by M. D. Cooper
She continued to move in the direction she expected him to be. The next room was also locked, but had a narrow window. She peered into it and saw a lab. Though lit only by emergency lights, she recognized the shadowy shapes of scientific equipment instantly. The place looked exactly like one of the labs at Rexcare headquarters.
Picking up the pace, she ran down the hall, pausing only to make sure the rooms she passed were either locked or clear of potential combatants.
Time was ticking away. She was chewing up her remaining time fast. When the clock ran down, reinforcements would arrive in force.
This was taking too long. She’d been afraid of that.
Finally, Trey responded.
When a black-clad figure rounded the corner just as she reached it, she instinctively gripped her rifle tighter, then realized Trey’s tracker was also rounding the corner at that moment.
“Where’s the door?” he asked, continuing to rush forward. She turned and hurried back the way she’d come.
“There are a few, actually. One’s a lab. We’ll try them in order.”
The first room revealed a data storage center, with racks of private servers and lots of tiny, flashing lights. As tantalizing as that was, they kept moving. The second door revealed a pharmacy. The third was the lab she’d seen, but they skipped over it.
She turned the corner and went back to the first locked room she’d found. Trey attached the mini EMP device to the door, keyed in the countdown, and they took a step back.
A snapping sound, and the door came unlocked. She nodded to Trey. He opened it while she stood, rifle ready, and edged in.
She smelled something metallic. She activated the lights, giving her a better view of the small room.
Her breath caught. A man was lying on a narrow bed in the corner, facing the wall.
“Let’s hope it’s him. Keep an eye out,” she said to Trey.
The bed was little more than a cot, and she had to kneel to check the figure’s neck for a pulse.
His skin was warm, and the pulse slow and steady.
Gripping the shoulder, she rolled the person back to get a look at this face.
Fitzmiller. He had coarse stubble on his face, and his hair was mashed to his head in wild disarray, but it was him. And he was alive.
“Fitzmiller!” She shook him but he didn’t wake.
“I think he’s been drugged!” she called back to Trey. “I need a stimulant.”
“No time.” Trey swept in, leaned over the bed, and draped the doctor over his shoulder. “Time’s up. We’ve got to go.”
“Shit. We didn’t even get into the lab.” Even as she followed him out, watching Fitzmiller’s feet dangle and bang into Trey’s knees, she mourned the lost opportunity. They wouldn’t get in here again.
They reached the stairwell a half minute later and Seven’s eyes widened as they approached. “Is that him?”
Reece nodded as they hurried by. She got ahead of Trey, since he was encumbered, and Seven continued to guard their rear.
She saw all the tracker lights on the edge of her vision moving like bugs. Some moved further apart, while others edged closer together.
She wondered if the others had come up with anything, but couldn’t spare the breath to shout back to Seven. She was running hard, watching the fifteen minutes on her timer roll into the final minute.
They weren’t going make it.
Trey ran surprisingly fast while carrying a slightly portly scientist on his shoulder. They pushed out of the side door as the timer counted to zero, and Reece wondered if they could make it across the lot to the van when it pulled up.
Seven saw the look of surprise on her face. “Auto programmed it to be here.”
Four of Seven’s clanmates poured out of another door and rushed to the van, reaching it a moment later.
“Where are the others?” she asked Seven.
“They got hung up. They have an escape plan, though. They’ll make it out.” His words were tight, and it sounded to her like he was trying to convince himself as much as he was trying to convince her.
Seven raced around the van and jumped into the driver’s seat, taking off the moment the last person was in the back.
Reece helped Trey lay Fitzmiller on the bench in the back, but it wasn’t easy with Seven’s driving throwing her off balance.
She dropped to her knees in front of Fitzmiller to keep him from sliding off the seat during an extreme turn, executed at an alarming rate of speed.
“Okay, you’re going to want to hang on to something,” Seven called back.
“What—” Reece’s question was cut off by her being thrown to the side of the van, and the sensation of sliding rather than rolling.
They leveled out, but almost immediately, she was thrown the other direction, without the benefit of the van’s hull to prop her up.
Then she found herself hauled upright and held firm by the waist. Trey had strapped into a seat and was now acting as her own personal seat belt.
Fitzmiller, unfortunately, rolled off the seat and into the floor.
She tried again to ask what was happening when she was interrupted a succession of high-pitched pinging noises.
“We’re being shot at, aren’t we?” She should probably be more horrified than enthralled, but this was a new experience for her. Usually she was the one driving in situations like this.
“That’s my guess,” Trey said.
One of Seven’s female clan members laughed and whispered something to the man next to her.
“I think they think we’re funny,” she said in a much lower voice, so only Trey would hear.
“Sure, I guess we would seem kind of naïve and precious to people who think this stuff is just something you do on a typical day.”
