Nelson stared at me, but said nothing as we headed toward where I had been questioned. We crept up the halls until we reached the room I had been held in. I eased the door open and peeked inside.
“Two guards and Ulysses. Roberts and Bender are on the hooks,” I whispered to the group. “Okay, here’s the plan …” I started, then Roberts screamed.
Bikes pushed past all of us and charged into the room. The closest guard turned and got clubbed with the steel bar. The second guard leveled his rifle and shot Bikes. The steel bar dropped, but he did not.
Behind Bikes, Jenkins shot the guard as Bikes reached Ulysses. Bikes grabbed Ulysses’ right hand with the Taser, and jerked it away from Roberts’ body. With his right hand he clamped down on Ulysses’ throat. Blood pumped out of Bikes gunshot wound, but he stared at Ulysses. Ulysses tried to pull a pistol from his waist band, but fumbled it and dropped it to the ground. He was using his left hand to try to pull Bikes off of his throat. Although they were both big, muscular men, Ulysses could not breathe and started to panic.
I walked over to the struggle, took the Taser out of Ulysses’ right hand, and took hold of his wrist. This freed up Bikes left hand.
Daiman grabbed Ulysses left hand and held it, so he was helpless.
“Save Little Boss,” I told Bikes.
Bikes closed both hands around Ulysses’ throat. A few seconds later the flesh failed; the tendons popped and the bones snapped. He twisted Ulysses’ lifeless head and let go of the body. When Ulysses dropped to the floor, Bikes stomped on his throat.
“Get me down,” Roberts said to all of us staring at the dead boss.
Bikes lifted her tied hands off of the hook and untied the rope. He started to move to Bender to get him down.
“No,” Roberts ordered. She stepped over in front of Bender. “You wanted me enough to cause all of this. Enough to let us be tortured.” She slugged him with a stiff left fist, then followed that with a hard right cross. Blood exploded from his face. She broke his nose, split his lip, and I watched several teeth fly through the air. “You stay, you sick son of a bitch.” Roberts turned to me. “We need to go now.”
I was not going to argue with her at this point. I nodded and handed her the Taser I had taken from Ulysses. We turned to the group to leave.
Nelson had one of the fallen assault rifles and the pistol Ulysses had dropped.
Daiman held a rifle pointed at me too.
Jane stood just behind them.
Nelson leveled his rifle at me. “You don’t have any information we need any more, Harry. We have Jane, we have Roberts, so I think we can escape without you.”
“I won’t lead you to the extraction point. You need me, and I say Harry is coming with us.” Roberts started to step over in front of me.
I stopped her, brushed her off to one side. “Bikes, protect Little Boss.”
That fast, even with his injury, Bikes pulled her back and put himself between her and Nelson.
“You and I still need to settle this, Nelson, but not here, not now. Lance will show up with more guards, and we’ll either end up dead, or back in a cell, a cell with guards this time. You need to decide now. You too, Daiman,” I told the two men.
“No Harry, no extraction point,” Roberts said over Bikes shoulder.
“We still need her,” Daiman said and lowered his rifle.
“Fine, but we are going to end this Harry, once and for all.” Nelson lifted the barrel of the gun, so it pointed up in the air.
“Daiman, rear guard. Nelson, point.” I expected an argument, but did not get one. As we started out, Bender found his tongue again.
“You can’t leave me. They’ll kill me for this, wait!” he started to scream.
I punched him and knocked him unconscious. We would leave him for the wolves of this world; the ones he had thrown us to. His death at their hands would likely, be long in coming, and painful.
CHAPTER 8
As we moved, Jenkins and I did a fast first aid job on Bikes. It slowed the bleeding down, but that was all. Without the real medical team on the other end of the extraction, Bikes would bleed out. After seeing to his wound, I moved forward behind Nelson.
If anything could be said about Nelson’s personality, it was that he was an effective killer. The few guards we came across helped take the edge off of his anger at me, and soon our entire group had rifles. Price, Jane, and Roberts were behind me. Roberts and Jenkins stayed close to Bikes, and Daiman had the rear guard.
