Fractured Stars

by Lindsay Buroker

  “A hole in the glass wall so we can get out that way.” She glanced curiously at him, then pointed. “The generator controls are on that panel over there.”

  Dash noted that, an idea forming in his mind, but his gaze was drawn to the glass wall. “It’s thirty feet down to the floor.”

  “There’s a big furnace and boiler below us—I was looking at it earlier. I think we can lower ourselves down to the boiler, then clamber down the side of it to the floor without a rope.”

  Dash was somewhat bemused that she’d been planning this from the moment they’d walked into the facility. Bemused but pleased.

  “I’ll—”

  An alarm wailed, cutting him off. The lights went out, including every monitor and indicator on the control panel. Everything beyond the glass wall went dark too.

  Someone’s curses emanated through the door.

  “That’s it,” McCall said. “I’m guessing it’ll take a half hour for them to get the main power back on once they get in here but a lot less time to fire up the backup generator.”

  “They’re still cutting through the door. I can hear the plastorch.”

  “I didn’t get a chance to find us a torch.”

  “Allow me.” Dash turned from the door and toward the glass wall, slinging a rifle off his shoulder. “Stand over here behind me.”

  She found her way over to him, patting his side, then stepped back. Not sure how thick that glass would be, Dash tapped his trigger once instead of trying a sustained blast. He angled it so his bolt wouldn’t ricochet back, just in case it was a lot thicker than he expected—or made from impenetrable Glastica.

  The orange bolt briefly lit up the control room as it burned a small hole, but the thick glass did not shatter. He shifted to sustained firing, as if he were using a plastorch instead of a rifle, and carefully cut a hole large enough for them to escape through. Fortunately, he made faster progress than the guards at the door, though from the smell of melting metal, Dash knew they were also progressing.

  The circle of glass fell outward, and he winced as it struck something—the boiler McCall had mentioned—and shattered. Loudly.

  Alarmed shouts came up from below, reminding him that dozens of workers were in the furnace room. He thought of the thug who’d picked a fight with him in the bay and hoped nobody would impede them.

  “The new exit, my lady,” Dash said, slinging the rifle over his shoulder again.

  McCall moved to the glass wall and paused, probably testing the edge of the hole to see how hot it was. Dash found he could make out more than expected once his eyes adjusted to the dark. A couple of furnace doors were open down below, the fires within providing a flickering orange light.

  Several of the workers were visible, staring up at them. They weren’t the Alliance men who were supposed to be out there. Where had James gone?

  “I’ll go ahead of you,” Dash said, worried their fellow prisoners down there would impede them rather than help, “but let me do something first.”

  He pulled out the grenade and thumbed the top open. A tiny display offered an option for instant detonation or a countdown of up to fifteen minutes.

  Dash tapped in the maximum time and, hoping he wouldn’t end up bringing down the entire facility on their heads, placed it where he thought it would help the most.

  11

  McCall clambered slowly down from the hole in the glass wall, barely able to see the boiler below or any handholds in the dark. She had the operator’s netdisc with the flashlight program, but she needed both hands for climbing.

  Her hand slipped, and she smashed her knuckles on some metal protrusion. She bit back a string of curse words that wanted to escape. Since this had been her idea, she shouldn’t complain.

  A soft, “Oomph,” sounded, Dash jumping the last few feet and landing on the floor.

  McCall glimpsed his shadowy form twenty feet below. She wasn’t ready to jump yet.

  As she groped for a lower handhold, the grumbles of nearby men floated up to her.

  “Who is that? He’s got rifles.”

  “…take them, break out.”

  “…against forcefields?”

  “Power’s out. Forcefields might be too.”

  McCall found a handhold and descended a couple of feet. Her boot touched the boiler and she angled her route so she could step onto its rounded top. Rivets in the metal helped her find a place she could settle her weight while she figured out how to get the rest of the way down.

