Chapter 34
By the time she reached the final stretch of stairs to the Under Deck for the second time in an hour, Sofie was dragging her feet. She hadn't gotten enough sleep.
She'd brought Carver and Zyr up here first, and when they'd seen the strange image her father had painted on the wall near the top step, they had stopped talking abruptly.
She said nothing about it, and neither had they, but being confronted with it again had made her decide to do some looking around while she was up here.
Sam had happily handed over watch duty to Carver and she'd taken him back to the Upper Reaches, and then turned around and come all the way back up.
She'd returned mainly to fetch Zyr, although the Lassian pleasure cruiser, the Verden, was only due in an hour, but she thought she could use the time while she waited for him to search for a clue as to why slitting wrists was so much on her father's mind toward the end.
She put her hand on the wall and stepped into the hidden passageway, and made her way to her father's office.
She stood, watching the empty room for a long time before she risked stepping inside.
She went straight to the door and saw a laser lock that secured it from the inside. She wouldn't have expected anything less from her father.
She activated it, and then looked carefully around the room.
There was the chair and the couch she'd noticed when she'd been in here before but the only truly interesting things were the desk, and the murals on the walls.
She hadn't had a chance to really look at them before.
She tried the desk first, though.
It had just three drawers on one side. They were secured with a laser lock and she had no expectation that it would open for her--she didn't think it was part of her father's original furniture--but she ran her finger through it anyway, and froze in astonishment when it did open.
She pulled out the top drawer, and found it was empty. The second was, too, but the third held a small, three-dimensional model, small enough to fit on her palm. It took her a moment to realize it was a model of the reservoir at the bottom of the way station.
Inside the cylinder, with its pumps and pipes along and down the sides, were stylized images of water droplets, stacked in diagonals on top of each other, all in the same white material the model itself was made out of. Except one. It was red, and it sat right in the middle of the tank.
She frowned at it, then went still when she heard someone outside in the corridor.
She carefully closed the drawer, but she kept the model to take with her.
She could hear voices more clearly now, but whoever was talking seemed to have paused. They weren't coming closer yet.
She looked at the murals, frowning at the representations of the old Halatian myths. Her father had told her and Rach over and over about the ancient stories of sacrifice, which the Verdant String Coalition now interpreted as the original travelers' struggles when their spaceships landed on the planets that now made up the Verdant String.
Somehow the stories from Halatia seemed to be heavy on the heroic men and women who sacrificed their lives for the greater good.
One caught her eye, the story of Abetal, injured in a confrontation with a ugon, one of the fierce, predatory species on Halatia, choosing to lead the beast away from the others in his group using a blood trail.
She connected it with what looked like a drop of blood in the water of the reservoir. The blood spilled in the murals on the walls. And then the strange, strange picture near the stairs.
She was disturbed to her core.
There was a muffled tap from the secret wall, and it startled her out of her thoughts.
She moved to the secret door and opened it, to find Carver and Zyr standing there.
“What are you doing?” Carver hissed, his eyes passing over her and into the room.
“I locked the door from the inside.” She moved back across the room, and listened at the outside door, but couldn't hear anyone any more.
She waved the two men back into the passageway, unlocked the door and then ran to the passageway herself, and closed the door behind her.
“What have you got there?” Zyr was looking at the model in her hand.
“My father's model for the design of the reservoir.” She looked down at it, at the red drop again, but if either of them noticed it, they said nothing.
“The pleasure cruiser's here. We just watched it land. It's early.” Zyr turned down the passage, and Sofie followed him, with Carver behind her.
They walked up the stairs to the Deck. On one side of the passage was the floor to ceiling window into the interior of the warehouse, and a little further down, on the right, was a large window on the opposite wall with a view of the deck itself.
Zyr was wearing a maintenance uniform, and he pointed to the sleek, silver cruiser, the Verden, which had Deck crew approaching it, wearing the same uniform.
A door opened and a ramp extended down.
Sofie looked around, but she couldn't see anyone looking their way, so she opened the door to the outside, and Zyr stepped through.
She and Carver stood shoulder to shoulder, watching him as he moved briskly toward the craft, and disappeared around the back of it.
“What's the red drop supposed to mean?” Carver asked.
Sofie followed his gaze to the model she still clutched in one hand. “That the filtration system can deal with a small amount of blood?” she suggested.
“Or it needs a drop of blood to function?” he said, a hint of humor in his voice. “Aren't you Halatians into blood sacrifice?”
It wasn't far from what she'd been thinking herself when she'd studied the murals, but something in what he said struck her, something so big and crazy, she actually stumbled back and hit the far wall.
“Looks like Zyr's found his man.” Carver wasn't watching her, his gaze was on Zyr, standing close to a man in a light gray uniform, their heads together. “Oh, and there's Dee.”
