Star Cruise: Marooned (18 page)

“I hope they torture him.”
 

“Not likely, not when he’s a big payday for them,” Red said from the doorway. “They won’t treat him with tenderness, though, if the idea is any consolation.”

“I’ll take what I can get.” Callina moved away from Meg. “May I go to my husband now?” Not waiting for permission, she left, brushing past Red.

Meg met Red halfway, giving him a hug and lifting her face for what turned out to be a protracted kiss.

“I’m going to head out for the landing field,” he said. “Gotta inspect the situation in the daylight, make plans for tonight.”

“I’ll go to Level Three with you.”

“Good idea. You should be familiar with the tunnel.”

She laughed, walking her fingers up the taut muscles of his stomach, and tweaking the tip of his nose. “I’ll go to Level Three with you because now I’m over trying to hold you at arm’s length, Mr. Thomsill, so I want to spend as much time with you as I can.”

“And I’m most appreciative of the sentiment, believe me.” Smiling, Red held her hand as they walked to retrieve the blaster from the charging station in the control room before retracing their steps to the gravlift.

“What would you have done if the cruise ended without us connecting?” she asked during the lazy descent. “If I’d managed to stay annoyed with you?”

“Laid in wait for you on the landing pad after the captain paid us off, and done my damnedest to convince you to give me a chance.” Red glanced at her as he stopped their progress with one hand on the gravlift wall, the other round her wrist. “What would you have said?”
 

“Cruise over, no reason not to mingle. I hope I’d have been smart enough to say yes.”

He drew her close. “No problem then. You’re a smart lady, Miss Antille.” He kissed her.

“Actually, I had a half-formed plan to waylay you and give you a chance to atone for all the rookie mistakes,” she said, warmth blossoming in her cheeks as Red laughed, eyes sparkling in delighted surprise.

“Great minds work alike,” he said. “But now isn’t the time to explore the subject. Sadly. Sex in a gravlift can be interesting. Offers a lot of possibilities.”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t know,” she said with a laugh.

He lifted his hand, allowing the gravlift to complete the final few feet of their commute to Level Three.

“Shouldn’t you take someone with you out there to watch your six?” Meg asked when she stepped off in Level Three, following Red on his way to the service tunnel entrance.

“I’ll be fine, used to working solo. Despite the name, we didn’t go in as a team on every mission. I don’t think the Bettises would be much use, and while I trust you to have my six—”

“I need to stay here and watch over them.”

“Exactly.”
 

Red showed her how to operate the air lock into the tunnel. “Just in case,” he said.

“In case of what?”

Shifting his stance as if uncomfortable, he nevertheless met her eyes. “If you had to evacuate the installation and I’m not…not here. But only as a last resort.”

“We’ll be fine. There’s been no sign of the pirates since the day you fooled their scanners with the tree dwellers. I’m sure the enemy has abandoned the fruitless chase and gone about their business by now.” Meg tried to inject as much optimism in her voice as she could.

Red nodded, but didn’t seem as convinced. “Promise me no one sets foot outside the building for any reason while I’m gone.”

“Of course. Why do you even ask?”

“I trust you, but Callina can be pretty immature at times. I’m worried about her getting bored, which is why I asked Bettis to hook her up with some games. The lovely Mrs. Bettis doesn’t have any more survival instinct than those pretty, empty-headed birds she sang to the other day.”

“I don’t know, she told me she fended off a pass from Finchon. That took some instincts.” Meg grinned. “What’s going to happen to him?”

“The Shemdylann will ransom him, probably send him to Freemarket via a third party and then he can get home to the Sectors in style from there.”

“No, I mean once he’s home in the Sectors. Any punishment for not ransoming the rest of you? Letting people die on the beach?”

