Crystal Deception (21 page)

“There’s a turn ahead past this building. Turn right. Turn
now.”

He watched through the dot as she glanced down the lane and
then sprinted into it. There were box-buildings on either side of her. Alleys
branched off in both directions.

Sid stood up and fumbled his way back to his cabin. He
toggled his dot a few times to see his own local view, but he moved mostly by
feel and memory so he could stay linked with Juice.

There was an explosion, and Juice looked over her shoulder.
Sid could see an impact crater on the corner building behind her. The Kardish
had fired his weapon. The shot was nowhere close to her, but it erased all
doubt that the fellow meant business.

“Glance back,” said Sid. “Let me see.” He saw the Kardish
rounding the corner. Pumping his arms and huffing through his mouth, he was
outmatched in every aspect of the running game. But a race against energy bolts
from his weapon would be no contest. “Take your next right. Go as far as you
can and then make another right. Go in a circle. I’m on my way.”

“Got it.” Her breathing was slow and measured. It gave him
hope.

Sid toggled his dot so he could see his world. He snatched
his weapon from beside his bunk. Running through the ship, he slapped it on his
wrist as he made his way to the hatch, dropped down to the deck, and sprinted
toward the box-buildings.

“Criss,” he called as he ran. There was no answer.

He reached the buildings and turned toward the Kardish hull,
running along the dividing road in the opposite direction from Juice. He
counted alleys as he ran, but realized he didn’t know where she was relative to
him. He stopped, crouched down, and toggled to see through her dot.

She was still running. “How many turns have you made?” he
asked. He watched the scene shift as she turned into another alley.

“That’s my third,” she said. “I couldn’t make it to the far
end. I’m two alleys short. I can see the open deck ahead.”

“Can you make it?”

“Easy. This guy is no runner.”

“When you reach the open deck, turn right again and keep going
along the road. You’ll see me standing here. Prepare mentally for that. Run
right past me and turn into the alley behind me. Hide somewhere and wait.”

He watched through her dot as she ran. He could see that he
had time before she would reach the end, so he rose, ran farther up the road,
and crouched near where she would emerge. He held his arm up and pointed his
weapon. Then he saw her. She popped out of an alley farther down from where he
expected. He rose and sprinted in her direction.

As their distance closed, he saw that her face was calm, her
stride was easy, and her pace was fast. Sid was impressed. As she zipped by, he
told her, “We’ve lost Criss. It happened when you connected that box.”

He turned his attention ahead. Once Juice was safely past,
he stopped and waited. The alien came huffing around the corner. He was
struggling from the exertion and didn’t have much run left in him. Sid put a
shot in his chest and ended his misery.

Dragging the dead Kardish back into the alley, Sid shoved
him into a recess and returned to the road, moving at a fast trot down to the
next alley. He rounded the corner and saw Juice standing there. She was
completely still. A Kardish had his arm around her neck. He held a weapon to
the back of her head.

Chapter 28

Jack snapped awake. It took him a
moment to orient himself. He checked the time and saw that he’d been asleep for
several hours. Creeping out to the edge of the hideaway, he peeked into the alley,
studying up one way and down the other. Nothing. He stood and walked to the
back of the gap. Cheryl still leaned against Cait, and they were still asleep.

He removed his hood and squatted down. “It’s Jack, Cheryl.
Rise and shine.” Her eyes popped open, and she registered recognition. She
rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands.

“How’re we doing?” she asked, sitting up straight.

“So far, so good.” He pulled the large pack over next to her
and opened it so she could get at the food and water.

He stepped over and crouched in front of Cait. He looked at
her, shook her shoulder, and then leaned forward to study her face. Sighing, he
reached out and felt for a pulse in her neck. There was none. Her skin was
cold. He’d seen enough death in his time, and his com confirmed what he already
knew.

He lifted Cait’s hands and held them in his. Tilting his
head forward, he said something under his breath.

“What’s the matter?”

He stood up and looked away. “Say your good-byes. We have to
move.”

While Cheryl fussed over Cait, Jack dumped the gadgets and
devices from his ghost pack onto the ground. He put back a couple of items,
including two of his three remaining demolition squares, then filled the rest of
the pack with food and water and assembled everything they were leaving behind
around Cait. He meant it as a symbolic ritual of remembrance. He placed his
third demolition square into her hands and folded them in her lap.

He helped Cheryl to her feet. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m ready,” she said in a somber tone. Looking down at Cait,
she added, “I hate these bastards. I really hate them.”

He shouldered the ghost pack, reached up, and pulled down
the cloak sheet from its perch overhead. Cheryl shook it, held it up, and saw
it was showing smudges here and there. It was becoming more like camouflage
than an invisible shroud. She wrapped it around herself.

Pausing at the exit, Jack toggled his speck from urgent mode
back to normal conversation. “Let’s go ruin their day,” he said as they walked
into the alley together.

