Rhys would try to escape.
* 9 *
Above, the storm showed no sign of abating and Gunnery Sergeant had finally opened her eyes. A soreness in her head like a cut of a knife greeted her into the world of the living. Something bound her head tight and when she tried to touch it, she found both her hands wore metal rings on the wrists connected by a sturdy chain. Chain’s rattle stirred a shadowy figure in the dark. Until she saw the cuffs, Holly had thought she was lying in their crashed speeder, but now she saw it was a different vehicle. For starters, it wasn’t bearing any signs of the smash.
“Lie still,” barked the shadow in a low female growl. Holly blinked her eyes into focused and saw a lump of a body, a helmet covering the face and a rifle, slightly beaten up and of a different configuration than Marine stock-in-trade. The woman also wore a different kind of uniform. Holly realised who she was and dropped back down to the floor of the car.
“I will,” she said. “Where’s my colleagues?”
“One’s over here. Sleeping like a baby.” The guard brought Holly’s attention to Ken lying sprawled over half the surface of the speeder’s back. Holly had never seen him sleeping before, but that was a position she might imagine him take in his bed. A hoarder. “I wish you slept too.”
“Where’s Rhys?”
“Your Captain’s with mine.” The woman checked her watch. “They should be back shortly.”
Holly asked the all-important question. “What’ll happen to us then?”
“Sssssnick,” the guard exaggerated a slow movement of the hand across her neck. Holly couldn’t be sure, but she thought the woman enjoyed the look of terror on her face before unenthusiastically adding, “Major will decide.”
Holly’s eyes drifted up to the ceiling. All willingness to talk to the rough and cruel woman evaporated from her mind. She analysed what she knew. They had crashed. Apparently, the signal was real and the Colonials got the drop on them. They took Rhys somewhere, possibly to the base, likely to be their guide and insurance. Good luck with that; the Captain she knew wouldn’t cooperate willingly. They were using her and Ken as leverage against him and left a solitary guard to keep watch. What next? She should get their bearings, wake Ken up, disable the woman somehow and run to warn the base. Let Rhys know they’re safe. She had a seed of a plan.
“What was that?” the guard asked her. Holly said nothing. She had no idea what the woman meant. “Stay here.” The sentry opened the door, jumped out into the chaotic weather, closed the door behind her. It didn’t lock as she thought it would.
Holly rose up in an instant and kicked Ken in the shin. He came out of a slumber with a painful groan. “What the heck?”
“Get up, Ken. We gotta move quickly.” She helped him stand.
“What’s that? Foreplay?” He meant the cuffs. His joking came through even in half-sleep.
“Shut up. We’re getting out of here.” She dashed for the door and tried the handle. It opened with a click. The cold became ten times stronger. Over the gusts of wind came the crackling of rifles. People were shooting at each other in the storm. She hurried Ken. “Out!”
“I outrank you, you know.” He listened nonetheless and hastened away. They got off the speeder and ran through the snowstorm blindly, guided only by the fizzling sounds of the firefight - in the opposite direction of them. The going was excruciatingly tough; driving wind and snow lashed them on the open skin on their faces and hands which were still bound at the front. It was a desperate push with little chance of working. The storm would be their death.
Ken fell, but he rolled and got up right away and Holly was somewhat impressed. She didn’t take him for an athlete like this. His collapse uncovered a patch of dark ground for a moment.
“Wait,” she urged him and crouched to check what they were standing on. The surface wasn’t the natural silvery-grey, cobalt infused rocky crust of Prox D; it was manmade, a slab of concrete. “We’re... we’re on the base,” she said to herself, shocked and awed and quite happy.
“What?!” Ken struggled to hear her.
“Come on! This way!” She pulled him to follow her. She knew where they were. They could make it if they reached the buildings. “Stay close! We’re almost there!” The storm seemed to hear her and reacted with double the strength. Running became impossible. They had to walk together, embraced like a pair of lovers. Holly knew how Ken felt about her, even though he had never said it. She would give him the chance if they made it. Life was brittle, opportunities were not to be missed, she now understood that silly little fact.
“-ey, is that-“ Ken’s voice was drowned out by howling of the wind. She understood what he meant. Something big loomed out of the maelstrom a short distance ahead. A building. They had almost made it. Their hands reached out and touched the firmness of a wall together. They both laughed. Ken probably wanted to kiss her then, Holly thought, but she turned away to look for the door. The entrance should be near, very near.
“What do we have here?!” She flinched at the sudden figure emerging from the blizzard. It was a fellow Marine wrapped up in full battle gear. His face was a mask with two round lenses where the eyes should be. Holly didn’t waste time wondering what he was doing outside. Maybe he was one of the shooters they heard before and maybe not. She only cared about passing a message, and about surviving.
“Sound the alarm! Colonials are here!”
“I know. This one is dead,” said the Marine coolly. He was a Lance Corporal, she understood from his collar insignia.
“Dead? Great! Now point us to the door!” Ken urged. Holly was less enthusiastic. Something was wrong in the manner of this man. Something in his voice. A disinterest. A lack of care. She put a halting hand on Ken’s chest.
