“Some of the area guards have guns, but most don’t. Big Chin had a gun, so we have that one,” Jenkins said.
“Jenkins, take Daiman around to the area guards that have guns, collect them for redistribution. If they argue about giving up their weapons, bring them here to me.” I waved them off.
Jenkins stood up.
Daiman got up more slowly. His eyes were on me.
“Problem, Daiman?” I asked and waited for a reply.
“What if I need to disarm them?” he questioned.
“Do your job, but if you start a fight out there they have the advantage, here we do. Use your best judgment.” I did not have that much confidence in his best judgment, but Jenkins would be there and he wanted off of this planet. They headed to the door and left. “Bender, can you come up with some alternatives in case those guns don’t work out?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never tried to make weapons.”
“Price, go with Bender. See what he has, and what you can come up with,” Roberts ordered. By this time everyone knew her orders were the same as mine.
I got up as they did. “Nelson, walk with me, just Nelson.” He and I moved across the room. “You okay?”
“Like you, I’ve been better,” he replied.
“I want a survey of the compound. I did not get to finish mine. Bikes knows this place, he can show you around. I need you to do this because only you and I have the experienced eye to look at the place. If we end up having to fight here, we have to know what is defensible.”
“You don’t have to fluff me, Harry, not here, just give me the order.”
“I’m not, Nelson. Roberts is a kid, talented, but a kid. Price isn’t a field agent, and Daiman, well, I just don’t know him. That leaves you and me to figure out how to defend this compound if we’re not out of here as fast as I would like.” I turned back to the others. “Bikes, take Nelson on a tour of the compound. Go everywhere, okay,” I instructed him. They left, leaving Roberts and me. I noticed her removing everything from the table.
“Come here,” she said to me. “Take off your shirt and shoes.”
“Why?”
“Just come over here,” she ordered.
I did as I was ordered and followed the next order to stretch out with belly down on the table. Mia started to knead my shoulders and arms.
She massaged my neck, went down to my feet, and worked her way back up. She leaned over close to my ear. “We have a problem,” she informed me.
“I know Mia, but I can’t do anything about it. We need everyone we have, and with Highman now gunning for me too, well, I just don’t have time for niceties like looking for the other missing agents.”
“I mean about the extraction. Your guest list is too long.”
“I can’t change that right now. I’ll deal with it then, it’s the best I can do, but keep your concerns between us.”
“Of course, but it’s still not going to be easy to deal with them.”
I closed my eyes and let Roberts work on my aching body. I could feel her strong hands and fingers dig into knotted muscles and tight tendons. “You do remember I got dragged into this problem. Lark was a civilized world you just couldn’t get off of. I didn’t expect this, a prison inside of a prison.”
“There are a lot of prisons here inside each other.” Roberts reached down to my right hand and began to flex my fingers, popping the joints, and working on the tendons to each finger.
I twisted her direction, turned over, and lay there looking up at her crystal blue eyes. “I’m sorry I’ve been hard on you and your agent friends. I want off of this banished prison world.”
Roberts studied me a minute, then bent forward and kissed me. “I want off of this banished world too. I want us off of this planet.” She kissed me again with a deeply passionate kiss. “Now turn back over, so I can get you ready to fight, just in case you have to.”
I reached up and caught her throat. I held her, but did not apply pressure. “Is that what this kiss is about? Do you think you have to do that, or this, for me to protect you until we escape?”
Roberts started to push my hand off of her throat and I did not let up. She leaned close to my face. “Before this mission, my views of you were very different than they are now. I’ve read your file. I talked to Nelson, who you might want to know lies about you.”
“So are your pretty blues eyes lying to me now?” I asked with my fingers resting on the pulse at her throat. There was no reaction to the question.
“I know who I can trust and who I can’t. I hope you get to that point too.”
I still held her throat and pushed her up, as I moved to a sitting position. “What are you basing your trust of me on?”
Roberts touched my ribs. “On this, you took a hell of a beating, and Highman didn’t storm in here with his more heavily armed guards and grab the rest of us. You didn’t talk even to save yourself. That is how I know I can trust you.”
I released her throat. “So does that mean you trust Nelson? He got beat up also.”
“Not the same. The guards just beat him up, no one questioned him.” Roberts put her hand against my chest. “Now lay down, so I can help you.”
I nodded and stretched back out on the table, belly up this time, as Mia Roberts worked on my aches and pains.
***
We found out that not as many of the area guards had usable guns. More accurately, the compound population thought the available weapons were operational. These guns were more for show than for actual force. All of the weapons were hand-me-down guns from the days before the planet had been a commissioned prison world. All of the weapons were hundreds of years old and abused.
Nine guns were collected in total. One of the issues with the working guns proved to be ammunition. All of it was as old as the guns. Old, unfired rounds were as risky for the person shooting the weapon, as it was for the person getting shot at. Then there was the parts problem. Over the years, parts broke, and there were no new parts available. Guns also broke, and there were fewer and fewer people that knew how to fix them, even to piece them together correctly.
