The Key (23 page)

She stowed the flashlight and stepped back through the doorway, bracing for the stretching thing.

Nothing.

So, how could she could arrive, but not leave?

“I’m feeling a little hurt here. Was getting kind of used to the whole light-my-way thing.”

She looked around. Still nothing.

It was almost as if the system were hunkered down. That was a bit… unsettling. Sara tried to tap in to the systems mentally and had the odd feeling that the block was inside her own head. Did Ruby know something she didn’t?

Okay, yeah, Ruby knew tons, but did she know something relevant to right now? Because her situational awareness was crap. Ruby needed to can the light show and just talk to her.

She tilted her head for a moment, but Ruby didn’t respond.
Great.

Since going back or forward wasn’t an option, she’d just have work her way to the surface and make her way back to the command center that way. Up top, she should have a better fix on her location.

Her spider sense was tingling, so Sara unhooked her P-90, flicked on the light and put it to her shoulder before she stepped out again.

“I’ll take point.” Hard to stack with one person, but it helped to pretend there was someone on her six.

As she moved forward, Sara shone the light around. The room was bigger, but emptier. And nothing…responded to her. By the time she reached the exit, her fun meter was pretty much pegged.

Addendum to the sci-fi list of things not to do in a creepy place: don’t go through really dark doorways.

As the door slid open for her, she cleared the room, before moving forward. Off to the side, she noticed a security station like the other one, but this room had some seating. Ahead was yet another door.

Panels slid back to reveal another one of those elevator-like things. At least it wasn’t stairs. She stepped inside. Green flash and it opened onto a corridor, with yet another security station. More ear popping, only the going up kind. That was good. She had to be getting close to the surface.

No doors off to the sides. Just a long walk to yet another door. This was taking her longer than planned. She’d better report in.

“Henderson? This is Donovan.”

Crackling silence.

“Captain?”

Okay, not good, but she’d been in some buildings where the radio didn’t work. She readied her P-90 and stepped to the side of the door again. It slid back and she cleared this room.

So far, so good.

Now she moved through a space that reminded her of the command consoles in the main control center, but on a smaller scale. And…still no welcoming lights. She reached out to touch one and got a mental yank.

“Okay, I won’t touch. Just tell me where I am.”

Not even a crackling silence.

Her spider sense was going nuts. She didn’t want to keep going. She stared at the door. If it, they, them, whatever didn’t want her to do this, why didn’t it let her go back the way she’d come?

You can’t sit here forever, she told herself, but her feet didn’t move. Apparently they disagreed.

She could almost hear Briggs jeering about her being a girl.

She reined in her imagination and approached the door. Almost automatically, she held up her fist in the stop and quiet signal. She looked at it.

“You’re just sad, Donovan.”

The same spider sense had her turning off the P-90’s light. She stepped up to this door. It opened, with a blank wall ahead, corridors stretching off to her left and right. Sara crouched down and did a quick look in both directions. Could she hear footsteps some distance away? She wasn’t sure.

She quietly tapped her radio again. “Henderson? Anybody?”

If the owners of the footsteps had been friendly, they’d have heard her radio, even if a signal couldn’t get outside the building, it should work inside the building.

She peeked out again, not sure which direction to go. It was lighter in this corridor, looked like natural light, but she couldn’t tell where it came from.

Okay, that was definitely footsteps approaching. She angled her head…from the right. She didn’t know why she felt the urge to move and move quickly. She just acted on it, turning and running in the opposite direction. She almost made the turn.

Almost wasn’t good enough.

A beam of light just missed her. She recognized it.

A Dusan energy weapon.

Where the crap was she? Okay, memo to self, Ruby’s flashing lights meant not just no, but hell no.

She raced for the next corner hoping to find cover.

Footsteps pounded behind her.

Sara reached the corner and stopped, waiting for them to come into view. When they did, she made them go away.

Two shots. Two kills.

She leaned against the wall. Her impulse was to return to her arrival point, but she’d already tried that.

