Seeds to the Wind (The Medicean Stars Saga Book 2)

by McCullough Crawford

  “Excuse me,” the general tries to interrupt. His voice, even though it is amplified by the microphone hidden before him, is lost in the ambient noise, leaving him no choice but to revert to his prior career as a drill instructor. “Attention!”

  This time his voice breaks through the din, cutting the cacophony off in mid stride. The room is deathly silent as papers drift silently to the floor like overgrown snowflakes, and the general scans the room, slowly glaring at each politician in turn. Few make eye contact with him as his eyes pass over them. Most stare sheepishly at their feet or look impatiently at their watches like they are waiting on him.

  “Ladies, gentlemen, if we could return to the problem at hand,” he says, indicating the screen behind him, which is now showing a slowly rotating view of the mountain as the interceptor circles it. “We have a situation that requires this committee’s oversight, because something is interrupting our scans, and none of the pilots have been able to establish any sort of communication with the object. If the committee decides to pursue the application of force, which I strongly advise against, it is probable that we will be unsuccessful in arresting the object’s current progress. Additionally, any force powerful enough to hinder, disable, or destroy the object will likely have dire consequences for the towns and infrastructure now located underneath it.”

  “Don’t we have rockets or something that can destroy that?” one of the audience asks, looking down his long and slightly crooked nose at the general.

  “Like I said, sir, anything big enough to destroy the mountain would take out a huge swath of the ground underneath as well.”

  “Surely it’s got engines or something. Just take those out and it won’t get away,” another member of the audience says while straightening the few papers remaining before her.

  “Yes ma’am, that might work,” the general replies. “But then the mountain and all its associated mass would free fall from a significant height. The kinetic energy released upon impact would be nearly as deadly as any weapon we’d use on it in the air. There are five towns within the probable destruction radius and another seven that will likely be seriously damaged by the shockwave and any resulting earthquakes.”

  “So. Simply collateral damage. The aftermath should be easy enough to blame on an eruption or something,” she concludes once her papers are neatly aligned. “General, have your men target the engines and stop that thing from escaping. Let’s get back to the published agenda, some of us have busy schedules to maintain.”

  “Yes madam secretary,” the general responds with his heart sinking. A few quick strokes on his keypad at the podium and the command is sent.

  * * *

  The circling interceptors receive the command almost instantly and, nearly in unison, bank up and away from their circular patrol pattern. They align to begin their attack runs, each following closely behind another but on slightly different vectors, as their orders did not specify a target location, merely: “Destroy means of propulsion.” The first interceptor achieves a target lock on the first potential target and looses its first salvo.

  Chapter 4

  Foothills of the Western Mountains

  A University Campus

  The men approach slowly up the stairs, their rifles trained on Jon, Sara, and Ryan. Sara stands slowly from where she was crouched before the door, while Jon and Ryan raise their hands in unison. The stairwell is silent except for the echo of the gunmen’s boots scraping on the rough cement.

  Stopping well out of reach, the lead gunman lowers his rifle and retrieves a package of zip ties, which he tosses to Jon before bringing his rifle back up to his shoulder.

  “Tie your wrists,” he says, his voice slightly muffled by the bandana tied across the lower half of his face. “Make sure it’s tight or you’ll get a bullet to the offending hand.”

  Jon takes one of the plastic strips before tossing the bag to Ryan. The smooth plastic slides through the ratchet easily, cinching down and biting into his flesh. With palms pressed together he turns towards Ryan, who seems to be struggling with his bonds. His wrists, courtesy of years spent in the gym and his overall large stature, are too thick for the tie to fit around. Every time he gets his wrists together and moves to tighten it, the ratchet slips free and the strip falls to the floor.

  Seeing this happen another time, Jon reaches down and awkwardly grabs the tie. With another tie from the bag, he loops them together in a two link chain that approximates a pair of handcuffs before handing it back to Ryan and tossing the bag on to Sara.

