Unstable Prototypes (29 page)

Back in the docking bay, Ma had reached the
inside of the ship and made a few more precision leaps, eventually
making it to the compartment where her slidepad was carefully
wedged. She tapped quickly at the screen, retracting the arm,
sealing the door, and transmitting an emergency disembark command.
If the station had been under normal operation, it would certainly
have denied the command, or at least raised a flag. The damage that
the saboteur had caused was sufficient to prompt an immediate
departure clearance. The airlock hissed open, sucking the bomb into
space. Ma initiated the main engine start sequence and directed the
ship's autopilot to exit the hangar while the primary thrusters ran
through their warmup cycle. A few moments later, the light patter
of shrapnel and a faint sizzle of plasma against the sturdy hull
heralded the detonation of the bomb. Without an atmosphere and a
confined space, the explosion wasn't nearly sufficient to be a
threat to ship or station. The Armistice oriented itself and
shuddered along until its engines finally fully flared to life.

#

"Any word on the Warden?" asked Garotte,
checking the time on his slidepad.

Confident though he was in his disguise and
credentials, every false identity had a time limit. He hadn't had
much time to prepare this one, so he'd been forced to construct it
with speed in mind, rather than longevity. Periodic automated
security sweeps would eventually find the entries he'd made, and
depending on the database, investigations would begin regarding the
validity. He'd estimated fraud alerts and security holds wouldn't
start for at least two days, but considering the fact that his
estimate was based primarily on wild guesses and intuition, he
would rather be long gone well before then.

The guard touched his headset again.
"Communications, can we... Communications?"

Suddenly the PA system began to blare an
alert. "Attention, all personnel. Situation Blue. Switch to point
to point communications and await further orders."

The message repeated itself once before the
power suddenly dropped away, plunging the room into darkness. An
instant later flashlights clicked on.

"What's this about?" Garotte asked,
convincingly pretending to be a man who was pretending not to be
afraid.

"Stay calm, sir. We have procedures for
this," the guard said unsteadily as dim red emergency lights
clicked on.

"Oh, well, that's alright then," Garotte
said, crunching on one of the mints from his pocket, then clicking
open his cane's compartment and dropping them in. "As long as
you've got procedures. I presume all of your doors lock in the
event of a power failure?"

"Yes."

Garotte clicked on the flashlight built into
his cane and shined it around, then appeared to nervously play with
the pair of buttons. A moment later the already nervous guard
furrowed his brow.

"What's that noise?" he asked, hand
instinctively moving to his stun rod.

"What is it? Sort of an edge-of-your-hearing
whine? Heading up in frequency and down in volume?" Garotte
asked.

"Yes."

"Probably just a large capacitor
charging."

"Where is it coming from?"

Garotte leaned to the side, as if listening
closely, then slowly raised the tip of his cane toward the
glass.

"I think... it may be coming... from the
basement," he said slowly.

At the sound of the final word, Winters slid
quickly from her seat and rolled beneath the counter. Before the
men on her side of the glass could react, there was an earsplitting
clap, Garotte nearly toppled over backwards, and the entire surface
of the glass marbled with intricate cracks and disintegrated into
small, jagged pebbles. The avalanche of glass was, to say the
least, highly distracting. Both Winters and Garotte took full
advantage. He flipped the cane around, grasping the end and
swinging the handle with pinpoint precision at the base of the neck
of the first guard, crumbling him to the ground. The second guard
swung at his head with the stun rod, but he stooped below,
snatching up the matching weapon from the downed partner and
delivering a swift, incapacitating jolt. Winters managed to get to
her feet, despite the high gravity and wrist restraints, and was
standing on the counter of her side of the broken glass wall before
the guards on her side had gathered themselves enough to take
action. The first one to approach got a swift kick to the bottom
edge of the face mask, popping his helmet neatly off and uncovering
his face for a thrust kick to the nose. The other tried to apply
his stunner to her legs, but she leaped toward him, driving her
knees into his collar bones and riding him down to the ground,
where the gravitationally enhanced maneuver kept him there.

The glass had barely finished settling to the
ground by the time the only person standing was Garotte. He climbed
gingerly over the divider and helped Winters to her feet.

