by M. R. Forbes
Lurin had given her a sedative. He had suspected as much, but he knew it was true. He could smell it on her. The Warden wouldn’t know he had that kind of training. The HSOC didn’t advertise the skills it imparted on its members.
“Lieutenant Cage,” he said again, futilely. If Lurin had slipped her the drug while the lift was out of commission, it would be at least six hours before she was alert enough to respond.
Her head turned slightly, and a soft groan escaped. What? Had he been wrong? Maybe Lurin had given her the drug before his arrival.
“Lieutenant.”
Her eyes opened a millimeter or two. They shifted rapidly back and forth. She was starting to come out of it.
“What?” she said softly.
“My name is Captain Olus - ooph!”
He was thrown backward as her hand shot up from beneath the blanket, hitting him square in the chest. He hit the ground, rolling over into a squat.
Lieutenant Cage was sitting up, staring straight ahead. “No,” she said. “No. Don’t.”
He got back to his feet. His chest hurt, and he had lost his breath.
“Lieutenant,” he said as strongly as he could.
“No!” she shouted, turning her head to look at him. Her body was shaking.
“Captain, I believe you should allow the patient to rest,” the bot said, reaching for him.
Olus shrugged himself away, moving toward her. “Abigail,” he said.
“Leave me alone!” she cried, putting her hand up toward him.
He wasn’t sure what happened next, but he found himself against the wall beside the doorway.
“Captain,” the bot said again, forever calm.
She was staring at him. Watching him like a predator. He turned his head away, sliding up the wall and moving toward the door. She seemed to relax as he backed away.
He exited the room. The bot followed behind him, closing and locking the door.
Lurin had warned him that she wasn’t well, but this? Something was happening here. Something that made his skin crawl.
He didn’t know what to make of it. What he did know was that with all the authority he did have, it didn’t include removing mentally unfit prisoners from treatment.
If he was going to get Lieutenant Cage out, he was going to have to do it the hard way.
26
Olus hadn’t told the Warden why he really wanted to meet with the prisoners, but he knew from Gant that the Warden had been listening in during his interviews and monitoring everything that was said. He had been careful not to reveal too much - years in the field had taught him to be smarter than that - but he had suggested aloud that he was going to order transfers for the convicts he had selected. Transfers to his command, under his control, with his authority.
Earlier, he had thought that maybe he had made a mistake. That he should have been even more cryptic and careful, although that would have made the selection process that much harder. Now, he was almost grateful for the reveal.
It was going to make what came next that much more of a surprise.
He left the medical ward, finding his way to Lurin’s office. He entered without knocking, catching the Warden with a large mass of written documentation projected at eye level, forms he recognized immediately as requisition requests.
“Captain,” Lurin said, dismissing the projection. “I warned you about Lieutenant Cage, sir.”
“You did,” Olus agreed. “I’m sorry I didn’t listen. What happened to her?”
“Post-traumatic stress, I believe, but I’m not a physician. I’ve requested a specialist be sent in to analyze her and document her case. It’s a shame, really. She was a good miner.”
Olus kept his expression flat. “Will she be transferred out to a rehabilitation center?” He already knew the answer. He wanted to see and hear how the Sergeant responded.
“No, Captain,” Lurin replied. “You should know, the only way out of Hell is death.” Lurin tried to smile, a difficult maneuver for an Atmo. It was more comical than anything, his lips forming an oval, his tiny teeth hidden behind them.
“You might have overheard that I was planning on changing that rule,” Olus said. “I came to Hell to locate recruits.”
“Recruits?” Lurin said, acting surprised. “What for?”
“That’s classified. The point is, I’ve decided against it. This episode with Cage has shown me that it was a bad idea. I just stopped by to thank you for the use of your facility, and for your patience while I undertook this process.”
“Oh. Of course, Captain. We are both servants of the Republic, and I was honored to be of assistance to you.” Lurin stood up and circled his desk, pausing in front of Olus to salute. Olus returned the gesture. “I’ll escort you back to the hangar, sir.”
“That isn’t necessary,” Olus replied. “I can see you have quite a bit of bureaucracy to catch up on.”
Lurin shook his head. “You have no idea. Master Sergeant Packard was not a fan of red tape.”
“Is anybody?” Olus asked. “Goodbye, Sergeant.”
“Goodbye, Captain.”
Olus left the office, tapping his communicator as he did.
“Commander Usiari,” he said.
“Captain,” the commander of the Driver said a moment later. “What do you need, sir?”
“I’m ready for pickup. Can you please send a shuttle down?”
“Immediately, sir.”
“Thank you.”
He closed the connection, heading for the lift and taking it up to the hangar. He was overwhelmed the moment he left the climate controlled confines of the administrative level, having forgotten how hot it was while wearing the coolsuit. He was amazed all over again that anything could live in it with no hope of relief. He could have waited on Level Two for the shuttle, but he wanted to experience the heat, as oppressive as it was.
He stood sweating in the hangar for twenty minutes, climbing into the shuttle and closing his eyes as a raft of cool air washed over him once more. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his uniform and then waited patiently while they made the return trip to the Driver, floating in orbit around the planet.
