“We can’t fight the entire city, Amelia,” said Benkei. “Let’s just go with them for now, and figure this out later.”
“Yes, Amelia,” said Sasha. “You know I’m no good in a shootout.”
Amelia took a deep breath, her gun steady, but her blood running cold. But Benkei was right; she could take out this squad with few problems, but the odds of her being able to shoot her way to the Meridian and pilot it out of here without getting blasted by the rows of ASA cannons were slim.
Raising her other hand in a slow, controlled motion, Amelia signaled that she was ready to surrender.
“Good girl,” said Dalton. “This may be a city full of pencilnecks, but they don’t slack when it comes to weapons R&D.”
Her expression tight, Amelia set the gun on the table. The LI troops rushed in, slapping tight steel cuffs on the wrists of the crew, and patting them down for whatever weapons they were carrying.
Looking over the pistols and small blades that were now piled on the table, Dalton shook his head.
“You guys normally walk around with an armory?”
“Pretty standard loadout for mercenaries,” said Amelia, the steel cuffs vibrating against her skin, emitting a frequency that felt like a mild electric shock.
“As you can see,” said Sasha, “I am a pacifist. None of those weapons belonged to me.”
“Goddamn brownnoser,” said Sam.
“Whatever. Let’s go,” said Dalton, turning and waving his hand, signaling for his troops to bring their new prisoners with them.
The four were arranged in a line and flanked by the troops, with Dalton taking point. They walked at a brisk march, the LI citizens that they passed gawking and pointing as they moved.
“What the hell are you looking at?” spat Amelia to a pair of small-shouldered men who were staring at the group.
“Keep it down back there,” Dalton said over his shoulder.
After a time, they walked through another long white hallway and arrived at another hub dome, this one more austere in appearance than the others, less welcoming, more threatening, with more guards posted, all of whom wore the same blank expressions as the group that was escorting the crew.
And, as they entered, the arched entry to the dome, which Amelia could now see was the only entrance to the dome, sealed shut.
“Welcome to your new home until we get this business with the cargo sorted out,” said Dalton, taking a seat on a chair near a large panel of security monitors. “Unless, of course, there’s something that you know that you’re not telling us.”
Amelia kept quiet. She noted Dalton’s strange demeanor. It was easier, less tense, than the rest of the civilians here at Universitet. It was the “been there, seen it all,” air of casual authority that she associated with other mercenaries, especially those who had served in the Federation. Many of these soldiers-turned-freelancers had sordid, bloody pasts, and used the collapse of the Federation as an opportunity to hide from the misdeeds of their past lives.
And the name, Dalton; it sounded familiar to her. But without being able to see his face, she couldn’t place him.
“I’m going to take the unanimous silence as a ‘no’. Suit yourselves. Split them up, take them to separate cells. We’ll deal with them one on one. One of them’s sure to crack, they always do.”
With that, the troops split up, taking each of the crew off and away, leaving Amelia alone with Dalton.
She looked around the wide expanse of the dome. It was filled with endless rows of security stations, all manned by at least two troops who watched the screens with the sort of rapt attention that could only come from massive doses of stimulants. Spherical hovering robots zipped here and there, scanning the troops intermittently, as though making sure they stayed on task.
“Nice setup, huh?” said Dalton, looking around.
“I knew it,” said Amelia, looking into the impassive faceplate of Dalton’s helmet. “You’re mercs.”
“They really did train the hell out of you Geists,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
He turned to a pair of guards who stood at attention nearby.
“Take her up to, ah, let’s say interrogation room six. Let her get comfy, and I’ll be up in two shakes.”
The guards moved to Amelia’s sides, each grabbing an arm.
“See you in a little bit,” said Dalton, giving Amelia a slight wave as she was roughly pulled away.
“You guys want to ease up? I’m coming with you,” she said, more frustrated than fearful.
