Shifting Infinity (ISF-Allion Book 2)

by Patty Jansen

  “Well, so much for that idea,” Ari said. “We’ll have to use the main route.”

  “Which means that they will be waiting for us when we get closer to the command centre,” Melati said. “Milo, can you suggest what to do? A smoke bomb and run through as fast as we can?”

  He shook his head. “There will probably be aggregates stationed in the rooms on either side and they don’t need to lower themselves to non-essential activities such as breathing.”

  “What about their eyes? Can they do IR vision?”

  “Of course they can.”

  So much for the idea of a smoke bomb.

  Milo said, “There is only one thing I suggest doing if we can’t find another route—”

  Ari interrupted. “It looks like all the routes that switch back to the command centre are blocked off.”

  “—And that is to use the element of surprise.”

  “Where have I heard that before?” Ari mumbled.

  Melati said, “So we throw some smoke bombs and whatever else we have to surprise them, and then shoot our way into the foyer of the command room and hope that no one has fixed the fire door yet.” The sector fire door default position when both sides were pressurised might be open but she very much doubted that this would hold for the command room.

  Milo nodded. “Pretty much.”

  “Where is the surprise?”

  “They don’t expect the smoke bombs, and they probably won’t expect us to barge straight through. I would like a better surprise, but it’s all we’ve got.”

  She pressed her lips together. A grim feeling came over her. It wasn’t a very good plan and there would be shooting. She could still hear Ari cry out, You just went pew-pew-pew . . . It wasn’t just like that at all. It was that in the split second after the Allion people came into the recycling room she had decided to draw the gun, knowing that it was absolutely the right thing to do, and also that it was no good complaining about ISF not doing anything when you had the chance to do something and you didn’t because you were squeamish, or weak.

  Kya said, “Bah, those aggregate things barely deserve the word ‘people’. They’re robots with an outer layer of fake flesh.”

  Coming from the mouth of a construct, that declaration was doubly odd.

  With the help of Milo, they assigned positions and functions. They had three smoke bombs and decided to use two.

  “If there’s any people in there still not using a mask, they would suffocate if we set off another one,” Majoa said.

  As far as Melati knew, Jas and Nysa hadn’t taken breathing gear.

  Majoa put the third smoke bomb in an easily reachable pocket just in case.

  Melati decided to keep her PCD handy in the inner pocket of her jacket. She had the two guns, wore the helmet with the air filter and breather mask connected. She checked the oxygen in the tank. It was designed to be a supplement, not an air replacement as one would use on a trip out the airlock, so she hoped that anything that was going to burn wasn’t going to give off toxic gas. She carried a pouch with recharges for the gun. They could be fired or, in an emergency, could do nasty things when thrown at electronics. The oxygen tank would be an interesting weapon in a fire.

  She said, “I’m ready. What about you?” It disturbed her how calm she felt.

  There were nods all around.

  Milo went first, followed by Majoa and Ari. Then Melati and Kya. The two hypertechs were at the back.

  At first they walked at a normal pace, but then Milo slowed down, looking from side to side. He told Ari and Majoa to open each door as they passed it. He told the hypertechs to walk backwards so that no one could surprise the group from behind.

  Melati could see the foyer to the command centre, a place she had rarely visited. She remembered coming here with a group of kids and looking in through the window and seeing Jocar Bassanti sit in his chair. To the bunch of little seven-year-old barang-barang children, Bassanti was akin to God.

  She had never set foot inside the command room.

  Grey shutters now covered those windows where she had stood on her tippie toes. The door was also closed, with a red light above it indicating that Command was busy. It was the normal panelled door, not the fire door that could withstand depressurisation on this side.

  Milo stopped.

  They were perhaps only twenty metres from the foyer. There were two more doors on either side of the passage before the end. Milo pointed the large gun first at the door on the right and then the one on the left.

  Ari went to open the door on the right, and couldn’t. “It’s locked,” he mouthed.

  “Stand back,” Milo gestured. Ari retreated.

  Milo kicked the door with his hard-heeled boots. It flung open, crashing into the wall next to it. The lock fell out and skidded over the floor. He looked inside the opening, gun half-raised.

  Nothing.

  He jerked his head at the door on the other side of the corridor. Majoa tested it and found that it was also locked. Milo kicked that door in as well, and still found nothing.

  Melati glanced into the room. The room contained a desk with a workstation and two chairs. No cupboards or any place where someone could hide. It was some sort of receptionist office.

  Milo was now studying the ceiling, checking for manholes. The expression on his face was puzzled and disturbed.

  But there were no manholes, and there were no hidden doors to service passages. Every step brought them closer to the foyer and strangely enough, it looked like no one was going to stop the group getting there—

  With an enormous thud and crash the whole right hand wall buckled, ripped and peeled open like a fruit.

  Milo fired at whoever was coming out of the wall and Majoa threw her smoke bombs, and someone who didn’t have their mask on quick enough was coughing. People shouted.

  Melati couldn’t see anything despite the face mask, despite having oxygen and IR view in her helmet, despite all the environment data that scrolled over the inside of the visor. It annoyed her and she couldn’t remember how to turn it off. In IR view, the entire corridor was a mixture of light and dark spots, with nothing that stood out as a human shape.

