Psion Gamma (45 page)

“What is that?” Wrobel asked again. Finally he spotted what Sammy was about to do. “Stop! Don’t do that!”

Frigid white fog filled the cabin. Wrobel cursed in frustration, and Sammy rolled toward the door. Wrobel must have thrown his body at him, because a tremendous thump shook the floor. His large hands scrambled to pull at Sammy, who was only just able to get on his knees and reach the releasing mechanism of the cruiser door. He gripped the handle tenderly with his burned thumb. The door beeped red in warning.

“Don’t open—!” Wrobel shouted as he clawed and grabbed at Sammy’s bound feet.

Sammy threw himself into the door again. This time it opened. The fog spilled out, clearing the air in the cabin. The ground was far enough away that Sammy wasn’t sure if he’d survive jumping. Wrobel got a firm grasp on his ankle, but Sammy made the choice. He leaned forward, tipping his weight over the edge of the door, and fell, ripping himself from Wrobel’s clutch.

He knew there was no time to mess with his ankle restraints. Instead, he focused on projecting as much energy as he could into a landing blast. His ankles stretched against the restraints as he bent his mind on safely reaching the earth. Blast after blast fired from his palms and feet in rapid succession.

Fear gripped him as he imagined an ignominious death meters from the landing strip at Baikonur. Finally, he felt himself slow. He fired again and again, each time feeling the concentrated cushions of energy as they bounced off the ground and decelerated his fall.

The landing was still awkward, but not even painful. He immediately began fumbling with the metal cuffs on his feet, trying to find some way to get them off. Above him, the cruiser prepared to land less than a hundred meters away.

Placing his other thumb over the keyhole of the ankle cuffs, he fired another intensely concentrated blast, channeling every bit of energy he could into the tiny hole. He screamed in pain as he felt his flesh burn again. He looked at his thumbs, both now severely red with spots where the top layer of flesh had been charred. But it did the job, enabling him to run.

So he ran.

May 5, 2086

S
MALL CLUSTERS OF BUILDINGS
stood along both sides of the landing strip that ran through Baikonur. Sammy had no idea what purpose they filled, but he knew he needed to find shelter and, if possible, come up with some way to get the attention of the Alphas in the area. The only idea that came to his mind was to set buildings on fire. Surely that would do the trick.

He jogged down the strip, staying close to the buildings on the right side. After passing the first bunch, he came to a stretch of land with no cover for about a kilometer. He stopped, afraid of making himself an easy target for Wrobel. The nearest structure was about the size of a modest house, flanked by two satellite dishes and a radio tower. He checked the double doors at the main entrance, but they were locked. Around the corner he found a smaller window partially covered by a tree. Blasts from his palms shattered the glass. Pain shot through his burned thumbs again when he blasted, bringing tears to his eyes.

The building was thoroughly modern and professionally decorated. Four rooms lined the main hall, each with large glass windows and doors and labeled with metallic plaques with the official NWG Space logo of the earth surrounded by a fiery ring. Quick glances through each glass door showed empty cubicles. Finally he came to an empty conference room.

Inside the room was a holo-screen. His curiosity got the better of him, and he turned it on. The channel was broadcasting live news coverage from the launch site. A crowd of thousands had gathered to watch the takeoff. Sammy saw no panicking, no fighting, only excited people anticipating the launch. A small countdown in the corner of the screen showed how much time remained: four and a half minutes.

As Sammy watched, his heart thumped madly. Any moment the CAG would attack all those people. He muted the sound and cranked the window open slightly so he could listen for sounds. Everything was quiet.

The excitement of the small crowd built into a fevered pitch as the few remaining minutes ticked away. Sammy, on the other hand, became more and more anxious. Would the CAG wait until the shuttle launched and shoot it down? Would they attack at the last possible second so it could not be aborted? Where was Byron and what was he doing now?

Only thirty seconds remained.

The reporters’ enthusiasm visibly grew as the last seconds ticked. Sammy could read the lips of the audience members as they counted down in unison. Every few seconds the camera cut to shots of the technicians seated at their desks. Would all those people die?

