Gabriel's Redemption (21 page)

Gabriel slumped back into the wall, sweat beading his brow from the effort of moving the heavy armor manually. Looking over his shoulder he could see Zack and Vanheel gaping at the scene. He hoped Zack understood the ‘back off’ look in his eye.

Just then, the doors to the hub corridor slid open, and Brevik walked in slowly, his armor obviously disabled as well. Gabriel had a fleeting thought of hope and started to rise again, when Jimenez walked in behind him, hands on his head, staggering under the effort of moving the armor. St. Laurent followed, face covered in sweat, a needler pistol pressed into the back of her head by Sabra.

Dammit
, Gabriel thought.
Lamber and Sabra, he should have known. Another mistake in judgement. Too many clues to have ignored. Must be getting old.

Sabra pushed St. Laurent forward, and the lieutenant stumbled into Jimenez, sending both to the floor in a tangled heap of disabled combat armor. Brevik turned with a glare, but Sabra waved the needler at him. “Tsk, tsk, boss. You wouldn’t hit a lady, would you?” she asked.

“You wouldn’t believe what I want to do to this
lady
,” Brevik growled in a menacing voice.

Sabra turned to Gabriel, dismissing Brevik with a wave of her off hand. “Looks like we caught you with your pants down, so to speak, eh Commander?”

Gabriel was running through what diagnostics he had left, trying to find a way through, but the neurojammer had jangled his entire system. He did show that a secondary jammer was running, blocking all neuretics comm links. He ran a passive worm, trying to work around the jammer, but to no avail. A symbol appeared in a corner of his eye; one of his systems had pinpointed the source of the jammer. It centered on Lamber.

Gabriel turned back to Lamber. “Why are you doing this?”

Lamber laughed, standing up from his crouched position over Sowers, his gun aim never wavering from the petty officer’s head. “Money, Commander! Isn’t that why any of us do anything?” He looked down at Gabriel with a pitying look. “Patriotism didn’t do you any favors, did it?” He walked closer to Gabriel, the pistol now swinging towards him. “I’m getting paid, and paid well, to prepare this colony for its new owners. But I’m not getting paid to clean up any messes, so when I shoot you, would you mind keeping your brains inside your armor?”

“Enough!” Sabra said sharply, pulling a small device from a pouch on her belt. She tossed it to Lamber. “Make the call.”

Lamber turned to catch the commlink, and Gabriel tensed his enhanced muscles and launched himself towards him. His armor protested with creaks, but his internal strength overcame the metal joints and he crashed into Lamber, knocking the pistol from his hand as the commlink clattered to the floor. Lamber yelped in pain as his head crashed into the floor, and Gabriel was on top of him in an instant.

Sabra started to point her weapon towards the grappling pair when Brevik’s massive form stepped in front of her, his natural muscles and size too much for the locked armor to stop. One armored gauntlet slapped the needler from her hand as his other hand reached for her throat.

“Stop, or he dies!” a voice came from the other side of the room.

Gabriel looked up from his opponent and froze. At the center platform stood Vanheel, the semi-automatic pistol Lamber had given him earlier in his hand, pointed directly at Zack’s head.

“Commander, I think you need to let him make that call,” Vanheel said.

Chapter 24

The shuttle was a standard single stage to orbit lifting body design, vertical take off and landing capable, mission-modified for inclement weather with an additional set of tail stabilizers and more powerful reentry engines. It streaked down through the atmosphere at Mach 26; the glow of its leading edges created a meteor-like effect across the western skies.

As it made wide sweeping S-turns to bleed off velocity, Santander’s comm rang in his ear and he reached up to take the call. His metal glove banged off the oversized Chinese combat helmet, and he cursed as he remembered the spoken command.

“Go for Santander,” he said, and the commlink opened, audio only.

“Mister Santander, this is Lamber. Colony is secure, all personnel accounted for,” came a voice.

Santander smiled and clanged his fist off Ran’s steel shoulder next to him. “Good work, Lamber. Give me a rundown of the situation.”

“The neurojammers worked like a charm as promised. Your SAR friends have some primo tech. Sabra and I were fully shielded, and all their neuretics and powered armor and weapons are disabled. The facility’s staff are all in the housing section, no threats. The board of directors and the operations staff are upstairs in the offices, right where we assumed they’d stash ‘em. The aliens are all in the lab area, which will be our second point of interest. Sabra and I have control of the team in the Ops center, which is where we’ll meet you.”

