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Metamorph: The Outbounder Chronicles

Page 27

by Chris Reher


  “That’s mega, as Nolie would say,” Ryle said. He looked over to Toji. “Speaking of Nolie, I’ll need Toji in engineering. Upgrade his access, Jex.”

  “Is that wise?” Jex replied, for Ryle’s ears only. “He is a Kalon. Our battle is with them.”

  “Not with this one,” Ryle said. “Toji, get down there.”

  Toji’s smile lit his leathery face and wiped away the wretched expression he had worn since leaving Torren. “To engineering? Yes, at once!” He rose from his seat but then paused on his way to the door. “What about Agent Ash? She is alone.”

  “She’s got Jex. Proceed.” Ryle pulled up the flight hologram and changed course to where the other outbounders had formed a protective barrier facing the incoming Br’ll ship. Some of the other armed ships that had escaped the station’s lockdown had also taken position.

  “Let’s head out to meet them,” he suggested, wishing Toji hadn’t mentioned Laryn just now. “In case we have to draw them away from the station.”

  A suggestion was really all he could offer. Although three of the ships out here belonged to Shelody’s fleet, the other prospectors worked alone or for competing outfits. It was rare to see them cooperate, even rarer to see them get along. The field of unmatched and unevenly-armed ships shifted and, never meant for armed conflict as a single fleet, failed to achieve any sort of formation.

  “Chase them away, you mean,” Dex Harris shouted aboard his corvette.

  “Damn mummies are not getting past me, that’s for certain,” another captain cut in.

  “My grannie gets by you,” someone retorted.

  “That was your sister. She’s still in my cabin.”

  “Fuck you, Trisky.”

  Ryle sighed. Still, although raucous and undisciplined banter filled the com channels to the point of incoherence, the ragtag armada moved toward the Well and the incoming Br’ll ship.

  His eyes were on the remote feed showing Colsan’s Chator and the other two ships heading on a seeming collision course with the alien vessel. “How are they doing, Jex?” he asked, unheard by the others.

  “Chator and Persephone are angling correctly, according to the maneuver we carried out earlier, and assuming the approaching ship has the same shield configuration. The Pendra ship has taken a defensive position. I am assisting the Chator’s JX.”

  “Careful,” Ryle said. He did not mean the maneuver.

  “I am circumspect,” Jex said. “As always.”

  “Didn’t stop Laryn from figuring you out.”

  “She is astute.”

  “Don’t get sloppy,” Ryle said, speaking into the com link to the Chator. “You’re a bit ahead, no?”

  “Your AI isn’t half the nervous kitten you are, Tanner. Keep your boots on.”

  “See?” Jex said, with a deliberate air of satisfaction.

  Ryle did not reply. Pendra’s cruiser rolled toward the approaching ship, perhaps at a request from one of the others. Then the Chator swooped up and extended her travel shields as Jex recommended. The Br’ll vessel’s own shields glanced along its perimeter and sliced closer to the horizon. Persephone dove from beneath and strafed it in turn, only to have it careen, in an attempt to escape, toward the Chator. Colsan pulled up hard and nudged it a third time.

  Ryle, and probably everyone else watching, gasped when the Br’ll ship started to come apart. It was not because it had suffered structural damage from the mild collisions, but because its individual parts seemed to be modules of a whole. A dozen or more oblong ships separated and shot away while the main part of the ship rolled, now caught irretrievably in the Well.

  “Well, shit,” someone said.

  “Attack,” Ryle said. “Fire at will. Watch out for ours.”

  “Told you it looked like garlic,” Colsan roared. “Now we got a bunch of cloves flying around!”

  “I’ll have those fuckers for dinner,” Jadie said.

  Ryle took up the fight, lobbing timed missiles toward the ships streaming toward them. A vast distance separated the defensive field of ships guarding the station from the enemy fleet but laser fire found its mark, guided by precise mathematics rather than marksmanship. Someone whooped when the first of the alien vessels disintegrated without so much as a spark.

