by Adam Quinn
Taylor was suddenly extremely grateful that the TKG was at the controls in Telahmir, not Harrison’s crew. “I understand.”
“That said, I hope you have some kind of plan to make your way to those parts of the ship because I guarantee the Alliance will be of no assistance to you,” Harrison said.
“No, but we have someone who knows their way around.” Taylor glanced at Saifan. “The plan’s simple enough: we set down in the hangar, then we rescue Marissa Bell from the ship’s holding cells before proceeding to the Firestorm facility, which our accomplice informs us is just below the bridge—our final destination, from which we can launch the attack on the control centers.”
“I see.” Harrison was clearly unhappy that Taylor would put Marissa’s rescue first, but she doubted he would jeopardize the mission over that.
“How’s our time doing?” Brook looked impatiently out the Cimber’s viewport.
JP produced a standard transceiver from a pocket of his IES uniform. “We are ahead of schedule—thirty-five minutes.”
“JP,” Taylor said, “can you open a communications channel with Trascion Command on that device and then give it to one of us so we can stay in communication with the Jacobins?”
JP had helped set up her conference call using Trascion Command’s broadcasting equipment, so she assumed he still had a working address for them.
“I don’t know why you would wish to remain in contact with a group of rebels and terrorists,” Harrison said.
“Certainly,” JP said.
As JP fiddled with the transceiver, the Frankenstein popped into existence outside the Cimber’s viewport, looming over their comparatively tiny craft. The MRSIS agent took the controls and piloted them toward the ship’s hangar.
“Done.” JP held out the transceiver.
Brook took it from him. “Got it.”
The Cimber passed through the Airshell field protecting the atmospheric integrity of the Frankenstein’s hangar, setting down near its center. A tremor of nerves slithered through Taylor’s body as the agent led their team to the unfolding door through which they had entered. There was no turning back—Taylor’s bet was down.
“Good luck,” JP said.
Taylor flipped down her visor, her HUD blinking into place, and her vision expanding to the suit’s omnidirectional field of view. The others readied their assortment of sear guns, laser rods, and incapacitators. She glanced at Hezekiah—he looked as determined as any of the others. The door unfolded.
Taylor had no idea what the personal-screen-toting hangar technician had expected to see coming out of the Metellus Cimber, but from his expression, it was certainly not a group of fourteen armed Meltians.
“Flip me,” he managed before Brook hit him with her incapacitators.
“Go!” The ceivers carried Brook’s voice straight into Taylor’s helmet.
Taylor leaped out of the Metellus Cimber, thrusting her arms forward and firing her thrusters in midair to soar across the hangar as the rest of the team poured out onto its floor. Alliance pilots and technicians fled while guards with sear gun rifles moved in. Sear gun bolts cracked through the air. Taylor twirled to the right as one lanced past her head. She telekinetically upended an interceptor and hurled it at the shooter.
Most of the team took cover behind the gunboats and other small craft that littered the room, returning fire with telekinetic energy, but Saifan was sprinting straight across the hangar, weaving between and around the Alliance ships. Brook trailed behind him, throwing incapacitator fire and laser beams at anyone who so much as stuck their head up out of cover.
Hezekiah was looking up at Taylor from the cover of a stack of metal crates.
“Help Saifan!” she said.
He ran after their ex-Firestormer ally.
Behind Taylor, the MRS Metellus Cimber lifted off and left the Frankenstein’s hangar, flooding her with a momentary sense of relief; no matter what, at least JP and the other IES survivors would get away safely.
Below, Hezekiah fired his laser rod at a pair of Alliance guards. They hid behind an interceptor but popped back up to take aim at Hezekiah when he turned away. Taylor dove toward them, slamming a blast of telekinetic energy into one’s shoulder. The other spun toward her, firing his rifle wildly. Four bolts lanced past Taylor before one struck her shoulder armor, throwing her off-course. She dipped beneath the wing of a gunboat, recovering her control in half a second before swinging out to drive a blast into the guard that sent him tumbling over the interceptor he had been hiding behind.
