Son of Sedonia (23 page)

All around, he saw the faces of Rasalla, or really the shells of Rasalla, busy moving like ants over garbage. Matteo felt a faint sadness in their expressions.
Probably the only thing the Dose didn’t take.
A lump formed in his throat as a skinny, sixteen-year-old kid made eye contact.

Kabbard led them to a group of three ships, two of them wide and flat with beefy wingspans, the other one a sharpened, deadly curve of volcanic glass.
Two Furies...and a Zeus.
An article out of
‘22nd Century Military Tech
’ had shown concepts of them. Matteo never thought he’d see one, let alone be shot into orbit by it. At the push of a button, the Zeus’ rear beetle-shell compartment split open.

“In there,” Kabbard said. The two henchmen zip tied Matteo’s wrists and ankles, heaved him into the space, and shut the hatch. Matteo couldn’t see anything in the pitch black space, but could hear muffled hangar sounds between his gasping breaths. He pulled at his bonds, digging plastic into flesh. They wouldn’t give.

Now what?
Matteo shifted his arms behind him. Every kid in the Slums knew this trick. He stretched in the tight space of the compartment, tucked himself over his tied hands, and brought them under his legs to the front. Started feeling the door panel in front of him. His fingertips searched in the dark for any features. Almost entirely smooth except for the thin, tight seam around the edges. His heart sank. Jumped as the compartment quaked with a throaty roar.
Engines!
Any moment, the ship would lift off the deck and take him...where?
No place good.

He made a hammer out of his fists and pounded against the hatch.

“COME! ON! COME! ON! CO—”

A piercing sound shrieked through the compartment shell. It buzzed three times then paused. Three times again. A bit of data from his new memories knew exactly what it was.
Class Four alarm...‘Prisoner Disturbance’?
Matteo felt the humming engines power back down to neutral, settling the Zeus on the deck.

Matteo’s eyes flashed wide. He brailled his hands on the door again, pressing until his fingers hurt. There had to be something...
A seam!
Near the edge of the door. Too thin to get a finger into, but it was there. A dent might do the trick. He twisted himself into position and cocked back an elbow. Rammed it into the panel.
Still smooth.
Blinking back the shooting pain, he tried with the other elbow.

“AAAAAGH!” Matteo heard and felt a snap. He clutched his throbbing elbow and tried to bend it. His arm hurt like hell, but the bones were fine. The panel had buckled, making a quarter inch space. He dug the pads of his fingers into it and pulled. It popped loose in his smarting hands, showing sharp metal hardware on its underside. He sawed through the zip ties in seconds, then reached inside the hole. Felt mostly wires inside. The kind that could electrocute an amateur Cutter if the power was on...and the power was definitely on. The idling back there made everything vibrate in his hands.

He threaded a cut tie through some wires, pulled them aside, and reached in. Found it. The door latch mechanism. And a pretty standard one at that. His hand barely fit into the space, cutting his knuckles as he worked his grip on the lever. A twist. Pull. Twist again. Then a pop. The hatch creased open with the sucking pressure of air. He freed his arm from the panel and peeked through the crack. No Kabbard. No thugs. He opened the door just enough and slid out to the ground, keeping low on the deck.

No one noticed him in the chaos. His Themis issue jumpsuit helped him blend in as the other inmates worked the Class Four alarm protocol securing ships and placing them under guard, locking down the entrances, and sealing the air-locks to the outside. No one touched Kabbard’s ship.
Not part of the Themis equipment manifest.
The cockpit had been left in a hurry by the look of it...and the canopy was still open. He grinned.

“No. Fucking. Way.”

The inner airlock could be over-ridden. After the responsible inmate had just locked it down, Matteo trotted over. Set the lock on a timer release. He ran back to Kabbard’s ship, gave a quick look around, and climbed into the cockpit. The dash controls overwhelmed him at first, but the shapes, buttons, and icons soon clicked into known patterns.
Flight stick, thrust, spatial navigation, fuel gauge.
The mental model of a Themis Scout’s controls grafted on.

So much adrenaline raced through him he felt faint. A series of switches, keys, and screen commands started the launch sequence. He trembled as he wrapped clammy fingers around the flight sticks.

