“Where are we going?” Gallego asked.
“Their ship is at the main terminal. If we hurry, we’ll be able to commandeer it.”
This, more than Houte’s consolation, caught Cheboi’s attention. “Their ship? How do you plan to commandeer that?”
“Clio has that covered too,” Houte said, sounding the slightest bit embarrassed. “She can make sure the ship will fly. All we need is the ability to get inside.”
“How do we do that?” Gallego asked. She immediately regretted it. All eyes were immediately directed at the nearest of the dead mercenaries. One of their biometrics would be enough to get past the ship’s outer security barriers. But that included a DNA scan, a retinal scan, and a handprint, and it would know the difference between the real thing and a digital copy.
Cheboi sighed and turned her right arm into a thin, straight-edged blade. She walked back to the vacant doorway, pausing only to call back over her shoulder. “Franklin, do you have a satchel or some heavy bags inside?”
Houte shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
Cheboi grunted and looked at Gallego uneasily. “Okay, I guess we can make do with one of ours. But I suggest you all look away. This is going to be messy.”
FORTY-ONE
THE ALARMS DIDN’T CEASE, no matter how far they got from Ebla. Power had since been restored, but tensions quickly shifted as attention focused on the firefight that had taken place in the Arwad quarter. Once the local authorities arrived on the scene, they couldn’t help but panic. Strange men with advanced armaments lay about in a pile. To them, it seemed like an attack similar to the one on Titan and Ganymede was underway.
It was no mystery then why the settlement of Ebla was locked down. Gallego, Cheboi, Houte and Amaru had barely enough time to make their way through the crawlspace and back to the terminal before it went into effect. By the time they reached the spaceport at Selket, news of the attack and the lock down itself had spread.
“Hurry!” yelled Houte, consulting the updates on a wrist-mounted wearable. “The spaceport itself is going to put a stop on all outgoing traffic.”
“Where’s the damn ship?” yelled Cheboi.
There were few people in the spaceport terminal at this point and those present were being hurriedly shepherded towards safe zones. Gallego was sticking close to Amaru. She and Houte seemed to know where to go, as if Clio had fed them directions in advance. Several times they had to lead their group away from security personnel who were now actively searching the corridors for any sign of hostile intruders.
Once they emerged, the two of them began looking for a specific docking bay. Between running, ducking behind cover, and more running, it took some time before they found what they were looking for.
“Bay twelve!” Amaru yelled once she spotted the desired sign. “She said it would be in there!”
Gallego let them take the lead. Cheboi was holding up their rear, sporting their satchels in one hand. Gallego tried not to look at the one that carried the special biometric load.
“How are you doing?” she asked Cheboi.
Her bodyguard looked down at the two bags in her hand. “Just fine, all things considered. Who needs personal effects anyway?”
Gallego would have laughed if the situation weren’t so macabre. As quickly as she could, Cheboi had dumped the contents of both of their satchels to make room for the items they needed. It seemed unfair that only one of them should sacrifice their gear for the sake of the mission.
While Gallego couldn’t bring herself to watch the process, she had quietly thanked the universe for providing them with satchels of Extropian manufacture. Anything that wasn’t nanofabricated would have surely soaked through by now. The last thing they needed was security officers noticing a group of four stragglers who were sporting a bloody bag.
Falling back in with the group, Gallego followed the others as they charged down the hallway towards the docking bay. When they reached the door, they found it all but abandoned. A squad pair of security personnel stood guard. Any passengers who were waiting to board a shuttle had long since been cleared out.
Amaru directed them to the nearest bulkhead to seek cover. Once they were concealed in shadow, she began cursing their situation. “Shit. We need to get past those men. And we need to do it quietly.”
“Clio said she would be able to get clearance for the doors. But even she can’t shut down a planet-wide lock down,” Houte added, for the benefit of Cheboi and Gallego. “If either one of those guards manages to signal the others, we’re fucked.”
Gallego huddled in behind the others, her back just barely covered in shadow. She knew Amaru and Houte were entirely correct in their assessments. Given the armaments they still had at their disposal, she and Cheboi would be able to neutralize the squad without much trouble. The only problem was, there was no way to do that without bringing the entire spaceport down on them. In fact, any hostile action at this point would draw the attention of every security system on Europa. Most importantly, they had no desire to add to the death toll of innocent officers.
Even if they engaged their stealth fields and took them down as gently as they could, there was no way one of them wouldn’t be able to call it in.
What was needed now was some serious finesse. Either that, or a minor miracle...
Adler paused for a moment to let his medimachines address the terrible pain in his abdomen. His biosensors had been screaming for some time that the rupture in his intestines had opened again. He held still while one batch of his medimachines cleared blood and septic fluid from his stomach while another worked diligently to patch the rupture. He couldn’t wait long though. The longer he stood still, the greater the odds that no one on their team would make it off Europa in one piece.
He wondered how he might go about explaining all of this to Emile. What would that message sound like? The thought made him smile bitterly.
“Emile, I regret to inform you that our mission has failed. My entire team is dead. Soon enough, you will be too. But don’t worry, I promise to clean up your mess before long. You see, it’s become personal now. See you shortly, you stupid prick!”