I had Nelson, Daiman, and Roberts strip all the guns apart and make us usable weapons. Nine turned into two usable guns and one hopeful weapon.
Mia’s gun from Big Chin proved to be the best kept one. It had ten rounds available, plus six in the gun. For the other pieces, we also had ammunition issues. The second revolver had no ammunition; it was hopeful that we might trip across someone from one of Bender’s sources. We had the two-clip feed pistols that seemed mostly functional, each of which had one clip in the gun and one spare removed from the non-functional weapons.
Bender and Price proved more useful assembling two make-shift but fully functional flamethrowers; these two worked well together. From what Roberts said, Price was a genius at creating things, everything from mechanical devices to high end electronics. If it worked out that we got stuck on this planet, I would be keeping Roberts and Price with me no matter who else survived.
“It will be light soon,” Bender pointed out.
“Well, let’s head out,” I said. “I want to do this in two groups. Jenkins, Nelson, Bikes, and Price are group one. Jenkins, take one of the good pistols. Nelson, you get that flamethrower. The rest of you are with me in group two. We roll out of here just after the work crews, then we break off. Any questions?”
“Yeah, who gets the last pistol?” Daiman asked.
I reached to the gun, laid my hand on it, and paused. I watched his face, watching me, then I pushed it down the table to in front of him. “Good enough?”
“Sure, I’ll take it.” Daiman pocketed the gun.
“All right, unless there is anything else, group one head out now. We’ll be behind you in ten minutes. Bikes show Nelson to the terrain truck.”
CHAPTER 6
As planned, my group reached the truck with it already warmed up and ready to go. We squeezed everyone into the vehicle and started out. The plow body vehicle, al
ong with the demo crew, was ahead of us, and we let them move off with our team lagging behind.
After a good distance, we changed our heading and sped up. Not that our truck had any speed, it did not. From the information out of Big Chin’s quarters, and Bender’s knowledge of the area, Roberts had plotted our course to the unscheduled drop. At our speed, it would take hours to reach the downed ship.
As we drove, I made sure everyone knew that only Roberts could get us off of the planet; everyone had reason to keep her alive and healthy if we ran into trouble. The roads, what was left of them, were filled with the debris of broken buildings. These were areas the salvage teams had not reached as yet.
It would all get collected and recycled someday, by the poor lot left on this world. They would trudge through their days, day-after-day with no real hope of a better future.
People like Highman could help, but would not. He had the bosses working for him, and they had the people working for them. New prisoners were fresh blood and fresh ideas until this world beat them down.
Lark, as a prison planet, had a government of sorts. The dropped supplies were not secret and hidden away, but centrally located and distributed in an orderly fashion. There were shortages, black market access to supplies, and lots of ways you could get in trouble, but it was a functioning world, unlike this one. This place was a slow death.
I watched out the window as we rode by the rubble of the dead city. We drove for hours before we found our goal. At the crash site, we all stood outside of our vehicle and stared up at the craft.
“Well, I hope flying it out of here was not the escape plan,” Jenkins said looking over at Roberts.
“It wasn’t,” Roberts assured him and the others that held that look of doubt, as we looked up.
“Standing here isn’t going to tell us anything. Nelson, group one, go up that building on the right. Watch your step and watch out for each other. I make that out to be about the fifteenth or sixteenth floor. Group two, the other building. It isn’t a race, just be careful.”
“You know the elevators don’t work, right?” Price pointed out.
“Yeah, I know,” I answered.
“Eighteen flights of stairs,” Price groaned.
“Nelson, if the building is impassable, come down and follow us up our side, and we’ll do the same. Bender, I want that truck still here when we come down, make that happen.”
Nelson and his team headed into their building. As they did, I looked up at our objective. Hundreds of feet in the air, firmly wedged between the two buildings, sat the daughter’s spacecraft. I shook my head and followed my team into our building.
“There’s a stairwell over in this corner.” Daiman motioned his direction. We all joined him.
“There’s a lot of light for a building with no power,” Roberts observed and started up the stairs until Daiman stopped her and took point.
“Got to protect the ride,” Daiman told her, to which she shot me a quick, unpleasant look.
Roberts might not like it, being she is an agent like him and getting looked after, but right now I did not care. It kept her safe, safer than the rest of us anyway.
Roberts followed Daiman up the stairs with Bender behind her, and me with the flamethrower, bringing up the rear. We found our light source three floors up. The wall of the building, after years of neglect, had fallen away after the impact. There were several floors of exposed stairwell. I looked up at the belly of the spacecraft where its stubby wings were jammed into the sides of each building. Nelson’s building had not collapsed or fallen, only ours. We had to walk over twisted metal, brick, and pieces of walls as we moved up the stairwell.
“I thought my demolition days were over,” Roberts joked as she moved from the landing on level six to the stairs of level seven.
I looked from the spacecraft down to our truck, and the horizon caught my eye. There was a rising plume of dust in the distance and it looked like the column of dirt was headed our direction. “Everyone fast and quiet, save your air for the climb. Daiman, pick up the pace.”
