SENALL

39 Dorie Senall stared at Tom Sakson with a look of hatred so intense that the man, for an instant, looked away from her. He covered his discomfort by pretending to take in the details of the suite, Max Rydell’s lifeless body, and his squad, which had complete control of the situation.

“This is the last time, Dorie,” Sakson said. “No more chances, no more reprieves. This ends here. Your life is forfeit.”

Dorie laughed. “Really? So you’re going to go completely rogue and bypass the council, the laws of Ribon, and become judge, jury, and executioner now?”

Sakson said nothing in return. Instead, he nodded at one of his squad members, a large beast of a man who closed in on Dorie and put her roughly on her knees. He held her there, one hand pushing her down with strong pressure on her shoulder, his other hand wrapped around his blaster. Right after, Sakson—looking a little nervous as he crossed the floor of the suite—came up to her, crouched low, and shook his head.

The silence afterward, compared to the noise of the raid on the building and the suite, stretched on forever. Now it was Dorie who looked down at the floor, not wanting to see Sakson gloating in front of her.

Finally, Sakson reached down and grabbed her chin, wrapping his hand around it. He pulled her face upward. “I believe I owe you something in return,” he said.

He spat in her face.

Dorie cringed as the spittle ran down her cheek, but she didn’t look away. She didn’t show weakness, and damn if she was going to let him think he had humiliated her. She felt it, for sure, but Dorie grit her teeth and didn’t react.

“I’m guessing Max didn’t tell you that anyone incarcerated into the Bubble is tracked? A simple procedure, a surveillance stud embedded in the skin behind the ear. I didn’t have time when I put you and Adi in there, due to the urgency of the moment, and by that time Max was mostly—” He looked over at the warden’s ruined body. “—well, fired. But Lorway had the tracker stud.”

Dorie couldn’t help it. She glanced at Lorway, her eyes searching the Memor’s face. Lorway shook her head.

“Don’t blame her,” Sakson said. “She didn’t know about it. Well, blame her, since she’s the one who brought us to you. In the end, after searching way too long for you in the city, I remembered the tracker. Max gave me what I needed to take local control of the Bubble facility.” He bent down and studied her face.

Dorie returned his gaze, hardening her eyes. She felt herself swallow hard. Sakson surprised her when he wiped the spittle roughly from her face.

“Demeaning, isn’t it?” He straightened. “Nothing to say? Very well.” From his hip he extracted his own personal blaster and he pointed it at her forehead. “It’ll be easier this way.”

Now Dorie struggled against the nameless squad member holding her down. The situation, she knew, had not only become dire, it had rushed forward with a sobering inevitability she could not ignore. She was going to die. Sakson was right. It would be too easy for him to do this, in front of witnesses, his own people, and still, somehow, he would be able to explain it all away. She wondered about Adi and Lorway, and whether they would escape Sakson’s revenge. Probably not. That twisted her gut even more, knowing she had led them to their deaths.

“Let them go,” she said finally. “They had nothing to do with this.”

“They did, Dorie.”

“I pulled them into it. They followed out of friendship, but I planned everything.”

“You can’t expect me to believe Lorway was a friend,” Sakson said. “It doesn’t matter, though. They know what happened here. What will happen. I can’t allow them to controvert the way things went down.”

Dorie struggled to think of something. Could she delay the inevitable? No. She didn’t believe a delay would amount to anything.

She was truly alone in all this. She’d be dead, Adi, would be dead. Lorway dead.

Terl dead.

She wondered how Sakson would handle the squad members involved with this raid. Were they that trusted that Sakson didn’t have to worry about their silence?

Sakson’s blaster hummed.

He aimed. He wasn’t even going to say anything more. Just pull the trigger and be done with it.

A crack snapped the air.

One of Sakson’s crew surrounding the three of them crumpled without warning. When the man struggled back to his feet, another blast put him down for good.

Sakson, startled, raised his weapon, then swept it around the room, confused. “What the fuck!” he said.

