CHAPTER 19

 

 

 

Wren hugged the shadows just inside the airlock.

"You'll be okay?" Kari said.

Wren gave her a flat look; there was nothing on the empty ship that she feared. And she'd like to see any of those bulky guardian robots try to beat her. She'd sever their circuits before they even knew she was there.

"Right, stupid question," Kari said. "We'll lead him away, then you head back toward the hospital. If you need us, use the communicator. Otherwise it will be radio silence."

"You know there are cameras?" Ryker said. "If the ship's defenses are worth two tokens, then they'll know that Wren is on board as well."

"Yeah," Kari said. "But at least she might be able to avoid having Alpha stepping on her toes."

Ryker shrugged. "That ship gives me the creeps."

"We should move," Wren said. "Before more salvagers arrive." The fact that they still hadn't found anyone—not even bodies—made her pause, but it wasn't enough to hold her back from the salvage. She filed the information away and checked that all her knives were in place. She'd been on enough missions to know that the other shoe would drop eventually, and when it did, she wanted to be ready.

"Right," Kari said. "Let's go."

Kari pressed the button beside the door and the airlock hissed open. Kari and Ryker entered the Imperium ship, and Alpha fell into step beside them. His mechanical voice trailed behind them as they turned left down the corridor and disappeared from sight.

Wren waited a full five minutes before slipping out of the airlock. She stopped at the entrance to the corridor and peered around the corner. Kari and the others were nowhere in sight and so Wren turned right and hurried down the passage. She retraced the path to the hospital without needing to look at the map.

Wren paused just inside the entrance, ears straining. Silence dominated the small space and the smell of antiseptic remained strong. She skirted the edge of the room to the door at the other side, the one she and Kari hadn't had a chance to investigate before Ryker's emergency call came through.

The metal frame looked thick enough to stop bullets and there was no window to see what was beyond. What sort of hospital needed a door like that? It made the back of Wren's neck tingle and she knew better than to ignore her own senses. She pulled a thin blade from her boot and held it ready as she pressed the button beside the door.

It slid open to reveal a dark passage beyond. The bright, sterile lights of the hospital spilled into the corridor to reveal metal walls splashed with a bright splatter of blood and shards of glass on the floor.

Wren crouched and waited.

Nothing moved the still air beyond the circle of light cast from the hospital. Usually she could sense movement by tiny changes in pressure, but nothing came from the corridor.

After another minute of nothing, she darted into the hallway and fell to a crouch just beyond the light.

Still nothing.

Wren waited. The average person didn't wait more than two minutes in stealth situations while the average soldier might last five. Wren's training kept her where she was for more than ten. There was something wrong with the corridor; the rest of the ship had lights that worked on sensors but here the bulbs had been smashed.

The lights in the hospital turned off, plunging the room behind Wren into darkness. Still she didn't move. She tensed each muscle in her feet and legs to stop them from cramping and kept a tight grip on her knife. Only after another ten minutes of complete silence did she allow herself to move, and even then, she crept up the hallway in a crouch, her feet silent.

She couldn't see anything in the darkness, but sight was just one sense and Wren had spent a lifetime honing all of them. A hundred paces from the hospital, a slight change in pressure warned of a doorway to her right. She stopped just before it and listened. There wasn't sound, exactly, but more a vague sense of movement in the darkness beyond.

There was something else too. A smell. Wren knew it well. Fear. And fear meant people. Perhaps she'd found the missing crew of the Imperium ship.

Wren considered calling Kari but discarded the idea. There was nothing the captain and Ryker could do that she couldn't, and if she called then she risked giving away her position. Just because she could smell the salty tang of fear, didn't mean the people within the doorway weren't dangerous. No, she'd take care of whoever it was herself, and once the area was secure, then she'd tell the captain.

She reached out and felt the door, solid and closed. She drew a shallow breath and pressed the button beside it, ready to leap away from any sudden attack. But instead of the door opening, a burst of bright light flooded the corridor. The sudden glare blinded Wren, and she leapt back, knife up, in case of attackers.

Something moved.

Wren blinked, ignoring the pain of the light. A guardian robot strode toward her from the other end of the passage.

"Hello, friend," it said.

Wren adjusted her grip on her knife. "You're no friend of mine."

The robot drew closer, feet clanging on the floor, metal face unreadable. It stopped a few feet short of Wren and her outstretched knife. "Perhaps I can be of assistance."

"I'm fine on my own."

"Then please, let me accompany you."

"If you want to help so much, then open this door," Wren said. She was more than aware that whoever was on the other side could probably hear them so whatever element of surprise she'd had was gone. Now she just had to hope that if they were hostile, that they'd underestimate her. It wasn't a far stretch, it happened all the time.

"Unfortunately, I am unable to comply," the robot said. "That is a restricted zone. But perhaps I can show you to one of the many spa locations we have on board the ship?"

Wren glanced to the door and then back at the robot. Red and yellow lines warned of the restricted zone but gave no indication of what was inside. Whatever it was, there was no way one robot was going to stop her. "Open the door."

"Unfortunately I am unable to comply."

"But you could open the door, if I was authorized?"

"That is correct. Now, perhaps you would like to explore the—"

Wren darted forward and plunged her thin knife into the crack between the robot's head and its neck. She slashed across and severed the wires and tubes inside. Green fluid leaked out, trickling down its shoulders. A red light flashed, and the robot collapsed to the ground with a clatter of metal.

Wren fell to her knees beside it. It had to have a key or some kind of identification swipe card on it which would open the door. She just had to find it and get inside.

A high-pitched beeping emanated from the robot's chest.

Wren scrabbled with the access panel to the robot's core systems. The alarm would warn everyone within a hundred yards. Atoms! So much for any element of surprise. Kari and Ryker could probably hear it from wherever the hell they were.

The noise echoed around the narrow corridor and the red light flashed in Wren's eyes, making it hard to see. She just needed to—

A sudden flash of movement passed the corner of Wren's right eye. She clutched her knife and spun but before she could do anything, a heavy weight slammed into the back of her head and she collapsed to the floor beside the dying robot. Cold hands gripped her wrists, there was a sharp stab of pain in her shoulder, then darkness.