“Got another one!”
Dinnie, who was trying not to sleep as she read through Moira Sherman’s school work, jerked upward at Mike’s yell, and flew from her seat to join him at the detector. She longed to shove him out of the way and type in the calculations herself, but he was doing it faster than she could have, the way her hands were shaking. She sensed the ominous weight of Feldman’s presence behind her, watching over her head as the bridge’s alpha point appeared in a three dimensional grid over Belfast.
The sweat on Mike’s forehead gave away his nervousness as he kept typing. A moment later, the omega point blinked into existence.
In space.
“NISS.” Feldman hissed the word behind Dinnie, and deep inside her, she felt something start to scream. Her soul it was, sure of its impending death. She stood frozen, staring ahead at Mike, watching him begin to turn, to nod in verification.
Then relief swept through her, from head to toe. They did it. They found the chip and went to NISS. They’re going to save the station. By the time Mike completed his turn, she had recovered, and met his eyes with a brisk nod of approval, before turning to face Feldman. Alert and professional, ready for anything.
Except for the desperate shock on Feldman’s face as he stared at the display. Behind him, to his right, the security supervisor was on a call, already sending a team to the alpha point. Dinnie’s voice was too high when she asked, “Sir? Why would they go to NISS?”
The shock left his face as a slow smile moved his lips. “I don’t know, Dr. Warner. But we’ve got them.”
He pointed at Mike. “I want to know how many people were transported. Hurry.”
Mike turned back to the display, began typing again.
“It takes a few minutes,” Dinnie said, not wanting Feldman to yell at Mike.
“I want it now.” Feldman jerked his chin at her as he tapped his ear. “Help him.”
It was a one-person job, but Dinnie stepped next to Mike and ran her finger over the bridge, hoping she looked like she was doing something useful. Mike grinned tightly at his racing fingers to acknowledge her.”
Behind her, Feldman said, “You have intruders on your station, Rhyder. Don’t ask me how I know. Just listen. Put that station on lockdown. Get your guards ...”
“Shit! There’s another one!” The shout was out of Dinnie before she even realized it, as a new virtual bridge shot through her hand. She could feel Feldman’s eyes boring into her back, but she didn’t turn around. “Same alpha and omega, sir.”
“How many fucking people?”
“Three on the first one,” Mike said, gasping a little. Dinnie thought she could see smoke coming from his fingers. She stared at the display, thought she could see where the numbers were going ... and took a leap.
“More than three in the second one.” She stared and counted. “Five ... no, seven. I think.”
“Yes,” Mike said, breathing hard. “Seven in the second.”
“Rhyder, you’ve got ten intruders,” Feldman said. Dinnie listened, but didn’t take her eyes off the display, terrified she would see another bridge. “Find them all. You can kill the soldiers, but no one else. Make that clear, Rhyder: no one else gets killed. Confiscate their equipment immediately, but do not let any equipment get broken. They’ve got some irreplaceable stuff. You make sure your people understand that. Are you on lockdown?”
Dinnie didn’t hear the answer, but Feldman said, “Keep them that way until all ten are rounded up. Move.”
He turned back to them. “Any more?”
Dinnie shook her head. “Not so far.”
Feldman moved closer, to peer at the display. Dinnie watched him without turning her head. “Why,” he said, as if asking the display, “would they go to NISS?”
~~~
When the lockdown alert came over the PA system, Ned stopped walking and shook his head. “On to us already. Damn.”
“Not surprising,” Andy said. “They saw our bridges.”
“I know they saw the fucking bridges. I was just hoping for more time.”
They were in a corridor, a tight circle with Sam in the middle. They had kept their weapons holstered out of deference to the civilians, but at Ned’s nod, the guards and Pete armed themselves. Ned pulled his taser out, as well, and after a moment of hesitation, Andy did, too.
“We continue to our objective,” Ned said. “When we meet resistance, Sam and Andy get down, try to get to cover. But let us protect you. Andy, you shoot if you have a clear aim, but your first priority is to protect Sam and the machine. Got it?”
He didn’t wait for Andy’s nod, he just turned and gestured onward. Andy went with them, tapping his taser with nervous fingers, and regretting his lack of rebel involvement up to now. If he’d been with them earlier, maybe he’d feel more confident about his ability to fight.
