by Jucha, S. H.
“Fourth dome!” Jaya exclaimed. “I knew it.”
“What assistance do you need to secure the evidence, Commander?” Drake asked.
“Official sanction, for one,” Eric interjected.
Drake looked at Jaya, who was nodding earnestly. “Commander, I’m officially asking for Haraken’s help in securing the evidence of any illegal drug manufacturing. Any and all implant documentation will be greatly appreciated as well. Anything else, Commander?”
“Then you have my permission as New Terra’s president to use whatever force is necessary to secure that evidence, Commander.”
But Eric thought he understood Alex’s reasoning. With Renée, Tatia, Julien, and the twins accompanying him, there was already too much precious cargo at risk. But it appears that many more of our people will be required to enter this fray before it ends, Alex, Eric thought, before he commed Ellie.
* * *
The three Haraken men — Brace, Tyree, and Oren — requested by Miranda met the SADE and Svetlana near the lift closest to the landing bay, on the main dome’s concourse level. The group arranged themselves so that Miranda could watch those approaching the lift, and the men played the part of trying to interest the two women in some entertainment.
Svetlana mentally marked time from Miranda’s contact with the security personnel in the guard room. In her estimation, they would be the first to wake, and once the alarm was sounded, the Harakens’ opportunity to reach the lab before it was defended by security forces would disappear and so might the evidence and the chemist. A wall of Toyo’s stun gun–armed personnel wouldn’t be penetrated by a SADE and four Harakens without weapons.
Tense as Svetlana was, she couldn’t help but admire the way Miranda chatted and teased their three male companions. The SADE was effortlessly keeping the three men laughing, and they were teasing her in return.
As the lift car door opened, Yance Deere stepped inside only to be shoved to the back of the car by a beautiful woman. “What?” he yelped, as he eyed the woman’s four companions.
“Do you have clearance for the lowest level of the fourth dome?” Miranda asked.
“Fourth dome?” Deere repeated. “There’s no fourth dome.”
“We’ll see,” Miranda said, approaching the controller box and typing D4-7 into the keypad. When the car began moving, she said, “He has the clearance we need, and he’s a terrible liar.”
“We don’t like liars, Ser,” Svetlana said, brandishing a knife taken off Jameson against Deere’s cheek. “Lie to us again and I’ll give you another smile.”
Svetlana grinned at Miranda, as the car decelerated and came to a halt. Before the door slid open, she unsnapped Deere’s holster, snatched his weapon, and tossed it to Brace.
Miranda led the way out of the car and down the first corridor with Brace beside her. Svetlana followed, and Tyree and Oren brought up the rear with Deere between them.
In a moment of déjà vu and at the same corner where Miranda previously ran into the two guards, the smirking one, wearing heavy bruises from his last interaction with the SADE, walked around the corner in front of them.
“You,” the guard shouted.
Both Brace and Toyo’s man had their stun guns in hand, so the weapons were discharged simultaneously — Brace at their adversary and the guard at Miranda, but both men slid unconscious to the floor. Brace had leaned in front of Miranda, his substantial body taking the stun gun blast.
Svetlana picked up both weapons, kept one, and tossed the other to Tyree.
“We’re close to the lab. Bring Brace with us,” Miranda ordered and kept going.
Tyree motioned Deere to help Oren carry Brace, but the older and out-of-shape security officer struggled to lift his half. Tyree shoved him aside and the two Harakens carried their companion, while Deere walked in front of them with Tyree’s stun gun pointed at his back.
Slipping into the lab’s anteroom, Miranda ordered everyone to don suits and masks. “Not you,” Miranda said pointing to Deere. “You’ll wait here for us.” Then she nodded at Svetlana, who promptly stunned the man and cushioned his fall to the floor, leaving him lying beside Brace.
With the suits fashioned for New Terrans, Svetlana grabbed a roll of fabric cord, sliced off 2 meters and wound it around her middle to cinch the suit to her waist. Holding out her balloon-shaped arms, she quipped, “This does nothing for my image.”
“We must all make sacrifices, dear. Now, let us proceed to claim this territory as our own,” Miranda said, as she activated the inner doors of the lab.
A suited and masked New Terran, inside the lab, swiveled to stare at Miranda. “Stop, woman! Are you crazy? It’s dangerous in here without safety gear! Get out.”
“Feminine, yes; woman, no,” Miranda replied enigmatically. “Where’s your senior chemist?”
“I said, out of here,” the suited figure repeated and shoved on Miranda’s shoulders. His eyes widened when he failed to move her.
“I wish you people would progress your society to the point where you acquire manners,” Miranda retorted. “I asked for your lead chemist. Either comply or I’ll strip off your mask and stick your face in a pile of this despicable powder you’re making.”
“Stratford’s not here,” the man stammered, taking a step back from Miranda. Before he could take another, Miranda was on him.