Sofie pulled herself together and stepped back up beside him, watching Dee as she rode a small hover past Zyr without even looking in his direction as she made her way toward a massive transport on the other side of the Deck.
“Bad timing for the pleasure cruiser. It's from Lassa and so's Ruanne's transport ship,” Carver said. “If this is a false trade, they'd have preferred no home witnesses, surely?”
“Yes.” Sofie wondered why they'd risked it.
She saw something big move from the corner of her eye, and she turned to look at the interior of the warehouse.
She had to stare for a few moments before she could understand what she was seeing.
Two long hovers had come out of the black warship.
A Caruson driver was at the controls of each one, and the strange hovers were built so that passengers could stand and hold a central bar, four on each side of the vehicle.
She was looking at eight Carusons on each hover. All holding the bar with one hand, a massive, alien weapon held in the other.
She hadn't realized there was that many of them here.
“Carver.”
The hovers nosed past the warship, and someone working in the maintenance area noticed them.
Called out a question.
One of the Caruso lifted his weapon and shot them.
Sofie heard Carver's breath catch as the tech went down, his face caught in a death grimace of pain.
“They're not taking Lassa. They're taking Garmen,” Carver whispered.
“And then they're taking Lassa.” She just managed to get the words out.
“Or, there's a group on Lassa right now, doing the same thing to the Cores there. Maybe the Caruso have been playing the game simultaneously.”
His guess was as horrifying as it was logical.
As the hovers waited for the warehouse doors to open, she forced herself to focus. “Zyr.”
“And Dee.” Carver had his comm set in his hand, and Sofie heard Dee's voice come through faintly as sh
e answered. “Heads up, the Caruso are taking the Deck. Unit of eighteen coming from the warehouse--fully armed.”
“Now Zyr,” she demanded, gripping hard on his arm.
Carver nodded, tapped at the screen.
Before he got through, Sofie turned and saw the doors of the warehouse had opened, and the hovers shot out onto the Deck.
They split up, one going right, the other left, and then they opened fire, the two at the back of each hover pointing their weapons back in the direction they'd come from, the middle four on either side shooting sideways, and the two at the front shooting forward.
It had a devastating impact.
People--either Deck workers or the crew of the hundreds of ships docked to either load or unload goods--were taken completely by surprise. She saw them fall, and her hand was on the door, pulling it open before she thought about it.
“Sofie, no!” Carver's hand closed over her wrist. “Wait for Zyr. He's coming.”
She paused, saw Zyr was running toward them, zigzagging away from the pleasure cruiser. He was close, about twenty meters away, when a shot glanced off his shoulder and spun him around.
He went down and she cried out and hauled the door open, and this time Carver didn't stop her. He was beside her as she ran to where Zyr was lying.
He was gray, the pallor beneath the dark brown of his skin alarming to her, but he was breathing.
Without discussion, Carver hooked a hand under one arm, Sofie the other, and they started dragging him back to safety. It took so long, Sofie expected a hit in the back at any more.
She hit the door with her palm, pulled it open, and then heard a change in the sound of the shots fired.
She turned as Carver heaved Zyr into the passageway, saw the Cores had started fighting back, the bulky black uniforms of the Cores guards breaking like a wave from the hover that had come up through the hoverway.
The Caruso had jumped down from their hovers now, and were spreading out through the Deck, their heavy armor shrugging off the return fire they were getting from some of the transport ships crew.
She caught sight of Dee, pinned down by the crossfire right beside the pleasure cruiser that Zyr had visited.
“Get in.” Carver was staring at her as if she were mad.
“This can't end well.” It was nothing but the truth. She looked up and there, just above the dome created by the grav and enviro generator, was a prickly, ugly looking Caruson warship.
“Sofie!” Carver's voice rose to a shout.
“I can stop it. I think.” She took a step away from the door. Looked at him with her heart in her mouth, sick to her stomach, and yet, she knew there was only one chance here. She had to take it. “Tell Leo I'm riding the roofs.” She slammed the door closed, knowing Carver would follow her otherwise, try to stop her.
She spun on her heel and ran.
Behind her she heard a body slam into the door.
But no one could open it except her.
And no one else could flip the kill switch, either.
Chapter 35
She raced toward the hoverway.
She glanced left as she ran, saw Dee had scrambled up the ramp of the pleasure cruiser, and as she watched, rolled through the open door to safety.
It lightened the weight on her.
Dee was safe for now. And Zyr and Carver were even safer, behind the hidden wall of the warehouse.
Carver would have a med kit in his pack, which meant Zyr would have some help.
A Cores guard spun her way as she accelerated toward the hoverway, saw she was from Garmen, and angled a little further to the right, and shot at the Caruson walking toward them both. She didn't paused as they engaged, she weaved a little, making her path a little more difficult to predict, and then she was at the hoverway.
A big gen-pop hover was lumbering down--it was probably the one that had brought up the guards--and she leaped over the edge and dropped three meters onto its roof.