“Sniper!” the squad member holding onto Dorie said. He ducked low, taking Dorie down until her face kissed the floor of the suite.

In the next few seconds, three or four more shots echoed through the room and two more squad members went down, including the one who’d held her to the floor. Dorie covered her ears, wondering how this could be.

“Away from the balcony door!” Sakson yelled, and the remaining members of his squad pulled back, hugging the wall of the suite.

Lorway and Adi had dropped to the floor. They seemed okay, and when Dorie managed to glance over at Adi, he nodded at her. He was fine. Lorway was alive too, also on the ground, behind Adi. She raised her head slightly, trying to get her bearings.

Who was shooting into the suite? she wondered.

Sakson had moved against the wall. He kept an eye on his three captives and said, “Perimeter?”

“Jennings has it,” one of the squad said. She was a tall heavily armed woman in bulky gear, pinned against the opposite wall. Her long blonde hair had come loose from whatever had held it underneath her squad cap. “He has two others out in the hall and two at the tower entrance.”

“Well, fuck, find out!” Sakson yelled.

Dorie waited. For what, she didn’t know, but she couldn’t do anything right now. If a moment presented itself, she would act. She kept her gaze on Sakson, who kept looking back and forth between the suite door and the balcony.

A distinct snap echoed in the room, and it was all wrong. Too loud, and completely out of place. Dorie felt the floor tremble, and then it seemed to roll like an ultra-real thrill ride.

The three other squad members cried out when the floor tilted slightly, and a snap became a crack and a loud groan. The room was not safe. Dorie’s heart twisted with renewed hope. The suite’s fragility might well kill them all, or it might lead to their getting out of this mess.

The suite’s door groaned, then snapped shut. Dorie remembered that even without power, the entry mechanism had a mechanical failsafe of sorts.

Sakson cried out when the wall behind him separated from the floor and he had to move toward the middle of the room.

Into the line of fire, Dorie thought.

“Where’s Jennings!” he yelled. He didn’t wait for an answer but raised his blaster and fired it through the opening to the balcony, as if he’d spotted the sniper firing into the suite. “He must be in a building across the way,” he announced. “Shelby, reconnoiter.”

Dorie looked up and watched Shelby, the tall blonde woman on the other side of the room, inch along the wall to the main entrance, stepping over Lorway’s feet, hugging the wall the best she could, keeping her blaster aimed at Dorie and her friends, the balcony, and the door, as if she couldn’t make up her mind.

“Got you,” Shelby said.

Dorie knew, and Sakson must also know, that no building across from them was high enough for a sniper to have a clear line of sight. The Tempest Tower, even at its reduced size, dwarfed most buildings in New Venasaille. Where were the blasts coming from?

Shelby—was it a first or last name?—made it to the door just as sniper fire erupted again, jagged lines crackling the wall and drawing a line that reached for her. “Shit!” she yelled, ducking lower. The blasts went over her head. At the door finally, she sat back on her heels and reached for the door’s sensor. It didn’t work as a sensor, the DNA mechanism compromised long ago, but the simple act of touching it would unhook the mechanical latch.

Dorie scrambled forward on her knees toward Adi, but the floor of the suite buckled just then. Dorie’s stomach lurched, the floor tilting and falling. She yelled out, expecting the worst, but something below the suite must have stopped its fall. The pops and groans in the suite were constant now, and she knew it was a matter of time before everything gave way and collapsed.

Shelby reached high enough to hit the sensor. If there was a click, Dorie couldn’t hear it amid the noise. Sakson kept to the wall, looking like a cornered animal. He couldn’t keep his blaster steady, and he’d stopped firing out at the balcony. Instead, he stared at Shelby prying the door open. He did his best to aim that way, as did the other two squad members, who were flat on the floor.

The door opened.

