“What’s going on?” Mav demanded over the siren wail.
“Shut up,” the guard said, and then he turned his back on his prisoners to continue whispering into his headset. Though, Mav did manage to hear a surprised, “All of us? Yes. Of course, sir. Right away.”
The guards just walked out and closed the door behind them. Mav asked into the stunned silence, “What is going on?”
The doors reopened and a total of six guards entered, two of which he was certain had been the ones who’d just left. Behind them walked an avenging angel from myths of old. She wasn’t particularly tall for a woman, but what she lacked in height she made up for in determination. This was a woman who knew her purpose and had tried to give her life to it several times over. The universe in all its glory felt the need to spare her so that they could continue to fight.
Mav smiled.
“What are you smiling at, terrorist?” she demanded.
Mav glanced at her insignia and name plate. “Captain Andrewson, is it? Whatever happened to our trusted leader, Captain Dags?”
“Dead,” the captain said coldly. Damn, she could do righteous anger like no one. She could do angry better than a lot of angry people. “No doubt your fault.”
Mav snorted. He reached his arms out to his sides, wincing as his ribs and muscles were pulled. Frances didn’t flinch. She didn’t show pity. If he didn’t know her as well as he did, Mav would have bet his life that she’d defected. She was that good. “I’ve been here enjoying the illegal hospitality of the Corps military.”
“By my calculation, you have a couple more hours to enjoy it. Guard, return their clothes. I’ve smelled enough cock sweat for one day.”
“Yes, Captain,” the guard said.
Frances leaned forward and said, in a hard tone, “Just a couple more hours, terrorist. And then you’re mine.”
“I hope you like a big cock, then.”
The eye roll and accompanying groan that Frances gave him was not acting. He smiled. Two to three more hours, then. Good. The sooner he was out of here, the better.
They were going home.
*****
At the summons, Rebecca crawled out of her tunnel to find a bloody Kat glaring at her. She pulled off her safety helmet and exclaimed, “My God, what happened to you?”
“There has been a shooting in Bubble Town,” Katherine said. “Commander Feema is dead. I was also shot in the process.”
“Are you okay? Oh my God, your neck is bleeding!”
“Rebecca, get a hold of yourself. You are the only tech right now that we can trust on this station to find out if we’re safe. I need your work finished in two hours. Do you understand me?”
Kat said the last part slowly, ensuring that Rebecca focused on it. The work. Oh God, she wanted the breakout to start in two hours. “Um, I’ll try.”
“Can you do it or not?”
“I’m going to need someone in security who can help me…disable systems as I test them. Right now, the process takes ten minutes for each test. It’s slowing me down.”
Kat nodded. “Ensign Lowell? Get to security and do whatever Rebecca St. Martin needs. Do you understand?”
“Absolutely, Captain.”
“Good. Now, let me ask the question again. Can you do it or not?”
Rebecca gulped. “Yes. Yes, I can do it.”
“Good.”
*****
Eventually, the sirens ended, but Rebecca was too busy to notice. With the pretense gone, Rebecca began uploading as much of the virus in as many of the isolated stations and drone controls as possible. She also deactivated several electrical panels all together, telling Nate she would hook them back up in a couple of hours once she was done all of the work. He gave her the clearance and she kept going.
“Nate, can you cut the feed to panel C-18?”
Nate replied in her ear a moment later. “Done. Let me know when you need it back up.”
“This is going to take me about fifteen.”
“Sure. Just call me when you’re ready.”
It had been like that for the last hour and a half. The work was going a lot faster with Nate pulling down the systems for her without her needing to lie each and every time. She worried he’d figure out what she was doing, or at least ask why she was rewiring panels together, or skipping ones entirely. But he never did. In fact, he even offered her a few bypass hints to help speed up her work.
She didn’t ask herself why she was helping Kat’s cause, and instead kept her thoughts on helping Kat. She could get behind that. Kat asked a favour, so she did it. When they came for her, there would be questions. She could say that she didn’t know it was Kat. She just reminded her of her old girlfriend and when a Corps captain asks for help, well, you give it with no questions asked.
