"This is my mission," he said.
Chloe gazed at him.
A tingling sensation rippled under his forehead as she reached out with her mind, trying to feel his sudden thoughts to the question. But he wasn’t a computer controller in an old Lunaran hangar. "Don’t probe me," he said.
"Fine," she said, sharply. "Go with Shannon. Let Mars do what it wants with you. The planet ruined your entire life, and it might as well finish you off. I can’t stand to be in your shackles a minute longer." She pivoted away from the group and stormed through the exit port. Jan followed her.
Seth turned to Parker. "Guard her. It is only a matter of time before the MSA come looking for her. Hans Bauer will continue until he captures her. He wants her more than me."
"I know," Parker said, placing his hand on his shoulder. "I won’t let them have her. I promise."
Parker closed the access door, the loud clunk echoing through the corridor. This section led to the service elevator of the processing plant and his first stop in finding the metalor cache.
Jan moved up beside him while Chloe leaned against the wall, still brooding over her argument with Seth. "Are they gone?"
He nodded. "I escorted them to their hovercar. They will contact us with anything they might need."
"Sounds good," Jan replied, absently. She was concentrating on the sonic pistols in his hand. "Do we need those to study the metalor?"
"You can’t tell who in the Alliance is against us," he said, handing her a pistol. "MSA infiltration is the reason we are so fractured now. I don’t want to take any risks."
"I guess we should be prepared for anything."
"Chloe," Parker said. "This one is for you."
"You think a gun will solve our problem," she said. "I need metalor and from different sources. A lot of them."
"Take it," he said, going up to her and forcing it into her hand. "Don’t take your frustration out on me. I’m not Seth."
"I don’t care about him," she said. "He is a pompous ass. I’m mad because everyone set out to betray me."
"No one betrayed you," Parker said. "I promised Seth I would keep you safe, and I’m honored he asked me to protect you. You are just angry you couldn’t read our minds beforehand."
"I don’t understand how this..." she said, waving the holstered gun at him, "is going to help us."
"We’re about to go down to the subsections of the complex, three kilometers under the ground, and MSA infiltrators are among the people guarding the Aethpisian metalor supply."
"Arrest the infiltrators," Chloe replied. "How hard is it?"
"We can’t all read minds," he said. "The Alliance is struggling because we can’t find them until they act against us."
Chloe shrugged. "What are we supposed to do, then?"
"I’m trying to tell you what we are going to do, but you keep sticking on every point," he said.
"Go ahead and tell us," Jan said from their side. "We’ll follow your plan."
"Well first…" he said, then scanned the corridor, bolted toward a row of shelves ten meters away, and came back moments later. "Put this on." He thrust a hooded pullover coat toward Chloe. "Put the hood on and shadow your eyes."
She pulled the hooded coat over her shoulders and fastened it shut. The arms were a few inches too long but the hood was perfect—big and ballooning over her face.
"According to the inventory data, twenty to thirty bins contain pure metalor, and they are all kept in the supply room. I wouldn’t have any trouble getting in," he said, pausing to make sure they were following what he was saying. "The problem lies with the MSA infiltrators. I can’t tell who is with us and who isn’t."
"That shouldn’t be a problem for me," Chloe said, pointing to her head. "I can tell…probably."
"That is part of the plan," he replied.
"So Chloe will go around touching every metalor sample until she finds something?" It was clear that Jan objected. "You can’t expect us to run a viable search with MSA running around."
"I’m not suggesting we make ourselves noticeable. We’ll take a handful from each of the different bins. Their ID tags should separate it," he said. "Sarah said these supplies are years old. They should run parallel with the MSA and Minister Cortez’s operations."
"Sounds good," Jan said.
"I guess we have a plan then." He gazed at Chloe. "Remember…allow me to do all the talking."
At the end of the corridor, they boarded the elevator. He swiped his access card, hit the last button to the end, and the elevator jerked as it started its descent.