“I’ll point you to this,” Lance Corporal said and aimed a gun between Ken’s eyes.
Ken paused and then he said something strange in response to the threat. “I’m with the Messenger.”
Lance Corporal wavered for just a second, then turned his gun on Holly. The barrel spouted a green bolt which penetrated her right breast. Without a sound, she fell into the snow, feeling her lung collapse. All her chest was being licked by some unbearable kind of fire. Why, she wanted to cry out, but couldn’t squeeze out a single syllable. Breathing was becoming more and more difficult. Life was seeping out of her with every passing moment. She would not make it. But perhaps Ken still could?
She watched her friend buffet into the shooter. They went down in a bundle and Ken got up first, holding treacherous Lance Corporal’s gun in his paw, pressing it against the shooter’s neck.
“I’m Johnson!” yelled the man in desperate protest. “What are you doing? You can’t kill me! I am meant for better things! It’s my destiny! Messenger needs me!”
“No, he doesn’t.” Ken used the gun without mercy. Holly turned her head away but it was too late. She saw part of Lance Corporal’s body explode into million pieces. Her breathing wanted to fasten, increasing the suffering; the pain fled entered the realms of an inferno. Her eyelids closed.
Ken shot off his handcuffs and knelt beside her. “Look at me.” His freezing hand touched her forehead and brought her back to reality. “I’m sorry. I never meant for this to happen. I thought it would be different, we could have run away together.”
She opened her mouth, but no words came. She was confused, cold and dying. Was it her or was the world growing dark?
“That was silly thinking. I’m sorry I didn’t save you from this brute, but maybe this way is better.” He leaned down to kiss her. She wanted to squirm away but couldn’t; her arms and legs refused to move when she wanted them. A different sort of fear grabbed her. Was she paralysed? What did it matter? She wasn’t going to walk away from this.
He didn’t kiss her after all. An intrusive sound of explosion stopped him. The fiery glow helped her see his profile as he looked away. He was handsome in an otterish way, she thought. What a bizarre thing to say. Then the pain swallowed her all up, her min
d drifted away and the eyes stopped to see.
She was dead. Ken got up to his feet and saluted Gunnery Sergeant Holly Welby because that’s the kind of respects she’d appreciate. She had fought and lost, like many before her. He liked her a lot, but being on the winning side always mattered more. He was on his own side now, his allegiance was broken. The priority was to make sure Messenger’s hell did not get him.
The explosions came from the speeder he had just escaped from. Ken picked up Lance Corporal Johnson’s face mask. He put it over his own eyes and ran to inspect the conflagration; it produced some well-needed heat; as he arrived, flames were just leaping onto two bodies, one piled on top of the other; he knew the man at the bottom was Private Anderson, and he assumed the larger shape above him was a Colonial insurgent. Johnson cleaned up his mess, and Ken cleaned out Johnson. Messenger’s plan was working.
Ken didn’t care about tossing more bodies on the pyre. He had somewhere he needed to be, so he went looking for a door.
* 10 *
Rhys
Selnov led the Colonials down and between arrays of machinery. The noises were pronounced, killing the possibility of normal conversation. That was all right with Rhys. He focused on looking for his opportunity.
They walked past a huge grey transformer with large #4 daubed over its side with red paint. Just beyond that stood a cylindrical vat with substance Rhys could not identify. He was more interested in the piping; a labyrinthine network of copper bars, nodes and valves kept puffing out a regular supply of steam vapour which covered the passage in scalding-hot clouds.
Major Remorra signalled a stop. She showed them what they would do which was to step through between steam bursts, one person at a time, and she led by example and ran through a clearing safe to the other side. Selnov did the same at next opportunity. They waited on the other side.
Nadie patted Rhys on the shoulder. “Your turn. No dirty tricks.”
Rhys ignored her. This was the chance he’d been looking for. When hot steam stopped flowing, he ran, forward at first but soon he slanted to the side and jumped straight into a gap between the narrowing gangway and the vat. His right hand’s side brushed against one of the pipes. It was the briefest of moments but the skin turned red and pinching. Painful sensation disoriented him for a precious nick of time and he landed nearly twenty feet below not on bent knees like he wanted, but with his left foot first. He heard a click, felt the agony of his ankle twisting, immediately went down on the corresponding knee.
Rhys rolled nonetheless away from the base of the vat, which was suspended a foot over the concrete floor by means of thick red beams. His leg protested with stings and jabs whenever he put weight on it. The Colonials spoke upstairs. They didn’t raise their voices much and he didn’t stop to fish out the exact words. They were after him, this much was certain. Now he was the fugitive, not yet safe.
He pulled himself up and limped away through a thin pass between two thickly cabled walls. It turned to the right and morphed into slightly broader maintenance corridor running in a complete straight. There were no side alleys and no doors, no place for him to hide. And hide he had to. He couldn’t outrun the chase with a bum leg, and his scalded hand hurt worse than expected. Just behind him came the noise of an orderly descent. A pursuer was taking her time scaling down a wall. She wouldn’t need long to conquer twenty feet though.