“And Gabriel?” Santander asked.

“He’s right here,” Lamber replied. “Along with the rest of his team. Sowers, Jimenez, St. Laurent, and that tank Brevik.”

Santander mentally ticked off his fingers. “You’re missing one, Lamber.”

After a pause, Lamber replied, “Dammit, that idiot kid Takahashi. He’s sealed in the labs with the doctor. I’ll send Sabra to get him, won’t take but a few minutes.”

“No,” Santander said.
Dumbass
, he thought. “Wait until we get there. I can’t have you splitting up. If he’s sealed off and the jammers are fully in place, leave him be for now.” He checked his heads-up display. “We’ll be touching down in just over four minutes.”

“Yes sir, we’ll see you then. Sorry about that with Takahashi, it’s just that…”
 

Santander cut the connection, blowing air through his lips noisily.
 

“Everything okay, Q?” Ran asked next to him on the comm net. The SSTO shuttle banged back and forth as the atmosphere thickened.

“Fine,” he replied. “Just hard to find good henchmen these days. No offense.”

Ran laughed. “None taken…just don’t call me a henchman.”

Gabriel and his team were seated against one wall of the Operations center, helmets off, with Lamber standing in front of them, now with an assault rifle trained on the group. Sabra was tapping away at one of the workstations, while Vanheel was with Zack at the central table.

“Pim, what happened?” Zack asked Vanheel in a low voice. “We’ve known each other for almost ten years! Since New Tokyo, for Christ’s sake.” He had a pleading look in his eye. “Why are you doing this, who are these people?”

“Stop it,” Vanheel said. “I…I can’t talk about it,” he said weakly, avoiding Zack’s eyes. He still held the gun, but it was no longer trained on the chairman.

Zack looked at his old friend, trying to figure out why he would turn on him, turn on everything they worked for, turn on the native species they had been working so hard to save. His mind ran through everything he knew about him, back to New Tokyo, back to their first trip to Poliahu, back to the wedding…wait.

“Is this about Stasia? The accident?” he asked.
 

Vanheel turned back to Zack. “Leave it be, Zack. You don’t know these people.” He looked away again.

Zack grabbed him by the shoulder and turned him back to face him. “It wasn’t an accident, was it?” he asked quietly.

Vanheel looked down at the floor. “No. They said…they said, it was a warning. And if I didn’t play along with this, they’d kill my daughter too.”

“My god,” Zack said, releasing Vanheel’s shoulder. “Where is she, I thought you said she was living with Stasia’s mother in Germany?”

“She is,” Vanheel replied. “But they sent me photos of her at her preschool. They’re watching her, and if I don’t go along with what they say…” his voice dropped to a whisper. “Listen, if anything happens to me and you get out of this, I need you to look out for her.”

“Pim, I’m so sorry,” Zack said. He looked over at his brother sitting against the far wall, a look of barely contained rage on his face, matching the rest of his team. “Stay close, this isn’t over yet.”

“You two, quit the whispering,” Sabra snapped from her workstation.
 

Lamber’s commlink buzzed at his waist. Taking one hand from the assault rifle, he picked it up. “Lamber.”

“We’re at the main doors, get ‘em open. Goddam freezing out here,” came the reply.

Lamber motioned to Sowers. “Open it,” he said, indicating a nearby workstation.

Sowers slowly stood up, glared at Lamber, and walked over to the workstation. The combat armor was still stiff in most places, and almost unbearably heavy without power. He tapped a few keys, and turned back around. “Open,
lieutenant
,” he said sarcastically, walking back to his original position and sitting down.

“Now what?” ground out Gabriel in a low voice.

“Now we meet the new boss,” said Lamber. “Nice guy, I’m sure you’ll all love him.”

Brevik spat on the floor. “Can’t wait,” he growled.

Gabriel’s Mindseye lit up unexpectedly, images of comm system icons flickering into view, and he struggled to keep his face impassive to not alert the others. He quickly sent in a few scout programs to see if they could broaden the path. Very limited pipe, he saw: no two way comm, no data link. If he could…
there
, he grabbed a screenshot of his vision, created an image packet, and fired it off to the only person not currently under the gun. As the packet was sent, the pipe crashed and the link disappeared. He only hoped the image made it out.