She snorted.
He whispered, “I think this is the part where we’re supposed to experience a bunch of sexual tension.”
A lurch to the left had her twisting and putting her arms around his neck to keep her balance. “Yeah, sounds about right. How’s that going? Are you sexually tense?”
“No. I think it’s because you’re too annoying.”
“Well, that’s convenient. I too find myself not the least bit possessed of tingly parts.”
“What? Really?” He sounded disappointed. “Not even after I picked you up and everything? I thought that was a very manly, heroic moment.”
“Oh, you did great,” she reassured him. “We just don’t have any chemistry that way. It’s convenient, really, if we’re going to keep working together.”
A long noisy leftward slide punctuated with a great many pinging sounds interrupted their conversation. She thought they’d lost the thread of their banter, but he picked it back up a few moments later, when they were once again traveling in a forward direction.
“Are we?”
“Are we what?” she asked.
“Going to continue working together. I’m not a permanent employee of Rexcare. This was a contract assignment.”
“If we deliver on this one, I guarantee you they’ll put you on staff. And in that case, yeah, maybe we will work together again.”
They took a sharp turn and they tightened their grip on each other for a moment.
“I don’t think I’d hate that,” he said. “Would you?”
“I’ve hated it less and less as we’ve gone along,” she admitted. “So, by the time we get back home, I might be entirely lukewarm to the idea.”
“Wow. I’m the king, aren’t I?”
“I guess.” She shrugged. “I’m just glad you don’t have bad breath. If you did, this conversation would
have gone the other way.”
“Thank goodness for my slavishness to dental hygiene.”
They fell silent, which gave her time to reflect that his sense of humor and quick replies matched her smartass reaction to risk and danger perfectly. When they got back to Akon, she’d have to put in a good word for him with Schramm. Her boss would take her endorsement seriously, so long as he’d forgiven her for her childish behavior at their last meeting.
First, though, they had to finish this job. She looked at Fitzmiller, unconscious on the floor of the van, and hoped he had the answers they needed.
* * * * *
After ten minutes, the wild ride smoothed out and the tension level in the van dropped to something more akin to that of a mere armed assailant, or a threat from some two-bit goon.
Reece and Trey didn’t get any updates, except that they didn’t appear to have anyone following anymore, and they were on their way to a safe place.
She made Fitzmiller as comfortable as she could on the floor of the van. Regardless of what Seven’s clan said, she had the sense that insane driving could break out at any time, and she’d rather not see the man roll out of the seat once more.
Not until she heard what he had to say, anyway. After that, she’d figure out what to do with him.
At least she was sitting in her own seat now. She supposed that sitting in Trey’s lap was better than having him sit in hers, but she much preferred things as they were now—one seat per person.
Well, except for Fitzmiller. But it was his fault they were all there in the first place, so she didn’t feel bad about it.
Since the van had no side windows and no one had much to say, Reece could only wonder at their destination, though her connection to the local GPS system showed them to be in the same neighborhood as Seven’s store.
When they slowed, then stopped, she scooted to the edge of her seat to peer forward. She saw a huge metal door rising in front of the van. They proceeded forward a dozen meters, stopped, and another metal door went up. Presumably, the first had closed behind them.
Wherever they were, it had some serious security.
Good.
Finally, they stopped and Seven came toward them. “All right, kids. We’re home. Anybody need to use the bathroom?”
She skipped over his untimely humor. Not that she minded untimely humor—she was just impatient to figure things out. “Where are we?”
“Bunker under my store. Nobody’s getting in here, guaranteed.”
“What about the two we left behind?” Trey asked.
His lips pressed together. “They’ll get out, and get somewhere safe. They’ll come here if they need to.”
“What’s this bunker for?” Reece asked. She didn’t like being so ignorant of how things worked on this planet.
“It’s a failsafe in the event of a clan war. My whole primary clan can fit down here, if need be.” Seven opened the side door and gestured for them to pull Fitzmiller out. Apparently, he didn’t intend to help with that. How nice of him.
Reece grabbed one of Seven’s tall relatives by the shoulder and pointed at the scientist. “Help with him.”
Then she got out of the van, daring Seven with her eyes to take issue with her ordering his clan member around. Seven shrugged. Once Trey and the other guy pulled Fitzmiller out, Seven gestured for them to follow.
After two more security doors, they were finally inside what looked like a well-furnished apartment with large rooms.
“This is surprisingly cozy,” Reece remarked, looking around at the couches, chairs, and tables. “It’s like a recreation center.”
“There are bedrooms down the left hall,” Seven said. “Put your guy in one of them so he can sleep off whatever they’ve given him.”
“What makes you think he’s sedated?” she asked, watching the men do as they’d been directed. “He could be comatose or something.”