  “That works, thanks,” Ryan says wryly before testing them out. Each loop fits tightly around his wrists, but since there is a link between them, he has more mobility than either Jon or Sara. He pulls them tight, the flesh around his wrists turning a darker shade, then he winks at Jon before looking past him down the stairs to their new captors.

  “So, you’ve got us bound. What do you want us to do now: dance a merry jig?” Ryan’s voice is mocking as he looms over the gunmen. To illustrate his suggestion he bounces up onto the balls of his feet for a few quick steps ending in a pirouette.

  “Come down the stairs slowly,” the leader says.

  The three captives and their two captors move down the stairs as a unit, captives with eyes locked on the guns trained at them, while the captors slowly back down the stairs, their eyes locked on the captives. Reaching the next floor down from the one Sara had been trying to break into, the leader of the captors approaches the door and knocks on it seven times in an unusual cadence.

  The door opens slightly at first, then opens fully once the person on the other side confirms the safety of the situation. The hallway beyond is much like any of the other hallways throughout the campus: beige floor with white walls, light wood trim framing each of the doors that seem to march down the length of the hall. The woman on the other side of the door, for surely it is a woman judging by the curves highlighted by the snug fitting university t-shirt she is wearing, also has her face covered and is wearing a hat pulled low over her eyes. She moves quickly, but with a noticeable limp from some old injury, to the far side of the hall to cover their entrance with her own rifle.

  “Inside quickly,” she commands. “The normal patrol is early.”

  Her voice is dark and smooth like a fine chocolate. Ryan catches Jon’s eye and gives him a wink, clearly thinking that their capture is looking up. Sara, behind them, rolls her eyes but notices the woman’s curves and sultry voice too. One of the men with guns ducks through the door while the leader hangs back and motions the captives through with the muzzle of his rifle.

  Jon steps down off the last step where he had been waiting and follows Ryan into the hall. His feet squeak on the recently polished floor, and once he steps to his left slightly he is able to see around Ryan’s bulky frame to a row of windows at the end of the hall that silhouette the man ahead of them with their glare. About ten paces down the hall, the door clicks shut behind them, and there is a rasping sound as the leader of their captors slides a bar into place to reinforce it.

  The guard down the hall stops and faces them as they approach. He opens a door, beckoning inside. Ryan enters first, nearly tripping over the tightly packed desks and filing cabinets. Jon, trying to avoid his friend’s mistakes, takes a slightly different angle of approach and nearly steps in a trash can full of moldering pizza boxes; it would appear they’ve entered another graduate student office. The power has been cut to the building, and the extent of the room cannot be seen just by the light filtering in from the hall. It may end just on the other side of the nearest filing cabinets or it may stretch out and fill up the rest of this floor. Both Ryan and Jon stop a few steps into the room, not wanting to risk any more of the hazards hidden in the shadowed office. Sara is just stepping over the threshold to join them when the leader of the captors grabs her shoulder.

  “Bring her, we’ll question her first,” he says. “Then we’ll be back for you two.” And with a significant glance at Ryan and Jon, the captor mar
ches her out into the hall. The door shuts behind them, throwing the entire office into darkness, only a thin crack of light filtering under the door. The sound of their footsteps recedes down the hall.

  The darkness is quiet for a few minutes, Jon straining at the door to try and hear some clue as to Sara’s fate, but hearing nothing once the footsteps are gone. Then behind him there is a clatter, followed by a grunt and a sawing sound. The sawing stops abruptly, followed by a thud and some mild cursing.

  “You ok back there?” Jon whispers.

  “Yeah, just had to get out of these stupid zip ties. Some idiot put them on too tight, and my hands were starting to go numb,” Ryan gripes from the darkness.

  “What’d you use to cut them?”

  “The corner of one of these filing cabinets and pretty much all my weight. I wouldn’t recommend it, though, I think I cut up my arm pretty good when they finally broke.”

  “We’re in an office, let’s see if we can find some scissors,” Jon, ever the reasonable one, says. “Or maybe something so we’re not defenseless whenever those people out there come back.”

