Deserter

by Mike Shepherd

  Jack rolled himself into the stairwell just as something flew by Kris’s head to explode at the far end of the hall. The back blast flashed toward Kris as she slammed the door shut.

  “What was that?” Tom asked breathlessly.

  “I don’t think that crossbow is for friendly games of darts,” Kris said as she opened the door a crack. Two gray figures came through the smoke at a crouch, machine pistols at the ready. “I’ll take the one on the right.”

  “I got the left one,” Tom said.

  “On three. One, two, three,” Kris said and squeezed off a burst directly at her target’s face. She collapsed, to be covered by Tom’s target. There was no more movement in the smoke.

  Kris wasn’t waiting for any, either. “Let’s get upstairs.”

  “That takes us toward maintenance,” Tom pointed out.

  “Which is where they won’t be expecting us,” Kris said as she hiked up the first of a long flight of stairs, heels echoing on steel. Jack was right behind her, Penny and Tom farther back.

  “Nelly, tell me what’s happening.”

  “The station is being evacuated. Yard, too, from the level of power to the elevators. The security net is going wild.”

  “Any traffic near us?”

  “No, Kris, but I did not get any signal traffic off the group in the elevator. Totally quiet.”

  “A different net would be my guess,” Jack offered. “Look for something anywhere on the frequency band. Even something in the civilian net that isn’t used here. These folks aren’t going to be bothered by a minor thing like frequency allocation.”

  Kris brought her team to a halt on a landing. “We’ve got to split up. Tommy, you and Penny can’t keep up with me and Jack.”

  “Yes we can,” and “I’m with you,” was their reply.

  “I also want to complicate Sandfire’s chase. We stay together, he’s got one problem. We raise scatter hell, and he’s not sure who’s doing what where. Play with me,” Kris said, pulling several of her cylinders from her dress. “We’ve got thirty minutes to run before I want to blow the yard. I’ve got to stay free that long.”

  “Make Sandfire’s life miserable.” Tom grinned. “I can do that.”

  Kris handed Penny half the bombs, explaining them as Penny pocketed each type. “Now, you walk or take a slide car down into the business section. Twenty minutes from now, meet us at Dock Eleven. That’s where they park the private stuff. We hijack one and head for a jump gate before the station blows. Now, make tracks. I’m leaving a booby trap here for our friends.”

  Tom and Penny checked the hall, found it clear, and headed out. “What does that leave us?” Jack asked.

  “There’s a service belt at the next landing,” Kris said, feeling inside her bodice and producing a booby trap.

  “Real booby trap.”

  “Pity, now I’m off balance. Give me a lift.” Jack made a foothold, and Kris stepped up just long enough to stick the explosives to the metal of the landing above them. Wonder if Jack’s a legs man? “Nelly, leave a nano to blow this if it spots people in SureFire Security gray or red/gray ninja getups.”

  “Done.”

  “Let’s make tracks.” They headed up another flight, found a door that Nelly opened onto a floor between the floors, full of air ducts, cable runs, and all the other necessities of modern life that people ignored. Nelly projected a holograph map. This floor circled the station at the .75 gravity level. Open all the way, they could reach the yard wall from here, but Kris intended to work her way closer to the station hub. If she was going to blow out the yard, she’d do it from the center out.

  “Cameras, Nelly?” Red points appeared on the map. “Lay out a walk that dodges as many of them as we can,” Kris said, then glanced around at the gray walls, floor, and machinery. “I don’t think my Princess camouflage quite fits here.”

  “Nelly, is there a locker room on the map?” Jack asked.

  A block showed yellow. The locker room had security, but someone had stuck a picture in front of the lens of a naked guy mooning the camera. Jack only broke into three lockers before he had two sets of orange overalls and blue union baseball caps. A tool kit in the last locker provided the final element for their disguise. That, and Kris’s skirt. Bunched around her middle, it gave her a world-class beer gut.

  “You got to start exercising more, Bud,” Jack said, elbowing her in her crinolines.

  “It’s not the beer,” she shot back. “I was born this way.”

  “It’s gonna be the death of you.”

  “You can say that again,” Kris said, buying into it, double entendre and all.

