Under Shadows

by Jason LaPier

  Safety protocols. The fire had released them from their cells. To be evacuated from the area. And the maglocks would have no effect without their clothes.

  There was no stopping them now, but he could slow their progress. They were intending to come back through the same locking hatch, but Runstom knew the other door would not open until the one he held was closed. He thought he might be able to wedge something in there, but the only solid object on his person was his blaster. He decided not to part with it. Rifling around his pockets with one free hand, he brushed something stiff. Pulled it out. A severed finger.

  He took the chance that the door couldn’t tell the finger was already severed and slid it into the opening. Quickly pulled his own fingers free. The door twitched by a millimeter then froze, the long, white finger held between it and the frame. It waited patiently for the owner to remove their extremity from danger.

  It would be waiting a long time.

  Runstom pulled his way back down the corridor, once again passing the floating remains of the guards that had tried to stop the Wasters. Spherical pools of gore were beginning to collect, with no gravity to spread it. He carefully steered himself around the mess. Liquids tended to get clingy in zero-G and the last thing he wanted at that moment was to carry the blood of the fallen around on his clothes.

  He came to an intersection. He didn’t want to go back the way he and Chen and the other two came; there was no telling what kind of shape the yard was in. If he could get to one of the outer guard towers, he could get a better picture of the situation. Once he’d thought of it, he realized the others had probably gone up to one of the towers as well.

  His map was near useless, but at least it was a map. The nearest towers were above Yard Beta. The towers were not towers in the same sense that the yards were not yards, but close enough to the same functions that the original terms were kept. As he inspected the holo-map, he realized the ringed corridors were shifting. This was a function of the facility he had not seen, except for in the Core. Was it in response to the fire, or to the assault? What was the point? In any case, it meant his ruse to delay the Wasters behind him would be short lived; they would be able to go around and reach any of the yards in time. In fact, they were probably splitting up, sending a contingent into the other cellblocks as well. They would spread like a virus and infect the whole prison within the hour.

  He checked his gun again. Ninety-eight percent. He tried not to think of the leaking charge as a countdown timer and moved on. The hatch to his destination should have been blocked to a low-ranking guard such as himself, but the panel flashed brazenly that it was unlocked and safe to use as an evacuation route.

  *

  The guard tower wasn’t meant to hold so many, and there were a lot of banged elbows and knees resulting. Chen had managed to get the other two guards safely there, but now the three of them were antsy, feeling useless. Being useless, Runstom realized. There were a few other guards stationed in the tower trying to do their job, which mainly consisted of tracking all the inmates in Yard Beta and the connecting corridors. Through a round cage at one end of the tower, the turret could be seen. Manned by a gunner actively trying to control the chaos in the yard. The sound of the laser was a pale hum, outspoken by the whining actuators that were in constant motion as the beam tracked its targets.

  He’d only been there twenty minutes, but the situation was deteriorating. By the chatter on the radio – which was set to loudspeaker mode, so that all in the tower could hear it – the Wasters were advancing all over the place. Some of them had taken over one of the special guardhouses that contained a security terminal. It was just a matter of time before they started making their way to the docks.

  Flashes of the first prisoner barge infected his mind. They’d torn it apart. If they made it to the docks, they’d find a way to rip the facility into pieces. It would no longer be a prisonbreak. The words of Moses Down. It would be war. The Wasters had been pushed, and they would push back.

  The murmured conversations around the room hushed. Runstom’s ears pricked. The radio.

  … is Tower Beta Two … we … ack … ZZT … no!… hellllpaaaAAAH…

  “Can they get to the turret in that tower?” The young woman from Chen’s group. Her voice quivered, her stare fixed on the grate-like portal between them and the turret in their own tower. “Can they fire it?”

  Chen looked at one of the guards stationed in the tower. “No,” he said with a grunt. “Gotta have the right clearance to pass through the cage. Right?”

