“Where do you think the ‘pecs actually enter the ground?” Malay whispered. From space, the planet looked like a black-ice marble.
Indeed, Talon had not seen any mountains, cave systems, or much topographic diversity at all.
“Probably with a man-made structure like a bunker door or something,” Talon answered. Her pulse quickened at the idea of just knowing.
A few minutes later, they watched the dots that represented Asher and Jupiter start making their way back towards the ship. They were waiting outside for Kelly and Brody to return.
“What’s taking them so long?” Kierra finally asked when the other twosome had not seemed to move. There were only a few minutes left on the clock.
“I don’t know,” Talon answered honestly. Something didn’t feel right.
“They’re going to have to return soon or freeze to death. These suits only have thirty minutes of heating power,” Logan explained.
Talon watched one of the dots outside the ship walking away in Kelly and Brody’s direction. Everyone’s eyes were glued to the screen as all three dots were essentially on top of each other. Was it Asher or Jupiter that had went? They would at least come back and report. But they didn’t. Now three dots appeared in an eerie state of motionlessness.
“Is it a trap? What if they are all dead?” Kierra asked in horror, breaking their whispering streak.
“Open the door,” Malay said.
After the order was made, one set of footprints came rushing in. Jupiter turned the invisibility off and was shaking violently. “What the hell are they doing?” he said, staring at the dots to confirm they were still unmoved.
“No one has broken radio silence,” Logan pointed out.
“What are we going to do?” Malay asked Jupiter. He was acting command in Kelly and Asher’s absence.
“Didn’t he say to leave in case people were captured or something?” Kierra’s voice quaked. She was shivering herself now, but not from exposure.
“Mission first, people always,” Logan quoted. “Plus, Commodore Dutton would throw us in a black hole if he knew we abandoned his precious baby boy.”
“Should we break radio silence?” Talon asked.
Jupiter sighed. “No, but do not hesitate if anything at all goes wrong. We’ll use a cable to attach ourselves to each other and spread out to cover more ground. We have to hurry. They can’t last that much longer in the outside conditions.”
Talon spoke up calmly. “Let me come with you. You need another set of eyes and ears out there.”
Jupiter nodded. With three men short, he needed her. He gave his orders and the team prepared for dismount. When the side panel flew open, Talon could feel heat being released into the suit, although it wasn’t enough to completely counterbalance the sub-zero temperatures. Under the night vision lenses, the alien planet seemed more strange and intimidating. Even though the night vision was coupled with infrared thermal imaging, the suits were effective at hiding body heat. Everyone really was invisible, making her feel alone and awfully uncomfortable.
Every atom in her body was screaming for her to turn around as she walked further away from the safety of the ship. The only redeemable factor of it all was the thick cable holding them all together in a line, although that was creepy too. She watched as it floated and dragged seamlessly forward in uncanny silence.
The edge of the valley was a fifty yard walk. Kierra and the pilots remained on the ship and Logan was positioned right outside in case a quick exit was needed. Malay was stationed at the half way point, and Jupiter and Talon were given the job to investigate the motionless dots that represented three men – one of which was Aberdeen’s husband. Talon had to bring him home safely.
As they jogged closer to the valley, Talon’s thermal imaging picked up the gas leaking from the vent of interest. She squinted her eyes down the small incline. She wanted to see the soft glow of warm bodies, but of course, she didn’t. Even if her comrades were screaming for help, she wouldn’t hear them in the atmosphere-less environment. It was either good or very bad they hadn’t broken radio silence.
A location burst displayed in her helmet. Kelly, Brody, and Jupiter looked to be halfway down the valley in the direction of the vent. She felt uneasy, but tried to imagine what could have happened to make them disappear so mysteriously. Could there be a ravine they inadvertently slipped into, or was it black ice that was preventing them from climbing back up the incline? Red flags began flying with an almighty vengeance. If the Sinupecs knew of their presence, this could be a trap.
Don’t go down there! Run! Get out! Her conscious mind was screaming at her. She always trusted her instincts. Go down the valley. She remembered the note from the hooded figure on the moon. Talon knew this was what it meant. Aberdeen had listened to her directions and brought down a huge money laundering scheme. Was their mysterious person a vigilante? Should Talon trust her? How did she know Talon would be standing here? This decision, Talon realized, was one of the toughest she’d ever had to make. Trust her instincts, or trust a mysterious stranger that might very well be Lennon.
Jupiter was standing next to her with the rappelling pack in his hand. If anyone should risk being captured or killed, it was she who should be sacrificed. Plus, they needed someone strong to lift the other person back up the icy slope. Without speaking, she gently tugged the pack with one hand and laid another on his shoulder. Let me go, she said in a silent gesture. She pulled the harness out and slipped it on as Jupiter jammed the anchor into the ground. They worked fast to put the ropes on the rappel anchor and secure Talon with locking carabiners.
She stepped down the hill and leaned backwards ever so slightly to ensure a secure fitting. The hill down wasn’t steep enough for rappelling and so she turned around and began walking normally. Her boots were fitted with cleats for ice walking, and she could feel the metal spikes digging like little knives into the frozen landscape below. She concentrated on following the footprints of her lost comrades. They were so faint Talon wondered if they were a figment of her imagination. She inched down the hill, giving full concentration to her senses.
