~~~
Out of the frying pan into the fire. Moira remembered her real father saying those words to her mother during an argument about her mother’s desire to join Sherman’s enclave. Moira had been too young to understand any of it, but her father’s words came back to her now.
She’d escaped the enclave, but now people were shooting at her. She suspected the enclave was the real fire, and this was just a minor hitch in her plans. She’d be dead for sure if her stepfather had his way. Here, she at least had a chance to get out of it.
Provided she stuck close to Karen Jones. Andy’s friend was a small woman. Moira would have called her delicate, her thin frame causing one to expect fairy wings, and her single, blond braid taking years from her already young features. But when an approaching Sun guard pulled a taser on them, with a demand to “freeze!” Karen did the opposite, whipping her own taser out as one leg flew up to shove Moira and Sarah into a side hallway. Her taser arm remained focused on the guard, sending a steady stream of energy in his direction, as the rest of her body twisted to follow them into the hall. In the space of two minutes, Moira knew she would never think of Karen as delicate again.
They heard the guard call for backup, and Karen popped into the main hall to send another surge toward him. Twisting back into hiding, she sent a blast into the corridor’s surveillance camera, and muttered one word to her charges. “Map.”
Moira shuffled the backpack off her shoulder and scrabbled for her Pad. Sarah reached around to close the pack and shift it onto Moira’s back so she’d be ready to run. Karen rang off another shot. In the background, Moira heard an announcement starting, declaring a lockdown and instructing people to shelter in place. To make it easier to catch us, she thought as she brought up the virtual station overlay. It was visible by the time Karen popped back into the hall.
“This hall leads to a roundabout,” Sarah muttered, her gaze following Moira’s finger through the display. “If we take the second walkway to the right, there’s a bank of lifts and a stairway.”
“Stairs. Go.” Karen flattened against the wall, holding her gun against her chest. “I’m right behind you.”
She dashed out once more to shoot. Moira did as she was told, her run clumsy with her Pad and backpack. Ahead of her, Sarah was having the same struggle. But the roundabout brought them a reprieve, as station personnel trying to obey the lockdown raced through in a frenzy. The guard stopped firing, yelling instead for everyone to get down. Then Sarah was through, Moira just a few steps behind. She wasn’t sure of her count, but she thought they’d missed the second corridor off the roundabout.
When no lifts or stairs appeared, she knew she was right. Sarah realized it too, and threw a hand against the wall to stop her forward rush. Moira collided into her, but managed to move enough to the side to make it a glancing blow. “Keep going,” she said, then on impulse pushed on the first door she came to. It opened and she fell into darkness. Sarah crowded behind her and Moira managed to swallow a scream of pain as her stomach lurched. Damn it, she wasn’t supposed to be running.
“Where’s Karen?” She managed to whisper the question. Good. Better than screaming.
“Don’t know,” Sarah whispered back. “Where are we?”
Moira flipped on her Pad’s light. Before they could look around, the sound of running feet outside the door made Moira kill it instantly. They waited, not breathing.
The feet slowed to a walk, then stopped. They heard a muttered “Feck,” and Sarah pulled at the manual door handle “That’s her ...” a seam of light appeared at the door edge, and a moment later the business end of a taser poked through, with Karen’s eyeball glaring just above it. Then the taser disappeared and Karen pushed her way in with them.
“You said the second path of the roundabout,” she said in a loud whisper.
“I was too busy to count,” Sarah said. “Where’s the guard?”
“Sleeping. But he did get a call out for backup. Where are we?”
“We were just starting to look,” Moira said, flipping on her light again.
Karen and Sarah added their lights. Moira moved hers slowly, trying to see everything, but Karen’s light danced around to specific points, as if she were looking for something. All Moira could see was that they seemed to be in a supply closet of some kind. The room was small, with wide shelves on two walls and storage canisters stacked on the floor. Karen nodded, as if reaching a decision.
