by Terry Mixon
“So, folks, our way home is through the Cadre. Who’s with me?”
Chapter Thirteen
Brad led the way into the warren of tunnels, pausing at every junction with another tunnel so that Saburo and his troopers could make sure they weren’t about to run into an ambush. The airlock they’d forced had obviously not been connected to a warning system, or someone would have already been there checking for a breach.
That wasn’t to say that the burst of Venus’s atmosphere that they’d brought in wouldn’t trigger some kind of environmental monitor and make someone wonder if they had unexpected guests. If so, they’d be ready.
Based on the condition of the tunnels and airlocks they’d passed, someone came down occasionally to make certain the inner airlock doors weren’t leaking by spraying reinforcement on them. They didn’t bother changing any of the lights that had failed, however, and there were massive pools of inky darkness punctuated with dim lights where fixtures were still operating.
“I’m guessing they don’t get down here much,” he said over his private link to Saburo.
“Hard to argue that,” his ground commander agreed with a brief chuckle. “They’ve obviously had more pressing matters on their minds than base maintenance. Do you think this is the main base of Cadre operations?”
“I suppose they could have more,” Brad allowed, “but it seems unlikely that they’d bring a captured Agent to a secondary base. No, I’m betting this is where the Cadre leadership is operating out of. That gives us a chance to rescue the Agent, capture some prisoners, and maybe get our hands on their computers.”
Saburo shook his head. “Sorry to pour cold water on your enthusiasm, but now that they’ve shot our shuttle down, odds are damned good they’re packing up shop. They have to suspect someone followed up on that transmission and have to expect it’s us. They know more shuttles will be heading this way once the ships in orbit notice we’ve failed to return.
“We have a very brief window to interrupt those plans before they’re gone. Odds are they think they’ve killed us, but they’ll still be on high alert. With our relative lack of weapons, we’re at a big disadvantage.”
Brad grinned coldly. “Then we’ll just have to even the odds. The first group of pirates won’t really be expecting us. We need to take them out before they can sound the alarm. We’ll add their weapons to ours.”
Following the twisting path to where the navigation program in his wrist-comp said the dome was took another five minutes. They found the access to the dome about where he’d expected it to be, protected by an airlock in much better condition than the one they’d had to force.
The tech checked it while they waited impatiently. After a minute, he straightened.
“There was a monitor, but I think I have it bypassed,” he said. “It wasn’t very sophisticated. I guess they didn’t expect anyone to break and enter.”
Brad laughed. “I’d imagine not. The exterior security measures are better than anyone else in the system can manage. Open it up.”
The airlock passed them through into a wide chamber in much better repair than the tunnels. It held a freight elevator and a wide set of stairs. The lights there were much brighter and all were lit.
“Bypass the elevator,” Brad ordered. “Someone might hear it.”
Saburo sent his men to the stairs and they started up into the base. The next few minutes would decide their fate one way or the other.
Brad found out that fate hated him as soon as they opened the door leading to the main dome level. Standing not fifteen feet away was a single pirate, and he was staring at them in shock. Shock that didn’t prevent him from screaming a warning into his com and scrabbling for his sidearm.
Saburo coolly shot the man down, but a low, hooting alarm was already sounding. They’d failed to get the advantage they’d needed. Now they’d have to do this the hard way.
“The transmission came from somewhere ahead of us,” Brad snapped. “We have to get there before the Cadre closes in on us.”
One of the troopers paused long enough to strip the dead pirate of his weapon, handing the captured pistol and its magazines to Pitts. Like all Brad’s people, she knew how to use a gun, but she wasn’t a trooper. If it came down to her needing the weapon, she was probably screwed.
The corridors were eerily empty as they raced deeper into the abandoned settlement that was now a pirate base. Where were the defenders?
He learned the hard way not to question their good fortune. Three men in unmarked uniforms of dark gray came out of a side corridor, firing military-grade rifles at Brad’s people.
Stiller, likely still suffering from the mild concussion, failed to throw himself down as quickly as his comrades and took the brunt of the attack, falling dead under the merciless barrage of bullets.
Brad rolled against the wall and returned fire, striking the leftmost pirate in the chest even as his comrades sought cover. It must not have been fatal, because the man was able to join his comrades behind the nearest corner.
While the wall made for excellent cover for the pirates, they still had to expose themselves to shoot. That gave Saburo and his troopers a chance to return fire effectively. Someone hit a pirate in the head, sending blood and brains across the wall behind the man and dropping him to the floor.
That added a layer of caution to the pirates’ fighting. The next man stuck his rifle around the corner and fired blind. He hit a trooper in the arm, but it only caused the man to curse. Several rounds struck the wall just above Brad, making him try to flatten himself even more.
“We can’t let them keep us pinned down,” Brad told Saburo as he discovered the limits on how far he could compress himself. “We need to dislodge them and get moving.”
“On it.”
Saburo crawled forward, keeping himself low and close to the wall nearest the pirates. Time flowed like old Earth molasses and the stalemate held until the Colonel reached the corner, stuck his pistol around it, and emptied his magazine into the shooter.
