by Daniel Young
A different guard attacked from her left. She lunged for him and grabbed the weapon that hung from his belt. She yanked it off its hook and turned it on its owner. She fired into his stomach, but the other two guards were already moving in from the other side.
Jackson dove between them. They closed on either side of him, exactly the way he intended. At least they left Lana alone. They tried to grab him, so he took a page out of her playbook. He let them get right up against him. One of them pulled a weapon and jammed it into his ribs.
He counted down the seconds. The device buzzed against his uniform. Quick as light, he seized both soldiers, jerked himself out of their hold, and shoved them together as the weapon went off. One of them went down, and the other whirled around to adjust his fire.
Jackson clamped his fingers around the man’s wrist and spun the guard backward. The weapon unloaded a second time, and Jackson directed the blast toward the first soldier, straightening up from where Lana had knocked him down.
The guard’s head cracked back, hit the wall, and down he went. That left the soldier in Jackson’s grasp and the one still trying to subdue Lana. But Jackson’s adversary proved stronger than he looked. When he realized Jackson wasn’t going down anytime soon, he exploded into action.
He wrenched himself out of Jackson’s grasp and struggled to turn around. He drew a second weapon from some concealed place and pointed both at Jackson’s head. Jackson didn’t have time to get out of the way, so he ducked.
The weapons went off. The pulse ruffled his hair as he buckled to the floor. He came to rest on his knees, looking at the soldier’s thighs. He had to neutralize this guy somehow, and he didn’t see how he could get either weapon away from him.
Liri still towered over Kwex, firing away without end. Lana jabbed out her foot and stuck it behind her adversary’s leg. She smacked both palms flat on the soldier’s chest, whipped his foot up, and toppled him backward across her knee. She struck down hard, with one hand on his chest and one on his hips. She cracked him across her leg, and the guy went down with an ear-splitting scream.
That left Jackson’s attacker. With no weapon and no options, Jackson took a gamble and kicked out. He nailed his heel against his enemy’s hip. The man pivoted, but only a few inches. He started to right himself, and Jackson took his chance.
He braced his legs and lunged. He tackled the soldier around the middle and sent his enemy stumbling forward. The guard took a few unsteady paces and tripped directly into the path of Liri’s weapon.
She didn’t see him coming. She was too busy hammering Kwex with hundreds of shots. The soldier blundered into her way, and her shots hit him instead.
Liri backed away. Her shots didn’t harm Kwex at all. The black cocoon lay where it had fallen, completely undamaged.
Liri pointed her device at Roy, who stared at the scene with enormous eyes. As soon as she released him, he lunged out of his chair. “Captain! What the hell…?”
“Don’t ask questions. Come on.”
The two sisters hustled Jackson and Roy out of the cell. Jackson gathered up as many weapons as he could see and pushed two into Roy’s hands. Roy wrinkled his nose at them. “How do you work this thing?”
Gunfire exploded down the corridor the minute Lana showed her hooded face outside. She backed against Jackson when he tried to get out of the cell. One backward glance showed him Kwex starting to rise, now that Liri no longer had him pinned down with weapons fire.
“Go!” Liri yelled over the noise. “We have to get out of here!”
“Take cover!” Lana yelled back. “They’re all over the place.”
Kwex lifted off the floor. He stood straight up now, and started to glide toward the party. Liri gave another frantic push from behind. “Get out of here, Lana! To hell with the guards!”
Pulses ricocheted down the corridor. One of them struck the door. It swung back and smashed Lana in the face. “To hell with the guards, she says! Let’s see you go out there!”
Jackson cast one more panicked look over his shoulder. Kwex loomed tall and terrible before his eyes. If Liri pounding him with all those shots didn’t keep him down, Jackson dreaded finding out what Kwex would do when he recaptured the party. If he captured Liri and Lana, no one would be coming around to rescue Jackson and Roy a second time.
He grabbed Roy by the sleeve. “Come on! All together!”