An Archavian IES officer dashed forward to seize the newly-cleared cover, but a sear gun bolt lanced across the hangar to strike him down. Taylor telekinetically ripped away the shooter’s cover, and a TKG soldier took the opportunity to close the distance and telekinetically slam the guard against a wall.
From her vantage point, Taylor saw Saifan pressing buttons on a control panel next to a gunboat-sized rectangular door; probably the very same cargo elevator that Marissa had used. Two new guards entered through a door to Saifan’s left. Taylor swooped toward the scene. Brook layered them with fire from both of her incapacitators, but it did not seem to penetrate their armor. Hezekiah fired his laser rod, its invisible beam scorching a very visible path across the chest of the closer guard, but the farther one was still about to fire when Taylor telekinetically reduced his weapon to a piece of twisted metal. Two IES officers moved in as Taylor pulled away, finishing the job with their laser rods.
As Taylor flew past Saifan, she watched him step away from the control panel, the cargo elevator doors opening… and then promptly closing again as a whistling alarm filled the air.
“That’s their intruder alarm,” Saifan said. “Transportation’s locked down.”
“We could unlock it,” Joseph said, “given enough time.”
“Well, we’re short on that,” Brook said. “Saifan, do you know another way?”
“Yes,” Saifan said. “The emergency stairwell at the stern of the Frankenstein isn’t far from here. The bridge is at the very top, just above the Firestorm area… and I think the holding cells are connected to it as well. Follow me!”
Saifan moved toward the doorway to his left, stepping over the bodies of the downed guards, and the team coalesced behind him. Taylor did a quick lap around the hangar, throwing telekinetic blasts at the few remaining guards, before landing and following the team through the doorway. A quick headcount revealed they were down to twelve people, which was not good considering they had just left the hangar.
As soon as she was on the ground again, Hezekiah moved so he was next to her.
“Be careful.” His voice was soft, though the nature of the ceivers meant that everyone from Brook to Harrison could hear him clearly. “There’s no cover up in the air—you’re a target.”
“A fast-moving target with telekinetic powers,” Taylor said. The fact that he was worried about her was endearing, but also ridiculous. His only combat experience to her knowledge was during the Treaty Day Attack—she had fought a galactic war.
“Get down!” Saifan said.
Taylor dropped to the floor. A trio of heat streams flew overhead, incinerating a TKG soldier who was not so quick on his feet.
Brook shot to her feet, hitting one of the Firestormers with both of her incapacitators before a stray heat stream slammed into her shoulder, knocking her back onto Taylor. The two hit the ground with a series of metallic clanks. An IES officer incapacitated a second Firestormer. The last unleashed a blossom of superheated air that swept across the entire group. Taylor rolled on top of Brook just in time to shield her damaged armor with Taylor’s intact SX-7. Screams reverberated in Taylor’s ears even after the wave of heat passed. The rapid report of an incapacitator sounded as someone took out the last Firestormer.
Taylor rolled off Brook and into a crouch. Hezekiah similarly dusted himself off next to her. The Archavians had fared well—Taylor remembered something JP said about them having a higher heat tolerance—but t
wo humans, an IES officer and a TKG soldier, whose armor had been damaged in the hangar, were now unrecognizably burned. Another three dead, in total, and they had not even achieved a single one of their goals. How many more to rescue Marissa and secure the bridge?
Taylor shuddered, but Brook grabbed her arm. “We have to keep moving!”
Saifan and the two surviving TKG soldiers took the lead. Only a dozen meters down the hallway, two guards with sear gun assault rifles leaned out of doorways on either side of the hall, but the TKG soldiers disarmed them before they could fire a shot, and Saifan slammed them with twin heat streams.
“The Jacobins say we’re running out of time,” Hezekiah said.
Harrison grumbled something about colluding with terrorists.
“Tell them we’re almost there; this is the stairwell we want.” Saifan pointed to where the hall dead-ended in an unassuming doorway. “Be careful; they may have deactivated the gravity in there to try to stop us.”
“Bad call if they did,” Brook said. “The Spirit’s barrel was built for micro-grav rescues.”
