Deserter (43 page)

Kris opened the door of her suite. Outside, Tom was still in formal dress uniform. With a grin, he made two service automatics appear. Beside him, Penny was in like drill, white dress pants in place of the long skirt otherwise required. The cut of her tunic was loose enough to hide exactly where she produced a machine pistol from. Jack simply stood beside them, looking his usual friendly, deadly self.

“Are we ready?” Kris asked.

“Looks like it,” “Ready as we’ll ever be,” was followed by Jack’s simple “Yes.”

“What do our guards look like out there?”

“I told the Sergeant we were in for the night. He dismissed half of them.”

“We’ve evacuated the top of this thing. Nelly, order the nanos in the yard to link up and short out transformers.”

“We can take out four and still have our command units and a few defenders left over for when the dust cloud arrives.”

“Do it, Nelly, and call in your security nanos here. Don’t leave any behind. They may come in handy.”

Jack looked at his wrist unit. “Five minutes?”

“Probably sooner. Sandfire reacts fast,” Kris said.

Abby joined them; twelve trunks rolled after her.

“Do we need those?” Jack growled.

“If we lose them, I won’t weep, but why abandon what we don’t have to?” Abby said with simple logic.

A minute crawled by. Kris settled into her chair. The others found seats of their own. The next minute took longer. Kris was committed. Somewhere in this station an alarm was blinking or clanging, screaming that a major message stream had been shot into the yard from Kris’s suite. There was no benefit to second thoughts. Either she or Sandfire would get what they wanted tonight. No political compromise, no splitting the difference. That was why Kris chose the Navy over Father and his politics. Then, the clarity of alive or dead seemed better than settling for half a loaf. Half of what you wanted.

Maybe Father had a point.

If I get out of here, I’ll have a sit-down talk with the man,
Kris promised herself
.

“Kris, there is major traffic on the security net.”

Kris rose to her feet. “Jack, please invite in our guards.” Jack quickly stepped off the distance to the door, then paused. “It might be better if we really had a fire,” he said.

“Right,” Kris said. “Abby, get those crates into Jack’s room.” While the maid did, Kris took the four steps to her door and pulled a cylinder from her pocket. One red band. Big boom.
Take this, you screenwriter.
“Fire in the hole,” she called, tossed it at her bathtub, and ducked back against the wall.

Three very noticeable seconds later, the bathroom exploded.

Jack waited a further second, then yanked open the door. Across the hall, two men were propped back in chairs, one snoring. Jack yelled “Fire!” and both came awake with a start. One fell out of his chair sideways; the other landed on his feet. The Sergeant appeared in the door, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He raced past Jack, followed by three others. Kris pointed them at the bathroom as alarms began pulsating in the room and the hall, drowning out even Kris’s bellow of “Fire! In there!”

They charged into her bedroom, then came to a halt, gaping at the wreckage . . . and maybe realizing they had nothing to fight the fire. Kris waved Tom forward, automatic in hand. “Nonlethal,” she whispered in his ear between bleats of the alarm.

Tom didn’t change his ammunition selection. He shot; four grays crumpled. Kris examined the bath. The bomb had shattered the tub. Spray from the faucets was putting out most of what had caught fire. “Leave them,” she ordered.

Penny and Tom took the lead for the door. Abby was already halfway down the hall, trunks rolling along behind her. As she punched for an elevator, one opened.

Trouble in spandex.

Eight of Sandfire’s girls stood in red, form-fitting body suits. Utility belts showed wicked looking bulges. Most held machine pistols at the ready; one had only a long black staff. Another held a crossbow slung across her arm.

For a startled moment, the two groups stared at each other. As weapons came up, the adjacent elevator door opened for Abby. She led her boxes in as if she knew nothing of what was about to happen. However, the maid had not given Kris all her small and impressive packages. As Abby crossed the threshold of the elevator, she casually tossed a small cylinder into the next car.

It gave a loud pop, knocking the red beauties off their combat rhythm for a fraction of a second, and gave Kris’s crew time to grab their weapons and dive for the floor.

