by Jason Letts
In the top right drawer, Rion found something curious indeed. When he picked it up and it shined in the fading light, Lena and Bailor came over to look.
“It’s a watch,” he said, holding it by its metallic band. “But there’s no screen, no plugs, no nothing other than this little knob on the side to set it. It’s old but it still works and even looks brand new.”
“It’s beautiful,” Lena said.
Bailor blinked and craned his neck.
“There’s something engraved in the back.”
Rion held the watch up to get a better look.
“Warren Kline. This watch belonged to the first Kline. I’m surprised this isn’t in the cases downstairs. I guess the current regent wanted to keep this close at hand.”
“That’s got to be worth a fortune, more than any of the ships we ever set foot on,” Bailor said.
Rion suspected Bailor was more right than he knew. The watch was incredibly valuable, but the personal connection for the regent made taking it dangerous. For someone who had nothing, what would it mean to take something like this? Of course, what Rion really wanted was to inflict on the regent the same feeling of loss that he’d carried for years of his life.
He set the watch on the desk.
“You don’t mind, do you?” he asked Lena as he picked the dagger out of her waistband.
Gritting his teeth, he held it over his shoulder and then stabbed downward. The first time he hit the desk, but the second time he connected with the watch, producing enough force to crack the glass and skewer all the parts underneath. After pulling the blade out, he picked through the shards and bits and took the watch’s two hands.
“I got what I came here for.”
Now all they had to do was get out.
They listened closely at the door for any signs of people passing by as the lights outside continued to dim. Their pumping adrenaline made it difficult to judge the time that the party would be in full swing. Hours could’ve felt like minutes. But when the intermittent thumping of music from downstairs reverberated in their chests, they had a good sense that the festivities were well underway.
Taking one last look at each other and nodding was enough to remind them all of the plan. Return downstairs, slip out one of the windows on the building’s right side, sneak through the garden to the tram station, and hope the conductor would shoo them on board without making any trouble.
Lena twisted the doorknob as quietly as she could, cracking the door open enough for them to slip out into a dark hallway. As they retraced their steps to the staircase, they noticed that many but not all of the rooms that had lights on inside before were now dark. More than once they heard voices. Not everyone here was attending the party.
Getting back to the staircase was easy enough, but they froze when they peeked around the wall to see the same butler as before occupying the bottom. Tense glances at each other betrayed a little bit of panic. If none of the invited guests were allowed upstairs, all of the staircases could be manned like this. They shuffled back into the hall.
“What do we do now? Try to open the window in the office and jump?” Bailor whispered.
“That drop,” Rion said simply. It would be a long way to fall. These high ceilings made a second story jump into darkness plenty risky. They’d need to find another way down.
Backtracking through the second floor halls, they turned corner after corner until they began to worry about getting lost. That’s when they heard thudding footsteps coming from around the next stretch. Panicked, they grabbed at the nearest doorknob and popped open the door, piling into a narrow room and closing the door behind them. Holding their breaths, they listened as the footsteps passed.
“Maybe there’s a laundry room with a chute,” Rion suggested.
Lena pursed her lips.
“We might need to be more aggressive about creating a way for us to escape. If we can’t find something soon, we start a fire somewhere and slip out in the commotion.”
The thought of doing serious damage to the building or possibly taking lives hadn’t struck Rion before, and it still wasn’t his first choice now.
“Let’s keep looking. There are a half dozen staircases and we haven’t even been to two.”
When they were confident the coast was clear, they returned to the hallway and successfully navigated to another staircase, which was also blocked. This wing didn’t have wood-paneled hallways lined with rooms. Instead, they’d entered into an area more resembling an office with cubicles. Panels extended from floor to ceiling, dividing the area into different shapes. They felt like rats in a maze.
They had barely been in this section of the Regent’s Center for more than a minute when they heard it.
“Over this way. If you get a clear shot, take it,” someone said.
The thrill of their daring escapade fled like a sheep from a pack of wolves. Footsteps and faint shadows loomed where they’d been only moments ago. Lena grimaced and tugged on Bailor’s arm so that he’d keep up. All together, they progressed down the row, bent over and crouching, hoping that the office furniture would conceal them.
A flash of light up ahead stopped them in their tracks. Suddenly they were trapped. Rion led his friends to the left at an intersection of rows, wondering why he thought they’d be able to pull this off and what they could possibly do to get out. Maybe Wud was the smart one to bail.
Glancing right, he spotted one of the center’s security men in light cast from a nearby window. He had a night vision apparatus strapped over his eyes. The chain gun he held would’ve been enough to puncture an Espirit Dozer. Requiring two hands, the weapon rested against his hip.
Did three kids really necessitate the presence of that kind of heavy artillery? It could’ve shredded everything in the room in seconds. They needed to get out fast.
Rion spotted something as they continued a little further, a stairwell behind a door. He had seconds to calculate. Wait around for security to close in on them, or risk opening the door and taking the stairs? Taking a deep breath, he pointed to the door and picked up the pace.
