by EJ Fisch
“You can’t help me, and even if you could, I wouldn’t want you to,” Saun growled.
Aroska watched her for a moment, straining to see out of the corners of his eyes. She wasn’t looking at him, but was staring vacantly at the monitor against the wall. He wasn’t sure if it was due to the revelation of her true identity, but something seemed oddly different in the way she spoke and the way she carried herself. It wasn’t just in his mind – it was something real, something on the outside, something physical.
“You’re dying, aren’t you?”
Saun forced a bit of a sad smile and wiped the tears out of one eye with the back of her hand.
“How long do you have?”
She shook her head quickly, knitting her eyebrows and maintaining that hint of a smile. “No, you’re wrong. I’m not dying, not anymore.” The smile suddenly vanished. “I get to live, you have to die. Think of it this way, Aroska. You’re giving your life to save a friend.”
-45-
Sublevel sewer system
Dakiti Medical Research Center
Sardonis
It smelled like what it was – a sewer full of unpleasant and unidentifiable refuse from the med center and all of its occupants. On top of that it was pitch dark, leaving Skeet only able to imagine what sort of nasty, slimy things were lurking around him and in the water that flowed past him at knee-level. He longed to activate one of the glow sticks and take a look around, but Zinni had suggested they save them until they began moving.
He kept his eyes on the thin halo of light that surrounded the access hatch through which they had come. It didn’t cast enough light into the tunnel for him to see Zinni and Jayden, but it would be sufficient enough to see the shadows of anyone coming in from above. All three of them remained silent, compensating for lack of sight by devoting all their energy to listening to the sounds around them. The tunnel was clear as far as Skeet could tell – all they needed now was to wait for Ziva and Aroska.
The water pressure and flow around his legs changed and Skeet could sense Zinni moving toward him through the darkness. She sidled up to him and reached out to find him, her small hand meeting his chest at mid-breastbone.
“Where are they, Skeet?” she spoke softly in Haphezian. She let her head rest against his shoulder and held on to his arm.
He put his arm around her shoulders and held her gently for a moment, straining to see Jayden in the darkness. “You know they’ll be here,” he replied in Standard so the young man could hear. As of this moment, Skeet was in charge of a mission without communication and without any idea what was going on around them, and the last thing he needed was for Jayden to think things were anything but under control.
Skeet still couldn’t see Jayden, but he did catch sight of the shadow as it passed over the crevice surrounding the access hatch. He alerted Zinni with a quick shove and moved across the tunnel to secure Jayden, rifle raised.
The hatch cover cracked open with an echoing groan that thankfully hadn’t seemed nearly as loud from the maintenance closet above. Light poured down into the tunnel and Skeet flattened himself against both Jayden and the wall, waiting anxiously for either Aroska or Ziva to appear. What he saw instead were a pair of bare feet lowering themselves through the opening, followed by grimy legs, some form of tattered clothing, and a bare torso. The strong stench that accompanied this person added to the already foul atmosphere and Skeet nearly gagged. Jayden did.
“Help me with him!” Ziva’s voice commanded firmly from above. Skeet could now see her hands supporting the man under his arms.
Zinni switched on a glow stick and the two of them stepped forward to gingerly bring the man down into the tunnel. He was disgustingly skinny but clearly Haphezian. Skeet tilted his head back into the light as Ziva dropped down into the water and shut the cover behind her.
The gesh punti were unmistakable. “I don’t understand how this is possible,” he said, looking up at Ziva.
“There’s still a lot I haven’t figured out either,” she replied. “Tate’s here too. From what we’ve found, it’s clear that they’ve been experimented on and would have most likely wound up in that furnace you two discovered.” She shifted in the water. “How are you holding up, kid?”
“Fine,” Jayden replied.
“Where’s Aroska?” Zinni asked.
The water seemed to stop flowing for a moment as Ziva tensed and looked around. “You mean he’s not with you?”
