She was about to step back in an attempt to get distance between her and her opponent when she heard a high-pitched crackle, and then everything went black.
Chapter 10
Angelika struggled to open her eyes, and when she was finally able to do so, the first thing that assaulted them was a blinding white light. Trying to filter it through squinted eyes, the paramount feeling she could articulate was a throbbing at the base of her neck. As more and more of her senses came online, she realized that she was no longer vertical, and was instead lying flat on her back on the cold, metal floor. Recalling her last memories, she realized that the droid must have knocked her unconscious, and she wondered how long she’d blacked out. She licked at her dry lips as her ears began picking up sounds in the room.
“Unit L-Two-Six, what is your status?” came a soothing male voice from somewhere nearby.
“Proceeding on course to destination,” an android’s metallic voice responded through a speaker a moment later. “Estimated time of arrival is five minutes, twenty-seven seconds.”
“Initiate visual link, L-Two-Six.”
With the ringing in her head quickly dissipating, and knowing that her hands were bound behind her back, Angelika gathered enough strength to turn her head in the direction of the humanoid voice. Standing before a large, rectangular monitor was a man, dressed in a uniform similar to the one Angelika had seen Krador wear in her briefing on Canis-Seven. Affixed to the bright yellow sash around the man’s waist was a long, curved dagger. Fastened on the opposite hip was a Sector Command-issued blaster. She could see that his boots were highly polished, and his defiant posture gave Angelika every impression that this man—probably Stoval—was the supreme lord over his exceedingly small corner of the universe.
Over his shoulder, Angelika watched as the view screen began displaying a live feed from the android out in the field. The android that was streaming the images was rounding the edge of the crater Angelika had traversed earlier. A moment later, Toyotomi’s makeshift mining site came into view.
Thank the stars, Angelika thought. I was only unconscious long enough for those droids to drag me up to the control room.
“What do your thermals read, L-Two-Six?” Stoval inquired.
“Nominal, sir. One life-form present.”
The Colonel nodded in approval. “Must be a newcomer to Torval. No one else would be stupid enough to stake a claim so close to our operations.”
Angelika had to get to her feet, but needed to do so without alarming Stoval or the droids she knew were present in the control space with them. She closed her eyes and tried to roll to her side, but a sharp pain radiated from her left leg, and she involuntarily moaned.
The sound pulled Stoval’s attention momentarily away from the monitor. He looked down on her with utter contempt, then nodded to a droid standing nearby. “L-Four-Four, get her on her feet,” he commanded. “Do not damage her. Not yet.”
The black android reached down and clamped its metallic fingers around Angelika’s forearm. It easily hefted her to her feet in a single, swift motion.
Stoval examined her from head to toe, ogling lecherously in some places longer than others. He reached up, gently pushing her worn outer vest over her shoulders. There was the slightest hint of admiration in his eyes as more of Angelika’s skintight thermal suit was revealed, but that admiration turned to disappointment when he caught the gleam of Angelika’s sidearm. His hazel eyes looked kind, but there was something else…something menacing lurking behind his almost boyish features. “And just who might you be?”
“A prospector,” Angelika said. “We’ve come to stake our claim out in the wastelands.”
“This is a restricted area, young lady.” Stoval’s tone was even, but not threatening. He inclined his head at the large monitor behind him. “You and your friend out there should have known that.”
“We’re new to Torval,” she replied, trying to jerk some of her hair out of her face. “We didn’t know.”
Stoval nodded slowly, his eyes now fixed on the image of Toyotomi’s digging operations. “That’s too bad, both for you and your friend out there.”
“B-but,” she stammered in an attempt to simulate fear, “we’ll leave. You don’t need to report us. Please. We cannot afford the fines. All you see on those monitors is all we have left.”
The corners of Stoval’s lips turned upwards in a devilish smile. “You still have your lives.”
Angelika’s eyes went wide with terror as the implications settled over her. “Please, please no. Don’t hurt us. We’ll go…we’ll go far away. Just let us be.”
His head rocked from side to side as if he were contemplating her words. “You know, a few years ago, I might have considered it.” He reached out and grasped a lock of her golden hair. “I may have even decided to keep you here for myself. But times have changed,” he sighed, then shrugged noncommittally. “You see, you’ve seen our operations here. Highly classified operations, I might add. I can’t let you go at this point. I mean, think of what would happen if you were picked up by Sector Command. You could compromise everything we’re doing here.”
“We won’t tell anyone about you. I haven’t seen anything.”
Stoval shook his head slowly again. He turned, then entered a series of commands into the terminal’s keyboard. On a smaller monitor to the left of the main display, a playback on Angelika’s entire journey was replayed in vivid detail and from multiple vantage points. Stoval chuckled as he watched Angelika, hanging by a single handhold on the ladder, point her weapons carefully at the passing sentries. “You look very calm right there. It seems to me you’ve done this before.”
“I’m not a thief.”
Stoval huffed. “If you are, then you’re not a very good one. I could classify you as a trespasser. That title alone caries a hefty fine.” He turned back to her, his handsome features never losing their luster. “Now, I’m a gentleman by nature, so I’ll do you one favor before I eliminate you; I’ll let you watch my droids take care of your associate out there. Then, if you start telling me the truth, I may let you live.”
