Transmuted (Dark Landing Series Book 1)

by Robin Praytor

  When Zamora left, Drew moved quickly to the reader that opened the hatch to the adjoining room and pressed his palm once more, hoping his luck hadn’t run out. It would prove awkward to make another request to the desk and would waste valuable time. The seal released and the hatch popped open an inch.

  Letty sat at the small desk and stared at him quizzically, her half-eaten dinner pushed to one side. Even with dark circles and red, puffy eyelids, she was still stunning.

  Without a credible story, he dove in, hoping something brilliant would come to him. “Change into your travel gear and pack your kit. I’m taking you out of here.”

  “What?”

  “We don’t have much time. An MCTT agent is on his way now to arrest you. They want to get to you before Earth authorities arrive. They’re convinced you’re involved in a conspiracy to disrupt the Coalition and seize control of trade commerce in the K.U.” What a load.

  Letty agreed. “That’s absurd. Why would they assume that all of a sudden?”

  Drew piled it on. “They see a pattern in everything you’ve been doing. And somehow it’s tied in with the security breach. Trust me, Letty, if they get their hands on you, you’ll never be seen again.”

  She smiled weakly. “MCTT can’t do that. Why would they?”

  “Let’s see—you have an army under your command. You’re wealthy enough to finance a hundred coups, and Taleen-staffed offices are strategically located throughout the K.U. They’re afraid of you, and they want you under their control. And, don’t forget, your identity was hidden until now.”

  Her look said she wasn’t buying it. The brilliant thought he’d been waiting for came to him then. “They’re going to charge you with Hernandez’ murder for starters.”

  “But, the vids prove—”

  “They’re only electronic files. Did I mention they fired me for defending you? MCTT now has unrestricted access to station records. They can do anything they want with those files.”

  “Hasn’t everyone else seen them . . . Mattie? Doc and Fitz?”

  Of course they have, but she can’t know that for sure. “I never had the chance to share them with the command staff. Letty, you’ve got to trust me. I’m trying to protect you, and we’re wasting time.”

  Muck’s game remained a mystery, but he was convinced they were up to no good. Once she was safe, he could tell her the truth. So, maybe she wasn’t in as much danger from Muck as he’d suggested. Still, someone wanted her dead, and that was no exaggeration. If she thought he’d over-dramatized events and insisted on returning to face MCTT, he’d confess to tricking her.

  She stared at him, uncertain for a few moments. Then, evidently having made up her mind, she moved to the small wardrobe fitted into the wall and pulled out her poncho and boots. From the drawer next to the wardrobe, she grabbed a shirt and her dungarees. When she began to unfasten the security jumpsuit Zamora had provider her, Drew turned his back, giving her privacy. As she was dressing, he heard the attendant enter the adjoining room to deliver his bags and the extra water pouches.

  “Where exactly are we going?” Letty asked.

  “I have a plan.”

  Chapter 15: The Plan

  Drew and Letty exited the inn. If anyone spotted them leaving the conveyer and making the hard right through the café, it didn’t matter, security would tag them AWOL soon anyway.

  The residents, used to seeing Drew wandering about, waived and nodded as he passed but seemed otherwise unfazed. That would change if Doc and Fitz issued a station-wide alert for him. Letty received little attention from passersby, who probably identified her as a boy. If they knew what was under the poncho they’d pay attention for sure. What they needed to avoid was security staff.

  He counted on Doc and Fitz sending a team to search for them at the inn and perhaps his quarters before they issued an alert. They might not issue an alert at all. They were on a space station for Pete’s sake. Where were they going to go? And issuing an alert for the chief of security would be embarrassing. Still, Drew disabled his com and its locator before leaving his office. He’d also disabled the surveillance cameras along their escape route and dozens of others throughout the station to further confuse a search. An added layer of passwords would keep them off line for a while. Those actions wouldn’t go unnoticed.