“I’ll take point.” Taylor shouldered her way to the front. “Brook, you can cover me—maybe put those microgravity skills to good use. Saifan, watch our backs.”
Brook took up a position on one side of the door, incapacitators ready. Hezekiah backed her up on the other side, while Saifan and the TKG soldiers moved to the back of the group.
Taylor gave the door such a powerful telekinetic shove that it tore from its frame and tumbled out into the center of the artificial-gravity-less stairwell. She launched herself out after it, grabbing the railing of the stairwell to arrest her movement before she floated out into its open center. There was no one in sight.
Brook seized the doorframe and swung herself into the stairwell, balancing on the wall like a professional microgravity athlete.
Taylor asked, “Saifan, which way do we—”
Two Firestormers dropped into view, perching on the outsides of railings above Taylor, and drove two heat streams directly into her chest.
Taylor released the railing and spun backward, HUD lighting up with warnings. Brook lunged forward, swinging herself over the railing and out into the middle of the stairwell. Streams of heat arced past her, and she returned fire mid-flight.
Hezekiah jumped through the hole toward Taylor, but he miscalculated and soared past her. His legs smacked into the railing, and he started tumbling into the middle of the room. His laser rod went flying. Taylor telekinetically pulled him back toward her, and the two collided beneath the cover of the next level of the staircase. Hezekiah grabbed onto her.
Meanwhile, the three surviving IES officers followed Brook, leaping one by one from the doorway to the underside of the landing above them, to the railing, and out into the fight. Saifan and the two remaining TKG soldiers stumbled after them.
Taylor retracted her SX-7’s visor. The air smelled of smoke and singed flesh and a little sweat. “We need to help them.”
Hezekiah nodded quickly. Taylor shifted Hezekiah’s arms so that they were not directly below her thrusters, then stretched out her arms on either side of him to grasp the imaginary stick and throttle.
Taylor could not see the fight the IES officers were waging against the Firestormers, but she could hear streams of heat and laser beams and incapacitators firing. An Archavian let out a grating cry that was suddenly cut off.
“Fall back!” Saifan said. “We need to go down! The holding cells are ten levels below us!”
“We can’t.” Hezekiah shook his head.
“What?” Taylor said. “Why not?”
“The fleet’ll be here any minute. We can’t go down and back.”
As much as she hated it, Taylor saw what he meant. The bridge was on top of the stairwell, so if they retreated down ten levels, they’d have to fight their way back up those ten levels against whatever Firestormers they were fighting now, plus any reinforcements that arrived in the interim. They had to rescue Marissa—there was no doubt about that—but that could be accomplished after the ship was in Meltian hands. If the fleet arrived before they captured the bridge, on the other hand, a galactic war could start.
“Hezekiah’s right,” Taylor said. “We have to go up.”
Taylor flipped down her visor and shoved her throttle hand forward, launching herself and Hezekiah out into the center of the stairwell. Streams of heat crisscrossed the space above her as the skilled but outclassed IES team battled the Firestormers. One of the IES officers raised his laser rod to fire but was struck by a heat stream that sent him tumbling into a railing.
Taylor helped Hezekiah into cover under a landing, then swerved back into the fray. The remaining Firestormers focused their fire on Taylor, but she spun away from their streams, catching one with a telekinetic blast to the side of the head. Brook darted across the stairwell to the injured Archavian, while Saifan and the TKG soldiers moved to cover Taylor. With this new firepower directed against them, the Firestormers began to disengage, one group of Firestormers sweeping the stairwell with suppressive fire as the other retreated.
“Target the fighters!” Taylor telekinetically tore into the balconies protecting the Firestormers who were providing cover fire. Saifan took two of them by surprise with heat streams. Brook and her IES officers chased the other with incapacitator and laser fire. The Firestormers’ support element destroyed, their tactical withdrawal devolved into a scrambling retreat.
Free from the threat of return fire, Taylor soared forward, the rest of the team struggling to keep up. She closed the distance quickly, but the Firestormers were far enough up the stairwell that by the time she arrived at the lone door on the top landing, the last Firestormer had already slipped through it.