Skeet felt the nervousness creep back toward him like some slimy creature in the water. “We thought you were together,” he said, exhaling a sigh through his nose.
Ziva placed one hand on a hip and ran the other over the top of her head. She sighed as well, taking a few seconds to stare into the darkness of the tunnel before sweeping her gaze over the three of them. “You go without me,” she said. “Take Jayden and Jole to the end of the sewer and wait. I’m going back for Tate and Aroska.”
“What?” Skeet cried. “Ziva, I can’t let you go back up there by yourself.”
“The last time I checked, sergeant, I was your commanding officer,” she snarled. “I don’t think it’s your place to tell me what I’m not going to do. Now, get these two out of here; I don’t want you under here when the Grand Army unleashes hell on this place. Besides, me going back alone is going to attract a lot less attention than all of us caravanning through.”
Zinni crossed her arms, successfully pulling off a threatening look despite the size difference between her and her superior. “We can only assume that Tate is in the same shape as Jole, if not worse, and who knows where Aroska is and how much trouble he’s in.”
“And Solaris is after you,” Jayden put in quietly.
The tunnel fell silent and all heads turned toward the young human, who was lingering in the shadows at the edge of the halo of light cast by the glow stick.
“Excuse me?” Ziva said sharply.
“That’s what I was telling you,” he said to Skeet and Zinni before shifting his focus back to Ziva. “That woman and Bothum were questioning me, asking whether or not you were coming. I didn’t tell them anything because I didn’t know. They knew it was too late for me to do anything about that transmission that I intercepted – as far as I could tell, they were using me to bait you. They said something like, ‘Nobody dies until Tarbic and Payvan get here’.”
Zinni swore. “Would it have killed you to elaborate earlier?”
“I’m sorry!” Jayden cried. “I didn’t realize it was relevant, and then we were trying to get out and—”
“Just stop,” Ziva ordered, holding her hand up for silence. She was quiet for a moment, staring into the cloudy water that flowed around her legs.
“We’re running out of time,” Skeet murmured.
“I know.” Ziva swallowed, then looked over each of them in turn. “They’ve got Tarbic. I’m going back for him, and then we’re going back for Tate. You three take Jole and proceed to the end of the tunnel like I said.”
“Here, then,” Zinni said, removing her earpiece. “You should take this.”
Skeet watched as Ziva nodded her thanks and inserted the device into her own ear. “What happens if you can’t handle both of them?” he asked. “What if you need help?”
“That’s what the military is coming for,” she replied. “Now go, Skeet. Get Jayden out of here. That’s an order.”
She opened the hatch and disappeared.
-46-
Prep room
Dakiti Medical Research Center
Sardonis
Aroska was fading, becoming incoherent. It would be difficult to extract any useful information from him before long. Saun couldn’t imagine that he would have come here without Payvan, and Atu had claimed to have seen the two of them together. The woman was around the facility somewhere, and they would find her with or without Aroska’s help.
Saun watched as the medical bot administered a small dose of a substance she wasn’t familiar with. This initial prep procedure was
tedious and time-consuming, but once they were able to begin the cloning process, the subject could basically be harvested at will until there was nothing left. She almost hated to see such a thing happen to the man she had truly come to care about, but her own clone was currently being prepped for surgery and Bothum had made it quite clear that he wanted both Tarbic and Payvan incapacitated before she was rewarded in any way.
The door hissed open and Atu burst in as wide-eyed as he was capable of. “My men found the woman,” he exclaimed.
At last. All too eager to get on with things, Saun took a quick look at Aroska’s monitor and then fell into stride behind the captain as he led her out the door and down the corridor. “Do you have her in custody?” she wheezed, trying to control her breathing despite the sudden excitement.
“They found her before the photos had completely circulated so she hasn’t been taken to Bothum yet,” he replied. “One of the nurses reported a suspicious person and they found her in the extraction chamber. She’s in one of the holding cells downstairs.”