  He was relying on Doc’s trusting character and her inability to think the worst of anyone, particularly Drew. If Fitz’s typical acquiescence to Doc’s suggestions held firm, they’d be okay for the short term.

  They headed to the west end of the station, which consisted of supply and equipment storage and saw little traffic. Even better, a limited-access conveyer separated it from the public thoroughfare. This time of day most workers were off shift or on dinner break. It was likely they’d pass unseen.

  They both carried duffels slung across their backs. Letty struggled with an extra shoulder pack filled with the water pouches and dried food packets that Drew had her purchase on the way. He’d provided her with hard script so the purchases couldn’t be traced. He might have done the gentlemanly thing and carried it for her, but it looked more believable this way. To her credit, she didn’t complain.

  There was no one around when they reached the entrance to the conveyer, which required palm and code access.

  Letty stared at the palm pad. “What do we do now?” she asked. Her tone conveyed the suspicion that Drew hadn’t considered when he palmed the conveyer their escape would be traceable.

  “Press your palm to the reader,” he said.

  “My palm?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  When Letty put her hand to the reader, the right half of a horizontal light strip across the top of the pad turned green.

  “Now punch in Charlie-November-Kilo-Eight-Zero-Quebec-Three.”

  She entered the code. The left half of the light bar turned green as well. The conveyer doors slid apart.

  He shot her a superior smile. “A little something I whipped up before I left HQ.”

  “What else did you whip up?”

  “You’ll see.”

  The conveyer traveled only a short distance before it stopped, and the doors on the opposite side opened. Letty stepped out ahead of him while Drew hung back in the shadows. Corridors formed an upside-down “T” to the right and left of the conveyer doors and straight ahead. Letty looked in each direction before motioning for him to join her. He nodded forward, and they proceeded down the passage in front of them.

  The facility was a metal cavern, two levels high. They traversed a corridor roughly sixty yards long. Free-standing storage cells packed tightly together lined each side, giving the appearance of permanent structures. If anyone stepped into the corridor in front or behind them, they would have no place to duck out of view.

  The cavern echoed each step, making it impossible to move quickly and quietly at once. Still, they were covering the distance in good time. To anyone watching, they’d look ridiculous tip-toeing down the corridor in heavy boots, their arms arched out stork-like for balance. Drew could think of no excuse to explain why they were there. Simultaneous with the thought, he heard the whoosh of the conveyer doors open at the head of the corridor behind them. The voices of at least two men echoed loudly. Drew and Letty froze.

  One of the men called out to them. “Sorry we’re late, Matt. We’ll be right back with the loader.” Drew dared to look behind him. The men had moved out of sight. He and Letty were only a few yards from the end of the corridor. Letty had the lead. In the dim light, the worker saw him but not Letty. And he’d seen what he expected to see: “Matt.” Drew didn’t take time to worry about where Matt really was.

  He pushed Letty toward the end of the corridor and motioned to her hand. She moved quickly, and placed her palm on the reader next to a hatch access. He pulled a flashlight from his duffel and relieved her of the shoulder pack. The loader came to life with a deep thrum, its tread hammered against the metal deck. Drew yelled the access code.

  Letty shook her
head at him. She hadn’t heard.

  He put his mouth to her ear and repeated the code as she punched it in.

  Drew shoved Letty backwards through the opening hatch, and hit the red emergency control positioned above the palm reader as he fell in after her. An alarm sounded one strangled half whoop before the hatch resealed behind them. He lifted weightless from the deck, still facing Letty. She floated in front of him wearing a terrified expression. Her hair and slouch hat hovered comically above her.

  He pushed off the closed hatch and held out his elbow as he passed her. She grabbed on, and he pulled her along the side of the airlock toward the palm pad at the opposite end. She nodded in understanding and palmed the reader as soon as they reached it. Drew recited the code, and she punched it in. The hatch opened, and they dropped heavily through into pitch blackness on the other side. Artificial gravity restored, bodies and duffels hit the deck with heavy thuds. The hatch sealed automatically behind them. No alarms sounded on that side.