  Jack looked at a clipboard he’d found, handed Kris the tool kit to lug, and led off like he knew what he was doing. Kris followed, steering him as Nelly directed her. This lasted for most of five minutes, enough for Kris to start thinking they might make it. Then a hooter went off in the gray and dusty space between floors. After three blares, a computer voice announced all personnel were to leave the station. “A lockdown is being enforced. Anyone remaining will be subject to immediate arrest and detention. If you resist, you will be shot. All work is to cease. Go to the nearest descent station and exit the station.” The hooter went back to hooting, then repeated the order.

  “No surprise there. Sandfire is running scared.”

  “I would be about now if I was fighting you,” Jack said.

  “Maybe it’s time to go with plan B. Get the nanos into the yard soonest and let them loiter up there while we run like hell.”

  “Best idea you’ve had all day. All month. Maybe all lifetime.”

  “I don’t like leaving our nanos for them to attack,” Kris said, starting to trot for the nearest exit like a good worker.

  “Better than leaving ourselves out for them to attack.”

  “Let’s try for the next exit. See if we get called on it.”

  “Why do I not want to say it’s your call?” Jack scowled but trotted along as Kris took a right turn. Kris managed to skip three exits: a slide car, an elevator, and a stairwell.

  She was working her way higher up the station, closer to the yard wall when the horn ahead of them quit hooting and a woman’s voice squawked. “Work party on twenty-six B, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “I forgot my lunch pail,” Jack shouted. “I got this new thermos I don’t want to lose.”

  “Forget your damn coffee, you idiot. This cheap ass pile of crap is falling apart, and there are goons all over looking for anyone they can shoot for a saboteur to cover the ass of the bloody idiot who built this mess. Don’t be dumb; get the hell out. I’m leaving in two minutes.”

  “We’re going, we’re going,” Kris shouted. “I told you your damn coffee wasn’t worth my neck.”

  “You got it, honey. You tell him.”

  “Women,” Jack snarled, but headed for the nearby exit.

  “You’re the fools what want to live with us,” the horn blared back.

  “Not live with you, just—”

  Kris got Jack good in the ribs.

  “Throw that one back where he came from, honey, we can get you a better work partner.”

  “The last one was all hands. I’ll take him. He’s just a lot of talk,” Kris answered.

  “Well, you hurry along. I’m out of here. There’s a gray goon that wants my observation station, and he can have it. Maybe they’re getting overtime. I sure ain’t. Now hurry along.”

  Kris did, for about thirty seconds, then took a turn and headed up again.

  “How long before a gray spots us?” Jack asked.

  “Your guess is as good as mine. A gray can’t know the plant layout like that nice woman did.”

  “Big mouth you mean.”

  “You’re just mad ’cause she turned you down for a date.”

  “I assure you, young woman, when I offer a woman an evening, I do it most graciously, and I am never turned down.”

  “What’d that woman say? ‘You’re the fools what w
ant to live with us.’ ”

  “I don’t want to live with her.”

  “Who does live with you?”

  “No one. I’m never home anyway.”

  “So you live with me.” That got no answer for several steps. Jack was just opening his mouth, Kris anticipating his reply.

  “Freeze where you are,” growled a voice behind them.

  23

  Kris froze in midstep. Jack, mouth open in mid banter, a statue beside her.

  “Now turn around. Do it now. Do it slow. Nothing fast, or I’ll shoot you both dead.” The voice was high, tending to crack in the upper registers. Just what Kris needed, a nervous finger on a gun aimed at her. She turned slowly, one hand raising high. The other still holding the tool box. Jack did the same.

  “We’re doing what you want,” Kris said in a soothing voice. “We don’t want no problems here. We’re leaving. We just wanted to get Jack here’s new thermos. He paid one of those latte places to fill it,” she rambled on, stepping forward and just casually coming between Jack and the gray-clad security guard.

  “Everybody got told to get the hell out of here.” The young man licked lips already raw and chapped. Very nervous type.

  “Yeah, but when has the boss man ever meant what he says when he’s panicking and ordering everyone around?” Kris said, seeking sympathy. “And we got really good coffee. You want a cup?” she said, stooping to put down her tool kit, giving him a good view down her only partially zipped overalls and the one falsie she still had.

