Polaris Rising

by Jessie Mihalik

  I led the way down to the cargo bay. The flight got a little rougher as the ship entered the atmosphere, but the compensators on this ship were much better than those in the escape shuttle we’d landed on TSD Nine.

  Rhys sorted through his gear while Loch leaned against the wall with crossed arms and a distant expression. His posture screamed disinterest, but his eyes were sharp. I could almost see the wheels turning in his head.

  While Rhys dug, I typed out my ideal concessions from Father on my spare com. I doubted Rhys would be able to get them all, but even one or two would make my life easier. I sent the list to Rhys, hesitated, then sent it to Loch as well. There wasn’t anything too surprising on the list and having a backup wasn’t a bad idea.

  At five minutes to touchdown, Rhys called me over. He handed me a backpack and started loading it and my cargo pockets with the gear he thought I’d need—a backup com, grenades, ammo, a stunstick, breaching charges, door stops, and small charges with remote detonators. Smaller items went in my pockets while the larger things like the breaching charges had to be in the backpack.

  On the belt around my waist he clipped the codebreaker that would hopefully get me through the doors without need for the explosives. A pistol blaster went on my right hip with extra ammo clipped to the belt. A stun pistol went on my left hip. A long blaster with a beam that could be adjusted from shotgun to rifle strapped across the backpack with a quick-release buckle.

  “And now, for the pièce de résistance,” Rhys murmured. He pulled a silver disk the size of a hockey puck from a locking storage box.

  “Is that what I think it is?” I said.

  “It depends. Do you think this is the very latest prototype of von Hasenberg shielding technology?”

  “How?” I whispered in awe. Realizing what I’d asked, I held up a hand. “Wait, I want to remain friends, so don’t tell me.” This prototype was so new I’d never seen one exactly like it. It was like the tech built into my cuff, only much more powerful. The last time I’d seen one, they were the size of a dinner plate, but the shape and markings were unmistakable.

  “I’ve been told this will stop up to a dozen close-range blaster shots,” Rhys said. “When it starts beeping and the light flashes red you know it’s about to fail. You activate it by clicking the button in the middle. A long press deactivates it. It uses power while active even if it’s not deflecting shots, so use it wisely.” He attached it to the front of my belt.

  The one-minute warning sounded. A storm of bees took flight throughout my system as adrenaline began flowing. “Thank you, Rhys. Take good care of my ship.”

  He nodded and pulled me into a hug. “Come back safe, Lady Ada,” he murmured against my temple.

  I moved to Loch. “I’m sorry we’re not parting on better terms,” I said. I drank him in with my eyes, aware that this could be the last time I’d ever see him. I let him see the regret and sadness, the longing and desire that I would never be brave enough to admit to aloud. “Look after everyone, okay?”

  He could’ve been carved from ice and I would’ve received more acknowledgment. Okay, then.

  I snapped on my helmet and my suit powered up. “Testing coms,” I said.

  Rhys already had his helmet on. “I hear you,” he said.

  “With the ship in stealth, you won’t be able to communicate with me, but you should receive my signals. You don’t need to respond unless I specifically ask for transmission confirmation. I’ll leave my com open for as long as I can so you can monitor my progress.”

  Eventually Rockhurst troops on the ground would realize the outgoing transmission wasn’t one of theirs and start listening in. When that happened, I’d have to shut it down or risk broadcasting my location and plans. I couldn’t risk an active tracker or video feed for the same reason.

  I waved to Rhys then sealed myself inside the docking bay airlock built into the side of Polaris’s cargo bay. This ship wasn’t big enough to bother with an atmospheric containment field over the cargo bay door, so I couldn’t open the cargo bay directly without admitting the foreign atmosphere.

  The airlock hissed then the outer door opened. A short, steep ramp led down to the ground and I realized Rhys must’ve extended it. As soon as I was clear, the ship lifted into the sky and disappeared.

  Loneliness tweaked my heart, but I shook it off and headed for the low bunker at the edge of the spaceport.

