| |
Chest heaving, Cade stared at the door. The sound of gunfire had ceased. Did the Malsain see them duck inside?
He stretched his left leg, easing the cramp. When it seemed like the Malsain didn’t know they were here, he stood and whispered, “What do we do now?”
Ansa glared at him and sliced a hand across her throat.
There was an escape hatch in the elevator ceiling. That was a popular escape method in movies, but he’d never succeed in climbing out and ascending the shaft to safety. Ansa might pull it off, but that would just mean abandoning him.
Why did he have to be stuck with her?
After several agonizing minutes, she stood and approached the door, pressing her ear against it. Then she pulled the door back open, grunting with exertion. The elevator hung suspended between floors, with room to crawl out either way.
He half expected the Malsain to appear above, guns in hand. They didn’t and Ansa gracefully slithered out the bottom to the floor below, pole in hand. Meanwhile he had to lie awkwardly on his belly and stick his legs out of the elevator, then push backwards until he almost lost control, before dropping free. This time he landed in a crouch instead of falling on his butt, but his left leg seized up on impact. He cut off an audible gasp, and it took him a moment to straighten.
Ansa already marched along the corridor, pole in hand, as though she intended to hunt down the Malsain. She leapt over and dodged around debris littering the hallway, not bothering to check any rooms they passed.
He couldn’t catch up, especially while remaining quiet so the Malsain wouldn’t hear him. Squeezing past overturned bed frames, dressers, and tables—with bedrooms, bathrooms, and a couple of mess halls on either side—he struggled to keep her in sight.
“Facility explosives activated,” a warning announced up ahead. “Five minutes to detonation.”
Ansa raised her wrist-comp to check the screen. Even from a distance, Cade spotted flashing red lights.
She cursed and bolted forward. He gave chase, abandoning his efforts to keep quiet. The Malsain must have returned to the ship to set off the explosives. They hadn’t bothered looking for the two of them. They’d retrieved the antimatter engine with a working droid, possibly a few other weapons if they’d found other working droids, then hightailed it back to let the explosives take care of them.
“Stop!” he shouted. “We won’t make it.” It would take them longer than five minutes to reach the dock. And even if they somehow got there in time, the Malsain would’ve lifted off. There was no reason to stay behind.
With his ship destroyed, he and Ansa needed another means of escape.
He pulled out Pali Dibra’s wrist-comp and searched for a facility map. There had to be secondary docks or emergency escape thorneways. But the facility was too large, with too many segments. Multiple thorneways spread across it, but none were close enough to reach in the next five minutes.
Was this it? Would he die here chasing a conspiracy?
His eyes hit on a lab one floor below. The label read Etaem technology R&D. A couple of weeks back, Nico had filled him in on Devika solving the Evanesco trial on Havendesh. An ancient species that had fled their home planet centuries ago, the Etaem had left behind the Evanesco trial as a test for any spacefaring species that visited Havendesh. Most participants in the trial had believed that completing it would provide answers to where the Etaem had gone. However, when Devika solved it she’d only discovered a large trove of Etaem technology. But on her way back to Space City, Devika had vanished, and no one had seen her since, leading many to believe she’d found the means to locate the Etaem after all.
“What have you found?” Ansa asked.
He jumped, not having noticed her return.
“Some of the new Etaem tech is here,” he said, pointing out the lab on the map. For a half second he wished she hadn’t seen Dibra’s wrist-comp. He’d wanted to keep it hidden. But what did it matter? They would live or die together.
“Who are the Etaem?” she asked, steering him toward a stairwell.
“An advanced civilization. They had some sort of mobile thorneway.”
Her head swiveled toward him, eyes wide. “Seriously?”
“Yes.”
She tossed aside the pole, gripped the side bars of the ladder, and slid down to the next floor.
How much time did they have left? He wished he’d set a timer.
He hurried down the ladder, but when he reached the floor, Ansa had already ducked into the Etaem lab. With every breath he expected to hear an explosion. Or would it be so big he died without knowing it?
Equipment filled the Etaem lab. It was the first place in the facility that didn’t appear damaged. Ansa strode along one wall, grabbing items, inspecting them, then tossing them aside.
“What are we looking for?” she asked.
He stared, unsure where to begin. They could sift through this stuff for hours, maybe days, without finding the right device.
Had Nico described the tech? Pacing along the wall opposite Ansa, his gaze roving over the tech, he wanted to try everything yet was afraid to touch any of it.
He recalled that Maellyn’s father used digital tags for all equipment in the science labs on Space City. The digital tags were viewable with his eye contacts. Might AED use the same method?
Show me any digital tags, he thought, or labels.
Digital tags appeared in the air next to all the equipment.