He didn’t waste any time once he was back on board, summoning Commander Usiari to meet with him in his quarters, not even bothering to change from his sweaty clothes or clean himself up before he arrived.
“Captain,” Usiari said. “You wanted to see me?”
“Yes, Commander,” Olus replied. “Please, come in.”
The door to his quarters opened and Usiari entered.
“Sir?”
“Commander. You understand that my mission and the means by which I carry out that mission are top secret, do you not?”
“Aye, sir.”
“You also understand that I have complete authority over the Driver and all of the assets within, including yourself?”
“Aye, sir.”
Olus watched him for signs of tension or concern. Meeting with Lurin had raised his suspicion, and he wasn’t going to release it lightly.
“If you don’t mind, sir, why do you ask?”
“I have a few requirements, Commander, and I’m going to ask a small number of your crew to act in a manner that could be viewed as treasonous without a full appreciation of the circumstances surrounding my requests, circumstances which I am not at liberty to describe in full. I will make it clearly known that this operation falls under my jurisdiction and comes under my orders, but it must be clear to both you and the affected crew members that one, no word of my requests shall ever leave them or this ship under penalty of court-martial and imprisonment, and two, orders will be carried out without question. Do you understand?”
“Aye, sir,” Usiari said without hesitation. “My orders are clear in that regard. I am to do as you ask. My crew will do the same.”
Olus nodded, convinced by the Commander’s reaction that he was an honest soldier. “Good. Who on your ship is the most skilled with networking?”
“I’m sorry, sir. We don’t have a Breaker in our manifest.”
“I know, but you must have a tech or three in charge of maintaining onboard systems?”
“Aye, sir. That would be Petty Officer Nort, sir.”
“Please have him come and see me in thirty EM. Do you have any softsuits available?”
“I’ll have to check, Captain. We don’t have any Marines on board either. We’re running zero atmosphere this tour. What do you need it for?” Olus made a face, and the Commander lowered his head. “None of my concern. Aye, sir. My apologies. I will resolve your request shortly.”
“Thank you. There are a few other things I’ll need. Hopefully, you’ll have them. We need to make this quick, Commander. Time is definitely not on our side.”
“Aye, sir.”
Olus began rattling off a list of equipment, his mind working furiously to round out the fullness of his plan. He was supposed to be retired from active combat duty.
It seemed that fate had something else in mind.
27
“I’m in, Captain,” Petty Officer Lohse said, a little too excited over his successful hacking of a private Republic MilNet. Olus didn’t think anyone should be that happy to commit what amounted to treason, but then again, what he was about to do was much, much worse.
“Go now,” Olus said, reaching over from the rear seat of the small Shuriken starfighter and tapping the pilot on the shoulder.
“Roger,” the pilot replied, sliding his finger along the throttle to push it to the max.
Olus was shoved back into his seat as the agile craft was jerked forward by sudden, massive ionic thrust, shooting through the Driver’s shields and out into space, immediately altering direction and turning to face the planet below.
Hell was just as ugly from space as it was from the surface, a brown and orange blob of jagged rock and flowing lava streams. He hoped that when he was done with this place, he would never have to see it again.
“Orbital sensors are offline, Captain,” Lohse reported. “I’m ready to open the hangar shields at your command.”
“Standby,” Olus replied, checking the feed to his helmet. Commander Usiari hadn’t let him down, locating a softsuit in the ship’s inventory. It was a little smaller than he would have preferred, but he had managed to fit himself into it.
“Two minutes to ingress,” Lieutenant Holt said. “Hold onto your lunch.”
The Shuriken began to bounce a little as it hit the atmosphere, its angled shape punching through the sudden influx of air and hurtling toward the planet. It broke through a dozen seconds later, smoothing out as it descended, coming down hard toward the rough terrain below. Olus held himself steady, trying not to flinch as they neared the floor, gripping the seat between his legs tightly while Holt broke the fall, firing vectoring thrusters and increasing power to the anti-gravity modules. The fighter shuddered and complained as it pulled out of the drop, rolled to port and then gained a little altitude back, nearly striking the side of a cliff as the pilot brought it back under control.
“One minute to ingress,” Holt said as if the prior maneuver was nothing. “On target.”
“Officer Lohse, prepare for shield deactivation,” Olus said.
“Ready and waiting, sir,” Lohse replied.
“Is there any indication they know what’s happening?”
“No, sir. It doesn’t seem that anyone is actively monitoring the system. Even the passcodes were outdated.”
Olus smiled. He had been counting on Packard’s laziness to work to his benefit, and so far it was.
“Thirty seconds,” Holt said, navigating the fighter a hundred meters above the surface, shifting it back and forth to avoid taller obstacles.
The added stealth measures were unnecessary in light of their control over the colony’s network, but Olus wasn’t one to leave things to chance.
He counted his breaths until he reached eight. “Lower the shields,” he ordered.
“Aye, sir,” Lohse replied. Three more seconds passed. “Shields down.”