His eyes hardly blinked as he stared, forgetting to breathe in the final moments. He was about to witness catastrophic destruction.

Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . .

Through the open window, Sammy heard the rumbling of the space shuttle’s gigantic engines and on the screen he saw the lift off. The shuttle launched into the sky, ascending on a perfect line. Billows of smoke and fire curled and blossomed around its base, following it past the clouds. He observed with fascination.

The attack didn’t come. Why? What’s going on?

CRASH!

Sammy jumped in his seat. An orange and red light streaked down the hall. Footsteps approached the conference room at a run. He snapped his body around, positioning himself with trained precision into a solid defensive stance. He hoped to see Byron, but he expected to see Wrobel. It was neither.

Katie Carpenter had arrived. And she toted the biggest gun Sammy had ever seen.

She wore the traditional uniform of a Thirteen, and its shiny metallic surface told Sammy she was more prepared than their last meeting.
A blast suit.
Her nose was slightly larger, still swollen. The thought of her broken nose put a sadistic smirk on his face, but he wanted to do more than that to her. Hatred boiled inside him as fresh memories of their last encounter flashed in his mind. Toad’s raw meat-like body being carried away by medics, blood trailing from the cruiser in the hangar to the cruiser on the runway, his glazed eyes and his face as pale as the sheet that covered him.

Katie pulled the trigger and he heard a loud
FFSSS!
like the sound of dumping cold water on a hot pan. In all the training Byron had put him through at headquarters, Sammy had never heard a weapon that made such a sound. He crouched low, and used a broad shield to deflect whatever projectiles this machine could throw at him.

The next thing he knew, there was a blistering hot pain in his left leg—much worse than what he felt in his thumbs. A shrill scream exploded from his mouth. He wanted to glance down to see what happened, but Katie rushed him, using the weapon as a club. He tried to stand, but the pain in his leg was too intense. Instead, he did a half somersault and used his hands to blast himself to the ceiling. Katie swung at empty air, and Sammy kicked at her face with his good leg on the back end of his flip. He had to use his hand blasts to soften the landing, but with them he rolled to the back of the room, away from Katie. An office chair provided him some cover. The pain in his leg throbbed mercilessly, fetid smoke curled off his skin, but he saw no blood. Whatever it was, it had instantly cauterized the wound.

Why didn’t my blasts work?

Katie whirled to face him and fired through the conference room’s glass wall, this time using a handgun. The glass exploded, but Sammy threw himself to the side. Pain shot up the entire left side of his body starting at his injured thigh. He yelled out in agony, almost falling backward.

She’s aiming low
, he noted.
Why is she doing that?

Katie stepped through the remains of the wall, crunching on the broken glass with her military boots. The angle gave Sammy a better chance to observe her weapon: an enormous black firearm with a dull red light on the top. Katie swung again, this time at his head, but he held the weapon at bay with a blast. The Thirteen almost lost her balance from the momentum shift, and the larger weapon knocked the smaller one out of her hand. He used that opportunity to straighten his legs, but found it nearly impossible to move his left leg laterally, even trying to do so made him want to scream again.

The red light on her gun turned green, and she took aim again.

FFSSS!

Sammy blast-jumped into the room across the hall and hit the floor next to her handgun. He jerked it around, flicking back the hammer, but Katie was not in his line of sight.

He remembered the red light turning green.
She’s waiting for her next shot
.

The smell of burned plastic reached his nose. He looked around and saw that part of the chair had been melted away from her last shot.

Sammy cursed softly. He dared not move first . . . not without some clue as to where she lurked. That gave him an idea.

“Not trying to kill me, Katie?” he asked in his most juvenile voice. “Above such things now?”

She gave no reply.

“Who’s calling the shots now, Katie? You answer to Commander Wrobel? Old Vicky? Is he your new girlfriend?”

