Crystal Conquest (28 page)

Dashing through the bedroom, he entered the bathroom and shut
the door behind him. Opening the bathroom window, he climbed out and dropped two
floors to the ground. He rolled as he hit, rose to his feet, and in a few
powerful leaps, reached the relative safety of the woods.

Racing through the forest in giant strides, and once
swinging from a branch mid-jump to complete a hurdle over a broad plot of thick
underbrush, he made for the scout. On his way down the slope to Heather Glen,
he angled toward the twin birches. Breaking from the cover of the trees, he exposed
himself to open sky for a brief instant, and then he was under the shuttle.

The hatch opened as he approached, and he jumped inside,
triggering it to close before the stepladder started to deploy.
Swipe. Tap.
Swipe
. He slid behind the ops bench as the engines fired.

His hands moved faster than the scout’s subsystems could
respond, and he forced himself to temper his speed as the scout lifted into the
air. Activating the external image display in front of the ops bench, he saw a half-dozen
drones flying down the south face of the mountain from the farm, moving into
formation as they closed on the lodge.

Criss lifted the scout over the rise between Heather Glen
and the lodge just as three Kardish troop transports stationed up behind the
farmhouse took to the air.

Juice, crouching on the roof of the west
wing, leaned back against the outer wall of the lodge’s taller central
structure. The slope of the roof caused her shoulder to press against the
chimney—the modest barrier hiding her from the window she’d crawled through
with Criss’s help.

I can’t go with them.
She knew Criss and Cheryl were bound
for the Kardish vessel and they’d expect her to follow.
I don’t have it in
me.
She started to whimper.

Near the peak of the roof, Cheryl looked up the mountain face.
Juice shuffled up close to her and rested a hand on her knee. Finding comfort in
the physical contact, she closed her eyes and willed some of Cheryl’s courage to
flow into her body.

Feeling a nudge, Juice opened her eyes to see Cheryl pointing
up the mountain. Drones raced down the slope from the left and right,
converging into a squadron of terrifying machines. They headed straight for the
lodge, leaving no doubt about their target. Her fear swelled and her thoughts moved
in a new direction.
Survival.

Straining to see or hear any indication of the scout’s
arrival, she willed Criss to hurry.
C’mon, young man
. Her heart pounding
in her chest, she took solace in having Cheryl at her side.
She’s been a
Fleet captain, so she’s experienced in this sort of situation.

She heard a muffled, thin whine and first thought it was the
drones. Swiveling her head, she recognized is as the sound of the scout.
Thank
you
. Though clearly nearby, she couldn’t tell where it was and wished the
situation had more clarity. “Should we go?”

“Hold, Jessica,” said Cheryl, using Juice’s given name. Shifting
up into a crouch, Cheryl placed her hands on the roof tiles like a sprinter
setting up in starting blocks. Juice followed Cheryl’s lead in preparing for
the dash of her life.

A faint cloud of dust swirled at the far edge of the roof,
and the whine of the scout’s power plant intensified at the same time the dust
swirl disappeared.

“Now,” said Cheryl. She took off in a sprint. Juice let her
get a few steps ahead, then took off in pursuit.

A Kardish soldier on the lodge grounds below saw them
running, pointed, and began shouting. Juice didn’t look, choosing to keep her
focus on Cheryl’s back. Like an image projection losing power, Cheryl flickered
and disappeared.

Juice’s momentum carried her three more steps, and she caught
up with Cheryl, who was clambering up the stepladder into the scout’s lower
hatch. The scout’s cloak now hid them from view to those outside the zone of
protection.

Stepping onto the ladder, Juice fought panic. This ride
would end at the Kardish ship. The hatch shut as she stepped onto the deck.

“Lie down and hold on,” Criss announced from the bridge.

Cheryl rolled on her back, and Juice dropped next to her.
The scout’s engines strained as they climbed the skies.

Fishing for Cheryl’s hand, Juice laced her fingers with
those of the former Fleet officer as the scout’s acceleration pressed on their
bodies. She snaked the fingers of her free hand into her breast pocket, fished
out a little white anti-stress pill, and slipped it into her mouth.

* * *

Flying into the dreadnaught through
the huge hangar door, Sid entered a cavernous world so large that the far wall
of the alien ship faded in the horizon. He recalled his time on the Kardish
vessel two years earlier and, as before, was captivated by the sheer size and
variety of the landscape below.

