The Dark Imbalance

by Sean Williams

Maii asked.

 

  Another vibration rippled through the corridor, followed quickly by another. The wailing alarm changed pitch, becoming more shrill and urgent.

  “That was no warning shot,” said Ansourian, steadying himself against a wall.

  Roche forced herself to keep walking even as the floor moved beneath her feet.

 

 

 

 

 

  She got Kajic on the line and instructed Cane to take the scutter as the Box had suggested. Kajic didn’t ask how she had found out about the battle; she hoped that he simply assumed that she had learned about it via Maii.

  Still linked via n-space, she noted that the reave was occasionally glancing away from where they were headed in the tunnels to the people surrounding them in the habitat. Even in the maintenance infrastructure, they weren’t completely alone. The ones that weren’t shielded were mostly thinking about what was going on: curious, concerned, frightened, angry... Only a handful were hoping the attackers would win, and none of them had any specific thoughts about the enemy. If there was a connection between the attack and the clone warriors, Roche had yet to find proof of it.

  she asked Maii.

  <1 still can’t pinpoint them the way you can. Want to try?>

 

  Roche tried to concentrate on walking as well as the mental landscape of the habitat. The rapid progression of minds was as disorienting in its own way as the incessant but irregular grumbling of the walls and floor. Mind after mind rolled by, until—

  The pitlike mind was in a group of three or four others, all stationary.

  said Maii.

  Roche asked.

 

  Ansourian brought them to a halt when they came to a closed door.

  “On the other side of this bulkhead is the corridor leading to the holding cells,” he said. “I don’t know what’s waiting for us there. It could be messy.”

 

 

 

  the Box said, before she could turn her attention back to Ansourian.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Until now, it had just been necessary to keep a low profile. Now they were suspects and would be hunted through every corridor of the habitat until caught. Or killed.

  Her face must have shown something. When she focused once again on Ansourian, he was staring at her.

  “What’s happened?”

  “The administer...” Roche began, then hesitated, debating for a moment whether or not to tell him. The news had the potential to distract him, a distraction she couldn’t afford right now. Nevertheless, he did have the right to know. “The administer is dead,” she finally said. “Assassinated, it would seem.”

  His expression flickered, and for the briefest moment she glimpsed a grief that surprised her. Even knowing that Jans was involved in the attack on him, Ansourian still felt compassion for the woman.

  Catching Roche’s surprise, he said: “For all her failings, she didn’t deserve this.”

  Roche nodded. “I understand,” she said. She allowed a moment’s pause before gesturing to the door. “I’m sorry, Ansourian, but we have to keep moving.”

  All trace of sadness vanished from his expression as quickly as it had appeared. “Do you want me to go first?” he said, jerking a thumb at the door in front of them.

  Roche flipped her helmet closed. “No, I’ll go. The suit will hold for a second or two, if it has to. You just open it.”

  He nodded and stepped back. The lock glowed green, and the door slid aside.

  Roche stepped into the corridor, confident that the Box knew what it was talking about but wary of any new developments it may have overlooked. As promised, though, there were no guards in sight.

  “Clear,” she whispered.

  Ansourian stepped out of the tunnel with Maii. The girl’s visor was also closed, and she kept one hand close to her pistol at all times.

  Ansourian indicated the passage to their right, and they walked that way. Two guards came into view thirty seconds later, one on either side of a door two meters wide. They seemed alert but not especially concerned at seeing Ansourian and his companions as they approached.

  she asked the Box.

 

  said Maii.

  Roche didn’t know what Ansourian had planned, so to forestall anything precipitous, she said to Maii:

  There was a brief pause as Maii relayed the message. she told Roche.

  Roche nodded.

  she said.

 

  Influenced by Maii’s powers, the guards stepped aside as they approached and waved them through; then, when the heavy door had closed behind them again, they promptly forgot they had ever seen the intruders.