Where were they, she wondered, after another location burst had her right on top of them. Her question was answered when she took a step and tripped over an object. Before she face planted she knew exactly what it was…a body. She lifted herself onto her knees and shook the person with all her might, but they did not move. Between her hands was a dead body. Who was it, she wondered? She hit the invisibility button on their suit and then reached for the latch button on the helmet, praying Kelly wasn’t underneath. Just as she went to take it off, Talon lurched backwards.
Jupiter began towing her up the hill. He was strong, and she began sliding backwards, unable to do much but dig her spikes into the ice and help. Finally she found her footing, but Jupiter jerked her with too much strength and sent her toppling over to her knees and then to her stomach. She looked up, but could not see him.
“What’s going on?” Malay broke radio silence. She must have felt the cable oscillating in threat. “What are you seeing?”
Jupiter did not bother answering. He was too concerned about pulling Talon back up the hill. Suddenly the cable went limp and she watched in horrified shock as a heated projectile flew down the hill and seemed to disappear into thin air right next to her.
“What the hell?” Talon screamed. She couldn’t see or hear anything around her on the seemingly barren landscape. Who was he shooting at? What did he see that she couldn’t?
Jupiter was taking several shots now, which allowed Talon to find her footing and start racing back up the hill. The cable that tethered her jammed into the ground and a wall appeared out of nowhere. What little photons existed were completely gone now, leaving her in absolute blackness.
“Hello? Malay? Jupiter?” Talon called over the radio.
“I’ve been shot. Cut the cable and dust off! Now!” Jupiter ordered.
“Co…,” Malay began to say before being cut off.
<
br /> “Hello? Does anyone copy?” Nothing.
Lights turned on and she was no longer standing on the icy hill, but trapped inside four walls of concrete. She reached out and touched the cold slab. It was covered with the same technology as her suit. The building had been cloaked, externally and internally. She turned around and gasped at the sight of three bodies lying on the floor in front of her. No. Please, God, no. They wanted her to walk down the hall beyond them. Her muscles weren’t working. She leaned against the wall, frozen. Then the sound of gas filled the room. It was the last thing she remembered.
18 PRISONERS
“Talon!”
Talon jerked awake to her shoulders being shaken.
“Oh, thank goodness! I thought you were dead!” Kierra was breathing heavily.
“Wh…where are we?” Talon managed to say through her massive headache. She looked down at herself laying on the cold floor of a prison cell. She had on the same attire – a white tank and black slacks, which weren’t any more dirtied than they had been before.
“I don’t know.”
“How long have we been here? Where are the others? What happened?” It was like a dream. In addition to her pounding temples, it felt like she may be concussed. Her short-term memory was shot.
“I’m not sure what happened to you.”
“What about the others?”
She simply shook her head and her gaze fell to the floor.
They were dead. Talon had learned not to linger on the loss of comrades when the situation at hand required all of her mental capacity and none of her emotions. “What happened here?” she said, laying a finger on the side of Kierra’s bruised head.
“The pilots sent out a distress beacon and then opened the door for Logan and then they ran in.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know, I couldn’t see them. I just remember the pilots going down and then everything went black.”
It sounded like she had been knocked out by the butt of a gun. Talon felt the side of her own head for soreness but felt nothing.
Why did they put them together in the same cell, Talon wondered? She probed Kierra’s memory for more information. What did these men say? Did they have accents or speak another language? Kierra tried to recall everything, but her details were understandably fuzzy. Unlike Talon, she wasn’t trained to recount the particulars of an event – and remembering a dangerous one was especially difficult.
Next Talon swept the room, but there wasn’t much to assess. They were surrounded by reinforced steel from the floor to the low-hanging ceiling. The only exit was a door, which had no opening mechanism from the inside. There were no windows, ventilation ducts…or plumbing. She grimaced at the sight of the bed pan in the corner.
“It looks like I’m going to get to see you pee after all,” Talon tried to make a joke.
“Huh?” Kierra regarded Talon with a confused expression.
“Remember…you were afraid I would see you pee or pick your nose…oh, never mind.” Only a sick person…like her…would make jokes at a time like this anyways.
The only redeemable part of the space was the small ledge for seating on one side of the room. Talon sighed. They were in a fortress. She would have to scheme an escape through the door, but first, she needed to know who was on the other side.
The voice of a screaming woman carried through the steel. Talon could have sworn the woman called out her name. She looked at Kierra for confirmation, but her friend was covering her ears and sobbing now. The screaming stopped as quickly as it had begun.
“Kierra.” Talon ran to her sitting on the cold bench.
“Talon, I shouldn’t have come! I’m not supposed to be here! I’m going to die!” she bawled. “I had such a good life with Marco.”
“They let you live for a reason, Kierra. I won’t let anything happen to you.” Certainly Kravis wouldn’t kill her maid of honor. Did her dad simply have a soft spot for Talon’s friends or was Kierra a piece in his manipulative game? If so, how? Was he going to use her as a bargaining chip?
“How do you know?”
