by Rick Partlow
The words should have been a relief; instead, they just seemed to add to the dread which had settled over her.
Singh smiled broadly, raising his pistol and lining the muzzle up between her eyes.
“I’m going to make sure he feels exactly what I’m feeling,” he told her with feral cheerfulness. “I’m going to kill you.”
Chapter Nineteen
“You don’t seem as enthused by all this as your father is,” Ash said quietly, sidling up to Lena Brunner.
She’d moved even farther away from Borges since Sandi had slipped out, and he was starting to worry she’d notice the other pilot’s absence. The tall woman shrugged noncommittally, not looking at him.
“You seemed pretty psyched about the chance to stick it to La Sombra back on the ship,” he prompted.
“I suppose I’ve had some time to think about it,” she replied, eyes flickering towards him then looking away again.
“You’re starting to think about Jordi Abdullah,” Ash guessed. “And how he’s going to respond to this.”
“What do you know about him?” She demanded, finally meeting his eyes.
“I listen to people,” he told her, shrugging. “He reminds me of the gangsters I used to know back in Trans-Angeles, in the Kibera.”
“I’ve heard of Trans-Angeles,” Brunner said with a chuckle, “but what’s a Kibera?”
He laughed sharply at that. “Sorry, I forgot where I was for a second. Even in the colonies everyone knows what the Kibera is; it’s on all the crime dramas. It’s the largest housing project in Trans-Angeles. Its official name is ‘the Center Trans-Angeles Housing and Development District,’ but everyone’s called it the Kibera since the first residents moved in like 150 years ago.”
“Not a nice place?” She seemed more at ease now, he thought. More like a regular person than he’d seen so far.
“The cops don’t come in there,” he confirmed. “If you want to talk to them, you go meet them outside. The gangs run the fab centers, the food supplies, everything. They deal Kick and Spindle and black market ViRware openly and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”
“Yeah, that does sound a lot like La Sombra,” she admitted. Her eyes glanced back at her father again. “Or here.” She looked at Ash with sudden interest. “And you made it out of that and into the Academy?”
“I had a lot of incentive. If you didn’t work for the gangs, you were prey. Neither option appealed to me.”
“So how the hell did you wind up here, then?” She wanted to know. “Old habits?”
“Sandi.” He knew he had to sell it, and he tried to put all the hurt and bitterness he’d ever felt towards her in the one word. “She kind of drags me into trouble, periodically, and I’m too stupid to avoid it.”
“So, you and her are…?” The words “significant glance” had been invented for the look she gave him.
“Sometimes.” This was the part that was difficult, the lie hardest to tell because he was afraid it might be true. “That’s something else she periodically drags me into that I’m too stupid to avoid.”
Brunner laughed at that. “So, where is she?” She waved around them. “Didn’t she want to stick around and bask in the acclaim?”
“We had an argument,” he lied, discovering that it didn’t come nearly as easy to him as it had back in the Kibera. “She thinks La Sombra has it coming, that we did the right thing. I’m not so sure. Like I said, Jordi reminds me of the gang leaders back home; and to them, face is everything. You lose face, you get killed not long after…unless you take it back, get revenge ten times over.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” She glanced around suspiciously at the throng of people growing closer to her father. “Come here,” she said, waving him away from the others.
Ash followed her through a narrow alley between buildings, out to a darkened alcove between the west wing of the mansion and a small storage shed. He shivered at the sudden drop in temperature away from the outdoor heaters and stuck his bare hands inside his jacket pockets.
“Are you cold, Ash?” Brunner asked him, and there in the dark, he thought he saw a particular glint in her eyes.
“A little,” he told her. “I’m not used to the weather here.”
“Maybe I can help.”
He wasn’t exactly shocked when she kissed him; Sandi had prepared him for the idea that she was interested. What did surprise him was how warm and soft her lips were, how gentle the touch of her fingers on his face was. She was slightly taller than he was, and it felt weird kissing someone upward, but it wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
“It’s even warmer in my room,” she breathed the words in his ear and followed them with her tongue, and he felt a surge of alarm that Sandi had been wrong, that this was going to wind up with the two of them in bed together, with him absurdly left behind while the others escaped.