Shelby had a split second to look up, yell out “Fuck!”, and then she was thrown back into the room as if she’d been pulled back by an invisible force. Before Sakson or any of his squad could react, the suite became a maelstrom of blaster fire as giant shadows swarmed the room.

Dorie’s mouth dropped in surprise. No fucking way.

Shelby groaned and regained her feet painfully, but when she finally stood tall, her long legs still wobbly after being cast aside like a rag doll, blaster fire from a half dozen weapons erupted from the doorway and lit her up like a firework, black lines of energy carving through her torso, singing her hair, and severing her neck. There was a look of surprise on her face, but she was already dead. She sank to the rickety floor as if readying herself to pray, then fell sideways. Singed blonde hair, set free by several of the particle beams, floated like gossamer before coming to rest near her body.

Dorie stared now at half a dozen Helks—mostly Second Clan by the size of them—who ringed the door. One of them was Tem Forno, Dave Crowell’s partner, dressed in that shoddy old coat that had once belonged to Terl, and later to Brindos.

“Drop the weapons,” Forno said, and Dorie glanced behind her in time to see the two remaining squad members comply. They tossed them toward the line of Helks.

Sakson was pinned against the wall, unarmed, his blaster at his feet. A support beam from the suite’s ceiling had wrenched loose, and one end of it had crashed to the floor near him. It held him tight, diagonally, ceiling to floor. He pushed against it, but it didn’t budge.

Dorie rose, carefully, slowly, and walked to him. She bent down and reached for his blaster. He tried to kick at her, but the beam blocked any serious attempt. She knew that given time and effort, Sakson could pry the beam away to get loose. But Dorie and Forno’s group of Helks wouldn’t let that happen. She looked over at them. They all wore long heavy coats, their leathery heads looking like caps in the dim light and dust of the suite.

“Forno,” she said quietly.

Forno smiled, his sharp teeth gleaming. “Sorry I’m late.”

Five minutes later, after three of Forno’s crew secured Sakson’s last two squad members and took them out of the suite— “Hold them in the shuttle for now,” Forno said. “Someone’s coming for them.” —Dorie Senall was still standing as close to Sakson as she could stomach. He would not look at her. A cut on his forehead bled freely, but she didn’t think it was life threatening.

“You had to know this would end badly,” she said to him.

“I knew no such thing,” Sakson said. “Everything was in control. If it hadn’t been for these fucking Hulks, you’d be dead already and I’d be explaining away how a RuBy addict tried to undermine a peaceful succession of power.”

Forno frowned. “You tashing asshole—”

“Believe what you want,” Dorie said. “I’ve got a completely different story to tell.”

“Ribon deserves healing,” Sakson said, as if not listening. “Plenko must pay, and you’ve done nothing but aid his cause during all this.”

Voices rose in the corridor, and Forno and his team went on alert.

“You’re delusional,” Dorie said. “I’ve not seen him for two years. He doesn’t deserve your hatred. How many times do I have to tell you?”

“As many times as you want. It doesn’t make a difference.”

“Fuck you,” Dorie said, quietly but with so much animosity, it surprised her.

“Dorie,” Forno said. “Morgan’s here. He’s clean.” He glanced out the suite door. “Let him in.”

Morgan came through into the ruined suite. He looked grim, as if he hadn’t expected the scene in front of him. How could he have?

Morgan’s hands were in front of him, bound with polymer. Dorie squinted, looking behind him. Where was Plenko? It wasn’t Plenko behind Morgan, obviously, or she’d have seen him towering over the mercenary.

Dorie recognized her in an instant. Jennifer Lisle, assistant director of the Network Intelligence Organization. Lisle and a few of her agents followed closely behind Morgan.

“His instructions count for nothing,” Lisle said. She flashed a badge. “Jennifer Lisle, NIO. Thanks to Forno, we were able to knock this thing down.” She nodded at Forno.

Forno nodded back. “Thanks for the travel visas.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Where’s Crowell?” he asked.

“Right here,” came a voice. Crowell appeared behind Lisle, looking a little perplexed.