They’d traversed half the corridor when their luck ran out. Ahead of them, two Sun guards rounded a corner. Andy quickly lost track of the action. The Sunnies ordered them to halt, their own guards were swinging around, the Sunnies were pointing weapons, someone pushed him, and in a blind panic ... he fired. He had time to see that his shot arced wild before he went down under Pete and Phil, and as the corridor filled with sizzling energy and shouts, he knew with sick certainty that he had fired first ... thus giving the Sunnies plenty of excuses to fire back.
In the next few minutes, he and Sam were shoved back a few feet, then into an open door. Their team followed and Pete pointed them to another door opposite them. Andy grabbed Sam’s arm and they ran through.
“Hang right!” Pete yelled. Andy turned without seeing, pushing Sam ahead of him, down a flight of stairs. They rounded a corner and crashed against a closed set of double doors. There was nowhere else to go. The sounds of taser shots and pounding feet grew ominously near. Andy exchanged a glance with Sam, who shrugged. “In for a penny ...”
Andy slapped the switch and the doors slid open on soundless tracks. Lisa appeared around the corner behind them, her taser firing back the way she’d come. Swinging around on one leg she saw them and shouted, “Go!” before continuing her spin to shoot in the other direction. Andy grabbed Sam and pushed him through. Inside were row upon row of plants in various stages of growth. They took shelter behind the nearest one and Andy peeked around it, taser ready. He felt more in control, remaining alert for either friend or foe to come through the door, prepared to not shoot if it were the first, or shoot fast and duck back, if it were the second.
Pete dashed through, then Ned and Lisa, neck and neck. Ned and Pete took cover, while Lisa turned to face the door, her taser held ready. A shot came through, but she didn’t flinch. The next moment, Trevor fell through the door as if he’d been thrown, then Phil dived in, slamming the switch on the wall as he came. The doors slid closed, and Lisa fired a five second blast at the switch mechanism on the wall. By the time the Sunnies got there, the doors refused to budge.
~~~
Out of the frying pan into the fire. Moira remembered her real father saying those words to her mother during an argument about her mother’s desire to join Sherman’s enclave. Moira had been too young to understand any of it, but her father’s words came back to her now.
She’d escaped the enclave, but now people were shooting at her. She suspected the enclave was the real fire, and this was just a minor hitch in her plans. She’d be dead for sure if her stepfather had his way. Here, she at least had a chance to get out of it.
Provided she stuck close to Karen Jones. Andy’s friend was a small woman. Moira would have called her delicate, her thin frame causing one to expect fairy wings, and her single, blond braid taking years from her already young features. But when an approaching Sun guard pulled a taser on them, with a demand to “freeze!” Karen did the opposite, whipping her own taser out as one leg flew up to shove Moira and Sarah into a side hallway. Her taser arm remained focused on the guard, sending a steady stream of energy in his direction, as the rest of her body twisted to follow them into the hall. In the space of two minutes, Moira knew she would never think of Karen as delicate again.
They heard the guard call for backup, and Karen popped into the main hall to send another surge toward him. Twisting back into hiding, she sent a blast into the corridor’s surveillance camera, and muttered one word to her charges. “Map.”
Moira shuffled the backpack off her shoulder and scrabbled for her Pad. Sarah reached around to close the pack and shift it onto Moira’s back so she’d be ready to run. Karen rang off another shot. In the background, Moira heard an announcement starting, declaring a lockdown and instructing people to shelter in place. To make it easier to catch us, she thought as she brought up the virtual station overlay. It was visible by the time Karen popped back into the hall.
“This hall leads to a roundabout,” Sarah muttered, her gaze following Moira’s finger through the display. “If we take the second walkway to the right, there’s a bank of lifts and a stairway.”
“Stairs. Go.” Karen flattened against the wall, holding her gun against her chest. “I’m right behind you.”
She dashed out once more to shoot. Moira did as she was told, her run clumsy with her Pad and backpack. Ahead of her, Sarah was having the same struggle. But the roundabout brought them a reprieve, as station personnel trying to obey the lockdown raced through in a frenzy. The guard stopped firing, yelling instead for everyone to get down. Then Sarah was through, Moira just a few steps behind. She wasn’t sure of her count, but she thought they’d missed the second corridor off the roundabout.