“We’re moving back into the undamaged sections and losing the sunlight up here,” he advised.
“Switch with me, I can use the flamethrower tip as a torch,” I ordered and moved up past Bender and Roberts, joined Daiman, and took over leading this journey.
He had been right about the darkness closing in. By the middle of the eighth floor, most of our outside light from the hole in the building was going. By the tenth floor, the flamethrower was the only source of light we had. It proved to be enough to reach the eighteenth floor. We got our sunlight back from building windows, most of which seemed to have been broken out for quite some time. There was also heavy building damage from the ship’s impact.
We gathered near the still closed entrance hatch to the ship.
“Okay, here’s what we know. They crashed here seven days ago, and for two of those days they were still in communication with the outside world. So now let’s see if there are any clues onboard as to what happened to them, or where they might be.” Now that we were here, I explained to everyone what I wanted.
Roberts headed to the hatch, only to get stopped by Daiman again. This time she pushed him back. “They know me. That is if there’s anyone still onboard.”
Daiman nodded and backed off a step.
Roberts reached to the control panel and entered the cycle combination. Nothing happened. She looked to me. “That was an override code. It should have opened the circuit.”
“What about the mechanical release?” I asked.
Roberts tucked the gun into the back of her pants. “I’ll try it.” She took hold of the latching bar, pulled it toward her, then up. “It’s tight, really tight.” Roberts got a better grip, further under the latch bar, and pushed up from her legs.
I noticed just how long and prefect her legs were.
The audible snap that released the locking pins also brought my attention back to the work at hand.
It was hard not to notice what an attractive woman Mia Roberts was.
She pulled the latch bar fully up, pushed the hatch in, and the seals released which let the door move into its retraction track. Roberts shouldered it off to the left and pushed until it stopped. “I think the frame is bent, that’s about as far as it’s going to go.” She retrieved her piece, reached inside the entry way, and touched the light control. “Ms. Garrett, it’s Agent Roberts, I’m coming in.” Roberts moved into the spacecraft.
Daiman stepped into the entrance, but stayed near the door.
Bender moved to the hatch and looked through the opening.
“Danbeu, come in here!” Roberts yelled.
I moved to the entryway and entered. “Watch our backs,” I said as I passed Daiman.
“You think someone is coming?” he asked.
“I don’t want to find out too late if they are.”
“Danbeu!” Roberts yelled again, breaking up our conversation.
I went inside and located her in the aisle of the common area.
Ms. Garrett’s ship was designed like a smaller version of the President’s transport. The forward area held the working deck for the flight crews. This area, nearest the entrance, was the common area for everyone onboard. Behind this section would be the President’s personal agent’s area, then the private quarters.
Roberts pointed at the opposite side of the ship, not that she had to, where the ship had come in contact with the building; both ship and building had been destroyed. What had been wall and ship now was a gaping hole into the other building.
“Didn’t the report say they might be able to fix the ship? They didn’t know for sure?” I asked Roberts. “Well, I’m no pilot, but I think this would be a problem.”
“I am a trained pilot, Harry …”
“You are?”
“Yes, Harry, why do you think I’m here, just to give you massages?”
“Well, speaking of that, I got a kink in my shoulder from carrying this torch.”
I grinned at her which she ignored.
“Yes, Harry, this would be a problem, and either they lied to Nelson, or he lied to us.”
“I don’t know. I got pulled into this pretty quick myself. The time frame doesn’t fit, not for how fast they retrieved me, then the drag time before we actually launched to the planet. It’s more like President Garrett knew this would happen, and we were on standby as a backup plan. Backup for who though.”
“Other agents? I don’t know, Harry. This bird was dead, and the crew had to know that.”
“You go aft, I’ll look forward, see what we can find out. Five minutes and meet back here. No more than that.” I did not wait for an acknowledgement. At this point, I knew Roberts followed my orders.
The ship’s control module, the cockpit, would be the farthest forward. Immediately behind that, would be a small crew area, a rack or two for sleeping on long flights, and a few personal storage lockers. There would be emergency supplies for the crew and the ship’s security contingent. This was the first section I reached.
Moving forward, I opened the lockers and pocketed a couple of protein bars I found; a little something for Roberts and me when no one else was around. I did not find any clues as to the crew’s location until I reached the cockpit itself. It had been exposed to the vacuum of space. The entire windscreen was simply not there, gone. Whatever had happened, the ship was in space at the time, and the pilots were caught unaware. Strapped in their seats, they looked mummified.
The spaceship crashed blindly between the two buildings. Straight-on stupid luck had kept the bird from plowing through one of them, ending everyone’s life at once. The controls were not damaged, and someone surviving the crash had come up here and turned them off. There was nothing here to learn, and my five minutes were up. I headed aft toward the mid deck and Roberts.
At the far end of the common area, Roberts was just returning forward. “Find anything?” I asked, as I joined her.
“I have one locked hatch with music on the other side, no bodies though.”
“Forward are two dead pilots. No clue what happened to the rest of the people. Windscreens are gone, lost in hard vacuum.”
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