“Always late to the grouping,” Forno said.

Crowell looked at him quizzically. “The what?”

“The party,” Forno said. “Helk’s breath, you didn’t even correct or ignore me.”

Dorie took another look at Crowell and her eyes widened in surprise. Somehow, the process of travelling to the Ultra universe—or maybe it was the process of coming back to their own—had reversed some of the aging. He seemed even younger than a year ago when he’d visited New Venasaille after the last Ultra scare. He was more like himself after the first go-round with the Ultras. It was exceedingly odd, since she’d become accustomed to his new look, and because Dave had been told he would be an old man when he got to the Ultra universe.

She glanced again at Sakson, who was looking at the floor again. She had never seen someone look so defeated. Except maybe Alan Brindos, in his Helk state as Plenko, just before the end when Crowell had shot him.

Crowell came into the suite and glanced around, frowning, figuring out who everyone was, taking in all he could. The other bodies were long gone, but Sakson was still pinned against the wall by the fallen beam.

“We should get out of here,” Dorie said. “This suite—it isn’t safe.”

Lisle nodded. She signaled Forno, and he lumbered over to Sakson. She and her team raised their weapons, and Dorie backed up a few steps. With barely an effort, Forno wrenched the beam away from the wall and freed the man.

The wall shuddered and everyone braced themselves. Sakson was quick. Quicker than anyone could’ve expected. In the moment, without hesitation, he ducked under Forno’s massive arm and went right at Dorie. He put his arm around her neck and twirled, putting himself behind her.

He had a weapon.

Dorie gasped as the point of the blaster pushed against her neck. How had that happened so quickly? How’d he get the weapon? In a moment of embarrassment, she realized it was his own. He had smoothly wrenched it from her grip as he situated himself behind her.

“Stand back,” Sakson said.

Not a single weapon lowered. They were all trained on Sakson. Or, more accurately, at Dorie, aimed as closely as they could to where Sakson hid behind her.

“Drop your weapons or she dies,” Sakson said.

“Don’t do it!” Dorie yelled. Sakson tightened his grip on her and slid the blaster to her temple. She couldn’t see any part of him and could only stare helplessly at everyone in front of her. “Tom,” she said as firmly as she could, “there’s no way out of here. No one’s going to let you leave. You kill me, they’ll kill you.”

“They don’t want to see you die, do they? They don’t want to die, do they?” He yelled loudly in her ear now, and she realized it was because he was addressing Jennifer Lisle and the others. “Give me a path. I’m leaving, and I’m taking her with me.”

“Yeah?” Lisle’s aim didn’t waver at all. “Anything else you want? You might as well ask.”

“Morgan comes with me, and we take his shuttle. We’ll let Dorie go before we leave New Venasaille. I want safe passage.”

Jennifer Lisle seemed to be thinking it over, but Dorie could tell it was all for show. Her blaster remained steady. Dorie studied everyone else: Adi and Lorway hugging the floor, Forno to her right, a few steps away from Lisle, Morgan on the other side of her. Dave Crowell was slightly behind her. The rest of Lisle’s team had spread themselves out along the wall, left and right, and behind them, towering well above, were Forno’s Helks.

Once again, she wondered where her Plenko was.

Lisle didn’t seem too concerned about Morgan, and Dorie thought she knew why. Morgan had come in ahead of the NIO director, and that said something. Lisle and Morgan had already made a deal. Lisle confirmed it.

“Not going to happen,” Lisle said. “Morgan’s clear of this. Technically, he’s done nothing illegitimate, except, perhaps, zipping through jump slots without proper visas and maybe being too mercenary. He’s also ex-Envoy. He was hired to do a job, and he did the job of finding Plenko and bringing him back, even if some of his intentions were less than honorable.”

“I want to see him,” Sakson said. “I want Plenko in this room right now.” He jammed the blaster into Dorie’s temple so hard she winced with pain.