But of course, Emile would hear about the debacle soon enough. The entire System would, and Adler would be hard pressed to simply disappear after that. Not that he wanted to. There were far too many scores to settle at this point. Assuming he never ran afoul of the team the Illuvians had sent in to take out the Cytherean women, he still had to contend with those two. Then there was Amaru, the bitch who just couldn’t seem to die! At this point, she was the first on his kill list. Her colleagues were a close second, followed shortly thereafter by Emile.
Looking ahead, Adler spotted another group of people being shuffled down the corridor by armed men. Keeping his stealth field engaged, he waited for them to move past. Unfortunately, one of the officers fell back while the rest carried on. He quickly realized this guard was manning one of the side corridors and was looking for stragglers.
Adler cursed beneath his breath, knowing that this would cost him several precious seconds. But he couldn’t hope to make a clean dash while this poor bastard was standing guard. Any sudden movements would cause the slightest of distortions, which wouldn’t go unnoticed. At the same time, revealing himself with a well-timed attack wouldn’t go unnoticed either.
Time isn’t on your side, he reminded himself. The entire world was already on lock down. The need for subtlety had disappeared long ago.
Calling up his arsenal, Adler opted for something quick. A lancing beam erupted from his arm an instant later, slicing through the guard’s body and burning a hole in the far wall. A strained grunt was all the man could manage before falling over and landing hard on the floor.
The alarms began to blare with new intensity. A series of red lights were triggered overhead. The internal sensors had registered the burst of energy and were now directing all personnel to his location. By the time they arrived, he would be long gone and hacking his way into the ha
ngar that housed his ship.
His stomach protested as he began running again, but his mind was calmed by the thought that soon enough, he would be putting the entire cursed Jovian system behind him. The thought of holding Emile’s head in his hands, and delivering the fatal blow to his arrogant face, that soothed him even more.
FORTY-TWO
THE NEXT FEW MOMENTS happened so quickly that Gallego could barely keep track of them. Without warning, the security squad abandoned the gateway to bay twelve. The sound of new alarms, which sounded dangerously close, drew them away in a hurry. As soon as they were out of sight, Amaru urged them forward. “Hurry! I’m not sure what the hell that was, but we better use it!”
Gallego looked back. The sudden alarm could only mean one thing: their enemy was following them, trying to get back to their own ship. Cheboi was even more concerned, forming a plasma launcher with her right arm and covering their rear. She paused only long enough to pass the satchels onto Gallego. “Here, you’ll have to do it now!”
Gallego suppressed the urge to vomit as the satchel handles landed against her palm and she felt the contents shift inside. Luckily, nothing came of it and she was able to keep up with Amaru and Houte, hanging back just enough to keep Cheboi within arm’s reach of her.
To her surprise, the bay doors opened when they came within a meter of them. The result of Clio’s intervention, no doubt. They even sealed again with a loud thud, once the four of them were through. Once inside, they were faced with several dozen ships sitting on an expansive deck, a series of catwalks and gangplanks leading between them.
“Okay... so where’s ours?”
Houte and Amaru both directed their gazes around the bay. It was no easy task, spotting a stealth ship when all the vessels were visible edge-on. Somehow, the two of them once again seemed to know what they were looking for. Houte spotted what appeared to be an open space tucked between two parked ships and perked up.
“Over there! Follow me!” He waved them on. They ran across the nearest gangplank with all speed, their feet slapping against the metal grating and producing a loud din. They doglegged across several walkways until they reached the empty spot. Here, they came to stop together and looked at Gallego.
“You’ll have to do it,” Houte said. “You just need to get within scanning distance and produce the... uh... biometric samples.”
“Me jodas,” Gallego muttered. Pulling the satchels closer to her chest, she swallowed a dry lump and once again fought off the desire to throw up. Her medimachines provided some much-needed help, flooding her system with endorphins and instructing her brain to disregard signals coming from the area postrema of her brain.
Moving up the final stretch of walkway, Gallego unzipped both satchels and reached in to grab their contents. The bags fell onto the walkway like discarded shells. In one hand, she held the head of one of their attackers, her fingers gripped tightly about the neck. In the other, she held forth his right hand, the five fingers extended in a stiff, rigor-induced fashion.
No vomiting took place, but Gallego felt short of breath as she neared the end of the walkway. Her medimachines worked overtime to prevent her from fainting or suffering a panic attack. Though temporarily safe, her every instinct was screaming out at her, alerting her to the fact that something was terribly wrong. Her body’s bio machinery, meanwhile, was fighting to tell her otherwise. A rare sense of duality, that was. Perhaps later she would think of something poetic to say about it.
She sighed with relief when a door slid open, revealing the interior of a vessel that wasn’t concealed by a stealth field. Instinctively, she threw the hand and the head inside. She even picked up their bloodied satchels and tossed them in as well. With that done, she yelled at the others to get inside. “Let’s go! Before it changes its mind!”