They brought her along a narrow steel staircase that led to a long narrow hallway. After several minutes, they arrived at a thick steel door with a “6” bolted onto the wall next to it.
A swipe of a keycard later, the door was opened, revealing a cramped room that was empty, aside from an uncomfortable-looking chair of sharp angles and hard surfaces with restraints built into it. The pair brought Amelia over to it, sat her down, and fastened the restraints on her wrists and ankles.
“Can you guys at least leave me a magazine or something?” she asked as they double-checked the restraints.
Once they confirmed she was securely bound, they left the room, shut the door, and locked it, with a solid steel clank. No sound remained but that same steady hum she’d heard from the moment she stepped into the city, the hum that never seemed to change in volume or pitch.
As soon as the door was shut, Amelia began scanning the room for any possible method of escape. She looked for anything that could be used to loosen her restraints, but found nothing; the room was completely bare. There wasn’t even a ventilation duct that could be accessed; only a long slit in the ceiling brought in fresh air.
She resigned herself to having to wait until Dalton decided to interrogate her.
She didn’t have to wait long.
Another heavy metallic clank sounded, and the door opened. Standing in the frame was Captain Dalton.
“Little Amelia, it’s been a while,” he said.
“Who are you?” she asked.
Without saying another word, he reached up to his helmet and pressed a small button that pulled back the faceplate in a smooth, fluid motion.
Amelia took in her next breath in a sharp gasp, recognizing with horror the face behind the mask.
“Now,” Captain Drummond, the man who’d made her fire on those civilians so many years ago, said, a sly smirk playing on his lips. “Let’s get down to business.”
Chapter 16
“Hello?” asked Benkei, his voice echoing in tight reverberations within the limited confines of the interrogation room. “I’m starting to get rather lonely in here.”
And just like before, nothing.
Benkei had been held in the interrogation room for hours, it seemed like. Though without even a clock on the wall, it was hard to say for sure. This wasn’t his first interrogation, and he knew by now that keeping the subject isolated and disoriented was built into the very design of the process.
But he was starting to get bored.
His wrists and ankles restrained, he shifted his considerable weight in his seat, trying to fight off the creeping numbness that was affecting his limbs. With a rueful eye, he looked down at the jagged tear that angled down the fabric of his waistcoat; this was one of his favorites, and he was reasonably certain that he wouldn’t be able to file with the Lunar Initiative for some sort of compensation.
“A light snack, perhaps? I can feel my blood sugar dwindling by the second.”
He knew that talking wouldn’t do anything to speed things along but, if he were being honest, he just wanted to hear something other than the droning hum that seemed to flow from the steel walls of the interrogation room. He found his mind drifting back to a 20th-century text he’d read recently, The Gulag Archipelago, in which the interrogation methods of one of the pre-millennial Earth empires were outlined. Specifically, the part in which the interrogators found that one of the most effective methods was simply to let your prisoner sit alone
for days, perhaps even weeks. One didn’t even need to bother with physical torture- silence and solitude would be enough to drive most prisoners to the brink of madness.
Benkei cast these thoughts from his mind and returned to the situation at hand. Pulling at his restraints, he found that they were solidly bolted into place, the hard edges of the durasteel digging into his skin as he pressed against it. But what caught his eye was the way the curved silver forms of the restraints were affixed to the chair; the durasteel could probably take a nuke blast at point-blank range, but the bolts…they looked rather flimsy. He knew that contractors liked to cut corners here and there, and durasteel was quite expensive. It was not beyond reason to consider the possibility that one of the hardest manmade substances in the solar system could be bolted to the chair with bolts his augmented strength could easily break.
And on the way in, he’d noted that Mädchen was simply tossed into a supply closet near his current room.
Benkei focused, letting his augmentations focus, strengthening the already-large, cybernetic-enhanced muscles of his right forearm. He felt the fibers of his muscles harden as the machine did its work. Then, with a quick, minute pull, he pressed against the durasteel restraints.