  The other guard looked at them in silence for a terrifyingly long second. “Riiiight,” he said. Before anyone could relax, he added, “But you can’t even get to the tower without some clearance.”

  Runstom noticed the man had given himself a discreet shove in the direction of the back of the tower. It registered. If the Wasters had gotten into Tower Beta Two, then they were subverting security. What would stop them from using the turret?

  There was a scope attached to one of the walls. Runstom had used it to scan the yard and surrounding corridors for activity. Had scanned with it obsessively for ten or fifteen minutes before the measured advance of the enemy became too exhausting to watch. He looked through it again, this time aiming it at the other tower. Panning to the turret. A large white blob filled his view. When his eyes focused, it became a man. Pale white skin like a domer, but as wide as a Sirius-Fiver and as tall as a B-fourean.

  Through the scope, names hovered above any identified person in the view. Names derived from a ModPol database somewhere, correlated by facial recognition and whatever else it needed. It would show stats or other info if Runstom knew how to operate it properly. But he didn’t, so it only showed names. Like the figures in the picture had little flags tacked to the backs of their heads. Not all of the infiltrators were identified, but some had been arrested before and were in the system. Eventually, it recognized them. The big Sirius-Fiver’s flag said Gary White.

  Gary White was in the process of beating and extracting the turret’s previous operator. Blobs of red plasma floated behind the clear sphere that surrounded the controls of the gun. White swatted them aside. Strapped into the control chair. The barrel fixed to the bottom of the sphere began to rotate.

  Runstom jumped back from the scope. Momentarily forgetting the lack of gravity, his jump was more of a twisting flinch that sent him into the panic-space of the room where there was nothing to grab onto.

  “They got it!” he shouted. “They got the other turret! I think they—”

  He was cut off by a shrieking, tearing sound. They all turned to face the grating that led to their own turret control sphere. The scream from within, quickly cut off. The suck of decompression. The room spinning.

  Runstom was no longer free-floating, he was being pulled. He grabbed the hand of one of the other guards who was latched to a handhold on the wall. He looked up the length of his arm briefly. It was Chen. He looked down at his feet, the source of the pull. Quickly understanding. White had turned one gun against the other. Blasting a hole through the control sphere.

  Air rushed past him and his eyes began to water. There was something moving, just beyond the grate. A round hatch mechanism, twisting shut. Over the sound of the wind he could hear Chen moaning. He gripped Runstom’s hand tighter, so tight that it felt like it might squeeze them apart.

  Then the iris was closed and the air pressure stabilized. A hiss of replacement air coming through unseen vents. Chen tugged Runstom toward the wall, then released his hand. Runstom caught the nearest handhold.

  The screeching sound began again, only slightly muted.

  “They’re blasting through the door!” one of the other guards shouted. “They’re going to smoke the whole tower!”

  “We gotta get out of here!” Chen yelled, thrusting himself toward the rear hatch.

  Runstom followed, and so did the others, as well as they could. Which wasn’t very well. They were all disoriented and banged up. Chen hit the panel a
nd the hatch spun open, revealing the small tube-like lock beyond. They’d have to all cram into it in order to cycle the doors and get out the other side.

  Runstom was the third one in. He’d managed to grab a handle on the floor when another blast broke through the tower. Again the rush of air, this time accompanied by the whining bend of metal.

  He looked back and the scene of flying debris and bodies was slowly getting smaller. The door was closing, before they ran the cycle. A safety feature, he realized: it was closing due to the sudden drop in air pressure. His stomach was in his throat as he saw three bodies batted around like leaves in the wind, disappearing beyond the wall at the other end of the tower.

  The last body was Chen. He was pulling his way across the floor, one handhold at a time. His form disappeared from view as the door’s opening shrank.

  Runstom remembered the finger – the door would stop if it detected a body part in its path. Leveraging himself with one hand gripping a hold tightly, bracing one foot against the floor, he raised his other foot toward the door. Stretched, as it spiraled inward. It closed around his boot halfway up and stopped.

