Dark Beneath the Moon (42 page)

Something banged against the other door, the one Maja had closed. Seemed like whoever was after us didn’t have any of those handy little field and control enablers. Viss Feron, Yuskeya, and I ran toward the door. If we were about to go hand-to-hand, we had to be right there and ready when the door opened.

We’d barely reached it when it did.

I WASN’T EXACTLY
sure when or how Jahelia Sord had transformed from prisoner to one of the crew, but she certainly seemed to have slotted herself in there somehow. When the attackers pounded on the med ward door, she was not even a step behind Viss and Yuskeya as they ran to flank it. Maja and Baden ducked to one side of the door, further along the wall than Viss, while Gerazan and Rei went the other way, behind the women. Hirin and I, along with our Chron benefactor, hunkered down behind one of the beds for cover, but I had a clear view of the door and what happened there.

The others obviously didn’t have access privileges on the station, because the door didn’t slide open as smoothly as it had closed—they had to force it. Viss, Yuskeya, and Jahelia waited until the lead attacker had pushed it halfway open, then in one smooth movement Viss leaned around and punched him square in the face. The force field flashed, and the combined impact of it and Viss’s punch sent the other man reeling backwards. As he fell, Jahelia was on him in a heartbeat, and stabbed her fork deeply into the back of his hand—he’d been holding a weapon but let it fall with a shriek of pain. She yanked the utensil out and bright red blood welled up from the punctures. Instantly, Yuskeya jabbed the med injector against his thigh and pressed the pad. He struggled briefly and then fell limp.

As soon as he’d let his punch fly, Viss had touched the door, making it open fully. Maja and Baden, Rei and Gerazan leapt through, over Jahelia and the fallen attacker, and were on the others in the hallway before they had a chance to react. It seemed to work out well, since there were two more attackers, one for each pair. I saw both Rei and Maja take one down, while Baden and Gerazan made sure they stayed down. Efficient.

So by the time—and it wasn’t long—the skirmish ended, we’d gained three actual plasma rifles. I knelt to examine the three intruders—one female, two male, all human. One, the female, wore a jacket with the red and black PrimeCorp logo on the chest pocket.

Baden knelt beside me and said, “You should use that datapad to scan their ID chips. Might as well get some names while we can.”

“Right.” PrimeCorp would want to deny any associations, so the more evidence we had, the better. I took a minute to scan them, and recorded a couple of images, too.

Rei, Gerazan, and Viss took the weapons and stood guard at the doorway while I finished that and had a hurried conversation—at least as hurried as it could be, funneling everything through Pita—with the Chron. Apparently the deck directly above us was much smaller, housing officer’s quarters. Above that was the even smaller bridge, where Cerevare had been taken for questioning. Below us, the deck was the same size as this one, half given over to crew quarters and amenities and half to ship hangars and airlock docks.

“Can you contact the bridge, find out how many have boarded the station?” I asked through Pita. “And ask if Cerevare is still there?”

The Chron nodded. The plates on its face shifted, tightened, as if it were clenching its jaw, and its throat moved.
Subvocalized communication
, I thought. After a moment, it held up eight long fingers.

“So it’s three down, five to go,” Baden said. “That’s not bad odds.”

Then it held up ten more.

“Ah. Where’s our ship again?” he added.

According to the Chron doctor, it was in the ring below us, at the airlock directly below the one we’d seen earlier.

“And where’s Cerevare?”

The Chron pointed up. I assumed it meant,
still on the bridge
.

“Will your people send her down to meet us at the ship? You must already know she isn’t working with PrimeCorp.”

After the translation, Pita said, “
Not to go.
”

“What? Why would they hold her here and let the rest of us leave?”

A new pounding commenced at the door of the med ward.

The Chron used its foot to move the attacker Jahelia had stabbed out of the way of the door, and closed it. It tapped a few commands into the touchpad, and started off, motioning for us to follow. This time we went quietly down the corridor, not knowing if others would follow to see what had happened to their three fellows. We made it almost to the airlock without incident, but someone must have heard us coming despite our attempt to stay stealthy. An energy blast from a plasma rifle bloomed near the airlock door, forcing the Chron’s feet to stutter backwards. It fell heavily before anyone could catch it, but Hirin offered a hand to help it up. It flashed him a smile of thanks, and I was struck again by how this Chron, at least, was nothing like the monsters I’d grown up hearing about. Where the blast had hit the wall, the panels had blackened and sagged, but stayed mainly intact.

Viss put his back against the wall at the corner of the hall leading to the elevators and hydroponics, where the blast had come from. Leading with the plasma rifle, he bent his head around the corner. Whoever was out there fired again, and he ducked back from the jagged flash of energy.

“I don’t want to fire wild and damage the elevators,” he said, “but they won’t let us walk out there.”

“Wait,” Jahelia Sord said. “What about the force fields? Can the energy weapons penetrate them?”

Pita flashed the question on the screen for the Chron. It seemed to consider before it answered.

“
Unknown.
”

“
Damne
. That was a good thought, Sord.”

“Not good enough, apparently.”

“Well, we can’t stand here and wait,” I hissed. “They’ll come down the other hallway, or come up behind us. The whole place is a ring, so there’s no real way to block them.”

“How many elevators are there?” Viss asked the Chron. Pita obligingly put it on the screen.

The Chron held up four fingers.

Viss shrugged. “
Okej
then, let’s chance it. Not very likely we’ll take out all four of them, right?”

I hesitated a moment, but then said, “Right. The elevators are our goal. Viss, Maja, and me in the front, hoping the force fields create a barrier. Go.”