Suddenly, the elevator was filled with swirling smoke lit by blinding flashes of light. If eyes weren’t dazzled, ears were shattered by a high-pitched screech that warbled as it went up and down the scale.

Behind Kris, Penny’s automatic pistol rattled from the doorway, hardly noticeable among the racket. Its slugs gouged plastic and plaster from the elevator wall where rounds missed the car and its load. Jack produced a machine pistol and emptied the magazine. Kris felt a moment’s compassion for the reds until a slug ripped plaster from the wall beside her.

Kris wasn’t the only one wearing body armor.

She spun on her belly and snaked herself down the hall toward an exit light just as a gray figure emerged from the elevator’s smoke at a low crouch, weapon on full automatic. A stream of rounds shot over Kris’s head before the woman spun and fell back into the smoke. Six hits on her body only knocked her back. The one that exploded her face killed her.

Kris reached up to unlatch the stairwell door, then pushed it open by rolling through it. Now with her pistol out, she worked herself up to her knees, took aim, and sent single rounds at anything in the smoke that looked like a face or bare flesh.

She didn’t have many good shots, but she fired some of her limited ammunition every few seconds to encourage heads to stay down.

Weapons in both hands, Tom wiggled his way backwards to the stairwell and joined Kris. “Those red outfits turn gray in the smoke. Anybody notice an explosion in the yard?” he said as he took station above Kris and sent a stream of slugs down the hall.

“The red outfits are also bulletproof. Nelly, anything?”

“Three of the task units reported just before they self-destructed,” the computer reported. “There are alarms on all levels of the station and verbal instructions to evacuate as quickly as possible. I assume the same is going on in the yard.”

“Good assumption. Tommy, me boy, the show is on.”

“And did I ever doubt it for a second,” he said, brogue showing. “Now, how do we get the hell out of here?”

The smoke hung in the elevator. Normally, there should have been a draft going into the stairwell. Not today. “Somebody’s closed down the airflow.”

“Only way to fight a fire,” the spacer pointed out.

Penny was now on her belly, snaking her way toward Kris. Jack kept up his fire even as he began a backward crawl. Someone in gray edged out of the elevator, but their face turned into a messy pulp, and motion stopped.

Fire was slow and sporadic as Penny backed into the exit door. Tom kept shooting, sending rounds into the smoke from on high. Encouraged, most fire from the elevator was equally high.

Jack rolled himself into the stairwell just as something flew by Kris’s head to explode at the far end of the hall. The back blast flashed toward Kris as she slammed the door shut.

“What was that?” Tom asked breathlessly.

“I don’t think that crossbow is for friendly games of darts,” Kris said as she opened the door a crack. Two gray figures came through the smoke at a crouch, machine pistols at the ready. “I’ll take the one on the right.”

“I got the left one,” Tom said.

“On three. One, two, three,” Kris said and squeezed off a burst directly at her target’s face. She collapsed, to be covered by Tom’s target. There was no more movement in the smoke.

Kris wasn’t waiting for any, either. “Let’s get upstairs.”

“That takes us toward maintenance,” Tom pointed out.

“Which is where they won’t be expecting us,” Kris said as she hiked up the first of a long flight of stairs, heels echoing on steel. Jack was right behind her, Penny and Tom farther back.

“Nelly, tell me what’s happening.”

“The station is being evacuated. Yard, too, from the level of power to the elevators. The security net is going wild.”

“Any traffic near us?”

“No, Kris, but I did not get any signal traffic off the group in the elevator. Totally quiet.”

“A different net would be my guess,” Jack offered. “Look for something anywhere on the frequency band. Even something in the civilian net that isn’t used here. These folks aren’t going to be bothered by a minor thing like frequency allocation.”

Kris brought her team to a halt on a landing. “We’ve got to split up. Tommy, you and Penny can’t keep up with me and Jack.”

“Yes we can,” and “I’m with you,” was their reply.

“I also want to complicate Sandfire’s chase. We stay together, he’s got one problem. We raise scatter hell, and he’s not sure who’s doing what where. Play with me,” Kris said, pulling several of her cylinders from her dress. “We’ve got thirty minutes to run before I want to blow the yard. I’ve got to stay free that long.”