She’d been working on her lie to help get her out of this since Zain got involved. There was a small part of her, the suppressed rebellious nature buried under years of fear, cheering on Kat and the rebels. Maybe they’d all achieve their goals and liberate their home worlds. Perhaps the DNA and implant experiments would stop. And, maybe, just maybe, they’d free her, too.
Tears welled in her eyes, but she didn’t bother to wipe them away. It was a hopeless dream. Earth would not rise from beneath its siege. She would never be anything more than a collaborator.
She could have had a different life, if only she’d stayed her ground. If only she’d picked up the phone and dialed Kat. If only she’d called her parents and told them to run and never look back. If only she’d grabbed the pistol from the unsuspecting guard and blasted her way out of her office when they’d come for her and her coworkers. She could have joined the security guards who tried to rescue them. Maybe with one more weapon, they would have all lived. Maybe they would have escaped. Maybe they’d all be free now. Maybe she could have turned the pistol on herself and splattered her brains everywhere, since that’s what she deserved.
Rebecca took a long, deep breath and quelled the rising anxiety in her guts. Now was not the time to panic and run from danger. No matter if she turned herself in, right now, they would still imprison her. Feema was dead. Dags was dead. Everything was changed now. There was no going back.
She worked on the rewiring and uploading. When the signal went up, Kat’s virus would hopefully take out the defensive drones and all of the cameras. Her own work should turn the drones into suicide bombers, taking out walls and soldiers alike.
“Rebecca St. Martin!” boomed a voice down the tunnel.
Rebecca dropped her laser gun in fright and it clattered to the floor.
“Rebecca? What was that?” Nate asked.
“Oh shit,” Rebecca said, not really to Nate.
“Come out. You are under arrest for sabotage.”
“Oh, shit. Shit, shit, shit.” Rebecca grabbed her phone and shoved it into her breast pocket. She glanced at her repair tablet, realized she couldn’t drag it through the corridors, and smashed it against one of the support pillars. The protective screen shattered and the device went dark. It wouldn’t stop them from getting into the device, but it would buy her some time. She shoved on her work helmet to protect her skull and starting crawling deeper into the tunnels.
“What was that?” Nate demanded in her ear. “Rebecca, what is going on?”
“Nate, run. Get away from the comm and run,” she shouted into her earpiece.
The line beeped. “Have you uploaded the virus?” It was Kat.
“The drones nearest the security entrance are still online. Do you hear me?” Weapons fired at her position. “Fuck!”
“What was that?” Kat demanded.
“Do you hear me? The main entrance is still live. It’s…”
“Rebecca St. Martin,” the masculine voice boomed down the tunnel, louder this time. “Come out peacefully or we will use force.”
“Jesus,” Rebecca whispered. Rebecca furiously crawled through the access tubes.
“I’m coming down there,” Nate said.
> “What’s going on? Lowell, is that you?” Kat demanded, the phone having conferenced her calls together.
“Rebecca! Run!” Nate shouted.
“Oh, shit,” Kat said and the background from her call disappeared from the call as she dropped the call.
“Nate, no. Listen, I’m sorry. Okay? I’m so sorry. This is being recorded, right? Tell them you didn’t know. Tell them I tricked you into helping. Nate? Nate? Are you there? Oh god, I smell smoke.”
“Rebecca? Listen to me,” Nate was breathing heavy, like he was running. “You get out of there, do you hear me? Get out of there.”
Rebecca scrambled through the tunnels on her hands and knees, faster than trying to rush in a crouch. Her knee pads protected her from sharp edges and hard surfaces, and she hit the first computer console. The tunnel was filling with acrid smoke; the weapons fire must have caused an electrical fire. Her helmet’s filters weren’t designed for actual fire survival and were letting in too much of the smoke. “Come on, come on.”
“What are you doing?” Nate shouted at her. He was breathing hard now, like he was at a dead run.
