Brooke dropped her dessert spoon onto her plate and leaned back contentedly. Next to her, Lochlain added the tip to the bill and used his datapad to access Zanshin’s operating account. It had been an expensive evening but the crew had learned much about each other. That bonding was well worth the cost.
“I noticed a bunch of small drums of sodium perchlorate in the aft hold,” Brooke noted. “Are all three of you in on that venture?”
Naslund swallowed the last bite of his cake. “Yeah, it’s pretty cheap here and it’s used to process anti-rad therapy drugs. Inside Carinae, a keg can go for one hundred fifty credits or more.”
“How much did you spend on them?” she asked. Lochlain tilted his datapad toward her for a math check before thumbing confirmation of the total and settling the bill.
“Seventy-two credits per case so just over twenty-eight hundred credits total,” Lingenfelter answered. She pointed at Naslund and Truesworth with a slightly guilty look. “They fronted the money.”
“You’ll pay us back after Carinae,” Naslund stated confidently.
Brooke stretched her arms high above her head and yawned. “I’m ready for bed. Time to head back?”
Naslund frowned slightly. “We don’t want to shop around a bit on the promenade?”
“Did you not hear my first statement?” Brooke teased as she stifled a second yawn. “Mercer Brooke likes a strong topic sentence,” she muttered playfully.
The group rose from the table together and left Solo Mio. It was 20:00 and this level of the orbital was packed with humanity. As they turned from the restaurant and entered the crush of traders, shoppers and tourists, Brooke glanced casually behind her, solely out of habit. Her time as an infiltration agent had honed a strong instinct to watch her back. The nondescript faces behind the group were no different from the ones ahead. Yet still, she played her game of association, noting clothing or other distinctive features of the people walking behind her for easier recollection.
Zanshin’s crew meandered off the overcrowded primary concourse to a less congested commercial mall. Vendors at the storefronts were cajoling passersby to enter their stores for a glimpse at their wares or a sample of their food. They walked past a Moroccan brasserie before Naslund stopped in midstride and returned to sample a tiny almond briouat. He delicately selected the wedge-shaped pastry and popped it into his mouth. After swallowing the cookie, he complimented the shop owner while unlocking his datapad. He tapped a corner to the register hanging from the man’s neck and was presented a small bag of briouats along with the vendor’s effusive gratitude.
Brooke was watching the purchase play out when her eyes caught sight of a man with a recreation patch on his temple... again. She had associated the square drug patch to the man’s severe, square jaw. She let her eyes slip off him and furtively looked for “the woman wearing the white wrapping” that had earlier walked with him. The mnemonic immediately brought a picture to her mind’s eye.
As Naslund resolved his purchase, the woman in white made her appearance at the opposite side of the mall. Her head was down, intensely inspecting a collection of potted plants but her positioning permitted an easy view of Brooke’s group.
Naslund opened his bag and offered briouats to everyone. Brooke declined with a gentle wave while returning her attention to the square-jawed man. This time, she made no effort to conceal her scrutiny. “Reece,” she started in a cautionary tone, but stopped short when she locked eyes with the man less than a dozen meters away.
The man did not reflexively avert his eyes. Instead, he allowed them to sweep over her body and then offered her a coy smile. Brooke’s mind raced as she held her stare. Only two types of people responded with such actions when confronted directly. The first were the truly innocent, the men and women who took guiltless, casual liberties with their eyes but intended no harm. The second were hardened, well-trained professionals posing as the first.
She felt her heart rate spike as the man continued to stride purposefully closer. She backed up, knocking into Lingenfelter who was pulling out a briouat from Naslund’s bag. The paper container skidded out of his hand and tumbled to the deck.
“Oh, no!” Lingenfelter lamented as Brooke watched the man’s eyes divert to the falling bag.
Brooke’s pistol was in her hands an instant later. She extended it directly away from her body, aiming toward the oncoming figure’s chest. The man grinned maniacally at her. “Run!” she shouted while shifting her pistol’s barrel toward the ceiling. Her finger pressed twice and the twin reports of her shots echoed down the concourse. The crowd around her froze in unison, stared in momentary confusion and then scattered in pandemonium.