“No, you mustn’t!”
“Please, I can’t stand groveling,” he said, dismissing her with a simple wave of his hand. Turning, he reached for a button on the key panel below the large screen. “L-Two-Six, do you have a target?”
“Affirmative,” the metallic male voice stated. “A passenger conveyance is approaching this unit’s position on an intercept course. Target will be in range in twenty seconds. There is one life sign aboard.”
“Excellent. Eliminate that vehicle and its passenger, then destroy the rest of the equipment. I want no traces left.”
“Understood.”
* * *
The rust-covered hover truck came to a slow halt ten feet from the sentry droid’s black metal body. Toyotomi watched in anticipation as the droid quickly raised its weapon and fired into the vehicle without hesitation. Hundreds of rounds were expended in less than thirty seconds. First the hover thrusters went dead, causing the vehicle to fall unceremoniously to the soft sand beneath it, and then the main body began to fragment. Soon it was little more than a smoldering hulk.
“L-Two-Six,” Stoval’s voice called into the droid’s headset. “Is the target eliminated?”
The droid hesitated for a moment as it scanned, then rescanned the fiery pile of twisted metal. “Negative. Target remains.”
“That’s not possible! Verify!”
The droid stepped over to the remains of the hover truck’s driver’s door. Hooking one of its claws into several of the bullet holes, the droid ripped the component from the chassis and tossed it aside. It leaned in to examine what remained of the driver, its single lens focusing to give Stoval a clear picture of the bullet-riddled body. When the smoke cleared, all that could be seen was an undamaged metal box, seated squarely in the seat.
“Identify that, L-Two-Six! Is it a bomb?”
The droid pulled the eight-inch square box f
rom the vehicle and held it up to the suns’ light. Cycling through several of its built-in lenses, it finally was able to examine the interior of the object. “This is a life-reading signal generator.”
“L-Two-Six, disengage and return to base immediately!”
Before the android could respond, a dual-barreled weapons battery burst out from its shallow grave in the desert floor ten yards away. Taking aim at the first available target, it opened fire on L-Two-Six with a deafening barrage of armor-piercing rounds. The android staggered back against the battered frame of the hover truck as round after round shredded it to pieces. Within seconds there was nothing left of L-Two-Six, save for one foot still twitching and spitting out viscous blue hydraulic fluid.
“All units, open fire!” Stoval yelled into each of the droids’ headsets. “Destroy everything!”
This was the sign Toyotomi and Angelika were waiting for, and she tapped a concealed transmitter in her back pocket.
On the screen, the droid from which Stoval was receiving his video feed suddenly trained its optics on one of the large ore carriers nearby. A deafening noise could be heard, and then the tent that was covering the rear of the vehicle split into several large sections, and a small aerial drone rocketed out, shooting out over the rim of the nearby crater. A moment later, several more hidden weapons platforms erupted from the desert sand and began opening firing on the droids.
From his concealed vantage point, Toyotomi watched as the emplacements took out no less than two units each before they themselves were destroyed by the sharpshooting robots. Now defenseless, he watched as the leftover droids began to make their way into the center of his mining operations.
* * *
“You dare to attack me?” Stoval shouted, pivoting toward Angelika with fists clenched and arms raised in attack.
She was ready for him. Although her wrists were still bound behind her, her legs were still free, and she planted one foot on the ground before sending the other squarely into Stoval’s midsection, causing the officer to stumble back against the control panel. Turning quickly to face the two droids behind her, Angelika again used her foot, this time to plant it against the droid for leverage as she spiraled in a graceful backflip away from the artificial unit. Seeing that Stoval was still trying to pick himself up from the console beside her, she crouched down onto one foot and swept the other cleanly down on his stomach once more. This had the desired effect of not only knocking the wind out of him, but it also dislodged the ceremonial knife from the sash around his waist. The knife clamored to the floor, directly between the two droids who were about to lunge for her.
That was when Angelika heard a welcome sound. As the sound got louder and louder, even the two droids stopped in mid-thrust as their programming tried to ascertain what was happening. Just as the roaring sound reached a crescendo, Angelika leapt sideways and clear of the console as the screen, and everything behind it, exploded into red-hot fragments. Through the now-gaping hole that looked out to the sprawling mining complex far below, the aerial drone launched by her earlier homing signal swooped into the building, beheading both of the stunned sentry droids before crashing into a far wall and lodging itself in the lone elevator shaft afforded this compartment in the tower.
Rolling to her side, Angelika retrieved Stoval’s dagger and set her wrists free. Jumping to her feet, she quickly scanned the decimated office for Stoval, but he was nowhere to be found. She quickly rushed to the side of the drone, opening a hatch on the vehicle’s side and withdrawing the contents.
As she fumbled with the alien device, a lone shadow cast itself over her. She looked up in time to see the twin Torvolian suns pass beyond the large hole in the wall, causing Stoval’s silhouette to fall over the entire compartment. He was holding her pilfered sidearm in one hand, pointing at the ground. In his other he held a transmitter, and it looked as if his finger had depressed the button.