He took a moment to confirm that he still followed Lenny’s
drone, and then he looked down at the huge, open field deck unfolding beneath
him. With a handful of Kardish ships scattered across the otherwise empty expanse,
he recalled that this field served as a staging area for cargo, patrol, and
other craft entering and exiting the vessel through the hangar door, now behind
him.

Up ahead across the field deck, taking up more space than
Criss’s huge farm, stood a drone parking garage. Constructed as row upon row of
long, squat buildings, each structure contained a honeycomb of hexagonal cubicles
nestled together in a beautiful pattern of strength and efficiency.

From his current vantage point of height, Sid could see most
of the garage facility, and he tried to estimate the number of cubicles in the
installation. To make it easy, he pretended the honeycomb pattern was a simple checkerboard
arrangement. Scanning the scene, he gathered numbers.
Call it columns of
seven cubicles high, with two hundred columns along the length of each
building, and about two hundred rows of buildings.

That rough assessment yielded a staggering number. More than
a quarter million cubicles.
And each cubicle holds a drone.

Like the other Kardish vessel he’d been on, a box city
consumed the area to his right. The box city was literally that—a massive
labyrinth of roads and alleyways crisscrossing through tens of thousands of plain
off-white box-like structures, some as small as shipping crates, and others filling
an entire city block and rising several stories tall.

Cheryl had speculated that the box city provided the support
system for the Kardish military infrastructure. The fantastic number of drones
and craft on the vessel needed fuel, ammunition, repair, logistical support,
and a myriad of other services to keep them operational.

Sid felt a sharp tug on his straps as his drone veered left.
He shifted his attention ahead and again located Lenny. Both their drones had
diverted from the pack and were headed toward a huge wall sectioning the ship.
Stretching from top to bottom and side to side, Sid recalled that this was one
of many such walls partitioning the vessel into a series of self-contained segments
along its length.

Their drones descended as they drew closer to the wall. Sid
studied Lenny to see if he was responsible for their flight path, but from what
he could tell, Lenny wasn’t manipulating his com or taking any obvious actions.
In fact, he appeared relaxed in his seat, gazing around like a sightseer.
The
meds solved one set of problems. I hope they haven’t created different ones.

Sid looked ahead and guessed their destination. Near the dividing
wall, a queue of drones rested end to end in a neat row on what looked like an assembly-line
conveyor. He couldn’t tell from this distance if the line moved, but the first drone
was poised to feed into a hole at the front. As they drew closer, a drone swooped
in from the side and parked at the tail end of the line. Moments later, Lenny’s
drone flew in behind it, and Sid landed behind Lenny.

Working quickly, Sid lay back and unbuckled his cinch
straps. The reclining position directed his eyes upward, and he saw the hangar
door high above him sliding closed. He knew that after it shut, subsystems
would restore air pressure to this section of the vessel, and Kardish would
return soon after that to continue their work.
We have maybe four minutes to
hide.

He swung a leg over the top of his cubby seat so both hung down
together, and as he pushed forward to dismount, he felt his body jerk sideways.
Sliding off the cubby seat and onto a support beam, he squatted and studied the
mechanism below the row of drones. Every few seconds, the entire line crept forward,
feeding the hole at the front.

Using a conduit as a handhold, Sid shuffled sideways along
the support beam until he stood next to Lenny. He nudged Lenny’s shoulder and
waved his hand in a “hurry up” motion. Lenny turned his face toward Sid and,
sporting a huge grin, said something. With their communicators disabled, Sid
couldn’t hear him speak, but it didn’t take a lip-reader to tell that his last
word was “fun.”

Sid unhooked Lenny’s straps. “Okay, cowboy. Let’s get out of
here.” He helped Lenny sit up, then turned and jumped onto the deck. He scanned
the area for cover, picked out a spot, and pointed. That’s when he realized Lenny
wasn’t next to him. He looked back to see the young man pull the wire filament
from his drone and then hold it over his head like he’d just won a trophy.

Lenny jumped down next to Sid and they scrambled to some broad
pillars. Sid leaned around one, intent on finding a place to hide. As he
searched the area, he felt a tap on his shoulder. Lenny, his pack on the
ground, waved a small canister and nodded. Leaving Sid and his pack behind, he
dashed back to the conveyor.

Climbing up next to his drone, Lenny squatted down and
squirted a puff from the canister in two spots beneath the cubby seat. He leaned
over the top of the drone and sprayed twice more on the far side. Gripping the
seat with both hands, he lifted it up and tossed it onto the deck.