They descended a stairwell to the second underground level, where a squad of guards met up with them from another hallway. “We put her in cell D24,” one of them informed Atu, sliding a stun pistol from his holster.
The holding cells were dark and reeked of death and decay, but they were reinforced with War-era nitamite, an alloy developed by the Biasi that the Sardons had paid an outrageous sum of money to install. The cells had been put to good use over the years and were virtually indestructible. Saun had spent time in one while Bothum tested her intentions when she’d first volunteered her services nearly a year prior. If Payvan was in one, she was certainly secure.
“She was wearing some kind of flight suit when we found her,” the sentry said. “We confiscated it and all of her personal effects.”
“That’s what Tarbic was wearing too. Could they have flown in here? Are there more of them that we don’t know about?”
A different guard, one who appeared to be full-blooded Sardon, spoke up. “We checked up on that. No ships without clearance have been picked up on radar. Honestly, we don’t know how they got in. As for there being others, that’s unclear. There was a whole squadron of security personnel shot to death in the east hallway on this level, but it’s difficult to say who the shooters were. They’ve done a good job at avoiding surveillance.”
Saun was grateful to finally be speaking to a competent person who had some facts. “What about the boy? Is Jayden Saiffe secure?”
“Pardon me for asking ma’am, but what good is it to keep him here?”
“He’s a witness,” Saun answered. “If we let him go at this point, he’ll just go back to his home planet and launch a counterstrike. That’s the last thing we need to worry about right now. Send someone up to check on him.”
“Right away.”
They reached the cell block and proceeded to D24, one of the larger and older rooms on the floor. A member of the medical staff waited there with a response kit; he removed a syringe of Axonyte from it as they neared. He gently handed it to Saun and stepped back with a respectful dip of his head.
Saun removed the protective cover from the needle with her teeth and held the instrument up to the light. Satisfied that the dose would be enough to neutralize Payvan but not render her completely numb just yet, she cleared her throat and nodded toward the door. “Open it.”
The bolt slid away with a swipe of someone’s access key and the door eased open. The guards rushed in, illuminating the shadowy chamber with the lights mounted on their weapons. Saun directed her gaze into the room and focused on the figure that hung limply from the clasps attached to the wall. To her horror, it was not Payvan, not even a woman, not even a Haphezian. The person suspended there was one of Bothum’s men, a cross-breed, stripped of his weapon and supply belt. His head leaned severely to one side, his neck broken.
Saun stared, speechless, as the guards swept over the rest of the cell. The syringe slipped from her fingers and clattered to the floor, partly out of resignation and partly because she began to cough so violently that she was forced to step away. Each breath felt like fire eating away at her lungs. She tasted blood as she regained composure and wiped her hand across her mouth. When she brought her hand away, her fingers were stained crimson and she quickly wiped them on her pants before turning her attention back to the cell.
Atu was just emerging from the darkness with his communicator to his mouth. “What have you found?” he asked sternly.
“The Saiffe boy is gone,” replied the voice of the guard who had been sent off to investigate. “His restraints have been released and the ventilation shaft is open.”
Saun summoned all the breath she had, allowing anger to numb most of the pain. “Find Payvan and Saiffe, now!” she screamed.
-47-
Intrepid
Fringe space
Shades of bright blue and silver swirled by outside as the Intrepid surged forward at FTL speed, closing in on the swampy world of Sardonis. Adin sighed and crossed his arms, watching the space out the front viewport as Mari and Colin piloted the craft. Using a limited amount of portable equipment en route and assistance from Mack Markel, they’d been able to narrow down the Solaris mole to someone inside the SCU. That left twenty possibilities, excluding Aroska and Mack, but Adin couldn’t shake the feeling that Saun was somehow involved. He hadn’t personally spent a lot of time around her recently, but after making some calls and obtaining any information Mack had, he could conclude that she had at least been up to something unrelated to any ongoing HSP investigations.