“This’ll work for now. Up there.” She pointed while pushing on Moira’s back. A top shelf was empty. Karen folded her hands together and bent down. “Up with you. Hurry.”
Moira swallowed her questions, slipped off her backpack, and put her foot in Karen’s hand. She wasn’t quite prepared to be thrown toward the ceiling, but she managed to catch the shelf. With the women pushing on her feet, she hauled herself up, biting her lip to keep back a cry of pain. Once on the shelf, she lay on her stomach and let them pass up all the packs. Then Sarah scrambled up and turned to help Karen. But Karen waved her off and moved a few feet to her right, doing a quick run and jump to reach that part of the shelf. This put several large boxes between them. Sarah sent a quizzical glance to Moira, who shrugged.
The boxes moved toward them and Sarah instinctively reached out to balance it. “Put them in front of you.” Karen’s voice floated to them over the boxes. “Get back against the wall and use them to hide you.”
In a few minutes, they had it all arranged, but they both peeked over the boxes when they heard Karen’s feet hit the floor.
“What are you doing?” Sarah asked in a frantic whisper. “Get up here.”
“Turn your lights off,” Karen said.. “Stay quiet and still. They’ll be searching. I’m going to draw them away.”
“You’re what?” Moira asked. “No! Stay with us until they leave.”
Karen pointed at her, then went back to packing various weapons in her pockets. “You cannot keep running. I need to buy us some time and space. Just stay put, keep the lights off, and don’t make any noise until I’m back.”
She leaned against the wall and cracked the door open to listen and look. Then she opened it further, slid through and closed it behind her. Moira heard no sounds other than their own breathing.
Sarah fumbled with her Pad. “She’s right. She’ll be back. Turn your light off.”
Moira had dropped her Pad on the shelf so she could look over the box, and she turned now to pick it up. A glimmer in the dark recesses of the next shelf caught her attention. She had to twist her neck a little to see it clearly, but when she realized what it was, she grabbed Sarah’s arm.
“My god. Can you see that?”
Sarah bent nearly in half, and finally sat back, shaking her head. “I don’t see anything. What is it?”
“It’s sort of a ball, with wires and lights. And numbers. I think it’s a bomb.”
Sarah swallowed, as if it were a difficult thing to do. “Can you read the numbers? Are they moving? Counting down?”
“Yeah.” Moira killed her light, and stared straight ahead in the darkness. “Counting down. Three hours, twelve minutes.”
Chapter 33
“Am I correct,” Sam asked, “in assuming that the Sunnies outnumber us?”
He remained trapped with Ned, Pete, and the three guards in a hydroponics lab, surrounded by rows of plants growing in pools of water. The room was warm, with a damp, green smell to it. Oddly, the Sunnies had made no attempt to get inside, which made Sam nervous. He supposed they were content just with keeping them in one place.
In the final moments of the shootout, Trevor had been hit, sustaining a deep burn to his arm. In that, hydroponics was fortuitous, for the lab boasted several aloe vera plants. Ned had applied the ointment to Trevor’s burn and settled him against a box of hemp bushes.
Andy was scanning his map for the location of a first aid kit, while Ned examined his map for more Sun guards. Pete, Lisa and Phil were searching for another way out.
“Ab
out twenty to one,” Ned said without looking up. “Not counting civvies.”
“Which are ...?”
“Civilians,” Andy supplied. “About eighty percent of the station’s personnel are civvies. Scientists, of course, but also teachers, medical personnel, cooks ...”
“Accountants,” said Ned. “Though God knows why.”
“We can’t depend on them to help us fight?” Sam asked.
Ned glanced up. “If I had time to take volunteers and organize them, a lot of them would help. A lot of them probably are fighting, if I know Arkady. But we’re still outnumbered. And for the most part, the civvies are in the way. Sun doesn’t care if any of them get hurt, but we do.”
Sam tapped an aimless pattern on his Pad. “There has to be a better way to find the bombs. We could search the station for days, and never find them.”
“Arkady’s assigned areas to search, but I’m open to suggestions,” Ned said as he went back his scanning.