“I know how to fly this thing... I’M GONNA FUCKIN’ FLY THIS THING!” He touched the down-thrust, lifting the Zeus from the deck. The feather-touch of the flight stick surprised him, causing the craft to tip and scrape the landing gear against the ground. It took a second for his heart to climb down out of his throat. Inmates outside turned to notice.

Matteo taxied toward the airlock door. Within seconds, it slid open on the timer.
Almost...!
Sudden tugs on the left and right wings rocked the cabin. Outside, the inmates struggled to either pull the ship down or climb the wings. Matteo tapped the throttle, throwing everyone off as he darted into the airlock. The Zeus’ nose struck and dragged on the outer doors with a sickening screech. Matteo winced.
There goes the paint job.
He laughed.

Sensing the weight of the ship, the inner airlock doors shut behind the Zeus. The outer doors would be tricky.
Can’t open them from outside the Zeus...can’t put in a request to control...the only way would be to—
Another childlike grin creased Matteo’s cheeks. He searched the dash and found it. ‘
Weapon Safety
.
’
He clicked it free on the switch marked ‘.75 Machine-Gun,’ then gripped the flight stick. He pinched his eyes shut instead. Sucked a breath into his stomach. Squeezed the trigger.

The concussion shook the airlock. Tiny cracks formed on the canopy glass with each gigantic muzzle flash from under the wings. The outer airlock took five or six gaping holes before flying off its hinges and out into the canyon beyond. Matteo panted like a maniac. Shook it off.

“HA HA HAAA!” He punched the thrust controls the craft shot out of the air-lock.“WHOA!” The ship darted directly toward the opposite canyon wall. He throttled back and pulled up hard, shooting straight up and out of the canyon. Smoothed. Through the glass, a field of shimmering lights spread across endless night. He’d glimpsed them through the porthole of the prisoner transport, but now found himself lost among them.

Awe, excitement, terror, nausea...time seemed to stop entirely, dangling him over the edge of some bottomless pit he had no way of imagining. It was too much. He looked back at the controls and tried to breathe past the spinning in his gut. A display showed him on a flat grid with a handful of stars highlighted and labeled. The highlights changed as he moved the flight stick.
Reference points
. Scouts used them to reorient themselves if they were knocked out of orbit by a blast or outgassing. He leaned the stick hard left, trying to ignore the dizzying rush of the Universe above the canopy.

The lunar surface appeared below and the Earth beyond. The sight seized him. A lonely blue and white ball floating in an ocean of sparkling black.
Home.
He felt tears coming and he smiled. Pushed the flight stick forward. The craft dipped toward the lunar surface and strafed the fields of craters. Matteo rolled left. Rolled right. Wove through mountain ranges and cliff-sides. He pulled up, pointed the nose at the blue planet, and punched the throttle to maximum.

23

Mission

Minutes Earlier

KABBARD, ANDREAS, AND
Nicks waded through the crush of Themis employees in the corridor to the Control Room. The alarms along the hall screeched in triplets, stoking fevered panic in the filtered air. Kabbard felt it too, but it underscored the next thing to do.
Get to command. Get a sit rep. Organize all these bodies.
They were out of shape. Slow. Drummond especially. All used to dealing with a completely pacified population of drones. But a real Class Four alarm? An insurrection? That meant that at least a handful of Rasalla’s hardest and fastest had somehow bucked the conditioning and gotten loose. The match in the gas tank. People were going to die.

Pushing past a few engineers, Kabbard entered the Control Room. Switched on his government Neural override and surveyed the scene. Technicians worked at several surveillance stations, searching through CCTV feeds on hovering Neural screens. Some of the servers had been cannibalized for parts or weren’t functioning at all. Desperate teams struggled in tangles of wire to get them back to limping. On the wall-sized screen at the head of the room, an overall picture emerged. Flashing red dots spread from section to section, radiating outward from the infirmary. The skeletal slum rat with the bloody fists flashed through Kabbard’s memory. He dismissed it.

Drummond hobbled from station to station at the call of his name. A tech would give a report or ask for orders and, before Drummond could answer, another shouted for him. The nervous breakdown was written on his sunken face. Worse, it was spreading.

“Everybody calm the fuck down!” Kabbard shouted. The force of the command seemed to hit everyone in their chests. Stunned, they listened like guilty children. Kabbard paused, allowed the moment to settle, and pitched his voice clearly.