Rhys pressed on, biting down the pain. If he got caught, it was game over, he knew. No more clemency from the Colonials. They didn’t seem to need him and that Corporal with two blasters looked like a trigger-happy camper. The junction ahead was dozens of yards away. The chaser made it to the floor. Rhys wouldn’t make it.
The glint came first, then the understanding what it was. A metal rod stuck out vertically from under a colourful brush of thick extension cables. It was a ladder leading a long way up from Rhys’ right-hand side. He swept away the distraction of wires and grabbed the handrails with both hands. A sore sting pierced through the tender area on his palm. Mindful not to repeat the unpleasantness, he pulled himself up and climbed. Some dozen rungs above the floor a rustle of movement invaded his ears, a cautious, reserved, purposeful gait. He shifted another few rungs and flattened against the wall, hopeful she hadn’t heard and wouldn’t notice him.
Nadie
Snap! She should have paid better attention, but she hadn’t and the Earther eel had squeezed through a hole. It was her fault and now she had to give him chase in unknown territory. Selnov stayed with the Major, and the Major carried on with the mission. Their objective came first - destroy the weapon. Getting back in one piece was secondary. All their combat actions were designated suicide by default.
Going it alone, she hid away her blasters and went down the wall on the other side, careful not to touch anything that looked suspicious. Foot and handholds were aplenty on the uneven surface and soon she was down. Now she switched to the rifle, it had better range and shot in bursts. Better to reach a moving target. Shoot to kill, the Major had said. She should have ordered the guy put down earlier and the trouble would have been prevented.
No telling off the command, a thought fleeted through her head. It took the shape of Major Remorra’s raspy voice. She was right. This was Nadie’s fault alone, she had to undo it herself.
She stopped and listened for sounds of movement, heard nothing through the din of engines, determined the most likely path her quarry could have chosen. She leapt into a narrow pass, leaned against a corner and looked out. The corridor looked empty, but a hunch told her she should look in it. She moved in fast, rifle ready in her hands to shoot at anything that moved.
Halfway through the noise grabbed her attention and she pivoted to examine what made it. Up above and behind her the leatherneck snake climbed the wall and disappeared on the high roof. She let herself run back, cursing her blindness. He must have hidden right there on the ladder she now discovered. No excuse for it, she had to sling her rifle on the back and start going up.
Rhys
The rooftop was a spread-out mess of tall, robust extractor fans working non stop and creating a bit of a hubbub. Whatever operation was going inside the tower, it must have needed a lot of cooling. Rhys scanned the area to determine his next step, but the only way he could discern led through this industrial maze. There should be a door or a hatch or some other access into the tower at the rooftop’s centre, he thought and rushed headlong through a passage between two fans. And then he stopped, struck by another idea. What if he could get a drop on her?
He chose the next fan and hunkered down behind its taller-than-a-man chassis. Some piping straddled its side and when he yanked it, a portion came out roughly in the size of a baton. Now he had something like a weapon, not much compared with firearms, but better than nothing at all. From his position, Rhys could well observe the head of the ladder. So he waited, looking and listening for the chase. If she wouldn’t appear in a minute, then he’d consider himself escaped and free to get on his way.
His pursuer was Nadie, which made some sense, as Remorra had the main mission to accomplish and Selnov didn’t look much like a fighter. She was a stealthy one; he first realised her approaching when her hand emerged to grasp the roof’s edge. She had a look around before she moved, or glided perhaps, in his direction. He had to stop surveying her after a few steps before she would see him too. Rhys leaned against the wall of his primitive hideout holding his makeshift baton over his head like a batter and counted in silence what he thought her steps would be. He couldn’t hear her touch the ground at all, curse all the damn coolers with their hum. At six he decided this had to be it and rushed out from hiding, swinging the pipe hard at the height where her shoulders were supposed to be. He didn’t aim for the head. He was too gallant for that.
She wasn’t there at all. He only disturbed the air.
“Looking for me?” Nadie spoke from behind, close. Acting from the sense of self-preservation, he pivoted and threw the pipe toward her. The Colonial Corporal stuc
k out her twin blasters but had enough time to take one shot only. The lance of sizzling energy struck the pipe in flight and disintegrated the metal on touch, itself disappearing as well. A faint whiff of ozone and burnt nickel pervaded the air. Rhys did not wait. He flung himself at his opponent even before the pipe was history, wasn’t struck by her counter and managed to tackle her legs from under her. Nadie fell like a piece of timber to the ground. As she lay confused by a blow to the back of her head, Rhys crawled on top of her and pinioned her wrists to the rooftop. One of her blasters came loose; he grabbed it and turned her own gun against her face. Feeling confident, he tore off the helmet from her head and chucked it off the roof. It de-personified her. He wanted to see the woman behind the mask.
The gird had short dark hair and a face of Asian descent, with stubborn brown eyes. She looked a touch younger, and a good deal prettier than he expected. “Give up, insurgent, or I will destroy you.”
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