“Shit,” I growled as I kicked the drone again. Then I hit it again, and again, and again, but the blockage wasn’t coming through.
“Hurry!” Zea screamed through my transponder.
“I’m trying!” I shouted back as I kicked the drone again.
“We don’t have that much more time!” I heard Kasta shout.
“Both of you get in the car!” I shouted as I kicked the drone again.
“What about you?” Paula cried.
“Just go!” I kicked the drone again, and a big chunk of it tore off. The elevator lurched upward, and I almost lost my pinch grip on the beams. Then the lift got stuck again, but there was only one more small piece of the drone’s wing left.
“Go back and get in the car. They will pass!” One of the twins called from up above.
“I’ve almost got it!” I shouted as I kicked again. My heart was pounding in my head, and I had to readjust my grip on the beams to keep from slipping off.
“They are almost here! Hurry!”
I kicked again as I screamed, and the last bit of drone tore free of the maglev track. The lift sprung up again, and my left hand slipped off the beam when I was jostled.
“No!” Zea and Paula both screamed, but my right hand maintained its grip, and I was able to reach back up and grab on the beam again with my left fingers.
Then I shifted my hands around one at a time, so I was facing back to the lip, kicked back, and threw myself to the next beam. The lift was moving upward now, so it was much harder to grab onto the hold. I actually almost slipped off the polished metal, and my friends let out another shout.
“I’ll stop the lift!” Kasta shouted.
“No! We don’t have time!” I called back. I didn’t actually want to look down at the approaching bird-drones, but I couldn’t help myself. They were probably three, maybe four hundred meters away, and their twisting forms flashed across the dot of light like a series of never ending shadows.
“Hurry!” Zea urged, and I threw myself to the next beam. My hands and arms were screaming, and I was only able to pinch the last few centimeters of the beam.
“Stop the lift! He almost didn’t make that one!” Zea screamed.
“No! I’m fine,” I growled as I threw myself forward again. I floated through space for half a moment, but the last almost miss had added extra strength to my body, and I caught this last beam easily.
“One more! Huhh!” I grunted as I tossed myself forward and wrapped my left arm around the lip of the lift platform. I knew the ladder bar was there, but I let out a mental sigh of relief when my hand touched the bar.
I could hear the wings flapping beneath me.
“Get up!” Kasta shouted, but I was already up on top of the lift and running toward the car’s open hatch. Kasta ran with me, and we both jumped inside while I grabbed the handle. It was closed half a second later, and the android and I collapsed together on the front seat of the car.
“You all almost died,” Zea groaned. “For real. One more second and they would have been on you.”
“Hmmm. They really are attracted by sounds,” Paula said.
“You didn’t know that by the code?” I asked after I inhaled a few grateful breaths.
“It was a lot of code to parse. I was more concerned by how they communicated with each other and their overall directives instead of their sensory protocols.”
“You’re such a stud. You saved us with your muscles. It was really hot,” Kasta whispered, and her arms slid up the armor of my chest to circle my neck.
“Kasta,” Paula sighed.
“Just being honest. I’m rather turned on right now.” The android bit her lower lip, and her eyes searched my face.
“We are working.” I pried her hands free of my neck and then crawled back into the seat next to Paula.
“Awww,” Kasta signed.
“You are going to get us kicked off Persephone,” Paula said.
“No. Adam likes us too much. I can tell.”
“I’m not worried about Adam kicking us off,” Paula said.
“Eve and Zea like us also. They seem to be okay with sharing him so--”
“Hey,” the hacker spat through our transponders. “Can you all focus on the mission?”
“Oh, sorry,” Kasta said, and her face actually did seem apologetic. “I’m just happy we are all alive. Feels like we keep narrowly avoiding death.
“Welcome to Persephone,” Zea said with a little laugh. “How soon until you are up top?”
“In a few seconds,” Kasta answered, and I felt the left start to slow down some.
“How are the Lith Dae ships?” I asked.
“They are still sitting there. They probably don’t know anything is wrong. Once you leave the bunker, and the doors close, they might ask Commander Tunar-Roz for an update. Then things might get prickly.”
The lift stopped moving, and the car began to roll forward. It picked up a bit of speed before it reached the doors to the bunker, and it actually caught some air when it slid off a curb. The rear tires broke free of the asphalt when Kasta, turned on the street, and Paula let out a surprised yelp.
“Zea and Eve, we are out of the bunker,” Kasta said across the transponder. “Heading northwest.”
“I will close the doors,” Eve said.
“The Lith Dae ships still haven’t moved. I’ll hold Persephone’s position,” Zea said.
“Keep us updated,” I ordered.
“I can send the two cars into the northwest bunker while I drive these. Do you want me to?”
“You’ll see what they see?” I asked.
“Yes, and Paula can put it up on her wrist screen. It is a bit hard for me to concentrate with all six of them. So I’m going to close my eyes for a bit, and I won’t talk much.”
“Send them in,” I said as I leaned over to Paula. She made a few motions on her screen, and then she turned her arm so that we could both see the front view out of the cars moving into the bunker.