  Ansourian automatically took off along the nearest of the black-gray corridors. He seemed unconcerned by the strong jolts that occasionally rattled and shuddered through the walls. Roche followed him, keeping a close eye out for the two shielded guards. They turned right, then left, passing sturdy-looking doors with numeric keypads instead of locks. There was no way to determine whether the cells were empty or not, however, as the window in each door was shuttered closed.

  When they reached Alta’s cell, Roche noticed a guard standing motionless at the far end of the corridor. She assumed he was unshielded and controlled by Maii, since he didn’t seem too concerned about the presence of visitors to the cell block.

  Anso
urian quickly tapped the appropriate code into the keypad of his daughter’s cell. Nothing happened.

  “They’ve changed the codes,” he hissed. “We’ll have to blast our way in. Is your pistol up to it?”

  “It’ll have to be.” She removed it from her holster and took careful aim.

  it said.

  She fired, and the door sprang open. Roche looked up. The guard hadn’t reacted to the noise, but she could hear the inquiries of someone who had.

  “Inside!” She pushed Ansourian and Maii into the cell, followed them in and shut the door.

  Alta was sitting on a low bunk. She looked up, surprised, when she saw them enter.

  “Father!” A smaller, female version of Atul Ansourian, with dark eyes and a small tattoo on her throat, sprang to her feet to embrace him.

  “Shhh!” Roche waved for silence. Footsteps were coming toward the cell.

  said the Box.

  She waited, pistol at the ready. The smell of energy-fire would linger for a while. If it was strong enough, the guard might realize immediately where they were. If it wasn’t, he might just keep walking, which would at least give them an extra minute or two. As far as Roche was concerned, every second was valuable.

  The footsteps stopped directly outside the cell.

  Roche didn’t hesitate: she opened the door and fired her pistol. The bolt of energy caught the guard on the shoulder of his armor, spinning him heavily into the wall. While he was distracted, Maii penetrated his shield and rendered him unconscious.

  He fell to the ground with a thud, his weapon sent clattering along the floor. But Roche didn’t dare hope that he would be the last of their problems. There was one more unshielded guard in the complex, and she had now fired two shots.

  “Quickly!” said Roche back over her shoulder. “Get her into that suit!”

  Without a word, Alta slipped into the OSFA suit her father had brought.

  Roche edged back out of the corridor, using the Box to scan the corridor of the holding cell grid. Aside from the unconscious guard outside Alta’s cell, she counted eight others: five along one wall and three along the other, all subdued by Maii. One was missing.

 

 

  The Box thought otherwise.

  said Roche.

  it said.

 

  <1 was distracted by the guard approaching you,> the Box confessed.

  She shrugged off its excuses. They would just have to hope the guard planned to lie low while they made their exit.

  Alta had finished donning her suit and stood, slightly stunned, with one hand on her father’s shoulder.

  “We’re leaving here?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Roche said. “The sooner the better.”

  They filed out of the cell and into the corridor, Roche leading, keeping alert for any sign of the missing guard. They made it around the first corner, then the next. The checkpoint appeared ahead of them, its doors invitingly open.

  Roche had barely passed the last cell door when it burst open. The guard managed to get off three shots before Roche brought him down with two shots from her own weapon—the first bolt hitting his side and spinning him away, the second taking him in the back and throwing him forward onto the cell’s bunk, which collapsed noisily beneath him.

  Roche ignored him and went to check on Alta and Ansourian instead. The woman, clutching an injured arm, was scrambling her way to her father who had taken two direct hits, one to the chest and one to the stomach.

  Roche checked Ansourian for broken ribs, but couldn’t feel anything through her glove and the blackened material of his OSFA suit. Even unconscious, he winced with pain as she probed.

  “I can carry him,” she said to Alta, “if you want to take that risk.”

  The woman nodded, all expression gone. “He needs medical attention,” she said, “and he’s not going to get it here.”