“Where is Stratford, dear?” Miranda asked sweetly, while her metal-alloy fingers delicately held the man’s windpipe.
“With his family,” the chemist choked out. “That’s how Toyo controls us. He’s brought all our families here to the domes.”
“I see,” Miranda said, releasing the man. “And you decided that it was a fair trade to protect your family in exchange for poisoning hundreds if not thousands of children of other families?”
“What could we do?” the suited figure asked, holding out his hands to Miranda.
“Resist,” Miranda said simply. “Men like Toyo seek to bend people to his will. That feeds his power, which spreads the disease. Refuse to cooperate and Toyo’s power wanes … but enough of this life lesson. Can you take my people to Stratford?”
“Yes, but my shift isn’t over yet. My children will be punished if I leave early.”
“Foolish man,” Miranda said, laughing. “This lab is finished. These domes are finished. You and your frightened colleagues were coerced into making Toyo’s drugs, and they made their way to Haraken. So, we’re here to end your ugly endeavor.”
“Harakens,” the man whispered.
“Go with her,” Miranda said to the senior chemist, shoving him bodily at Svetlana.
Miranda watched to ensure her people cleared the anteroom, after they shucked off their suits and masks and threw them into a recycling chute. The last she saw of them, the chemist was pointing the way back down the corridor.
The SADE turned to face the group of suited and masked men and women who stood staring wide-eyed at her. “Who would love to see tomorrow?” Miranda asked, in a pleasant voice, and watched as everyone raised their hands, even if only partially. “That’s the spirit. Okay, people, shut down all active processes. I don’t want heat or energy flowing in this lab. Clean up all active products and secure them.”
When no one moved, Miranda clapped her hands together, making a sound like lightning cracking, and the New Terrans scattered, the chemists shouting orders to the technicians. While they worked, Miranda returned to the outer doors and carefully disabled the door’s activator so that she could easily repair it.
Returning to the lab, Miranda selected an empty preparation table and snapped off its square metal legs. More than one intake of breath from the lab personnel accompanied Miranda’s actions. Squatting down, she hammered one end of each leg flat. As Miranda carried her makeshift wedges back to the anteroom, she heard the whispers of “SADE.” It made her smile. Now, maybe you’ll jump when I give you an order, Miranda thought.
Taking the first two wedges, Miranda jammed them into the tops of the outer two metal doors. Before she repeated her efforts on the inner two doors of the anteroom, she dressed Brace in a suit and mask and carried him over her shoulder inside the lab, laying him down in a corner. When she turned around, the chemists and technicians were standing and waiting for her.
“Everything is prepared as you requested, ma’am,” a figure said.
“And you are?”
“Stan, ma’am, I’m the shift supervisor.”
Miranda’s tongue ran out briefly, and her analysis confirmed the lab vents had cleared any residual product. “The air is clear, dears. After you wipe down the surfaces and dispose of that material, it will be safe for you to remove your suits and masks, people. We might be here for a while.”
“Pardon me, ma’am,” said Stan, “but even at parts per million, this drug is dangerous.”
“We’re well aware of the insidious nature of what you fashion here, New Terran,” Miranda said, eyeing the supervisor, and he winced from the accusation. “I test at two figures higher than that, human, and I tell you that the air is cleared for breathing,” Miranda replied, emphasizing her nature.
Stan stood undecided, but most of his people broke ranks and grabbed scrubbers and hoses to clean the tables, floors, and equipment. Soon after, Stan joined them rather than being the sole focus of the Haraken SADE.
-24-
After receiving Lisa Sparing’s warning of his impending betrayal, Toyo was torn between loading every shuttle he possessed to go after Kadmir and remaining in place, wondering what his adversaries intended as their true end game. He envisioned landing at Kadmir’s domes, while O’Brien’s men took over his establishment, leaving him stuck aboard shuttles and isolated to a pair of freighters.
In the end, and despite not knowing how the forces were arrayed against him, it was Toyo’s decision to attack Kadmir with a single shuttle. The strategy left his domes defended, and while accompanied by the experienced veterans, it gave him the best chance of taking on Kadmir’s security forces. Armed with the new stunners, his people would be a difficult force to repel.
Toyo’s young pilot, with his enthusiastic mannerisms, was a charmer and had the reservationist and the bay landing controller eating out of his hands. It cleared the biggest hurdle, gaining entrance to Kadmir’s landing bay.
Toyo saw three possible outcomes to his chosen course of action. He could kill Kadmir and claim he was rescuing the girls or, just as easy, if he located the girls first, he could take them, clear out, and claim the same thing. The last possibility was that he would be killed, in which case, his troubles would be over.
The shuttle eased into the bay, and lights on the deck guided the ship to its assigned position. The pilot glanced at Toyo for instructions.