He was wracking his brain for an excuse to get out before it was too late when he heard the whine of turbojets somewhere overhead and then an explosion, way too close. Brunner broke off the extended kiss and began looking around, alarm replacing the arousal in her expression. Over the west wall, they could see a fireball rising up into the sky from the direction of the landing field, lighting up the low, snow-filled clouds with its red flame.
“What the hell is that?” Brunner exclaimed, their prospective intimacy abruptly forgotten.
“Did a ship crash?” Ash wondered. He’d heard the jets…
The questions were answered with the scream of a shuttle passing just above them, the glow of its engines barely visible in the cover of the low clouds. A smaller flare of light separated from the larger one, slamming into the opposite wing of the mansion with a thunderous concussion that shook the ground. Heat washed over them from a hundred meters away and fire lit the sky nearly to daylight.
“It’s La Sombra,” Brunner hissed, horrified realization in her eyes.
Without another word, she brushed past him and sprinted back towards the courtyard, towards her father. Ash was frozen with disbelief for just a heartbeat, until reality sank into his brain with the weight of a neutron star. If La Sombra was here, there was only one thing they’d be coming after.
He ran the opposite direction of the way Brunner had gone, heading for the gate and the hangar just beyond it. The Planet-Killer…
***
“You don’t want to kill me, Singh,” Sandi said, trying to keep her voice steady and calm, her hands raised palms-up in front of her. “I’m worth more to Jordi alive.”
“You certainly are,” the bounty hunter admitted. His rage was as chilling as the arctic wind outside the building, the muzzle of his weapon never wavering. “And I don’t give a shit.”
She was poised to make a lunge at him, figuring she had little to lose, when the first explosion shook the building. It was so close that it sent clouds of dust floating down from the ceiling and nearly threw Sandi off her feet, so loud and concussive that it startled Singh even though it shouldn’t have, and threw his aim away from her for just a moment. Sandi was too off-balance herself to take advantage of it.
Adam wasn’t.
The kid didn’t try anything fancy, didn’t go for the fallen gun, didn’t try to grab a club or any of the dozen things Sandi thought might have been smarter, but neither did he run off and abandon her, which would also have been smarter. Instead, he dove shoulder-first into the bounty hunter’s knees and sent both of them toppling over sideways. There was a hum-snap-crack repeated so fast it blended into one chattering sound as Singh squeezed the trigger instinctively on the way down, the tantalum needles splashing up against the ceiling with a smack of metal through metal.
Sandi didn’t know what was causing the explosions and she didn’t stop to consider the issue. Instead, she scooped the gun up off the concrete floor where she’d dropped it, bringing it up two-handed and firing the moment it was in line with Singh’s center of mass. Miniature red flares leapt out ahead of the handgun’s muzzle and streaked
into the bounty hunter, popping with small explosions of molten metal as they flogged at his body armor.
She tried to get a shot in at his head, but he was moving, throwing his arms across his face as he scrambled to his feet and stumbled back towards cover. There was blood on the floor, she saw as he disappeared from view, but not enough of it.
Fucking armor. Then, I need to get some of that shit.
He was back in the shadows at the rear of the hanger, but his machine pistol was on the floor, left behind, and a glance at the receiver told her why: it had taken a round from her weapon and the electronic firing mechanism was fried. Her own pistol was empty, and she tossed it aside and grabbed Adam’s hand, helping him to his feet.
“Thanks,” she told him, fishing in her jacket pocket for the second handgun.
The kid seemed too stunned to speak, and she saw a red mark on his cheek where Singh’s knee had struck it; he’d have a nice bruise there pretty soon.
“Where’d he go?” Adam was finally able to ask.
Sandi was wondering that herself. There was another exit back there, but would he just leave? She wasn’t going to count on it.
“Come on,” she urged Adam, grabbing his sleeve with her left hand and guiding him back towards the belly hatch of the Acheron while she covered them with the pistol.
