Rising Tide (15 page)

Sarah is already freeing Chase's hands with a long-bladed knife.

“What the fuck is going on?” Chase hisses at me.

“We're getting out of here,” I say.

“What about the pumps?”

“I've handled the pumps,” Sarah says. “In return for you taking me with you.”

Chase opens her mouth, and I can tell she's going to ask more questions, so I cut her off. “No time. We have to get Whistler out and then we have to get back to the
Raven
.”

Chase frowns.

“I'll get you out,” Sarah insists, “but you can't kill anyone. Try it and I'll stop helping you.”

“Got it?” I ask Chase.

“Okay.” She says. Sarah passes her a uniform, too, and she puts it on, tucking her hair underneath the cap.

“Whistler?” I ask Sarah.

She nods and leads us down more corridors. I tell Chase to get behind us. Even with the uniform, her unique haircut is more likely to give us away.

And none of us have any viable weapons.

Sarah slows and turns back to us. “Whistler's being held around the next corner.” She pokes her head around. “There isn't anyone guarding the cell. I'll stand outside with Chase. You go inside and get Whistler.” She hands me the knife.

I nod. I'm still holding the keys from the guard Sarah took down. She and Chase take up position while I open the door.

When it swings open, I have a shock.

Commander Marcus is standing in front of me.

The Commander turns to me in surprise and I slam my fist, still holding the keys, into his face. Then I drop the keys, grab his head, and slam it into the wall. I punch him in the side, then kick his leg. He crumples to the ground.

He's down on the ground, and a hot rage fills me. I start kicking him, delighting in the impact of my boots on his body. “How do you like it?” I ask. “This feel good?”

I stare at his face even as it contorts in pain. It's too groomed. Too perfect. Too clean. I think about him carefully shaving himself. Cleaning himself. Safe here behind walls, with big guns to keep others away. It's false. The world is dirty and rough and chaotic. He offends me. His cleanliness offends me. He needs to be dirtied up. Roughed up.

Bloodied.

The moment the thought hits me, I realize what I'm doing and fall back, panting. I was ready to kill this man. I hear Miranda's voice in my mind saying, simply, “Ben.” And most of the rage and anger falls away. It's not important. None of this is really important. I feel the cold of the oily water as it soaked into my skin. Imagine Miranda there.

I shake my head. When I look down at Marcus, he's not moving. Unconscious, then.

I turn to see Whistler looking at me with a strange, intense expression of enjoyment. It sends a shiver down my back.

“Now do I get a turn?”

“No,” I say. “We need to get out of here.” I move around and cut through the restraints. “One of their people is getting us out of here in return for a ride out with us.”

“I never agreed to taking anyone else with us,” Whistler says.

I clench my jaw. “She's getting us out of here, so we're taking her. She's also getting us the pumps. If you want to return to Mal without them, then it's on you.”

Whistler glares at me, and I can see the thoughts warring inside that thick head. “Fine. We'll take her.”

I notice another bag on the ground, discarded, and I pick it up and wad it into the commander's mouth like I did with the other guard. It should help buy us a little time.

Then I catch sight of what's strapped to the commander's leg. A very familiar revolver. In Mal's leg holster. I reach down and remove the holster. It's my father's revolver all right. Makes sense. Marcus was the one who pulled it off of me. If ammo is as tight as Sarah said, I can see him holding onto this.

I leave the commander on the floor and exit with Whistler.

“This is Sarah,” I say. “Sarah, your commander was in there.”

“You didn't hurt him, did you?” she asks.

I scratch my head. “Just a little bit. He put up a struggle,” I lie. “He'll live.”

She moves to the door, looks into the window. What she sees apparently satisfies her. “I didn't want anyone hurt.”

“He'll pull through,” Whistler says. “Let's worry more about us instead.”

“Agreed,” Chase says.

“Fine,” Sarah says. “Let's go. I can take us out a different way. I know where the patrols go. We can get into a car and avoid them.”

“What about our weapons?” Chase asks. “They took Sully off of me.”

Sarah looks at me, pleading. “The weapons are probably still near the gate. If we go that way, they'll definitely be alerted. But I can sneak you out the back way. Down to the water. Then we can circle around to wherever your ship is.”

Sounds good to me
, I think.
I already have my revolver.
I realize that makes me a hypocrite, but fuck it—Whistler and Chase aren't exactly my friends.

“Take us out the back way,” I say to Sarah.

The thing about the base is that it's actually pretty large. Fenced in, yes, but the living quarters, according to Sarah, aren't that close to the water and the officers use a series of cars to get around inside the grounds. It's into one of these that Sarah ushers us.

