Insidious (23 page)

“We’ve got a lot of time to kill,” Aldriena said. “You have a bunkmate?”

“No,” he said.

Aldriena didn’t actually have much experience with men, but she covered her uncertainty with aggression. She leaned forward from her cross-legged sitting position onto all fours, moved forward, and kissed him.

“You don’t believe in wasting any time, do you?” he said.

“People like us don’t have time to waste.”

She kissed him again, pressing ever forward until she pinned him against a giant supply container. He responded to her eagerly, running his hands through her hair. They clutched each other in the low acceleration, moving slowly as if in a dream.

She unzipped his vac suit all the way to his groin. Her hands slid over his flesh underneath, then her mouth followed.

At first, Martin remained a gentle lover, although as they rolled about in the tiny cabin, he slowly stepped up his own urgency to match hers. Aldriena directed the course of their lovemaking as if to remind herself that she had chosen this encounter rather than having fallen victim to the whims of a male. She reluctantly gave up the reins as he neared his climax, yielding at last to this man and his instincts. She admitted to herself that it did feel good, at least physically.

Afterward, Aldriena quickly slipped back into her Veer skinsuit.

“Back into Momma Veer, huh?”

He referred to her military skinsuit. Veer Industries manufactured the best in personal defense equipment. Its reputation was so solid that soldiers often called the company Momma Veer.

“My real mother is dead. But Momma Veer has been as good a replacement as a girl could hope for,” she said bravely, although she didn’t believe it.

Sex confused her. When she’d first discovered men and their drives, she had felt anger and resentment. Then she’d learned to turn the tables on them and manipulate them with her striking looks. Now she didn’t know how to feel when she offered a lover something genuine. She thought maybe she was missing something, but she didn’t know what.

She turned and tried to smile at Martin. Instead of smiling back, Martin frowned. Aldriena felt surprise. Was this how the men she had courted and then shoved aside felt when they realized her true disposition?

“Someone’s on the barge,” he said. The faraway look on his face told of PV access.

“Engineers? Guards?” she asked.

Martin looked up and locked eyes with her.

“Space force rangers,” he said. Suddenly he had a weapon in each hand, one with its handle offered to her. Aldriena took it. She checked the barrel. It looked like a 10mm slugthrower. Aldriena pulled back the slide a little to peek at the round in the chamber. The case was sealed against vacuum with a shattering slug. It would fire in space, and the bullet wouldn’t make a hole in a spacecraft bulkhead.

“Now what?” she asked.

The door exploded.

Aldriena’s eye’s closed instinctively as debris rained across her body. Pieces of the door ricocheted wildly against the crates in the low acceleration of the barge. She staggered back a step, but her training allowed her to react. She brought her projectile weapon up and fired into the opening even though no target had appeared. She hoped the rangers wouldn’t charge in if she demonstrated they weren’t incapacitated, even though her aim was badly shaken by the sudden assault. She didn’t check herself for injury. If something had been broken, she’d find out soon enough.

A black grenade rattled gently across the floor. It acquired them and made a crisp ninety degree turn to roll closer. Aldriena turned to run. The sounds stopped behind her. She knew that meant it had anchored itself somewhere and started to split open like a predatory flower to scan for victims. She focused on the other exit. A thought flitted through her brain as she accelerated toward it.

Have they already surrounded us? Only one way to find out.

As she yanked the door open, shots sounded from behind her. Was Martin sticking around to fight? She took a quick look back and saw him lying across a glue floret the size of his torso, his gun leveled at the door.

Aldriena felt a stab of guilt. He’d blocked the glue grenade to help her escape.

Damn.

She bolted out of the room into the cold outer maintenance tube beyond. No rangers awaited her there, so she took a giant leap forward, taking advantage of her low weight. Somehow, she landed without falling and turned a corner, glad to get out of the line of fire.

Merda.

It was pressurized outside the pod, but icy cold. The chill began its own assault on her.

Surely, they could spare some of the hydrogen to warm the barge. But of course, no one’s supposed to be on it.

The rangers had the drop on her. They would be well equipped and organized. What advantage did she possibly have? She’d gone into Xanadu with a plan and the initiative, but now she was the one unprepared, reacting to their plan.

At least she had her sticky pads on the hands and feet of her Veer skinsuit. It helped make up for her reduced weight in the barge. The skinsuit was made of military grade combat armor, which didn’t hurt, either. It worked for Aldriena in many ways. Although the garment was thick, it fitted her well enough to display her firm curves, which was nice when it was time to get some attention.

The pistol, however, hardly qualified as anything more than a peashooter against the space force rangers. Not that she wanted to kill any of them anyway. Aldriena only wanted to escape back into space and pick up her next assignment.

In a couple of seconds, she came up with two positive possibilities. One, the
Silvado
. If she could get to her ship, she could at least delay her capture and even possibly escape. Two, they most likely wanted her alive. The UNSF would want to know what she knew.

She leaped by a giant flat container nestled between the structural bars of the freighter. She ended up grazing the container and then stopping herself with a jolt by attaching her palms to its surface. Jumping felt faster than running, but she found it hard to gauge where she’d end up.

