Escape (19 page)

“Granted. But it means that the sentinels are probably looking for this ship.”

“Sentinels, Carloni clanners, patrollers and enforcers
 
.
 
.
 
.
the more the
—
”

“Deeper the shakra we're in.”

“Yeah
 
.
 
.
 
.
”

Through the windows in the top half of each set of airlock doors, Kieran could see a blue transpiranium bubble cockpit staring back at him. Both cockpits were identical, with room for only one pilot underneath. As far as Kieran could tell, there were only two ships, each separated from the other by the corridor where they were standing. The hangar space itself would be in a vacuum, obviating the need to suck all the air out of the hangar before a launch
—
hence the airlocks in the corridor.

“Suit up kid, you're going to have to fly one of those interceptors. You up to it?” Kieran turned to see that Ferrel was already changed into one of the flight suits.

The boy was grinning. “No problem.”

Kieran pulled a flight suit from the rack and began changing into it. The suits were pressurized and had a small internal supply of oxygen for emergencies and transitioning between the pressurized corridor and the airless hangar.

When Kieran was done changing, he turned to Ferrel expectantly.

“What?” Ferrel's voice was dispassionately conveyed by his helmet's external speakers.

“You first.”

“Sure.”

Kieran watched with a frown as the boy walked up to the nearest airlock, keyed the access code into the control panel, and then walked in, the door closing automatically behind him. Walking up to the airlock door, Kieran watched through the doors as the airlock finished depressurizing and Ferrel walked into the hangar. He continued watching until he could see the boy begin clambering up a short gray ladder to the blue transpiranium cockpit of the interceptor. Ferrel turned from the top of the ladder and gave Kieran a thumbs-up, but Kieran waited until the boy had triggered the canopy release and was seated in the cockpit before he turned to the other airlock.

As the airlock door closed behind him, and he began to hear the hiss of air being sucked out of the little space, Kieran considered a nagging question: why hadn't Ferrel been equally averse to going through the airlock first? After all, it would be just as easy for him to take the corvette and run as soon as Ferrel was safely away in one of the interceptors.

Curious.

When the airlock opened into the hangar, and Kieran stepped through into the comparatively open space, he spent a moment admiring the interceptor seated there on a tripod of magnetic landing struts. The interceptor was gleaming black
—
the natural color of tetrillium shielding
—
just like the shadow-class corvette, with equally smooth, sensor-defeating lines. It was a thing of beauty, little more than half a dozen micró-astroms long, and roughly shaped like a triangle, with a pair of massive, cylindrical thruster exhausts peeking out at the back, and running along the underside of the hull for half the length of the ship. The front was a fork with two short tines, and the ship’s blue bubble canopy was set between them, looking down the tines. Kieran could just barely see from where he was standing, a pair of weapon barrels at the end of the far tine, presumably the other tine had an identical armament
—
making four guns in all, and no doubt a launcher or two for missiles concealed somewhere along the hull.

Kieran didn't even have to think about the make and model of the interceptor. There was no doubt about it: he was looking at one of the Union’s brand-new MF-19’s
—
a Black Arrow Interceptor. Kieran grinned behind the clear transpiranium faceplate of his flight suit and started toward the short, gray ladder leading up to the interceptor's cockpit.

* * *

Dimmi awoke squinting up into the harsh blue lighting of her cell. Suddenly sickeningly disoriented, her heart began pounding, and her palms began to sweat. She sat up in a rush, swinging her legs over the side of her sleeping pallet. Her eyes skipped around the cell as she focused on taking deep, steady breaths. What had happened? The last thing she remembered was
 
.
 
.
 
.

Dimmi's eyes narrowed, and her panic disappeared in a flood of rage. Kieran. He would pay, but first
 
.
 
.
 
.
Dimmi's eyes fell upon the door to her cell. First, she needed to find a way out of the brig.
Well, that's easy enough
, she thought. She began reaching up to her breasts, but then thought better of it, and looked around for a security camera. There was one hanging down from the ceiling directly opposite her cell. With a smile for the camera, Dimmi stood up from her sleeping pallet and made her way to the back of the cell and the cleansing station there. She drew the privacy curtain, cutting off the camera's surveillance, and silently thanked whatever moral sensibilities had inspired the designers of the ship to afford prisoners a measure of privacy.

Now, without the camera to observe her, Dimmi reached into her bra
—

And frowned. She could feel nothing between the warmth of her skin and the smooth, silken fabric of her bra. Gone were the plastisynth cups with their deadly payload of FPD binary explosive. Realizing what must have happened to those cups, Dimmi's cheeks burned fiercely red and she tore the privacy curtain aside, ripping it clean off its rings and guide rail. Looking straight at the camera across from her, Dimmi stalked up to the bars of her cell and spent a long moment glaring into the beady black lens of the camera.

“You keficking perverts! You're messing with the wrong woman! I hope you took a good look while you were undressing me! Perhaps you noticed what was inked onto my shoulder? The Carloni clan will be coming for me, and if they find that you have so much as plucked a hair from my head, they'll
—
”

“Dimmi.” The voice that interrupted her was clear and cold, and utterly unrecognizable. It sounded so close to her ear that she involuntarily whirled around, checking to make sure that no one was in the cell with her.

“Who said that?” Dimmi asked, searching the far corners of her cell. The voice was masculine, and vaguely familiar, but she didn't recognize it as either Kieran's or Ferrel's.

“I did,” the voice returned, sounding just as close as before. Dimmi felt something cold brush against her arm.
The bars of the cell door,
she thought. Suppressing the cold shiver that was slithering down her spine, Dimmi whirled again, intending to address the camera with her next remark. Clearly, whoever was speaking, was speaking through the ship's intercom.

