” She met Arp’s eyes. “Finish what the old man started and get their own back for what we did to Gibraltar.”
“What you did,” Arp said. “So maybe the target’s just you. Maybe we realized how dangerous you are, Drake, and we want you dead as much as they do. Consider that?” He cocked his head to one side. “Maybe we all meet over that pitstop on the way to hell and end up getting a drink and going home, with all of you gone.”
“Good luck with that,” April remarked. “If that’s the game from Interforce, glad I stayed on the side I did. What a bunch of wankers you are.”
Arp smiled. “Looking to die, nomad?”
April shrugged. “We’re in the game of dying. Now? Later?” She shrugged again. “Best I ever hoped for was a good, juicy death taking as many people with me as I could. I’ll settle for you, though.” She wiggled her fingers. “We done talking, Jess?”
“You collect a lot of riff raff, Drake.” Arp took a step toward the ramp. “So no, I don’t buy your game. We’re going to keep on mission. Maybe we’ll take some shots for them at your ass when you run from us.” He glanced over at the pilot’s seat. “Your five minutes are up.”
“Dev, get ready to rumble.” Jess shook her head. “When they ask, I can say I tried.”
“Yes.” Dev thumped back into her seat and started up the power gen. “Stand by.”
The tech, John, had edged inside and now he walked up behind Dev and stepped over Doug’s sprawled legs. “Pilot,” he said in a low, rumbling voice.
“Don’t be mean to Rocket,” Doug warned as he was taking the scan results and updating the targeting system. “She’ll bump something with her elbow, and your ass is going to be thumping its way down that slope backwards. She doesn’t mess around.”
“C’mon, John.” Arp stepped backwards and down off the ramp. “We’ve got company we have to meet.”
“You really on their side?” Jess asked in a very mild tone.
“I’m not on your side,” Arp said. “So if that means I play their game long enough to get rid of you, then maybe I...John!”
Dev felt the motion start behind her and reached up to release her restraints as she heard Doug draw breath to yell. Instinctively she dove over the arm of her seat and heard the sound of a knife puncturing the surface of it. She ended up tangled with Doug as something big and fast moving hit the chair from the opposite direction.
“You motherfucker!” Doug’s yell erupted.
A flash of steel reflected the blue and green power leds and Dev twisted around to see a blade plunging down toward Doug’s chest as he threw himself in front of her. Her eyes widened as she got her arm up and around him and grabbed for the knife wielder’s wrist.
“John, no!” Arp scrambled back into the carrier only to haul up as a knife blade pressed up against his stomach, and he threw his hands back. “No!”
“Stay still,” April warned. “Drake’ll handle him.”
Jess had vaulted over the weapons console and a second later hit the pilot’s chair, reaching around it to grab for the attacking technician who was stabling wildly after Dev’s form. She latched on to him just as Dev caught his arm and pulled him down.
The knife stopped at the edge of Doug’s jumpsuit and its tip just cut through the fabric as Dev got her knee up under her forearm to brace it.
The man stared at her, panting. Then his body was gone, and the arm was ripped out of Dev’s hand. He disappeared backwards over the top of her chair, and there was a horrible cracking sound along with a growling roar.
Dev grabbed the arm of the chair and untangled herself from Doug. “Are you okay?” She hauled herself up into the pilot’s position and looked over the back of it to see Jess dragging the limp tech toward the hatch of the carrier. “Jess!” She let out a yell of alarm, seeing past her. “Watch out!”
“Better get this thing going, Rocket.” Doug strapped himself down as April dove at Arp and they crashed to the ground of the carrier. Jess ejected the body she had in her hands, and it cleared the hatch just as it slammed down, the barrage of blaster fire thumping against it.
“Get out of here!” Jess yelled, jumping over the two fighting agents. “Go go go!”
Dev wasted no time. She lit the engines and exploded away from the ridge, the backwash from the engines flaring out over the now sodden body lying on the rocks and the empty carrier they left behind them.
“Oh boy.” Doug braced his legs and watched his partner anxiously. “Gonna be a rip long day.”
JASON WALKED THROUG
H the huge central hall, its monstrous grandeur still evident despite the damage. “Whoa,” he muttered to Elaine, as they both glanced at their tall, scrub overalled escorts, gangling and tousle haired and young.
“Whoa,” Elaine echoed. “They trashed this place.”
