by Jacob Gowans
Sammy realized his mistake, but could not change his course fast enough. He brought his hands up to block the blitzer, but felt a smacking thud against the side of his head.
“Ugh,” was all he could say as he fell to the ground unconscious.
* * * * * * *
The blitzer was beyond repair. Not that the Queen was a weapons expert, but she knew enough. After all, the weapon was her own concept. The problem with prototypes like this was they were slow, fragile, and bulky.
Give it five years. The Fourteens won’t know what hit them.
She looked down at the boy’s unconscious form and moaned with desire to kill him.
He broke my nose!
The thought sent waves of rage rippling across her skin. She had already scheduled an appointment with the best plastic surgeons, but not until after this mission. She brought her foot down hard on Sammy’s nose and heard a satisfying crunch.
“Now we’re even.” Then, over her com, she said, “I’ve got Sammy.”
“What’s his status?” came Wrobel’s reply.
“Out cold.”
“I’ve got your signal. There’s a maintenance room in the back of your building. Take him there—it should do the job. On my way with the Alpha right now.”
The Queen hauled Sammy by his hair to the back of the building, taking care to pull his body over as much glass as possible. Small lines of his blood trailed behind them.
At the end of the building’s main hall and to the left was a steel door marked with electrical symbols that only an engineer would understand. Three savage kicks later, the door swung open, and the Queen pulled Sammy into the room over the cold bare floor.
The room was bigger than she’d expected. It probably serviced connections to the satellites and radio towers nearby.
She threw Sammy into a corner and sat cross-legged facing him, her third and last gun (a jigger, her favorite) was aimed at his chest. She could have picked up the pistol, but the filthy kid had touched it, even fired it. No thanks. All she needed now was an excuse—half an excuse—because she had very large doubts about the Fourteen’s grand scheme to kill two birds with one stone.
The back door’s handle emitted a hiss and small wisps of blue smoke drifted up from the keyhole. The Queen pulled a strand of hair out of her face and put it back behind her ear. The door opened and Wrobel came in. His right arm was wrapped around his own subdued hostage, his left carried several pieces of equipment.
“Take him,” he told her. “Watch them both while I set up.”
“Let’s kill this one now,” she said, pointing at Sammy, as she relieved Wrobel of a young Fourteen with brown hair.
“No!” Wrobel shouted.
“Kill him now!” the Queen yelled back. “This one is different. The longer he stays alive the more chance he has of—Byron will never even know!”
Wrobel ignored her, going about setting up two folding metal chairs less than half a meter apart as if she’d said nothing. Then he assembled a small camera on a tripod facing the chairs. She grabbed his arm.
“Wrobel! Kill that kid now!”
“No! We do this my way! You shoot him, I shoot you. Got it?”
The Queen pulled out her jigger again and this time aimed it at Wrobel. “The fox wants him dead.”
“The fox wants me alive even more.”
“You’re useless to him now. They know about you.”
“I’m the one that has access to everything!” he said, tapping his head and glancing at her with a look that instantly broke down her surety. “That virus I put in Byron’s computer is going to be hard to shut down. In the meantime, I can do a lot of damage. If you don’t believe that, kill me. Otherwise, shut up and put your kid on the right chair and the Alpha on the left. Make sure they’re secure.”
“Aren’t you going to sedate him?” the Queen asked, gesturing to Sammy.
“No,” Wrobel answered. “Any more could kill him.”
“Why do we care?” She didn’t bother hiding her dislike of him and his methods.
“I had him handcuffed,” Wrobel said, “he figured out a way to use his blasts to break the cuff.”
“Do you think I’d underestimate him?” she shot back.
“Of course not.” He glanced at her broken and taped nose.
She shoved Sammy into his chair and taped each wrist and ankle separate, bending him over until his face was in his knees. His arms and legs were intertwined with the legs of the chair in such a way that his hands had no mobility.
“Ready to go,” she informed him.