“We know why you want him,” Lisle said, “and that’s why he’s being held in a secure location. Look around you. It’s fifteen to one, and half of us are nearly three times your size.”

No one spoke, but the cracks and pops and groans of the suite continued, a reminder of the increasing danger.

“Well,” Sakson said. “I could just wait for this room to come down around us.”

“You’re not going to do that,” Crowell said.

Dorie saw him take two steps toward her. He also had a blaster. Sakson backed up the same two steps, pulling her with him.

“I’m also not going to kill her, is that right?” Sakson scoffed.

Now Dorie revisited her earlier flashback of Dave Crowell facing his partner Alan Brindos, fully morphed into a Helk, but in constant pain, with no relief possible, his inevitable death at hand. After a signal from Brindos, Crowell shot his partner, and when he fell, Crowell was able to shoot the false Plenko, the Movement leader, who’d been hiding behind Brindos.

Sakson was hiding behind her. Would Crowell do it again if she gave him a signal? Maybe. But why would she do that? She wasn’t in the kind of pain Brindos had been. She might still be a RuBy addict, technically, but she was a recovering addict, and she still wanted to be governor of New Venasaille again.

Fuck, she didn’t want to die.

“You might,” Crowell said. “I can’t stop you if you do.” He took another step forward. Sakson took them both back a step. “Let her go. Your disagreement isn’t really with Dorie, now, is it? Politically, maybe, but that’s not what this is about.”

Dorie kept her eyes on Crowell, trying to figure out what he was up to. Lisle wasn’t telling him to get back, but then again, she and Crowell had been through a lot together. Maybe they had planned something in advance. She gave him a quizzical look, but he ignored her.

“What’s this about then?” Sakson said. His breath was hot against Dorie’s neck.

“It’s about Plenko. You want to kill Plenko and—”

“I want to humiliate him. A spectacle for all of Ribon to see.”

Crowell shrugged. “Okay. But eventually kill him. Let me ask you something.”

Crowell, what are you doing? She felt herself falling into the rhythm of his words, even as the floor rumbled, and something else—some structure or beam or wall—fell inside the suite. Another groan, and the floor skewed again, and there was a definite tilt now. Sakson, surprised, stumbled backwards, losing ground, but kept his grip on Dorie.

Crowell seemed not to worry. “Do you know how many times Dorie has seen or heard about Plenko being killed?”

The question surprised her. It had an effect on Sakson too. She felt the pressure on her neck lessen.

She knew the answer. “Four times,” she said.

“That’s right,” Crowell said. “Four. Times. That includes the Plenko she believed she lost years ago.”

“So?” Sakson said.

She’d expected his voice to be uncaring, as if he were sneering as he said it, but it seemed to be a simple, legitimate question.

Dave Crowell then did something else that surprised her. He bent down and placed his blaster on the floor. He kicked it to his left, and it slid toward the wall until one of Lisle’s agents put his foot on it. She expected Crowell to make a gesture that would reinforce the fact he was no longer armed. Raise his hands, for example, palms toward Sakson. But he didn’t. He kept his hands at his sides, and he looked thoughtful.

“Think a moment, Tom,” Crowell said. He moved again, but this time he angled left. He turned and came back, past his first position, until he reached a spot on the other side before stopping. He was pacing. He was lulling Sakson a little. “Think what that must be like for her. I understand how you feel, too, but that’s the problem. You’re convinced there’s a Plenko to kill, when a good number of them—including one who was an incredibly good friend of mine—have died already.”

Crowell’s voice was mesmerizing. Dorie couldn’t take her eyes off him. His pacing continued, but she realized he was closer to them now.

Sakson noticed too, and he backed up again, but not very much. He was quiet, as if considering a possible counterargument.

Finally, Crowell stopped pacing. He stood in front of her, and he was definitely closer. With a little more freedom of movement, she could’ve reached out and touched him.

“Dorie doesn’t need to see it happen again.”