Another hover passed them on its way up, and Sofie looked at it as it came by, saw the surprise on the faces of the guards inside at the sight of her.
The descent was slow, but when they reached the first stop, at the Under Deck, she saw why.
It was stopping to pick up more guards, and it'd be going straight back up.
She looked to the upward side, saw an exec hover filling with slick, well-dressed execs, and guessed they were not going up, even if they were on the wrong side.
She ran to the edge of her hover, close to the loading ramp, and heard a few calls of surprise from the guards below at the sight of her. She turned around and used the distance across the roof to wind up for a running jump.
She threw herself across the narrow space between the two hovers, and landed hard on the roof, rolling a few times before she managed to stop.
It dropped, almost as if it had been waiting for her, and fell so fast, the wind it generated buffeted her, forcing her to crouch into a tight ball in the middle.
She would need a knife.
The reality of that slammed into her, because she wouldn't find one on the roof of a hover.
She lifted her head, her eyes watering as she looked around for some sharp edge instead.
She could see nothing.
The hover suddenly decelerated, and she risked standing and taking a few steps to the edge to look over and see what was happening.
They were approaching the Upper Reaches, and there were other hovers in the way.
“Sofie!”
She saw Leo fighting through a crowd of people all queuing for a place in the hover docked at the Upper Reaches loading bay.
Before she could respond, the hover she was on jerked sideways, taking a gap in the traffic on the upward lane, and passing the hover blocking the way.
She fell, rolled, and then lay flat as it moved across the hoverway. By the time she got her hands beneath her, she just managed to catch a glimpse of Leo's face, stark and determined, before the hover dropped, down, down toward the bottom, still tens of thou below.
She didn't know how long they dodged and wove between the hovers, but they came to a stop on the Lower Reaches, and she realized with a start the execs were going to grab their more precious possessions from their apartments before they abandoned Felicitos.
The hover docked, and she risked standing up again and walking to the edge.
A guard pointed a laz at her from the loading bay, and she backed away, out of his range.
There seemed to be a few guards keeping the area free of the gen-pop. Because heaven forbid the execs would have to deal with frightened T-Towners while they loaded up their riches.
She turned to the other side, looking up and down to see what was coming her way.
There was nothing docked on the opposite side, but she could see hovers above her making their way down. Nothing was coming up.
The word must be well and truly out on what was happening above.
She kept her head tipped up, waiting for something to come down that was headed right to the bottom, and she saw a hover going faster than the usual slow, steady pace.
It passed other, slower hovers in a fast path downward and she expected it to race past her.
She braced, ready to jump as it came by.
But it slowed as it reached the dock on the opposite side of the hoverway, and she hesitated.
If the execs in the new hover were also going to grab their stuff, the one she was on now would likely leave sooner.
“Sofie. Jump on.”
She stared in shock as Leo leaned out of the window and pointed to the roof.
Then his hover drifted even closer to hers and bumped into it, rattling it in its harness where it was docked to the loading bay.
She jumped.
“Are you all right?” Leo's voice was a little frantic.
“Yes. Can you go down to the bottom?”
He was silent for a moment. “Yes.”
The hover began to move, at a far slower pace than it had bef
ore.
“You can go faster. You need to go faster.”
It sped up a little, but not as much as she would like.
“Do you have a knife in there?” she called.
“A knife?” He sounded strained. “Why do you need one?”
“To cut myself.”
He was quiet, and their descent slowed.
“Leo, go faster and give me a knife!”
She wondered what was happening above. What carnage was being wrought.
She looked up, and saw her original hover was coming back down again, catching them as it sped to the bottom.
“Leo, please get word to the crew and techs of the Deck that the enviro and the grav is about to go. Get them to sound the alarm.”
“About to go?” His voice rose.
“I'm about to flip the kill switch,” she shouted, bending her knees, getting ready for the jump.
“You found it?”
“I am it,” she said, and then she leapt.
Leo watched Sofie drop past him, her face grim and set, crouched low on the roof of a high-end exec hover.
She had wanted a knife. To cut herself.
He had honestly not known what to make of that.
“It's like that little picture on the stairs, isn't it?” Sam's voice was quiet. He'd been giving Leo an update on his time prowling the secret corridors of the Under Deck when Carver had sent him a desperate message that Sofie was riding the hover roofs again.
Leo nodded. “She must have figured out what it means.” He could think of no other explanation.
“Do we warn about the enviro and grav going?” Sam asked.
Leo walked to the tiny serving hatch set into the luxury hover he'd commandeered. “Yes. If she's going to flip the kill switch, everything on the Deck will be sucked up into space.” Including the Caruso. It was brilliant. And it seemed she was prepared to sacrifice herself to do it.
The thought slid ice through his veins as his hand closed around a small, sharp fruit knife.
Sam lifted his comm set, and Leo put in a call as well.
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