Because the door slid in and out of a slit in the wall, the aliens could not use it for makeshift cover, so instead they stayed behind the walls and fired through the doorway, four of them at a time—two standing and two crouching at their feet. Fault ducked a particularly nasty volley of shots, then bobbed up and fired off a few rounds of his own, but at the moment, he couldn’t tell if he’d hit anything. Smoke from lasers burning wood, plaster, and alien bodies filled the room and the corridor, and he only had a few seconds to shoot each time the Snappers offered an opening. The whole room lit up with laser fire.
They could only hold out for so long, he realized; sooner or later, Snapper reinforcements would come in through the exit, and the humans’ only way out would be gone. If they weren’t killed straight out, they’d be captured again, and probably separated. And escape next time might not prove so easy, especially since this time they wouldn’t have a man on the outside.
He and An had to duck again, and pray the sturdy, ridiculously-angled tables held out. Fault could imagine the lasers cutting a hole through the wood to the flesh beyond . . . and what his imagination did then was not pretty.
There was an awful sizzling sound, and An cried out abruptly, dropping his weapon and clutching at his leg. Fault saw smoke rising from the wound, smelled the unmistakable stench of seared skin and muscle.
“An!” Fault dragged An’s pack off his shoulders and went through it until he located the last remaining MediKit, which he tore open so that its contents tumbled all over the floor. “Dammit!” He had to chase after the bandages, which had a tendency to roll, but he got them and had An swivel around so he could see the damage. An’s trouser leg hung in crispy tatters around the outer side of his right calf, where the laser had struck. The bulk of the wound had been cauterized, but it still bled, and plenty. A golf ball-sized divot had been taken out of An’s tissue, but at least the bone appeared untouched.
Fault wrapped the bandages around the injury, tightly enough to stem the flow of
blood, tearing the end with his teeth since he couldn’t find the scissors. “What’re you whinin’ about?” he asked An. “That ain’t nothin’.” He clapped the other man’s shoulder, a bit too hard.
“Ow. You’re an ass.”
They had to get out of here, Fault decided. He unclipped a grenade from his belt, popped the pin with his teeth, and waited as long as he dared before sending it flying. “Fire in the hole!” He hunched down, and a deafening boom! resounded, leaving much more noxious smoke and debris in its wake than all the lasers had. The corridor was permeated with it, and it flowed into the meeting room without discretion, setting them all to coughing. Fault wrapped an arm around An and hefted him to his feet. “Come on.”
“You go,” Garner said. “Jaden and I’ll provide cover and catch up with you.”
Fault nodded and helped An limp to the exit, eyes watering so badly he could scarcely see where he was going. But when he opened the door, the way beyond lay clear of both smoke and aliens; he and An stepped through, Garner and Jaden right behind them . . . hopefully.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
On the alien planet
Laser fire zipped past Garner’s ear and struck the wall next to him. He smelled the odor of melting metal and followed the others out the exit and into the glare of sunlight. Ahead of him, Jaden trailed Fault and An. An’s leg dragged behind him as he tried to limp to cover. It was badly burned, a portion of his trouser leg gone to ash, and the flesh beneath turned red. Garner couldn’t tell from here if the laser had gone all the way through An’s leg or just grazed it. He hoped the latter. He didn’t know if even Doctor Jain could fix a through-and-through.
But An wasn’t the only one on Garner’s mind. He stopped, trying to convince himself to keep going, to stay with the group and get out of there, to get help when they could. But he couldn’t convince himself to abandon her, not when he was so close.
He turned in the direction of the prison cell block.
Jaden noticed what he was up to and dropped back herself, stopping him. “What are you doing? They’re right on our tails.”
“I have to know,” he said, and he could hear the desperation in his own voice. “I have to go to the prison cell block and see if she’s there. I have to find her.”
Jaden paused for only a second. Then she nodded. “I’m going with you.” Her tone said she would brook no argument, so he didn’t protest as she went with him to the block, both of them hoping none of the Snapper guards from the hangar would search there.