Without hesitation, Viss put the plasma rifle around the corner, scanned, and fired. Another glass wall shattered. Without waiting to see what the response would be, Viss ran down the corridor, Maja close behind him. I hoped the force fields would deflect most of what came at us, and followed the others.

WE GOT LUCKY
—sort of. There were seven of the intruders here. Three Chron and four humans, and fortunately for us, these Chron wore completely different uniforms from those who belonged on the station—dark brown pants and buff-coloured jackets with blue insignia on each shoulder. Unfortunately for us, they were better prepared than the last three we’d met, and at least three of them opened fire as soon as Viss bolted from the hallway.

The force field generators worked to substantially deflect the plasma bolts the intruders threw at us. They did little to lessen the impact—the first bolt that hit my field staggered me and I stopped moving forward. Hirin, right behind, ran into me and bounced off the already-flaring field. He lurched to the side, leaving him open to a clear shot from one of the plasma rifles.

Despite the blasts firing all around us, the noise and the flaring shields, I managed to regain my balance and jerked sideways, trying to protect him. Maybe if I’d been myself I would have managed it, but my reflexes weren’t what they’d been only a couple of days ago. Part of the shot deflected, but part caught Hirin square in the shoulder. He yelped in pain and fell heavily against the wall.

I dropped to my knees beside him, shielding him as the others fought around us. My Chron doctor joined us, but obviously hadn’t brought any sort of first aid kit along, and I felt certain the med injectors were nothing that would help this, except perhaps to knock Hirin out. We couldn’t afford that. The Chron peeled away the torn and burned edges of Hirin’s shirt and made a human-sounding
tsk tsk
at the sight of Hirin’s wound.

A hand bearing a torn strip of yellow fabric appeared in front of me. The fabric looked suspiciously like the sheet that had covered me when I woke up in the medical bay, and I glanced up. Jahelia Sord grinned down at us. “This any good for a sling?”

I took the cloth. “Thanks.”

She shrugged. “Thought we might want to tie someone up with it, so I took it along.”

Then she was gone again, and the sounds of fighting had lessened in intensity. The Chron doctor fashioned a crude sling to take the weight of Hirin’s arm, and a moment later Viss was helping Hirin to his feet.

“Okay, this is where we split up,” I said, when we’d reached the elevators. “I’m going to go and find Cerevare. Viss, Gerazan, you’re with me. Hirin, take the rest and go find the ship, get on it, and get it ready to leave. We’ve got to get out of here fast.”

Hirin’s face was pale and strained from the pain in his shoulder, but he put out a hand to catch my sleeve, then remembered the force field at the last moment and slowed the motion. “Luta, are you sure? We’ve stayed together this long—”

I shook my head. “We don’t know for sure how many others are still searching for us. Splitting up will get us all off the station the fastest. And you need to get some medical attention,” I told him. I turned to the Chron doctor. “Can you make sure the rest of your crew knows my people are trying to get to our ship? And they’ll let them through?”

When Pita displayed it, the Chron doctor nodded. Its face altered again, and I knew it was communicating with its crewmates. It nodded, then pointed inside one of the elevators, showing Hirin how to reach the level they wanted.

“I couldn’t open the airlock door earlier,” Maja said. She tapped the button on her sleeve. “We figured this wasn’t enough, that it needed some sort of key, too.”

After a quick translation, the Chron nodded. Using the elevator controls, it showed Hirin another sequence of symbols—presumably the code he’d need to enter a touchpad outside the airlock.

“Hey, Captain,” Jahelia Sord said.

I turned to meet her gaze. Her brown eyes held a hint of challenge, but not as overtly as they had before.

“You planning to return my datapad anytime soon? Not to be a pessimist, but what if you don’t make it to the ship? It is mine, after all—and it’s got all your evidence against PrimeCorp on it.”

I glanced down at the datapad in my hands, reluctant to give it up. And yet, she was right. It had been invaluable for me to communicate with the Chron, but it wasn’t right for me to risk it any further. Besides the evidence I’d gathered from the fallen PrimeCorp intruders, the translation dictionary itself was part of the case against PrimeCorp.

I held it out to her, trying not to let my reluctance show. “You’re right. Thanks for letting me keep it as long as you did.”

She took it wordlessly, not taking the opportunity to make a snide remark as I’d expected she might. I felt a sharp pang of helplessness—I’d relied on the AI completely for all my interactions with the Chron doctor. Now I would have to hope I could get across what I needed to through gestures and our shared knowledge of the situation. At least, I hoped we shared it. I still wasn’t sure I understood the situation, although I was beginning to put the pieces together.

The Chron doctor stepped into one of the elevators and crooked a finger for me to follow. I did, with Viss and Gerazan close on my heels. The doctor pressed a symbol, and we shot upwards. I caught a final glimpse of Hirin’s pained, worried face through the transparent elevator wall, and then it disappeared below us.

THE FEELING OF
having my datapad—of having
Pita
—in my hand again was ridiculous relief. So much had been happening, I hadn’t really realized how much it bugged me to see Luta Paixon using Pita to communicate with the Chron. Like it was her resource, not mine. I practically wanted to stroke the case, but refrained from such an open show of affection.

“Welcome back, Pita,” I said in a low voice as we piled into the elevator. “Quite an adventure you’ve been having.”

“I missed you, too, Jahelia,” she answered in a whisper. “I don’t think the captain appreciated me quite as much as you do.”

Hirin pressed the symbol the Chron had indicated, and the floor of the elevator fell away. Not fast enough that my feet lifted off, but plenty fast. He gasped, and I figured the motion hurt his injured shoulder pretty bad.