“You okay?” the disembodied voice said.

Takahashi struggled to consciousness, his vision going from black to gray to a blurry white. A light flashed from one eye to the other.

“Wha???” he stammered. His neuretics were completely down, his arms and legs felt as if they were wrapped in heavy chains, and he had a nasty taste of vomit in his mouth. He felt some kind of sticky substance on the back of his head, which was throbbing like the morning after his first real Mexican tequila night.

He shook his head and the pain feedback told him that was a mistake. He blinked his eyes. Doctor Gilchrist stood over him; apparently he was sitting on the floor. His last memory was, what was it? They were moving the cabinet in front of the door as a secondary barricade, then there was this terrible pain in his…

He sat bolt upright. “
Kuso
!” he said, cursing in Japanese, trying to get to his feet.

“Whoa, whoa,” Gilchrist said, pushing at his shoulders. “You fell flat backwards, hit your head on the edge of the table, and have a grade two concussion. You shouldn’t even be awake right now.”

“Awake?” Takahashi said in alarm. “How long have I been out?”

Gilchrist checked his watch. “About eight minutes.”

“Dammit!” he barked, pushing the doctor’s hands away as forcefully as he could with the disabled armor. He struggled to his feet, knocking several instruments off a nearby tray onto the floor.

“Relax, it was an accident,” the doctor said. “Sit down, I’ll get you some water.”

“No, doc, it’s not an accident,” Takahashi replied. “We’re under attack. That was a neurojammer. Someone tried to fry our systems.” He did some neuretics checking, to no avail. “And did a damned good job.” He checked a few more pathways. “No comm, no weapons, and armor is compromised.”

Gilchrist looked alarmed. “I thought you said they’d be coming in through…”

“I know,” Takahashi interrupted. “We all thought so. Damn, neurojammers aren’t even supposed to exist. Experimental only.” He took one armored gauntlet off, dabbing at the back of his head with his freed hand. Looking at the smeared blood on his fingers, he grimaced.
 
“Seems like they work just fine,” he said. “We’ve got to get to the rest of the team.”

“But your commander said to stay here,” the doctor said.

Takahashi was about to reply when a burst came in through his disabled neuretics.
Shouldn’t be able to receive anything
, he thought. Must have been a discrete channel, high power.

The file opened in his Mindseye, barely, showing a blurry image of the Operations center. The edges of the image flickered in his weakened systems. On the left of the image he saw Jimenez and Sowers, both seated on the floor, hands crossed on their knees, and Brevik sitting on his knees next to them. Several workstations were further back in the image; Sabra sat at one of them, a small pistol in her hand. The chairman and his assistant were at the central platform table at the far end. Everything appeared relatively normal, except for the fact that Lamber stood dead center of the frame, holding an assault rifle pointed directly at the sender of the image.

“Oh no,” he said slowly. Looking closer, he saw that both Sabra and Lamber had the same hard look on their faces.

“What is it?” Gilchrist asked.

“We’ve got a problem,” he replied. “Something’s happened. My team’s being held at gunpoint.” He gritted his teeth. “We’ve got a mole, two actually, and bad guys on the way.” He looked around the lab. “Doc, do you have a back exit?”

Gilchrist shook his head. “No, not really. Front way is the only way in, except for the Polis’ way.”

“Polis’ way?” he repeated.

“Well, it’s not really an exit,” he replied. “More of a way to easily get them in and out of the cold when they need to be. So that we don’t have to run them through the entire complex. But it goes outside, and I’m not really familiar with the surface, and quite honestly I don’t see the point. There’s nowhere to go.”

Takahashi tried to pull up the colony schematics in his neuretics, but they were non-responsive.
Damn again…
“Do you have a layout of the buildings, something hardcopy I can look at?” he asked.

Gilchrist tapped his chin. “Maybe…yes, hang on,” he said, and walked over to a table covered in paper notes. He rummaged through the pile, and pulled out a crumpled sheet of yellowing paper. “Here, something one of the Polis made.”
 

He took it from him and looked at it. It was a crude outline drawing of the colony, but even the rough uneven lines looked fairly accurate from what he remembered from the briefings. He pored over the paper, looking for some type of guidance.