Wrobel had finished tweaking the camera, and after surveying her work, he cleared his throat and spoke: “Charlie. Six. Lima. Zero. Alpha. Seven. India. Four. Romeo. Three. Echo.”
* * * * * * *
On the north end of Baikonur, Commander Byron, Commander Zahn, and Elite Commander Durrant oversaw the removal of over thirty Alphas and two hundred Elite from Baikonur. No attack had come. Not that Byron wasn’t grateful to avoid a conflict, but the whole situation was still a disaster.
For the last couple hours, every com worn by an Alpha had been dysfunctional.
“Oscar Squadron, move all the crates into the cargos!” Byron ordered.
Alphas and Elite soldiers moved like ants around the launch command center. Byron watched them with distant interest as so many unanswered questions wrestled for his attention. Why had there been no attack? What had gone wrong with the coms? Did Victor have something to do with it?
No sooner had the thought crossed his mind then his com screen flipped down.
Incoming call/video feed: Victor Wrobel
Byron’s mouth went dry. He snapped his fingers loudly until an Elite intelligence officer looked up, then Byron waved the man over. “I need a tracer on the line calling my com.”
The Elite officer got to work while Byron answered the call. “Hello, Victor.”
“Walter. Are you tracing my line?”
The commander’s com picked up Wrobel’s video feed, and he saw two hostages in chairs. Cloth bags covered their heads. Byron knew of them was Sammy simply by the clothes he’d been wearing. The other was an Alpha.
“Why are you doing this, Victor?” As he asked, the notion that the Alpha might be his son struck him. “Are these your hostages?”
“No need for hostages anymore,” Wrobel explained. “I’m already on my way out of here.”
“Then what’s the point of this?” Byron asked.
“Because today’s your day of reckoning, Walter.”
Katie Carpenter walked into the scene on the video. She held a jigger in one hand as she walked behind the two hostages and pulled the bags off their heads.
“Victor—Victor, what are you thinking?” Byron asked, trying to find his most calm voice, but failing.
“Think!” Wrobel shouted, looking more unhinged than Byron had ever seen him. Tears swam in his old friend’s eyes. “Think about Claire!”
“Claire?” Byron repeated. “How does this have anything to do with her?”
“I said think!” Wrobel was still shouting while his face became streaked with his tears. His face got uncomfortably close to the camera and bits of his saliva landed on the lens, blurring the image. “You gave the orders on the mission. Do you remember what the order was?”
The memory came back to Byron as clear as if he was there again. Emily falling down the sewer ladder, bleeding, and he, Byron, diving after her, catching her and stopping them both from crashing to the ground with his blasts. Screams from a man and a woman. Blake lying in a pool of his own blood. Claire clinging to the same ladder, her neck bleeding. Victor pulling her the rest of the way up the ladder while she screamed his name. Chaos—chaos everywhere. The enemy retreating, but Emily still bleeding so much. Byron’s hands trembling as he carried her. Trying to pull out the braxels that had drilled too deeply into her body.
“You blame me, Victor?” Byron pleaded. His hands now shook as badly as they had then. “I was trying to save
my wife.”
“Do you remember the order?” Victor’s voice was an inhuman scream. High and shrill like a cat’s.
Byron had to think for only a moment. “Yes, I remember. I was supposed to shield for Claire and myself up the ladder.”
“You see? You see now you stupid son-of-a—”
“My wife was shot! You would have done the same for Claire.”
“EMILY WAS ALREADY DEAD!” bellowed Wrobel. Tears streamed now from his red eyes. “And because of your incompetence Claire had to die, too! You murdered her in your stupidity.”
“Murder—I—” but the words failed to come to him. How could Victor have kept this in for so long? Byron tried to explain, and as he did, his voice grew in power. “It was an accident. The Thirteens killed her. Look who is behind you, Victor. See reason, not madness! She killed them both!”
“Like I said,” Wrobel continued, now with more composure, “this is your day of reckoning. I will not be guilty of murder as you already are. I will allow you to choose.”
“Choose?”