  “He’ll be all right if we can just get him back to the Ana Vereine. But before that,” she said, remembering Ansourian’s instructions to Haid and Vri, “we need to find corridor 14 in Sector Green-D. Do you know where that is?”

  “Yes, of course,” she said. “But why do we need to go there?”

  “Because that’s our escape route,” Roche explained hastily. “I’m arranging a pickup at the maintenance airlock there.”

  Alta frowned. “ ‘Maintenance airlock’—is that what Father said?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “It’s not a maintenance airlock,” she said. “It’s an old refuse dumper.”

  Roche stared at the woman for a second. Dumpers were little more than chutes designed to fire pellets of unreclaimable material at a suitable disposal site—be it the atmosphere of a dead world, the nearest sun, or anywhere the waste would do little harm. They would be lucky if it had even the most primitive airlock facilities, let alone somewhere to dock.

  “This just gets better and better,” she said, shaking her head. “But it doesn’t matter. If it’s the only way out, we’re going to take it.”

  She rose slowly to her feet, bringing Ansourian with her. The suit gave her the strength to carry him, and the fall in ambient gravity helped, but he was still going to be a burden—especially if they encountered any more guards and she had to use her pistol.

  she said. <1 don’t want to have to drop him like a dead weight at the last moment.>

  said the Box.

  She staggered as the floor shifted under her; then, regaining her balance, she headed for the checkpoint. They passed through unhindered, and headed off along the corridor.

  <1 presume you can’t read her,> Roche said to Maii.

 

  She shifted Ansourian’s body to a more comfortable position. Alta took them along a series of wide, curving corridors, many of them ringing to the sound of sirens, but each as deserted as the last. The vibrations seemed to lessen when they stuck to the main routes, and Roche was grateful to he able to forget about not banging her head on the maintenance tunnels’ low ceilings. She did feel exposed, though, and would be glad when they reached the exit point—even if it was just a refuse dumper.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  A further violent judder swept through the habitat just as they turned down another corridor, this time forcing Roche to one knee in order to keep herself from falling. “What was that?”

  Alta looked frightened as she helped Roche to her feet. “We’ve been holed!” she said as a sudden shift in air pressure made everyone’s ears block. The sirens took on a new note of alarm. “Pressure-doors will be up all over the station.”

  “We have suits,” said Roche. “Do you know the override commands?”

  Alta shook her head. “My father would have.” Roche felt trapped. Keeping the Box’s existence a secret was becoming harder and harder.

  The Box complied a
nd she quickly relayed the codes to Maii. Via implants again, she said:

 

  Roche nudged Alta on. “Come on, keep going. We’re going to make it, okay?”

  They continued through the vibrating corridors of the habitat, though now with more pace and urgency. There was still no one around, and Roche assumed the nonessential Vax personnel were holed up in their pressurized compartments. If the majority of the security personnel were down at the docks or elsewhere in the habitat where the defense was concentrated, that at least decreased the chances of their being found. But it wasn’t enough to help Roche relax. Not until she was standing on the bridge of the Ana Vereine, with the habitat far behind her, would she allow herself that luxury....

  They passed through two open pressure-doors, then a third. Roche could see the puzzlement on Alta’s face at the blatant lapse in safety precautions, but there was no time to explain. The only time they stopped was when a particularly violent attack shook the habitat so badly that Roche was flung into one of the walls, and Maii and Alta were thrown onto the shuddering floor.

  Steadying herself, Roche asked:

 

 

  From the Ana Vereine, Kajic said:

  They passed through the first junction, taking a little-used passage that obviously connected to the maintenance tunnels they had left earlier. The second junction took them to a wide, straight corridor that seemed to stretch for miles. In the distance, loping toward them, were two figures, one dressed in black, the other in gold.

  Alta started when she saw them.

  “It’s okay,” Roche assured her. “They’re with us.”

  Yet another violent shudder ran through the walls and floor.