  “I get the salvage on that, whatever it is,” Dex yelled.

  “Shit shit shit! They got the cutter!”

  “Watch the one flanking left.”

  “Do not let them get near the platter!” Ryle said. He looked up at the alerts from engineering to see all systems working correctly, despite his maneuvers to avoid the other ships as well as the alien weaponry. The Pendra cruiser had torn apart without any noticeable impact.

  Ryle shifted his onboard weapons to follow a Br’ll ship now angling for the laser array. “Prepare for impact, Nolie,” he called but it was a pointless call to make – the platter was a child’s toy compared to the Pendra ship that had just gone down. He forced himself into calmness, calling upon Jex to calculate the tactical for a precision hit. The charge was true to target and the alien vessel started to spin like a boomerang until it broke in two.

  “Hit their tails in the thin part,” he transmitted to the others. “They’ve got gravity. If you can get them to spin, they’ll rip.”

  Soon, the other ships reported success with more of the targets and immediately began to squabble over the salvage rights and the unquestionably profitable technology to be found among the debris. Ryle brought the Nefer about and headed back to Pendra Station.

  “Hey, Tanner,” Jadie called. “Don’t you want some of this?”

  Ryle’s attention was already on the unsupervised docking ports. “What I want isn’t out here,” he mumbled to himself.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Tom, what happened?” Laryn said, startled out of her meditative state when the room went dark.

  The technician looked around the dim room. “I… I don’t know.” He worked on his console to terminate her infusion. “CogSys is still operational. Thankfully.” He rose from his stool and opened the door to peer outside. “Just emergency lights now.”

  “Jex?” she whispered, wishing for Ryle’s subvocal abilities. “Any idea?”

  “None. The illumination for the station is part of the power plant. To turn off only the lights would be a deliberate act.”

  “Speculate, will you?”

  “Kalon eyes are sensitive to low light levels. The dark will make it easier to stalk their Human prey. Alternatively, they may be struggling to understand the station’s mechanical systems. They may be experimenting with it to further affect life support.”

  “I wonder what else they’re fiddling with.” She looked up to find that Calek had gone out into the hall, leaving her still connected to CogSys. Low, urgent voices reached her but the words were unclear.

  “Quick,” she said. “I need access to engineering.”

  “I do not have the means for that. Engineering is not accessible by CogSys.”

  “I know. But I think you can reach the Pendra Admin domain. ANN-A. She holds the personnel files. I’m already on record there and cleared by security. Add my KRNL number to the engineer roster. The AI there should then recognize me as belonging there.”

  “Giving you access to ANN-E in engineering. That is clever. You want me to give you a promotion?”

  She grinned. “Yeah. My second one today.”

  Laryn flinched when someone shouted something. It sounded distant, perhaps in another part of the clinic. She pushed the infuser away from her head and sat up. “What if the Kalons try to get in here? To use CogSys to find out how the station works?”

  “They would have done so already, don’t you think?” Jex replied. “You now have access to engineering. Voice control is not available from this port.”

  “I know.” She logged out of CogSys and activated the manual screen on the wall. Somehow, disconnecting Jex from the system made her feel a little less guilty. Using her freshly-installed knowledge, she tap
ped her way along the hierarchy of sub-systems until she reached the controls for the photonic transporter. Re-initializing the program took only moments. “Damn, I’m good,” she said. “Yes, don’t say it. Allow me my conceits.”

  “Ryle confirms acquisition,” Jex said with a remarkable lack of congratulations. “He seems happy,” he added, perhaps perceiving that something more was required of him.

  “Okay,” she said, tapping her lips as she scanned the display. “Now let’s see if we can get the air moving again. That’s got to be somewhere in housekeeping.”

  Voices outside caught her attention and then a woman’s frightened cry was followed by the sound of something breaking. Whatever it was, it sounded large and metallic and just above their heads. The monitor before her went blank.

  “Damn!” she gasped, tapping frantically at the screen. “Jex? Are you still here?”