  The youngster stared, part distraction, part confusion, and no part alarm. He nodded. A split second later, he collapsed slowly as Jack put three sleepy darts into him.

  Kris grabbed his automatic pistol before it hit the deck. She popped his ammo belt off and snatched his wrist unit, stuffing it down her bodice. “Nelly, crack that net. We got any bugs we can spare?”

  “I have twelve. I am working on the net.”

  “Send one bug zigzagging off that way,” Kris pointed. “Have it switch off every camera it can. Do the same with another bug in the opposite direction.”

  “Doing.”

  “Which direction are we going?” Jack asked.

  “I think we’re close enough to the wall. Time to take the exit like we were told,” Kris said, dodging around the elevator.

  “Right behind you.”

  “I had Corporal Stout report that he is pursuing two people and gave a bearing that follows my first decoy,” Nelly reported.

  “Good,” Kris said as she opened the service hatch behind the bank of elevators. “In you go, Jack.”

  “I thought you were going to lead, and I got to follow.”

  “Change of plan. You missed Chivalry 101 and failed to open the door for me.”

  “Damn, and me out killing some of your dad’s opposition the day it was taught. They said I’d never miss it if I worked for a Longknife.”

  “That’ll teach you to trust what other people say about those damn Longknifes,” Kris said, leaving a whizbang on a ledge next to the door. “Nelly, leave a nano. Blow the charge if something gray or ninja comes in here.”

  “That leaves us only nine,” Nelly pointed out.

  “Nine will have to do. What’s happening on net?”

  “SureFire Security is dividing its forces between problems on Level 26—that’s us—and Levels 51 and 39. One of those must be Tom and Penny. There are also crowd control problems on five other levels. Kris, people are panicking.”

  Jack glanced down at her; she shrugged. She’d known when she started that evacuations were not orderly affairs; people got hurt. Whatever happened in the next twenty minutes had to be less deadly than what would happen when the station started whipping around as the yard blew out. Calculated risk.

  Climbing went quickly. Gravity grew less the closer they got to the hub. Jack went hand over hand up the rungs, Kris right behind him. There was a shout from below them followed by a burst of rapid fire. A second later the whizbang went off. Noise, flashing light, and smoke turned the shaft into no place to be; Jack opened the next exit hatch and made good use of it.

  “We’re not quite at the hub,” he told her. A glance showed a high ceiling, gray work spaces, heavy machinery, and from the smell, a wastewater treatment plant.

  “Am I going to spend the rest of my life doing penance for that little bomb topside?” Kris snapped.

  “I’m sure you’ll earn worse karma,” Jack said and ducked behind a whirling green generator.

  Two grays were headed their way at their best attempt at a run in this gravity, arms and legs flying.

  “Put your hands up,” one bawled. Kris did. Jack snapped off two shots; the grays tumbled and slid along the deck.

  “That cuts it,” Kris said. “We fight the rest of the way.”

  “The security net has squawkers reporting those two down,” Nelly added.

  “That way,” Kris pointed. “The wall can’t be too far over.”

  Problem was, that direction had four grays coming around a corner at a run. Kris took them down in one burst that pounded shredded bodies against the wall. A glance at the gray pistol she’d picked up showed only one setting: deadly.

  “This is for keeps,” Jack said, switching his weapon from sleepy to lethal. That wasn’t what Kris intended, but Sandfire was calling the tune now.

  She half-trotted, half-skated for the corridor the grays had just left, careful with her steps in one-quarter gravity. A stairwell’s door gaped open. Ahead of her loomed a long open space, dotted with the occasional humming machine, pipe run, stairwells, and control stations. The far side of this big space was the wall. She spotted a room built out from it and pointed it out to Jack. Kris tossed a sleepy bomb in the stairwell, closed the door, and made fast, tiny steps for the wall.

  Kris heard footsteps before she saw them. Going to ground behind a large yellow pump, she searched to the left. The legs of the grays came in sight first. This close to the hub, the pronounced curve up of the floor made for a close horizon. Kris waited, then drilled them as their bodies came in view.

