Birthright: Battle for the Confederation- Pursuit (27 page)

"Holy sheifah," she murmured. 

"They're all here," Web
confirmed, scrolling through cells.  He couldn't read much more of the data
about the cell's occupants, but he knew the names.  They were Senators, every
last one other than Dennix, who had all been kidnapped by the Primans at the
beginning of the war.  The enemy's initial plan to throw the Confed government
into chaos had entailed abducting the government itself in the hopes that the
people wouldn't be able to function without the bureaucracy.  In fact, it had
only been marginally successful.  That was, until Senator Dennix engineered his
own rise to power.  Between the deal-making and backroom agreements, he'd risen
in the power vacuum that the Primans had created.  While the Primans already
had their hooks into him by that point, they'd had no greater hopes for him
other than as a source for information or potential use as a sleeper agent. 
Only later had they made their own deal with him: they'd help him rise to control
the Confederation in exchange for his subservience to them.  And only the
Primans knew that the deal was only good for as long as it suited them; sooner
or later they'd come back and finish off Confed in their own good time.

Now, things had just completely changed. 
The leaders of the Confederation, the
duly
elected
leaders of the
people, had been found.  If they could be brought back to the Confederation,
perhaps they could oust Dennix and his yes-men and get their homes back on
track.  Surely years in Priman captivity hadn't earned them any fans among the
elected leaders.

"We need to get them out of
here," Web said urgently.

"Yes," Halley agreed, "but
how?  We need to scram right this instant.  We don't have a plan for hundreds
of people, transport that can get us off-planet, or even a way to keep them
together and not scatter the instant the doors open."

"What are you saying?" Web
asked in amazement.  "We leave them?"

"For now, yes," she stated
simply.  "Look, the Primans don't know we made it this far.  Other than
this guy you knocked out here, nobody knows what we've found.  These folks are
all safer here than if we try to half-ass a rescue right now.  Best bet is we
clear out and not let them in on what we know.  Then we come back ASAP and
break them all out with a team and a plan."

"Dammit," Web said, but deep
down he knew Halley was right.  There was just no way they could get hundreds
of people out of here, and they'd probably get a bunch of them killed if a
half-baked rescue attempt was made.

"So we drag this scumbag somewhere
and hope he doesn't tell on us?"

"Well, either we take him back to
Confed space or we kill him," Halley said. 

"Alright," Web said with an air
of resignation.  "I'll carry him until he gets too heavy."

Web hefted the man over his shoulder,
then he and Halley trudged to the lift.

"You got the data?" he asked.

"Every last dirty bit," she
confirmed. 

They exited the lift on the main floor
and immediately discovered a problem; the building was on fire. At first, Web
was caught completely off guard.  Modern buildings don't catch fire.  Sure,
there might be an explosion, but between fire-resistant materials and
suppression systems, fires shouldn't stay lit.

"Is this more of your artwork?"
Web asked Halley as he turned to survey the hall.  The way they'd come was
engulfed in flames, including Web noted with a certain regret, the storage
closet where he'd tucked the guard Halley had knocked out.

"No," she replied calmly as she
took stock as well.  "They must have made some modifications to the
structure when they took the place over.  Who knows?" 

The front entrance was off the list.  She
remembered from the schematics two other exits; one was a service exit, the
other was a small motor pool/garage.  She chose the garage.

"This way," she commanded Web,
and he followed her as fast as he could while carrying the dead weight of the
Priman in a fireman's carry.

They arrived at the entrance to the
garage.  "I'm not sure how big it really is, if it's guarded, full, empty,
anything actually," Halley admitted in a rare case of her not knowing the
situation fully.  Web just nodded.  "I'll go in and clear it.  Give me ten
seconds and then follow if you don't hear gunfire."

Web shifted the Priman's weight as the
man twitched.  He hoped the guy wasn't coming around or he'd have to give him
another beating to keep him quiet.

Halley disappeared into the door, letting
it slide shut behind her.  Web counted, but only got to five before he heard
the voices behind him.

"Identify yourself!" he heard a
woman's voice yell.

"Local security," Web said
commandingly as he slowly spun around to face his accusers.  He might be able
to talk his way out of this.

"What have you done to him?"
the woman asked again.  She was Priman; tall, athletic and attractive in the
way they all seemed to be.  She had four more guards with her, all brandishing
assault rifles of some sort.

"I came in to report as liaison and
saw him in the hallway, so I'm trying to get him out.  Which way to the exits? 
The front of the building's on fire!"  Web tried to look panicked, and if
this woman delayed him too much longer, he wouldn't be acting any more; it
would be real.

The woman started to walk closer, then
her face faltered. 

"He's a guard from the
sublevels!" she yelled, and everyone brought their rifles up.

"Intruder..." the man over
Web's shoulder struggled to say in a strained, garbled voice.  The woman's eyes
went wide and she brought up her own blaster.  Web reached for his own but
fumbled for a split second.  It was a law enforcement style holster, meant to
keep the weapon secure until it was very obviously grabbed and retrieved from
its place.  Web was used to the military style, which made for a much easier
draw and was cut to allow the barrel to come up quickly as it was pulled out.

The split second might have saved his
life, though, as the guard over his shoulder made a grab for the blaster.  He
latched on to Web's hand and he staggered under the assault until finally the
guard slid off his shoulder and onto the floor.  Web punched him across the jaw
to stun him, then ducked behind and used the Priman as a shield as his comrades
opened fire.  Their first shots went high where he'd been standing, then
stitched down the wall to floor level.  The guard tried to get up and away from
Web, but that only caused him to stand up into the line of fire and catch a
pair of blasts square in the chest. 