He took hold of the door handle with one hand and gripped his weapon in the other. Staying in the cell wasn’t an option anymore, and that left one alternative. He swung the door open, and thousands of shots peppered it from the other side. It gave the friends a few inches to get out into the corridor.
Liri crammed up against Jackson from behind. Lana sandwiched the group from in front. He swung the door all the way open, and the soldiers’ fire from outside ripped into the hinges. The upper one gave way, and the door dangled by the lower hinge.
In half a second, more shots from outside tore the door completely off the wall. It came away in Jackson’s hands and teetered toward Roy. Roy braced his palm against it, and the four friends staggered into the corridor.
“Go!” Jackson bellowed. “Go!”
Liri smashed herself against Roy. She fired behind the door, while Lana laid down a carpet of fire in front. Jackson and Roy strained their arms, holding the door upright while all four crawled into the corridor.
Jackson wasn’t sure this could actually work, but as soon as they left the cell, the Legion’s assault stopped Kwex from reaching them. A curtain of charges cut him off from following the fugitives.
Jackson didn’t see where Lana was leading them. He didn’t care, as long as these sisters got him and Roy out of the jail and away from Kwex.
Thumps and bangs echoed through the building. They ricocheted off the walls and zinged back on the party. One of them clipped Lana in the shoulder. She spun around, roaring in fury.
“Shoot!” Jackson thundered in Roy’s ear. “Return their fire, for Christ’s sake!”
“How?” Roy yelled back. “How am I supposed to shoot when I can’t even see them?”
“Shoot at the walls, genius!” Jackson shouted back. “Deflect your shots off the walls and ceiling the same way they are. We aren’t getting out of here the way we are.”
The dawn of understanding lit up Roy’s countenance. He scanned the corridor in front of them—the part he could see. He went through a rapid mental calculation, checking the ceiling angle and the corners.
Still supporting the detached door with one arm, he trained his weapon toward the ceiling. He tightened his grip on the device to fire. Nothing happened. He pressed it. Then he swiveled it around and frowned at it.
Before Jackson could say anything, Liri jabbed her arm over Roy’s shoulder. She poked her finger at his weapon and tapped a button on the side. His eyes flew open, and a huge grin spread across his face. He nodded.
Liri went back to what she was doing, and Roy aimed his weapon again. This time, he fired it at the upper wall where it intersected the ceiling. The thing erupted and thumped in Jackson’s ear.
With another weapon defending their retreat, the enemy attack coming from behind the door faded, but only slightly. Now came the hard part—getting the hell out of here.
Windowless cells lined the corridor. A single door at the far end offered the only possible exit, but Lana didn’t go there. She inched toward one of the cells. Jackson tried to pull her away. “Not there!”
She ignored him until he finally stuck his mouth right next to her ear. “Not there! There has to be another way!”
She paid no attention until she hauled the friends right up to the entrance.
“This can’t be the way out!” Jackson hollered. “We’ll be trapped in there.”
She shook her head, but she didn’t turn around. “We’re inside the Guard Post. The Legion has the jail surrounded.” She pointed her chin toward the end of the corridor. “They’ll expect us to go that way.”
“They’ll expect
it because it’s the only way out.”
She took another device from her pocket. All these devices looked the same to Jackson, but what did he care so long as it worked? She used it to unlock the cell, and burst inside under a devastating barrage from behind.
Jackson hauled Liri inside. He and Roy crammed the loose door against the threshold. “We can’t hold this long! Whatever you’re gonna do, do it quick.”
Lana sneered at him. “Keep your shirt on. I didn’t come here to become a prisoner in your place.”
She squatted down next to a single chair planted in the middle of the room, and placed her weapon on the ground. It looked so small and insignificant. Jackson didn’t see how it could possibly get them out of this death trap.
She did something to it, and it started buzzing. It vibrated against the floor. Lana rushed Jackson and collided with him. She almost pushed him back into the corridor, into the line of the Legion’s fire.