Nelson leaned back my direction. “He’s slowing us down and leaving a trail, he needs to stay behind, or go a different direction, away from us.”
“No one is staying behind,” I told Nelson.
“Bender did. We left Bender, and they’re going to hurt him a lot.”
“Bender betrayed us, Bikes freed us,” pointing out the difference to him. “Just go,” I ordered, indicating our direction heading.
Nelson moved on, and I slowed up a bit. I looked back at the others. Jenkins was talking softly to Bikes, and they were looking down at the blood trail. It made me wonder what that conversation was about.
“Harry, up here,” Nelson called out.
I moved forward to Nelson again. He was at the doorway that opened out into a parking garage. Our group moved into the garage and next to the guard rails that bordered the far side.
“This is the entrance they marched us in through,” Nelson announced. “I’ll bet that somewhere in the lower levels of this building there are vehicles we can acquire to reach the extraction point.”
“Yeah, I agree.” I looked around the group to find Roberts. She was over talking to Bikes, checking his wound, and trying to pack it tighter. “Roberts, how far from here do you make the extraction point?”
She spoke to Bikes again, then walked over to me. “That direction.” She pointed and looked at Nelson. “Let’s get to the ground floor, and I’ll give more instructions there.” She did not wait for a reply, but started down the parking structure ramp. Everyone followed. We were on the fifth level of the garage, and walked down as fast as Bikes could move.
Our group’s alignment broke up some as we walked the down ramps. I drifted back to Bikes. “You did real good back there at saving Little Boss, thanks.”
“Slow,” Bikes said.
“Yeah, we’re going to keep it slow, we’re not in a rush.”
Bikes shook his head. “You should go fast with Little Boss, go fast, not wait for me.”
“We’re not leaving you behind, Bikes,” Roberts yelled over her shoulder. “It’s not open for discussion.”
“See, you’re doing fine,” I said. I quickened my pace and took Roberts off to one side of the group.
“I don’t want to hear it, Harry. I won’t leave him here.”
“I am not always a nice guy, but if you have my back I have yours, no matter what. No, we are not leaving him. I just want to know two things. Is it far, and are there medical supplies there?”
Roberts shook her head. “Medical maybe, I don’t know for sure, but it is close, Harry. We still have one problem that I can’t get around. When …”
I put a finger to her lips. “Not here. Whatever it is I’ll deal with it. For now, you just lead the way,” I told her and took my finger away. I noticed, as I did, I wanted to touch her soft lips again. That was a distraction I did not need right now. I could see it in her face, she was wondering what I was thinking.
“Anything the rest of us should be hearing, Harry?” Nelson yelled over at us. Good old Nelson, always there to clear away the distractions.
“When there is I’ll let you know,” I told him. “Bikes, Little Boss thinks I’m being lazy by not helping you. She’s promising to be mean to me later if I don’t help, so let’s see what we can come up with.” I moved back over to Bikes, slipped my left shoulder under his arm, and lifted just enough to ease the pull on his gunshot wound. Our speed increased a little, but I had injures of my own. That we were traveling downhill helped.
At the bottom, we huddled in a little group next to the entrance wall.
“Okay, we’re all here, we need a bearing? We need some kind of a direction, so we can get a vehicle and go,” Daiman urged.
“We do have to be getting close to the time for extraction,” Nelson said.
“I can wait an extra day or two,” Jane commented and looked from Nelson over the small wall. “Nice planet that Tirus is and all.”
“Well, it isn’t going to be a day or two,” Daiman said sharply, enough to catch my attention.
“Yeah, I have nothing against an extra day or two, as long as Roberts can tell me it will not stop the extraction. We can find a hidey-hole and stay out of sight if that’s best,” I said, looking for a reaction from my group.
“It’s not going to happen. We get out as soon as possible,” Nelson growled at me.