At first, nothing. He scanned the corners of the room once again, trying to pinpoint where the cameras might be. But they were too small to detect.
Another pull, this time harder, the copper-colored augmentation whirring as he strained.
Nothing. Maybe corners hadn’t been cut.
He decided to give it one last try. Taking in a deep breath, he closed his eyes and pulled again, this time hard, as hard as he could, hard enough that he worried the forearm would pull free from the flesh of his upper arm.
Then, one of the bolts split, a small, jagged black crack forming. A smile formed on his mouth as he pressed against the restraint again; now it was loose. With another pull like the one before, he could likely free himself. But the door…that would be another issue.
Then, with a dry, metallic clank, the lock of the door was undone, and the door opened without a sound. And into the frame of the door stepped a tall woman, her face severe, scarred, and difficult to look at, her black hair tied back into a simple, functional ponytail, her height increased by the thin augmentations that had replaced both of her lower legs below the knee. In her hand was a slate, and at her hip was a slim, simple coilgun.
“Kaito Benkei,” she said, stepping into the room and shutting the door behind her, the durasteel of her leg augmentations touching down with gentle thuds. “I’ve heard of you.”
“Ah,” said Kaito, “that a lovely woman such as yourself would be aware of a mere gnat such as I lifts my spirit enough to endure this torment.”
The woman looked up, her black eyes narrow.
“You can store that bullshit right now,” she said, her tone as harsh as her features. “I’m here for information. Provide that and I won’t have to take out any fingernails.”
“Well, it appears my tongue isn’t the lustrous sheen of silver that I wished it were,” said Benkei. “Please, how may I help you?”
The woman narrowed her eyes at Benkei before looking down at her slate.
“Been in this merc game for a while, I see. Before that, you ran smuggling ops for the rebels during the Sector War.”
“I wasn’t aware that I had a biography written,” said Benkei, craning his neck in an attempt to look at the slate.
“And now you’re with this crew,” she said, turning off the slate and clasping it to her hip. “Messing with cargo that doesn’t belong to you.”
“That is where I must take objection to your story, I’m afraid. We had nothing to do with anything that occurred with the cargo, you see.”
“That doesn’t matter,” said the woman. “Not one bit. We’re about one day away from full-on war, and you’re going to let us know what you know about that cargo.”
Benkei looked up in surprise.
“You mean…you have no idea what it is?”
“We have some ideas. But after whatever you did to it, the encryption locked down, and now we’ve got an extremely expensive paperweight. So, you’re going to tell us what you know about it.”
Benkei considered the request. But only for a moment. Suspecting that letting the Lunar Initiative know what was in the cargo could result in moon-wide genocide, it was an easy decision to make.
“I’m afraid I will not be helping you with this.”
“Suit yourself,” said the woman, unsheathing a wicked, jagged blade from her hip. “We’ll just have to do this the fun way.”
“Indeed, we will,” said Benkei.
With that, he pulled on the restraint, yanking it free, and, with a smooth motion, brought the impossibly hard steel against the side of the woman’s face, knocking her unconscious instantly.
Slipping the keycard from her pocket, he unlocked his restraints. Now free, he took the coil gun from his interrogator and peeked out of the room. There was a pair of guards at the far end of the hall, but it was otherwise clear. The supply room where Mädchen was being kept was just a dozen or so feet away. Stepping out into the hallway, he knew it would be just a quick dash before Mädchen was back in his hands.
“PRISONER ESCAPING, INTERROGATION ROOM 9,” called a blaring voice as soon as he stepped out of the room.
Sighing, he ran to the supply closet, unlocked the door, and found Mädchen. And not just Mädchen; she sat amongst piles of weapons presumably confiscated from other prisoners. He took what he could carry, and, with a warm smile, retrieved Mädchen, turning her on and warming her up for the inevitable firefight to come.
“So, the fun way after all,” he said, the clopping of several pairs of boots growing louder in the hallway beyond.