“It’s dark inside,” I said to state the obvious.
“Just like the southeast bunker. I hope the drones didn’t get in there.”
We watched the view from one of the cars inside the bunker for a few more minutes, and then it stopped in front of a lift control.
“I stopped driving them,” Kasta said as she sat up in her chair. “We’ll have to go down the lift. We will be there in a few minutes. As she spoke, the speed of our car picked up some more.
“How much longer?” I asked.
“We are almost there. Just another minute and a half,” Kasta answered.
“Zea?” I asked.
“No movement,” the hacker replied. “Oh wait! I see them launching a shuttle. Shit, what do you want me to do?”
“Let us know where it is heading,” I asked.
“It’s either going for you or Eve. My money is on you,” Zea answered.
“Do you have scanners on the shuttle? How many marines do you think it can carry?”
“Hmmm. It’s the same size as the other ones they sent.”
“Shit,” I said. I hadn’t paid much attention to the shuttle Captain Renalta and his commander landed when they met with us, but I guessed it could hold about forty marines if they all packed inside.
“That sounds ominous,” Paula whispered.
“We could be in for a fight,” I said. “Against a bunch of marines.”
“They will still have to get through the drones,” Paula said.
“Unless they fly their shuttle right inside of the open bunker doors,” Kasta said. “Then they will only have to worry about the drones that come in through the door. There will still be some, but not as many as if they were in the open street.”
“They are entering the atmosphere,” Zea said.
“How much longer?” I asked Kasta.
“Less than a minute,” she answered.
“I think they are going to get there a few minutes after you,” Zea said.
“So we should hav
e enough time to take the lift down. Then we can find the terminal and upload the drone program.” I pulled the magazine out of my rifle and replaced it with a fresh one as I spoke.
“What about getting back out? Won’t they all be waiting for us?” Paula asked.
“One problem at a time,” I replied.
Chapter 18
Kasta drove the car into the bunker with a screech of tires and then skidded to a halt on top of the lift platform. I was ready with the hatch, and I pushed it up before the car settled back on its wheels. Three seconds later she had hit the correct buttons on the control panel, and she dove back into the car. The lift started to descend right after I slammed shut the hatch, and the three of us let out another grateful sigh.
“I didn’t see any drones out there other than mine,” Kasta said.
“We didn’t see any on the ground floor of the last bunker either,” Paula reminded her.
“I hope everyone in this bunker is okay. I know we found corpses in the southeast one, but there wasn’t a lot of them. I wonder if people evacuated to this one instead?”
“We’ll find out in a few minutes,” I said.
“What happens if they try to call the elevator up and you haven’t hit the bottom yet?” Zea asked.
“Uhhhh. I really don’t know,” Kasta said. “Maybe I should go back out there?”
“Zea, how long do they have until they reach us?” I asked.
“Maybe another minute. Of course, they could be coming for Eve.”
“I will be prepared in case,” the vampire woman replied calmly.
“How likely will it be for them to fly the shuttle into the bunker, land, and then immediately run to the lift control? I think we have another minute, or maybe even two after they get here,” I said.
“You… such... optimist,” Zea said.
“We are losing her,” Paula groaned.
“You… losing?” the hacker asked.
“We aren’t going to know for sure if they are coming after Eve or us,” Kasta said.
“We’ll focus on what we can control. We’ll upload the new drone program, and then take out the Lith Dae marines.”
“How many do you think they will send?” Paula asked, and the fear in her voice was apparent.
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll take care of them,” I growled, and the beast in my stomach grumbled in agreement.
“What if there are ten of them?” Kasta asked with concern, and I almost laughed.
There would be a lot more than ten.
“I’ll deal with it. I need you two to focus on uploading the new code. Follow my orders exactly. Got it?”
They both nodded, and no one said anything else. We just waited for the lift to stop, indicating that it had hit the bottom, or the lift to pause and reverse direction.
“We should be close to the--” Kasta started to say, but the forward display cleared the last part of the elevator shaft, and the screen showed a large room similar in size to the second floor of the southeast bunker where all the bird-drones had lost their power.
Only this room was lit, and instead of the bird-drones, there were a good fifty men and women with weapons pointed at us. Most of the guns looked to be rifles, but Paula quickly accessed one of the dragonfly drones, and I could see a few of the gathered people held rocket launchers. One of them even looked to have a plasma rifle. The weapon would turn our car into a lump of coal in three seconds.
The drone picked up one of the men shouting, but I couldn’t understand the language.
“He is saying not to make any sudden driving movements, or they will kill us,” Kasta translated.
“Tell him we want to fix the drones and that Lith Dae is on their way,” I said as calmly as I could.
“Can’t without opening the hatch,” the android said with a shrug. “I didn’t put speakers on any of these cars.
“I’ll open the--” I started to say.
“Wait! They will shoot unless we do what they say!” Kasta raised a finger up and then listened to the shouting man. She nodded and then slowly lowered her finger.
“What did he say?” Paula asked after the man stopped speaking.
“He wants us to stay in the car and not move. They will send men up here to open our hatch.”