  Jack caught up with her, paused for a second, then said, “Cover me,” and launched himself for a pipe run.

  Kris was up as soon as Jack got down, low trotted past him and across the floor to drop behind a compressor. Jack was up and moving while she was still bouncing.

  On Kris’s right, a gray turned the corner of a green-painted bank of pipes, seemed startled to find herself already in the fight, and turned to run as Kris dropped her. A fusillade of fire to Kris’s left made a lot of noise and resulted in spent darts ricocheting off the ceiling but left no target for Kris. NELLY, GET A BUG OVER THERE.

  ON ITS WAY.

  It showed three grays squatting behind a very solid generator, occasionally sticking their machine pistols out enough to fire but never enough to aim. Kris chalked them down to a risk not worth pursuing. Maybe others would catch their attitude if they lived.

  Far to Kris’s right, an elevator door opened, followed by an explosion, smoke, and flashing lights. Kris snapped off a burst and waited. Jack dropped but held his fire. Nothing came out that Kris could see; she wiggled around to the other side of the compressor for cover.

  KRIS, THERE ARE OBSERVER NANOS OUT NOW, Nelly announced.

  KILL THEM.

  I AM TRYING, BUT THEY ARE TOUGH FIGHTERS.

  Kris risked a look. A red-clad body lay just outside the elevator doors. Sandfire’s harem had caught up with them.

  Kris backed off and half-ran, half-sailed for a spinning turbine. A grenade flew out of the car to smash itself against a piece of massive machinery. Smoke swirled to cover the entire elevator landing. Jack liberally hosed down the smoke, but now there was return fire, and it spread out. The reds were loose.

  “Follow me, Jack,” Kris shouted. The two of them dodged and weaved as they fired and ducked their way across the industrial floor. Rounds flew from both directions. A pump took punishment it wasn’t designed for, sending a spray
of oil or other industrial-grade chemicals flying in lazy globules. Some caught fire, adding smoke to the mess before the lack of nearby oxygen suppressed the flame. The oil did send one swift-moving red into a pratfall. Kris got a good shot at her face. Now blood added its red to the wreckage.

  Three grays came running down the decking over a wire run to Kris’s left. They emptied their magazines at Jack to no apparent effect as Kris snapped off a fast volley in their direction. Suddenly, there were no more grays.

  “Those damn fools,” came from behind Kris. So the reds didn’t think much of the grays either. Kris loaded a new clip and emptied it in cover fire as she lunged for the wire run.

  Her orange coveralls ran red from the slaughter as she slid under it, but the fire that chased her did not catch her. She slammed a new magazine in. Shouldering two full ammo satchels, she grabbed a machine pistol from one of the fallen, reloaded it, stood, shouted, “I’m covering,” and let loose with both guns.

  Jack did a fast trot for her. She waved her head, pointing him for the stairwell the three dead grays had used, and he changed directions. Snagging an extra machine pistol as he went by, Jack sailed into the stairs as Kris emptied both magazines.

  Now Jack covered her as she made the dash, crashing into the stairwell as Jack slammed the door closed. A grenade bounced off it with a clank followed by an explosion. Someone was at least using only low-order stuff; the door bowed in but held.

  Kris frowned. There should have been dents where darts stuck in the outside. Lots of dents. “Somebody wants us alive?” she muttered as she followed Jack up the stairs.

  “That was the idea, remember? You naked, Sandfire and Smythe-Peterwald with knives. Looks like his harem of red ninja wanna-bes has got that word.”

  “I don’t like this.”

  “I haven’t liked it for some time. You got another one of those whizbangs?” Kris passed it to him. He cracked the door a bit and rolled it out. Three seconds later, noisy, flashy hell broke loose. He counted to three. “We run now.”

  Staying low, he rolled right from the door. She rolled left, then wiggled for cover behind a bank of pipes. This ring was also industrial gray. Slugs cut the air over her head. She wiggled some more and spotted two attractive legs in red tights behind an elevated walkway. The legs led to a very intense face behind an assault rifle firing on full automatic. Kris was immediately in love with that rifle.