Chapter 17
Sam gritted her teeth, her hands clenched into tight fists, her nails on the brink of cutting through the skin of her hands. The electricity -as far as she could tell, it was electricity- that coursed through her body was specially designed to work on her nerves, putting nothing through her body but a steady stream of white-hot pain. She wanted to scream, even though that would give her interrogator the satisfaction of knowing her torturing was doing its intended work.
Then, as suddenly as it had been turned on, the pain stopped. The interrogator was crouched over the sleek, jet-black display of the interrogation panel, the blue percentage bar of the intensity of the torture now set to zero.
“I’m not sure if you were paying attention to the numbers, my little red-haired friend,” he said, his mouth in a gleeful smirk. “But that was, ah, about forty-five percent. That’s forty-five out of a hundred, in case you have forgotten.”
He stood up, his long body thin and angular under his stark white coat, his black hair patchy and thin, his face an ugly combination of beady eyes and misshapen everything else.
“You know how this goes,” he said, squaring his skinny shoulders and clasping his hands behind his back. “This isn’t going to end until you tell me everything you know about that cargo. We know you tampered with it, and we need to know exactly what you did.”
“Fuck off,” said Sam through heavy breaths as she recovered from the pain, strands of red hair in front of her eyes.
She knew that telling them what they had learned about the cargo would be a death sentence. Telling them that the crew had found out that they were working with nano-based weapons of mass destruction, and possibly giving them information that would allow them to use the thing, wasn’t what Sam had in mind.
“Christ, you’re really going to do this? What do you think’s going to happen when I get up past oh, say, sixty? Here, let’s try fifty; five-number increments always hit my ear the right way.”
He swiped his fingertip across the percentage meter, causing the bar to fill halfway, a stream of nearly unbearable pain rushing through her body once again. He turned it back off after only a few seconds.
“The big and burly types usually crack around this poin
t, just for your information,” he said. “Feel like spilling the beans yet?”
“I don’t know,” said Sam, still breathing heavily, her slim chest rising and falling under her loose-fitting mechanic’s jumpsuit. “I mean, we’ve already come this far.”
“God!” the interrogator exclaimed, his hands running through the little bit that remained of his hair. “I mean, I like doing this, don’t get me wrong. But it gets to a point where you just want to take a lunch break, you know?”
“Then take one,” said Sam. “It’s not like I’m going anywhere.”
The interrogator thought about this for a moment before his face settled into an expression of defiant determination.
“You know what? I’m going to, just because I can. You cool your heels here for a half-hour, lady. Be ready to talk when I get back.”
And with that, he stepped out of the room. Sam watched him leave with disbelief, a tickle of sweat darting down her face. She knew that she’d needed to get him out of the room in order to hack into the panel, but she hadn’t expected that acting like a brat would be enough to get him out.
She made a quick roll of her shoulder, hard enough to jostle out of place a small, pin-shaped object used for accessing electronics wirelessly. The device settled into her hand before she grasped it with her fingers. Sam was surprised to see how poorly-secured the network was; she figured that a city full of scientists would know a thing or two about encrypting networks. But she figured if her interrogator approached everything else with the same enthusiasm that he did with interrogation, then it wasn’t that much of a surprise.
Sam pressed down on the small button on the bottom of the hacking pin, causing the tip to light up with an azure glow. The pin between her index finger and thumb, she waved it like a small conductor’s wand, a display appearing on the screen. She accessed the controls for her bindings and undid them, the metal slipping back into the chair, her skin raw and red where they had been pressing upon it.
Scrolling through the information she now had access to, she raised an eyebrow when she came upon what would undoubtedly be her ticket out of there. Another small wave of her pin, and the door to the interrogation room was unlocked, a shrill beep emitting from the panel. Looking around, she bolted from her seat, pushed the door open, and stuck her head around the jamb. All clear, for now.
Unknown Cargo (The Meridian Crew Book 1) Page 7