by G J Ogden
“Doc, I hope you got what you needed here, because we have to go,” said Hallam.
The scientist was gathering up various items from Falken’s desk and shoving them into a satchel. The bag had a picture of a bonsai tree with the words “All Valley Karate Championship, ‘84” written around it.
“I have almost everything I need,” said Dr. Rand, fervently stuffing items into the bag. Falken then unplugged a handmade electronic gadget from a different computer on her desk and handed it to the scientist. Dr. Rand looked relieved that the hacker hadn’t forgotten the item, and placed it in the bag alongside the other items.
“What don’t you have, Doc?” replied Hallam, noticing that Cad Rikkard seemed to be close to completing whatever he was doing.
“A ship,” said Dr. Rand, slinging the satchel over her shoulder and meeting Hallam’s eyes. “For this to work, I need to retrofit these components into a vessel that is equipped with one of my adapted self-bridging drive systems. That ship is currently outside on the landing pad, being reclaimed by its former owner.”
Hallam cursed again and pressed his knuckles to his chin, racking his brain for a plan, but all he could think about at that moment was surviving.
“We’ll have to figure that out later, Doc,” Hallam said, handing one of the metal cases to Dakota. Now was not the time for machismo, he realized. Then he turned back to Falken. “But we’re all dead anyway, unless Falken can get us out of here.”
A sequence of solid thumping sounds resonated through the mezzanine level. To Hallam, it sounded like relays closing and opening. Then Falken finished working on her computer and turned to him. “There, the elevator systems are initializing. It may take a few minutes before it comes back online, though.”
“We may not have a few minutes,” said Hallam, noticing that Cad Rikkard was no longer visible on the security feed. Both fighters had also gone, so that only the curious container remained on the landing pad. “Where the hell did he go?” said Hallam, frowning at the screen.
“Let’s not wait around to find out,” said Dakota, ushering Dr. Rand ahead of her. “We need to get that elevator door open.”
Hallam followed Dakota and the others down the winding metal staircase and along the dark, dusty corridor of the old mining facility. He set the case down and threw open the elevator’s external safety gate before hammering the call button. However, the elevator still appeared to be without power.
“The control components may have corroded,” said Dr. Rand, yanking open a service panel. The insides were covered in spider webs, and an acrid, burnt electronic smell filtered out. Dr. Rand reached carefully inside and pulled out a circuit board, which, even to Hallam’s inexpert eyes, looked obviously fried. Dr. Rand then glanced up at Falken with hopeful eyes. “I don’t suppose you carry any spares?”
The young hacker just shook her head. “We could maybe fix it, though?” she offered, kneeling down beside the scientist. “It only looks like a few of the surface-mount components are damaged. I’ve got stuff that could replace them.”
An electronic hum interrupted then, followed by Cad Rikkard’s voice, sounding muffled and distant. Falken pulled a small dataphone out of her pocket and held it up to Hallam.
“I relayed the external comm feed to this,” she said, waiting for Hallam to take the device. “Maybe you two can still work things out?”
“There’s no ‘working things out’ with Cad Rikkard,” Hallam replied, taking the dataphone off Falken. “But I’ll keep him talking for as long as I can while you two fix that elevator.”
Falken nodded and hurried off, racing back up the flight of stairs to the mezzanine. Hallam turned back to Dr. Rand, who was still cleaning out and generally inspecting the elevator control panel.
“Can you fix it, Doc?” asked Hallam, hoping that if there was ever a moment when the genius scientist could turn water into wine, this would be it.
“The circuit board is not badly damaged, but how quickly it can be repaired, I do not know,” Dr. Rand replied while continuing to work. “However, I may be able to bypass the controls entirely and call the elevator manually.”
“What can we do?” asked Dakota, who looked as on-edge as Hallam felt.
“Stall Cad Rikkard for as long as you can,” said Dr. Rand with an unusually chilling solemnity. “And find out what he has placed outside the door.”
Hallam nodded and both he and Dakota raced through the maze of corridors back to the slab-like door to the landing pad.