"What would you have done if I'd forgotten
what 'basement' was code for?"

"Apologized vigorously and helped you to pick
bits of glass out of your hair," he replied, returning to the
proper British accent, which seemed oddly out of place coming from
his altered face. His breathing was heavy, the exertion taking an
extra toll in the high gravity.

"How did you manage to shut down power and
security?" she asked breathlessly.

"Power
and
security?"

"Situation blue. Complete secondary system
failure."

"That was not part of the plan. Not part of
my
plan anyway. Still, don't look a gift horse in the mouth
and all that."

"How did you break the glass?" she asked.

"The same way I'll be breaking your cuffs.
Careful. Wouldn't want to dislocate a shoulder," he said, guiding
her to the counter and doing his best to put the locking mechanism
against the surface.

He climbed to the counter, placed the tip of
his cane against the lock between her wrists, and depressed one of
the buttons. The same subtle electronic whine sounded, and another
clap. Even with the whole of his body weight bracing it, the recoil
from his cane nearly lifted him from the ground. A neat hole about
the size of a pea was blasted through the restraints, and a
somewhat larger one through the counter and floor below it.

"Who would have thought a breath mint moving
at a few multiples of the speed of sound could be so effective a
lock pick, eh?" he quipped as Winters pulled her hands from the
broken restraints.

With an impassive look on her face, Winters
reached up and grabbed Garotte by the collar, yanking him down from
the counter and pulling him off his feet, such that the only thing
keeping him from laying flat on his back on a bed of broken glass
was her steely grip. She pulled him face to face.

"Why did you come here and do this? I didn't
want
to be broken out. Do you understand?"

"You certainly seemed quick to take out these
two gentlemen when you had to."

"As soon as you raised that cane, the best I
could hope for was six months in solitary, minimum. If it is that
or an escape, I choose escape, but you had better have a
gosh
darn
good excuse for making me choose it," she said, delivering
the replacement expletives with all of the force and conviction of
the originals.

"A group of political or religious extremists
with military ties have kidnapped Karter."

Winters considered the words for a
moment.

"Good call busting me out then," she
admitted, straightening him up and fixing his collar, "But give me
that cane-gun before you hurt somebody."

"Gladly," he said, handing it over.

"When this is all over, I owe you three
slaps."

"Why three?"

"We'll get into that later. What's the plan?"
she asked, snapping instantly into business mode.

"Well, the plan
had
been to walk out
of here with you under my custody. It had been going rather well
until this mysterious blackout, I should add."

"Yes, well, I'd say that plan is officially
beyond redemption. What is Plan B?"

"I hadn't actually formulated one. I hate
Plan B. Its very existence undermines confidence in Plan A."

Winters pinched the bridge of her nose. "This
is exactly why you weren't the one who made the plans."

"Evidently."

"Alright, well, we need-"

She was interrupted by a chirp of Garotte's
slidepad. He glanced at it.

"There has been a security and communication
failure in the orbital section of the facility. Potential
infiltration. Expect difficulties," he read aloud.

"Who sent that?"

"We'll get into that later. I suppose we'll
need to get to the shuttle bay?"

"Yeah. And every darn door along the way is
going to be locked. Not even these boys would be able to get them
open without power."

"The cane ought to get them open."

"Sure, but how many rounds do you have
left?"

"It fires anything that fits down the
barrel," he said, stooping and scooping up a double helping of the
cubed glass remnants of the divider, "And I'm willing to wager
these will be a bit more effective than breath freshener. The cane
is armed, so this button opens the compartment to reload, and this
one is the trigger. Hold down to charge, release to fire. Longer
charge, harder hit. And brace yourself, she's got a hell of a
kick."

She dumped out the breath mints and dumped in
some glass, then clicked the compartment shut and took a few test
shots at the wall. When she was comfortable with the firing
characteristics, she raised the weapon and popped a shot at the red
emergency light, scoring a direct hit. As she opened the
compartment to top off the load of glass, she began to rattle off
orders. "We'll take the first two doors to the left. Should lead to
a service corridor. Narrow, fewer doors. From there we'll head out
into the administration building, then straight through to the
hangar. I'll lay down cover fire, you get a ship running. I hope
you've got something with a faster-than-light drive up there."