The door to the bridge, if Saifan’s memories were correct.
The rest of her team arrived on the top landing one after the other. They were down to eight now—barely more than half of their starting numbers—and one of the Archavians was clutching his arm instead of his laser rod, so just seven fighters. Unfortunately, waiting was not going to increase their numbers, while it very well might increase Mantradome’s.
“Get ready to move in.” Taylor telekinetically seized the door. “Go!”
Taylor ripped the door from its frame and fired her main thrusters for half a second to propel her into the room beyond. Gravity thankfully returned to normal, bringing her and the rest of her team to a stumbling halt. Which was not to say that she needed any physical force to stop her in her tracks at that moment—two facts did that job perfectly well for her.
First, that when Saifan said the bridge was “above” the Project Firestorm facility, he meant that the Frankenstein’s currently unoccupied control consoles were literally on a stair-accessible metal platform elevated above the floor of the Firestorm facility, so that the bridge crew could conceivably look down on the facility’s array of exotic machinery, medical-looking tools, and bizarre human-sized devices as Project Firestorm’s technicians performed their evil work.
Second, and much more important, that Marissa Bell was bound to one of those human-sized devices in much the same way as Saifan had been back in Telahmir, and that she was surrounded by a dozen Firestormers, plus a stout woman in a military uniform reminiscent of the GG Navy who held a sear gun pistol to Marissa’s head.
Mantradome.
“Well, well, well. I should have known the MRSIS would send its thugs after me sooner or later, if not to retrieve their little spy…” Mantradome pushed her pistol up against Marissa’s skull. “…then to steal Firestorm from under our noses.”
“What in the galaxy are you going on about?” Brook asked.
This only seemed to encourage Mantradome. “It’s a little late to play dumb. I knew the MRSIS would be jealous of our Project Firestorm soldiers from the day we deployed them on your ‘Anniversary Attacks,’ I just did not expect you to try to steal our secrets so soon. I actually believed your stupid spy for a while when she said she was acting alo
ne, but as your Earthpunk director would say, ‘all’s well that ends well.’”
Taylor was confused for a moment before she remembered that they had arrived on the Frankenstein in an MRSIS ship. To be honest, Mantradome’s story made more sense than the truth.
“Five minutes until the fleet arrives,” Hezekiah muttered too softly for Mantradome to hear. Taylor wanted to take Mantradome out with a blast of telekinetic force, but that would not stop one of the Firestormers from finishing off Marissa. If they were to have any chance at all, they had to somehow simultaneously relax the Alliance’s guard and get Marissa out of her restraints.
“All right, here’s the deal, Meltians,” Mantradome said. “You had better listen up, because I don’t think I’ve ever given a better one to anyone in my life. You’re looking at every Firestorm soldier I have left in the galaxy—and these guys don’t come cheap—so I’m willing to let you and your spy go free, as long as you surrender all of those weapons and armored suits to me. If you don’t like that, I will immediately put your spy here out of her misery, and then my soldiers will take care of you. Most of you will probably die, but I will make sure at least a few live, so that I can plug you with a Firestorm implant and see what juicy little MRSIS secrets are swimming around in your heads—just like I was planning to do with her. So what’s it going to be?”
It was a fool’s deal—Taylor had no doubt that as soon as they relinquished their gear, Mantradome would kill them all. She looked up at Marissa. There was not a drop of fear in the ex-MRSIS-agent’s eyes—if she had to die to give Taylor’s team a fighting chance, then she would look death in the eye… but Taylor was far from convinced that she had to.
Especially considering that, unlike Saifan’s special heat-resistant cuffs, Marissa’s bonds were constructed from mere fabric mesh.
“I am rapidly becoming impatient,” Mantradome said.
“All right, all right.” Taylor dropped to a knee, setting both her slugthrower pistol and her short-sword on the smooth floor. Mantradome would interpret Taylor’s next words as being addressed to her, but Taylor’s eyes had not left Marissa’s. “Here you go.”