“I hope you’re sitting comfortably, Mr. Knight,” said the voice of Cad Rikkard through the dataphone. “Because I’m going to have a little fun before I blow you to pieces.”
Then Alexis Black’s inappropriately cheerful voice added, “Oh, and thanks for looking after my ship, and for filling up the tank.”
They reached the door and Dakota hauled back the enormous bolts that were sealing it shut.
“Why the hell are you still bothering us, Rikkard?” Hallam said into the dataphone, hoping that antagonizing the man would motivate him to keep talking for longer, to make sure he got in the last word. “Just how many merc jobs do you expect to land once all the bridge worlds collapse? Stop being a fool. Let us do our jobs and fix this!”
Dakota hauled the massive steel door open and stepped out into the snow. Hallam followed, bracing himself against the icy breeze. Then he spotted the sky-trails of the two mercenary fighters, circling around the mountain.
“You think you’re so special, don’t you?” Cad spat back as the fighters looped back around and began to fly toward the mountain. “Doyle’s intransigence and arrogance are the real reasons for these anomalies. He kept the problem hidden. But now that I’ve killed him and exposed his secret, a galaxy’s worth of the most brilliant minds are free to find a solution to the mess your precious scientist created. No one needs Rand or the Darkspace Renegades anymore.”
Dakota was now knelt down beside the device, cautiously checking it over, but the scowl on her face suggested she still had no idea what it was.
“And what if you’re wrong?” said Hallam, eyes locked on to the approaching fighters. “You kill us, and you just condemn yourself as well. That doesn’t make you better than me, and that’s what you really care about, isn’t it? It makes you weak and small-minded. Kill me, and you prove me right. Kill me and you prove that you’re inferior.”
The channel went dead for several seconds, during which time Hallam hoped that Cad Rikkard was having a moment of pause. However, when the mercenary eventually answered, it was clear that vengeance still blinded the man.
“Enough talk,” Cad Rikkard spat back. “We’ll soon see who is superior, when you’re a cloud of atoms and I’m still soaring above you, victorious.”
Dakota cursed then shot up and grabbed Hallam’s shoulders. “It’s a nuke!” she said, eyes wide and wild. “He’s rigged up one of the nuclear warheads that he stole as a bomb. We have to go, right now!”
Hallam took one last look up at the two fighters closing in on them, then threw the dataphone into the snow and raced back inside the lair, hauling the steel door shut behind him. However, if Dakota was right and Rikkard had rigged up a nuke, the door would do little to protect them. Their only hope of escape was the elevator, assuming Dr. Rand could even get it working again.
“How long ‘til it blows?” Hallam said, running hard to catch up with Dakota.
“No way to know,” replied Dakota, grabbing hold of an old piece of pipe to help swing her around a corner without losing too much momentum. “But it sounds like he wants to toy with us, so we may have a minute or two, if we’re lucky.”
The entire mountain then shuddered, as if there had been an earthquake. The sudden motion of the deck plates knocked Hallam and Dakota off their stride and both tumbled to the deck.
“Was that the nuke?” asked Hallam, sounding frantic, but Dakota shook her head.
“When that nuke goes off, we’ll be dead before we get to ask that question,” she repli
ed, helping Hallam to his feet. “The sadistic asshole is just shooting up the complex and the mountainside to mess with us.”
Hallam and Dakota pushed themselves on, their boots thudding into the rusty metal decking as more reverberations rattled throughout the old mining structure from cannon and missile impacts.
“Doc, there’s a nuke on our doorstep. Tell me you’ve got this working,” cried Hallam, dropping to his knees in front of the elevator, gasping for breath.
“Almost…” said Dr. Rand, seeming to not react to the news of impending nuclear annihilation.
Falken rushed down the stairs with something in her hand and practically fell at Rand’s side, looking even more out of breath than Hallam did.
“Here…” Falken said, holding her sides and flopping back against one of the metal pillars that was propping up the stairwell. “This should do it…”
Dr. Rand took the object then disappeared inside the control panel. A couple of seconds later, the elevator powered up, and Hallam could hear the motors start to whir, hauling the elevator up from the lower depths of the mountain.