They made their way to the edge of the box city and stood concealed
in shadow. Jack remained quiet while Cheryl evaluated the expanse in front of
them. He listened while she described what she saw, and her observations and
conclusions matched his.

Her eyes were drawn to the huge hangar doors in the hull of
the vessel overhead. “We need to get out of here.”

He looked at her.

“You know how we get rid of vermin on Fleet cargo ships? We
open the hold to space. Cold vacuum is a great way to kill everything.”

He looked up and considered the hangar doors, seeing them in
a new light. “You think they’d do that to us?” He pointed down a long corridor between
two rows of drones. “This brings us to the dividing wall and hopefully a way
out. The good news is that being hidden between big structures gives us plenty
of cover. The bad news is that if they figure out where we are, it’ll be easy
to trap us.” He stepped out from the concealment of their shadow. “Hold for a
moment. Let me check for all clear.” He took a few steps, then stopped and
scurried back. “Looks like we’re done walking.”

She leaned out and peered down the road. A cart was approaching.

Jack stood close to Cheryl and waited. He spent those
moments deciding that he was no longer interested in keeping a running tally of
the body count—the entire vessel didn’t have enough Kardish to balance the
score.

“This one’s for Cait,” he whispered when the cart rolled in
front of them. Taking quick steps out of the shadows, he broke into a run behind
the cart, lifted his arm, and shot the driver. The cart drifted to a stop. He pulled
the alien onto the ground and dragged him to the nearest cover.

“Your chariot awaits,
chérie
,” he said as he sat
where the driver had been. He waited as she climbed in next to him. He reached
over and helped her adjust the cape to maximize her cover, though he suspected
that, at this point, such details didn’t really matter. The sight of an unauthorized
cart driving among the drones would be enough for the Kardish to shoot first
and never think about asking questions.

Before he started driving, he opened his ghost pack and
removed a small box. “Good-bye, Cait.” He touched the box. There was a
tremendous explosion in the distance, and the deck of the Kardish vessel shook
beneath them. Almost immediately, there was a spectacular secondary explosion.
A pillar of flame thrust upward.

“Holy hell,” said Cheryl, watching the flame mushroom out
into a ball. As it dissipated, she added, “Whatever we were sleeping next to
was powerful stuff.”

Jack drove the cart between two rows of the drone parking
garage. The cart’s top speed wasn’t as fast as he’d have liked, but at least the
deck was flat and the ride was smooth. As they rode along, Jack set off another
charge. This one didn’t trigger a secondary explosion, but it was impressive in
its own way as the sharp bark of the detonation ricocheted throughout the open
area of the vessel.

The drive was nerve-racking as column after column of
cubicles, each holding its own drone, passed by on either side. They were
anxious to complete their passage as quickly as possible and fearful they’d be
attacked at any moment. Halfway to the dividing wall, Jack set off the third
demolition square. This one caused a secondary explosion that rivaled the
first. They didn’t stop to watch.

They were purring along, lost in their own thoughts, when Jack
asked, “Where’s the alarm? Why no fire or emergency personnel?”

“You know one of the most effective ways to extinguish fires
and clear smoke out of a ship?”

When she phrased it that way, Jack knew the answer. Vacuum. He
looked up at the hangar doors and this time saw them as threatening jaws preparing
to rip the life out of them.

They mercifully made it to the end of the long drone corridor,
and Jack kept driving straight at the wall.

“Do you see a doorway?” His eyes scanned side to side in a
desperate attempt to outrun what seemed like an ever shortening time table. The
wall drew close, and Jack chose to turn right. They continued along, solid wall
to one side and rows of drones to the other. “Somewhere along here there’s got
to be a way to get people and carts in and out.”

“There,” said Cheryl, pointing ahead, then Jack saw it, too.
A doorway. He slowed as they drove by and gave it a quick visual inspection.
“That’s our ticket,” she said.

He stopped the cart. “I’m going to park. Wait for me here.”

Cheryl stepped out and watched him drive the cart back to
the nearest row of drones. When he reached the structure, he slowed down and
slanted the cart into the first ground-level cubicle. He drove at a severe
angle to the drone, catching it on its edge, then accelerated and was able to
shove the craft to one side. He backed up and drove forward into the small
space he’d created, the cart scraping and squealing as he forced it forward between
the drone and the cubicle wall. Climbing out over the back of the cart, he viewed
his handiwork, satisfied that most of the vehicle was hidden inside the compartment.
He hoped it would buy them more time.

He joined Cheryl and studied the doorway. Given all the Kardish
technology around them, the door certainly must have a mode that would cause it
to open automatically when approached, but it wasn’t functioning for them. He
spied a small lever on the door at waist level and pulled on it, but the door
didn’t open. He tried moving the lever left and then right, pulling each time,
but it wouldn’t budge. Stepping back, he scanned the outline of the frame and then
shook his head as if to acknowledge his stupidity. He lifted the handle and
pushed. The doorway swung wide.