What if he had another weapon? She hadn’t seen one, but she’d had her eyes on that big-assed pistol mostly. She had to get in the ship and get out of there. She slapped a palm to the ID plate on the belly of the ship, then typed the password into the flush-fit keyboard. The ramp began to slowly lower, its hydraulics moaning in protest, and she cursed at it mentally, wishing she could afford the attention to kick it.
Hurry up, you ancient piece of shit.
It was no more than halfway down when a black blur rushed out of the shadows at them, running on the side where Adam was standing so that she didn’t have a clear shot in the split second’s warning she had before he struck. He hit Adam with a backhand swipe that struck the kid in the neck right over the carotid and sent him sprawling, eyes rolling back in his head, unconscious before he hit the ground. Then he slammed into Sandi, crushing her to the floor with his weight, her shoulder blades slamming down flat on the concrete and knocking the breath out of her.
His hands were around her throat, his eyes ablaze with hatred and rage, his face a mask of burnt skin and blood where a mini-rocket warhead had detonated too close and sprayed him with hot metal shrapnel. She gasped desperately, the sound a squeak as her airway was closed off and her arms and legs were pinned under his armored mass and…the gun. Did she still have the gun?
She couldn’t feel her hands, couldn’t feel anything but the crushing constriction around her throat, but she squeezed her right fingers shut and there was a flash and a loud, hissing, smacking sound and his fingers loosened from around her neck, his face screwing up with pain. She tried squeezing the trigger again, but it wouldn’t fire. Was it empty? She could breathe again, but he was still on top of her, pinning her down.
She worked her hand free and swung the side of the gun into his head. Singh’s face went from pain and shock to glass-eyed and semi-conscious by the second time she’d connected the receiver into his temple. He toppled off the side of her and she rolled out, coughing, gasping, hands going to her throat. Another explosion shook the walls and shook her free of her incipient shock.
They were under attack, and if Singh was here, that meant La Sombra was doing the attacking. She had to get the Acheron in the air before they took out the whole hangar and everything in it. Singh stirred and she saw that he was dazed and wounded, but not dead. Blood was slowly soaking his leg from the shot she’d gotten off; it had hit in the lower abdomen and penetrated right around his beltline, but it didn’t look immediately fatal. More blood dripped from a cut over his eyebrow and his pupils seemed unfocused and wandering.
I should kill him, she thought dully, still trying to get her brain working again after the near-asphyxiation. If I don’t kill him, he’ll be back.
She looked down at the gun in her hand. The muzzle was jammed with melted and smoking polymer from the exterior coating of Singh’s armor, which was why it had refused to fire; it had safety interlocks that prevented it from launching a round when the barrel was blocked. She threw it down in disgust, then drew back and kicked Singh in the face in frustration. His head snapped back and he collapsed to the floor. She almost kicked him again, but stopped herself with a wordless, frustrated growl and instead, ran over to the control for the main hangar door.
It was a keyed lock, but the key had been left in it. She twisted it to the left and the door began to motor up into its track along the ceiling with a deafening rattle of sheet metal folding in on itself along joints rough with road salt and gravel. The wind howled beneath the hangar entrance as the door rose, like she’d thrown open its cage, and its wicked, frigid talons sliced through her mercilessly. She gritted her teeth to keep them from chattering as she kept the pressure on the control until the door hit its stops with a loud thump and the motor hummed in futility.
Turbojets roared low in the night sky and she saw missiles and lasers flashing upward into the clouds, answered in kind by aircraft she still couldn’t see. Warheads burst and lasers glowed and together they set the clouds afire. She looked away from the apocalyptic vision and turned back to where Adam was coming to, groaning softly, his eyes flickering open. She grabbed him beneath his arms and muscled him to his feet, then walked him up the ramp into the utility bay, hitting the hatch control with her elbow as she passed it.
“What happened?” He mumbled groggily.