“Oh shoot, wait, I need to get something!” cried Falken, pushing herself up again and jogging back up the stairs as quickly as her tired legs could carry her.
“The top of this mountain is about to be blown clean off!” Hallam called after her. “You don’t have time for this.”
“I’ve got to get my drives,” Falken called back, her voice already distant. “They’ve got all my stuff, including my movies!”
Hallam stood up, ready to go after Falken, but Dakota pulled him back down. “Like hell you’re going after her,” she snarled. The statement was delivered so forcefully that Hallam didn’t dare move a muscle.
“She’s going to get atomized if she doesn’t get her ass back here now,” said Hallam. The lift doors then pinged like an old-fashioned microwave and slid open, grinding back years of accumulated dust and grime.
“That’s her choice, Hal,” replied Dakota, her eyes still burning with intensity. “We have to go, now.”
Hallam gritted his teeth, still fighting the urge to go after the young hacker.
“Damn it,” he said, grabbing the cases and hauling them inside the elevator. “She has until the doors close again…”
Hallam could hear Falken’s footsteps on the metal staircase, and Hallam urged her on. The doors started to close, but Hallam jammed them with his foot, crying out for the hacker to hurry. The lair was then rocked by another ripple of heavy quakes, and this time, part of the structure caved in. Metal beams and pipes collapsed outside the elevator door, and a girder fell from the ceiling, slamming into the door jamb and stopping the doors from sliding shut.
Hallam cursed and straddled the metal beam, bracing himself against the impact of smaller rocks that were falling all around him. “Help me move it!” he yelled to Dakota and Dr. Rand. All three then grabbed the twisted chunk of metal and tried to pull it clear, but it wouldn’t budge. Cursing, Hallam suddenly realized that the quakes and shudders had all stopped.
“They’ve stopped firing on the mine,” said Dakota, seeming to also notice the absence of cannon fire hammering into the mountainside. “We really don’t have long.”
“Step back!” cried Hallam, pushing himself flat against the rear wall of the elevator. Using it to propel himself forward, he then launched a drop-kick at the top-end of the beam, smashing it out into the corridor with a brassy clang.
“Wait!”
Hallam picked himself up and saw Falken trapped underneath a pile of rock and metal from the collapsed stairwell.
“Help me!”
Hallam started to go after her but felt hands close around his arms, yanking him back.
“No, we can’t leave her!” Hallam yelled, but the doors had already closed and the elevator had begun to descend.
“I’m sorry, Hal, but there’s no time!” Dakota hit back, letting go of Hallam’s arms and slumping to the floor. “There might not even be time for us…”
Hallam leant on the wall and hammered his fist against it. He wasn’t mad at Dakota – as usual, she was right – he was mad at Cad Rikkard, and his ludicrous vendetta against him. Falken, for all her faults, and the part she had played in Rikkard’s schemes, was about to become another one of his victims.
The elevator picked up speed, to the point where Hallam could almost feel his body leaving the deck. He slid over beside Dakota, hooking his arm through hers, and watched the level indicator continue to drop. Then it felt like they’d been blindsided by a truck. The lights went out and the elevator began to descend out of control. Hallam felt his body actually leave the floor this time and he cried out, but he couldn’t hear his own yells over the screech of metal grinding against metal. Emergency brakes activated and dug into the walls of the shaft, slamming Hallam back to the deck like a dead weight. His head cracked against the wall, and his vision went blurry, but he could see well enough to know that Dakota had also been hurt. Clambering over to her, he pulled her head onto his lap to cradle it, and looked over through the gloom to see Dr. Rand pressed into the opposite corner, blood trickling past her eye. Hallam called out to her and offered her his hand, but again his voice was swallowed by the howl of the elevator as it burrowed deeper into the mountain. Then the elevator stopped with a jarring suddenness that stole the breath from Hallam’s lungs. The last thing he remembered was the ceiling caving in, and rock and dust piling onto his body.