“Well, look, we know the bombs were smuggled aboard with other equipment, right?”
“Yep.”
“You know which equipment? Perhaps the bombs are buried within.”
“It was all kinds of stuff,” Ned said. “The bombs Arkady’s people found were still in the cargo area, probably the most recent ones sent up. They’re sending up components, y’see. One of the bombs was assembled and sitting in a locker for extra space boots. The other one was still in pieces, packed among other standard items.”
“So someone up here is meeting the shipments, separating out the bomb materials, assembling them and placing them somewhere else?”
“That about sums it up.”
Sam continued to tap his Pad. “Do you have some way to track cargo? Chips, radio frequency ...?”
“Radio frequency,” Pete said, joining them on the floor beneath the Aloe vera. He shook his head at Ned’s silent question. “We’ve got two Sunnies guarding the hallway to this section. I guess they feel they’ve got us trapped, and can handle us when it’s convenient.”
“Arseholes,” Ned said.
Sam stayed on his thought. “Do you disable the frequencies once the shipment is received?”
Ned looked thoughtful. “No. Everything’s tracked throughout its lifecycle. We’ve learned not to throw things away.”
“You’re thinking we can trace the bombs using the RFI?” Andy asked.
“Do we have that information?”
Ned scratched his head. “For the items on the final manifests, yeah. But the smuggled items aren’t going to have an RFI listed.”
“Not on the final manifest,” Sam said, and looked at Pete.
“I’m on it.” Pete flipped his Pad on and his fingers began a furious dance.
“They’d be idiots if they didn’t disable them,” Ned said.
Sam shrugged. “Bureaucracy takes on a life of its own. If some clerk is responsible for maintaining RFI’s, he’ll do it unless someone tells him not to. Objects-in-motion kind of thing.”
Ned grunted.
“Ye-e-esss,” Pete ended on a hiss. “We have them. Bloody hell, we have them on the original manifests!”
“Trace, man. Start tracing them.” Ned sat up on his knees, face hopeful. Andy grinned.
Pete’s brow furrowed as he worked a series of taps, then a pause, another series of taps, another pause. He started to shake his head, eyes dimming with discouragement, but a sudden beeping emanated from his Pad, and he jerked to his feet in startled dismay.
“Holy hell, there’s one right here!”
Sam felt his body go still, in the same way an animal freezes at the whiff of a predator. He sensed that everyone in the room did the same. They stared at each other.
“That explains why no guards followed us in here,” Andy said, his voice just above a whisper.
“We’re trapped, so they can blow us up at leisure.” Pete turned his head, staring down a row of spinach leaves. “It’s down there somewhere.”
Sam stood, moving to the aisle, CERBO at the ready. “Give me the coords.”
Pete’s fingers moved over his Pad. “You have ‘em.”
They all watched Sam. Lisa and Phil abandoned their lookout posts, joining their injured comrade on the floor. Trevor’s ragged breathing was the only sound. Sam nodded toward the row of spinach plants. “Third plant box from the other end,” he said. He started down the aisle.
“Where the hell you going?” Ned asked, soft.
Sam stopped and looked back. “Don’t you want visual confirmation that it’s actually a bomb?
Ned fidgeted. “Suppose I do. But not you.” He gestured with his taser. “Lisa, you’re on.”
Lisa gave a sharp nod and moved with quick steps to join Sam. A jerk of her head sent him back to the end of the aisle. She holstered her taser and inched her way down the corridor. Once in front of the box, she began an intense examination without touching anything, searching from every angle she could. They saw her shake her head.
She raised her hands, touching each finger to her thumbs in quick succession, then bent into a squat, fingers playing over the frame with a feather-light touch.
Sam could feel his heart pound, setting up a dizzying thumping in his ears. He reminded himself to breathe, and the thumping quieted to a background knock.
Lisa sat, flipping on her wrist light. She stretched out on her back, sliding head and hand beneath the box, light poking into the darkness. When her body went still as death, Sam knew she’d found it.
