The added shock of the rear hatch opening, exposing an
empty
craft, cost her precious minutes. A digital image of the cargo box phasing in and out, died away as the lights from the hover gave out.
A decoy? She’d followed the decoy.
Darkness didn’t kick-in in time to cover her exit. She managed to regain her footing, intending to head for the caged maintenance handholds, when a heat-guided retrieval harpoon sliced through her abdomen.
With a guttural cry and a swipe from her laser, she severed the feed line the sentry had intended to use to haul her back. The narrow harpoon rod still in place, she jumped down the hole, her legs splayed to ride the edge of the cage. Her one good arm wrapped tight around the central pole.
Reaching the next level was a bitch.
Gasping with pain, she latched a grommet to the understructure of the grid. Nausea and lightheadedness clashed as she struggled to maintain her gloved grip on the repelling line. A laser shot punched by her hand, just missing her. Twelve feet from the bottom, she released her hold. The crash of rocks against her feet jarred her entire body. The collapse of her legs launched her backward to land on her hip. She wanted to pass out from the pain.
Lights flickered above her on the support column from the sentries making their way down. Shouts echoed from her right. The squads were closing in on her from Down Below. No time for rest.
With a curse, she rolled to her useful arm and gasped at the burning pain in her abdomen. Tapping a button on her belt, she jerked as a hypo-spray of adrenaline injected through her navel. She’d never had to use one on herself before.
With a quick activation of an ion spray and a fresh dampening field, she forced her legs to move. The spray would cover her scent. If she reached one of her safe holes soon enough, she could burrow down and wait. Contacting Aaron now, bringing him into the search area, would put him in too much danger.
Too late, she regretted not relying on the team she’d come to trust and negating her usual security protocols. Instead, she had exposed herself for nothing and allowed insecurity to lead her. All for nothing.
No, the young girl in the Med Lab warranted the effort and she was real. The crystal had confirmed as much, though it had sent no vision to Analena on this extraction. She forced back the hindsight and guilt to focus on moving.
Sweat dripped into her eyes as raw, red pain engulfed her lower body from the harpoon and another wound along the inside of her thigh. A hit from the last laser shot. She dusted back the grit covering the doorway to her hole, one of several she’d provisioned for this purpose.
Thank heavens the access didn’t require her arm’s interface, or she might as well lay down and wait for them to kill her. The punch code took three tries. She blinked to focus, the stinging sweat a nice change to the agony in the rest of her body. Rolling inside, she pulled the door behind her, engaged the lock, and sank to the floor with a sob.
Her belt held one shot of coagulant. It might keep her from bleeding to death—maybe. She aimed the small hypo dot above the wound in her abdomen and let loose a scream as she activated the injection.
The crawl was excruciating, though there wasn’t a choice. She needed to get away from the safe-hole entrance and travel the quarter mile to the other end of the passage, a safe enough distance to call Aaron. She swallowed back a laugh. He’d probably turn around and call Trace. Smart boy.
Finally at her destination, she leaned against the metal door, solid beneath her cheek, and forced herself to stay conscious for the thirty minutes she deemed safe for transmission. Then she raised her hand, grabbed the comm link with her teeth, and ripped.
Having only one hand was a bitch.
Wolf ?
Wolf: Confirm
Down @ #4 location
Chapter 7
Trace crouched and punched a series of numbers into an ankle-high security pad outside his entry. Five minutes without the appropriate acknowledgement sequence, and the self-detonation program would launch. Ten minutes, and the four-story ruin would erupt in a ball of flames fed from a pocket of gas beneath the basement floor. Over the last eight hours, he’d cleared out his other two safe stashes with only this final one to go.
His duffel hit the floor as he hurried to his lab. Reducing large screens of data to pebble size, grabbing tools and drugs, and activating their safeguards, he stacked a pile to pack. Paranoid maybe, but Rasmond’s warning wasn’t something his gut could discount. That she knew his identity wasn’t important. That she’d let him know after her warning meant she knew more than was safe to relay in the open and the trouble was serious.