“Why would she?” Sakson asked.

“Because you’re going to let her go and take me as your hostage.”

Sakson tensed behind her. “What?”

Dorie said, “Dave, no—”

“I’m unarmed. And Plenko is here. He’s in the hallway.”

“Crowell!” Jennifer Lisle said in a harsh whisper. “No. What are you thinking?”

Crowell ignored her. He reached out a hand. “Let Dorie go, then grab my hand. Grab it and pull me right to you. I’ll take her place.”

Dorie searched Crowell’s face, younger, and yet in some ways older, as if the years had been piled on to him, then taken away too quickly. Was there a signal in those eyes of his? Did he need her to do something? He was unarmed. Sakson had the blaster, and what Crowell was offering was doable, if Sakson took him up on it.

She’d known Dave Crowell for a few years now, and she thought he was the kind of man to shoot his way out of trouble—or to turn Forno loose on someone—and not the kind of man who talked quietly and offered himself up as a—hostage? Crowell was the kind of person who had the guts to shoot his friend and partner for the greater good.

What are you doing, Crowell?

“He’s really out there?” Sakson asked. “In the hall?”

Crowell’s voice matched the smile that came across his face, calm and worthy of trust. “Sure he is.”

Jennifer Lisle was frowning, but she kept quiet, possibly realizing he was up to something.

“He’s come this far,” Crowell said. “He agreed to come here with Morgan, remember? Turned himself in. He only cares about one thing, and that’s to see Dorie. Give him that. Let her go to him. After that, we’ll work things out.”

Sakson hesitated, and Dorie heard the indecision in his breathing. The way the blaster shook a little against her neck. “They have to lower their weapons as we switch.”

“Of course,” Crowell said. He smiled serenely, then kept smiling as if it were the most natural thing in the world, turning slowly, moving his hand to each person in the room, a signal to lower weapons, but she realized the gesture also told them to remain vigilant. It was impressive to see each blaster and rifle dip down as Crowell made his full circle.

He faced Dorie and Sakson again. He extended his hand.

The pressure on Dorie’s neck was gone, and she felt distance between her back and Sakson’s hip and shoulder.

“That’s it,” Crowell said. “I’m coming to you. Here’s my hand.”

Finally, suddenly, Sakson shoved her in the back, aiming her body left. She stumbled a little but stayed upright. She turned enough to see Sakson snag Crowell’s hand and pull him in.

She should’ve run toward Jennifer Lisle. To her, and past her. To Plenko. Was he really out in the hallway? But she didn’t. She faced Sakson and Crowell, and it happened so fast, so suddenly, that it took her a second to realize something was wrong.

There was a flash. A sound that sizzled, and kept on sizzling, and Sakson yelled out, screamed, and he was shaking violently, his grip around Crowell’s lower arm loosening. The air smelled of ozone. Something green glowed on Crowell’s fingernails, she saw now.

Finger capacitors!

Sakson let go of Crowell and stumbled backwards, his body gyrating, his blaster discharging white beams into the floor. His momentum took him through the broken French doors and onto the balcony.

Dorie didn’t wait. She ran. Even now, she visualized every weapon in the room coming up, even as Sakson’s blaster spit fire into the floor. His weapon was inching upward, most likely involuntarily, his hand clenched around the trigger, but she followed onto the balcony. She thought she heard Lisle cry Hold! Hold your fire! and someone else say Dorie, no, stop! and movement all around her that might be those fifteen against one moving in, or it could be the suite itself coming apart.

She caught up to Sakson.

Even as his blaster snapped upward in a last violent gesture, she ran into him, throwing her shoulder and all her body weight into his chest. He pinwheeled, the blaster beam circling dangerously, then he slammed against the wall of the balcony. His torso folded backwards, and he pitched over the unshielded edge like a rag doll.

It wasn’t a hundred floors, but it was enough. Dorie didn’t see him fall, only heard the blaster going, and going, until it stopped.