Sandi pushed him down into one of the acceleration couches lining the rear of the bay and strapped him in, keeping one eye on the ramp, half-expecting Singh to come rampaging up it just before it closed, murder in his eyes.
“Stay here,” she warned Adam. “It might get rough.”
She jogged up the passageway into the cockpit, lunging forward to hit the controls to fire up the reactor before she even began to strap into the pilot’s seat.
How did they do it? She wondered, spooling out the interface jacks and plugging them into her implant sockets. How had La Sombra gotten past the orbital defenses here? She could see Jordi committing enough forces to overwhelm them, but how had they slipped by without alerting the sensors?
There was only one answer to that question, she decided, feeding power to the turbines, feeling their vibration through the hull. Jordi had another mole here; they already knew it, Garces had told them. Whoever it was had either shut down the defense net or given Jordi the passcodes for it, and she knew there was only one reason they’d blow their last intelligence asset on a gamble like this.
She had to get to Ash.
Clouds of dust and smoke billowed up around the Acheron, blanking out the exterior cameras, and the ship wavered slightly as the belly jets lifted her a few centimeters off the concrete, then lurched forward. The walls of the hangar slid by on either side of her, but before the bulk of the cutter had even made it out of the building, a warning klaxon echoed the cockpit and her world was filled with flashing red threat icons. Multiple incoming missiles targeted the boat and she had a half-second to react.
The turbojets screamed and she was pressed back into the seat hard enough to peel her lips back from her teeth. Explosions shook the Acheron, nearly nosing her in; Sandi had to feed the belly jets a burst of energy to pull up in time, and then she was banking and climbing, heading up to meet the threat.
“Ash, are you there?” She transmitted using the ship’s commo, trying to raise his ‘link. “Ash, this is Sandi. Can you hear me?”
Nothing. The commo board told her that all signals were being blocked by a broadband jamming field. Ash would have to wait until she took care of these guys.
As for Singh, she could only hope that either the jets had fried him on takeoff or the missiles they’d launched at her had brought the hangar down around his ears. She had a fee
ling that she’d regret not taking the time to kill him.
Chapter Twenty
Ash felt the breath freezing its way down his throat and into his lungs; he ran harder. The guards at the gate hadn’t stopped him, hadn’t even questioned him; they’d been facing outward, guns ready, watching for a threat from the ground since there was little they could do against the armed shuttles bombing the city.
Don’t worry, guys, he thought grimly. They’ll be coming.
Jordi Abdullah hadn’t wasted an attack of this magnitude to fly a few strafing runs.
He slipped on a patch of icy snow just outside the gate and barely caught himself, slamming his other foot down painfully and feeling the impact in his lower back. He kept running, limping at first but then picking up speed again, but the slip was a crack that the doubts began to squeeze through.
You don’t have a gun, you moron, he chided himself, what the hell are you gonna do when you get there?
The others would be armed, he soothed the raging doubts. Everything was going to be fine, everything was still going to work.
He was nearly able to convince himself of that by the time he skidded to a stop against the rear wall of the building. This was Carlos Borges’ private hangar, much closer to the mansion than the ones back near the landing field, and usually much more closely guarded. Except tonight, Tomlinson had arranged through a friend to get himself, Fontenot and Kan-Ten assigned as the guards. With any luck, they’d have the charge planted in the warhead already, and all four of them could hop in a groundcar and go join Sandi at the Acheron.
He tried the side door and found it locked. That probably made sense, he supposed; they wouldn’t want to leave too many avenues of approach open while they sabotaged the Planet-Killer. The cold was catching up with him again and he jogged quickly around the perimeter of the hangar, hoping the core warmth was worth the icy daggers stabbing through his lungs. He found the main aircraft entrance wide open, the nose of the heavy cargo shuttle protruding out nearly to the doorway, bulbous and upturned and covered with frost. He turned into the edge of the entranceway and saw the cargo boat’s wings stretched out to the side walls and slanted upwards nearly to the ceiling of the huge structure, and tucked under the portside wing was the massive Planet-Killer missile, suspended on a wheeled gantry with the access hatch hanging open.