When no lifts or stairs appeared, she knew she was right. Sarah realized it too, and threw a hand against the wall to stop her forward rush. Moira collided into her, but managed to move enough to the side to make it a glancing blow. “Keep going,” she said, then on impulse pushed on the first door she came to. It opened and she fell into darkness. Sarah crowded behind her and Moira managed to swallow a scream of pain as her stomach lurched. Damn it, she wasn’t supposed to be running.
“Where’s Karen?” She managed to whisper the question. Good. Better than screaming.
“Don’t know,” Sarah whispered back. “Where are we?”
Moira flipped on her Pad’s light. Before they could look around, the sound of running feet outside the door made Moira kill it instantly. They waited, not breathing.
The feet slowed to a walk, then stopped. They heard a muttered “Feck,” and Sarah pulled at the manual door handle “That’s her ...” a seam of light appeared at the door edge, and a moment later the business end of a taser poked through, with Karen’s eyeball glaring just above it. Then the taser disappeared and Karen pushed her way in with them.
“You said the second path of the roundabout,” she said in a loud whisper.
“I was too busy to count,” Sarah said. “Where’s the guard?”
“Sleeping. But he did get a call out for backup. Where are we?”
“We were just starting to look,” Moira said, flipping on her light again.
Karen and Sarah added their lights. Moira moved hers slowly, trying to see everything, but Karen’s light danced around to specific points, as if she were looking for something. All Moira could see was that they seemed to be in a supply closet of some kind. The room was small, with wide shelves on two walls and storage canisters stacked on the floor. Karen nodded, as if reaching a decision.
“This’ll work for now. Up there.” She pointed while pushing on Moira’s back. A top shelf was empty. Karen folded her hands together and bent down. “Up with you. Hurry.”
Moira swallowed her questions, slipped off her backpack, and put her foot in Karen’s hand. She wasn’t quite prepared to be thrown toward the ceiling, but she managed to catch the shelf. With the women pushing on her feet, she hauled herself up, biting her lip to keep back a cry of pain. Once on the shelf, she lay on her stomach and let them pass up all the packs. Then Sarah scrambled up and turned to help Karen. But Karen waved her off and moved a few feet to her right, doing a quick run and jump to reach that part of the shelf. This put several large boxes between them. Sarah sent a quizzical glance to Moira, who shrugged.
The boxes moved toward them and Sarah instinctively reached out to balance it. “Put them in front of you.” Karen’s voice floated to them over the boxes. “Get back against the wall and use them to hide you.”
In a few minutes, they had it all arranged, but they both peeked over the boxes when they heard Karen’s feet hit the floor.
“What are you doing?” Sarah asked in a frantic whisper. “Get up here.”
“Turn your lights off,” Karen said.. “Stay quiet and still. They’ll be searching. I’m going to draw them away.”
“You’re what?” Moira asked. “No! Stay with us until they leave.”
Karen pointed at her, then went back to packing various weapons in her pockets. “You cannot keep running. I need to buy us some time and space. Just stay put, keep the lights off, and don’t make any noise until I’m back.”
She leaned against the wall and cracked the door open to listen and look. Then she opened it further, slid through and closed it behind her. Moira heard no sounds other than their own breathing.
Sarah fumbled with her Pad. “She’s right. She’ll be back. Turn your light off.”
Moira had dropped her Pad on the shelf so she could look over the box, and she turned now to pick it up. A glimmer in the dark recesses of the next shelf caught her attention. She had to twist her neck a little to see it clearly, but when she realized what it was, she grabbed Sarah’s arm.
“My god. Can you see that?”
Sarah bent nearly in half, and finally sat back, shaking her head. “I don’t see anything. What is it?”
“It’s sort of a ball, with wires and lights. And numbers. I think it’s a bomb.”
Sarah swallowed, as if it were a difficult thing to do. “Can you read the numbers? Are they moving? Counting down?”
“Yeah.” Moira killed her light, and stared straight ahead in the darkness. “Counting down. Three hours, twelve minutes.”