  “I am. What happened?”

  “The Annex network’s gone down.” She scooped up her gear and Ryle’s jacket and went out into the hall. The doctor stood near the reception alcove with the frightened woman she had seen earlier. “What’s going on?” she said.

  Calek turned. “We can’t reach anybody. And there is a commotion on the upper floors. We can hear shouting through the vents.”

  “Is there some place where you can lock yourselves in?” Laryn said. She went to the lab’s entrance door to listen to noises in the distance. “From the inside?”

  “You think they’re out there? Coming for us?” he said. His voice shook, but he had put a protective arm around the other technician’s shoulders.

  “I don’t know. Just hide somewhere.”

  “Where are you going?” he exclaimed when she put her hand on the door. “Stay with us. You… you have a gun.”

  “Down to the Ministry level,” she said. There was only silence now in the corridor outside. A stairway beyond the entrance to the clinic would let her reach the immigration offices and, hopefully, a network access to the main administration of the station. “It should let me get at the life support control. Lock this door behind me.” She slipped outside before Calek could sputter another objection.

  Only the orange emergency strips along the wall and floor showed the way through the almost absolute darkness. Was she imagining that the air seemed overused and thick here now? A shadow flitted through the periphery of her vision, startling her into ducking for cover. She berated herself when she realized it was only one of the light strips, blinking slowly in some malfunction.

  Laryn passed the angled ramp leading toward the main body of the station and soon saw the stairwell ahead of her. The sudden thump of heavy boots above her made her leap into the recess of a locked doorway, gun aimed toward the sound.

  A powerful beam of light stabbed into her eyes. “Gun! Drop the gun. Drop it!” a man shouted “Down, I said!”

  Laryn, startled by the assault, obeyed his command and raised her hands. “I’m just—”

  “Step away. Now!”

  She moved out of the doorway, blinking into the light. “I’m Pendra agent Ash, Intermediary,” she called out, almost hearing the adrenaline powering the man’s voice. “Stop shouting!”

  The light shifted and she made out a uniformed guard.

  “What are you doing out here,” he snapped. “We’re in lockdown.”

  “I know that,” she said, shielding her eyes. “I need to get downstairs.”

  “No, you don’t. That level is shut down. No lights, no vents, and no network. We’re cut off. The closest shelter is the clinic. Come this way.”

  She pulled away when he gripped her arm. “No! I have to reach—”

  His hand shifted when he felt the shape of the small oxygen bottle on her back. “You got air,” he said. “Been looking for some. Let’s have it.”

  “What?” she gasped. “No.”

  He jerked the strap off her shoulder, but she gripped the bottle in both hands. “Let go. We’ve got priorities in situations like this. And you’re not one of them.”

  “Detecting Kalon speech pattern behind you.”

  Laryn dove past the guard without thinking before Jex had even completed his warning. The beam of his flashlight swung as he tried to find the source of the rasping noise now audible to their ears. He moved toward it and into one of the glistening threads already spinning his way.

  A hand clamped over Laryn’s shoulder and it wasn’t Human. She spun and launched herself toward her attacker, the image of the adversary Toji had faced in the cave clear in her mind. The nozzle end of the air bottle punctured the soft spot in the alien’s abdomen and she shoved it deep, pinning the flailing Kalon against a wall. His screech filled the air and she winced as her eardrums seemed to tear with the sound.

  She scrambled for her gun, hearing the hysterical cries of the guard caught by the deadly filaments. He still held on to his flashlight and she raced past the confusion of light and sound, back along the corridor, toward the conduit.

  “I got cut off,” she gasped, spurred on by the dread of a Kalon thread landing on her. Her handprint opened the gate to the conduit she had crossed not so long ago. Once through the pressure door, she activated the keyplate, praying that the security system now accepted her new status as engineer. It did, and the plate turned red after a few jabs at its controls, now out of service to even the highest clearance.