“Just a guess based on the most likely scenario.”
She remembered what he’d said earlier. “Do clan wars happen a lot here? This place seems like a pretty elaborate setup.”
“It’s probably the best private bunker on the planet,” Seven said with a touch of pride. “We’re situated directly below my store, too. When we need to, we’ll be able to use it for the warfare part of things, while keeping the rest of the Lees safe down here.”
“Lees?” she asked.
“My clan name. Didn’t I mention that?”
“I don’t think you did.” She was sure of it, in fact. He hadn’t answered her question, though. “When was the last clan war?”
“A hundred and eight years ago.”
“So odds of having one aren’t too high,” she surmised.
“On the contrary. We’re overdue for one. Tensions have been steadily rising, so it shouldn’t be long before someone does something to get it all started.”
Reece wondered if their actions this evening may have pushed Wadish a bit closer to the brink.
“Really? Why? What’s the benefit?”
“Oh, there’s no benefit,” he said. “But it’s inevitable, all the same. Pride, tradition, and a planetary love for weapons don’t make for a pacifistic society.”
“And you Lees are a dominating clan, I take it?”
He leaned over a couch, resting his elbows on the back. “Yeah. One of the five most affluent and influential, right now. The next clan war will probably knock one or two of the others down, while bringing others up in their place.”
“Sounds bad,” she said.
“It’s life. Anyone who doesn’t want to be a part of it can try their luck in some other system. One like yours, maybe, where there’s no clan to protect you, and the corporations can take you out of existence with a snap of the fingers.”
His tone made his opinion of her way of life clear, but between that and this clan war thing, she’d take the corporations any day. To her way of thinking, being part of a clan made a person a target more than it offered protection.
Trey and the tall Lee returned, but the others didn’t.
“Are the others making some dinner or something?” she asked.
Seven shrugged. “One of the tricks to keeping a clan tight is not getting too far into each other’s business. They know where we are and will come out when they want to.”
“Right.” She shook her head to clear it. She needed to forget about his details and focus on hers. She looked to Trey. “Okay. Does Fitzmiller seem okay? Is he waking up at all?”
“Not yet,” Trey said. “But his color’s good, breathing is even. His body temperature and blood pressure are good. He just seems to be asleep.”
She looked to Seven. “You have drugs down here?”
“Yeah, but I don’t think this is the right time for a party.”
Trey grinned at the joke, but Reece gave the arms dealer—and maybe clan leader—a withering stare.
Seven sighed. “Yeah. We’re equipped with food and medical supplies to last for more than a year. You want a stimulant, right?”
“Yes. Something simple and safe. Nothing harmful.”
“Gotcha. I’ll go see what we have.” He winked at her as he walked past.
She wanted to talk to Trey, but the other Lee, whose name she still didn’t know, had made himself cozy in a chair.
His answer came immediately.
She smirked at him, then blinked at a sudden realization.
She shifted her attention to the Lee in the room, tall and silent, and never offering a name. She’d thought it odd how little Seven’s clan mates had spoken, but it now occurred to her that they did talk—just not to her. Either she wasn’t worth the effort, or they were saying things they didn’t want her to hear.
Either way, it felt ominous. Was Stretch here keepi
ng an eye on them, or was he just chilling out? He hadn’t shown up to hit that building to help her and Trey. He’d done it to get back at a rival clan for something or other. There was no reason to consider him an ally.
she told Trey.
Trey’s gaze flickered to Stretch.
Had they simply moved Fitzmiller from one captor to another, along with themselves in the process?
A QUICK EXIT
DATE: 04.06.8948 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Istanba, Wadish
REGION: Eashira System, PED 4B, Orion Freedom Alliance
“Can we talk here without being overheard?” Reece edged into the room, looking back over her shoulder.
“Sure. What’s up?” Seven asked, opening a drawer and rummaging around.
“When I wake up Fitzmiller and talk to him, can you keep Trey busy?”
Seven stopped searching through the drawer and turned to her. “Why?”
“Would you want a rival clan to have vital information you needed?” she asked. She didn’t wait for an answer, since it was more of a hypothetical question than a real one. “Trey is essentially a rival clan to me, as far as how things work on my world. When we get back, I need to be more valuable to our employer than he is.”
“You think he’ll take your job? I thought you two were partners.” Seven found what he was looking for—a syringe packaged in a crinkly wrapper.
“We are. And he’s fine. But he’s competition, and I have my own family to support. An aging aunt. I know it’s not a lot compared to your kind of family, but she’s everything I’ve got.”
He let out a slow breath. “Yeah. I could see that. Okay. I’ll ask him for help with something. You think he’ll go for that?”
“It should work. He has no reason to think I wouldn’t tell him everything Fitzmiller says. He’s new to Machete.”