“Which one dies—your son or your prize pupil? My assignment for the last fifteen months has been to kill Samuel. Fortunately, I can now hand that assignment to you.”
“You call yourself innocent?” Byron responded. “Martin Trector? Is his blood not on your hands? What other lives have your actions—your treason—cost us?”
“His blood is not on my hands!” Wrobel said. “I told you—everyone on Psion Command told you they should have had weapons! You ignored us. You threw your weight around and ignored all of us! Now, I’m giving the choice to you. Samuel or Albert.”
Byron’s breathing was labored as he struggled to grasp the insanity facing him. Several people were gathered around him now, but he looked to the Elite intelligence officer who shook his head and pointed to his wrist.
“Give me time to think, Victor, please.” His voice was desperate and solemn.
“One minute,” Victor answered quietly. “And if indecision is your choice, she’ll shoot them both.”
On his small screen, Byron saw Katie standing behind Samuel. Her gun centimeters away from the crown of his head. Her face shone with pure joy. There was a ripple in one of the tiny flecks of spit on the camera, and Byron squinted to try to see better. He could not be sure what he saw. He wiped the sweat from his own eyes, and bowed his head in thought and prayer.
Just as suddenly he lifted it up again. “Have me instead,” he announced. “I will give myself up, I swear it!” His voice was pleading, his tone urgent and humble. “You know I would, Victor. You know it!”
“Thirty two seconds.”
“VICTOR!” Byron yelled, and many people around him jumped. “You are a better man than this!”
Wrobel said nothing, but continued to gaze at his watch.
Byron knew he had to choose.
“Twenty seconds.”
The word coming out of Byron’s mouth tasted obscene, but he said it with conviction. “Albert.”
Wrobel looked at the camera as though he’d misheard. His face paled, and his lips went tight. “What?”
“Albert.”
But Victor nodded to Katie, and she lifted her jigger away from Samuel’s head. A single tear fell from Byron’s eye, and he was grateful his com screen covered it. “I love you, son,” he whispered so quietly that the words would never be heard by Wrobel.
* * * * * * *
Sammy’s hands were useless, but his feet were in perfect position. When Byron chose his son, he heard the shock in Wrobel’s voice. Katie had been standing above him, pressing the barrel of the jigger into his scalp in a very painful way. When the gun pulled away, he knew he had to act.
Using foot blasts, the entire chair shot straight up like a rocket. Sammy threw all his weight back and smashed the back of the chair into Katie’s face. For the second time in two days, he was rewarded with the immense pleasure of hearing her nose crunch, this time, however, it was already broken. He wrenched and twisted his hands, blasting to help them rip through the tape. He succeeded in only loosening them. Then, balancing his weight just right, he landed back on the floor, only to repeat the jump.
Mid-jump, he whirled his body around, chair and all, and gripped her blast suit with his hands as she grabbed at her nose. He threw his weight backwards and jerked at her, flipping her over his head with his momentum. Katie flew into the camera, sending it crashing to the floor, and Sammy landed on the back of his chair, barely keeping his head from smacking the concrete floor. Lying on his back, he could see Wrobel staring at Katie in disbelief.
“Get up!” Wrobel yelled at her.
Sammy struggled with his feet, trying to free them, but Katie had done too good of a job on them. He was stuck. Raising his head as high as he could, he saw Wrobel pulling his own gun from his holster. Sammy did the only thing he could think of. He rocked his body forward with one great heave as he blasted himself bodily into Wrobel, catching the commander in the chest and landing in a heap on top of him.
The collision loosened up his right hand enough that he managed to wiggle it five or six centimeters back and forth. Before he could free himself, Katie got up with a grunt. She scrambled for her gun, moving too fast for Sammy to do anything but react.
He tipped himself off Wrobel and landed the chair on its feet, right side up. The broken tripod lay nearby. Sammy picked it up. Clutching it as best he could with his right hand, he leaned forward and blasted again, trying to stay low, knowing if he overshot his mark, she could easily kill him. Flying through the air, he extended the three metal feet of the tripod and jabbed at her just as she stood.