  I had a job to do.

  Chapter 20

  The bunker was larger than it appeared from a distance. The opening was nearly eight meters tall by ten meters wide. It was curtained from the outside air with the faint shimmer of an atmospheric field. Hopefully that meant the air inside the building was breathable and I wouldn’t have to make my way through an airlock.

  If anyone occupied this base, they likely knew I was here by now, since landing a ship was hard to miss, but the inside of the bunker was empty. Railings surrounded a wide, circular platform set into the floor with a control panel on the far side. If they had an industrial lift, they definitely transported large quantities of something.

  A square room occupied the far back corner of the bunker. Solid concrete and concealed by a heavy, sealed door with a control pad on the wall, it probably contained the stairwell and elevator.

  Time to see if Rhys’s codebreaker was any good.

  I attached the com-sized device to the door’s control panel and hit the override button. While not as rare as the prototype shield on my belt, codebreakers still were not easy to come by. Thirty seconds later, the door popped open with a click. I put away the codebreaker and unholstered a blaster.

  “I’m heading inside,” I murmured into the helmet’s microphone. I didn’t know if Rhys and Loch were still in range or if they’d already taken the ship and disappeared, but I wasn’t going to ask them to drop stealth just to reassure me.

  A quick peek revealed an empty room. A specialty airlock elevator took up the left half of the room and another heavy door lead to a stairwell on the right. The elevator had too many potential failure points. If the security forces overrode the commands from the codebreaker, I’d be trapped in a metal box.

  I put a door stop on the room door. A piece of metal that clamped around the edge of the door, it prevented the door from closing and locking behind me. The part that touched the door was coated in an insta-weld compound that permanently secured it to the door.

  The door stop would have to be cut off to be removed. Using them was kind of a dick move on an unterraformed planet, because if the atmospheric field fell, the intermediate doors wouldn’t seal properly and would allow unbreathable air to seep inside.

  I hoped the people inside practiced their contingency plans.

  The codebreaker cracked the stairwell door’s unlock code in ten seconds, which told me that either it was less secure than the previous door or their codes relied on a pattern that the breaker had picked up on.

  I eased the door open. The landing was clear. Where was everyone? I put a door stop on the door then peeked over the side of the banister. The stairwell was square. The stairs hugged the wall, leaving a hole in the middle. It had to be at least ten stories down to the distant floor.

  “Too bad I didn’t bring rappelling gear. Would’ve made this faster,” I muttered. I resigned myself to spiraling down the steps as quickly as possible. And I was not looking forward to hauling ass back up these steps.

  There were no other exits on the way down. At the bottom, a closed door greeted me. It was on the same side of the stairwell as the door at the top, leading out under the rest of the bunker. The industrial lift should be just out and off to my left. The codebreaker made quick work of the lock.

  I crouched down and barely cracked the door open to reveal a large, brightly lit warehouse. Farther in the distance, separated from the warehouse by a wall full of windows and a wide door, large tanks were connected to a production line with thick plastech pipes.

  Nothing glowed pink.

  And, more worryingly
, the vast room waited in silence.

  “I’ve found the warehouse entrance, but I haven’t confirmed they’re mining. Setup looks right, but no material is visible. And the whole place is dead. Watch your backs,” I said softly.

  I put a door stop on the door. No one moved in the warehouse and nothing disturbed the silence. The amount of radio traffic from this location was too high for it to be abandoned. So were they working in another section of the building or had they fled when they spotted me?

  Or, perhaps, they were drawing me in, luring me deeper, until the trap sprang closed.

  On this end of the room there were no hiding places. The warehouse was empty and from what I could see, there weren’t any other rooms off of the main one. The production line room was another story. It had desks and lab tables scattered throughout, plus the low wall between the two rooms would allow an entire platoon to hide behind it.

  “I’m going to check the next room. Be prepared to run,” I said, still talking to people who might’ve already left me.

