Renegade (10 page)

The cruiser landed by a main tower and rolled through checkpoints into a separate carpark. Trace ignored it all, and watched the newsnets chasing various Debogandes at work and home, reporters shouting questions, then shut down by security guards. Apparently journalists were allowed to ask all the confronting and nasty questions they liked so long as they didn’t ask them of Fleet. A lawyer read a statement from Alice Debogande. ‘Innocent of all charges’, was the gist of it. The implication was not spelled out — that the whole thing was fixed. No doubt the lawyers would tell Madam Debogande that such statements were not wise at this time.

The cruiser rolled to a halt, and Trace got out with her escort. They passed security getting into the carpark elevator, then more security when they got out at the detention level. Big double doors and body screens got them into the shiny bland corridors beyond. They’d be keeping Erik down here somewhere. As they’d been keeping the Captain before him. If HQ wished it, Erik could easily meet a similar fate.

They took her to an interrogation room, bland and featureless, save the big one-way mirror and cameras at the ceiling. There she sat for half an hour, unmoving with her eyes closed, until an interrogator entered. He was an army Colonel, Trace saw as she opened her eyes. She didn’t recognise the name, nor cared to recall it.

“Major,” he said, taking a seat opposite, a slate screen on the table between them. “Do you know why you’re here?”

“Yes,” said Trace. Perhaps he was uncertain, given that she was meditating, and neither particularly cooperative, nor particularly involved. Some might view that as guilt. Possibly quite a few of these people did not know that it was all a stitchup. They believed the LC was guilty because HQ had set it up that way. But she doubted the Colonel would be so naive. HQ would make certain one of their own was sent to interrogate her, to find out the score, and how much trouble she was likely to make. If he deemed ‘a lot’, then they’d have to find a way to deal with her too. Only how did you blackmail a Kulina, who desired for herself not even safety?

“And why
are
you here, Major?” pressed the Colonel. He was a big man with a big neck that swallowed his chin. Trace wondered what compromises such men made with their lives, to wear that uniform, yet to participate in
this.
And once begun, where those compromises would stop, if anywhere.

“To find the answers to questions,” Trace answered honestly.

“Which questions?”

“My own questions.”

The Colonel considered her for a moment. Trace wondered if he were uplinked, being fed questions from outside. Perhaps from behind the one way glass. “Look, Major,” he said, with a kinder, more conversational tone. “This is an unfortunate situation.” His pause invited her to agree. Trace just looked at him. “We all know the loyalty of Kulina officers to Fleet. But we also know the loyalties that develop between officers on the same vessel in wartime. What I’d like to do in this briefing today is establish some facts about Lieutenant Commander Debogande, and then see where you stand after that.”

“My loyalties are absolutely clear,” said Trace.

“Really?” said the Colonel. “Please continue.”

“And my goals are also absolutely clear,” she added. “To me at least.”

“And?” With the faintest trace of impatience.

“To get here,” Trace explained. “In this room.”

The Colonel frowned. “To what purpose?”

“To do this.” She grabbed him across the table, yanked him over it, and broke his neck with a twist. Then she hurdled the table, smashed one guard to the midriff, then judo-threw the other over her shoulder as he grabbed her, depriving him of a weapon in the process. The first guard went for his own, so she shot him, then put a spread of five shots through the glass. The window was tough, but the bullets made holes big enough for a uniformed arm to smash the rest without injury, revealing several officers sprawled and scrambling on the floor.

One had her pistol out so Trace shot her, side-kicked a spacer captain into a wall, then grabbed the Admiral off the floor and shoved the gun up under his chin. “Where’s LC Debogande?” she asked him.

“You fool!” he hissed, eyes wild with terror and disbelief. “Don’t you know who I am?”

“I know exactly who you are, Admiral Keith,” said Trace. “But karma rules us both at this moment, and one more dead officer hardly weighs the scales. LC Debogande, where is he?” No reply. Trace shot him in the foot, then put the hot muzzle back under his jaw as he screamed. “Where?”