Smart thinking, Len
. Those seats would signal the
certain presence of intruders, and Lenny had the foresight to bring a solvent
for the adhesive holding them to the drone. Sid hustled back to help. He lifted
the seat, tilted it sideways, and slid it into a recess under the conveyor. He
did the same when the second seat plopped onto the deck next to him.

When Sid crawled out from beneath the conveyor, he saw Lenny
trotting along the row of drones, headed toward the front of the line.

“Where are you going?” he shouted in frustration, knowing that
with their communicators off, his voice just bounced around inside his own hood.
He glanced up at the hangar door, estimated they had less than a minute, ran
over and grabbed Lenny’s pack, and took off running.

He caught up with Lenny, who was fumbling to open a door about
a dozen steps past the front of the line of drones. Sid nudged him aside,
lifted the door latch, and led them into a tiny room with another door leading
ahead.
Dammit, Len. This better be a good idea.
The door closed behind
them and the second door opened. A tiny light inside Sid’s hood turned green,
signaling this was a pressurized room with breathable air.

The room had diffuse background lighting, and when Sid stepped
out of what he now recognized as an airlock, he paused for a moment, waiting
for the brightness in the room to increase. When nothing happened, he decided bright
lights would draw unwanted attention to them anyway.
Works for me
, he
thought as his eyes adjusted to the dim setting.

Sid and Lenny walked in opposite directions around the perimeter
of the small room. It was unoccupied and, from the uniform film of dust on
everything, appeared as if no one had been there for some time. The back walls
were lined with taller cabinets and equipment that ran from floor to ceiling. A
table with seating for six occupied the center of the room.

The front walls held a scatter of stations where workers
might sit and do whatever it was they did in this place. Above the workstations
were two narrow observation windows. One window faced down the conveyor with
its line of drones. The other looked out onto the open field deck.

Standing at the front corner, Sid lowered the packs to the
floor and unfastened his hood. Lenny watched him for a moment, perhaps checking
to see if Sid would survive the exposure, and then he also unfastened his hood.

“Nice find,” said Sid, looking through the window down the
row of drones. “How’d you pick this place?” He stepped to the other window and took
in the sights on the field deck.

“Saw it on the way in. My brain pegged it as a good
possibility for surveillance.” He ran a suited finger across the top of a
cabinet and held it up to look at the dust. “The appears-abandoned part was
pure luck.”

Sid glanced over his shoulder, gave the room a quick scan,
and returned his attention to the field deck. “Any guesses what it’s for?”

Lenny pointed out the window facing the row of drones. “My
guess is that this is a salvage or repair line, and workers used to run it from
here. Maybe automation put them out of work when the job got centralized somewhere
else on the ship.” He loosened the top of his coveralls as he studied the
equipment. “Or maybe the workers got replaced by a crystal.”

Sid bent toward the window facing the field deck and craned
his neck upward. “We can see the hangar door from here.” He reached out and,
with his index finger, wrote three symbols, each as tall as his hand, in the
dust at the corner of the window facing the field deck.

Lenny furrowed his brow. “Why 2-0-2?”

Sid answered with a silent expression conveying
disappointment.

Lenny looked back at the symbols, then nodded. “From the
outside, it reads S-O-S.”

“Cheryl knows to look for a signal from us. It’s standard
ops when hunting for one of your own behind enemy lines. My job is to give her
something to find.”

“Did you talk about this in advance?”

“Didn’t have to. I trained with her years ago. She won’t
know exactly what she’s looking for, but she’ll know it when she sees it. In
truth, I could’ve sketched the Union of Nations flag, or even written ‘look in
here,’ and she’d figure it out.”
I hope I made them big enough
, Sid
thought, studying his artwork. “I picked S-O-S because it sort of looks like a plausible
smudge.”

Sid leaned toward the window and, looking up at the overhead
hangar door, noticed movement to his left. “Stay low.”

“What’s going on?” The bravado was fading, and Sid detected
a hint of fear.

“A van carrying Kardish is on the move.” Sid lifted his head
and took a quick peek. The van wasn’t headed toward them. Instead, it drove straight
onto the field deck. As time passed with no additional activity, he sat on top
of a workstation and watched through the window.

Minutes turned into hours, and the Kardish workers that came
and went on the field deck never approached their hideout. While Sid spent his
time spying on the Kardish, Lenny explored the equipment in the room.

“This is the main panel for this operation,” Lenny said. Sid
turned from the window to see him standing in front of a dark display. “Want me
to fire it up and see what I can learn?”