She caught sight of a small black bulb affixed to one of the struts. She recognized it as a security device. She presumed Martin had somehow circumvented or subverted the freighter’s security measures, but had the rangers had time to get it back online?

She fled past blue and green metal tubes as thick as her torso. Equipment lockers dotted the area. She considered hiding in one, but that seemed futile, since once she gave up her mobility they’d trap her there eventually. The barge didn’t have elevator shafts or ventilation ducts in which to hide.

Aldriena tried to calm herself and think as she flitted through the interior of the barge, working her way around the struts and tanks. Surely, they would have posted a guard or watch device on her vessel? She took a sharp left. Most likely, they had a plan to prevent escape. The
Silvado
was no trinket, but it wasn't really hers, so she didn’t need to take it. On the other hand, what choice did she have other than the ranger’s ship, her own ship, or the barge itself?

Were there any escape pods or shuttles on board?

She asked for space transport services over her link. Nothing replied to her query except the
Silvado
. She inquired about the ship’s status. The
Silvado
confirmed her fears: it had been locked down with three rangers on external guard duty.

A steel-toothed noise sent her reeling back into a wobbly sprint. It was a close miss from a sonic stunner. Aldriena tried to shake off her new headache and avoid running into anything. It was hard enough to run with sticky feet and low weight. Thankfully, she’d had some time to practice moving in the environment, but she’d probably be less accomplished at it than the rangers.

The extreme exercise was helping to keep her warm. Only her face felt the sting of cold, but she ignored it. She brought up a link map in her head. It showed she approached a hydrogen transfer control station. She darted down a corridor on her right. A heavy metal door barred the way. She hurriedly invoked her Cascavel. The stealth link accessed an account that Martin had set up to suborn the hydrogen barge. Once logged in as an authorized user, Aldriena disarmed the lock and slipped inside.

Warmth. The air beyond felt almost hot against her chilled face, even though it couldn’t have been more than fifteen degrees Celsius in the control station.

The spartan rooms served as a nerve center for moving hydrogen to and from the barge. She stared at rows of manual controls covered in dust. Presumably, no one had used the controls since the barge had been constructed, since the barge was automated, and even the normal override mechanism was probably link-based. Aldriena assumed that one could do something dangerous from here, maybe even without authorization. Not that she knew how.

A message came through her link.

“You may as well come out. We’ve got you this time.”

She smiled. It sounded like a cheesy vid. She could play along with that.

“Come in here, and I’ll blow us all to hell,” she transmitted.

“Let’s not get overdramatic, lady,” a voice replied.

“Try me,
cabrão
.”

A second or two ticked by. She scanned the controls for anything related to moving the hydrogen around.

“We’re coming in. We don’t want to hurt you of course, but—”

“You’ll hurt me all right. Beat me up and rape me, most likely.”

More seconds.

“You know we can’t do that. The mission is being monitored.”

“Okay, have it your way,” she said. “Good-bye cruel world.”

Aldriena disconnected and started searching for other exits. She examined the ceiling first, but soon concluded it didn’t offer any clever exit.

She dropped to her knees and examined the base of a bank of manual controls. She spotted an access panel on the side. She pulled a plastic handhold, but it stubbornly refused to open up. Aware of the seconds slipping by, Aldriena switched hands and pulled frantically.

Finally, the panel snapped away from the station. She set it down next to her, wondering how she could replace it if she crawled inside. She looked into the interior. The station base held a few cyblocs and some power conduits, but there weren’t any holes leading under the floor. It was a dead end.

She stood up. Two marines stood across the room with their weapons pointed at her. Then a white hot flash of pain seized her chest. She fell in a heap.

Aldriena drew a ragged breath as rough hands dragged her across the smooth tile floor and propped her up against a wall. Her eyes refocused. She saw two more rangers swagger in, tall men with short haircuts and hard eyes. Her chest felt numb. Her arm twitched, still partially possessed by the electrical weapon that had taken her down.

Another soldier, a lieutenant, pulled her roughly by the arms to a standing position, although she had to lean against the wall.

“Your superior isn’t going to be too happy with your behavior, soldier,” she said hoarsely.

“Well, you see, someone blocked our link frequencies here on the freighter. Must have been Black Core operatives,” said the man closest to her. He smirked.

Aldriena took his meaning. His superiors weren’t watching them after all, so he could do whatever he wanted. Aldriena took that news hard, but she set her mouth and met his gaze.

“My man Faber here wants a word with you,” he said.

Faber stepped forward. The man stood about six feet tall. He was clearly muscular, even through the thick fibers of his military skinsuit.

“You almost offed me,” Faber said coldly.

“You shot at me first,” Aldriena said.

“We weren’t out to kill you or you’d be dead. You almost blew my head off. You see that? Ricocheted off the edge of my helmet, right here,” the ranger said.

“You should’ve—”

The back of the ranger’s hand cut off Aldriena’s smartass reply as it struck her face.
He clasped his hands behind her head and pulled her torso into a knee strike. Her skinsuit distributed the blow well, but it still smarted. She slid back onto the floor without making a sound.