Dragonfly (15 page)

“Not too much …
está bien
. And … we have collapse.” He ripped out a synapse and tossed it away, and above our heads current popped and zapped silent. “Laser grid off. And magnetic field failure … now. Time?”

I checked my counter. Five seconds until Spider’s timecheck. Trust Dragonfly to be minute-perfect. “Three … two … one … mark.”

He severed another synapse. “Magclamp doorlocks open. And … lights out. That’s it.”

He threw me a charming grin, dust drifting from his hair in the neurospace’s green glow. “Nice job, techgrub.”

“Yourself.” I grabbed the boltcutters and cut the exposed power conduit with a bang and a shower of sparks. We’d already given ourselves away. No point making it easy for them to fix. “Let’s get out of here.”

“After you.” He pulled his gammaspace shades down over his eyes, like ultrafine UV glasses with smoky lenses.

I did the same, blanketing the room in shadow, and we kicked our gear under the console and ran.

17

In the corridor, it was dark as space. Blindness swamped me. Shouts and orders rang out in the thick blackness, marines trying to get organized and figure out what had happened.

I stumbled over a jutting bulkhead, and Dragonfly fumbled for my arm. “Let there be light,” he whispered, and snapped open the portable gammaspace link he’d spent all those hours building on
Ladrona
.

Static crackled blue on my shades as the remote interface lit up, and my vision glimmered red. Purple shadows loomed, the sharp edges of bulkheads and doorways glittering like bloody ice. Stray current arcing up from the gravity engines six stories below us flickered like tiny lightning strikes in the walls and floor, and the air sparkled with charged particles shedding their own tiny gammawave radiation. I grinned. It was the same as the station’s approach grid, though not as sophisticated. Invisible ionized wavelengths revealed by gammaspace shades. Now we could see while everyone else fumbled blind. This was fun.

Dragonfly grabbed my hand and we ran. In the garrison entry corridor, soldiers stumbled in the dark, feeling their way. The security shield had opened when we switched off the magnetics, and we dashed through.

Somewhere behind me, a flashlight pierced the dark, and someone shouted. “There they are!”

Took them long enough.

I slotted Spider’s smoke grenade into my marine regulation pistol, aimed high over my shoulder and fired. Crack. The ceiling splintered, charged metal edges glittering, and white smoke particles scattered, a diffuse cloud that made the flashlight useless. But in gammaspace, the charge in the smoke particles sizzled and faded like melting snowfall, leaving our way clear.

Muffled cursing rang out, and sweet smoke tickled my throat as we ran.

I’d asked Dragonfly why the marines wouldn’t have gammaspace shades too, rendering our shelter ineffective.

“They’re too dumb,” he’d replied.

Seemed he was right, and for a moment I exulted in being on the better, cleverer, more efficient side.

Except this wasn’t my side. We were the bad guys, and we were slipping past Imperial security with no more trouble than a kid playing hide-and-seek. The marines were well-trained and prepared, but they couldn’t think of everything. Sometimes, all it took to be a criminal was the guts to try it.

Reluctant admiration warmed my blood. I’d thought maybe Dragonfly had tried to defy Spider because he was afraid. I was wrong. He’d talked as if this’d be simple as freefall, and it turned out the cocky son of a spaceworm could back it up. Damn.

Out in the corridor, Spider had already fired his smoke grenade, and the gammaspace radiation flood we’d made was doing its job. Glowing red metal edges guided us down the corridor like a shuttlecraft runway’s lights, and we ran past looming bulkheads and storage compartments to the remote guardpost.

The door to the girl’s apartment already stood half-open, magnetic locks broken and shiny metal clamps exposed. Spider loomed out of the smoke, dark shades gleaming across his eyes. On the red-glittered metal floor, three marines lay senseless or dead, degrading bio-current crackling like blue webs over their skin.

I swallowed, angry. I hadn’t heard shots. Spider was clever enough not to give the other marines something to run toward. Too fucking clever. I wanted to punch his grinning face.

Dragonfly just looked at him and shook his head.