  With so many people discharging weapons, she ducked to the side of the corridor and pressed herself against the wall. Her heart was thudding so loudly that she could hear nothing except the roaring of blood in her ears and her ragged breathing.

  She clutched the gun, but she needed a clear line of vision to get a shot. She didn’t even know what to look for, what she’d be shooting at. What sort of thing had the strength to burst through a wall?

  She tightened her grip on the gun and advanced one step at a time, always keeping one shoulder to the wall.

  The smoke bombs both lay in the entrance into the foyer, belching thick black smoke. A gentle breeze drew the smoke into the corridor and sometimes it was so thick that she couldn’t see two steps in front of her. An alarm went off.

  Where was everyone?

  She bumped into someone similarly leaning against the wall. It was Ari. The two hypertechs were with him.

  There was a body on the floor next to them, tall and dressed in blue. The boots were almost twice the size of Melati’s.

  “Is that an aggregate?” Iman said.

  At that moment another flash went off from Milo’s gun. “Everyone, move forward,” his voice said in her helmet radio.

  There was a small break in the smoke and she thought she could see him standing at the entrance to the foyer.

  “Did we get all of them?” Kya asked.

  “Yup, I think we got them,” Majoa said.

  Melati was still very careful when walking the last ten or so metres to the foyer. She saw another body, not an aggregate, but one of these tall, sinuous women who had also come to collect Jas and Nysa. She lay on her side facing away from Melati. Majoa knelt next to her, snapped a lock over her wrists and legs and picked up her gun. “Anyone?” She held it up.

  Fatima took the weapon.
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  Melati was glad that this round of shooting hadn’t involved her, because she didn’t like to develop a reputation. No doubt there would be more than enough to come yet.

  Ari and the hypertechs were quiet.

  The Allion thugs had made a mess of the foyer. Bits of shattered panelling lay scattered over the floor, together with sprays of the fine dust that built up in the corners of the station. There was no more movement other than from members of the team. Milo walked around with his big gun at the ready, checking behind the pillars that supported the ceiling.

  According to her helmet display, the air quality had deteriorated further, not merely from the smoke that lingered close to the floor, tinged pink from the red light above the command room door. Oxygen was now getting dangerously low. Maybe Allion made little attempt to defend the station because most of them were already dead.

  That thought chilled her.

  She nodded at the command room’s door. She had been right: the fire door was destroyed, cut through with something much more powerful than they carried. The metal had even melted at the edges of the cut. Good grief, what sort of weapon was that?

  Milo joined her. He held the large gun in the crook of his arm. “Do we open it?”

  “We could knock first.” She raised her eyebrows. “If we’re polite.”

  He grinned. “Are we?”

  “No, not really.”

  He took a few paces back and fired at the door with the big Allion gun.

  Chapter 31

  * * *

  THE DOOR GREW HOT, glowed briefly and sagged to the floor in a puddle of molten plastic. The display of lights at the top all started flashing orange.

  Someone inside the room shouted. Milo jumped aside just before a jet of plasma sizzled across the door. He dropped to his knees and fired a few times into the jagged opening. Melati couldn’t imagine that he could see anything.

  “Wait.” Majoa approached at a run, and skidded on her knees next to him. She lobbed the remaining smoke bomb into the opening. It produced a hiss when it went off.

  More people shouted inside, men and women. There was a rumble of moving chairs. People coughed. Someone ran out. Milo whacked him with his baton. The man fell face first on the floor. He wore a blue uniform, with the backside of his pants covered in dust as if he’d slid down a dusty slope.

  Someone else ran out, one of the tall guards. She ducked Milo’s baton and ran into the foyer, where Kya shot her square in the back. Two more people ran out. Milo got one, but the other escaped in amongst thick clouds of smoke that belched from the room. Kya fired but Melati didn’t like her chances of hitting the escapee.

  More people ran out, more than the team could deal with. Everyone was shooting but the beams made the smoke glow and made it so much harder to see. Melati wasn’t sure who was part of the team and who was an enemy. There were people on the ground, and still more people were coming out. That room was not that big, wasn’t it?

  She realised something else: no one was returning fire. Indeed a group of seven or eight people huddled together near the door didn’t appear to be armed. They didn’t wear uniform either.

  She called, “Hold fire!”

  The team did. With Ari, Fatima and Iman blocking the way into the corridor, no one was going anywhere. One more civilian man stepped out of the ruined door, raising his hands. He was dark-skinned, with a short beard, not unlike Moshi when she had first seen him. His eyes were wide.

  “Don’t shoot,” she said to Kya next to her.

  Milo gestured with the gun to the group already on the ground. The man joined his fellows. Milo mimicked holding his hands on top of his head, with one hand because he held the gun in the other. The escapees put their hands on top of their heads. Kya and Majoa walked around and indicated for them to hold out arms and legs so that they could attach locks on their wrists and ankles.

  “Urgh, they smell,” Kya said.

  Indeed the smell of musty clothing infused with sweat drifted through the foyer.