  Either way, I needed to get a closer look at the production room, so I opened the door and sauntered out into the warehouse. The rubber soles of my boots squeaked against the hard floor and my pulse pounded in my ears.

  Nothing moved and I slipped through the door into the production room without getting jumped. Based on the setup, this was a research area. I brought up the nearest console, but it was locked. Snooping in desks was easier than cracking passwords because scientists liked to jot down notes while they worked.

  “I’m seeing references to the element,” I said into my headset. “This planet is at least involved in the research.”

  I crept deeper into the production facility. A low hum from the tanks on my left caused me to freeze. Perhaps they weren’t empty after all. I climbed the ladder of the nearest one. On the top, a circular observation window was covered by a sliding panel. I slid the panel aside to reveal a tank of glowing pink liquid.

  Jackpot.

  I whispered to Rhys and Loch, “They have vats of the element here. This is definitely—”

  “Come down, Lady Ada. Slowly, if you please,” Richard said from behind me.

  I nearly fell off the tank in shock. I clutched the ladder and waited for my heart to steady.

  “Richard is here—abort, abort now!” I whispered frantically while making enough noise on the ladder to cover my conversation. “Get out of the system!”

  I clicked on the shield generator and palmed a flash-bang grenade in my left hand while I descended. Once on solid ground, I turned to face Richard. He was in a space suit, but he had removed his helmet. He was flanked by four guards still in full space suits. The fact that I hadn’t heard them approach meant either I was losing my touch or they were using a silencer. I hoped it was the latter.

  I pulled on my public persona like armor. “Hello, Richard,” I said.

  “My wayward fiancée returns,” Richard said. “And you were kind enough to bring back my ship as a wedding present.”

  “Richard, we were never engaged,” I said with exaggerated patience, as if explaining to a small child for the umpteenth time.

  His mouth pressed into a flat line, but he recovered quickly. “Nevertheless, you will marry me. When you do, I’ll let your friends go and even give them a shuttle to get back to populated space,” he said. “Except for Loch. He’s mine.”

  Because he hadn’t included specifics when he mentioned my “friends,” I doubted he had the ship. And even if he had, he wouldn’t be offering to let them go so easily if he’d gotten a glimpse of Lin. So there was hope, however slim, that they had escaped. Now I had to focus on my own escape.

  “I do not think Loch swings that way, Richard. And planning an affair so soon after our wedding?” I tutted and shook my head.

  Richard took an abrupt, furious step toward me before he pulled himself together. I’d pushed him close to the end of his patience, so I double clicked the button on the end of the flash-bang grenade. A subtle vibration counted down the seconds.

  “Drop your weapons, Lady Ada,” Richard said.

  “Why?”

  “Because they’ll stun you if you don’t,” Richard said, waving an arm at his guards.

  “Not man enough to do it yourself?” I asked, as the grenade’s pulsing sped up.

  “For the love of—” Richard growled, but the grenade had reached constant vibration.

  “Catch!” I yelled, launching the grenade at them and darting left, farther into the room. I heard the explosion behind me. It wouldn’t cause much damage, even if he was stupid enough to catch it, but it bought me precious seconds.

  I dodged through the desks and tables, trying to prevent the soldiers following me from getting a clear shot. I slammed through the doors at the end of the room into a wide hallway.

  And my shield promptly took hits from multiple stun rounds. I shot both Rockhurst soldiers blocking the hall, but I could see another squad in the next room. I turned to go back the way I’d come, but Richard’s soldiers were already there. The shield took more hits and started beeping a low-power warning. I fired back and they retreated through the doors.

  I couldn’t let House Rockhurst have our shielding technology. I’d left my cuff and necklace hidden in the ship for the same reason. Before the shield completely ran out of power, I clicked the middle button in a seemingly random pattern. Rhys hadn’t mentioned it because he likely didn’t know, but all House von Hasenberg advanced tech had self-destruct options built-in. A small vibration confirmed I’d gotten the code correct.