“Level two, C-21!” he hissed between sobs. Trace smacked his head against the wall and dropped him. Then she opened the door to the observation room, and ran out. Alarm klaxons were howling, and lights flashed red. Immediately there were two armed guards up the corridor coming to a halt and raising pistols at her. Trace opened fire, fading her stance from high right to low left and a shoulder crouch against the wall. She’d been good at that since age nine, and with both her targets down, she took off running once more.

Across the next corridor too fast for anyone to shoot at her, then left down stairs and hurdling the flight across to the lower level. She landed two steps up and rolled to avoid snapping her ankle. Broke her fall with a free arm and looked right then fast left from the floor. Another couple of guards tried to aim at her and she shot one, backrolled to her feet and pressed against the corridor wall, moving one way while aiming back the other. The other guard wasn’t reappearing, so she ran ten yards then pressed to the wall again… sure enough the sound of running footsteps brought him out for a clear shot at her back, only to find her braced against a wall and putting two through his chest.

The speaker system was now announcing something, calling her name, telling her to stop in the vain hope she was stupid enough to listen. As though stopping now could possibly stop them from executing her if they caught her. And probably the LC too, now that she’d started shooting they had a perfect excuse to get him caught in the crossfire. But using the speakers was stupid of them, because now every guard in the complex knew exactly who they were chasing. Many would probably stop trying very hard to find her.

Another guard she predictably found sheltering at a corner ahead… but too close, shooting at point blank against an expert was even harder than shooting at extreme range. She went around him, took his leg with an arm to his chest and crashed him to the ground hard enough to stun. She grabbed his collar, dragged for several doors, then propped him upright with an armlock before room C-21.

“Key the door,” she told him, and he did that.

“Please don’t kill me!” he gasped.

“That’s out of my hands,” Trace told him. She pushed him first into the doorway, and was now in the plastic-partitioned half of a detention cell. There were two guards on the far side, pistols out and yelling at her to stop. And LC Debogande, in wrist and ankle restraints on the bed, looking otherwise unhurt. Trace kicked the chair into the doorway, to block the door in case someone closed it by remote. The doors weren’t heavy enough to break a chair, this was light detention, not maximum security. “Key the door,” she told her prisoner.

“Don’t do it!” yelled a guard on the far side, pistol trembling. “Don’t you do it!”

“Key the door or I’ll start blowing holes in you,” Trace told him. He reached his trembling palm to the reader, ID card in hand. “You two, shut your mouths and put your guns down or I’ll kill you.”

Fear on both faces, battling with duty. And possibly pride, given there were three of them, all told. “Okay!” said one, raising his hands. “Okay, we’re putting our guns down!” They did it very slowly.

Trace didn’t have time to wait, every second in this room was getting her trapped, if someone worked up the nerve to come up the corridor behind. Unlikely for a few moments at least, lesser soldiers always froze when people started dying. The plastic door opened, and Trace pushed the guard ahead of her as a shield.

One of the two inside abruptly changed his mind and dove sideways, angling for a shot. It surprised Trace not at all, and she shot him halfway through the move. But her response exposed her to the second man, who also aimed. Trace threw her shield at him as the gun went off. The shield-man fell, exposing the remaining guard for a desperate second at Debogande’s bedside. Trace blew his head all over the wall, then knelt in the mess to retrieve keys and unlock the LC on the bed.

Debogande was swearing and shaking, badly shocked and spattered with gore. “Oh good god,” he muttered as Trace removed the restraints and gave him a gun and ammo from a dead guard. “Major what have you done?”

“Do you want to live?” Trace asked him, pausing for a hard look in his eyes. “Then do exactly what I say, when I say it, and kill anyone who tries to stop us. Let’s go.”

There wasn’t time for anything more. All spacer crew knew basic close quarters combat, but few had actually done it, and none of those by choice. Worse, they didn’t have a marine’s combat augments or gene-mods — a pilot like the LC would have reflexes every bit her equal, but total physical coordination was a different thing again. He was definitely going to get in her way, and she’d have been much better off alone, but Trace didn’t make a habit of worrying about things she couldn’t help.