“I'll keep the lights off,” she says. “I should be able to navigate well enough in the dark. I've been doing it most of my life.”

“Are there other cars out here?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says. “But I'm hoping we'll be able to avoid them.”

The car is an open-topped vehicle, with four seats and a simple windshield. The hope is that right now we look like four uniformed, completely-belonging-in-this-base individuals. And with the lights off, hopefully we won't call attention to ourselves.

“What about the pumps?” Whistler hisses.

“I put them in a raft, dropped them into the sound,” Sarah says.

“The what?” Whistler asks.

“The water,” Sarah says. “The current should take them north. I put a tracker in with them. We should be able to find them once we get into the water.”

“Or the air,” I say. I'm starting to get desperate to be back in the air. I'm sick of water. Being on it. Having it forced into my body. All of it.

The car hits a bump and we all go lurching.

“Watch where you're going,” Whistler grunts.

“I can't see very well!” Sarah says. “I'm doing the best that I can.”

“Leave her alone,” I say to Whistler. I realize that I've started thinking that Sarah is on my side, and Whistler and Chase aren't, but that isn't exactly true. I don't know that I can trust Sarah or that I can't trust Whistler and Chase.

I just want to get back to the
Phoenix
.

We've been driving for a little while when we see the flash of lights nearby.

“Shit,” Sarah says.

I watch as the lights swivel toward us and another car, one very like ours, starts moving toward us.

“They're coming after us,” I say.

“I know!” Sarah says.

She guns the engine and we shoot ahead, which throws me back against my seat. But when I regain my position I see the other car matching speed with us. I think I see two people inside the vehicle.

“Try to keep her steady,” I say. I draw the revolver and fire behind us, trying to hit one of the two dark figures I think I see inside the car.
There has to be someone driving it
, I think. At the very least.

“No!” Whistler screams into my ear. “Shoot for the lights!”

So I do. Or at least I try to. Sarah is swerving the vehicle around, and I can't seem to get a steady bead on anything. The first shot seems to go off into darkness. The second follows it.

The third shot hits the vehicle, but I don't see it do anything. And now I'm down to a handful of shots left.

I'm just lining up a fourth shot when we hit something.

Hard.

For a moment, I feel the impact, and then we're spinning through the air and I'm tossed from the car onto the hard ground.

The trauma of the last few days has weakened me and it's all I can do to maintain consciousness as I roll against the ground, trying to suck in air, feeling the abrasions on my skin as I slam into the ground.

Amazingly, my revolver is nearby, just out of my reach, or at least I assume so judging by the three identical images that are spinning through my vision.

As those three images resolve into one, I see a soldier, a man in a Navy uniform, moving toward us, a rifle in his hand. He fires and I see the muzzle flash, hear the retort of the gun even through my ringing ears.

I don't have time to think much, no time to analyze or plan. I scramble for the revolver, scoop it up into my grip, and sight on the soldier. His shots are tearing up the ground around us, and I squeeze the trigger. Once, then twice.

I don't know what hits and what doesn't, but I see him jerk back and fall to the ground. Then, energized by my little victory, I scramble to my feet and move forward to the other soldier, revolver out.

I move toward the vehicle, but . . . there's no one else there. Just the one.

Sarah comes running up beside me, grabs onto my arm and pulls it down. “I told you not to hurt anyone!” Her voice is on the edge of hysterics.

I turn to look at her, suddenly cold. “He was going to kill one of us. You. Me. Whistler or Chase. I had no choice.”

She runs to the body, bending down over it, but I grab her and pull her off and toward the other car. Ours is tipped on its side, and I don't know if it works or not. “Get in,” I say, pushing her toward it.

She turns to me, defiant, with tear-filled eyes.

“Get in,” I repeat. “There are going to be others coming soon. With more guns. And they will be shooting to kill.”

“I didn't want it to happen like this,” she says, in almost a sob.

“It
is
happening like this,” I say. “And we have to get out of here.”

Sarah stands there for a moment, her shoulders heaving.

“If you don't leave with us—
now
—they will get you. The best I think you can hope for is a life in a cell.”

She looks up at me and suddenly seems to come to. She knows better than anyone else what kind of punishment she might face. And I can see it dawning on her.

“Get into the car. We need to get to the water.”

She nods, dumbly, and gets into the car. Whistler gives me a quick nod and gets in as well, followed by Chase.

I run back to the fallen soldier, pick up his rifle. He's moaning and writhing on the ground. I have no idea if he'll make it. I guess it depends on whether other people find him or not. I consider putting a bullet in him—it might be the merciful thing to do—but the truth is, more than the promise I made to Sarah, I don't want to waste the ammo. So I crawl into the car and tell Sarah to go.

We ride off into the night.