“I’m going in,” Holt said, altering the starfighter’s path again, rising into the atmosphere and then rolling over and turning toward the open mouth of the entrance to Hell. He didn’t slow the ship as he approached it, blasting through and into the tunnels leading down to the facility.
“Lohse, I want lights out and every internal feed offline,” Olus said.
“Aye, sir.”
The Shuriken slowed slightly as it reached the hangar, sweeping around the back of it before decelerating quickly, pushing Olus forward in his seat. The lighting vanished a moment later, leaving them in pitch black. Both helmets adjusted a moment later, switching to infrared and giving them a view of their surroundings that the guards wouldn’t have. The starfighter touched down, the canopy above the cockpit sliding back as it did. Olus unbuckled himself from it, picking up his rifle and vaulting over the lip of the cockpit, onto the side of the craft where he slid off and to the floor.
The Shuriken was ascending before he had taken more than a handful of steps, hurrying toward the pair of techs who had been left blind. He pulled a pair of nerve sticks from the softsuit, hitting each of them in the neck with the devices and knocking them unconscious. Then he rushed to the lift, removing a small disc from a tightpack and putting it to the controls. Lohse was doing a good job so far, but there were a few systems he had to handle himself.
He tapped the tactile controls on the suit, the terminal commands for the lift service slipping into the corner of his helmet’s visor. He broke into it easily, finding the software hadn’t been patched in nearly four years, leaving it vulnerable. He triggered the commands to send it downward. Level Twenty to start, then Eighteen and Fifteen.
He could hardly believe he was about to help some of the most dangerous individuals in the galaxy break out of one of the Republic’s worst prisons, and that he was doing it in the name of the same Republic.
“Sir, we have local activity on the network,” Lohse said. “I’m losing access.”
The lift reached Level Twenty. “I expected you would. You’ve done well. Get out before you’re identified.”
“Aye, sir.”
It was unlikely that Lurin wouldn’t guess who was behind this, but the Warden wouldn’t dare report it to Republic Command. There would be too many questions about why the head of the OSI felt the need to break into a facility he had authority over, and if there was something dirty going on here the increased scrutiny was highly likely to expose it.
And he was experienced enough to be certain there was something dirty going on here. The only question was: what?
It was a question for another time. He had enough to worry about already.
The lights suddenly came back on, an alert signal sounding throughout the prison. He could hear the synthetic voice instructing the prisoners to return to their cells immediately, and he allowed himself a small grin as the lift shuddered behind him, trying to follow the instructions coming from the mainframe and being overridden by his local patch.
He raised his rifle to his shoulder, flipping the toggle next to the trigger to switch the munitions type being loaded into the chamber. It had been at least ten standard since he had last made a combat drop, but the muscle memory had remained, and he felt like he hadn’t missed a beat.
He moved deeper into the level, his clothes already soaking through beneath the softsuit, the lightweight armor holding in the gathering heat. He had to be quick if he had any hope of getting out before he cooked himself.
A guard in a battlesuit came around the corner ahead of him, his helmet marking the target before he made visual contact. He reacted from experience, shifting himself to the opposite side of the corridor and taking aim, squeezing off a round in the space of a heartbeat. The munition smacked into the battlesuit and flashed, the localized electromagnetic pulse cutting through the weaker shielding of the older model of the armor and disabling it, leaving its wearer trapped inside.
; “Thanks again, Packard,” Olus said as he moved past the guard, waving to him on the way.
He ran down the corridor, nearing the central cell block a moment later. Not only were the cells on lockdown, but the entire block was sealed off, a heavy blast door stopping him from entering.
It was too bad for them he didn’t need to get inside.
Not yet, anyway.
He removed another disc from a tightpack and slapped it on the controls, quickly breaking into the system. He didn’t use the access to open the blast door. Instead, he used the network connection to move further into the systems, deeper into the door controls. It was trivial to navigate his way to Level Twenty, searching for specific cell doors.
He found them a moment later:
2015: Merrett, B.
2315: Pik.
2401: Gant.
He entered the override command, and they all unlocked and slid open. Then he found the controls to the security door at the base of the guard spike.
He opened that one, too.
He held the connection to the disc, watching his back as he counted up to one hundred. Then he toggled the blast door, switching munitions as it slid aside, just in case.
Bastion was just coming out of the tower, one of the guards’ rifles in his hands. Pik was with him, the nearly four meter tall Trover hulking over the back of the pilot. When he saw Olus, he squared the weapon off, ready to fire.
“Hold your fire, Worm,” Olus snapped.
“Captain Mann?” Bastion replied, momentarily confused. He started to lower the rifle before changing his mind. “Give me one good reason, you son of a bitch.”
“One,” Gant said, rounding the side of the spike and pointing at Bastion’s bracelet. It had started to buzz a delayed warning.
“They’ve regained control of the deterrence system,” Olus said. “You have about twenty seconds to either kill me or escape with me.”
“But you can’t have both,” Gant said, shaking a furry wrist. His bracelet was gone. “Captain, I thought you changed your mind?”