  Jon can hear Ryan begin to rummage around within a metal drawer, presumably the filing cabinet now adorned with his blood. Jon starts making his way slowly away from Ryan, barely lifting his feet off the floor as he shuffles into the darkness. His outstretched arm brushes against something the moment before his shin connects solidly with a sharp corner. With the resulting thud and light rustle, Jon surmises that he has collided with the resting place of one of the precarious stacks of paper they’d seen before being plunged into darkness.

  He gropes around the edge of the table, hoping that he is remembering the glimpsed layout of the room correctly. Somewhere in front of him there should be a desk and hopefully a pair of scissors tucked into one of the drawers. After gaining only a few more bruises on his shins, he reaches the back of the chair that is before the desk. He sits down and begins rummaging through the first drawer.

  His hands meet something soft and squishy, wrapped in plastic, when suddenly the door opens and a shaft of light pierces the room. Startled, he looks up from the drawer and into the glare from the hallway where one of their captors is standing, silhouetted as he peers into the shadows.

  “Ryan, Jon, we need to move now,” the guard says. His voice has an anxious note to it, like he’d much rather be running for his life than trying to find the two captives in the shadowy office. “Sara vouched for you guys, but we have to get out of here. The regular patrol is searching the building. Follow me; I’ll take you to our escape route.”

  Jon recognizes the man in the door as one of the ones who had captured them only a few minutes before, and trusting the man who is likely just a graduate student such as himself, he winds his way back out of the mess to the doorway. When he is only a few steps from the door, he hears a loud crack and rending noise. He turns to look back into the room where the noise came from to see Ryan walking out of the shadows holding a chair leg like a nightstick.

  “If we’ve been vouched for and you’re really trying to save us, you won’t mind me bringing this along,” the big man says, tapping his improvised club in the palm of one cupped hand.

  “Uh, sure,” the guard, who now has to look up at Ryan looming over him, stutters. “Whatever, we just need to get out of here before they make it to this floor.”

  The guard turns and jogs down the hall, away from the stairwell and towards the central lobby. He doesn’t stop or look back to see if Jon and Ryan are following. Lacking a better option, they run after him; Jon’s hands are still bound, making each step awkward and allowing Ryan to easily outpace him. A third of the way down the hall, the larger man pulls past with only a quick glance back. His arm holding the club is stained red and the shirt sleeve is hanging loosely, as if torn. Jon watches a drop of blood form and drip off his elbow, he remembers Ryan’s warning against using the cabinet to cut his bonds and wonders if his friend is even aware of the severity of his wound.

  The floor of the hallway is still clean enough that even though Jon can no longer see Ryan, once he rounds the corner that leads to the elevators, he can clearly hear his feet come to an abrupt halt on the polished surface. Slowing down, he peeks around the corner warily. Forming up in front of the elevators is a group of about twenty people, each wearing something to cover the lower half of their faces and most wearing some form of hat. Jon easily identifies a man handing out backpacks and a small length of rope with a hook on each end as the leader of their captors, and he correctly assumes that he is the leader of this entire band.

  “You two. Come on. Grab a pack and get down that shaft,” he says, gesturing to the left-hand elevator doors through which several of the assembled group have already disappeared. “Use the hook on the main line and wrap your legs around it to control your speed. It isn’t that hard, just move fast and stay quiet.

  “Come here, let me cut your wrists free,” he adds, noticing that Jon’s are still bound.

  Ryan grabs a bag and one of the proffered hooks, looking at it skeptically considering his substantial bulk. Glancing at Jon, who, while far from tiny, appears relatively so next to his larger friend, Ryan steps to the side and motions him through.

  “You go first,” Ryan says. “That way when this little hook gives I’ll have something soft to land on.”