“It will not make a big difference. As long as we get there, I can get us off planet,” Roberts told the group.
I noticed Jane watching me. “No problem, but we can’t stay right here. Where do we need to go?”
Roberts pointed across the wide street. “We need to get to that building.”
“That one? The one that has a small army of scavs camped out in front of it,” Jenkins said sharply.
“Nelson, Jenkins, scout out the area as best you can. Daiman watch our backs. Everyone else, eyes open.” Everyone moved off to see to my orders.
Jane moved over next to me. “You don’t know, do you?” she said softly.
“I wouldn’t let Roberts tell anyone. I haven’t even let her tell me the exit plan.”
“Not about that, about me, and why you’re all here.”
“You’re Garrett’s daughter, he wants you back. That’s why we’re here.”
Jane smiled. “They didn’t tell you or Roberts, or you wouldn’t likely be here.”
“Tell us what? That the President loves his daughter and that he wants her home safe?”
“Agent Danbeu, they didn’t tell you that the President is dying. He wants me back because I’m a positive organ match. That’s why there’s a rush to get me off this world. It’s part of the reason I came to Tirus.” She looked out at the ruined city, the decay. “I didn’t know it was a dead world.” Jane Garrett looked back to me. “My plan was to escape the network and disappear. Daddy wants to cut out my heart and other parts, so he can live.”
I stared at her. “You have to be kidding. Nelson knows?”
She nodded. “He’s been one of daddy’s special private business agents for about eight years. Daiman knows too, from his reaction earlier.” Jane shrugged her shoulders.
“You said Roberts doesn’t know?” I questioned.
“She did not know until I told her in the ship.”
“Price must not know either.”
“Yes, he would know. He is one of daddy’s private agents too. He’s a science type, not a field agent, so I’m not sure why they sent him into this kind of place.”
“None of us knew it was this kind of place.” I shook my head. “All right, I’ll get you off this planet, but to safety, not to be cut apart.”
“Mia said I could trust you. You won her over, and I would have bet against that.”
“Care to explain that?” I asked.
“Harry, come here,” Nelson called out to me.
Jane smiled again. “Ask Mia.”
Jenkins hurried back to our position at the short wall and knelt down next to Bikes. “I’ll bring him, you need to go forward.”
I joined Nelson, and a second later Daiman joined us.
Nelson pointed across the street to the scavs. “That’s where we need to go, according to Roberts. We have to go into that building, but that is the only viable entrance.”
Roberts came up and knelt down with the rest of us. “We can try to go to a different area of the building, move around, and come in a different door, but that’s the location we need.”
“I count four guards and three times that many scavs,” Daiman said, peeking around the corner.
“Yeah, that’s what I counted too,” Nelson agreed. “The guards pulled up ten seconds ago, Harry. The scavs, most of them jumped to their feet, but neither side looks hostile, not yet anyway.”
“All right, we scout around and find another way in,” I ordered.
Daiman stepped around the corner of our little wall and raised his rifle. He opened fire and started heading for the small band of people.
“Damn,” Nelson cursed and ran after Daiman.
“Stay here,” I told Roberts, and charged after the two of them. We had the advantage of surprise and assault rifles. Lance’s four guards died first. The scavs did what scavengers do, ran. For most of them it did not help. They just died running.
When it was done, and the dead littered the ground. I grabbed Daiman by the shirt front. “What the hell did you think you were doing?!” I screamed at the man.
“My job, I was opening the front door!” Daiman yelled back.
“We don’t know if these guards have a check-in time, when it is, or what Lance’s guards relationship to the scavs is. The guards might have rousted them out of here and moved on.”
“Which would have left us in the clear to walk in the front door,” Nelson added.
I let go of Daiman. “Do not kill one more person unless they are trying to kill you, clear?”
“I’ll do my job, Danbeu.”
“Which right now is to follow my orders,” I pointed out. “Go get the others and don’t shoot them.”
Nelson and I looked over the bodies as we waited for Roberts to arrive. “By now, Lance’s guards have to be in full search mode for us in this building. They’ll be here before long,” Nelson pointed out.