Frowning, Red traced the PolyStarMed emblem incised on the air lock door with one finger. “Generational billionaire. Probably has lawyers on staff who will fight the charges all the way to the Sectors Supreme Court for the next hundred years if anyone does try to nail him. We’ll report, and we’ll tell the truth, but don’t expect much in the way of satisfying results. And, as Bettis was telling us earlier, Finchon’s looped into the military R&D structure pretty tight. He’ll probably get a slap on the wrist for doing a deal with the Shemdylann to save his ass.”

“Him getting off so easily isn’t fair.”

Kissing her on the forehead, Red stepped across the threshold into the air lock. “I’m going to worry about getting us home safely, not Finchon, okay?”

“Why is there an air lock anyway? Same air in here as there is out there.”
 

“In case anything escaped Level Four,” Red reminded her.
 

Reluctantly, she activated the controls. “Don’t take too long, okay?”

As the heavy door shut behind him, he waved a hand at her on the vidscreen, and turned to open the door leading into the tunnel.

Meg wished she’d asked him how long he was going to be gone. She sat with Callina for a while, playing the noisy colorful game, and she worked in the kitchen, sorting foodstuffs. She was in there when an alarm sounded. Heart pounding, Meg rushed from the kitchen as the klaxon cut off.
 

“Did you hear that?” Callina asked unnecessarily.

“I’d better get to the control room and see what happened.”

The woman trailed her down the hall. “I hope the pirates aren’t here.”

“You and me both.” Half formed plans cascaded through Meg’s mind. Should she move the Bettises into the tunnel now? Move the food and water? When she entered the control room, the situation seemed normal. Only a single indicator was glowing amber. Remembering from Red’s tutorial earlier, the signal was connected to the aerial scanner, she hastened to the board and hit playback. Adrenaline pounding in her veins, she watched an unusual flitter pass over the installation, circling twice before flying off to the south.

“Did we see a Shemdylann ship?” Callina asked.

“Maybe. I never saw anything like it before.” Meg sank into the chair, realizing her hands were trembling. “But it’s gone now. Can you go ask your husband to join me here? I want him to check whether the entrance is securely locked. Tell him what happened.”

Callina gave her a half salute and rushed off. Meg stayed in the chair, watching the overhead scanner, afraid of what she might see.

Moments later, Bettis hobbled in leaning on his wife and confirmed not only was the main entrance to the installation locked, the gravlift from the reception area to where they sat on Level One was also disabled, with the door sealed. “We’ll be fine,” he said, false cheer in his voice. “The Shemdylann might not even think it’s worth their time to check this building. It looks pretty insignificant from above.”

Meg and he sat together in the control room, eyeing the screens for what felt like hours. Mrs. Bettis said the waiting made her too tense, so she returned to the cafeteria.

“When is Thomsill getting back?” Bettis asked.

Jittery, Meg tried to keep her voice from shaking. “When he’s done checking out the landing field.”

“I wish we had some way to contact him, warn him.” Bettis chewed his lip.
 

“Too risky to try the com link over there. The sound might attract the wrong attention. There’s nothing he can do—” Meg broke off, gasping as the flyer appeared in the scanner again. “Lords of Space, it’s landing.”

The intruder was a small ship, and for a few moments after touching down in the grassy expanse, nothing happened. Then a ramp shot out and two hulking Shemdylann soldiers emerged, armed and cautious as they moved to the front portal.

“Turn off the alarms, will you?” Meg asked. “I can’t think over the racket.”

Bettis obliged her. “You do remember I, uh, can’t move fast if we need to evacuate.”

“You said the enemy couldn’t get in.”

He shook his head. “I said the door was locked.”

“Will it withstand blaster fire?”

“I guess we’re going to find out.”

One of the soldiers raised his weapon and fired off a barrage of blue tinged energy at the entrance. He and his fellow leaped to opposite sides as the weapon’s bolts rebounded from the material the PolyStarMed people had used to build the visible portion of their complex. A tree several hundred feet away cracked and toppled as the weapon’s energy hit it. Tremors shook the earth around the building as the mighty tree, hundreds of feet tall, collapsed into the clear space, narrowly missing the entrance and the cowering soldiers.