Web wasted no time in lunging for the
doorway and smacking the release with his palm.  He ducked through, spun around
as he hit the close button on the garage side of the door, then tapped the
button that commanded it to lock.

"Problem!" he yelled to Halley,
who he couldn't see in the dark, shadow-filled garage.

Loren held his SSK up in a two-handed
stance as the doors opened.  He stood to the side towards the front of the
house so that an errant blast wouldn't ricochet right into him by accident. 
After all that had happened, that would be about the most inglorious way to
die.

He heard rapid exchanges of blaster fire,
both the familiar deep report of the SSK as well as the higher pitched squeal
of Priman energy weapons.

"Cory, Merritt," Loren called. 
"Ready to fall back."

Since no blasts came towards him, he
crouched low and risked a peek around the corner.  He saw the main gallery and
his comrades at the far end, both on the near side to him of a crossing
hallway.  A storm of blaster fire was coming left to right down the cross hall
which led to the portico where they'd entered.

He saw Cory's body language change at the
sound of his voice, then she turned to look at him.  He stood halfway out into
the hall and leveled his blaster down the gallery to cover them.  She slapped
Merritt on the shoulder, then ran halfway down the hall to a doorway where she
took cover.  A second later, Merritt broke contact and ran as well, going past
her to the next position, the lift Loren was standing in.  He crouched low and
readied his weapon while Cory turned to run. 

She was almost to the lift's door when
the first Priman rounded the corner.  Cory must have seen the look in Loren's
eyes because she hit the ground, diving head first towards the door.  Loren
immediately pulled the trigger, sending an armor piercing round into the
soldier's chest.  He followed with a single-trigger-pull double tap (the most
popular feature of the military version of the weapon) as the man staggered and
fell, then put another half dozen rounds into the wall at the intersection to
deter more Primans from dashing headlong around the bend.

Cory scrambled into the lift, Loren and
Merritt ducked in, and the doors closed.

 When the doors opened at the sub-level,
they ran out but Loren immediately doubled back.  He looked around for
something to jam in the door, but the clean hallway was devoid of anything he
could use.  He wasn't wearing the standard infantry combat vest with its many
pockets and tools, so he finally dropped the magazine of armor piercing rounds
from his SSK.  While it was still well over half full, it would be better used
to stop their Priman pursuers.  He shoved it in the door tracks and stepped
back, then nodded in approval as the doors made a grinding sound and stopped
their movement.  A bell started to ring in the lift car, and Loren pronounced
his handiwork to be good.

"Let's go," he commanded as he
slid his spare magazine into the sidearm.  He took off at a jog for the storage
area where Echo and the world-destroying weapon were waiting.

As they burst into the room, they saw
Echo tapping commands on a large display against the back wall of the space. 

"Loren, stay here so I can show you
what I'm doing.  The rest of you, please, head through those doors and find
yourselves something to escape in.  The owner has several spaceworthy ships to
choose from."

Loren nodded at Cory and Merritt, who
took off through the doors and into the loading dock beyond.

"Something you wanted to tell
me?" Loren asked Echo.  "Or maybe a way you don't have to die
here?"

"Sadly, no," Echo replied. 
"This is my role to fulfill.  It will only take a minute to trigger the
explosion, so the decision's made and your clock is ticking."

"What if I don't let you?"
Loren said.  "What if I knock you out, shoot you in the leg?"

Echo turned his head to look at Loren. 
"I can see your conviction, Loren, but I know you won't pull on me; I can
see it in all your bio-signs."

Loren seemed ready to say something, then
just angrily shoved his SSK into his hip holster.  "Apparently you can't
bluff an AI."

Echo studied Loren as the Confed man
stood there with an air of defeat about him.  "Are you doing
alright?"

"Funny you should ask
me
that," Loren said without humor.  He considered for a
minute his reply.  "You know what, Echo?  I feel tired.  For the first
time in my life, I feel old, like I've seen too much.  That's not a good
feeling."

Echo smiled as he returned to his task. 
"It will pass as you experience brighter days, I assure you, even though
you might doubt that at present."  The AI looked Loren in the eyes as he
continued.

"I wanted to tell you something,
Loren.  You and a handful of Avenger's crew share a unique DNA sequence." 
He waited to see if Loren was paying attention, then carried on.  "While
all of the species in your part of the galaxy had Priman DNA inserted into your
genomes, some of your DNA is integrated much differently.  You wouldn't notice
it unless you knew what to look for and compare it to, but it's there.  Your
Priman DNA is blended in the random and chaotic fashion that only comes from a
natural, biological transfer."

Loren's raised eyebrow and lack of a
comeback encouraged Echo to continue.  "Somewhere way back, more than a
thousand years ago, you had an ancestor that was Priman.  Yes, originally your
people were altered with their DNA, but at a point after that, you had a
forebear that joined with a Priman."

"Wonderful," Loren said neutrally. 

"It's a perfectly understandable
situation, really," Echo continued.  "Just before the first Priman
War, they were the biological equals of many species in your corner of the
galaxy.  They would have worked together, collaborated, why not married and had
children?"

"Great; so what does that make
me?"

"Absolutely nothing, Loren.  You
have neither superpowers nor a curse.  It goes to the point that all of you and
the Primans are closer and more compatible than you might be willing to
admit."

Loren just nodded.  He saw what Echo was
getting at; a long time ago, Primans and the various humanoids of his home
probably did have relationships with each other, before the Primans went off on
their unpopular tour of galactic conquest.  Maybe someday Echo thought things
could return to that state.