With his foot propping the door open, he touched the detonation
box and blew the final charge. They both turned to watch the explosion, but the
drone garage blocked their view. The thunderous sound was pleasing enough.

As the echo of the explosion faded, their attention was pulled
to a grinding noise overhead. They looked up to see mechanisms moving on the
giant hangar doors. A whistle became a howl as ever greater volumes of air rushed
out through a widening gap in the hull. They stepped through the doorway in the
dividing wall and shut the door behind them.

* * *

Cheryl rushed to the left toward a
rack of pipes. Jack ran straight, heading for the cover offered by a series of
columns. They saw they were moving in different directions and both switched destinations
to join the other.

Before it became a silly dance, Cheryl stopped moving and
pointed. “Let’s go for the pipes.” She turned and dashed for her original target.

The crisscross of pipes and ducts had a familiar industrial appearance.
After they’d climbed several layers deep into the maze and stopped to assess their
situation They couldn’t detect any pursuit. Well hidden by the tangle of equipment,
their location’s one disadvantage was its limited view of their surroundings.

Cheryl could see enough to appreciate that this section of
the Kardish vessel was different from where they had just been. The
Alliance
had passed through here, so the open area in front of them was undeniably huge.
Yet compared to the previous section with the drones and box city, the open space
here was much smaller. The expanse was narrowed on each side by partitions that
ran along the length of the ship. The featureless partition walls offered no
clues as to what might lie behind.

“Any ideas on what’s going on in this place?” Jack asked.

She patted the huge pipe they were resting against. “At
least some of this stuff would be in our operations bay. I’d need to see more
to know, though.”

“What’s your take on that city of box-buildings?”

“I’m thinking that was the infrastructure for their military
machine. With a couple hundred thousand drones, it would take a lot to keep
them operational. They’d need maintenance and repair. Spare parts. Factories to
build weapons. Warehouses to store them. They’d need fuel.” She shrugged.
“Let’s face it. War is big business.”

He nodded. “That would explain the secondary explosions. If
that’s true, it would mean we hurt them back there, at least a little bit
anyway.”

“But that kind of infrastructure needs people,” she said. “We’re
still missing some pieces in this puzzle.” She looked at him. “Hey, your hood
isn’t working.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I see a dirty hood sitting on top of a partially
cloaked body.”

He adjusted it. “Anything?”

“Nope.”

After several more attempts without success, he gave up and pulled
off the hood. Cheryl looked at his unshaven face and disheveled hair. “That’s
not working either.”

“Smart-ass,” he said, tossing the hood at her. “The damn
thing is uncomfortable anyway.”

Cheryl looked around and absorbed their setting. They were
both soldiers and this was war. She was mentally prepared to commit to her
final mission.

“Here’s where I am. We have food and water for maybe a week.
The thought of trying to hide and survive for as long as we can doesn’t work
for me. I say we make a play to steal one of their small ships, or we try to commandeer
this big vessel. And if we can’t pull that off, then we take all of these bastards
out with us in a spectacular final exit.”

“We’re on the same page,” Jack replied, nodding. “My sense
is that making any of those things happen means getting to the bridge. Let’s
keep that as our goal and see how our options develop.”

She pointed upward and he looked. There was a flat ceiling
overhead, high off the deck but low enough for there to be more levels of
living and working space above them. “What I don’t know,” she said, “is whether
the bridge is forward, or if it’s up there.”

A flurry of activity drew their attention. Three carts
purred out of one of the side rooms and took up station in front of the
dividing wall.

“I’m guessing the air pressure is almost back up,” Cheryl
said. “And their assignment is to scavenge our bodies.” As they watched, a door
in the dividing wall swung open and the carts drove out.

Cheryl instinctively moved away from where they saw the
Kardish, which meant moving forward on the vessel. She led them past towering
structures of alien equipment and machinery. She didn’t understand what any of
it was for, but sensed it reflected the existence of an advanced and perhaps
ancient culture. As they walked, she tried to organize the different pieces into
a familiar construct in her head.

“I have two demolition squares left,” Jack offered. “Can you
see any place to put them where we’ll get our Kardish-ending big bang?”

“It’s not going to be explosives that get us there,” she
said. “The bridge is the place to make that happen.” She kept walking while
continuing to search, then picked up her pace and pointed. “Or maybe there.”

He followed as she hurried over to what looked to be an
operations panel. Her eyes danced across it as she studied her find.

“What are we looking at?”

“I’m not sure. But the operations crew…” she paused to give
him a quick sideways glance, “if there were any, would need a way to interface
with all this equipment.” She walked slowly around the unit, studying it from
different angles. “I’m hoping this is that.” She touched the front panel and it
came alive. “With luck, we may not need to get to the bridge. We might be able
to get everything we need right here.”

“Do you know how to use it?”

“No. Not yet.” She moved her hand over the panel and the
display kept changing. “I’ll need some time, probably a few hours, before I’ll
know if I can make sense of it.”