“Make Sandfire’s life miserable.” Tom grinned. “I can do that.”

Kris handed Penny half the bombs, explaining them as Penny pocketed each type. “Now, you walk or take a slide car down into the business section. Twenty minutes from now, meet us at Dock Eleven. That’s where they park the private stuff. We hijack one and head for a jump gate before the station blows. Now, make tracks. I’m leaving a booby trap here for our friends.”

Tom and Penny checked the hall, found it clear, and headed out. “What does that leave us?” Jack asked.

“There’s a service belt at the next landing,” Kris said, feeling inside her bodice and producing a booby trap.

“Real booby trap.”

“Pity, now I’m off balance. Give me a lift.” Jack made a foothold, and Kris stepped up just long enough to stick the explosives to the metal of the landing above them.
Wonder if Jack’s a legs man?
“Nelly, leave a nano to blow this if it spots people in SureFire Security gray or red/gray ninja getups.”

“Done.”

“Let’s make tracks.” They headed up another flight, found a door that Nelly opened onto a floor between the floors, full of air ducts, cable runs, and all the other necessities of modern life that people ignored. Nelly projected a holograph map. This floor circled the station at the .75 gravity level. Open all the way, they could reach the yard wall from here, but Kris intended to work her way closer to the station hub. If she was going to blow out the yard, she’d do it from the center out.

“Cameras, Nelly?” Red points appeared on the map. “Lay out a walk that dodges as many of them as we can,” Kris said, then glanced around at the gray walls, floor, and machinery. “I don’t think my Princess camouflage quite fits here.”

“Nelly, is there a locker room on the map?” Jack asked.

A block showed yellow. The locker room had security, but someone had stuck a picture in front of the lens of a naked guy mooning the camera. Jack only broke into three lockers before he had two sets of orange overalls and blue union baseball caps. A tool kit in the last locker provided the final element for their disguise. That, and Kris’s skirt. Bunched around her middle, it gave her a world-class beer gut.

“You got to start exercising more, Bud,” Jack said, elbowing her in her crinolines.

“It’s not the beer,” she shot back. “I was born this way.”

“It’s gonna be the death of you.”

“You can say that again,” Kris said, buying into it, double entendre and all.

Jack looked at a clipboard he’d found, handed Kris the tool kit to lug, and led off like he knew what he was doing. Kris followed, steering him as Nelly directed her. This lasted for most of five minutes, enough for Kris to start thinking they might make it. Then a hooter went off in the gray and dusty space between floors. After three blares, a computer voice announced all personnel were to leave the station. “A lockdown is being enforced. Anyone remaining will be subject to immediate arrest and detention. If you resist, you will be shot. All work is to cease. Go to the nearest descent station and exit the station.” The hooter went back to hooting, then repeated the order.

“No surprise there. Sandfire is running scared.”

“I would be about now if I was fighting you,” Jack said.

“Maybe it’s time to go with plan B. Get the nanos into the yard soonest and let them loiter up there while we run like hell.”

“Best idea you’ve had all day. All month. Maybe all lifetime.”

“I don’t like leaving our nanos for them to attack,” Kris said, starting to trot for the nearest exit like a good worker.

“Better than leaving ourselves out for them to attack.”

“Let’s try for the next exit. See if we get called on it.”

“Why do I not want to say it’s your call?” Jack scowled but trotted along as Kris took a right turn. Kris managed to skip three exits: a slide car, an elevator, and a stairwell.

She was working her way higher up the station, closer to the yard wall when the horn ahead of them quit hooting and a woman’s voice squawked. “Work party on twenty-six B, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“I forgot my lunch pail,” Jack shouted. “I got this new thermos I don’t want to lose.”

“Forget your damn coffee, you idiot. This cheap ass pile of crap is falling apart, and there are goons all over looking for anyone they can shoot for a saboteur to cover the ass of the bloody idiot who built this mess. Don’t be dumb; get the hell out. I’m leaving in two minutes.”

“We’re going, we’re going,” Kris shouted. “I told you your damn coffee wasn’t worth my neck.”

“You got it, honey. You tell him.”