Liri charged Roy. The two sisters flattened themselves against Jackson and Roy as the weapon exploded with a ground-shaking concussion. The room detonated.
Lana seized Jackson by the jacket. “Come on! Drop the door and run!”
Jackson caught a glimpse of the room. A massive crater gaped in the middle of the floor. Liri and Lana sprang toward it. Lana sat down on the rim while Liri gazed into the pit.
Jackson hesitated to let go of the door with the Legion right outside, but Lana showed no such qualms. She tucked her weapons into her clothes and pushed off. She dropped into the void.
Liri cast one last glance at Jackson and Roy. “If you’re coming, you better come now. You won’t get another chance.”
She jumped off and sailed out of sight. Jackson and Roy exchanged glances. At the same instant, they both released their hold on the door, raced across the room, and jumped.
7
Jackson soared through pitch darkness, expecting to splatter to a pulp at any second. Half a second later, he landed against something smooth and tilted steeply into a slide.
His fall carried him for what seemed like miles. Pretty soon, the incline relaxed and swept him upward into a horizontal tunnel. He started to slow down when he collided with a huge pile of what looked like rubble.
Liri and Lana picked themselves up not far away. They brushed themselves off and removed their hoods to look around them. Jackson got to his feet as Roy careened down the passage and banged to a halt.
Lights illuminated the landscape from a black ceiling high overhead. From what Jackson could tell, the landscape consisted of mountains of rough, round boulders of something solid. He couldn’t distinguish what they were at first glance.
Roy straightened up and adjusted his neck inside his collar. “Smashing. Let’s do it again.”
Liri strode over to Jackson. Her grey eyes shone through her skin, which refracted the light in a queer, rubbery gel. “My debt is paid. You’re free to go your way. I wish you well. Many blessings on you.”
She repeated the same words that Woolzi used, but she made them sound sarcastic and mocking. Jackson started to suspect the expression might not be a blessing on Keter at all, but more of an insult in the same way humans used the term “Good luck.”
Liri turned to leave. Lana fell in at her side, and the sisters exchanged a few words that Jackson couldn’t hear.
“Hey!” Roy called after them. “Where are we, anyway?”
“The rubbish dump,” Lana replied over her shoulder. “That chute carries the rubbish from the Guard Post to here.”
“Well, how the hell are we supposed to get out of here?” Roy bellowed.
The sisters didn’t answer. They walked away, going somewhere. Roy glanced around and then at Jackson. “Do you suppose we ought to follow ‘em? Looks like they know a way out of here.”
Before Jackson could reply, another smash of gunfire ripped through the underground chamber. It came from the shadows. At the same moment, a dozen racers zoomed out of nowhere. They stuttered shots against the floor and sent the boulders of trash flying.
Liri and Lana bolted back to where Jackson and Roy stood. “Well?” Roy demanded. “Many blessings to you, too.”
Liri spun around. She ran backward, firing at the racers, but lost her footing and stumbled into Jackson. He grabbed her Keter Legion uniform and hauled her after him, floundering through acres of trash.
The only way out was back toward the chute. No way could the party climb that thing. He stumbled in search of some escape, but the racers streamed around the fugitives and showered them with shots. Jackson tried to dodge, and ran into more racers closing from behind.
He veered toward the chute, even though he knew it was useless. Roy and Lana fired over their shoulders, but the racers only evaded. They moved too fast.
A brutal smash pounded the floor a few feet away from Jackson. It pulverized the rubbish, and the boulders of whatever sailed in a fountain around the party’s heads. Jackson ran the other way, but Liri stopped him.
She barreled into him from the left and bulldozed him toward the place where the shot landed. “There! Get inside!”
“What?” he hollered. “Are you crazy?”
“Get in!” she roared. “Now!”
Lana leaped to the spot. She dove into the trash and vanished. Jackson hesitated a second longer. What the hell. He plunged in after her, with Roy and Liri right behind him.