  “Get it back open!” he shouted to the others. “Chen is stilllllAAAAAAHHH!”

  His foot, his whole leg blazed with pain. He could hear the crunching of the bones over his own cries. No one had touched anything. The door kept closing.

  He pulled frantically, bringing his other hand down to the floor and doubling his grip. Pulled through his own screams. Twisting his foot unnaturally.

  Pulled it until it pulled apart and he was flung across the tiny room, smacking into the far wall.

  As he slid out of consciousness, the voices of the others echoed distantly through the black.

  “What the hell happened? It didn’t stop! What about the safety protocols?”

  “The decompression! Safety override!”

  “Damn, look at his foot!”

  *

  “This plan,” Moses said, his bare chest heaving. “This plan could have been a little more thought out.”

  “Most of my plans are just for killing people, not for saving people,” Dava muttered, examining the holo map in her armband.

  They were pulling their way away from the Core. They needed to get to the docks. Any dock would do, but preferably one with a pilot. Dava and Thompson didn’t know the first thing about piloting, but Moses could fly if he had to. She didn’t dare ask when the last time he took hold of a flightstick was. It was bad enough to be reminded of his true age by the fact that she made him strip out of his inmate jumpsuit, exposing wrinkled skin speckled by patchy tufts of soft gray fuzz. His muscles still demonstrated strength and flexibility, but there were parts of the aging process that were harder to cover up without the help of clothing. The important part was that he could pilot at one time. All they needed to do was get to a dock.

  Unfortunately, the map was giving her some trouble.

  “This doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “We came into Dock C, then through Yard Beta. Then Cellblock Four. But they’re all scattered now.”

  “The whole place moves around,” Moses said. “It’s automated, but as far as we can tell, it’s random. The screws probably know the schedule, but to us it’s pure chaos.”

  She tapped out a message to Freezer. Near the Core, need a safe route to a dock.

  After a few seconds, the response. Polar Gary got into a turret and is carving shit up. Going to send you around to the other side. Route incoming.

  Her map blinked and she tapped at it, acknowledging the incoming data. A green line appeared, drawing jaggedly from the Core to Dock A.

  Freezer, she tapped. Get the word out and make sure everyone gets to a dock safely. You and Johnny have to escort the pilots.

  Roger, Capo. Stay alert. I’m hacking security, but it’s a tug-o-war. They keep overriding my overrides.

  “Okay, let’s move,” Dava said.

  She filled them in as they pulled their way through the twisting corridors. The reconfiguration set Dava on edge. She was used to memorizing the layout of a ship or a structure, designing her own route, building it up in her head, knowing the options and alternatives should it go bad along the way. This place didn’t play by her expectations.

  But she had Moses. She got here, got in, and got him out. They just needed a ship.

  After a series of locks, they reached one of the outer corridors. The curve was much wider and they could see a longer distance before the walls bent away from their view. They were only a few legs from the dock in Freezer’s route.

  A few minutes of pulling handholds, and four hatches came into view on each side of the hall. Dava checked her map. The connecting corridor to get them to the dock was just a bit farther up. The map showed that the four connecting rooms were small, like utility closets or something. It wasn’t explicit about the contents, other than displaying an icon that looked like a three-dimensional asterisk, just a small central dot with a series of lines extending from it. There was another icon that looked like a lightning bolt, the universal symbol for power. Either a generator maintenance panel or some kind of charging station.

  Taking the lead, Dava slowed their approach to the four hatches with the palm of her hand. Either prospect might be useful. If it was a power control, she might be able to disable power to the outer defensive turrets, making their getaway much less risky. If it was a charging station, there could be weapons or powered armor inside.

  The latter of which they didn’t have a need for necessarily. Thompson-Gun had given up her sidearm to Moses, so he and Dava were both packing compact but powerful laser pistols.

  Just a few hops from the hatches, the walls turned red. She froze for half a second, then realized the hatches were opening.