“Go, go, go!” Brooke urged over the cries while shoving Lingenfelter down the concourse with her free hand. The sea of people parted compliantly at the sight of Brooke’s gun. Behind her, the square-jawed man brandished his own pistol in one hand while tearing the patch off his temple with the other. Brooke’s expletives were lost in the tide of chaos.
She turned again and shoved Naslund, still stooped over his bag of briouats. “Casper, run! We’ve all got to run!” She grabbed the collar of his green pullover, savagely yanked him upright and shoved him into motion. Ahead, Lochlain and Truesworth had possessed the good sense to act immediately on her instruction and were pulling Lingenfelter between them. Naslund matched Brooke’s frantic retreat when she passed him. She risked a quick glance behind Naslund and saw their pursuer was in no rush. He calmly stood in the center of the bedlam, connecting a hardline from his pistol to the smartlink at his temple as if the madness around him were ordinary. Brooke knew his shots would not miss once the connection was established.
She pointed her pistol behind her but reluctantly held her fire. As before, she would not risk the lives of the people behind her target and take a shot. Instead, she faced forward and dashed after her crew. The closest corner ahead of them was still dozens of meters away. Brooke bent her head low and sprinted toward salvation.
She felt the stinging impacts on her back before hearing the gunshots. The barks from the man’s pistol were much deeper than those her own weapon produced, telling her he had the advantage of a larger caliber, more energetic propellant or possibly both. Her back spasmed under multiple blows and pain coursed through her body as bullet after bullet struck her. The peppering seemed relentless, her assailant bearing no qualms about overkill.
Brooke lost count of the number of strikes as she stumbled, finally collapsing around the corner she had fought so desperately to reach. On her side, she looked up to her friends with eyes brimming as she fought the waves of agony. Mercifully, no one else had been hit.
Lochlain was kneeling beside her the next instant. “Mercer!” he cried while reaching out to take her hand. Trembling fiercely, he vowed, “We’ll get you to a doctor. Hang on, babe.” Lingenfelter, Naslund and Truesworth watched in horror from a meter away.
Brooke shook free of his hand, rolled onto her stomach with a groan and forced herself up. The group gaped at her bullet-ridden back. Remarkably, there was no blood. She pressed herself to the wall at the corner and fired blindly around the junction, angling up steeply to miss any innocents still unlucky enough to be in the concourse.
Lochlain, unable to speak, stared uncomprehendingly at her.
“You never put Verdin’s vest back, did you?” It was Truesworth who ruined her illusion of immortality.
“They work,” Brooke retorted as she again gingerly slipped closer to the corner. In truth, her back was on fire. She cautiously peeked around the edge but immediately flinched back as gunshots answered her audacity. She shivered and looked wide-eyed at her friends. “That monster’s still standing smack dab in the center of the concourse. There’s at least one more of them, a woman with a white scarf.” She upended her pistol and glanced at the counter on the bottom of the magazine. The numeral “8” glowed faintly at her. “We need to keep moving.”
“Are you able to run?” Lochlain croaked, as if unable to breathe.
“I can fly if I have to,” came her reply. Her eyes swept over the shops nearby, searching for the man’s partner. “Reece, lead us back to Zanshin but don’t take a direct route. These people are seriously bad news.”
“Let’s go, everyone,” Lochlain ordered and took off down the corridor.
Brooke watched them retreat. After the group was several meters away, she once again brought her pistol around the corner and fired a shot. This time, it was directed down the now abandoned concourse at the last place the man had been. She doubted her blind shot hit him but at least the return fire might give him pause. She shoved off the hallway’s bulkhead and hurried after her friends. Every step sent new thunderbolts of pain coursing through her back. Seeing Lochlain nearing the next corner, she shouted, “Stop and look. Don’t just make the turn blind!”
Lochlain skidded to a halt and sneaked a quick look around the junction. He rapidly ducked back to cover.
“More of them?” Brooke asked as she caught up.
“No,” he said between breaths. “Station security. They’re running parallel to us down the main hall, toward him.”
“Then keep mov—”
The woman in white emerged from a shop, ahead and across the corridor, raising a pistol.
In a blink, Brooke unleashed a hailstorm of gunfire at her, heedless of whether there were patrons inside. The fusillade forced the woman to retreat into the shop.