The words came out easily enough but they did not take away the horrible ache in his leg, the burning in his thumbs (compounded by gripping Katie’s fallen gun), or the piercing fear in his mind. Katie was the one Thirteen that Sammy wasn’t sure he could defeat.

He heard a tiny sound like weight shifting on a few slivers of glass. He was pretty sure it came from the other side of the wall to his left. Was she in the room adjacent to him?

Using his hands as support, he scooted his body to his right to give himself a better angle. Katie must have heard the changes in his breathing, because at that moment she attacked. Again, Sammy noticed, she aimed away from any vital organs. His arm moved out of the way just in time, leaving him no chance to return fire. He felt the heat of the projectile graze his arm hair, and the next moment half of a palm-sized disk protruded from the carpet, smoking and singeing the fibers. From the combined effects of the pain and the overpowering scents of burning skin, hair, rubber, and carpet, Sammy felt nauseous and hazed.

It’s a blitzer
, he realized. Al had told him about it during their Rio mission briefing.
Super-heated discs that can cut through a blast shield
. If he wanted to block one of these, he’d have to use a strong, concentrated blast. The thought of doing so made his thumbs sting.

Katie hid behind the wall again. Sammy decided not to go on the offensive with so little distance between them. Instead he got his good leg underneath him, and maneuvered the bad one as best he could. If he needed to move quickly, he could use feet blasts. He held the gun in his hands with a steadiness that surprised him.

Katie whipped around for her next shot with breathtaking speed. Sammy fired three rounds right as she emerged. Reacting with perfect timing, Katie used the massive blitzer as a shield. Something inside the weapon ruptured and a billowing plume of steam erupted from the punctures. Katie aimed the jet of hot air at Sammy trying to cloud his vision. He used feet blasts to shoot over the growing fog, but Katie anticipated this and swung the blitzer hard.

Sammy realized his mistake, but could not change his course fast enough. He brought his hands up to block the blitzer, but felt a smacking thud against the side of his head.

“Ugh,” was all he could say as he fell to the ground unconscious.

* * * * * * *

The blitzer was beyond repair. Not that the Queen was a weapons expert, but she knew enough. After all, the weapon was her own concept. The problem with prototypes like this was they were slow, fragile, and bulky.

Give it five years. The Fourteens won’t know what hit them.

She looked down at the boy’s unconscious form and moaned with desire to kill him.

He broke my nose!

The thought sent waves of rage rippling across her skin. She had already scheduled an appointment with the best plastic surgeons, but not until after this mission. She brought her foot down hard on Sammy’s nose and heard a satisfying crunch.

“Now we’re even.” Then, over her com, she said, “I’ve got Sammy.”

“What’s his status?” came Wrobel’s reply.

“Out cold.”

“I’ve got your signal. There’s a maintenance room in the back of your building. Take him there—it should do the job. On my way with the Alpha right now.”

The Queen hauled Sammy by his hair to the back of the building, taking care to pull his body over as much glass as possible. Small lines of his blood trailed behind them.

At the end of the building’s main hall and to the left was a steel door marked with electrical symbols that only an engineer would understand. Three savage kicks later, the door swung open, and the Queen pulled Sammy into the room over the cold bare floor.

The room was bigger than she’d expected. It probably serviced connections to the satellites and radio towers nearby.

She threw Sammy into a corner and sat cross-legged facing him, her third and last gun (a jigger, her favorite) was aimed at his chest. She could have picked up the pistol, but the filthy kid had touched it, even fired it.
No thanks.
All she needed now was an excuse—half an excuse—because she had very large doubts about the Fourteen’s grand scheme to kill two birds with one stone.

The back door’s handle emitted a hiss and small wisps of blue smoke drifted up from the keyhole. The Queen pulled a strand of hair out of her face and put it back behind her ear. The door opened and Wrobel came in. His right arm was wrapped around his own subdued hostage, his left carried several pieces of equipment.

“Take him,” he told her. “Watch them both while I set up.”

“Let’s kill this one now,” she said, pointing at Sammy, as she relieved Wrobel of a young Fourteen with brown hair.