That didn’t keep him from striding up the stairs with determination. It wouldn’t take long before someone else noticed him and McCall on the loose.
“Let’s take the control room,” he added, “then I’ll come back and drag the unconscious guards into it. Or into a nice equipment closet.”
“Right behind you.” McCall stepped past the downed men, her stun gun in hand. She patted down the second guard but didn’t find a second stun gun.
“Glad to have you back there.”
Dash jogged up the long set of stairs to a landing and into a corridor. He came to a T-intersection and turned right, remembering the control room had looked out over the furnace room.
The sound of voices came from around a corner up ahead. Dash paused, debating if he truly wanted to leap out and start spraying blazer bolts. He turned toward McCall, lowering the rifles, and pointed to the stun gun.
She flipped it and handed it to him without a word.
“Thanks,” he mouthed, then handed her one rifle and kept the other.
She gripped it like a club rather than a blazer, and he flashed a quick grin.
As he advanced toward the corner, the voices stopped. Dash imagined them getting some alert from whoever monitored the cameras. He paused before poking his head around the corner and reached out with his mind, trying to touch theirs.
They stood at the end of the corridor in front of the closed door to the control room. Right away, he sensed their alertness. They had received a message that two of the prisoners were heading in their direction.
Dash could only attempt to manipulate one man’s mind at a time, so he picked the one who seemed more concerned, more ready to jerk his rifle up and fire down the corridor. Dash tried to make the man believe he heard a yell from inside the control room and that the door was opening behind him.
A startled oath drifted around the corner, and Dash sensed the man spinning toward the door. Hoping his comrade would also glance back, Dash leaned out. The men were about thirty feet away and already turning back toward him, realizing they had been fooled.
Dash fired twice, grimacing because the stun gun was a short-range weapon, and he doubted its bolts would knock them out from that far down the corridor. They whipped their rifles up, and Dash lunged back around the corner. Orange blazer bolts streaked past, slamming into the metal wall and ricocheting off.
McCall cursed and skittered back. Dash crouched low and leaned out to fire again.
One of the guards leaned against the wall, and the other had dropped to one knee. The stun bolts had hit them, just not with enough power to knock them out. Dash fired again, then jumped out and raced down the corridor toward the men, determined to get close enough to fully drop them.
But the second shots did the job. The men toppled to the floor.
Dash rounded up their rifles and found another stun gun. He handed the new one to McCall as she came up behind him, hoping they continued to only encounter people in twos. Even with his mind tricks, and McCall cheerfully clubbing people in the head, he doubted they could take down more than two at a time.
He stepped over the guards and to the control room door, splaying his fingers on its cool metal surface. He could sense a man inside, not very alert as he sat back in his chair and watched pornography on his netdisc. Dash grunted. They might have been able to engineer a systems failure without bothering with this room at all.
“Can we get in?” McCall whispered.
One of the guards moaned, and she pointed her stun gun at him. Dash hoped to tie them up as soon as he figured out a way to get inside.
He waved at the sensors on the control panel beside the door, just in case it wasn’t locked. Not surprisingly, nothing happened. He tried the palm print. Nothing.
“Can you reach his mind from here?” McCall asked. “Maybe you can trick him into thinking there’s someone at the door.”
“That’s not a bad idea.” He blushed, embarrassed he hadn’t thought of it.
“Assuming there aren’t camera displays in there that show us standing here,” McCall added.
“He’s looking at other kinds of displays.”
Dash rested a hand on the door again and concentrated on reaching the man. He wasn’t sure if there were monitors inside, but he tried to instill the idea that the operator had heard something in the corridor and ought to check on it. Personally. To add urgency, he also tried to suggest the man might be in trouble if something happened while he’d been looking at pornography.
It worked. He surged to his feet, grabbed a stun gun, and ran to the door.
“Watch out,” Dash whispered, “he’ll have a stun gun.”
“You have one too,” McCall whispered back. “And three rifles.”
“Right.” Dash raised the stun gun. The other weapons he slung over his shoulder on their straps.
The door opened, and Dash uttered a harsh, “Don’t,” as the man lifted his stun gun. Dash was aware of McCall, her weapon also pointed at the operator, standing at his side. He liked that. He’d never had a partner as a bounty hunter, and Axton certainly hadn’t filled that role in his more recent job. It was nice having someone he could rely on beside him.
The operator saw the downed guards and lowered his stun gun. Dash snatched it from his hand, then used it on him. As the man toppled, Dash ran over to the glass wall and peered down into the furnace room below. The lighting down there was poor, especially compared to the brightness inside the control room, and it was hard to see people. Eventually, he spotted several men shoveling in coal, and there was James. Good. Dash gave the bright suns gesture, hand to chest, fingers splayed, then, not certain that would be obvious at that distance, just waved.
When he turned back to the room, McCall was pulling one of the unconscious guards through the doorway.
“I’ll do that.” Dash jogged over. “You handle the computer stuff. Especially figuring out how to make that buzzer go off so the workers will shovel in more coal.”