He ran his fingers through his hair and pulled, trying to recall his path over the last two days before he’d gone to Analena’s. He searched his memory for any mistake he might have made, which would link her to him. Nothing obvious stood out. It didn’t rule out others being aware of who she was or what she did.
Hell, he hoped not.
He turned for a visual sweep of his lab as a message flashed on his wall. He had left the message cubes for last to pack.
Onyx?
Need priority help
.
Thinking the call a standard reach-out for his services and not seeing Piper’s moniker, or any moniker, he almost ignored the message.
Shepherd:
Wolf status?
Damn. Aaron. Why had the kid not followed protocol?
Wolf: Need Onyx
Trace clipped in his acknowledgement before Shepherd could circumvent the distress call.
Confirm—status?
Wolf: Piper hit—critical— Pickup
Stunned, Trace hesitated. It wasn’t possible. She’d been safe for years, before he’d ever set eyes on her. Now that he knew she was flesh and blood, she’d been taken down?
Wolf: please
Confirm Pickup —medical status?
Wolf: Priority 10—
unconscious
—abdominal bleeding—BP >60/40.”
Highest priority, bleeding and dropping blood pressure. She’d performed an extraction in broad daylight. What had she been thinking?
He shook his head. She hadn’t been thinking. She’d assessed a risk and couldn’t let the kid hang out until nightfall. As always, she worried about the kids before considering her own danger.
Pickup location?
Wolf: SOP—tomorrow PM 11—Cassiopeia.
Tomorrow PM, translation: today, eleven AM. He had ten minutes. With a quick glance around his lab, he cataloged what he still needed to do.
Confirm
Time enough to pack up, bug out, and blow up.
***
Trace pitched his bags to the ground and dropped to his knees by Analena’s side. Her head twisted toward him, her eyes clouded with pain in the small beam of the light crystal beside her.
“Hold on, Angel.” Trace pulled back her shirt and flinched at the rod of metal penetrating her flesh. No time to pull it out now, she’d bleed to death. He swept the med scan over her body, locating another dark patch of blood on her inner thigh without technological help. The scanner at least confirmed the femoral artery hadn’t been hit. Still, she’d lost too much blood.
“How long ago?” Trace asked. When Analena didn’t respond, he glanced at Aaron.
The young man’s mouth pursed. “An hour since she messaged me, probably another before she risked contact.”
He nodded, not happy. “She’d been compromised.”
Aaron didn’t respond. Trace turned back to Analena’s right arm, or where it should have been. What remained lay flat and broken. Only bits of flesh, pieces of wires, several cables, and sinew held the bones of her fingers in a thin string to her shoulder. Quick ripples of activity over her fingers signaled alternate technology at work. The sight shocked him, but this wasn’t his first exposure to cyber—or perhaps other technology. Unfortunately, if the rejuvenation kept up this slow pace, she wouldn’t recover use of the arm for several days. At which point, he had no idea if she’d regain the original function, much less die from loss of blood.
Extracting a plastic sheeting packet from his duffel, he carefully positioned it over her arm, and then initiated a command on his scanner. The intelligent plastic elongated and spread. Floating like seaweed, it circled the delicate bits of her arm, sealing at the end of her fingers and above her shoulder.
With another code, the bag-like structure puffed with air and dispersed an ion disinfectant.
“We need to get her back so I can operate on her stomach.”
“It’ll take us an hour to get to the entrance.”
“Fuck.” Trace blew out a breath and palmed a large, thick device. Analena grabbed his wrist until he met her gaze.
“Promise me…you’ll stay and help the kids. Please.”
What he wouldn’t give to give to make her happy. He looked into her eyes, palmed her cheek, and said the only thing he could. “No. I’m not promising you a damn thing. You live, Analena. That’s it. You fight, and I’ll make sure you survive to take care of those kids.”
She started to argue, but he gave her head a shake. “Don’t think I’m kidding. You give up and die, and I’m leaving your body on the nearest pile and heading out of town.”
He heard Aaron’s annoyed grumble behind him, but the angered gleam in Analena’s eye was what he needed. “Now hang on to me, Angel, ’cause this is going to hurt like a son of a bitch.”