Using just her heels, she slithered out and stood with care. “Wires,” she said. “The bomb is attached to the bottom of the planter.”
Sam crooked a finger at her. “Come this way.” As she came toward him, he sent the planters coordinates to CERBO and set a destination.
“Go,” Ned said.
Lisa had nearly reached Sam when he pressed the final button. At the sudden clap of thunder behind her, she threw herself forward. Sam let out a yell as she crashed into him, sending them both to the floor in a clatter of weapons and Pads.
“Bloody hell!” Sam yelled, pushing her off of him and sitting to rub his head. “What’d you do that for?”
Nervous laughter from the others brought a flush of embarrassment to Lisa’s face, but she laughed, too. “I thought the bomb went off. I forgot about the thunder.”
Pete slapped Sam’s shoulder. “Be grateful for her quick reflexes. She just saved your life.”
Lisa snorted. “Doubtful, if that had really been the bomb.”
“It counts,” Sam said, and held out a hand to help her up. They all took a moment to stare down the aisle at the now-empty space.
“Find the others, Pete,” Ned said. “Lisa, Phil, I want ideas for handling our personal guard team out there.” He nodded at Sam. “Good work.”
Sam shrugged.
“Where’d you send it?” Ned asked.
“Three hundred kilometers in that direction,” Sam said, pointing behind Ned. “Into the big, dark middle of cold space.”
“My hero,” Ned said, and tapped his Pad. “Arkady, my man,” he said when Arkady answered, “I’m reporting our first success.” He gave a brief run-down, and they all heard Arkady’s whistle.
“Good job,” he said. “I’ve got your original manifest. I’ll help with your search on this end. Oh, did you ever send those civvies down here?”
Sam clamped down on the fright those words gave him, but he turned to face Ned. Pete and Andy did the same thing.
Ned stiffened. “I did, thirty minutes ago.”
“They haven’t made it here. No word from them, either.”
The men stared at each other, none of them willing to speculate.
“Shit,” Sam said under his breath. “Shit, shit.”
~~~
Dinnie splashed cold water on her face, then stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Water dripped down as she listened to the hard, frantic pounding of her heart. She fancied she could see it beating through her blouse.
Feldman suspects something. He’s watching me. Waiting for me to trip up.
She shuddered, and reached for a towel, certain that she was going to crack. Feldman terrified her, and she was losing the ability to hide it.
Her Pad went off, on a triple-urgent alarm sound that sent her a foot into the air. She was out the door and heading back to the lab before she finished pulling it out of her pocket. Two steps later and she was racing inside, snapping the alarm silent without answering it. Mike and Feldman were in front of the detector. She joined them there, not even needing to ask.
“Bloody things are becoming commonplace,” Mike muttered when she reached his side.
“Into space?” Dinnie said, confused by what the display showed her. “They sent someone into space?”
“Or something, Feldman said, his cold eyes lowering her body temperature several degrees when he looked at her.
She shivered, then rubbed her face, as if to wipe his glare away. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“No people were on that bridge,” Mike said. “Whatever it was, it was small and inert.”
A bomb. Please, all the saints, let it be one of the bombs. Afraid that Feldman could hear her traitorous thought, Dinnie glared at the display, as if looking for the answer there. Mike sent her a little smile. She wasn’t the kind of boss who hovered, but she thought he was grateful for her as a buffer between him and Feldman.
She wondered who would buffer her.
~~~
“We have to find them,” Sam said. He struggled to contain his fear for Sarah, as well as his bewilderment at the other men. He could understand Ned’s attitude: Ned had to command the entire team, and that meant being willing to accept losses. But he didn’t understand Pete at all. How could he be willing to ignore the danger his wife might be facing? Even Andy was strangely ambivalent. Moira might be Andy’s student, but it was obvious to all of them that he was in love with her. Yet he seemed to be taking his cues from Pete and Ned, and wasn’t willing to go after the women.
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