  She leaned against the door for a moment, breathless, until something, possible a two-pronged foot, punched against it from the hall. She rubbed her ear, still ringing from the Kalon’s scream, as she stepped off the platform and into the conduit.

  “Heading back to the station,” she said to Jex, just as something jolted the tunnel, nearly throwing her off her feet. “What the hell was that?” she cried before remembering that Jex now had only audio contact with her. “Did something hit the conduit? There’s a light tube thing in the ceiling. It’s flashing now.”

  “The Annex is separating from the main station,” Jex said. “Something may have triggered an emergency response. Unless someone is in control of the maneuver, like during a drill, the conduit will shatter.”

  “How long does separation take?”

  “Please run.”

  Laryn stepped out onto the rail and kept her eyes down as she moved as fast as the spaces between the supports allowed, not looking outside, not thinking about the sections of the station moving apart until one or the other end of the tunnel broke away to spill her into space.

  “Laryn,” she heard Ryle’s voice over her com tab.

  “Can’t really talk right now,” she gasped. Cold air stabbed into her lungs, turning each breath into a painful gasp. The floor sagged under her feet and she stepped into nothing for a moment, saved from falling only by the handrail running along the wall. Something cracked far too loudly. Had the tube been this long on the way here? Probably her fault, she thought, for wishing it was longer every time she sat in that nice, safe travel pod like a little princess making wishes upon the stars. Another jolt did drop her this time and she landed on her knees. A sheet of pain sliced through her knees and she froze in a moment of agony.

  Another crack, like a gunshot, alerted her that it was probably time to get up. She lurched onto her feet and fixed her eyes on the exit to the station where that little blue pod waited as if for the next passenger. Now the tube angled upward as if, instead of moving away, the Annex had dropped lower. She picked up her pace, ignoring the pain in her knees and throat and finally flung herself onto the platform. Not bothering to stand up, she scrambled on hands and feet to the door and slapped her hand onto the control panel. Lockdown or not, separation or not, it obeyed the engineer’s command to open.

  She launched herself through the gate and forced it to seal again, leaving her with a place to lean against, gasping for air as she listened to the sound of splintering metal and plastic behind her as the conduit tore loose. Fleetingly, she felt regret for the damn travel pod.

  “Ryle,” she whispered as she moved away from
the door to once more hide behind the abandoned cart. She peered around it to scan the plaza. The two bodies still lay where they had fallen, as lifeless and silent as the rest of the plaza. “I didn’t have time to get at the ventilation system. I have access to ANN-E now, though.”

  “Can you log in somewhere?”

  She came to her feet, not without a groan of pain. “I’m at the observation promenade. I think the whole network is down. I’ll have to get down to engineering to get access. Where are you?”

  “We’re just locking onto station.” He paused for a moment. “We… we lost contact with Azah.”

  “What? Where?”

  “I don’t know! She’s not answering. But Jex is still receiving her telemetry.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “No,” he said. “Toji and I are coming for you both. Another Kalon ship just came around the Well. Everyone’s out there, fighting. That means we’re not going to track down the Kalons loose on the station for a while yet. Find a control room, barricade yourself, and log in. We will come for you.”

  “Okay,” she said, wondering if she sounded brave enough to put his mind at ease. “I’m all right. Find Azah.”

  She crept out of her hiding place surveyed the plaza. Nothing moved in the meager emergency illumination and what little starlight fell through the transparent ceiling. Silence.

  The station’s schematics passed through her mind, forming maps of levels, ramps and stairs, along with now-dead elevators and the occasional moving platform no longer in motion. The parts of the station not meant for the general population formed a warren of passages connecting one service area to another. What was lying in wait for her in those dark corridors? The gun in her hand was reassuring; being alone was less so.

  She stepped out of the shadows to cut across the promenade, aware that she was clearly outlined against the observation window. It took only moments to cross the open space, past the empty faces of the dead couple, and to the entrance of a clothing depot.

  “And into the sewer we go,” she whispered to herself.

 

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