“Got it.” She ran to the banks of monitors and panels full of levers, switches, gauges, and control pads.
The miasma of equipment daunted Dash, especially since the archaic system didn’t look like anything with a holodisplay or help files one could access for advice. Fortunately, McCall appeared less daunted. Her eyes were intense with focus as she scoured the area.
Trusting her to have more of a clue than he, Dash dragged the two guards inside, then ripped strips of material from their uniforms so he could tie them up. It would only take twenty or thirty minutes before their systems cleared the effects of the stuns.
While he was patting them down, he found a grenade in one guard’s utility belt. Standard issue or had the man known he might have to deal with trouble tonight?
Dash pocketed it, figuring he might have a need for it soon.
“Be right back,” he said and headed out to get the other two guards they had knocked out.
McCall, bent over the control panel and already tapping buttons, didn’t acknowledge him. As Dash raced back down the hall, he realized he had never seen her at work on a job. He could easily imagine her forgetting to eat or drink or sleep when engrossed in hunting down a felon.
Dash hoisted one guard over his shoulder, took him to the control room, and was on his way back to the stairs for a second when the murmur of whispered voices drifted to him from farther away. It sounded like more than two people this time. He almost left the man, thinking to run back and barricade the control room, but a familiar person in a green uniform ran into view. Marco. He spotted Dash, ducked back out of sight, then must have realized Dash wasn’t a guard because he came forward again.
“We’re ready to go for the uniforms as soon as the forcefields go out,” Marco whispered, then pointed over his shoulder.
Walters and Jannik leaned out from the shelter of doorways. Walters wore a pained expression and gripped his ribs, as if even skulking about bothered him, but he managed to flash a smile and wave.
A buzz echoed
through the facility, the warning for the coal shovelers to dump more fuel into the fires.
“It should be soon.” Dash didn’t know if it would take minutes or hours for extra electricity to be made, so he hoped he was right.
“Some other prisoners have woken up and are milling around,” Marco added. “They may have caught wind of something.”
“Well, don’t tell them the plan.” Dash hoped nobody would take advantage and pick a fight. With luck, the other prisoners would distract the guards.
Dash waved a farewell and, not wanting to leave McCall alone for long, grabbed the last unconscious guard. As he strode back to the control room, the man thumping heavily over his shoulder, another buzz went off.
By all three sun gods of the trinity, maybe this would work.
Dash imagined prisoners had attempted to break out numerous times and that the guards were experienced at foiling them, so he didn’t want to get cocky envisioning their success—they still had to hope the forcefields would go down with a power outage—but this might be the first time some of the prisoners hadn’t been implanted with that impetus to avoid fighting the guards. Unless other Starseers had been dumped into this hole.
Probably not. Other Starseers had more mental powers to draw upon and wouldn’t likely have allowed themselves to end up in this situation.
Dash forced aside the surge of bitterness and ran into the control room. He glanced to the side, making sure nothing had happened to McCall, and dumped his guard next to the others. He shut the door, then dropped to his knees, tearing strips of clothing for bonds.
A soft click emanated from the door.
“I locked it,” McCall said when he glanced over. “There’ll be an override, I’m sure, but it should buy a few minutes if we’re besieged. I’ve got the buzzer going off periodically, and I shorted out the camera in this room. I’ve figured out how to shut down power in the facility, but it would be easy to flip back on that way, so I’m continuing with my original plan. I’ve also jammed an attempt from upstairs to communicate with us.”
“I’ve been gone for a whole five minutes, and that’s all you’ve managed to do? Really?”
McCall frowned uncertainly at him before her forehead smoothed.
“Sorry, it was sarcasm,” Dash said, realizing she hadn’t gotten his joke right away. “You’re actually quite amazing.”
He had the urge to follow the words with a quick kiss—or maybe not that quick of one—but reminded himself she thought kissing was gross. She also hadn’t shown any romantic interest in him. Unfortunately.
“Oh,” McCall said in response to his compliment. Nothing more.
He sensed that he’d flustered her. Damn, that hadn’t been his intent.
She pointed at a bank of monitors to one side. “You can watch the video feeds and let me know if trouble heads our way. They know something’s up, but I’m hoping they haven’t quite figured out what yet.”
“I’ll keep an eye out.” Dash finished tying the guards and strode to the monitors.
Another buzz blasted into the furnace room, and he imagined the workers down there waving their shovels in irritation. Would those buzzes echo all the way up to the higher levels? Probably. That balcony was open to the furnace room below.
Dash spotted movement on one of the monitors, then snorted. Marco, Walters, and Jannik were skulking through the corridors, pausing, then running, then pausing again and running. As if they were in some medieval castle, darting from shadow to shadow between flickering wall sconces.
A ring came from the control panel near McCall. She pressed a button to silence it as she peered at a display.
“Trouble?” Dash asked.
“Someone is paying attention downstream. They’ve noticed that more electricity than is required for this hour of the night is pouring into the system.”
“And you’re not answering?”
“Only by sending even more power into the grid.” McCall tapped a couple of buttons, then looked toward a live map that Dash couldn’t begin to decipher, other than it seemed to show a network between the domed cities with flashing lights coming on all around them.