He didn’t give her time to prepare before he injected the flash-freeze nozzle into her abdomen. Her body arched in his arms, her fingers clenched in his jacket. Before she had time to breathe, he moved the nozzle to her leg and injected a second round.
“Did you really—”
Trace tossed the unit to the side and cradled an unconscious Analena to his chest. Ignoring the soft shuffling behind him, he buried his face in her hair.
Aaron stuffed the discarded freeze unit into the duffle. “I’ll bring the bags.”
Trace hoisted Analena in his arms and stood.
“We’re taking a different route into the caves to cover our tracks.” His back to Trace, Aaron paused at the door. The duffle hung over his shoulder with the two remaining bags in his hands. “You didn’t have to be so brutal.”
“I needed her to believe me. I can’t risk her letting go.” The words sounded pathetic, but he’d never meant anything more.
With a shake of his head, Aaron unlatched the door and they headed into the falling dusk.
Trace gauged the sun’s position from the shadows of the grid above. The good news, they were almost as far as they could get from the entrances to the caves. The kids’ location wouldn’t be compromised. The bad news, the freeze solution to contain Analena’s wounds might only last long enough to get to the entrance. They’d have to hurry to make sure she didn’t bleed out.
The longest minutes of his life were spent zeroed-in on Aaron’s back, watching for signals of caution, halts, and ever-diligent searches for detection.
Finally, Aaron crouched and pointed toward an entrance beyond the satellites. Two of his fingers swept in an arc, indicating the open grasses they would need to cover.
He’d go first. Trace would follow.
The young man maneuvered from bush, to tree, to tall weeds and then disappeared around the corner of the satellite’s foundation. Ready to follow, Trace hesitated.
An older man meandered, poking in the grasses at the edge of the rim with a stick. The process looked harmless, as if he was searching for lost remnants or salvageable parts. Trace held back. His instincts screamed. He wasn’t going to risk Analena. He pressed his lips against her forehead and shrank into the shadows.
The man finally gone, Trace quickly followed Aaron’s route. With one last check over his shoulder, he slipped into the crevice.
Chapter 8
Aaron had been pacing beyond the first dark bend. Finally clear of the threat outside, he increased his speed, leaving Trace to find his own way.
Trace gripped Analena tighter and broke into a run, the minutes eaten up by the pounding of his feet. Fifteen minutes later, Aaron returned to guide him through the final snake of tunnels. They exited into the light, and Trace released his breath in relief.
Evidently, Aaron had delivered his tools and supplies to the cave, taking time to sort the instruments and packages neatly on a smaller table before returning for him.
“Clean water. And the small blue pouch,” Trace shouted. Aaron and Hena jumped in compliance. Laying Analena on her side on the larger table, he extracted a disc from his pouch and placed it beside her.
“Patient platform.” One hard smack with his palm to the surgi-disc, and it elongated, six feet by two. He made quick work of sliding her onto the platform before cutting back her shirt and pants leg.
At a collective gasp, he glanced up and frowned at the group of children gathered around the table. “Is there a screen or something we can put up?”
At the suspicious looks from the older ones, he motioned to the stomach wound. “I don’t think she’d want to have you see her undressed or in pain. I promise, as soon as she’s stable, you guys can sit with her.”
Hena ushered the children back, then rolled several balls across the floor and tapped them with her foot. Opaque walls shot from the centers and stretched like old-fashioned fans, each overlapping and creating a barrier of sight, though not sound.
Perhaps that was just as well. As much as he hated the kids to hear Analena’s pain, they’d be more suspicious of silence.
Holding the edges of the patient platform, Trace raised the whole unit. The plasma disc floated above the stone table remaining where he’d positioned it and holding Analena securely. He pressed his hands together to curve the borders and encapsulate her. “Ninety-degree forward tilt.”
The platform rotated with Analena’s body secure yet suspended within its confines. Her injured arm remained beneath her, protected in the air-bubble sack. With his fingers, he widened the platform’s opening around the harpoon projecting from her body until he had full access and visibility to her wound.