  ~ ~ ∞ ~ ~

  Drew pointed his flashlight at Letty. Spread-legged on the deck, leaning back on locked arms, she looked like a mad woman, saucer-eyed, hair disheveled.

  She shouted questions at him rapid fire. “Are you insane? What the hell was that? Where are we? My hat . . . where’s my hat?”

  “Relax, relax, we’re fine. Sorry, that airlock is a no man’s land between the station and Spud. It has its own gravity inductor, but activating it would trigger a light on someone’s panel.” He smiled at her boyishly.

  “Where . . . are . . . we?” She pronounced each word as if she were speaking to a toddler.

  “In the west cradle arm.”

  “Why are there environmental services here?”

  “Because I enabled them before I left my office.”

  “Won’t that trigger lights on someone’s panel?”

  “Nope. There’s a stand-alone setting to activate or deactivate Spud’s environment, but Spud’s operating system from this side of the hatch on, was never integrated with the station systems. The cradle arms operate on Spud’s self-contained system—unmonitored self-contained system.”

  “I hope by system you mean there’s a light control somewhere.”

  “We need to move along the arm and into the mining facility. A second airlock opens into an anteroom. Back when they were still mining, the anteroom and airlock served as the transport dock. There’s a main control panel there. The facility itself is huge. There are offices, living quarters, mess halls, gathering areas, and the mine, of course. When I was assigned to Dark Landing, I took a tour of the facility. It’s been closed for years.”

  As Drew talked, he offered a hand to Letty and pulled her to her feet. Still holding her hand, he led her along the gently sloping arm toward Spud—a distance of almost two kilometers.

  “The mining equipment is still intact, but they stripped most of the personnel areas,” he said. “There should be enough left to make ourselves comfortable.”

  Drew detected an element of disbelief bordering on fear in Letty’s voice when she spoke.

  “So . . . what? We’re going to set up housekeeping on Spud?” She pulled her hand away. “Seriously, I don’t think you’ve thought this through. How long did you plan on hiding out here?”

  She was questioning the soundness of her decision to come with him. No surprise there. So am I! “Until we can get some answers. If I share what little we’ve learned so far, maybe you can fill in a few of the blanks. And I need to figure out what Muck’s up to.”

  “Why do they have to be up to something? You don’t think I believed half the crap you were feeding me earlier?” she asked.

  “It worked didn’t it? You’re here.”

  “The part about being charged with Hernandez’ murder sounded plausible enough, though not for the reasons you so dramatically outlined.”

  “The truth is, Letty, I’m trying to protect you. Hernandez’ killer was after you, not Hernandez. He just needed to get him out of the way first.”

  “Wasn’t he taking a big chance? I mean, he couldn’t possibly have known how I’d react. I could have just run. I should have run, but I couldn’t leave Alberto.”

  “If you think about it, it was the first opportunity the killer had to get to you. You’ve been locked up under guard since you arrived. I think he had to take the risk because he might not get another chance.” He didn’t mention his own concerns about the timing of the attack, and how the killer knew she’d be in that corridor.

  “Okay. But, why would anyone want to kill me?”

  “It might be something to do with your little security problem which, by the way, I’m pretty sure Muck has learned of.”

  “Only if you told someone,” she said accusingly.

  “Not me. Someone else maybe.”

  “Like who? You’re one of four—with my dad gone, one of three—who knows about it. You’ve kept me away from all com devices and processors. Anne Rostenkowski at the ETOC certainly wouldn’t leak it.”

  “You’re forgetting the others.”

  “What others?”

  “The bogeymen,” he said.

  That silenced her for several minutes. Finally, she asked, “So, what’s your plan?”

  “I created profiles for each of us with CoachStop executive roles. When they remove my access from the security database, they may not think to look under the corporate accounts. Still, I couldn’t use my palm print station-side without setting off alerts. That’s where you come in. Your profile is under Rebecca Richards, and I added your print to the system as a CoachStop officer. They’ll trace my print, but it shouldn’t occur to the system techs to trace yours. They aren’t even aware you were traveling under an alias. And they can’t track the access or movements of anyone on Spud.”