“Drummond. Sit rep, please.”

“I—uh…We—There’s been an incident in the Infirmary. Details are fuzzy, but a few—er—uh—a few assets have deviated from their programming. We are containing the disturbance now,” said Drummond. Andreas let out a chuckle. Swallowed it when Kabbard shot him a look.

“‘Assets’…‘Deviated from programming’…You’ve got T99s running amok in this corporate park you call a penal colony, and they’re waking up to the fact that they’ve been taken from their homes, shot into space, and turned into slaves. Call it what it is and deal with what it is. Now, I’m seeing movement in sectors Five, Six, and Seven. Are all those areas locked down?”

Drummond stiffened.

“Of—of course they are! Triggered by the Class Four as per standard operating procedu—”

“Sir,” a technician’s voice cracked as he interrupted, “I’ve been trying to tell you, sir, the doors in Sector Five weren’t triggered and won’t respond to direct commands!”

“Sector Five...” Drummond turned and looked at the big screen. Red dots spread into the corridors surrounding the sector. Kabbard bristled.

“There’s a direct path leading from Sector Five to this Control Room. Andreas! Nicks!” barked Kabbard. The two of them stepped forward in silence. They weren’t EXOs and they weren’t military, but scheming killers were more useful than stuffed shirts and new-hires.

“Move to intercept the inmates in the main corridor, and recruit any guard you find along the way, particularly those with stun batons or spurs. I’ll dispatch more to you over the Comms. Go.” The two of them hesitated. Looked at one another.

“I dunno, sir...going off mission?” asked Nicks.

“Yeah...Sato sent us here for the kid, not to go play hero. I’m not trying to get myself killed off the clock,” Andreas said. It took every ounce of Kabbard’s iron discipline to not knife-hand Andreas’ throat. A little extra when the bastard shrugged.

“Sato sent you here to follow my orders. You’ve heard them. Now go.”

They backed slowly toward the door. Technicians around the room nervously gestured to refresh their Neural keyboards. One of them shot up from his seat.

“Mr. Kabbard?! Mr. Drummond?!” the tech blurted, waiting to be called on like a school boy. Both men turned their version of a cold stare on the frail man too young to look this old. The words tumbled out of his trembling lips.

“P-perimeter breach...Main Hangar, Airlock Four,” said the tech.

“What?!” said Drummond. “That’s impossible. The disturbance is contain—”

“Full Screen, NOW!” shouted Kabbard. It seemed to blast the boy back down in his chair and flip him to face his station. A few keystrokes and the live feed appeared on the big screen. Kabbard squinted at it. Beyond the chaos of the scrambling workers, the Hangar looked fine. Except...
Where’s the Zeus?
The Furies sat parked where they’d left them. But Kabbard’s prize office perk and the cargo therein were missing. Andreas cocked his head.

“Where’s the—”

“Roll back the feed! Five minutes!” Kabbard commanded. The Tech scrubbed the feed backward. Eventually, Airlock Four opened and the Zeus emerged. It taxied in reverse to where Kabbard had left it. The canopy opened.

“No. Fucking. Shit,” said Andreas, almost laughing, as their prisoner crawled backward out of the cockpit and backtracked to the rear compartment.

“Freeze it there,” said Drummond. The low-res image of the Rasalla boy paused him mid-stride on his way around the rear of the craft. Kabbard gritted teeth behind tight lips.

“There is your culprit, Mr. Kabbard. Thank you for offering your services, but you have my leave to pursue your vessel,” a wry grin tugged at Drummond’s corpse-like face. “Rest assured, we have the situation well in hand,” he turned his back. Kabbard dug his fingernails into the meat of his palms.

“Let’s go, boss. His funeral,” said Nicks. Kabbard felt like he could breathe fire.

“It could be all of ours,” Kabbard said, taking one last glimpse of the panicked faces throughout the control room. He turned away. The three of them trotted off to the door as the buzz of activity resumed in the Control Room. Kabbard tried to ignore Drummond’s nauseating voice rising above the din.

“Organize what personnel we have to push the inmates back into Sector Five! Have some engineers accompany them to manually lock down the doors, then perform a gas purge on Five, Six, and Seven.”

“Vent the O2? Some of our own people are stuck in those sectors, we can’t—”