“They did. Crapola.” Jason shook his head. “I think maybe Jess has something in that whole attack each other thing. It’s just a variation on the theme, right? What the old man was trying to stir up.”
“Mmm. Maybe it was bigger than he was.”
“Maybe.”
They went down a hallway full of gun toting hulksters and into a blasted open door that revealed a set of old fashioned ops consoles and a wall full of blaster scar. In the center room, at one of the main consoles, sat a familiar blond haired figure, dwarfed by the Bay residents around him. “Hey, Doc”
Kurok glanced over at him. “Hello there.” He leaned on the edge of the console. “Want the good news or the bad news?”
“Oh oh,” Elaine muttered. “There’s good news?”
The rest of the agents and techs that had come with him filed in and took spots against the wall. Mike Arias, and Chester, Jorge and his partner Sal among them. Everyone had battle scars. Uniforms were torn, and there were blood stains and shadow rimmed eyes.
“Hey, Doc,” Chester spoke up.
“There’s a force coming in,” Kurok said.
“We know, from the west coast,” Elaine said. “Jess’s screwing with them.”
“No, not those.” Kurok tapped a pad and indicated a screen, half cracked, being held up with plas. “Those.”
“Oh crap,” Jason said. “She was right.”
“Jess?” Kurok asked. “It’s a trademark of the Drakes in general, but she knew about those?” He looked skeptical. “Behind the ridge I didn’t think they’d make good scan.”
“No.” Elaine folded her arms over her chest. “Something she said before she told us to come hide here.”
He got up and approached them. “I assume you turned out to be good guys.”
“We did.” Mike half smiled. “I owed it to April.”
“Jess said she thought this whole thing was a scam of theirs to make us all kill each other. Save them the trouble,” Elaine said. “When she said it, my guts just started nodding along. Said it was a set up, all of it, bringing in the Bay and pitting them against the force.”
Kurok cocked his head slightly to one side as he considered that, and his gaze shifted off them into the distance. “Could be,” he said after a brief pause. “More likely they just wanted her dead. She’s too damn wildcard for them.”
“Not all this for one person,” Elaine said.
“One person? Actually two persons did them enough damage to put them back fifty years,” Kurok reminded them. “Same person, somehow, comes into ownership of the most dangerous force on the continent, and through a bizarre set of circumstances gets hooked up with an experiment that outreached even my admittedly biased high expectations.”
“Dev.” Jason leaned against the wall, one eye on the screen with the incoming force.
“Dev,” Kurok said. “Biological Alternative, set 0202-164812, instance NM-Dev-1, likely my last contribution to science.”
Elaine regarded the screen with a furrowed brow for a moment. “Maybe not.” She went to the console and leaned on it, ignoring the wary looks of the console operators who nonetheless made space because that black uniform was what it was.
“Got a squirt from Jess’s bus,” someone on comms said. “Coming in, warning what’s following.”
“That didn’t work,” Jason said. “Okay, everyone back to the line. Let’s get this over with and blast them before we’re fighting two fronts.” He pushed off the wall and started out the door. “You coming, E?”
“Let me suck this.” Elaine was shuttling through data. “Blow something up for me.”
“Lots of something,” Jason said, hauling up when he cleared the entry and came face to face with a half dozen men dressed like he was. Instinct threw his hand to his blaster, and he went into a crouch as Mike Arias came past him and leveled a muzzle just past his ear.
The agent in front threw his hands up though, palms out. “Hold it, Jason!”
“Derek.” Jason lowered his gun, but left it in his hand. “What’s the game?”
Derek shook his head. “No game, bro. We’re done on the dark side. You going to fight? We want to go, too.” He glanced at his companions. “We’re all from either Juneau or Rainier Island. “
Jason cocked his head and stared at him. Stared through him. Derek was young and new and had the idealism brutally beaten out of him in the last few days. Before he could say anything though, Arias came past him all the way and went nose to nose with Derek.
“I remember you in class,” Mike said. “You’re a marginer.”
Surprisingly, Derek nodded. “True. My parents paid to have me taken in. I was a pain in their ass and it was worth their cred to get me off their back and leave them with my perfect little sister and brother.” He looked around the Bay. “I never figured to have to understand this.”
Mike smiled. “They lied. April knew.”
Derek nodded. “She knew.”