The friends burrowed into the hill of trash. Fortunately for everyone involved, whatever these boulders were kept the trash contained. The experience wasn’t all that different from crawling into a mound of rocks.
The boulders weren’t as heavy as rock, either. Jackson had no trouble burrowing under them. He kept bumping into Lana’s heels as she weaseled her way deeper into the mountain.
Stifling heat suffocated him, but with endless blasts still going on outside, he didn’t have any trouble digging deeper into the hill.
He tried to crawl faster to overtake Lana. He wanted to ask her what her grand plan was to get away from the racers, but she didn’t stop crawling. Every time he got near her, she worked her way farther forward. For all he knew, she was planning to set up a permanent home here.
Movement from behind told him Liri and Roy were still with them, but there didn’t seem to be any end to this crawling. Where would Lana stop?
A second later, Jackson broke out into fresh air—or as fresh as he could expect in a rubbish dump. Lana shook herself and straightened her uniform. She was wearing her hood. The mask made her look alien and strange, but not as strange as her real face.
Her goggles regarded him from a featureless face. “What are you staring at?”
“Why do your people wear those hoods? Why do you keep your heads covered all the time?”
“Our skin doesn’t protect us from the sun’s ultraviolet radiation. It oxidizes our blood and makes it break down.”
“There’s no sunlight down here,” he pointed out.
She ripped the hood off. “I only put it on so I didn’t have to carry it through the hill. I don’t need it down here.”
Jackson studied her queer features. “You look almost human.”
She curled her lip at him in disgust. “We are human, fool. We are the original humans. How do you think humans reached Earth? Keter colonized it millennia ago.”
Jackson’s eyebrows flew up. “What makes you think that?”
“The whole story is in our historical archives. We all know humans from Earth colonized Zenith before you became an independent republic. What you don’t know is that Keterans traveled to Earth first. You wouldn’t even exist without Keter.”
He studied her transparent skin. “If that’s true, why do you look so different from us?”
She snorted. “You’re no scientist, are you? The Earth atmosphere was toxic to the mitochondria in our cells. It killed all our native mitochondria and left Earthlings exposed to become symbionts for native mitochondria. The new strain made your skin opaque.”
“If you know all that
and if you’re right that we’re the same species, why doesn’t your government answer Zenith’s requests for diplomatic relations? We could have been allies all these years, but you won’t even talk to us. We never even knew what species you were, because no one from Keter would communicate with us.”
“Keter has no government, stupid,” she returned. “There is no one here for your precious Zenith to communicate with.”
“That’s impossible. How can you have a Legion without a government? Someone must be in charge.”
She snorted again and turned away. “You have a lot to learn, chump. Keter isn’t Zenith. People and groups do what they please here. They fight who they want to fight and make friends with whoever they want to make friends with. They trade and war and make peace as they please.”
“What about the Legion? Who runs it, if no one is in charge?”
“No one runs it and everyone runs it. Whoever controls it, controls it. It changes hands every year, or sometimes every month. No one can ever be sure who the Legion will attack or who they’ll help, but you can be certain it isn’t any form of government. Government doesn’t exist on Keter.”
Just then, Roy and Liri crawled out of the trash pile. Liri strode past Jackson to follow her sister. “You better come with us. We’ll show you a way out of here, and then you can go on your way…wherever you’re going.” She nodded toward the racers, who still bombarded the trash heap near the chute. They concentrated their fire on the place where the fugitives had crawled into the pile. “We don’t want to be down here when they figure out we aren’t under there anymore.”
She sauntered after her sister, and in a minute, she disappeared into darkness. Jackson checked on Roy. “You all right?”
Roy nodded toward the sisters. “We better go with ‘em. Wherever they’re going, they must know a way out of here.”
“Suits me.”
Liri’s footsteps led them into another dim tunnel big enough for Jackson and Roy to walk upright. In a minute, it opened into another landscape like the rubbish dump, except that this one was open to the sky.