Together, we pushed the heavy steel door aside on its rollers and entered the apartment. White matte plastic walls decorated with flowers and bright-daubed art. A pile of glass books and a fluffy white teddy bear lay scattered on the low table, and beside the plastic autoclave in the kitchenette, take-out dishes lay untrashed. Fridge, mirror, dark glass movie display set into the floor, pink and white cushions on the sunken lounge, popcorn spilling from two creased boxes. A white daybed sat under an oblong clearview, stars shining steadily beyond the number three docking arm, the scaffolding stretching out into space. The heater was on high, warm air scintillating in gammaspace with the ionized scent of sweet perfume. A girl’s room.

Spider hadn’t mentioned she was such a
little
girl.

The side exit was half-open, its maglocks disabled too, and Foxy strode in through a cloud of smoke with a chunky black laser rifle slung low at her bony hip. Dragonfly dragged the main door shut behind us and jammed the shiny cylindrical plasma charge from his pistol between the locking contacts. Current flashed orange, and the contacts hissed and melted, welding together. He snatched his singed hand away and the electromagnets snapped on with a steely clunk that gripped the door tight. Temporary, but good enough.

I looked over my shoulder, alarmed. “What are you doing? How are we meant to get out?”

“Not that way, I guess. No point giving them options.” He holstered his crippled pistol.

An open doorway led to the bedroom. Already Spider and Foxy had gone ahead, and I heard a thump and a muffled squeal before Spider strode out, dragging a girl in a white silk nightdress.

She kicked and struggled, her yells strangled by his hand over her mouth. Golden hair tumbled over her pretty young face, ionized blue eyes wide with shock. No gammaspace shades for her, and even the nightlights were out. She couldn’t see, and she was terrified. She didn’t look more than thirteen or fourteen. Her long slender legs were only half-covered by the sparkling static-charged nightdress.

She wriggled and kicked, but Spider held her like a doll, the ugly steel disruptor he pressed against her temple putting an end to any ideas she might have had of calling for help. I didn’t like her chances of making it out of this unbruised. But if I acted squeamish, they’d just cut me loose. My mission was more important.

I shook my head, pretending disgust. “A little young for you, isn’t she?”

The girl jumped at my voice. My words could have been more comforting, but at least now she knew there was another woman in the room.

“Old enough for what I want.” Spider snapped his disruptor into its thighclip and pulled her to her feet, his big hand still plastered over her mouth. She stood, shivering.

Dragonfly waved his hand, irritated. “
Madre de dios
. At least let her put some clothes on.”

But Foxy was already emerging from the bedroom holding a bundle. She swiftly wrapped the girl in a long brown coat and forced some shoes onto her feet.

Voices rang closer in the corridor beyond the side exit. Foxy shouldered her rifle, taking aim with her pierced lips thinned. “They’re coming. Get on.”

Spider pulled the girl backward against his chest in a rough embrace, and from a tiny pocket on his thigh he slipped a shimmering hypodermic clip. “Hang on now, Natasha.” His whisper was musical, comforting, and all the scarier because of it. “We’re taking a little ride. Sweet dreams.”

And he stabbed her in the neck, glowing green fluid draining from the vial. She crumpled in his arms, asleep.

I shivered. I totally believed everything I’d read about Spider. His matter-of-fact carelessness gave me the creeps. Foxy, too, with her cold demeanor and vacant eyes, as if she felt nothing but adoration for Spider and hatred for everything else. On the whole, I preferred Dragonfly.

Great. What was this, terrorist aversion therapy? Now the murdering maggot was the nice one?

Dragonfly hopped up onto the low table and held out his hand to me. “Let’s get out of here.”

In a flash I understood. The docking arm lay directly above us. Spider’s two minutes had just gotten shorter. I tossed him my plasma pistol, and swiftly he slashed a wide molten gash in the plastic ceiling and tore a section down. Current sputtered weakly like water, broken lasermirrors flashing in the cavity.

“Grid’s still down,” he said. “Can you make it through that hole?”

I skipped up beside him to look. He caught my waist to steady me, and the pistol’s sharp edges jabbed into my ribs. It was still warm. His body was warm, too, where his hip pressed casually into mine, resulting in an unreasonable amount of thigh-to-thigh contact. I swallowed, his spicy scent drying my mouth. The smoky shades covered his eyes and I couldn’t read his expression, but he still felt pretty good, even if he was faking the rest of it. “Huh? I mean, yeah, I can make it. Can you … umm …”

That annoyingly sweet smile. “After you, Major.” He gripped my foot and heaved me upward.