Lena and Bailor followed closely. Rion had his eyes on the stairwell door, which he couldn’t reach fast enough. His hand grasped for it long before it was in range, and when he finally took hold of the handle he noticed his hand was sweaty. The door popped open with a loud click.
“There!”
The shout barely registered in their ears as they poured through the doorway. They had seconds to get away before any of their pursuers closed in on their location, but what they saw surprised them in the worst possible way.
The stairs only went up.
Staying put was not an option. They leapt to the stairs and pumped their legs to ascend as fast as they could. The stairs only went up to the third floor, and what waited for them on the third floor wasn’t something Rion wanted to think about. Getting caught and shot now seemed like a matter of when, not if.
When they reached the top, they heard the door below swing open and glanced down to see figures filing through one after another. Rion half expected the shooting to begin right there, but they slammed against the third floor door, wrestled it open, and spilled into a well-lit area with metal sheets for walls. A hum filled the air, and Rion guessed this was where the colony’s data mainframes resided.
Something else was here as well, a shadow slipping around the corner. It was the only way forward, and they had no choice but to follow. Only a few steps got them into the next hallway, where they saw something that boggled their imaginations.
In plain view they saw a man wrapped head to toe in a black cloth-like material. He looked like a mummy, and even his eyes were covered. He had a pack strapped high on his back. Both hands were empty. The man stopped, having been seen in plain sight, and turned back on the three thieves.
A sneaking suspicion sprung up within Rion, one he couldn’t believe and yet was more consuming than the imminent threat closing in on them from behind.
“You shouldn
’t be here,” the man said in a raspy, tortured voice.
“You’re Reznik Igorovich,” Rion said, breathless.
“He never leaves any witnesses,” Bailor whispered.
They stared at the taped man, who seemed frozen, until the echo of the stairwell door swinging open hit their ears. The man clenched his fists. Suddenly, it all made sense to Rion, the big guns and the manpower. Security had been hunting Reznik, but if it was really him, what was he even doing here?
Being caught between the most famous trained killer in the solar system and a cadre of heavily armed Alliance guards seemed like the absolute worst place to be.
Then the man, with the simplest gesture, flipped his wrist to signal them to come to him.
The thieves didn’t waste a second, sprinting forward past the bright lights lining the ceiling. It was a good thing they moved quickly too, because when Rion glanced back over his shoulder to see their pursuers rounding the corner, a click from the man in black triggered an explosion in the corner of the hallway. Something had been planted there, and the blast sent the officers flying. They disappeared within a cloud of smoke.
“We have to hurry. More are coming,” the man said.
He took off in the opposite direction and the three kids followed. Bailor, running with his jaws dropped, managed to shoot Rion a glance saying, “Can this be for real?”
The first gunshot through the smoke made it all the more real. The bullet struck the wall panel in front of them, putting a hole in it that had to be centimeters away from Rion’s shoulder.
The man led them around another corner. His long strides made it difficult to keep up, but Rion wasn’t about to get left behind for anything. Lena seemed to easily keep his pace and might’ve been able to outrun him if it came to it.
But what she couldn’t have done was stop on a dime and charge into a door, busting it open as Reznik did. Humming and blinking computer servers filled the room from floor to ceiling, but the man ignored all of it, focusing instead on a window in the back.
By this point, Rion had no clue where he was in the building or which direction he was facing. When the man used his elbow to break the window, the blackness outside didn’t do anything to inform his sense of direction. What was obvious was that the man had a plan of escape that was slightly more sophisticated than offering booze to the tram conductor in exchange for a lift.
Reznik reached into his pack and pulled out a gun with a cable attached. After clearing away the glass, he stepped on the windowsill and took aim to the lower left. The head sailed off into the darkness, and Reznik quickly secured the other end to part of the infrastructure holding the mainframes.
The sound of stomping footsteps in the hall renewed Rion’s anxiety, but their mysterious guardian only focused on testing the line and making sure the gun would properly serve as a trolley. They tried to stay out of his way until he turned to them.
Another gesture with his wrist was all it took to communicate that the time to go had come. Rion watched his fingertips as they reached out for the legendary figure’s shoulders, in disbelief about what he would be touching. What he noticed immediately was an incredible sense of warmth. The man was practically a walking power plant.
Bailor wrapped himself around a leg and Lena grabbed Reznik by the neck and other arm. One swift jostle sent them all into motion as Reznik climbed onto the windowsill and leapt off the edge. The sudden drop and the gust of wind were almost enough to make Rion lose his grip. He clenched every muscle he had, right down to his toes, as they sailed through the night.
When the boy managed to crack an eye open, he saw that they were sailing toward the lifts near the rear of the compound. Lights rushed toward them at breakneck speed.
It was not a soft landing.