“C’mon. We’re wasting time.” Jason abruptly made his decision and holstered his blaster. “Those your carriers on that ridge? We’ll drop you on ’em. Take care of the bunch that’s chasing Jess, then die pointlessly blowing ourselves up in front of the bad guys.”
“Nothing left to go back to anyway,” Derek said. “Let’s go, call the wrenchers.”
DEV WASN’T SURE if they were going to be attacked immediately, but she wasn’t going to take a chance. She shot for the high horizon at a steep angle as Jess got herself into the gunner’s position and ratcheted her restraints down with one hand while reaching out to punch the agent April was fighting with, feeling her knuckles impact something as she got her triggers down.
Arp was very strong but April had just that much more experienced in half grav and took advantage of that. Dev hit the top of an arc and curled over, and they came off the floor of the carrier. She flipped him over, aiming an elbow at his throat when Dev started to dive, and they slammed back down.
“Go for the Bay, Dev.” Jess released the rear plasmas as they came across the flight line of two of the carriers, and a moment later they were in a very hard arc to the left as Dev evaded the return fire. “Warn ’em!”
“Yes.” Dev was busy fighting the throttles. “Doug, could you possibly do that?”
“Sure.” Doug got the comms into his ear. “BR270006 to Drake’s Bay control, copy?” He reached over to tune. “Hope you copy. We’re incoming with enemy following, take action.”
A crackle. “DBOPs, got it,” a low, growly voice answered. “Got ya on scan.”
Dev whipped the carrier in a circle in mid air, cutting out the mains and letting them drop two full lengths before she boosted them forward, shooting right back at the cluster of chasing carriers at full speed, the only thing out racing her the blaster fire from the big guns on either side of her window.
She chased it, the new engines in the carrier giving her more speed and better maneuverability than the ones she was facing. She went through them at a steep angle and saw they couldn’t react fast enough.
Jess released plasmas on either side of them, and one of the carriers frantically tried to get away by a hair, her engine cowling coming with inches of scraping theirs.
There was a bang behind Dev, and then Doug ripped the comms from his ear and the restraints from his body and dove into the back of the craft as she heard Jess let out a warning yell.
Halfway through a maneuver, she had no options but to keep her hands on the throttles and her eyes on the screen. She caught a brief glimpse of motion behind her before she heard the distinct sound of Jess’s belts retracting.
A wordless yell from April, and Dev put them into a rotation, then a steep dive, feeling the gravity yank against her body and throw
her into her own restraints as she heard a cracking sound and then thumps and bangs. “Jess!”
“Keep flying!” Jess shoved herself away from the floor against the pressure and finished coming around and pulling Arp’s arm around and right out of his shoulder socket. “Get back!” She yelled at Doug, who was dragging April away from the melee.
Dev was going right at the cliff, and she got to the narrow gap a blink ahead of the enemy, twisting the carrier onto its side and bolting between the sheer rock faces that fairely scraped either side of the carrier.
“Ow, shit!” Jess somehow kept ahold of Arp and slapped her knee over his wrist as he tried to shoot her in the head with his good hand. “Dev, other side!”
“A moment.” Dev angled them downward as the boards picked up an explosion behind her. When she barely gained enough space, she rotated them one-hundred-and-eighty degrees. “Jess?” She looked anxiously into the reflector, relieved to see Jess’s tall form braced against the weapons console.
“Can ya straighten us up?”
They had airspace, and she did, the carrier now running almost at ground level, the engines sending up blasts of steam as the energy impacted the wet ground. “We are not being pursued any longer.”
Jess dropped into her seat, blood running down one arm, blinking against the burn of a blaster that had creased her face. Doug had April secured near the back of the carrier, near the weapons rack, her eyes closed and a line of red, heavy blood leaking down from her ear.
Arp was out cold, sprawled near the hatch with one arm at an impossible angle.
“Imagine what they look like,” Jess commented, after a minute. “Get us back over the landing bays, Dev. I need to take the trash out before we have to turn around and fight again.”
“Yes.” Dev risked turning around in her seat. “This vehicle is undamaged.”
Jess leaned on her console and blinked bemusedly at her. “They didn’t hit us once?”
Dev shook her head. Then she smiled and turned back around, adjusting her boards and resuming the comms unit Doug had dropped as she used the mottled skin of the carrier to hide against the mottled rocks.