“I just know.”
“What’s going to happen to us? Are we going to get tortured?”
“They might be bad guys, but they’d only torture you to get information. Do you know anything top secret?”
Kierra shook her head with a whimper.
“Well, then you have nothing to worry about.”
“Are you going to get us out?” Her eyes were as pleading as a puppy’s.
Normally, Talon would be confident in her abilities, but even if she and Kierra were successful in escape, there was nowhere to run on this forsaken glacier.
“How long will that emergency beacon take to get to the military ship?”
Kierra scrunched her nose as she did the math. “A couple days maybe.”
“What!” she wasn’t expecting that answer.
“We rode here FTL, remember? It has to take a natural speed back.”
It certainly gave them time to come up with a plan. Eventually this place was going to have an army raining down on them. Talon wanted to escape and find somewhere to hide until that hour, but wherever they were was more technologically advanced than she imagined. The Sinupecs had already demonstrated their means rivaled that of the military. Even if they could escape this room, they would most likely find them. Talon contemplated another route…lying.
She hadn’t seen or spoken to her father since Caleb Burger’s apartment, and her graduation present was the only sign since that he was still alive and interested in her. In those few minutes she heard him speak through the mask of the Extension, she realized he was the worst kind of demagogue…and Talon could see why. His followers were undeniably loyal to his cause, whatever that was. She couldn’t discern what his ramblings about destiny meant, but would he have so many supporters if there weren’t some substance to it all?
She reflected over the course of history. There were plenty of examples of lost or angry people who followed a charismatic and confident leader that ended up being criminally insane. And she knew for a fact Kravis was in that category. Her dad actually believed Talon would be working with him, side by side, in some crazy father-daughter evil duo. The notion sent goosebumps racing down her extremities and she shook the anxiety out through her wrists. Despite how disturbing his fantasy was, she could use it to her advantage now.
He hadn’t harmed her, and she had a gut feeling he wouldn’t. What if she faked an armistice? Led him to believe she was willing to cooperate? She could manipulate this situation much better if she could just get out of this room. If power is what he wanted to give her, then she would gladly take it and use it against him at an opportune moment. But first she had to convince him…
She felt the room shake ever so slightly and heard a humming sound. It became lower and lower pitched until it finally stopped.
“What was that?” Kierra asked.
“I don’t know. I felt a little movement. I think this room is…movable.” Much like the conference room Talon first had her debriefing in about the moon, their prison cell seemed to use the same technology. The question was whether their jailors moved them closer or further away from the hallways of their underground base. She waited and waited, poising her senses to pick up any indication of life beyond the steel door, but nothing seemed to be different than before.
“You’re pacing like a caged animal,” Kierra pointed out after an hour of Talon’s back and forth movement.
“I just want someone to come to the damn door!”
“Well, why don’t you just ask?”
“That’s not a bad idea.” Talon could not fill Kierra in on any plans in case the room was bugged. She traced the words ‘trust me’ on her friend’s leg and Kierra acknowledged with a nod. Satisfied, she walked back over to the impenetrable steel door and banged. The echoing of metal rang in her ears. “Hello! I need to talk to someone!” Nothing. Talon yelled through the door for another fifteen minutes to no av
ail. She turned to Kierra and pointed at her leg. It was a question. Kierra dipped her chin again.
“I am the daughter of Kravis and I demand to see him…or someone!” Nothing. “I want to see my father! I’ve been searching for him for weeks! I have something I need to tell him!” They continued to mock her attempts at communication with silence. “What the hell!” she cursed frustratingly.
Kierra was looking at her with wide-eyed astonishment. “I didn’t know. That’s why we’re all here. It makes total sense now.”
Talon neither confirmed nor denied the authenticity of her words, but for the first time since they had been trapped in the metal cell, Kierra stood from the ledge. Talon clearly registered anger begin pulling Kierra’s brows together. Her friend puffed out air in a display of disbelief and finally said, “You are so selfish, you know that?”
“Excuse me?”
“You sought me out to use me. That’s all I am to you, a way to get you closer to your dad. I’m going to die here because of you.”
Talon was dumbfounded. “You’re the one who decided to sneak aboard the military ship and be involved. You could have gone home. Don’t blame this on me. And you’re not going to die for the tenth time.”
“Not just me. You will use anyone to get what you want,” she spat. “How many lies have you told to get here right now? How many people have you used? Marco told me what Levi said. You’re not marrying him until you reach your career goals. This is what you’ve left him behind for? Reuniting with your insane dad? You really are crazy to choose this over him.”
“Is this the pills talking?” It was a serious question, but Talon only seemed to provoke Kierra more. She watched all the muscles in her face tighten.
“He’s on Earth, and from what I hear, it’s not going very well there. It’s not the pills, Talon, I’m being a decent human being who worries about her friends.”
“I am worried to death about Levi. I asked if you trusted me—”
“Well, I don’t anymore. You can’t go around abandoning your family and breaking the rules and quitting your job and sneaking around to get what you want,” she hissed, her voice growing louder as she ran off the list of Talon’s discretions. “People are dying!”
An Eagle's Revenge (Across the Infinite Void Book 2) Page 23