  A grinding noise came from the control room up above. Were the guards through the door yet? McCall hoped none of them knew how to turn on the backup generator and that they would have to wait until the operator woke from his stun. But she wouldn’t bet on it.

  “That’s the law enforcer,” someone below said loudly.

  “Not to rush you, McCall,” Dash whispered up, “but we’re going to have a problem if we stick around.”

  “Coming.” She dropped to her belly and slithered over the side of the boiler. How far from the floor was she now? Could she risk dropping off? If she broke her ankle, she doubted those Alliance people would carry her more than a hundred miles. Dash might try, but that would be an awful burden to put on him.

  A blazer bolt streaked through the air, and McCall almost lost her grip on the boiler.

  “Stay back,” Dash growled, his voice cold. “You want to escape, go right ahead. But you’re not getting my weapons.”

  “You got three rifles. What do you need them all for?”

  “Friends.”

  “Other law enforcers?”

  “Back off.”

  Clothing rustled and boots hammered the floor. Another weapon fired—this was the whine of a stun gun.

  McCall couldn’t see the floor in the dim lighting, but she made herself let go. Her heart tried to fling itself into her throat when she dropped farther than expected.

  She landed behind Dash—hard. Pain erupted from the soles of her feet, and she fell in an awkward roll. Her shoulder clunked against the bottom of the boiler as Dash sprang away, firing the stun gun.

  Someone roared, and McCall glimpsed a shovel swinging toward Dash’s head. Three people were already on the floor unconscious, but every worker out there had decided to attack him. Where were their Alliance allies?

  Ignoring the twinges of pain, McCall scrambled to her feet and ran to the end of the boiler as she pulled out her own stun gun. In the poor light, their attackers were indistinct blurs of shadow, but Dash kept firing, the muzzle of his stun gun flashing white with each shot. Sometimes he hit men, and sometimes he did not.

  McCall fired her own stun gun at anyone far enough from Dash that she didn’t risk hitting him.

  A thud sounded, and she envisioned a shovel hitting him in the head.

  “Dash?” She stepped forward.

  “I’m fine,” he barked over his shoulder, firing again. “Stay back there behind cover.”

  Another thud sounded, and someone with a shovel moved in front of the light from a furnace. Was that one of the Alliance men? Maybe they had an ally, after all.

  McCall and Dash dropped three more men with their stun guns, and the furnace room grew quiet.

  “James?” Dash asked the only other figure still standing.

  “Yup.” The man waved his shovel. “That’s me. Handsome and charming like nobody else here. Want to follow me? I know the way to where Marco and the others should be getting supplies.” He looked toward McCall. “Glad you got the power off. How long will it be out?”

  A clank and a shout came from the control room above them.

  “Not long,” McCall admitted glumly.

  A shadow moved behind the glass wall, and she glimpsed flashlights inside the room.

  “Hurry. The sooner we get out, the sooner we can show your handsome charm to the critters on the tundra out there.” Dash waved for the Alliance man to lead the way.

  “Now doesn’t that sound appealing?” James ran toward an exit.

  M
cCall chased after him at full speed, with Dash matching her pace. They were running out of time, and they had barely started.

  “Do you have a flashlight?” James asked after stumbling over a stunned man on the floor.

  “Here.” McCall hated giving up the netdisc, but she handed it to Dash, who gave it to their new leader.

  Fortunately, the corridors were empty. They heard shouts on the levels above them, but James knew the facility well and seemed to be picking a circuitous route. He led them to an access shaft with a ladder leading up that would bypass the elevator, but he paused before starting up it.

  “There’s usually a forcefield to keep us from going up there.” James shined the flashlight into the darkness. “Any way to tell if it’s up?”

  “It shouldn’t be right now,” McCall said, “but it’s not going to take them long to get the generator up, at which point, all the forcefields could come back on.”

  “In other words, hurry up.” Dash pointed his stun gun up the shaft. “We’ll catch you if you get zapped and fall.”

  James grimaced, and McCall wondered if more than zapping happened to those who touched a forcefield here.