Somewhere out in the swirling colors, a sizable chunk of the Grand Army’s fleet zoomed along with them. Adin had briefed the colonel and his captains on all the information he had, which wasn’t much considering he’d lost communication with Ziva and hadn’t heard anything since Skeet had instructed him to bring the military into play. Unsure what exactly they would find upon reaching Dakiti, Adin had left the majority of the tactical decision-making to the military men, feeling content to provide what little HSP support he and his team could.
Mack appeared in the cockpit beside him, studying Dakiti’s schematics on a small data pad. Adin was grateful for his help on such short notice. He’d never met Markel personally before the previous evening, but any friend of Aroska’s was a friend of his.
“I just filled the director in on our progress,” Mack reported. “Now he at least knows what’s going on, even if he’s still refusing to send any HSP support. He wants updates from both you and Colonel Sheen every half hour.”
Adin nodded and stroked his chin but said nothing. Emeri was being a coward, and if they were too late to help Ziva and her team, Adin would hold him personally responsible. He didn’t doubt their abilities by any means, but judging by what little Skeet had told him when he’d called, it was quite possible that they were in way over their heads. He was determined to prove the director wrong, whatever that meant.
“Agent Woro,” came Sheen’s voice over the comm system. “We’re all set up for a full ground assault, but we’d like a twenty on your people before we proceed.”
Adin picked up the receiver. “We haven’t been able to make contact for nearly an hour. You’ll be the first to know if we hear anything.”
“Roger that. ETA, thirty minutes.”
-48-
Sublevels
Dakiti Medical Research Center
Sardonis
Saun lifted her face from her knees when she sensed someone standing in front of her. It was the Sardon who had spoken so intelligently to her earlier, towering over her as she sat on the floor with her arms around her legs. He studied a data pad and shifted his gaze over to meet hers when she looked up.
“One of the prisoners is missing,” he informed her.
Saun held her breath to postpone the pain and scrambled to her feet. “Out of here?” she scoffed. “The crop in this cell block has already been harvested. They’re useless now, if not dead – ready
for the oven. If Payvan was here, why would she bother taking one of them with her?”
The guard shook his head and gestured back at the data pad. “The missing prisoner is Imetsi, Jole, one of Tarbic’s former team members. Final harvest took place yesterday – he’s still alive.”
Saun took the data pad from him and looked over it herself. She remembered the day they’d brought Jole in like it was yesterday, though it had been nearly three months earlier. He’d fought hard, stayed alive longer than many of the others. It was almost as if his body had started becoming immune to the continuous drugs and medications administered during the harvesting prep, so they’d had to stop before he became too much to handle. His partner Tate had been a fighter too, though they had started his harvesting process a few weeks later. Between the two of them, the facility had been able to generate over twenty successful products, all of whom had immediately been selected to begin military training.
“What’s Luver’s status?” she asked.
“Still here,” he replied. “Alive, but barely.”
The back door had just been opened. “If she took the time to take Imetsi, she’ll more than likely be back for Luver,” Saun said, handing the data pad back. “Station someone here to wait for her, and have security monitoring Tarbic’s prep process in case she finds him. No one rests until she is found, understood?”
-49-
Sublevels
Dakiti Medical Research Center
Sardonis
If Dakiti’s restricted levels had been quiet before, Ziva might as well have been deaf now. Quite suddenly, in her opinion, there wasn’t a soul to be found nor a sound to be heard, making the hairs on her arms and neck stand up as if they too were searching, listening. What disturbed her most was the lack of medical personnel who had been so abundant earlier, telling her that they had been alerted to her presence and ordered to withdraw. The occasional nurse or doctor still scurried by, ducking into rooms to continue their work from behind locked doors. She doubted it had taken long for someone to find the unfortunate sentry she’d killed in the prison cell. His missing access key would be a sure giveaway.