Senescence (Jezebel's Ladder Book 5) (30 page)

Luca Maurier groaned. His armor had
been heavier, but there had been no coverage in the butt and upper thigh. When
he tried to sit up, he collapsed again.

“Help’s on the way,” Stu said. “You
did it. You saved her. We’ll get you on the helo and take you to the hospital.”
He used the straps from the borrowed kneepads and Maurier’s own armor to put
pressure on the many wounds.

His calm wavered when he saw the
blood on Mira Hollis’ neck. A single bullet had penetrated the pile of
defenses, and that had ricocheted off the brick wall. “Aunt Mary, don’t move.
Let me check for spinal damage.”

Aunt Mary?

“The evac is here,” he told her.
“We just need to—”

In Laura’s earbud, Kaguya shouted
the words, “Eject, eject.”

A beam pulsed down from the sky,
leaving pink afterimages on Laura’s retinas. The helo vanished.

When Laura came to, she was lying in an arched foyer. “Mom?”

“Everything’s okay, dear,” Kaguya
whispered from nearby. “You just had the wind knocked out of you. Stu carried
you to shelter while Mo pulled me out of a tree.” She flapped the cloth sling
over her left shoulder. Her face was scuffed, and she smelled of burnt hair.

“What happened?”

“Orbital laser.”

“Those are illegal!” Laura
protested.

“But still surprisingly common,”
said Eowyn, tweezing something black and twisted out of Laura’s injured foot.
“The big five voted themselves a limited number of exceptions from the rules.
The oligarchy will allow weapons if they each receive the same number and
type.”

“Who let you out of the brig?” The
splash of antiseptic stung enough that Laura gasped.

Stu was there in a heartbeat. “Are
you okay?”

Kaguya frowned. “I told you I’d
handle Laura. You need to stop that bombardment.”

He nodded. “Mom took care of that.”

“The killer satellite?” asked
Kaguya.

“My mom can be a bad ass, too,” Stu
said.

“You can talk to her by radio?”

“I can send messages whenever I
want. She can reply to Joan, who travels to
Sanctuary
Out-of-body.”

“Her range must be incredible.”

“Oleander helps boost her, but,
yeah, Joan is special. The ship swings close enough periodically. They can’t
stay in one place long because the enemy sees everything our main lens does,”
he said. “Mom wanted us to know she’s clearing a path now, pulling all the
teeth and eyes from here to the prison.”

As Eowyn wrapped Laura’s foot in
gauze, she said, “The UN will call it an act of war.”

“And assaulting our embassy
wasn’t?” Stu snapped.

“With the chaos here, no one will
be able to track you for twelve hours,” Kaguya said. “If you slip out before we
let the fire engines in, you can be anywhere in the world by the time they
realize you aren’t dead.”

“I’m going to be locating Monty,”
Stu insisted. “The bad weather there will improve our cover. As soon as all the
injuries are treated, we can head for the airport.”

“We’ll need someone with an armored
vehicle and some decent weapons,” Kaguya said.

“That won’t be corporate security,”
Stu explained. “Luca is on his way to surgery, and someone told the rest to go
home at midnight.”

Kaguya sighed. “My father.”

“In what world do the Moris have
that kind of access to our company?” Stu demanded.

“Ms. Hollis placed Tetsuo on the
board to end the war. The companies themselves merged several years ago.”

Stu sat next to Laura, horrified.
“We’re doomed. Nobody’s insane enough to drive us to the runway with a price on
our heads and no guards.”

Laura looked at Eowyn as she moved
to the next person in need of first aid, a female student with burns. “I may
know someone. Mater Nyx has a strike team ready to infiltrate.”

“How many kill teams are there?”
Stu asked. “And why is everyone so eager to attack now? Are they upset about
the cure I broadcast or the items on my list?”

“Too recent,” answered Eowyn,
surprising them all.

Stu addressed her directly with the
next question. “To avoid my UN speech?”

“Perhaps, they like to avoid
choices that lead to unconstrained outcomes.”

“Are these the same people who
destroyed
Ascension
?”

“I have no way to know who
participated. Only three weapons were involved,” Eowyn replied.

“Only,” echoed Stu. “Which means
there was a possibility of more.”

Laura repeated Eowyn’s earlier
statement. “The big five vote themselves a limited number of exceptions from
the rules. Three conspirators who don’t want
Sanctuary
to return, or
want to loot the gutted husk of your ship—probably Mori and two others.”