I jumped and caught the edge of the hole. The mirrored edges of the deactivated laser grid slipped in my sweaty palms, but I held on and hauled myself into the ceiling cavity.

I rolled over to sit up, my biceps aching. Power conduits and glittering glass laser channels lined the plastic ceiling under my butt, and water pipes gurgled overhead, bolted to the steel girders of the station proper. Ahead, outlined in sparkling red gammaspace current, the vast docking arm connected to the station shell, with a huge array of welded scaffolding and safety bolts designed to split the docking arm off in an emergency, their charges coated in silvery stealthplate shields to ward off hackers.

I peered down just as Spider tossed Dragonfly a shiny metal cylinder as long and as thick as my arm. Dragonfly set it beneath me and popped the top off, and a fine steel ladder unfolded from inside, building itself joint by nanospliced joint until I could reach down and grab the top rung.

Bootsteps clunked outside the door, and a shout rang out. “Miss Verenskaya, ma’am? Sit tight. You’re safe.”

Wrong.

I hooked the ladder over a ceiling strut and the nanomachines aligned with a sharp click, snapping it rigid. “It’s solid.”

“Okay, let’s skip it.” Dragonfly held out his hands to take the girl.

Spider lighted up the ladder, nifty for such a big guy. I crawled aside and he squeezed through the hole, his massive shoulders scraping the sides. Once he was in, he reached down to drag up the insensible girl.

Foxy next, reaching down for Dragonfly to pass up her rifle. A red-hot shot sizzled, and halfway up the ladder, Dragonfly cursed.

I scrambled to the edge, risking a look. Another plasma round hit the ladder and flared, metal dripping, and Dragonfly hissed and let go, teetering a couple of meters above the floor. My heart lurched. I dived over, reaching down. Plasma flashed, singeing the hairs on my arm.

He grabbed my hand, fingers locking around my wrist. I pulled, muscles aching, and he scrambled up the last few rungs using me as a handhold. Just as he reached the top, the nanoladder shuddered and liquefied, hot metal pouring in globs to the floor.

He rolled over in my lap, panting. “Thanks. That’s another one I owe you.”

“Forget it.”

I struggled to recover, my pulse still alight. His hair spilled over my thighs and I wanted to run my fingers through it. He felt warm, human, real. Not distant and faceless. My guts twisted. I didn’t want his gratitude. I couldn’t let his sweet façade fool me. It was all an act. It had to be. He wasn’t a beginner at this. It was all too easy for him, fiddling old neurosystems and unlocking doors. Put him under pressure—more pressure than a few marines trying to shoot us in the dark—and he’d show his true colors.

It wasn’t like I cared about him dying, or that him saving me from Spider was worth anything. If I let him get killed, I was screwed, and I didn’t want to be alone on Spider’s ship.

But no time to get pissy with him now. Already Spider had dragged the girl over one shoulder, her blonde hair bouncing, and was running toward the docking arm. I scrambled up and followed, not looking back. But Dragonfly was there behind me, I knew it. I could smell him. I could feel him, laughing at me.

Foxy kicked open a corroded maintenance hatch, and we hustled through one by one into the docking corridor. Icelights glared on a metal walkway that stretched for what looked like kilometers between rows of rad-burned airlocks capped with keypads. The starfield shone warped behind the dirty glass ceiling, tethered machinery hanging silent and still in space. I tore off my gammaspace shades and shoved them in my jacket as we ran, squinting in the harsh light.

More plasma shots hissed around us. Molten holes dripped in the metal walls, flames licking. Foxy vaulted the railing at the second airlock and stabbed in an access code. Air hissed and the soot-blackened glass groaned aside. She bolted in, and Spider followed, ducking his head.

The marines advanced, half a platoon of them, all armed with plasma. Dragonfly and I dived over the railing and rolled, molten shots arcing over us with that special
schllpp
! noise that meant we were well within lethal range.

Dragonfly crouched against the wall and reached up to rip the cover off the entry console. “Cover me.”

“Oh, sure. With what?” I grabbed back the pistol he’d taken from me and aimed for just above the point guy’s head, letting off a few quick shots in warning. Great. Shooting at marines. Hell, I’d done worse to keep my cover, but it didn’t feel good. And the bastards just kept shooting back.

A bolt seared though the railing and slammed into the wall above my head. I ducked, red-hot metal dripping. “What are you doing?”