“This would be funny if it were a trideo. Or if I wasn’t actually here,” Bettis said.
 

“Red wasn’t kidding when he kept saying the Shemdylann weren’t too bright.”

“Well, not their workers and the lower ranks,” Red said from the doorway. “The officers have smarts. The females are rumored to be the most intelligent, but have never been observed in the field. Intel suggests queens actually rule the homeworlds. The Shemdylann are a spacefaring race, after all, although we suspect the Mawreg gave them the technology, in return for doing their bidding.” He came to stand beside Meg, resting a hand on her shoulder and bending over for a quick kiss. “How long has this been going on?”

“The ship flew overhead about half an hour ago, then returned, and the soldiers are trying the door.” Meg’s terror subsided a few notches with him standing reassuringly beside her. “How was the landing field?”

“Run down and overgrown, which is good for us. Nothing to cause the robo any problems.”

“Maybe we should go out there now, wait there,” Bettis said.

Red shook his head. “We’re secure in here. If the enemy finds the landing pad and checks it out, their suspicions will be lulled if they don’t find any signs of us. Their scanners are capable of pinpointing our location if we’re out in the open, remember?”

“Right.” Bettis subsided into his chair, tapping the chrono with his fingertips. “Six hours standard to wait.”

“Too long for me,” Meg said. “We don’t have any choice, do we?”

Red shook his head. “The extraction attempt will occur when Max said it would and not a moment earlier or later.”

Meg had another discomfiting thought. “Is the tunnel mouth secure at the other end?”

“It opens in a small building that was damaged in a storm at some point. The access is locked tight, like the portals here.” Red’s answer was reassuring. “I’ll take the watch if you want to start moving some supplies into the tunnel?”

“Why would she move anything?” Frowning, Bettis assessed them both, eyes bright with suspicion. “What do we need food and water for if we’re leaving on a shuttle tonight?”

“Most likely we won’t need anything,” Meg said. “But if we miss the shuttle for any reason, Sectors’ command won’t send another. We want to be prepared.”

“Then we come back here and sit it out,” Bettis said. “The war has to end someday.”

Surprised, Meg explained the logic. “Mr. Thomsill and I decided we’d be better off to move north and avoid all contact with the Shemdylann or any other enemy combatants.”
 

“I’m not sure my wife and I would agree.”

Red moved into the chair Meg had vacated. “That’s your privilege. I’m not going to fight you over it. But Miss Antille and I’ll be heading north without delay if the extraction fails. You’re welcome to take your chances with us, or to stay here if you like the odds better.” He shook his head at Meg when she opened her mouth to argue.

As she left the room, she decided Red was right. The Bettises were adults, and if the couple voted to stay here, even though the enemy plainly had the installation in their sights now, there was nothing she could do about it. But Red wouldn’t let the planned escape into space fail, so worrying about what ifs was a waste of time. Squaring her shoulders, she headed for the kitchen and her stockpile.

Dinner in the cafeteria on Level One was tense. Red talked them through his plan for the night. “The tunnel has a few minor cave-ins along the way, nothing we can’t get past, but the obstacles will slow us down.” He glanced at Bettis. “And your ankle slows us even more, but it can’t be helped. I have to be in place half an hour before the scheduled landing time, so the robo’s AI can lock in on me the moment it breaks out of hyperspace above Dantaralon. It will track me if I have to shift positions, but we want a clean extract, in and out. So we’ll leave here an hour ahead of time.”

Meg opened her mouth to detail the items she and Callina had dragged into the tunnel, but was cut off by the alarms. “Lords of Space, now what?”

“We’d better go see.” Red led the way to the control chamber, all four of them crowding inside.

The Shemdylann were back, in force. Three large flyers had landed in the artificial clearing in front of the entry. As Meg watched, heart pounding, soldiers exited from each and then Crxtahl appeared, Finchon walking beside him, still chained by the wrist, but appearing quite at ease, if a bit grubby and with a facial bruise or two. The two of them were talking as they approached the portal.