“That’s one way of answering, I suppose.” He glanced back at his monitors, then cursed.
A bunch of guards were gathering at the base of the stairs he and McCall had come up. Preparing to storm the control room, he wagered.
On another display, he saw his green-clad allies around a corner from two guards striding in their direction.
Dash grimaced. The Alliance people outnumbered the guards three to two, but they would have those brain stamps to ensure they went along with anything the guards said. They wouldn’t be able to bring themselves to attack.
“Shit, is there any way I can do something to those guards from here?” Dash wished he could use telepathy through a video monitor. “Maybe some androids I can send leaping out of a closet to attack them? Or a mustard gas I can pump through the ventilation system that would leave the guards gagging and puking?” Of course, that would have his people gagging and puking, too, and he needed them to reach the supply room and retrieve survival equipment. “Make that a sedative gas,” he amended, though that would still give their allies a problem.
McCall arched her eyebrows at him. “You read too many space-station thrillers.” She looked toward a map of the facility with a panel of labeled switches under it, then flipped one.
The lights went out in the corridors with the Alliance men and the guards.
Dash grunted. “That might not save them.”
“Sorry, I can’t make mustard gas ooze out of the walls.” Another buzz sounded, and McCall returned to monitoring the grid map of the domes.
A red light flashed on the panel next to her. She nodded, as if all was going according to plan.
Dash hoped so. He looked back to the monitors, but he couldn’t see what was happening in the area where McCall had turned out the lights—he hoped his people were sucking in their stomachs and pressing their backs to the walls as the guards walked past in the dark.
On the display that showed the other guards gathering, Dash noticed two more had joined the group, bringing the total to ten. Those two had brought plastorches.
“I think they know we’ve locked ourselves in here and are planning to force their way in,” Dash said.
“Yeah, the control-room camera is the only one I could tinker with from here.” She pointed to a corner near the ceiling. The camera’s glass lens had been shattered, the housing cut open, and wires dangled free.
“You have a simple but effective style,” Dash said. “I approve.”
“Glad to hear it.”
Dash looked at the labels on the panel by the monitors and found the one that matched up to the bottom of the stairs and the gathering guards. He flicked the switch to turn the lights out on them. It was worth a shot.
McCall quirked an eyebrow but did not comment. She was frowning at lines scrolling past on yet another display. Dash had seen space-base launch facilities with fewer displays and controls than this place.
A flashlight beam appeared on the darkened monitor, followed by three more. These guards were better prepared than the others. They marched up the stairs and would soon reach the control room.
“You’re sure there’s no mustard gas we can fling at them?” Dash asked.
“Sorry.” McCall glanced at the monitor. “Want to look around in here and see if there are flashlights we can use when the power goes out? Did any of those guards have netdiscs?”
“I’ll check.”
Another buzz sounded.
Angry shouts drifted up from below, audible through the glass wall.
A clank sounded at the door. Dash didn’t have to look at the monitors to know the guards were right outside. McCall had locked it, but if they went straight to cutting a hole through it with the torch, it wouldn’t take them long to get in.
Someone knocked.
McCall grunted. “They expect us to answer?”
<
br /> “Maybe they think we’ll believe it’s a food delivery service.” Dash found the netdisc the control-room operator had been using to entertain himself. The naked couple in the pornographic holodisplay popped up. He hastily swiped it aside and located the flashlight application. He noted that there was no connection to any satellites for sys-net access. Not surprising.
A few scrapes and thunks sounded at the door. The guards had already given up on knocking.
“We’re about there,” McCall said. “The breakers in our facility and downstream should start tripping soon.”
“How long until they’ll be able to get power back on in here once it goes out?”
“Not long if they can get into this room. I did see that there’s a backup generator. It requires someone to manually start it up and switch the critical systems over to it. I tried to find a way to deny access, but I couldn’t figure anything out. Sorry.” She glanced back at him. “My specialty is creating search algorithms, not working with hardware.”
“You’re doing great. I’m the one who’s about to fall short.” Dash placed the netdisc beside her, its flashlight beam shining, and stood to face the door with a stun gun in one hand and a rifle in the other. “I don’t think I can keep those guards from getting in. They’ll probably hurl in stun grenades once they cut a hole.”
Or regular grenades, he thought grimly. If one guard had carried such a weapon, others likely would have them too.
But, no, they wouldn’t want to blow up their control room. They shouldn’t hurl explosives through the doorway. But stun grenades would effectively end this prison breakout, at least for Dash and McCall.
“I don’t think they’re going to have time to get us.” She tapped her fingers on the panel. “We do need something to cut with. Have you seen a toolbox?” She looked over and saw his ready stance in front of the door. “Never mind. I’ll look.”
She jogged over to cubbies and a storage locker that looked more like a place for workers to store their lunches and jackets than a receptacle for toolboxes.
“What do you need to cut?” Dash grimaced as the soft whine of the plastorch emanated through the door. “And which controls over there deal with the generator?”
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