The pirate’s rifle clattered to the floor and the troopers were on their feet, rushing the remaining pirate. It turned out to be unnecessary. Brad had killed the man, but it had taken him a few moments to die. He lay sprawled on the floor just past the rest of the dead.
“Collect the weapons,” Brad ordered. “There’ll be more.”
“What do we do with Stiller?” Saburo asked quietly as his men carried out Brad’s order.
“I hate to do this, but we’ll leave him for now. We’ll either be coming back for him or none of us will be getting out at all. These three were holding us in place. We need to get clear of the area before the force they were holding us for puts in an appearance.”
That plan also ran afoul of the enemy. Even more of the Cadre’s elite troops showed up behind them, obviously having just missed trapping them in a pincer. His men, now armed with captured rifles, set up an ambush of their own while Brad and the rest made their best speed to find a defensible position.
The Cadre troops proved their elite status by overwhelming his men before he’d found anything that would provide them any cover at all. It infuriated Brad that his men had had to trade their lives for getting the rest of the team clear of the ambush, but he knew they probably hadn’t had a choice. None of them did.
Examined dispassionately, the odds of them making it out alive were slim. Unless he changed the calculation.
“Break contact,” he ordered. “Get as far into the dome as we can.”
The settlement inside the dome was still almost completely unused. Signs of disrepair were all around them as they ran: doors agape, nonfunctional fixtures, and trash scattered about. Whatever the pirates were using the place for, they didn’t need all the space.
Brad checked his navigation system and found that they were almost at the area the transmission had come from. If the Agent was still there, this would be the time they could rescue them. If they could manage that, they might just learn what the pirates were
up to.
“We’re about a hundred feet from where the transmission came from,” he said over the general channel. “Keep an eye out for any place they could be holding the Agent and watch out for guards.”
They slowed their headlong rush and moved forward as cautiously as they could. They didn’t find any guards, which suggested that the pirates had moved their prisoner or that they no longer needed to worry about them being rescued.
A call from one of the scouting troopers confirmed the grim latter guess. “We found a body, sir. It’s bad.”
Brad left the defense of the area to Saburo and made his way forward to see what the man meant. He immediately saw that it was ugly. Very ugly.
A redheaded woman sat bound to a chair, dead. Someone had used snippers to cut off her fingers, bit by bit. The abandoned torture implements lay on the floor beside the dead Agent.
“Dammit,” he muttered as he knelt to examine her face. She was young and had been pretty before someone had used a knife to slice her face. Her unfocused green eyes stared into infinity.
“She held,” Saburo said. “They wouldn’t have cut off all her fingers if she’d talked. They’d have just shot her.”
“And she couldn’t have sent that signal without them,” Brad agreed. “They probably tried to get her to unlock her wrist-comp and she triggered the signal. There’s no other reason she’d have had access to it.”
He touched her bloody arm and felt fading heat. She’d have died about the time they crashed, he suspected. While killing pirates was always a worthwhile endeavor, he hated that their primary mission had failed. That he had failed to save her.
“Find the com unit she used,” he said heavily. “Or a terminal to their computer system. They’d have had her nearby, I suspect.”
“Found it, sir,” Pitt said almost as soon as he’d finished speaking. “The computer terminal, that is.”
He followed the sound of her voice to the next room over. It looked like this was where the Agent’s guards had been living. And where they’d died.
Four bodies lay sprawled across the floor, all riddled with bullet wounds. Someone hadn’t been pleased that they’d allowed the Agent to get a signal out.
“Search them,” he ordered as he sat at the computer terminal.
It wasn’t locked, but it also wasn’t very helpful. The system was in the process of erasing itself. Most of the data and control interfaces were already gone. Only one remained: a self-destruct countdown.
“Well, isn’t that just peachy,” he muttered, attempting to interrupt the counter, which showed less than fifteen minutes remaining.
Only, it wouldn’t let him. It kept prompting for a code that he didn’t have. He didn’t have even the most basic interface to try and hack it, either. No, this base was doomed and so were they, if they couldn’t get clear in time.
“Found what looks like the Agent’s wrist-comp in a Faraday cage,” Saburo said, holding out a wrist-comp. “It seems intact but it’s locked.”
“We’ll have to check it more closely later, if any of my Agency codes will work on it,” he said, gesturing at the timer. “We have to get to the shuttle pad and hope we can steal a ride.”
Saburo took one look that the countdown and started ordering his troopers into motion.
They were down to eight people, if they counted Pitt, so Brad sincerely hoped they didn’t run into more elite Cadre fighters. One good firefight might end them.
Of course, most of the enemy were getting the hell out of there, too, so the chances of that shrank with every second. So did their chances of getting off Venus alive.
While he didn’t have a map of the settlement, all domes were laid out in a roughly similar pattern. The shuttle pad would be on the outer edge of the dome so that the small craft could take off and land with a minimum of fuss. The challenge would be figuring out where that might be in time.
That’s when he spotted a set of bloody boot prints leading away from the makeshift prison. Admittedly, the person that had made them might have been going somewhere other than the shuttle pad, but it was a chance they’d have to take.