They paused at the cell block door, flanking it with their pistols at the ready. When Garner opened the door, Jaden glanced in, then went through, Garner on her heels. There was no one in sight, but the halls were spiral-shaped like those in the hangar, disorienting the humans. Other halls branched off the main hall, and Garner and Jaden darted looks into those as they passed, choosing for now to follow the main hall.
Suddenly, from a branched hall up ahead, there came an alien guard. It raised its weapon, but Jaden shot first; the smell of seared flesh rose in the hall, and the guard collapsed. It tried again to raise its rifle, but Jaden ended its life with a shot to the forehead.
They crept along the hall, their backs flattened against the walls, halting at each branched hall to check for danger. They continued on in this manner for a minute or two before finding the first door. It had a window in the top, and through this they saw a dark cell lit only by a hole set in the ceiling. In one corner sat a makeshift latrine.
They didn’t see any prisoners, but Garner tried the latch just in case. The cell opened easily; no one was inside.
They found eight such cells; one had a tin plate with a few semi-fresh crumbs on it. “This one’s been lived in recently,” Jaden said. But no one was here now.
They came to the end of the hall. This door had no window, so they stood to either side of it; when Jaden opened the door, Garner glanced in.
What he saw made him go through like lightning. He holstered his gun—there was no guard in the room—and went to her, an agony of emotion sticking in his throat.
A long metal table stood to one side. On this table had been set a wide collection of instruments, some of which he could guess the purpose of, and others he could imagine only in his nightmares. Also on the table was a glass half-filled with water; someone had been here, and recently, and would likely be back soon. A chair sat at an angle next to the table, empty.
The room, dark but for a single lamp, was completely composed of metal. In the center of the floor sat a grate, and above this grate, her toes barely touching the metal, was Ilana. She hung by manacles attached to her wrists, and her body had gone limp; she was either unconscious or dead. Her head lolled to one side, her beautiful blonde locks now greasy and matted with blood. Shadows lived around her eyes, under her cheekbones, under her lower lip; she had lost weight. Her ribs stood out. Her nails, which she had always kept clean and neat, were dirty and uneven, a couple of them broken and bloody. It looked like she had been trying to claw her way out of somewhere.
They had stripped her naked. Garner could see every crevasse of her body, every jut of bone, and the hollows of her clavicles. Dirt streaked her fair skin, and bruises both old and new painted it new colors: black, blue, green, yellow, brown, purple; and one very nasty bruise that covered most of her left ribcage and turned it the color of blood. She had scrapes and scratches all over her, little hurts and breakings of skin.
And she was covered in blood. A dozen wounds, or a hundred, he couldn’t tell, but they had hurt her, oh, yes, they had hurt her, and they had taken pleasure in doing it. Blood dripped down her slender body and into the grate, where it drained away. Her wrists, rubbed raw by the manacles, were red and sore-looking; and here, too, were cuts, some small and hesitant, and others deeper and more determined. Cuts down the lengths of her wrists.
Suicide attempts.
Garner ran to her, took her in his arms, touched her wounded face. All that he had gone thr
ough—the pain of losing Adam, the beatings he’d taken, all of it—he would go through all over again if only to spare her one minute of this hell.
“Ilana,” he said; it came out a bare whisper. He swallowed and tried again. “Ilana.”
Jaden came in and pressed her fingers to Ilana’s carotid artery. Garner could see by her expression that the news wasn’t what he wanted to hear.
“Garner,” she said after a minute, “I can’t feel anything. She’s—Wait.” Her eyes went round. “I feel something. I feel a pulse. It’s weak and thready, but it’s there.”
“Ilana? Ilana, honey, it’s Garner.”
Her dark lashes fluttered; Garner saw a glimpse of sage green as her lids cracked open, and then she fell unconscious again. He saw now that she breathed, but lightly; and for how long?