  “Get back!” she said. “Back, back!”

  They hastened back the way they came, but without gravity they were not in any position to sprint. Dava glanced back over her shoulder to see dozens of shapes pouring forth from the pulsing red walls.

  She turned back and kept pulling, letting the split-second image resolve in her mind. Spheres, about a meter in diameter. Legs or tentacles protruded from them in all directions, ropelike limbs that were reaching for handholds. Dozens of pairs of eyes turning to face their direction. One eye shining: the protective glass over a camera? The other eye hollow and dark: the barrel of a weapon?

  “HALT FORWARD PROGRESS.” The machines were speaking simultaneously, working on a hive brain of some kind. “SURRENDER YOUR WEAPONS. SURRENDER NOW.”

  “Dava, tell me you’re packing grenades,” Moses said. Her heart sank in remembrance of her strict commandment that she would never carry explosives. Then it jumped when she remembered she decided to violate that particular personal virtue, just this once.

  She reached for one side of her belt: anti-personnel. Reached for the other side: electro-magnetic pulse. She yanked one of the EMPs away and tossed it at the chorus of spiderbots that were chanting for their surrender.

  The bots were flinging themselves down the corridor at alarming speed using those whipping limbs. The small grenade floated straight until it bopped into a bot in the middle of the pack. There was a bright flash and a ball of crackling white fingers danced across them. Dava felt a tingle as the momentum of their movement brought a couple of them tumbling into her. She spasmed, twisting her body and kicking the cold, limp limbs away from her. When she got her cool back a moment later, she saw the crowd of them – about two dozen in all – were drifting around her like corpses.

  She looked back, Moses and Thompson going through the same motions: spastic fear, then a sudden relaxation at the realization that the monster-bots had been fried. She turned back to the hatches. In the few seconds that had passed since the doors opened, they had fled back down the corridor a good thirty meters.

  She stared fixedly at those hatches. She didn’t know what the range of the EMP was, or whether its effects were permanent or temporary, and if the latter, how long they would last. Th
ey needed to move, but she stuck frozen to the spot. Watching those hatches.

  “WARNING, HOSTILES DETECTED.”

  This time the chorus was smaller, but the handful of bots that came out, came out shooting. Anchoring themselves with their limbs, they fired some kind of charged projectiles, orange balls that blazed forth and ripped into the partial shielding created by their stunned brethren.

  “Take ’em out!” Dava yelled, whipping her pistol from its holster. She squeezed the trigger and nothing happened. The charge indicator on the back of it was dark. “Shit, my gun is fried!”

  “Mine too,” Moses said. “Pull back!”

  Dava turned and using a foot against a handhold, shoved Moses as hard as she could, sending the old man gliding down the tunnel. Tiny orange explosions burst against the wall around her. She grabbed the handhold and pulled herself into a crouch.

  The sound of a wet crunch followed immediately by a gurgling scream. She looked to her left. Thompson-Gun flailed, spinning like a top. Dava could see straight through the fist-sized hole in the left half of her stomach.

  Thompson managed to grab the far wall and righted herself. She let go to put both hands on her submachinegun. With a metallic clatter, it ripped bullets down the hall, smashing apart two of the spiderbots. In the same instant, the recoil of the full-auto sent Thompson tumbling down the corridor in Moses’s direction, a string of blood and excrement and intestines extending from her form.

  Dava, still crouched, kicked off. She brought her hands forward, reaching out with her fingers and straightening her body. As she flew at the curving wall farther down the hall, she quickly grabbed a handhold, brought her knee to her chest, planted her foot against the wall, and kicked off again. This time she caught Moses as she passed him.

  She grabbed another handhold as she found Thompson grunting with effort. She was upside-down from Dava’s perspective and was messing with the strap of her Tommy-Gun. Her guts hung half out of her side, like some kind of festive gore-decorative.

  “Thompson, we have to go!”