by Lolita Lopez
“What now?” Vicious asked, stopping his own orders mobilizing the land forces on the ship.
“We can’t shut down the HVAC systems. Our bridge control has been overridden.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Vicious growled. “Let’s go.”
The general and admiral disappeared from the room, and Raze pointed at him. “Stay here. You’re our link with Shadow Force.”
“Got it.”
Raze, Venom and Menace rushed from the room, and Torment tossed a gas mask at him. “Here. Weapons and gear over there. Take whatever you need.”
Cipher needed only the mask and rushed to a computer. He used his credentials to get into the live security feeds of the brig, the bridge and SRU. They were all hives of action as soldiers and airmen tried to get control over the situation. With those displayed on a separate large wall screen, he started pulling up maintenance and security feeds from the HVAC units.
“Oh, fuck me,” Savage all but shouted. “Is that Terror?”
Cipher turned to see the screen behind him where he had sent the feeds to be displayed. Terror had a knife in his hand and slashed at Reckless, cutting free the duffel bag he had slung over his shoulder. Small canisters of emergency oxygen fell out and rolled around on the floor.
His stomach dropped, and his heart skipped several beats as the last person he ever expected to see in the damn bowels of the ship appeared. “Brook!”
“Shit.” Savage stepped closer to the screen. “Tor, get our boys down there. Immediately. Terror needs backup.” As if remembering that Brook was his mate, he glanced at Cipher and said, “She’s a smart girl. She’ll stay out of trouble.”
“Clearly not!” he snapped.
Why was she even there? He had told her to go back to their quarters after dinner. She had promised she would. She had promised she would take her treatment and wait for him. How the fuck had she ended up in the most dangerous place on the ship?
“Where is she going?” Torment asked as Brook dragged the bag of emergency oxygen away from the two fighting men. “What the fuck is he spraying at Terror?”
“Tear gas?” Savage guessed. “It’s not fatal whatever it is. Reckless wouldn’t be dumb enough to use something in close quarters without a respirator in place.”
Cipher’s gaze danced between Terror and Reckless and his mate. “She’s moving back to the HVAC unit.” He jumped back to the computer and took control of the cameras there. He moved the view to the right and managed to get a good look at the massive unit. “Oh, shit.”
There were canisters of gas hooked up to the ducts.
“Are those active?” Savage demanded.
Cipher zoomed in as Brook rushed toward a canister of gas and started pulling on the tube that had been spliced into a duct. He held his breath as she tore it free. If there was gas flowing, she would be dead in a few seconds. When she moved to the next duct, he released the breath he had been holding. “No.”
“But where is Rake?” Torment asked. “Unless he died in the brig attack, he’s got to be somewhere on the ship.”
Savage did a quick count of the bodies in the hallways of the brig. “No, he’s not there.”
“How many bodies were in the pulmonary unit?” Torment asked.
“Seven,” Cipher said, his focus never leaving Brook as she bravely dismantled the gas tubes. “There are six canisters on that unit.”
“So, where’s the last one?” Savage wondered. “With Rake?”
“Probably,” Torment agreed.
“Do we think it’s the NA-9X?” Savage rubbed his jaw. “It would make sense, right? Keep the worst gas for another part of the ship?”
“The bridge?” Cipher suggested, still watching Brook. “Or maybe the central units that supply air to all of the mission centers? SRU, Bridge, pilot’s deck, hangars?” He glanced away from the screen where Terror and Reckless continued to fight. He tapped on the security feed from that sector and made it bigger. “There!”
“Is that Rake?” Savage looked aghast. “Is he rigged with explosives?”
Cipher zoomed in on his vest. “Yes.”
“Fuck,” Savage swore. “He’s blocking the only entrance to that unit?”
“Yes,” Cipher confirmed, checking the other angles of cameras.
“We need EOD down there immediately. If he has a canister of gas rigged to that unit, and we can’t shut it down remotely, we’re all fucked,” Savage snarled.
“Maybe not,” Torment said, gesturing to the screen where Terror had taken down Reckless. Brook rushed forward to help, grabbing a roll of silver tape that had fallen from the duffel bag and hastily securing the doctor’s ankles while Terror held him. “Is there audio in there?”
“No.” Cipher’s mouth went dry as Terror held his knife against the doctor’s eye socket. Brook glanced away as she taped his hands together, using her slight weight to keep him from moving. A second later, a gush of blood erupted from Reckless’s face and his mouth opened in a silent scream. The eyeball that had once been safely housed there flopped out onto the metal grate.
“Fuck,” Savage groaned and made a face.
“It’s effective,” Torment murmured, his attention fixed on the doctor who seemed to be babbling as Terror took his blade to the man’s ear.
“It’s illegal,” Savage reminded them.
“I don’t think anyone is going to care,” Cipher said, wishing with every fiber of his being that Brook wasn’t there to witness the gory display. At the same time, he couldn’t deny how much pride filled him as he had watched her dismantle the crude gas delivery system and help Terror secure the doctor.
“Where the hell are they going now?” Savage demanded as Terror and Brook shared a serious look before leaving the bleeding, howling but tightly secured doctor on the floor.