  “They’ll find us eventually, Drew.”

  “Eventually, yeah . . . and probably soon. We just need some time to work on plan B.”

  “You realize . . . I mean, after everything you’ve done . . . your career on Dark Landing is probably over?”

  For the first time, Drew abandoned his lighthearted posture and considered the consequences of his actions. In the darkness of the armature, he felt insulated, freer to talk about his feelings. It didn’t come easily to him. “Honestly, I should be wrecked. I have . . . had . . . everything I ever wanted. Or, at least, I thought I did. If this goes south, I don’t know what I’ll do. I don’t have family on Earth anymore. I have a little savings. I can always find a shipwreck somewhere, fix it up, and become an independent trader.” He shuddered at the prospect of life as a space-dwelling, nomadic trader.

  “But, I am feeling a strange . . . I don’t know . . . emptiness.” Emptiness doesn’t begin to describe it . . . dread? . . . panic? . . . Jesus, what have I done? Drew reined in his verbal and internal ramblings. There was no turning back. Well . . . there was, but it wouldn’t change things.

  They walked the rest of the distance in silence. As they approached the end of the arm and the second airlock, the glow of the light indicating it was fully pressurized became visible. No code was needed to open the hatch, and Drew turned the manual wheel. There was a satisfying whoosh as the seal broke. They crossed and opened the opposite hatch.

  Drew and Letty stepped from the blackness of the airlock into the blackness of the miner’s anteroom. He directed his flashlight clockwise around the room, searching for the control panel he vaguely remembered being somewhere near the eleven o’clock position.

  “Stay here,” he said, when he spotted it. “I’ll see if I can find the lighting menu.”

  Drew crossed the room and placed his palm on the pad to the left of the panel. The panel glowed softly with a multi-colored display of options. After studying the choices for a few seconds, he pressed several icons in succession. A muted blue light emanated from narrow soffits located around the perimeter of the ceiling. He’d selected the evening illumination option.

  Suddenly feeling exposed and self-conscious at having share
d his feelings earlier, he reverted to his customary flippancy. “Romantic, don’t you think?”

  “What I think is that we need to talk, Chief. I came with you so that I wouldn’t be arrested for murder, and so I’ll be free to figure out what happened to my dad—and to Hernandez as well now—but that’s all. You’re insane if you had anything else planned.”

  Drew measured his response. It was pointless to deny his attraction, but he wanted to reassure her they’d come to Spud for her protection. “Don’t worry. You’re safe from me for as long as you want to be.”

  “Good,” she responded quickly. Then paused, her eyes narrowing as if she were considering what he’d said.

  He gave her no time to dwell on it. “So, let’s figure out where we want to set up operations, and then have a snack. Slinking around like a criminal is making me hungry.”

  They searched the outer offices and administrative quarters for anything useful. In one of the storage lockers they found an overlooked folding cot and carried it into what was probably a VIP suite with a back office and a front reception area. While Letty set up the cot in the office, Drew searched for something he could sleep on softer than the deck. Finally locating a broken lounger, he wrestled the cushions off. Pushed together, they were short for his frame but better than nothing.

  He found two small tables in the rec room. Placed end-to-end in the reception area, they formed one longer table against the wall opposite his improvised bed, and directly under conveniently situated built-in shelving. Chairs proved more difficult. He finally settled on cable spools which were about the right height, though a little wobbly.

  Once he’d created a workable space, he unpacked his duffel and Letty’s shoulder pack, placing their limited food and water supply, along with what little gear he’d brought, on the shelves. He set his processor on the table and stood back to survey their new quarters. They’d done fairly well, considering. He pulled a water pouch from the shelf along with a package of dried meat and one of mixed dried fruit, then called to Letty in a sing-song voice, “Dinner’s on.”