A clatter of noises began to echo throughout the space. They were getting louder with each passing second, and Angelika had a sneaking suspicion of what was about to happen. As if to confirm her thoughts, a lone droid sentry climbed into the control room through the wide hole behind Stoval. It was followed by another, and then another. Soon, the entire compartment was filled with deadly, armed droids waiting for an order from Stoval, the red lights of their optics staring at Angelika menacingly.
“As payment for your audacity, I will not shoot you with your own weapon,” Stoval said as he placed her gun into the folds of his jacket. With his sleeve, he wiped of a line of blood dripping from his cut lips. “I will, however, take it away as a prize. For your punishment, I’m going to have my droids rip you apart one tiny piece at a time. I want you to feel everything, so that even your tormented soul will eternally remember that Colonel Alisi Stoval did this to you.”
“Is that your final word on the matter?” Angelika asked with a devilish smile.
“Defiant to the last. I like that. What a pity,” he said with mock sadness. “Droids, dismember her…slowly.”
“Dismember this!” Angelica reached into the black folds of the garment she’d pulled from the drone wreckage and withdrew a palm-sized sphere. Twisting it, she quickly lobbed it in Stoval’s direction and then crouched down in anticipation for the upcoming explosions.
Nothing happened.
Seriously?
“I hope that wasn’t your only hope,” Stoval began. “Because if it was, it—”
His words were cut off as the spherical device at his feet began to twist itself. The device’s midsection sprang open, and a torrential wave of energy erupted from within. Like a lightning bolt, it struck the lead droid dead-center, sending out a shower of sparks in every direction. Soon, each of the droids present began violently shaking and sputtering in their own death throes as more and more beams of raw energy spilled from the seemingly harmless ball. A moment later Angelika could hear Stoval scream in agony, and with his bloodcurdling cries she knew at once that he had also been caught in the disruption grenade’s blast wave. Toyotomi, it seemed, had been wrong when he had described to her how the device worked; it was just as efficient on biological forms as it was on synthetic ones. Hopefully Agent Katashi had been right about the blast radius, and she would remain safe. The console, and every electronic device in a twenty-foot-wide arc in front of Angelika sizzled and sputtered as fireworks seemed to go off all around her.
Then, as quickly as the energy discharge had propagated, it was gone. The room was deathly silent as Angelika tried to register what was going to happen next. The sentries were still standing, but only for a moment. Like dominoes they collapsed, one after another, on the floor in a large heap before her. Beyond their metallic corpses, Angelika could see that her blast had also crippled the station’s main computer. The mainframe was a mess of oozing conductive gel and wasted circuitry. With the computer down, every droid not in the tower would now be deactivated, even the ones down in the mine. As if to confirm this, Angelika peered out the hole in the wall where the large screen had once been. Far below, in a pile similar to the one behind her, were the droids that were once clinging to the side of the tower and waiting to get in before falling to their collective synthetic deaths.
Angelika smiled with satisfaction at the job well done. Stepping over to Stoval’s body, she found little evidence to suggest he was still alive. He was bleeding from every cavity she could see, and probably from the ones she couldn’t see as well. Checking for a pulse, she felt none. She then reached into his charred hand and withdrew her sidearm. Giving the weapon a cursory inspection, she tapped at the transceiver in her earring. Pressing the small device, she only hoped Toyotomi had been as successful—and that he’d send her some form of rescue soon. With the lift door smashed by the invading drone, the last thing she wanted was to remain in at the top of this tower—a veritable Rapunzel—for the rest of her life.
A moment later her palm-sized transceiver chirped, which was immediately followed by Toyotomi’s voice. “Agent Jordan
, can I assume that you were successful?”
Angelika nodded approvingly at her surroundings before speaking. “Affirmative. Primary objective complete: the tower is secure.”
“And our friend?”
Angelika looked at the still-smoldering lifeless body of Colonel Stoval on the floor. “The secondary is down.”
“Nicely done, Agent Jordan.”
Something sparked behind her, and she turned to see the lifeless form of a droid twitch in its final death throes. “What’s your status, Agent Katashi?”
“The staging area is secure. Once you deactivated the tower controls, the remaining sentry droids went into automatic shutdown. They did succeed in damaging some of my mining equipment beforehand, however. I may take it out of your pay.”
Angelika smirked at his sarcasm. “You can bill me. I’ll need to some help getting out of here.”
“Specify?”
Angelika turned to the remains of the aerial drone lodged half into the elevator shaft. “Well, that drone you sent up crashed right into the elevator shaft, so I’m stuck up here for now.”
“We were afraid something like that might happen. In any case, the elevators would be useless now that the main control center at the base of the tower is offline.”
“Right. Well, is the sky lift still working?” she asked, referring to the main aerial lift that was supposed to be her ticket to freedom.
“Unfortunately, no. It was one of the pieces of equipment damaged in the attack.”
“Of course it was,” she rebuked under her breath. “Plan B it is, then.”
Traitor Winds - Kestrel Saga: Vol. 0 (Kestrel Saga - Origins) Page 11