  “Never mind. I’ll go.” Dash pocketed his stun gun, jumped, and pulled himself up the rungs.

  James shined the flashlight up into the shaft. McCall watched Dash and held her breath. She didn’t think the forcefields could be up, but what if she was wrong? What if they ran on a different system from the lights?

  “Almost to the top,” Dash called down.

  Footfalls sounded in the corridor they had just come down.

  James cursed. “Here, let me give you a boost. McCall, was it?”

  “Yeah.” McCall stuffed her stun gun into her pocket, glad the scratchy uniforms had pockets.

  “That’s a weird name.” He knelt and made a basket with his hands.

  “My mother picked it during her historical-romance-novel reading phase.” McCall stuck her shoe into his grip. “Apparently, Old Earth Scottish heroes were popular for a while. She named my sister McKenzie.”

  James boosted her up so she could reach the rungs. “That’s a pretty name.”

  “McCall is weird, and McKenzie is pretty?” She clambered up the shaft after Dash. “That figures.”

  James didn’t respond. The footfalls had grown much louder. Guards were definitely heading their way.

  McCall hurried up the rungs, afraid James wouldn’t have time to jump up before they appeared. It was dark in the shaft above, so she couldn’t tell if Dash had made it to an exit. At least she hadn’t heard any zaps.

  “Here,” Dash whispered from her side, and she realized she had reached a spot to get off the ladder.

  Her knuckles hit cement above her. They couldn’t climb any higher.

  As Dash helped her off the ladder and onto a solid floor, blazer fired squealed below. James screamed in pain.

  McCall gasped and stuck her head back into the ladder well.

  James had made it part way up the ladder, but crimson and orange bolts slammed into his lower body. He lost his grip on the rungs and tumbled back down to the floor.

  McCall yanked out her stun gun as more bolts hammered into his body, but there was nobody in sight she could shoot.

  “Dash,” she blurted, not sure what she wanted him to do.

  Jump back down and help? He would only be shot too.

  Dash pulled her back and leaned forward, reaching for the rungs.

  Then the lights turned on. A bzzzt of energy came from the ladder well, and motes sparkled briefly in the air as a forcefield stretched across the shaft.

  “Damn it.” Dash slammed his fist against his thigh.

  McCall leaned forward and glimpsed James writhing in pain, scorch marks all over his body, before Dash grabbed her and pulled her away.

  “Come,” he whispered. “Before they see us.”

  Horrified numbness filled her, but she let him haul her down a drab gray corridor identical to others they had run through. Somehow, she hadn’t grasped that this prison break—this whole prison situation—could turn deadly. Maybe because all she ever did was find criminals from the safety of her ship; she didn’t go down and start firefights with them. She never had to deal with the realities of killing and death in person.

  Dash turned and jogged toward an open door, his stun gun firmly in his grip.

  Though she struggled with an overwhelming sense of defeat—how were they going to get past more forcefields now that the power was back on?—she made herself pull out her stun gun to help him if he needed it.

  “It’s the Alliance boys,” Dash whispered, relief in his voice. “Marco, it’s us.”

  Dash poked his head into the open doorway, then immediately backed out. Marco, Walters, and Jannik pushed out a laundry cart full of fur-lined parkas, leggings, boots, and hats. A couple of boxes of ration bars lay on top of the pile, along with a couple of the compasses Dash had asked for. McCall supposed finding water outside on the snow-covered tundra wouldn’t be a problem.

  “Look at everything we got,” Walters blurted, his eyes shining.

  “Good work.” Dash hesitated. “James didn’t make it. We have to hope the others are waiting at the stairs and haven’t run into trouble too.”

  The gleam vanished from Walters’ eyes, and Marco and Jannik swore.

  “Sorry,” Dash said. “Can you lead us out?”

  “I can,” Marco said, “but do you have a way to deal with the forcefield at the stairs?” He glanced upward at the lights, then looked dubiously at the rifles Dash had collected.