They scarcely needed to be told. One by one, Amaru, Houte and Cheboi ran across the walkway and pushed inside. Cheboi grabbed Gallego by the shoulder and dragged her in behind them. Gallego was thankful for that. With her ghoulish task now done, she must have looked like she was ready to fall flat on her face.
Once inside, Houte and Amaru quickly moved to secure seats. They seemed to know which ones they needed to commandeer, and immediately began eyeing the controls before them.
“Strap in! Clio is about to release the ship to our control. Things are going to get bumpy after that.”
Gallego spotted an acceleration couch in a small common area and threw herself against it. Restraints immediately began to deploy and attach themselves to her. Cheboi took a seat next to her and was similarly secured. In seconds, the ship’s many displays and terminals began to come to life. From every display, Clio’s avatar appeared to them. As always, it looked like something godly, glowing and benevolent in its countenance.
“You’re almost there,” she said. “Just one more hurdle to pass before we’re clear.”
Just as quickly as she appeared, Clio’s avatar disappeared again. The ship rumbled to life a second later, and the interior began to shake as VTOL thrusters engaged. The acceleration couch became temporarily more supple as they experienced a shift in the gravitational force their bodies were exposed to.
An alarm began to sound on Houte’s station that caught his attention. Reaching out to her terminal, he struck a key and silenced it. “Not to worry,” he said. “The ship is just a little nervous that we don’t have clearance... and that the dome isn’t opening.”
Gallego said, “Let me guess... Clio is on that too?”
“Yes,” he said, but looked less than confident. The alarm began blaring again, louder this time. Gallego could barely see the display beyond Houte’s frame, but the blaring, bright-red symbols told a clear story. Over the din, she heard him whispering to himself. “C’mon, Connie. You got this, little sis.”
The alarm went silent. On his screen, the lights all turned a light shade of teal. Gallego looked at the nearest porthole to see that their worst fears weren’t coming to pass. The spaceport’s dome disappeared beneath them, replaced with the slightly hazy light of the distant Sun. Through Europa’s thin atmosphere, it looked like a piercing blue light. As they reached higher, the light became gentler, and the starry night became visible.
“We’re clear!” shouted Amaru. The cabin also ceased shaking as they made the transition to space. With all the excitement, Gallego had barely noticed the subtle shift. All she could feel was the pounding of her heart and the rush of relief.
There was a series of new sounds once they found themselves pushing into space and the curvature of Europa was becoming apparent through the porthole. Both Houte and Amaru were being notified at their stations. The method behind their selection of seats quickly became apparent.
“Okay, I’ve got helm control now,” said Amaru. “Houte, you got the lidar, Doppler, and other long-range sensors yet?”
“Online now. We’re clear so far.”
“Good. Everybody hang on.”
Once again, the acceleration couch embraced Gallego and Cheboi as Amaru engaged the ship’s main thrusters. This time, they were thrown back into them by the force of forward acceleration. The couch applied much more support as the G-forces ramped up to several times the force of normal gravity.
Through the porthole, Europa shot away behind them. In seconds, it had gone from being a sloped horizon to a white and orange sphere. A few seconds more, and it had diminished to the size of a ball, then a marble. When the engines cut out, the couch tightened their restraints to make sure they didn’t float away.
Leaning back against the headrest, Gallego closed her eyes. A few seconds of deep breathing was all it took. No interventions, no instructions to her bio machinery, and no need to initiate her natural sleep cycle. Between the feeling of being weightless and their newfound sense of freedom, Gallego drifted off into sleep.
FORTY-THREE
THIS TIME, THERE WAS no gentle transition. No sensation of waking up in a strange place or floating above some familiar landscape. When it happe
ned this time, it was like the sudden onset of a very bad dream. Gallego felt confined and trapped, and the voice that was calling to her was rapid and insistent.
“Nika, can you hear me? There isn’t much time!”
Gallego knew she was dreaming. Still, she did her best to push her mind to full wakefulness. The dreams had always been lucid, and lucidity sounded very important right now.
“Surrounded on all sides, the knife closing in,” said Constance. “You cannot hope to win this fight by force of arms alone. Understand your surroundings.”
Gallego looked in all directions but could made out only the faint outline of walls. They were indistinct but felt threatening all the same. They looked almost alive, the way they flexed and pushed. They were close and getting closer.
“Clio?” she asked. “What now? We’ve made it out! We’re safe now, aren’t we?”
The walls flexed and moved again. What Gallego considered to be breathing room was quickly disappearing.
“Not yet, Nika,” Constance said. “One thing remains, and it’s up to you to address it. I can only point you in the right direction. You need to ensure that everyone makes it out okay.”
“What then? What do you want me to do?!” Her voice had become desperate, and it wasn’t just the sense that she was about to be crushed. What little patience she had for cryptic warnings and vague clues had been exhausted long ago.
“When it’s time, try taking an old-fashioned approach. Pick up a rock and hurl it between the enemy’s eyes. Strike true and strike often. That’s all you need.”
GALLEGO AWAKENED WITH a shout. Everyone was staring at her momentarily, but Houte and Amaru went back to their terminals as soon as Cheboi came to her side.
“What’s going on?”
The Jovian Manifesto (The Formist Series Book 2) Page 27