  I now had ten seconds before the shield self-destructed. I had at least five people between me and the hangar and eight or more if I kept moving deeper into the facility. I decided retreat was the best option. I slung the long gun off of my back and set it to shotgun mode.

  Time for shock and awe.

  I hit the doors at a run and fired before I had a clear sight line. My firearms tutor would be extremely disappointed, but one of Richard’s guards went down and another had been clipped. I fired again and missed, blowing a hole in a lab table. At least it made the remaining guards wary of leaving cover.

  I kept firing, but, unfortunately, I was still badly outnumbered and no longer protected by the shield. A stun round narrowly missed me on the left. I swung the shotgun around and blasted the table the soldier was using for cover.

  The shield’s vibration pattern went steady at the same time Richard stuck his head up, so I unclipped it and threw it at him as hard as I could. The shield generator self-destructed midair in a burst of white-hot flames. I didn’t get to enjoy the surprise on Richard’s face for long because stun rounds hit me from two different directions.

  I screamed as little bolts of agony licked through my system, causing my muscles to contract and twitch. I caught a glimpse of soldiers in space suits as I fell. The world went distant, and I didn’t feel the floor that rushed up to meet my helmeted face.

  When I came back to myself, a blurry Richard stood over me. Someone had removed my helmet. I blinked to clear my vision, but it helped only marginally.

  Blood caked the side of Richard’s face from a cut over his eye. With the blood, his handsome face had taken a sinister turn. “It didn’t have to be like this, Ada,” he said. He sounded sincere.

  “Then let me go,” I gritted out.

  “I’m afraid not,” Richard said. “You know too much, as evidenced by your search. You must not be allowed to alert the other Houses before we are ready. So, you can marry me, save your friends, and live in relative comfort, or you can rot in a cell while your friends die. You have until Santa Celestia returns to decide. Take her to the holding cell.”

  I was lifted by two soldiers and placed on a stretcher. They strapped me down, then picked up the stretcher and moved deeper into the building. I tried to keep track of our movements, but the ceiling kept dipping and swirling in my vision.

  I couldn’t feel the backpack under me, so they must’ve stripped me of gear while I
was out. On the bright side, they hadn’t stripped my clothes. If I could find my helmet or another like it, I’d have a working space suit.

  The soldiers maneuvered me through a doorway into a small room. They lowered the stretcher to the ground. The restraints loosened but didn’t fall away completely, then the soldiers left. The door closed and locked behind them.

  I forced my neck to work. It looked like I was in an office that had been stripped of furniture. There was a large window next to the door, and a helmeted guard faced me through the glass. Another guard faced out into the larger room.

  So much for escaping unnoticed.

  It was much more interesting that all of the soldiers I’d seen so far were wearing space suits. Either Richard expected me to blow the atmospheric field or he had only just arrived and they hadn’t had time to change.

  It took a few minutes, but I finally made my arms functional enough to pull the restraint strap off of my chest. I sat up with a groan. My abs trembled with the effort. I pulled the restraint from my legs and wobbled to my feet. I would need a few minutes of recovery before the ass-kicking started. I staggered to the window and tapped on the glass in front of the soldier facing me.

  He did not react.

  Looking past him, I could see a few more soldiers milling around in what appeared to be an office area. Desks sat in neat rows with a cleared space in the middle where a grouping of couches surrounded by a low wall made an informal meeting spot.

  Richard stood next to one of the couches, close to another man who had also removed his helmet. The man nodded while Richard talked. By the deferential way he stood, even though he towered over Richard, he was likely the guard commander.

  In fact, all of the guards were on the tall and bulky side—not a lanky guy or gal among them. My plan to play guard would go nowhere fast; they’d take one look at me and realize I wasn’t one of them.

  I turned around and leaned against the window to better assess the room. Solid plastech walls and ceiling meant I wasn’t escaping unless I found a plasma cutter stashed conveniently nearby. I looked around, but the room failed to deliver. Even the air vent was a tiny rectangle that no human could fit through.