Parker, taking the first to step off the elevator, noticed immediately that this room was completely different from the corridors and the processing plant. It was as if he was in a different building. Gone were the smoothed edges, safety lights, and overall decor of a well-maintained facility. Instead, the room was cavernous; along the sides, burrow machines had buffed the walls to an inconsistent finish, with noticeable cracks in the foundation. The ceiling was varying in height, some twenty meters above him, and at the far end, the height varied from thirty to fifty meters.
He walked farther along, staying within the marked lanes, which were painted yellow and stretched for hundreds of meters. Outside of the lane markers in the storage areas, industrial-sized shelves lined the entire cavern. Most were filled with machine suppliers, mining equipment, or computer-scored bins—a definite industrial feel to the room.
As he reached the main laneway, to his left he saw three massive burrowing machines lying covered in red dust. No doubt, they were the same machines that had carved this once-jagged cavern into a serviceable dwelling. But no metalor signs said ‘right here.’
The girls walked up behind him. He tilted his head and saw Jan fiddling with her breathing mask. It was harder to breathe. The air was musky with a hint of rusted iron. He noticed the thin atmosphere right away but thought nothing of it. He had been in worse oxygen-depleted areas, especially exploring the Lunaran tunnels.
"Where is the metalor?" Chloe’s voice echoed through the cavern. They winced. "Sorry," she whispered under her hood.
He swiveled around, searching for any sign of life or movement. "We are alone. And please don’t speak; they’ll no doubt have voice scanners at the ready."
"They could be in any of these bins," Jan said. "These scorings on the bins can only be read by computers, so we have no way of knowing what is in any of this."
"Don’t be so pessimistic." He smirked with a crooked smile. "There should be an area where all the metalor is located."
"Where?"
"No signs, so we should look. You go this direction." He pointed for the girls to go to the left. "And I will go this way." He jabbed his thumb toward the right path.
"Sounds like a plan," Jan said, then turned to Chloe. "Ready?"
Chloe held her gun against her hip, nodded, and followed Jan down the laneway. As soon as they turned around the corner, Parker turned and headed down his path.
After a couple of dead ends, he was beginning to wonder if it was such a good idea to split up. He wasn’t any closer to the metalor supplies, although he had spotted several interesting pieces of equipment he would love to get his hands on for the Protector.
Even though there seemed to be no danger, he couldn’t help but worry about the girls. They weren’t within immediate reach, and he had learned from this war that you keep your loved ones as close as possible—anything could happen on Mars.
Interesting, he thought, looking toward the shelves in front of him. He picked up a small hydrogen converter and twisted and turned it to see every side—
Then across the cavern, an echoing scream wailed.
Instinctively, his hand was at his side, ready to draw his gun. He listened for a long moment, waiting for the next sound. He heard nothing aside from the pounding of his heart and the lengthy breaths from his mouth.
Then he heard a clanging of metal on metal and another scream. That was definitely the high-pitched scream of Chloe.
He pivoted round and dashed in the direction from which the scream had come. When the third scream came, he was thirty paces away from their starting point.
A minute later, he rushed down the left path, pointing his gun, and then hurried down the uncharted territory of the supply cavern. Luckily for him, this path wasn’t as winding. After a long stretch, voices carried enough for him to get a sense of where they were coming from, but he couldn’t hear the words. He stopped to listen.
Hunched and ready to shoot, he crept along the laneway. As he edged closer to the voices, he found a group of people in an open area to the back of the cavern. He saw Jan and a hood-free Chloe, two men behind the girls to protect their flank, and three more men in front, all pointing their guns toward Jan. Obviously, the value of their hostages wasn’t lost on them.
One against five, and he was the one. On top of all that, he had to make sure they didn’t shoot Jan or Chloe.
"Are you Chloe Jones?" the man said, pressing the gun against Jan’s head.
Parker winced at the all-too-real threat to get Chloe to speak.
"I will make Mars redder. Don’t think I won’t do it."