“Okay, as soon as they open the hatch you’ll tell them that--” the lift started to move upward, and my words caught in my throat as if someone had punched me in the esophagus.
“Shit!” Paula and Kasta both screamed.
“Drive!” I ordered.
“They will shoot us!” the android screamed back.
“Lith Dae will shoot us. Just go!” I ordered, and Kasta commanded the car to accelerate forward off the lift.
The twins screamed as we dove nose first toward the ground. It was hard to tell exactly how high we were from the monitor, but the feeling of weightlessness lasted for much longer than I expected.
Then we smashed into the ground like a dropped can of soda.
I wrapped my arms around Paula shielding her from some of the impacts, but I couldn’t reach Kasta, and the android collided with the front dashboard of the car. My head smacked against the back of her seat, but it was made of a padded cloth, and it didn’t do any damage.
“Kasta, are you okay?” I asked as soon as the car fell over sideways and laid still for a few moments. I was a bit surprised no one shot the car full of bullets, or rockets, or plasma, but that was the chance I took when I told her to drive off the lift.
“Yeah,” she said with a cough. “Wish I would have left the steering wheel on, or buckled my seat belt. I’m going to need a back and front rub.” I realized that her cough was actually a laugh. “Will you take care of me if we get out of this--”
The screaming picked up again, and Kasta stopped talking so she could listen to them speak.
“They are rather upset,” she said with a sigh.
“They are coming toward the car,” Paula hissed as she held up her wrist. Sure enough, the group of armed men and women were carefully moving toward our flipped over vehicle with their weapons raised. A woman glanced up, noticed the drone, and she shouted at her friends.
“Shit,” Kasta said, and my view through Paula’s wrist went topsy-turvy as they all started shooting. Then my view cleared at it looked like she had flown the drone up into the wide shaft of the lift.
“They don’t seem to be very accurate with their weapons,” Paula whispered. The car was laying on its right side, and her back was pressed against my armored chest. I still had my arms around her from when we fell, and I let go so that we could position ourselves less intimately.
“Or I’m just great at flying drones?” Kasta asked.
“How many drones do you have here?” I asked.
“Three. They are all in the shaft now. I can still kind of hear them shouting even though we can’t see them. They are approaching the car. Get ready.” Kasta held her hand out to her ear as if she was trying to listen to something in the distance. I was sure the movement was just theatrics since she was able to fly the drones with only the hardware inside of her skull.
I heard shouting outside of the car, and then we were lifted off the ground and pushed back on our wheels. Paula let out a yelp when we all fell back into our seats, but I wasn’t that surprised by the movement. I knew what would follow, and I didn’t flinch when there was a sharp pounding sound on the hatch.
“They want us to open it. Hands in the air,” Paula translated.
“I’ll get it. You all put your hands up,” I ordered as I reached for the hatch handle. Then I yanked it open and pushed the hatch up while I stood.
I hated having guns shoved in my face, but there was something even more annoying about receiving threats from people I was trying to help. As soon as I lifted the car hatch, there were half a dozen gun barrels shoved in my face, and even more people screaming at me. The beast in my stomach screamed to be released so he could kill all of them, and I closed my eyes so I could focus on pushing hi
m down into my stomach.
I heard Kasta yell at them, and the armed citizens yelled back, and I cracked open my eyes to see them drag the twins out of the car. The sight made the beast roar up to my chest, and I took four deep breaths to keep from shifting.
I had no idea what anyone was saying, but I did hear “Lith Dae” come out of Kasta’s mouth too many times to count. Then I felt hands grab my shoulders. I relaxed my body and let them pull me out of the car. I kept my eyes closed and tried to think about the oceans of Earth. The shouting between Kasta and our captors seemed to intensify though, and I heard Paula yelp with pain.
I opened my eyes and saw that they had forced her to her knees. One of the men held a gun to the back of her head, and a woman was screaming in Paula’s face. The sight made me unbelievably angry, and I felt my spine start to tingle in my lower back. Shit. I couldn’t shift now. These people were just scared. If I turned into my tiger-man form, they would really freak the fuck out, and I’d probably end up killing all of them.
“Please,” I whispered. I didn’t know who I was pleading with. The beast inside of me didn’t give a fuck about killing innocents, it saw them threaten two women that were part of his pride and was going berserk. Maybe I was pleading with myself. I just needed to hold on for a few more minutes, I couldn’t change now.
The shouting suddenly stopped, and I heard Kasta speak for about half a minute. It actually sounded as if they were listening to her instead of yelling, but my body was on the cusp of transformation, and anything could knock me over the edge.
It was getting harder to hold back my shifts, and I didn’t like the realization. I’d noticed a bit of it in Queen’s Hat. It had been too easy to shift, and it had been too hard to change back. I’d also stayed in my weretiger form for longer than I ever had, and the beast almost changed me into a full tiger.
“They are starting to believe me.” Kasta’s words pulled my mind away from thoughts about my shifting, and I slowly opened my eyes. The men and women were still pointing their weapons at us, but they looked less tense than when they first pulled us from the car half a minute ago.
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