  “We may have to come up with something creative when we get there,” Dash said.

  “Oh.” Marco looked at his Alliance buddies, their expressions all equally concerned.

  McCall glanced into the supply room, wondering if something inside might help. All she saw were racks of winter clothing and weapons, the latter in a vault and protected by a forcefield. She didn’t see a way to turn it off. She couldn’t help but feel herself a failure for not coming up with a way to take that generator offline.

  She and Dash let the men with the cart lead, and they set a fast pace. Shouts continued to echo through the facility, some not far off, and McCall feared they would have to engage in another firefight to even reach the forcefield.

  She glanced at Dash. “How long until that grenade you set goes off?”

  He grunted. “You don’t miss much, do you?”

  “It’s hard to miss a lit display in a pitch black room. But I didn’t see where you put it. Just in the control room somewhere?”

  “Under the—”

  “There are the stairs,” one of the men blurted. “We’re almost out and—ack!” He ducked down behind his cart.

  “Relax,” a woman said, one of five people stepping into view at the end of the corridor. It was Rose and the rest of the Alliance team. “It’s just us, but we have a problem.”

  Rose looked toward McCall, and she couldn’t keep from wincing.

  “I know, the forcefield,” McCall said. “They were down when the power was out, but they got a generator online, and it—”

  A distant boom sounded, and the cement floor trembled. The lights flickered several times, then went out.

  “Huh,” Dash said.

  “Where exactly did you put that grenade?” McCall asked.

  “In a cabinet under that panel for the generator controls that you pointed to.”

  “Ah. Good thinking.”

  “It happens every now and then,” Dash said. “Mostly by accident.”

  “The forcefield is down,” someone said from the darkness ahead. “Get this cart past it and up the stairs. Now, move. Go, go.”

  “Never time to savor your victories,” Dash said.

  McCall thought of the man she’d seen gunned down and didn’t know if she could consider this a victory.

  As soon as McCall stepped out of the warm underground facility and onto the icy landing pad, she wanted to turn around and go back
in. The snow had stopped, but frigid air blasted her, freezing the cilia in her nostrils and all the way down to her lungs. The chill burrowed right through the cold-weather clothing she and the others had donned on the stairs. Would the gear be sufficient for a days-long trek in these temperatures?

  The sky was clear, the stars as brilliant and abundant as if they were looking out the Star Surfer’s porthole. McCall would much rather have been aboard her ship and admiring them from there. Specifically, from the sauna in her lavatory. It had a lovely porthole and was deliciously hot.

  She peered around the landing pad, relieved when she didn’t see Scipio’s broken form lying in the snow. Nor did she see any frozen dog bodies. That didn’t necessarily mean he and Junkyard were safe, but at least Axton hadn’t hurled them out a hatch and flown off on his own.

  He wasn’t a pilot, Dash had said. She hoped that proved true and that he had needed Scipio. And that Scipio had found ways to delay or even defeat him. It would be convenient if her ship was in orbit overhead right now, Scipio in NavCom, waiting for her to find a way to make contact.

  “Let’s march,” Rose said, sounding more like a military commander than a professor. “They’ll figure out how to get the lights on before long. We need to get long gone by then. Who’s got the compass?”

  “Here, ma’am.” Marco waved his mittened hand.

  Next to him, Walters, now bundled in a parka and snow pants, leaned over, gripping his knees with gloved hands. He straightened as soon as he noticed people looking in his direction. Nobody said anything, but McCall wondered if his injuries would cause trouble for the group on the march.

  “The closest city is in Dome Seven,” Rose reminded everyone, “and it’s across the tundra and over the mountains. Lead the way, Marco.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Dome Seven doesn’t have a space port, does it?” someone asked. “We’ll have to buy a train ticket to another dome?”

  “That’s right,” Rose said. “We’ll either sneak aboard or send a message so someone can come pick us up.” She waved toward the starry sky.