For Toad.
Two of the three feet caught her blast suit and dug two long bloody slashes in her skin. Then he shot a blast, catching her in the side and shoving her away.
Just before he smacked into a wall, he wrenched his right hand completely free and used a small blast to stop himself. It was not pretty, but he landed and rolled onto his back so he could see properly. Quickly, he released his other hand from the tape. Wrobel seemed down for the count, but Katie gingerly stood, bleeding now from her face, ribs, and arm.
“I can block whatever you’ve got.” He was panting hard, working with one hand to free his feet, ready to shield with the other. “Your suit’s worthless. And sooner or later, my friends will come.”
He knew he was right. He looked ridiculous, and every part of his body hurt in a way he hadn’t felt since being in Stripe’s care, but she had lost.
Katie looked at him with an expression he could interpret only as curiosity. She had won the first and second rounds, but now he had beaten her. There was no fear in her eyes, only respect, intelligence, and ruthlessness so intense that Sammy knew he would never comprehend the depth. He didn’t know how he could understand her so well. Even still, he hated her with such passion . . . because she scared him.
She crossed the room and stood at the entrance of a hallway. At her feet were several small streaks of what Sammy guessed was his own blood. She stopped, turned, and smiled at Sammy. He’d never seen anything so ugly as her perfect lips twisted in a smile. Then she lifted her gun and fired twice at Al. Sammy tried to blast at her, but she was too far.
Al’s head jerked up as Katie left.
“Al!” Sammy fumbled again with the tape around his feet. In his panic, it took several extra moments to free himself. He crossed the room to Al, limping badly on his injured leg. A hole had formed in Al’s clothes over his left breast, but worse, Sammy heard the soft whir of a jigger tunneling. Al’s eyes were open as he gasped in shock.
“HELP!” Sammy screamed to no one as he ripped Al’s flight suit. He tried to get his hands into position to reach the wound. “HELP!”
“Hey,” Al whispered, his face twisted in a grimace of pain. “Hey.”
Sammy stopped yelling.
“Can you stop screaming and pull the braxel out?” Al was trying to smile. “I can’t die. I’ve got to get married soon.”
&nbs
p; “But how . . .?” Sammy sputtered.
“Reach in and get it.”
Sammy held his breath as his index and middle fingers slid into the wound slick with blood and tissue, and pried away the muscle around it. Al moaned in pain and ground his teeth together.
“Don’t do that,” Sammy said through his own gritted teeth, trying to force his fingers deeper. Al cried out as Sammy did so. Finally the tip of his index finger felt the spinning metal object just below it. Taking a deep breath, he forced both fingers around it, and caught it between the tips of his fingernails. It spun hot between them, but he began teasing it out very carefully.
Al screamed longer and louder than Sammy thought was possible for anyone to scream. The braxel continued to spin against Sammy’s flesh, bringing new sensations of pain to his burned thumb, almost causing him to lose his grip. Slowly he pulled it out and dropped it with a clank on the floor. Leaning back from the awkward position, he fell to the floor and breathed loudly. “Now what?”
Al panted and moaned. “Either I bleed to death or they find us . . . or Wrobel wakes up and kills us.”
Sammy stripped off his shirt and compressed it against Al’s wound as best he could. “Well, at least if I get left behind this time, I won’t be in enemy territory.”
Al snorted a tired chuckle. “Please don’t make me laugh,” he grunted. “It hurts just to breathe.”
Sammy wanted to distract Al from the agony, but he didn’t know how. He finally decided just to talk to him. “Can I ask you something?”
“Okay,” came the response.
“It might seem obvious, but I really need to know what you think.”
“Sammy, I’m bleeding badly, just ask . . .”
“Is it worth it? Getting married, having a family? Aren’t you afraid of losing Marie?”
Al coughed a couple of times. The coughs were abnormally thick and heavy. Color drained from Al’s face. “That’s what we fight for, right? Families.”