She was wrong. And it wasn't the cell bars which had brushed her arm. It was the leathery gray hand that was wrapped around her wrist
—
the pointed black claws of all
six
digits tightly interlaced over her frantically beating pulse.

Her mahogany eyes grew huge and terrified as she looked up from that hand and stared into a nightmarish visage of wrinkled gray skin, long, pointy teeth, a lipless mouth, and eyes that glowed a deep, blood red
—
like firestones. A question rose as a scream in her throat, but never made it past her frozen lips. It echoed impotently in her head.
What are you?

To Dimmi's horror, the creature answered: “I am you as you will become
—
a more efficient design. Please hold still, Dimmi. This will take but a moment.”

Dimmi felt her hand and wrist begin to go numb where the creature was holding her. She jerked violently away, trying to wrench herself free, and felt all of the force transferred to her shoulder, nearly dislocating it. She let out a terrified whimper and tried again. The creature didn't seem to notice either her struggles or her abject terror. His grip around her wrist was as unyielding as if she had been chained to the bars of the cell.

“Kieran, Ferrel! Help me!”

“They have left the ship, and by the time they return it will be too late. Relax, you will feel nothing.”

Dimmi believed him. In fact, the numbness had spread from her hand all the way up to her elbow, and was fast encroaching on her shoulder. In a trembling voice, she asked: “What are you doing to me?”

The creature grinned more broadly at her, revealing its pointed teeth in all their glistening ivory menace. Its reply slithered soundlessly into her mind, without the creature's lipless mouth even having to move: “I am saving you.”

* * *

“What are they doing?” Ferrel asked from where he was lying flat on his stomach beside Kieran on the roof of Deegan’s Meatshop near the entrance to the marketplace inside The Corollary.

Kieran had a pair of electroscopes pressed to his eyes. He was watching half a dozen men in UBER uniforms disperse through the marketplace, going from storefront to storefront.

“So far none of them have bought anything,” Kieran replied, frowning. “Have you noticed the pattern in their movements?”

Ferrel nodded. “Once one of them has been to a particular store, the others don't go to it, as if they already know where their buddies are going.”

“Yeah
 
.
 
.
 
.
”

Kieran watched a tall, broad man with a long, angular face and short-cropped black hair shoving his way through the crowd. He was wearing a uniform with the red and black pant stripes of a flight leader. He walked up to a store that called itself Gili’s Odds and Ends and began talking to the storekeeper. Kieran zoomed in with his electroscopes to watch the conversation more closely. They talked briefly, and then the flight leader extended his hand to the storekeeper. She eyed his hand curiously, then tentatively shook it.

“Looks like this one just found somebody he knows,” Kieran commented. “They're shaking hands.”

“Maybe they're concluding a deal?” Ferrel suggested.

“Possibly.” Kieran panned through the crowd, looking for another one of the officers. The next one he found was also shaking hands with a storekeeper. Kieran frowned and focused in on the storekeeper's face
—
he was wearing a bemused frown. Kieran matched it with one of his own. He panned through the crowd again, found another officer speaking with yet another storekeeper. He watched for a few moments, and then
—

There it was again. The officer concluded the conversation with a handshake. Kieran lowered the electroscopes slowly. “They're all shaking hands with the storekeepers.”

“What? Why?”

Kieran shook his head slowly. “I have no idea, but whatever these officers are doing, we don't have time to figure it out. I think we've overstayed our welcome.” Kieran pointed to the entrance of the marketplace where a pair of enforcers were just clunking into the market
—
their matte, dark green and black battle armor making them stand head and shoulders above the milling crowd. Both of the enforcers stopped just inside the marketplace and spent a moment searching the crowds, their heads turning this way and that.

“Shakra, man! They’re not looking for us, are they?”

“I don't know, but let's not stick around to find out.” Kieran jerked his head back the way they'd come, toward the makeshift ladder (which they’d made by stacking supply crates one atop the other) at the back of the Deegan’s Meatshop. They began crawling on their stomachs in that direction. That was when they heard a deep, amplified voice cut through the hubbub of the marketplace: “All UBER officers, please stay where you are! By order of the Enforcers Guild, you are under arrest for suspicion of treason and conspiracy against the Union.”

“Run!” Ferrel said, and began climbing to his feet.

Kieran's arm shot out, and his hand landed with a heavy slap! on the boy's back, flattening him to the roof of the meat shop. “They haven't spotted us yet! Stay down!”

Ferrel muttered something under his breath and they continued crawling to the back of the roof. Once there, they began quietly climbing down the stack of crates they'd used to get to the roof.

In the narrow alley behind the meat shop there was a freight lane which supplied the stores and ran directly to The Corollary's hangars. Kieran considered it briefly, his eyes searching for a rail car. There were none.

Kieran caught a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye. His head turned in an instant. Ferrel followed his gaze to the end of the alley. There, in characteristic black and green battle armor, weaving his way toward them through stacks of multicolored plastiform crates was another enforcer.

When the enforcer noticed that he'd been spotted, he drew his side arm and called out to them in a booming voice: “Halt!”

Kieran and Ferrel raised their hands above their heads. Then there was a rattling whoosh and another flicker of movement to Kieran's left
—
in the direction of the freight lane. His head turned, and he saw that a car had just arrived with a delivery for the store next to the meat shop. Karen watched dumbly for half a second as the freight car's doors began to automatically open. A ramp extended, and a pair of plastiform crates
—
one blue, the other green
—
began rolling down it.