Though Reznik kept his feet as they hit the ground, the momentum sent the other three tumbling against soil, which might as well have been cement. Rion gasped for breath, struggling to lift his head. He watched Reznik use a pneumatic gun to drop a charging attendant. The discharge of compressed air was almost silent. Rion thought it was an intriguing choice of weapon, one none of the stories ever mentioned.
In moments, Reznik reached the controls of one of the lifts and prepared it to ascend. He didn’t show any signs that he’d wait for them to dust themselves off. Rion and the others crawled, scrambled, and dove to get on the platform as it began to rise.
Bailor had barely made it to the edge and began to slip off the side into the open air. Rion dropped down and grabbed him by the sleeve, but his friend’s weight threatened to pull him over as well. Lena caught him by the foot, and together all three of them slid as Bailor lost his grip on the edge.
With the least amount of exertion possible, Reznik shifted his foot to the right slightly to step on Lena’s pant leg. That was enough of an anchor for them all to recover to the safety of the lift. Breathing hard, they had a quiet moment as they ascended above the magnificent Regent’s Center, where it now looked like every single light was on. They could even see the tram station, where people were attempting to flee the area. Making it out that way would’ve been impossible, given the extra commotion Reznik had produced.
The man in black tape didn’t appear to linger over where they’d been or what they’d done.
“What were you doing here?” Rion asked, dreading the answer so much it was a relief not to get one.
The lift ascended beyond the highest point of the center’s underground cavern, leaving them with the Martian mantle on all sides. Soon they eclipsed that as well. The lift continued to shoot up through a tube extending beyond the surface. Craning his neck, Rion could barely see the structure they were heading toward. The Regent’s docking station, so much different than the spaceport, had room for only a few ships.
One of black and silver stood out as being completely unique. Rion thought he knew the design of every ship in the galaxy, but this one was unlike any he’d ever seen. The closest description might be an hourglass on its side, but the middle wasn’t so narrow. At different angles, the ship appeared to vanish completely from view. But the ship didn’t need a transparency effect to impress him. It was The Assailing Face.
“No one who sees it lives to tell of it,” Bailor whispered. Rion had been so mesmerized that he hadn’t realized Bailor was right next to him at the window.
How Reznik managed to park his ship at the Regent’s dock to begin with confounded Rion’s sense of logic. A stolen clearance code? Hacking the terminal controls? Fly in with guns blazing? Rion couldn’t stop his mind from churning out more possibilities. For all he knew, Reznik had come through the spaceport on a transport vessel, taken the tram like they did, and his ship only just arrived via autopilot. He’d never know.
Either way, when they reached the top, there wasn’t a soul there. They stepped out of the lift, the young ones right on the heels of the one who’d gotten them out of the Regent’s Center, but they stopped as he started down the tunnel toward his ship and the doors slid open. A few lights from the controls inside the ship made Rion wonder what else was in there.
This time Reznik stopped and turned to them.
“Are you staying?” he asked.
Bailor’s crossed arm nudged Rion in the back. Rion knew the stories as well as he did and didn’t need the reminder.
“No one who touches the Assailing Face lives,” he said.
Going back and handing themselves over to the Martian security forces was certain death, but the unknown of what Reznik Igorovich would do to them was even more terrifying. Reznik leaned forward slightly. He put his hands together and rested them on his left thigh.
“Is that true?” he asked, giving Rion pause.
In a moment of clarity, he’d realized how much credence he’d given those old stories. No one questioned them because no one had ever been in a situation where they’d ever actually be tested. In practice, how would touching or entering the ship result in death? He’d always figured there were hidden weapons and sneaky traps, bu
t what if the stories were the trap?
“I don’t trust him,” Lena said.
“We don’t have a choice,” Rion said, taking the first step forward.
Whether they liked it or not, their fates were in the hands of a man known far and wide for being a merciless killer.
CHAPTER 5
If being inside the Assailing Face was a dream come true, it was better off being a dream.
First of all, the only table doubled as the only chair in the cabin, and all three of them were squeezed onto it while Reznik piloted in the cockpit. He had given them unlabeled silver ration packs containing bland mush that couldn’t be identified even while being eaten. The cabin itself was small and stuffy, thick lining covering every inch of the walls. The galley was nothing more than a compartment set into the floor.
They would’ve starved in a week if the ships they had to break into at the Mars spaceport had all been like this. But now they’d been traveling for five or six hours to…where?
When not feeling overwhelmed with exhaustion, Rion tried to look for clues in the design about how the ship worked, what its capabilities were. Reznik’s seat and head blocked any view of the control panel, even when Rion got up and attempted a peek.
“Sit back down,” Reznik said. Rion complied immediately, but he wasn’t going to let go of the first shot at a conversation he’d had.
“Where are we going?”
“Away from here,” Reznik said.
“You sound worried,” Rion observed, though how he guessed that through the man’s garbled sounds wasn’t easy.
“There’s always a chance that something is tracking us. There are more lethal threats out there than the Planetary Alliance.”