Don’t say anything, Parker thought. He needed Chloe to stall—to hesitate long enough—for him to formulate a plan.
"No, I’m Chloe Smith," Chloe said. "I would ask you to lower your gun. You have no intention of shooting her."
"Shut up," the leader snarled. "I intend to kill the pair of you—maybe. If you don’t cooperate. Have a problem with that?"
"I understand your position." Chloe, apparently recovered from the panic that had produced her screams, was eerily calm. "You are part of the MSA, and you wish to turn me over to them to gain favor with the regime."
The leader of the group laughed. "MSA! Why would I join them?"
The man beside the group’s leader stepped toward them, holding a hand-sized gadget with two sensors sticking out of the top. "It is her. Voice tracker confirms it."
Parker winced but remained as silent as possible. He had warned her not to talk.
The leader’s face beamed with satisfaction. "Excellent. I guess we don’t need this one."
"Turning me over will not gain favor with the MSA. They already divided the power and won’t relinquish their roles to reward you." Chloe tapped her chin with her index finger. "You should think about this logically."
"I told you to be quiet," the leader said with a sneer. His blackened teeth signaled his status as a converted raider from the revolutionary war. Obviously, he was relapsing back into his old ways. "We are doing this for the reward money. They promised us top- notch lodging on Zephyria to bring you in."
"Each of you," Jan scoffed. "Hardly. You guys better decide who will be the only one getting the reward and who will be getting the shaft."
"I said, be quiet." The leader pressed the barrel harder against Jan’s head. She gritted her teeth. Then he tilted his head toward the two men behind him. "They are just trying to rattle us. The MSA are generous people, and Miss Burns will keep her word."
"What are we going to do about the other one?" the largest of the men said from behind the girls.
"Kill her," the leader replied. "I want to retain our cover."
Kill her! That was all Parker needed to hear. He picked up a retrorocket gauge from the shelf closest to him, pulled his arm back as if he was tossing a grenade, and sent the gauge across the lane.
It crashed against the shelving on the opposite side, and the men swung their heads in the direction of the sound.
Parker darted into the open area, exposing himself to the men. With three quick shots, he took down the two large men closest to him and yelled for Chloe and Jan to run toward him. The two men hit the ground with a thud, and the three remaining men swung around with their guns pointed at him.
He dove behind the shelf on the bisecting laneway. Bullets ricocheted off the metal in front of him as he pressed against the cover the shelves provided.
A clicking sound told him that the men were reloading, which gave him the opportunity to peek around the corner for an instant.
Only meters away, Jan was hunched behind several piping drums, and the two downed men lay unmoving on the floor, blood spreading on the ground around them. The three other men had scrambled behind another set of drums and spindles. But he didn’t see Chloe at all.
He swiveled his head to the right and picked up her flickering movements through the supply shelves as she ran down the lane parallel to the one he was in. Her legs couldn’t move any faster. Her quick escape wasn’t unexpected but it was problematic for him. Sure, she was moving away from their attackers, but she was also running farther from him. He had no way of knowing where she was going.
After another series of ricocheting bullets whizzed by his head, he swung his arm out and fired several shots toward the three men. They dove back into cover. He was about to wave for Jan to follow, but she was already ahead of his thoughts and was beside him. He fired another series of shots and followed her down the laneway.
"We have to find Chloe!" Jan yelled over her shoulder. "Where is she?"
"Keep going straight," he called. "She was running parallel. She should be right ahead of us."
He craned his neck around. He saw two of the men rounding the corner. He twisted his torso while stepping his right foot over his left, twirled, and fired until his gun clicked. No more bullets.
Fortunately for him, the shots he did manage to get off were effective enough to send the two men scrambling for cover. He heard one of the men scream, and as he whipped his head around, he saw the man closest to him grab his leg.