“Follow the boot prints,” he ordered.
His crew fell in and they rushed forward, slowing only when they came to an airlock. They had no way of seeing what was on the other side. It might open to the surface, which would be a rude and painful mistake to make.
“Look there,” Pitt said. “That’s probably a control booth for the shuttle pad.”
She pointed at a hatch a dozen feet down the corridor. “We can take a quick peek in there and see what’s going on before we attack.”
“Will it be occupied?” Saburo asked, motioning a pair of the troopers forward.
“Does it matter?” the pilot asked with a shrug. “Time is wasting.”
“Can’t argue with that,” the Colonel said. “Go in hot, boys.”
The troopers opened the hatch and raced up a short set of stairs, with Brad and Saburo right behind them.
As Pitt had guessed, this was indeed a control booth for the shuttle pad. There was no one inside and none of the interior lights were on, but the wide glass had a good view of the lit pad below. A single shuttle remained, pirates hastily loading boxes aboard it.
“This looks like our ride,” Brad said, looking for and spotting four pirates with rifles watching the airlock from behind cover. “If we can figure how to take it without being shot to pieces.”
According to the timer on his wrist-comp, they had less than ten minutes to take the shuttle and escape. It looked as if the pirates would be done loading in less than two. This was literally the time to do or die.
Chapter Fourteen
“You know what I don’t see in there?” Pitt asked. “Atmosphere suits.”
Saburo grunted slightly. “Not much need when you have a protected shuttle pad like this one. They can work in shirtsleeves and be perfectly safe. I’m not sure how that helps us.”
The pilot smiled coldly. “Commodore, do you remember how you knew that trick with the airlock in the tunnels? Big airlocks like this have something similar buried in the fire-suppression protocols in space, and I’ll bet no one bothered to remove that from the basic controls. I think I can convince the system to open both outer doors at the same time.”
Brad felt his eyes narrowing as he considered her words. Such a thing made sense in space. It would be really helpful to dump the atmosphere in a landing bay to extinguish a fire instantly. Down here on Venus, of course, the results would be very different.
The outside air pressure would force the sulfuric acid–laced soup into the shuttle pad like an ocean would flood a holed ship with water. The men below had no protection against something like that.
“Okay, I get how that would be bad for them,” Brad said. “But how is it good for us? We don’t have suits either.”
“I can close the airlock and use the pumps to pull the tainted air back out. The part I’m not sure about is how long it will take to clear the atmosphere on the pad. We need to hit them while they’re still screwed up.”
Brad nodded sharply. This could work, and it wasn’t as if they had a lot of time to come up with a different plan. They had to execute an attack now if they hoped to survive the self-destruct charge. He even thought he had a plan to deal with Venus’s atmosphere.
“Do it,” he ordered. “Saburo, get the men into the airlock. I’ll be down as soon as it’s safe to go in.”
Pitt leaned over a console and started paging through system screens. “Here it is. Fire suppression. Dammit, the command to open both doors is locked out.”
“Maybe it needs to detect a fire,” he suggested. “Or at least be told one is present. Systems on a ship have decision trees like that.”
With that, he leaned forward beside her and pressed the fire alarm on the panel they were looking at. Red lights began swirling over the shuttle pad, and he could hear a high-pitched siren sounding. The pirates looked up with expressions of alarm and confusion.
“That did it,” Pitt said, pressing another button that had switched from gray to red.
The large airlock doors above slid rapidly open and a wave of toxic yellow poison flooded the compartment in seconds. Its pressure was more than sufficient to push the regular air out of its way with ease.
Brad lost sight of the pirates in the haze but could imagine how they were reacting to that crap in their eyes and lungs. Even the pirates aboard the shuttle would be in the same pickle, unless they were already suited. And even if they were, what were the odds they’d donned their helmets?
“Start pulling the bad air out of there,” he said. “Call out the moment the pad has a breathable atmosphere and we’ll rush them. I’ll leave the outer door locked open so that the air inside the base will come in with us. That means you can follow as quickly as you’re able.”
“Will do, sir. Good luck.”
Brad ran down the stairs and joined his troopers in the lock. He manually tied the first door open with a cable provided for that purpose. It was used during maintenance when someone wanted to be sure a hatch didn’t close behind them.
He gestured to the tech. “Open that panel up and be ready to force the hatch open. Don’t trigger it until Pitts gives us the green light, or we’ll all regret it.”
Thirty seconds passed before Pitt transmitted. “You’re good.”
“Blow the hatch,” Brad ordered. “Hang on, everyone.”
The tech bridged the connection and the hatch in front of them slid open. Air from inside the base rushed past them, tugging strongly at their arms and legs. Ten seconds passed before the pressure equalized.
“Go!” Brad yelled, rushing into the shuttle pad.
The Venusian atmosphere had had a profound impact on the men out in the open. The four guards and two pirates loading boxes were all down. None were moving.
He suspected that meant they were dead, but he had no time to make sure. They had to secure the shuttle before someone inside decided to seal it up. Though, if they hadn’t done so by now, he suspected they might not be able to.