Cipher’s blood ran cold as Brook placed the glasses from his office onto her face. “Toward Rake and the bomb.”
Chapter Twenty
Brook refused to even think about what she had just witnessed. She pushed all the gruesome images and the gross sounds of Terror popping that eye out of the doctor’s head from her mind. She tried to forget the smell of blood and piss as the doctor wet himself in agony and fear. There would be time to deal with all of that later.
Terror hadn’t tried to discourage her from following him. He must have known that he needed her help. If what Reckless had told them was true—that Rake was rigged with an explosive vest and the canister of deadly NA-9X gas was on a timer—they didn’t have time to wait for backup. She wasn’t as skilled as the explosives techs on the ship, but she had confidence in her abilities. Reckless and Rake had rigged terribly simple bombs on the gangway so it was likely they had done the same with the ones on the vest. She could handle that.
Terror didn’t need the help of the glasses as he raced along the gangway, but she did. She kept the glasses in place as they ran, just in case he veered off course or they got separated. Watching him in action earlier, she had understood that he had definitely earned his name. He was a terror. A walking, breathing nightmare to anyone who crossed him.
When they reached the first ladder, he hopped down and landed as gracefully as a cat. She wasn’t about to try to hurl herself that distance, especially without any shoes on and her feet already bleeding. She would have tried to slide down, feet against the outside, but again, no shoes. Instead, she descended two and three rungs at a time.
Terror hadn’t waited for her, and she didn’t mind. Time was of the essence. She raced to catch up to him and inwardly groaned when she saw him jumping down another ladder chute. Glad for all the hundreds of times she had climbed and descended ladders as a miner, she descended as quickly as possible and sprinted after him. They descended three more ladders and must have covered at least three-quarters of a mile before they finally neared their destination.
Terror raised a hand, silently telling her to slow down and stop. Trying to control her breathing, she did as he instructed and sidled up close to him. He
crouched down, using a wide chute for cover and motioned for her to join him. He moved so close she could see the beads of sweat on his upper lip. His mouth brushed her hair as he hissed, “I’m going in this way. I want you to follow those condensers until you find the service entrance to the compressor. You’re as small as some of our maintenance robots. You’ll fit. Get inside the compressor room and look for any other explosives. If you find the gas, try to disconnect it.”
More nervous than she had ever been in her life, she nodded shakily. “Yes, sir.”
“Brook.” He grabbed her upper arm and forced her to meet the stare of his single eye. “If we fuck this up, everyone dies. You. Me. Cipher. Our friends.”
The reality hit her like a load of bricks to the chest. Lifting her chin, she promised, “I won’t fuck this up.”
“Good girl.” He roughly patted her back. “Go.”
With shaking limbs, she grabbed onto the first bracket securing the huge condenser lines and hauled herself off the deck. Her lungs weren’t happy with all the exertion required to climb without ropes or a ladder. The treatments had helped, but she felt herself breathing harder and harder as she ascended. Her arms started to burn, and her fingers ached from grasping the hard metal brackets. She didn’t even want to think about her throbbing feet. She could feel the blood smudging the cold metal of the condensers.
When she finally saw the flat top of the compressor room, she heaved a grateful sigh. She glanced down, but Terror had vanished from sight. Certain he was about to put the hurt on Rake, she pushed him from her mind. She was about to drop into a room that might be rigged with explosives and poisonous gas. She didn’t have enough space in her brain to worry about him, too.
There was a grated cover over the ventilation space similar to the ones she had encountered in the mine. It was so heavy, and she had to strain every muscle in her body to lift it a few inches out of its grooved seat. Panting and sweating, she pushed it as hard as she could to slide it out of the way and make enough room. When it was out of the way, she stuck her head through the slim opening to check out the situation. Terror was right. It was a very small space, but she could fit. For once, her thin figure was going to be very useful.
With trembling arms, she lowered herself through the hole and grabbed onto a beam. It was so noisy inside the compressor room, and the smell of grease and dust made her wrinkle her nose. Worried she was damaging her hearing being so close to all that noise, she cautiously swung her feet forward until she felt a bracket strong enough to hold her. She stretched out her right arm and took hold of another beam. She was barely tall enough to keep her toes on the bracket and her fingers on the beam. She cursed her petite stature and prayed to any deity listening that she wasn’t about to fall and break her neck.
Seeing a spot where she could descend, she lowered her arms to her sides and took a steadying breath. Her bloody feet protested as she stepped from the bracket onto a thin beam running parallel to the floor. Trying to stay as balanced as possible, she walked the unnervingly long length of the beam. She wobbled three different times, and her heart clattered in her chest.
Don’t fall. Don’t fall.
Somehow, she managed to make it safely to the other side. She crouched down carefully, her thighs shaking and her stomach lurching with fear, and took hold of the beam under her feet. Not very gracefully, she lowered one leg and then the other. Dangling too high from the ground to jump without hurting herself badly, she stretched out her left arm toward a ladder-like structure of welded metal holding up various pieces of the compressor.