"One more down!" he yelled to Jan who had run ahead and was standing in the laneway. He pulled up beside her and scanned behind him. After he had shot the one man, the other appeared to have become more cautious, and Parker couldn’t discern where he was.
He released the magazine clip from his pistol. "Why did you stop?"
Jan took in several short breaths. "Because you said she was running parallel to us," she replied, pointing through the shelves toward the laneway Chloe went down. "Our lane runs straight. Her lane turns and runs perpendicular."
"Jinx," he said. Then a thought came to him. "Do you still have your gun?"
"I managed to pick up this pea-shooter from one of the bigger guys." She held up a six-shot sonic revolver.
"Okay," he said, clipping in a new magazine into his pistol. "You run ahead, and I will cut through the shelving to find Chloe."
She nodded. "I’ll look for a way out of here."
Hearing the pops of the gunfire and perceiving a sudden fading in the minds of the two larger men behind her, Chloe immediately pivoted her ankle and sprang down the laneway to her left.
Pop! Pop! Pop! She cringed. The end was only a hundred meters away and she wasn’t stopping for anything—not with gun-wielding kidnappers on her trail.
When she reached the end of the laneway, she sidestepped to the right and slowed to a jog to scout her next turn. The pops of more gunfire, the flashes of light against the ceiling, and the horrific echo that followed, all made her flinch. Sure, she was safe, but her friends were fighting for their lives, and she could do nothing for them. She was no longer armed, her body was too weak to overpower anyone, and her mind was racing too fast to project any telepathic help. She was panicked, plain and simple.
Her only choice would be to keep her pace to draw the attackers away. She stumbled around the next turn, trying to focus her mind and release most of her angst. She had yet to acclimate to the strong and more persistent fixed gravity of Mars. With great heaves, she panted as she raced down laneway after laneway toward the opposite side of the cavernous room.
She stopped as the dismay at meeting another dead end punished her. No way out of this place. She was lost.
"Where are you, young lady?" The voice was terrifyingly memorable. It was the man who had spoken to the leader, and judging by the sound of the call, he was only a few laneways behind her.
Chloe accelerated. Her legs burned with each push. He was right behind her, and she didn’t have a plan to where she was going. She rounded the next corner.
Dead end.
She muttered every terrible word her mother warned her not to say. She turned around, and a jolt of terror overwhelmed her. The barrel of a gun pointed at her, and she sunk into the corner of the laneway, sobbing.
"Get up," the man said. "Don’t make me pistol-whip you."
"Shut up," she replied. "You are pointing the barrel of a gun in my face, and you’ve the audacity to taunt me with verbal threats."
"I got the gun here," the man said. "I say what happens, and what happens is you follow me to my ship."
"I don’t think so."
"Why not?"
"Because," she said, looking over the man’s shoulder. "You’re outnumbered."
"What?" He twirled his body around, gun rising from his waist to chest height, and fired uselessly against the shelving, because before he knew what was happening, Parker had fired his sonic pistol into him.
The bullet exiting from the man’s back sprayed blood across her face. The man slumped to the ground, lurched to the side, and spread out dead on the floor.
"You okay?" Parker shouted.
She didn’t quite know if she was okay. She wasn’t hurt physically, but emotionally, she was still shaken and a tad out of sorts. At the forefront of her mind were her struggles with Hans Bauer, and she never wanted to go back to him again. She had thought she could handle Bauer, but the experience she had just gone through scared her. These men were ruthless and greedy. Seth and Shannon had been right; the MSA would be relentless in their pursuit.
"I’m fine," she said, stepping past the dead man toward Parker. He scanned her, searching for any physical clue that she was hurting. She felt his worry and said, "I’m fine. Are they all dead?"
He shook his head. "No, we still have the leader. I wounded the other man."
She sensed remorse pulling at Parker’s mind, creating doubts about their mission. "There was nothing you could have done for this man. So stop thinking about any of them. They would’ve killed Jan. Their hearts were colder than a Pluto winter."
Lunara: The Original Trilogy Page 52