“We’ve got to get her down from here.” He heard a break in his voice, a voice that sounded distant to his own ears. Jaden searched the table.
“No key,” she said. She got a wrench and went to work on the chains attached to the manacles. It took time, and Garner kept glancing over his shoulder, expecting Ilana’s torturer or a guard to appear at any second. When finally Jaden managed to break the chains, Ilana fell limply into Garner’s arms, her wrists still bound by the manacles.
She felt so light. God, what had they done to her?
Her lips, bruised and split, had started to peel; she was dehydrated. Garner gently moved her away from the grate, wrapped his jacket around her shoulders, and put her head in his lap. The jacket didn’t cover her entirely, but he felt better having given her some small amount of dignity.
“The water,” he said. “She needs water.”
Jaden hopped to the table and fetched the glass. Then she stood guard while Garner tried again to revive Ilana.
“We’ll be getting company soon,” Jaden said. “That water is cold, and her wounds are fresh. Whoever was here before won’t be long coming back.”
“I know.” He bent over Ilana, tenderly stroked her hair. “Ilana, can you hear me? It’s Garner.” He dipped his fingers in the water and touched her lips. “Can you drink, baby?” He dunked his fingers in the water again and let them drip into her mouth. She was as still as death.
He looked to Jaden. “We have to get her to safety. We can’t leave her here.”
“Garner, did you notice the only ships in that hangar are Copperheads? There are no shuttles; and fighters don’t have room for passengers.”
“I’m not leaving her.” His hand tightened around Ilana’s shoulder as if Jaden would try to physically take her away from him.
“I know.” Sadness shadowed her blue gaze. “Barricade the door with the table and wait. We’ll come back for you both.”
“Thank you.”
She gave a curt nod, glanced once at Ilana, and left them, closing the door behind her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
On the alien planet
Fault and An had circled around to the back of the hangar itself, where the fighters were supposed to be kept, and settled down to take a rest stop behind some canisters of fuel. An’s breathing was slightly labored, and although his bleeding had lessened, his leg continued to drip, and his face held an ashen look Fault didn’t like. Probably it was the pain; Fault had lost the MediKit’s mini bottle of pain killers when he’d dropped the kit, so An was forced to do without. Fault wished he hadn’t been so clumsy, but it was too late to think about that now.
“You sure you can fly?” he asked An.
“I’d better be. We don’t have any other way off this rock.”
From where they sat, Fault could see a glimpse of the hangar through an outside window, but he couldn’t see enough to be sure there weren’t any aliens around, so he crept to the door and peeked through its window. Rows of Copperheads stood in formation all up and down the hangar, but he couldn’t tell for sure if any of them were the mock-ups; Nuria and her team had done too good a job making them look like the real thing.
Other than the fighters and some more barrels of fuel, though, the hangar appeared to be empty, so he returned to An, who was leaning against a wall and panting lightly, his eyes closed. “Ready?”
An opened his eyes to slits. “No.”
He gathered An up again, took as much of the other man’s weight as he could reasonably take without outright carrying him. “Wuss.”
“Ass.”
They made their way to the hangar door, An dragging his wounded leg, hardly putting any weight on it at all, and wincing every time he did. Neither of them spoke about what had happened to Garner and Jaden—that much, they could guess: Garner hadn’t stayed behind to provide cover so much as he’d stayed to search for Ilana, who might have been brought to the compound after she’d been taken captive, and Jaden had stayed with him because she was loyal to the other members of her team . . . especially Garner, Fault thought.
Of course, if the two of them did find Ilana, Garner would likely get back together with her, leaving Jaden free for Fault, if she’d have him. So there was that.
Fault guided An towards the Copperheads, realizing they were going to have to check them all until they found the replicas. One end was as good as the other, so he started them off on the far left, thinking to work their way to the right and back, row by row.