She cleared the corridor first, then set off running with the LC behind, keeping 45-degrees ahead so he wouldn’t block her view back. A fist up at the next cross-corridor, and he stopped, but on the wrong side of the corridor instead of behind her. She cleared the corner with a fast look, then ran on and angled left for the next stairs… someone dropped a stun grenade from above, and the LC might have panicked but she grabbed him and spun him neatly about the next corner, and had time to clear both ways before it exploded.

She put her gun around the corner to fire blind up the stairs at whoever might be thinking of following that grenade, loaded a new clip and ran up the next corridor to the security entrance, gesturing the LC to keep low as they approached. Sure enough the guards on the far side saw movement and opened fire with assault rifles, big rounds exploding windows and kicking open doors. Trace scrambled on all fours where the thick wall gave better cover than the windows, and put her back to a security scanner.

“We have to go around!” the LC insisted, wide-eyed and terrified as she’d expect from someone unaccustomed to firefights, but holding his nerve despite it. Trace ignored him… there were only two well armed troopers, they just made a lot of noise with those rifles, and the one on the left was exposed in the wrong spot by the outside wall. Trace rolled through the open first security door, crawled to the second, waited for a pause in fire, then pushed the first door open enough to show the left-side trooper, but not his friend.

One shot put him down, his buddy fired on panicked full auto until his gun clicked empty, whereupon Trace swung fully around the doorway and shot him too. Then she ran quickly, got a better weapon and more ammo, handed the other to the ashen-faced LC as he followed, then hit the elevator call button.

“We’re taking the elevator?” Debogande asked in disbelief.

“Yes.”

“Could use a fucking grenade.” He checked his rifle with shaking hands.

“Do you see any grenades?”

“No.”

“Then be quiet.”

The elevator arrived — empty, and Trace got in and hit the parking level. Debogande leaned against a car wall, breathing fast and hard as the doors closed. “You don’t think they’ll slaughter us at the parking level when we get out?” he asked.

“We’re not getting out at parking level.” She hit emergency stop and shouldered her rifle. “Boost please.” The LC got the idea and she stood on his hands to open the emergency access hatch above, then wriggled out. Helped the LC up after her, then grabbed the shaft cable and climbed fast. If someone overrode the emergency stop beneath them, they’d be in trouble, but she didn’t think they were working that fast, or that the elevator would work with the top hatch open. The higher she climbed, the better her uplink signal became.

“
I’m here,
” she said as the connection came clear. “
Let’s go.
” And she waited, hanging on the cable opposite the doors two levels above the main parking level. The LC hung on grimly beneath her, thankfully breathing too hard to make more useless suggestions.

A massive crash from outside the elevator doors, and yells. Trace leaped to the doorway and pulled the doors open — with augmented strength it wasn’t hard. On the far side was the main lobby to one of the big HQ towers… only the glass wall was in shattered ruin all over the polished marble floor, and people were running everywhere for cover. The cause of it, a civvie cruiser, sat waiting for them on the marble, doors open and two armed marines covering with pistols. Trace and Erik ran, threw themselves in as the marines bundled after, and the driver powered them up and out the shattered glass wall.

The driver was Lieutenant Dale, and he kept them low, howling across the memorial yard toward the distant Shiwon towers at head-height in case the defensive emplacements were active yet. It was early evening, the grounds still full of uniforms despite the fading light, and Trace didn’t think they’d shoot so low over everyone’s heads.

“LC, you okay?” asked Private Tong in the rear seat. Because the LC was still covered in blood and bits of brain. He hadn’t fired a shot, Trace noted, and that was just as well, given he could have hit anything, her included.

“I’m okay,” said Debogande. “Holy fuck. You’re all in on this?” As the cruiser rocked a turn, accelerating and now climbing for some altitude as they howled over suburbs.

“Major set it up,” Tong confirmed. “Put us on standby when you got arrested.”

“You saw this
coming?
” Debogande asked incredulously.

“They’re called emergency precautions,” said Trace. “Something’s always coming.”