28
Hallam, Dakota, and Dr. Rand sat in silence as the mushroom cloud grew taller and wider over the top of the Falken’s mountain, or what remained of it after Cad Rikkard’s bomb. Dakota was again nestled up against Hallam’s shoulder, their arms hugging one another tightly, and again he was comforted by the closeness of her body. However, the emotions he was experiencing could not have been more different from those he’d felt in Falken’s lair, when they had fallen asleep together watching an old movie on the hacker’s cozy couch. Now he was simply glad she was alive.
Dr. Rand was sat next to them, hands placed neatly on her knees, watching the cloud rise with almost impassive serenity. However, from the lines around her eyes to the downturned shape of her mouth, Hallam could see that their shared ordeals had left scars on the scientist as well. She may have been a uniquely gifted human being, but she was still human. Hallam reached out and prized one of the scientist’s hands off her knee before holding it in his own. Dr. Rand smiled warmly at him and patted the top of his hand like a mother comforting an injured son before returning her gaze to the mountain. Even so, she did not pull her hand away.
The old mining vehicle in which they were all sitting had spared them a ten-mile trek through a maze of pitch-black tunnels that snaked underneath the mountain. They had, almost literally, stumbled on the vehicle after regaining consciousness and clawing their way out of the smashed elevator shaft at the base of the mine. The emergency brakes had succeeded in arresting their fall, mere meters before the elevator had smashed into the rock at the base of the shaft.
Dakota had found Bob the bear amongst the debris, presumably having fallen out of her back pocket while they were tossed around inside the elevator like salad in a bowl. She had patted its woolen head, as she always did, and put the group’s survival down to the toy’s lucky influence. For once, Hallam hadn’t the strength or the will to argue with her. They needed all the luck they could get, especially now, and he couldn’t deny that, somehow, Bob the bear had always pulled through. And, by some miracle of chance, so had they.
Mothballed over a decade ago, the underground mining operation had once transported the precious minerals and metals from the mountain to numerous processing facilities in the surrounding area, via long tunnels. This had been considered safer than transporting it over-ground, where bandits and outlaw gangs could more easily attack the shipments. As it turned out, the tunnels had not only safeguarded the valuable resources the mountain once supplied, but it had saved their lives too, protecting them from the blas
t and the immediate fallout from the bomb.
Dr. Rand had explained all this as they had driven their adopted mode of transport to the abandoned mining town they were all now watching the spectacle from. It was a little over ten miles from the mountain, which, as Dr. Rand had also explained, put them out of immediate danger from radiation fallout. Hallam had also noticed that the wind was blowing the fallout in the opposite direction to their blast-damaged little town. It was a small mercy, at least for them. The people downwind from the blast would not be so lucky, Hallam mused. Just more dead to add to Cad Rikkard’s butcher’s bill… he thought to himself.
“So, where to now?” said Hallam, breaking the funereal silence that had fallen over them all.
“There is a renegade outpost on Vediovis,” said Dr. Rand, still watching the cloud. “Or, at least there was. It is several hundred miles from this location, but we should try there, first of all.”
Dakota pulled away from Hallam and dropped down into the driver’s seat of the mining vehicle. “We’d better get moving, then,” she said, firing up the motor. “We’ll need to charge this thing up at a local town first. I doubt its old cells have enough juice in them to get us much more than another ten or twenty miles.”
Dr. Rand shuffled into the rear compartment of the vehicle and rested against the seat back, then raised her eyebrows at Hallam. “Well, Mr. Knight, are you going to take a seat, or do you intend to spend the rest of the journey up there, like a child on a fairground ride?”
Hallam huffed a laugh and smiled back at her. It was good to hear the old Shelby Rand again, even if it did mean suffering her usual passive-aggressive haughtiness. He slipped down into the passenger seat and smiled at Dakota before wafting a hand in the general direction that took them away from the smoldering mountain. “Lead the way, Wolf One… The skies are clear.” Then he scowled back at the mushroom cloud and made sure to point more directly in the opposite direction. “At least they are if we go that way.”