“Land where you’re directed, pilot. It’s not a bad place, and no need to show our hand yet,” Toyo said.
After the shuttle touched down, Toyo ordered his people to line up at the hatch with weapons drawn. Then he ordered the pilot to comm bay control that the shuttle’s ramp extenders weren’t responding. It was a common problem with older shuttles, maintenance not being a priority for most moon-based shuttles.
The bay controller sent a tech party of five over with a small repair vehicle. They hooked a chain from the vehicle to the tongue of the ramp to pull it from under the shuttle’s belly.
The moment the pilot reported the ramp fully extended, Toyo yelled, “Now.” The hatch slid open, and the first of Toyo’s people out on the ramp promptly shot the five crew. Flooding out of the shuttle, Toyo’s red-uniformed, security personnel cut a swath through the bay.
Kadmir’s brown-and-gold uniformed, security personnel fought back, but they were quickly overwhelmed. For every one of Toyo’s people they stunned, three of their number went down. The landing bay controller managed to sound the alarm that a shuttle full of intruders had landed in the bay before three of Toyo’s people crashed through his door. He stunned a single, red uniform before the invaders killed him.
Toyo was soon at the forefront of his people’s charge across the bay. He lived for moments like this — the rush of open warfare. It was how his reputation was made. Toyo was despised even as a teenager for his refusal to deal, to compromise. He made one offer to his enemies and only one offer. Those who didn’t fall in line could expect only one response — a fight for their life, which resulted in casualty after casualty until no one bothered to offer him resistance.
Toyo’s security force watched their leader come upon the first brown uniform, who struggled on the deck. The man’s arm, from shoulder to hand, was numbed by stunner fire. Toyo paused for a moment and bent to slice the man’s neck open with the heavy blade he carried in his left hand. His security forces took it as a demonstration of what their leader expected of them.
In the early moments of the firefight, Toyo’s people held the initiative and soon cleared the bay of security and service personnel, men and women. When they gained the wide corridor that led from the bay to the main dome, their progress bogged down. The straight corridor offered no hiding place for the attackers, and Kadmir’s security forces had grabbed furniture from the passenger waiting area, tilting the pieces on their sides, and formed a makeshift barrier.
His forces stymied, Toyo whistled shrilly and a heavyset, hatch-faced fighter, carrying a plasma rifle, hurried up to Toyo’s position.
“Be careful with that thing, Lenny. Punch through the furniture for a strike. And don’t go mad with it. One shot only.”
“Sure, Boss, one shot only,” Lenny replied, hoisting his plasma rifle. There was no more dangerous weapon to fire in a dome that faced vacuum, which is why Toyo ordered that only one plasma rifle should be brought by his crew.
Next to Toyo, Lydia grinned in anticipation, and Toyo returned it, his eyes wild with excitement.
Sighting on the largest pile of furniture, which concealed four of Kadmir’s people, and dialing his weapon to its lowest setting, Lenny fired a single shot. The twin, twisting bursts of energy sizzled through the air and burned a 1-meter hole through the furniture barricade and two brown uniforms. Its energy was absorbed 50 meters later by a section of wall a
nd a dense pile of crates stacked in the utility room beyond.
The plasma fire panicked the defenders, who abandoned their positions and retreated while returning fire. But when Toyo and Lydia charged at them, howling like the demented, the brown uniforms lost all pretense of acting as defenders and ran full tilt down the corridor toward the first bend, which marked the entrance to the main concourse. Most of them were shot in the back by Toyo and Lydia before they could reach safety.
* * *
When the intruder warning hit the comms, Kadmir raced to the nearest guard center and found his security chief, Omi Yakiro, accessing the security cams of the main dome and landing bay.
“How many, Chief?” Kadmir asked.
“A single NR-shuttle type. It was fully loaded.”
“Where are they, and how are we doing?”
“Not well, Sir. Toyo and some equally crazy woman are leading the charge, and they’re scaring our people to death. We had a good barricade in the corridor leading to the landing bay until one of Toyo’s people fired a plasma rifle at it.”
“He what?” Kadmir said, shocked.
“Afraid so, Sir. Craze … it’s an apt nickname. Right now, we’re holding about 30 meters, landing bay side, from the green lift. I’m bringing security personnel up from the lower domes as fast as we can load the car, and every lift that descends is packed full of patrons and our service people.”
“Good work, Chief. Keep on it. I want enough security in the main dome to hold him and keep both lifts in our control, but don’t commit all our forces.”
“Afraid the crazy man might use that plasma rifle again?
“Exactly. If Toyo thinks he’s losing, he’ll get desperate. No telling what he’ll do then. I don’t want to put any more of our people in harm’s way than can be helped. Let me know when the main dome is cleared of civilians, Chief. Can we bring a shuttle down from the freighter station and get forces in behind Toyo?”