Putting down the burn ointment,
Eowyn said, “I need more bandages.”

Stu grabbed her hand before she
could leave the foyer. “We need more information. If we showed you a captured
telescope, could you tell us who owned it?”

“Anyone can find that using the
serial number and the AEC website.” Eowyn refused to meet his eyes.

Stu borrowed a computer pad from
one of the injured students and handed the device to the UN investigator. “Show
us.”

Eowyn logged in and tapped a few
times. Once Stu recited the serial number, she shook her head. “You must have
made a mistake. Lockwell International is registered to that number, but that
radio telescope is still in orbit near the UN moon base.”

Using the popup display inside the
sneak suit’s helmet, Stu showed her the photograph of the evidence from
Sanctuary
,
allowing her to double-check each digit.

“That can’t be.”

“Unless someone is stamping the
same ID number on multiple weapons,” Stu replied.

Eowyn glanced up at the sky in
panic. “We should leave this area while we can.”

“Right,” Stu said. “I’ll tell
Oleander to put my blood bag into a cooler and start the evacuation.”

****

The ten-woman Nyx team arrived in a school bus. Aunt Mary
rode in the seat behind Stu and Laura. She spent her time frantically sending
legal orders and press releases to contain the disaster. Dr. Maurier and her
medical staff stayed behind with her husband. Stu asked the civilian invitees,
like the school girls, to stay close to the doctor until he returned.

While the fire brigades and police
poured in the front, the Sacred Heart athletics bus carried the extended crew
of Ballbusters to their plane in the Fortune Enterprises hangar. As owner, Aunt
Mary badged them through the gate.

When they parked, Aunt Mary
gestured to a sleek aircraft beside the Ballbusters plane. “That’s my jet. I
should be going.”

“We’ve barely spent any time
together.”

She sighed. “I have a dozen things
to do, the first of which is finding my friend Gabriela. She was supposed to
meet us here. If I run away with you, Mori wins. I have to uproot this weed now
or things will get worse. I’ve put my trust in several of the wrong people.”

Stu hugged her tight. “I’ll save a
spot on the roster for you just in case.”

Then the CEO kissed a confused
Laura on the cheek. “I wish I could be there when you meet her, but I made
promises. We’re big on those in my family.”

“What roster?” asked Eowyn.

Stu turned to face her. “Sometime
after the vote, if I live that long, I’m taking about seventy people on a tour
of our ship. Mo and Kelly are already on the list. You’re welcome to come too
if you’ve a mind to look after them.”

“What about my girls from Nyx?
Their covers are probably burned.”

Stu knew the Ballbusters plane
could carry about seventy passengers plus cargo. Most of the Mater Nyx members
were even Active. “They’re welcome if they ride shotgun through Antarctica. We
have a lot of people to free, and the governments might not keep their word.”

“Try to keep us away,” Eowyn said.
“How long do we have before departure? A few of us still have day jobs to call
in sick to.”

Aunt Mary said, “Assume you’ll be
gone until the UN vote. Ask each person, just to make sure. Anyone who goes,
I’ll cover financially.”

Two of the Nyx women elected to
stay behind to guard Mary.

“You know these vigilantes?” Stu
asked.

“Most of them were rescues and
strays,” Mary replied.

“From the Canary Islands Academy,”
Laura guessed. “You financed the recovery efforts after the UN quit.”

“And the therapy. Sometimes
recovering one of your own is the best kind of therapy imaginable,” Mary said
with a wink.

After the door closed on the
Ballbusters plane, Laura asked Eowyn, “Were you at that academy?”

“No, but Kelly was.”

“Ah,” Laura said, gaining insight
into how an ethics officer could help a known terrorist organization.

Oleander asked for her sneak suit
back, so Laura found a suitable cold-weather outfit in her luggage and limped
to the bathroom to change. “Would you like to come, too?” she asked Stu,
waggling her eyebrows.

“No. I peed before we left. I’ll
save your seat for you.” Then he shouted, “Hey, Mo.”

“Hey, what?”

“Thanks for not being a stinking
traitor.”

“About that. I was ordered back to
base before the hit. I’m kind of AWOL.”

“I guess I could put you on the
embassy staff in the mail room,” Stu said with mock reluctance.

“Not bodyguard?”