The sound of the door sliding open behind them brought him up short. A Snapper was entering through the door they’d just come in, its attention focused on some document or other it was reading on its tablet—but it was bound to notice them if it looked up. Fault and An slipped underneath a fighter, using the landing gear as a block between the alien and themselves, albeit a fairly poor one. The Turtle headed their way, and they were forced to move from one Copperhead to the next to avoid detection, until at last they came near some more fuel canisters grouped alongside the wall and hid behind those.
Fault kept an eye trained on the alien as it walked through the hangar. It put its tablet in its pocket. Glanced down.
And saw An’s blood where it had leaked onto the floor.
The Snapper’s head swivelled as it sought out the owner of the blood, and then it began following the drops of blood, gun in its hand. Fault’s weapon was drawn, as well, although he didn’t want to shoot if he could help it; he feared the noise might call attention they could scarcely afford right now. He left An where he was and duck-walked between the canisters, seeking a proper position for an ambush; he figured the alien would naturally follow the blood trail to where An lay, never noticing Fault until it was too late.
Or at least, that was the plan. He was forced to put his head down to avoid being seen as the alien came ever closer, and he bunched his muscles and listened hard, readying himself. The heavy footfalls slapped nearer and nearer.
The Turtle produced an exclamation Fault had never heard them use before, and he figured it must have found An. Fault bounded up and cold-cocked the alien with all his strength, the butt of his gun making a decidedly solid sound as it connected with the base of the creature’s skull. Blood poured from the wound, and the alien fell, one arm slinging itself across An’s lap.
Fault didn’t know if he’d killed the thing or not, but he knew they had to get out of here as soon as possible, before any more Snappers showed up. He only hoped Garner and Jaden knew what they were doing. He rolled the alien’s body away from An and checked to make sure the other man had his weapon trained on the prone Snapper.
“I know, I know,” An said. “Hit it again if it wakes up. I realize they’re tough, Fault, but I don’t think this one’s getting up any time soon.”
“I’m gonna find our fake Copperheads. You stay here. It’ll be faster that way.”
“Way to bolster a guy’s self-esteem.” But he didn’t look any too unhappy about sitting still for a while.
“You sure you can do this?”
“I’m sure. Quit asking.”
Fault nodded, then began the hunt for the human-made Copperheads. It only took a few minutes, but it felt l
ike a lot longer, and he breathed a sigh of relief when he finally came across all four of the mock-ups. He retrieved An and awkwardly helped him climb up into one of the replicas, then went to the one holding the orb and made to climb up himself.
Just as he wrapped his fingers around the metal ladder leading up to the cockpit, the door slid open again, and he whipped out his pistol—no way to make a quiet kill from this distance, but he supposed it didn’t much matter at this point. He lifted his hand abruptly when he realized it was Jaden standing there, her slender body backlit by the alien sun. God, he was glad to see her.
The door slipped shut automatically as she ran towards Fault, her ponytail bouncing and swinging about her shoulders with every step. When she reached the fake Copperheads, she was a bit out of breath, so she must have done some serious running to get here—probably trying to make it before he and An took off. “Garner found Ilana,” she said, her tone carefully neutral. “He’s staying behind with her until help arrives.”
“She in one piece?”
Her gaze shifted. “More or less.”
He could guess what that meant. He gestured to one of the other mock-ups. “Yours is over there.”
She met his gaze, an expression he couldn’t read, and he stared back at her, mesmerized by the particular shade of blue in her eyes, wanting to tell her something but having no idea what. Then she raced to her Copperhead and climbed aboard.
They had only just started firing up their engines when Jaden called out, alarmed: “Snappers on our six!”
Fault looked behind him. A pair of aliens had tailed Jaden and were running in the humans’ direction, guns blazing. Fault struggled to reach his pistol past the harness, which seemed intent on blocking his every attempt. An was evidently having better luck, because momentarily he shot back, first bringing one of the aliens to a sudden, scorching halt, then missing the other one—but not by much, and he kept on firing until he’d driven the Snapper into hiding underneath a Copperhead.
Suicide Mission: Unity War Book 2 Page 14