  Jon simply snorts and steps up to the edge of the shaft. The darkness looms before him, seeming to beckon, trying to drag him in and let him fall to his death. With the weight of the unfamiliar pack threatening to throw him off balance, he reaches into the darkness and grabs onto the twisted steel cable. His hands are sweaty, not enough that he would have thought to wipe them off before reaching for the slick cable, but sweaty enough that when he swings out into the darkness he nearly starts sliding. Scrambling to get the looped rope and hook that are secured around his waist attached to the cable and to wrap his legs enough to support his weight, he is thankful for the darkness that hides the true depth of the shaft.

  Once attached, he begins sliding down the cable, slowly squeezing it a little less with his legs and allowing the remaining friction to keep him from moving too quickly. Down about one floor, the cable shakes and sways slightly as Ryan swings out and attaches himself. After Ryan, there are two, much gentler, vibrations of the line as the remaining two members of the group attach themselves, the majority having already descended while Jon and Ryan were strapping on their packs and preparing themselves. After the last vibration there is a slight pause, and as Jon looks up to make sure Ryan isn’t approaching him too quickly, the shaft light from the open doors shrinks and then disappears, dropping the shaft into complete darkness. Jon continues to descend.

  Cocooned in the darkness, eyes straining for some scrap of light, the only sound the slow rasp of his pants against the cable, it seems like an eternity of gently sliding down. Just as his eyes are beginning to adjust and take advantage of the tiny slivers of light slipping through the gaps in the doors on each floor, something touches his shoulder, causing him to nearly let go of the cable and fall.

  “You’ve made it to the first elevator car, you’re going to have to transfer to the other line to get the rest of the way down,” a voice whispers right next to his ear. “You’re almost sitting on the roof, but be careful when you stand up.”

  Not trusting the voice or even the vague outline of a person slowly materializing out of the darkness, Jon gingerly unwraps one leg and reaches into the darkness beneath him. His foot connects with the surprisingly close solid roof of an elevator car. Still not fully trusting what he can’t see in the dark, he slowly places his second foot next to the first and stands up before disconnecting his rope. In the darkness he can barely make out three of the walls of the shaft, more by their consistency than by any direct visual cues, so he makes his way gingerly towards the fourth direction that seems different. His outstretched arms connect with cold steel instead of the rough concrete he’d expect from an elevator shaft, leaving him guessing t
hat he chose correctly; this must be one of the support beams between the two parallel shafts. More shapes are materializing in the darkness around him, and he is able to confirm that directly in front of him is a beam barely wide enough to stand on and an open shaft beyond.

  Once balanced on the beam, he still cannot make out the next cable he needs to slide down, so grabbing onto another beam with his left hand, he leans out and starts groping in the darkness. On his third blind swipe he manages to connect with the steel line. This time swinging out and securing himself goes much more smoothly, but his heart still leaps into his throat as he steps out into the void.

  He slides down this cable more quickly, anxious to get to the bottom, and completes the final two thirds of the floors in nearly the same time it took him to do the first third. As he nears the bottom of the shaft, he can begin to make out the solid shape of the floor, and when he is close enough that he can stand, the light of a small flashlight flicks out from a small access door set into the wall.

  “Quick, this way, clear the line so the next person can come down,” a voice whispers.

  Jon hurriedly unfastens himself and ducks into a steam tunnel; the mess of pipes and oppressive heat leave him with no doubt as to the function of the tunnel. Several flashlights dance around as people mill about in the cramped space. Jon stands on his toes trying to make out faces in the darkness. He hadn’t seen Sara in the group of people at the top of the elevator shaft when they came around the corner, but she must be down here.

  “Sara?” he calls softly still trying to peer through the crowd. “Has anyone seen Sara?”

  “I don’t think she’s here,” a voice from the back answers.

  Jon is still trying to look at everyone’s faces, not believing that she isn’t there because he knows she isn’t following him down the shaft, when the press in the tunnel increases as the last of the people make it down, and the leader shuts the door to the elevator shaft behind him. With his focus on finding her face amongst the crowd and repeating to himself that she must be somewhere in the tightly packed tunnel he misses the fact that the assembled graduate students turned outlaws know her by name.