She heard the squeak of the fire suppression doors come to life and then they slammed shut. “I closed the west fire door on them, but they can come at me another way. Ah, shit. I don’t think the actual fire suppression is working. Shit, shit shit!”
“Rebecca St. Martin!” someone shouted from a different corridor.
“Nate, oh god. I’m fucked.” Rebecca cried out and went back to crawling further away from her original position, though she had no idea how she was going to get out of there now.
“Are you close to the cleaning drones? Get into the closet. Do you hear me? Get into the closet. Move! Rebecca, move!”
“What the fuck is going on?” Kat shouted in her ear. The background noise around Kat was cutting in and out.
She grabbed a tablet from one of the panel stations to log in, but her ID didn’t work. “Oh, shit. The network is offline. I can’t log in. Shit.” She coughed, as the smoke thickened. Her helmet began flashing a warning in the corner of her vision: she only had fifteen minutes of function filters left before the smoke was going to just pour through. “Oh, God.”
“Get to a closet and lock yourself in before they throw concussion grenades at you.”
She crawled another four meters and grabbed the latch on a small door and pulled hard until it creaked open. She crawled inside with all of the cleaning drones, curling her limbs around the various round robots that kept the chamber clean, and hauled on the door as hard as she could.
Rebecca was trapped between a wall she knew was plastered with explosives on the other side, and a firing squad. Her elbows and hands were bloody, and her skin stung from the sweat seeping into the various cuts and scrapes from crawling over rubble. There was going to be a massive electrical fire on one side of her soon, and there was a dead end to the other side of her. Her coveralls and boots were only fire retardant, and she didn’t even think to grab her gloves. Her breather beeped inside her helmet, signaling that she was nearly out of emergency oxygen now, and she knew the helmet filters were pretty much shot.
She was going to die here. Either the fire would take her, she’d suffocate, or she’d die riddled by bullets and plasma burns.
Fear froze her in place. Rebecca curled into as tight of a ball as possible as pulse waves hit the walls around her. She heard a metal clang and she knew a canister rolled by her door. Her brain screamed to move, but there was nowhere to go.
Her helmet helped shield her from some of the concussive shock, but it wasn’t a military design. It was meant more to protect her head from a flash fire and falling debris, not from grenades. Hell, not even the thin door was meant for this. Her ears rang and the shouting around her was muffled, far away. She knew she was slumped over, but she couldn’t get control of her brain to figure out how to move from this position.
They would execute her. Now, later, it didn’t matter. She had fought so hard not to end up here, and yet here she was. Maybe this was her fate after all, to die forgotten in a heap of smoldering garbage. Maybe that’s all she was: garbage.
More weapons fire. More shouting. More smoke and acrid air seeping in through her filters. The breather stopped beeping, finally empty and useless beyond the additional feeble filters it had.
Then the floor was rocked with an explosion. Her ears rang, even with the protective helmet. A wave of heat filled the room as the entire closet shook. Several drones fell out of their holders and bounced off her arms, which she’d instinctively raised to cover her head and neck. She screamed before passing out.
Nightmare Nine
Rebecca ran from the flames that bellowed through the corridors. She had to get to the cells. She had to rescue the prisoners. She had to get them. She had to prove that she could do something right just for once.
Who were they? She felt like she should know, but she couldn’t quite remember why they were important. But they were important. Anything to get to them.
Rebecca needed to get to the cells, but she couldn’t remember the right way. She tried to follow the sound of screaming, the sound of unabashed agony, but she could never get close enough to it. She recognized a corridor and bumped into Zain.
“This isn’t the right way,” he said. His usual overalls changed and he was in all black with a high-necked collar. “Go back, Rebecca.”
“I have to get through,” Rebecca said, but she couldn’t push her way past him.
Zain threw her up against the wall. His thumb nails pressed into her wrists. A gasp of pain escaped her. “I said no.”
Rebecca struggled, but she couldn’t move. She screamed, but no one came running.
“You’re never going to make it,” Zain said. “He’s going to die.”