  Melati crossed the foyer. The escapees were men and women, all of working age and probably in their mid-thirties. They were a sad bunch, with grubby clothing and dirty hair. “Look at their hands,” she said. The nails were long, with dirt under the rims. And then she asked Majoa, “Do you think any of them have a decent ranking?”

  “No ranking for any of these. I think they’re civilians, like Moshi.”

  Did Melati imagine it or did a man give her a sharp look at hearing Moshi’s name? Were these people merchants as well?

  She asked, “Shouldn’t Kerakis be in the command room?”

  They all looked at the ruined door. From where she stood, Melati could only see the back of a workstation and a piece of carpet. Smoke still bled slowly from the room.

  A faint light glowed somewhere in the depths of the room, but no sound came out, and there was no sign of movement.

  Milo went to the door and carefully looked inside, holding his gun raised. He stood motionless. After a while, he backed away.

  “Can’t see anything,” he said in a low voice. “Were any of the people we got of the command?”

  Kya shook her head. “Are they still inside?”

  “I would think so.”

  Melati looked at Majoa. “Do you think you could talk to them?” Here was another useful skill they had in the team.

  “I can, if there is anyone left in there.” Majoa called in Centrasian into the door opening. The language sounded guttural and rattling to Melati.

  A light went on in response.

  Majoa said something else. It was strange how Melati had been able to understand Centrasian when in Moshi’s memories and now couldn’t make out any meaning.

  A male voice called out.

  “They’re telling us not to come in,” Majoa said.

  Melati snorted. “Of course they would. Any idea how many people there are inside? Tell them that they can come out with their hands above their heads or we will come in using force.”

  Majoa translated this.

  A man laughed, not in a nice way.

  “He says we’re welcome to try.”

  “Is that man Kerakis?”

  Majoa spread her hands.

  “How many people are inside? Ask them to show us Jas and Nysa and we’ll come in without shooting.”

  Majoa translated. Her words were followed by another burst of laughter.

  Melati gestured for Iman to come over. “Scan into the room with the IR visor.”

  Iman did. “I can see five or six people.”

  “Aggregates are unlikely to show up on the scans,” Majoa said.

  “How many aggregates would they have brought?” Melati asked. “We shot two when we went over the outside of the station. We just shot another couple.”

  “Hasegawa shot two,” Kya said.

  Majoa shrugged. “They’re not common, at least they weren’t last I heard.”

  “They haven’t been able to bring in any new troops,” Milo said. “They must be running low on aggregates.”

  Melati pursed her lips and checked the time. “We just don’t know. We have two hours until Dolchova unleashes the fireworks. I think we’ll have to risk it, and be prepared for the unexpected.”

  Ari snorted.

  “Someone will attack us as soon as we go in,” Melati continued. And if there were any aggregates in that room, their chances to retake the command room wouldn’t be good. The enemy was in an excellent position, as they had been for the last ten months.

  She looked around the group, searching for an idea, a skill they hadn’t yet used. There was Milo with his guns and ability to fight in smoky corridors, there was Kya and her negotiation skills, there was Majoa and her ability to speak Centrasian, there was Ari—wait.

  “Do you have that gecko on you?” she asked in B3.

  “I do, but I need the software that’s on the shuttle and it’s out of action.”

  “Can we ask Dixon to do it for us?”

  “Yes,
but I thought we weren’t meant to use the radio so as not to give away our position.”

  “Everyone knows by now anyway. Can you do it? You have a radio?”

  “Yes, but it will take a bit of time to set up.”

  “How long?”

  He shrugged.

  “Do it,” Melati said.

  Ari gestured the hypertechs over. Iman carried the radio. They crouched on the ground with their equipment between them. The radio wouldn’t connect. Ari had a copy of the software on his PCD, but it was going to be much slower, he said.

  The rest of the team waited while Ari worked.

  After what seemed far too much time, he took the gecko out of its container and used his PCD to transfer it to the wall inside the molten door. Melati didn’t see the animal disappear, because the passage was too dark, but Ari used the map of the command centre to send the animal all around the room’s ceiling. It came back about fifteen minutes later.

  There were now seventy-three minutes left to Dolchova’s ultimatum.

  He pressed the gecko to the screen and then had to watch through thirteen minutes of vid footage showing the command room upside down. He made sketches while he watched, where each circle represented a person.

  “There are fourteen people in there,” he said and pointed. “This one here looks like Jas and this one” —sitting in the command chair— “is Kerakis.”

  “Are the people all sitting towards the back of the room?”

  “It seems so. Probably because they can see us when we come through the door.”

  “Hmmm,” Melati said. “No aggregates?”

  “These two.” He pointed.

  “We can handle that. Let’s go in.”

  There were now less than sixty minutes left. There was no more time for being careful. If ISF decided to attack, there would be no escape. She gestured to the team. “Come with me.”

  Everyone lowered their visors and raised their guns. In this manner, they stepped through the jagged molten plastic panels.

  The first thing Melati registered was that there were a number of people in the room sitting and watching and that someone gasped.

  The second thing she registered was that a woman in dark uniform was coming towards her at a determined and aggressive pace.