Okay, clearly she’d left the island. She thought about the maps she’d seen, about the circle of flashing planets. Was it possible she’d been sent to another outpost, one controlled by the Dusan? That world she’d touched? Was that like the subway, a sort of destination request?

Man, those Garradians should have put warning labels on their stuff.

The presence of the Dusan might be the reason nothing would turn on for her. At least it was a working theory. Not anyone around to dispute it.

But if the portal, or whatever it was, wasn’t going to send her back, then she needed another way off this rock. Just taking a wild guess, but the only available transport was probably Dusan.

So that was the plan: steal a Dusan ship and fly back to mother.

Okay, it wasn’t a great plan. There were lots of problems with it, but at least it was a plan.

Assuming the layout of this outpost was similar to theirs, and assuming she was in the building she thought she was, there should be another elevator with direct access to the outside. The problem, she was pretty sure she had to go back past the two gone gomers.

Weapon ready, and keeping close to the wall, she peeked around. So far the corridor was still clear. She paced forward. When she got to the two downed Dusan, she reached down and grabbed one of their weapons, tucking it in the front of her vest. Her ammo wasn’t going to last forever. And their ray guns were quieter.

At the corner, she hesitated, listening. She did a quick look. More light blasts sizzled past as she jerked back. At least six, maybe seven bandits.

No joy that way.

She turned and ran full out to the next corner, then crouched low and waited. No single shot this time.

As the patrol came into view, she opened fire with a sustained burst, then threw herself behind the protection of the wall and ran to the next corner. Did a quick look. Clear. She dodged around.

These corridors were crap. She needed some place where she could go to ground and regroup. Figure something out. Improve her situational awareness, hell, get some situational awareness.

As she jogged along, she started looking for vents or shafts. This time she didn’t stop at the corner, just ran harder for the next one. They’d be expecting fire at the corners now. By the time they figured out she’d changed tactics, she needed to be out of sight.

She stopped shy of the corner, did her quick look, then slid around. Maybe she should duck into a room. She picked a middle one. As she went in, she heard footsteps from the other direction. Hard not to feel like Custer, with bandits closing in from both directions.

She saw a ventilation grille and jumped up on the desk, but it was bolted in place.
Trapped.

She dropped down in a crouch behind the desk.

Crap.

* * * *

Carey made a clean landing near the main building. Fyn watched Colonel Halliwell, and the
Patton’s
commander, Colonel Emerson, rise and head down the ramp, followed by the jarheads. Dr. Smith and the Marine’s commander, Major Loren, and the SO, Captain Henderson, waited for them outside.

Fyn was disappointed not to see Sara with them. He’d been so sure she’d be waiting. She could be on duty, though. Doing whatever it was she was doing down here.

Loren saluted the two men, and then they all shook hands. He remembered Sara telling him it was “friendly.” He’d also noticed that sometimes it was friendlier than others.

Carey strolled down, stopping next to Fyn. He looked around.

“I wonder where Donovan is.” Carey adjusted his cap.

Halliwell heard him and looked at Henderson.

“Where is the Captain?”

Henderson frowned. “I’m not sure, sir. I thought she’d be here.” He tapped his radio. “Donovan? This is Henderson. What’s your twenty?”

For some reason, Fyn began to feel uneasy.

“Donovan? Respond, please.” Henderson started to look worried.

“Who’s on her team?” Halliwell wanted to know.

Now Henderson looked really worried. He opened his mouth, but didn’t seem to know what to say.

Carey stepped up to him. “She’s out there by herself?”

Henderson opened his mouth. Closed it. Sighed. “She was just mapping—”

“What was her twenty last contact?” Halliwell snapped.

“Zone Five, Building Thirty-four. She said she had one more room to check, then she was heading back. Be here no later than 1400.”

“It’s 1415 now. Has she ever returned and not reported in?”

Henderson shook his head, looking a bit sick now.