“Keep us moving, Reece!” Brooke ordered. She debated briefly whether to follow or to press her fleeting fire superiority and enter the store after her adversary. Brooke’s pistol answered her question as its slide had locked back. She thumbed the magazine release and the narrow container clattered to the deck. In one smooth motion, she inserted her second, and final, magazine into the pistol well and batted the slide forward to chamber the first round.
The crew had cleared the junction and were running down a narrower corridor with shops only on its left side. Brooke fired three more times toward the woman in white before racing after them. Despite her command to keep the group moving, Lochlain waited for her at the next intersection. He was shouting into his datapad.
“… two lunatics with guns are shooting civilians at Level Five, Concourse Junction Alpha-One and Charlie-Five. One of them is a female decked out in white. The other is a gigantic male.”
“Sir,” the man’s voice over the datapad’s speaker was restrained anxiety, “station security has been alerted and is on the way. You are instructed to find shelter and wait until the disturbance had been dealt with.”
“I was standing right next to the guy! He was ranting about the Purity of Truth!” Lochlain screamed hysterically. “He said they had more followers cleansing Docking Bays Thirty through Forty! You need to send some troopers there to protect those ships!”
“One moment, sir,” the emergency liaison replied. “I’m dispatching a response team to sweep those slips now. You need to find a place to shelter and wait until we’ve handled this.”
“Okay,” Lochlain agreed shakily. He closed the connection and said in a calmer voice, “If these people mean to ambush us again, the watchman’s bay would be a great place. We may as well improve our odds.”
A squad of Federation security troopers appeared around the far corner and raced down the corridor. They were kitted out with full ballistics armor and long guns. Their blue helmets completely encompassed their heads except for raised, black visors.
Brooke quickly tucked her pistol behind her into the waistband of her pants and let her brown vest drop over it. Her back, already tortured by the gunman’s brutal assault, began to feel a different kind of heat, this time from her own weapon’s barrel.
The lead troopers pointed fearsome carbines at the group. “Hands, now!” one ordered harshly from meters away.
As his crew raised empty hands, Lochlain’s voice regained its hysterical tone. “Thank God you’re here!” He pointed hurriedly toward the corner. “One of them is around that corner in a shop. She was just randomly shooting at people!”
Four of the six troopers never broke their strides and rushed past them. The two leading troopers ground to a halt in front of Lochlain and kept their aim. “Have any of you been shot?” the squad leader asked. A scarlet aiguillette encircled his armored right shoulder.
“N-no,” Lochlain answered timidly, “we’re fine but there are still people trapped in the stores. They need your help!” A pistol’s report punctuated Lochlain’s statement. Carbine fire rapidly followed.
“Find a place to hide,” the squad leader ordered and motioned his companion ahead. The two men dashed after their team.
Brooke placed a hand to her back and moaned. “It’s really starting to ache.” Each footstep was its own, exquisite torture now.
Lochlain wrapped a supporting arm around her.
“Don’t touch my back!” she howled as she shied away.
“Sorry, baby,” he replied and lowered his arm to support her at the waist. They began to move again.
“Who were those people?” Lingenfelter asked while staying close to Brooke’s side.
The group skittered across another junction unmolested. People cowering in shops peered down the corridor with a mixture of fear and confusion.
“VSP,” Brooke answered between sharp breaths. “Very Scary People.” She grunted with every step. “That guy was a cut far above anything that a criminal ring could send after us. We need to leave this station immediately.”
“But Casper wanted to go shopping tonight,” Lochlain kidded.
The group stopped at a lift and Truesworth activated the call button. The wait felt like an eternity. When they entered the elevator, he noted that their level was currently locked out as a destination. A minute later, the group exited the small compartment onto Zanshin’s level. The absence of people on the new level was an eerie reminder of the one they had left behind. The group walked urgently through seemingly abandoned corridors, anxious for the safety of their ship.
Finally, they rounded the corner to Zanshin’s bay and came face to face with three security troopers. Fully armored, they had taken up positions of cover behind portable barriers erected near the destroyed crate that once served as the watchman’s desk.
“Stop!” screamed a trooper. It was a woman’s voice. All three carbines pointed directly at Lochlain.