Rebecca kicked him and ran away down the corridor. And right into a firing squad.
Chapter 19
Katherine ran toward the explosion just outside of security, as opposed to away from it like every other sane person. Smoke billowed from the remains of two food vendors. Civilians and military alike ran from the flames and smoke.
Dammit, Rowe was early. Something must have happened for her to pull the trigger. She skidded to a stop at a fallen guard. Katherine gave a glance about her, but she was mostly shielded by the smoke and the firefighters who’d arrived to put out the flames. She peeled off the guard’s bullet proof jacket and shrugged it on. It was too big for her, even with the straps tightened as far as she could get them. She tugged off his helmet and grimaced at the blood all over his face. She gave the helmet a shake before shoving it on her own head. Then she grabbed his weapons and his ID badge before heading toward the emergency staircase.
The helmet made breathing a bit easier, thought she still coughed from the smoke she’d already inhaled. Several security personnel came running from the depths of their own area, black smoke and sirens following them. They pushed her out of the way, not giving her a second thought. Many were covered in burns, smudges, and bruises. She didn’t recognize any of them, so she let them go. She wasn’t there to rescue everyone, especially not someone who wore that uniform.
The door to the emergency stairs was missing, so Katherine took that route down, not trusting the elevator shafts to be free of flames.
The floor shook again, causing Katherine to lose her balance and tumble down a set of stairs. She landed well, though, and spotted Rowe of all people. She was scavenging a freshly-shot guard’s corpse. “Rowe!”
Rowe lifted her pistol, cocked her head, and then snorted. “Took you long enough. What the fuck happened? I thought I had another hour.”
“Wait, this wasn’t you?”
“This is too unorganized even by my standards,” Rowe complained. Another explosion up above rocked the stairwell. “Well, I’m pretty sure that was one of security’s backup power cells. Oops.”
“How did you get a bomb into security?” Katherine asked, helping Rowe to her feet. She gave Rowe the
once-over. “You look like a one-woman invasion force.”
Rowe was in full-customized black tackle gear. Two pulse rifles hung over one shoulder. A large messenger bag hung at each hip, straps crisscrossing her chest. One strap had several pulse charges and grenades attached to it. The other had three pulse rifle battery packs taped to it, along with an extra load of ammo for the pistol. A pistol was strapped to either thigh with custom holsters, and she had a knife scabbard on either boot. She also had a thick belt with a multitool, first aid kit, emerg surgery kit, and…
“Is that a chocolate protein bar on your belt?”
Rowe glanced down. “Well, yeah. What if I get hungry?”
“What’s in the bags?” Katherine asked as Rowe passed over one of her pulse rifles.
Rowe pressed a button on the inside of her own helmet and said, “Set frequency match.”
In Katherine’s ear, she heard her own helmet’s VA say, “Frequency match set. Rowe’s Extra Spicy Blood Noodles active.”
“I robbed the pharmacy warehouse twenty minutes ago. That’s where I got the pulse rifles,” Rowe said casually. “Antibiotics, tranqs, stims, narcs. The usual shit that’ll trade for a fortune. My skin rejuv ain’t cheap, baby. Need grenades?”
Katherine shook her head. “You have enough for both of us. Extra spicy blood noodles? Seriously?”
“It’s my VA hacking program. I designed it while I was eating blood noodles in a Marsella transport prison.”
“Of course you did. Okay, we need to get to secure holding. Maybe Rebecca’s still down there.”
They rushed down the stairs, which were surprisingly empty. Though, upon further consideration, Katherine supposed those in the basement were safest down there, whereas everyone in security were rightfully running away from the explosions there.
Where had that second explosion come from. She knew an operative was supposed to put a bomb on the main concourse, but no one had plans for inside the security office. Hell, there wasn’t anyone in the rebellion working in the security office. There wasn’t even a new transfer, expect for Lowell. Katherine stumbled as her brain processed that. Then, she let out a laugh that startled Rowe.
Traitor (Collaborator Book 1) Page 14