“You weren’t concerned when she didn’t report in?” The Old Man’s eyes were hard, narrow slits. He didn’t give Henderson time to respond. He didn’t look like he could anyway. He turned to Smith. “Can you show us this Zone and building?”

“We can look it up on her map,” he half sputtered, looking more annoyed than worried.

Halliwell looked at Carey. “Get a team together and keep trying to contact her.”

“There’s a faster way to find her,” Fyn said, as Halliwell started to follow Smith inside.

“What?”

Fyn pointed to the ground and the path of yellow lights.

* * * *

As Sara crouched behind the desk, her P-90 trained on the door, she could hear footsteps pounding up and down the corridor. Lots of activity, lots of noise, but it seemed to ebb and flow, rather than resolve into a coherent search.

That was weird.

They didn’t seem to know how to clear a building. Maybe they didn’t have a lot of urban fighting opportunities. The fact that most of her experience came from paint ball fights was beside the point.

Sara rose cautiously and padded to the door, coming at it from an angle that she hoped would keep it from opening. She tilted her head, trying to hear anything, reaching out with her senses for any danger signals.

Either her spider sense had been lulled into a false sense of security…or the search had moved elsewhere.

Okay, now what? She could stay put, but not forever. She’d missed her check in time, so it wouldn’t be long before they started looking for her. What if they stepped through the doorway, too? They’d all be stuck here.

New plan. Possibly better plan. Return to point of entry.

She rubbed her face, flipped her cap around, so the bill was in the back, and pulled out a fresh magazine for her P-90. Once she was ready, she moved so the door would open. She checked both directions. All clear.

She eased out. No light blasts sizzled past. That was good.

She padded silently back toward the door where her little adventure had started to go wrong.

First corner. Clear.

Only two more to go.

The next corridor: also clear.

It was hard to believe her luck could be that good.

She approached the last corner more slowly as her spider sense started to tingle again. She eased up close, her back pressed against the wall. A quick peek, then back.

Two guys standing right in front of the door she needed to go through. Did they know that’s where she came out?

The P-90 would draw attention. She hung it on its clip and eased the Dusan weapon out. When Fyn showed her how it worked, the dial had been here. So opposite of that must the “kill” setting. Could it do multiple blasts? And could she aim it accurately? She felt the weight of it, tried sighting along it, did a slow count and then popped out and fired. Once. Again.

Both men dropped like rocks.

Sweet.

She darted toward the door, not as worried about quiet as fast.

She was still five feet shy of the door when six men rounded the corner. If they hadn’t been weapons ready—but they were.

And all of them were pointed at her.

Don’t get shot.
First advice from Fyn.

They looked…surprised.

Sara dropped the Dusan weapon on the floor and slowly raised her hands, hoping the gomers knew what that meant.

They didn’t shoot, so that must mean they did. While three of the men kept her covered, three closed in on her. Their technique sucked. One of the guys wandered into the line of fire. If there’d been two less guys pointing ray guns at her, she’d have tried to take them. Or even one. Odds were still long, though.

One guy took her weapons, another took her vest, while the third gomer secured her wrists, in front no less. And that was the end of their search. They didn’t even pat her down.

Good for her. Bad for them. She had a knife strapped to her back and another strapped to the inside of her ankle.

She might still have a chance. A small chance, but hey, a chance was a chance.

They grabbed her arms, knocking her cap off, and half dragged, half walked her back the way they’d come. No one said a word to her or to each other. It was kind of weird, but then almost everything here was. Maybe they were guys who couldn’t talk.

In short order they reached a door in a different part of the outpost. After a short wait, they “ushered” her inside another room with a shove. Two of them followed her in and piled her weapons and vest on a desk. Then they stood back.

A man rose from behind the desk. He was probably in his fifties and he wore a dark green uniform—must be the real Dusan uniform. He had a red nose and not a lot of hair—except inside that nose. A little white make up and he could have been shoe-in as a circus clown, if he could lose the snarly expression.