It was so loud next to the compressor that she could feel her brain rattling in her skull. She clenched her jaw and growled as she swung herself to the metal bars. Her hands slipped as she grabbed hold, and she only just managed to catch herself. Panting and clinging to the metal as if her life depended on it, she carefully climbed down until she made it to the floor.
Wincing at the incredibly loud cacophony from the machine, she started examining every place she could see for any signs of a bomb. She didn’t find anything that looked out of place until she followed the giant pipes running from the condenser to the blower unit. When she walked around to the front of the blower, she spotted a canister of gas, this one stamped with a skull and crossbones, attached to the blower and fan. There was a single tube running from the canister into the blower unit box.
That would be easy enough to remove, but there was another problem.
A really, really big problem.
The canister was rigged to explode.
In less than seven minutes.
She didn’t hesitate. Lifting the glasses onto crown of her head, she rushed forward to examine the small metal case holding the canister and explosives. She could remove the case from where it had been screwed into the wall of the blower unit, but she couldn’t remove the canister from the explosives or case. There were too many wires, too many decoys and not enough time.
She checked the explosive device, the canister and the case for any sort of pressure or movement switches. Years earlier, her father had taught her how to build that sort of explosive charge. Back when their people had first settled the mountain, the miners had accidentally dug into the burrows of underground creatures, terrifying man-eating monsters that could see in the dark. They had used explosives triggered by movement to trap and kill the monsters and make the mines safe.
There weren’t any of those monsters left, just the occasional set of bones in an abandoned shaft or newly opened mining section. Still, her father had wanted her to know how to build that kind of device, just in case. She silently thanked him for being so thorough and prayed that he was somehow looking after her now, guiding her from wherever the soul went after death.
After her third check, she was relatively sure that there were no pressure or motion switches. She looked around, desperate for a tool to remove the screws bolting the case to the wall of the blower. An idea struck her. She reached up and grabbed her collar, unbuckling it and studying the silver buckle. It looked to be close enough to the correct size.
With hands that were surprisingly steady, she started unscrewing the bolts. She hissed when she tore her fingernail on the sharp metal but ignored the pain and kept going. One bolt. Two bolts. Three bolts. She was working on the fourth when she heard a man screaming in pain. He was so loud she could hear him over the clang and hiss of the compressor. She glanced toward the nearest door. It was closed, but she suspected Terror and Rake were fighting on the other side of it.
Hurry. Hurry. Hurry.
Her nimble fingers twisted the buckle of her collar, loosening that final bolt. She was just about to wiggle it loose when it happened.
A blast.
In a split-second, all the air in the compressor room seemed to suck away from her body. Not even a heartbeat later, it was rushing back at her with such pressure that her lungs felt like they were being crushed under her ribs. The force lifted her from the ground, flinging her across the room and into a metal chute as if she were lighter than a feather. A scorching wave of heat kissed her skin and singed her hair as she screamed into her arm, hiding her face and desperately hoping she wasn’t about to burn alive.
As quickly as the blast began, it stopped. Ears ringing and head throbbing, she pushed up on shaking arms to survey the damage. There was fire and smoke everywhere. Her eyes stung, and she coughed, wondering if it was the smoke or if the gas canister had been damaged in the explosion. The door to the room had been blown clear out of its frame and had landed against the blower unit, denting the side of it.
She spotted the case holding the gas bomb. In a panic, she clambered toward it, crawling over metal shards and stumbling over broken pipes until she reached it. Somehow, the damn thing had survived without being detonated or damaged. There was a slight ding in the case, but that was it.
The timer was still counting down.
Are you kidding me?
In that moment, the reality of her situation became crystal clear.
This bomb wouldn’t be as powerful as the one that had just rocked the ship, but it would be deadlier. It would kill everyone. The gas would be blown into the air and that would be the end of every life on the Valiant.
Cipher.
And Hallie and Dizzy and their babies.
Ella and Naya and their dreams of becoming powerful businesswomen.
Raze, Venom, Menace and the general. Risk. Men. Women. Children. All of them, murdered in the most horrific way, strangled and choked by an invisible assassin
NO.
She remembered her promise to Terror who was likely dead after that explosion.
I’m not going to fuck this up.
She scanned the place where she had been tossed by the bomb and found the glasses. They were a little cracked but still worked when she slid them into place. She brought up theblueprints of the ship and flicked her fingers until she found the closest space vent. There was a cargo bay, a small one meant for medical waste, not far from here. She would have to run faster than she ever had in her life, but she could make it.
Not wasting another second deliberating, she snatched up the explosive case and canister and sprinted out of the compressor room, through the burning doorway and onto the destroyed gangway. There was a hole in front of her, not too wide, and she bravely jumped it, leaping over it and landing on the other side. The metal was hot beneath her feet, and she cried out in pain as her tender soles were burned. She cast a glance on either side of the gangway, hoping to see Terror. She couldn’t see anything but smoke and fire and some sort of strange white foam spewing from broken pipes
Hugging the case to her chest, she sprinted as if she were being chased by some great and evil monster. She ignored the pain in her feet. She ignored the burning ache in her chest. She ignored the throbbing in her head. None of it mattered. If she didn’t reach that cargo bay in time to vent the bomb and gas, she would be dead.