“Where to from here?” I asked, as Roberts reached me.
Roberts started for the building front. The wide double doors led into our target location. I stopped her and motioned Nelson forward. He took the left, and I covered the right as we opened the doors and entered. The lobby of the building was well lit from the outside light. We entered and separated, going around the area, and back to the doors.
“Empty,” I said to Nelson.
He nodded.
“Roberts, bring everyone in here!” I yelled out the door.
Once everyone was inside, I turned to Roberts. “Okay, so you point the way and follow me. Which way are we headed?”
Roberts scanned the empty lobby of the building. “It actually works out for us that Lance and Ulysses took over the old Agency building. We didn’t have to find it ourselves.” Roberts’ eyes stopped on an old storage closet door that stood open. The cleaning supplies and whatever else had been kept there was long gone. Roberts entered the closet and looked back at the group. She pointed her rifle at the wall to the right of the closet and fired into the cracked and broken plaster. After a short burst, she stopped and kicked at the wall. It was dark inside, and Roberts started to step through the cavity.
I grabbed her arm. “Just point, we’ll go there, and you follow.” I pulled her back a step, then Nelson pulled her back more. He and I stepped into the dark hole.
“There should be a flashlight to the left.” Roberts entered after Nelson secured the flashlight and flipped it on.
Inside, on one wall, was another door. It was heavy steel with a control panel to its left and one button on the right side. There was nothing else in the hidden room. From the dust on the floor, we were the first people in here for a very long time. I looked to the panel, and Roberts approached it.
Roberts patted the door when she reached it. “Here, here’s what we need.”
Nelson smacked the steel door with his fist. “It’s sealed and it doesn’t look like it plans on opening for us.”
Her crystal blue eyes locked on Nelson. As quick as lightening, she pulled her rifle up, spun, and smashed the control behind her off the wall. “Dummy!”
“Great, that helps,” Daiman commented.
Roberts looked to me,
reached into the ruined panel, took hold of the components, and pulled them out. She kept dropping parts on the floor until she reached the back of the component box. Roberts beat at it with her rifle butt until it cracked. When the crack grew larger, and she could reach inside, she wiggled and twisted something unseen until there was a sharp pop. Roberts pulled hard, and the component box came out of the wall.
I leaned forward and looked inside the hole she had made. There was a second control pad just at arm’s-length away. I looked at the hidden panel, then to Roberts. “Nice, but it still doesn’t have power.”
Roberts grinned. “It’s an Agency building which means it has a nuclear core. Half-life is about five thousand years.”
“So, if any of the prisoners here had gotten that panel off, they would have had power?” Daiman said, noticeably shocked.
“What is the access code?” she asked him.
“How the hell do I know?”
“And they don’t have it either. Without it, you can’t access the power supply. After the second failed attempt, or if they would have gotten around to running a plow bar through here, the core would have exploded. Since the building is still here that means no one has touched it.” Roberts turned back to the panel, covered the key pad, and quickly entered her code. After a few seconds, the panel lit up. She thumbed a control in the once hidden access panel, and everyone could hear hydraulic pumps squeal to life. “Try that button now.”
Jenkins touched the button, and the door slid aside quietly to reveal a dark stairway landing.
“Everybody in,” I ordered, then looked to Roberts. “Can you power up the lights?”
Our group moved onto the landing, and Roberts took the flashlight from Nelson. She located an inside control panel, typed in an access code, and powered up the landing. The lights came on, and we got our first look at a deep downward concrete stairway.
“Hey, not that I’m complaining, but it wouldn’t take Lance’s people long to find this closet and be right behind us. So, if we’re going down there we need to get moving,” Daiman said as he stuck his head back out of the doorway.
Roberts pulled him back, thumbed the door control, and the door slid closed behind us. “What closing it from this side does, is disconnects that outside panel, disengages the failsafe, and locks us off from that exit. Now we walk.”
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