"That I do."

"Alright, then we get in the shuttle, we pray
that the security failure holds until we manage to dock, then we
get to your ship, get out of here, and you get your slaps. Try not
to kill anyone. These men are just doing their jobs. And for
goodness sake, let's not start a riot, and let's not let anyone but
us escape. These people are here for a reason."

"Duly noted."

"What's the codename today?"

"I've been using Garotte."

"Again? I guess I'll go with Silo again,
then."

"Just like old times," he said with a grin,
snatching a pair of the stun rods and giving them a quick
twirl.

She took a deep breath, clicked the cane
compartment shut, and nodded. "Move out."

From time to time, one may hear the term
military precision. This usually brings to mind images of troops
marching in perfect step, or perhaps doing weapon drills in unison.
Impressive, perhaps, but not the sort of thing that inspires awe or
admiration. Those who feel that way, however, should know that what
the term really refers to is the battlefield behavior that all of
those synchronized exercises were conceived to facilitate. Garotte
and Silo as they worked their way through the prison's halls were a
textbook worthy example. With seldom more than a syllable exchanged
between them, actions were assigned and performed. While Silo
perforated a lock, Garotte distracted and disabled a guard to buy
her the time to do so. Emergency lights were destroyed to provide
the cover of darkness, hallways were declared to be clear if they
were, and a few quick applications of a stun rod emptied the ones
that weren't. In most instances they were through a section of the
facility before the guards, who were still grappling with the chaos
caused by the total power and security failure, even knew they were
there. When they approached one of the secondary entrances to the
shuttle hangar, Silo stopped him.

"Alright. If I'm right about their
procedures, the hangar is going to be packed to the gills with
guards. Did you check out the layout on the way in?"

"Six emergency oxygen masks on every
alternate support column, three secure munitions chests. One in
each corner and one in the center," Garotte said, taking the cane
from her and topping off its supply of crushed glass.

"Those chests will be loaded with
anti-vehicular weaponry to take out rogue shuttles in the event an
escaping inmate makes it that far. We'll need to confiscate or
destroy the contents of all three chests if we are going to have a
chance to escape. And we'll need to clear the hangar of
guards."

Garotte tapped his foot and twirled a stun
rod in thought, the sounds of utter bedlam echoing through the
halls around them.

"Refresh my memory. The atmospheric pressure
on this planet, lethal?" he asked.

"No. But the atmosphere is unbreathable."

"Right, so, we pop the door, you provide
covering fire, I grab an oxygen rig for each of us. I take cover,
you blow the lock on a munitions chest and as many oxygen rigs as
you can. I get a gun, I offer cover fire, you get a gun. We strap
on oxygen, then blow the hangar doors. No more breathable
atmosphere, no more oxygen rigs, mandatory evacuation. They'll have
to manually apply the internal emergency doors to keep the facility
from losing its oxygen. They're locked in, and we're all alone in
the hangar with the doors wide open. Sufficient?"

"Sufficient," she nodded.

She put the cane to the door lock, pulled the
trigger, and the plan began to unfold. The pair moved like
interlocked gears, each step and every motion leading smoothly into
another. A gathering of guards, still startled by the sound of the
disintegrating door lock, scrambled for cover as the sonic booms
began to erupt from the bizarre makeshift weapon. Garotte sprinted
to a pillar, pulled down three oxygen masks and tanks, and tossed
one of them high into the air in the high-roofed chamber. Silo
spotted it, shifted aim, and neatly punctured its edge with a shot,
sending the canister rocketing dangerously around the room. In the
brief window of distraction it caused, she turned and fired at the
chest nearest to Garotte. He wrenched it open hoisted out a weapon
that looked like a rifle with an eating disorder. On a normal
planet he would have had trouble carrying it. On Manticore it was
practically immobile, but he managed to heave it onto the chest's
edge, slap in an ammo clip, and pull the trigger. A wild spray of
dark red energy bolts lanced through the air, just barely over the
heads of the nearest guards.