“Nah, man. My wife and Kaguya
kicked more butt last night than you have since I met you. You’ve been
replaced.” People had to trade places so Stu could tell the story to his
friend. He completely skipped the belly dancing, but described his escape in
great detail. At some point, Laura fell asleep next to him.

Oleander mentioned the story of one
of Stu’s scars, and he had to recount another adventure. In spite of all the
horrible events that night, Stu felt at peace. He was surrounded by a family he
had assembled a piece at a time. Everyone shared their favorite war story.
While Oleander described the final battle of Labyrinth to the huntresses and
Mo, Stu decided to catch a nap. He had heard the tale dozens of times.

By the time their plane reached the
refueling station on Tierra del Fuego, someone had covered him and his wife
with a prototype Gravity Boy blanket.

Stu worried that the airstrip on the ice flow was too short
and slick for the Ballbusters plane. To make matters worse, visibility was low
in the perpetual night. Conditions were building for a full blizzard. The
prison had to plow the landing strip again before the Ballbusters could
approach. “Whatever happened to Global Warming?” asked Artemis.

When they slid to a halt on the
runway, they entire crew cheered the pilot.

Stu was anxious to reach Monty, so
unloading the mail for the base and navigating diplomatic channels seemed to
take forever. He sat alone in a chilly Quonset hut for over an hour.

“I apologize,” said the warden from
Iceland. His crisp, blue uniform and parka with brass buttons would have been
at home on a cruise ship. “Because of the weather and difficulties with
satellite reception, we have to file all the paperwork on actual paper. This is
very rare for a visitor to bring so many people. We don’t have lodgings except
maybe a few tents.”

“They’re here for the return flight
to make sure no one escapes,” Stu assured the man. “Most of us will stay on the
plane. We don’t plan on being here long.”
Although, I’m not certain where
we’re going after this.

The warden nodded. “I will bring
the volunteers into this hut one at a time.”

Of course, Z is at the end of
the alphabet.
Monty’s official name, according to corporate records, was
Zygote 17.

Stu called the others on his
Ballbusters comm unit.

Oleander ran the interviews, and Mo
provided extra protection. Hans videotaped while the Llewellyns paced the back
of the room. The show’s director commented, “This is the cleanest, most polite
prison imaginable.”

As Oleander accepted each person,
the chained individual would cross to the plane and board. The icy wind was
howling as the snow fell, but Kaguya stood outside the plane, waiting to be the
first person Monty would see as a free man. She wilted with disappointment as
each new person turned out not to be her boy.

The few workers Oleander rejected,
two with rape convictions and one with obvious mental illness, went back out to
their compound. After filling twenty-six slots, the warden thanked them and
shook hands.

“What about Zygote 17?” Stu asked.

“Who?” The warden flipped through
his records. “Ah. Yes. Mori Medical has right of first refusal. For special
prisoners, the wronged party has the right to hire the person first.”

Which means he would never get
out from under the Mori thumb.
Laura pulled Stu aside before he throttled
the man.

Oleander handled the problem
smoothly. “But you see, Ms. Zeiss is a managing researcher for Mori Medical,
and Mr. Llewellyn has board-level authorization from the parent company.”

The warden made a great show of
examining Stu and Laura’s credentials, some of which came from before the feud
with her grandfather. Eventually, he licked his lips and admitted, “This is
embarrassing. This prisoner used the excitement of your arrival to escape.”

“What?” Laura asked. “Why didn’t
you tell us earlier?”

“He didn’t volunteer. It didn’t
seem relevant,” the warden said, backpedaling. “Without the satellite, we won’t
find him until spring, when the snow melts off the dogsled he stole, and we can
see it from the air.”

Laura wailed. The air smelled like
burnt electronics.

Stu caught her as she launched
herself at the insensitive warden. Stu whispered in her ear. “Easy. Monty can’t
have gone far. He knows the dogs. He’ll be fine. You can locate him before he
freezes.”

“Twenty-four hours,” said the
warden, standing at the door. “That’s the record for a man alone in this
weather. It’s the middle of winter in this godforsaken place. No sun for
another month, and he has no tent.”

“If we find him before then, can we
recruit him?” Stu asked.

“Sure. I’ll give you his papers
now. Save me a burial.”

Laura shrieked as the callous man
left.

Stu stroked the back of her coat. “Calm
down. Your range is farther when you relax.”

“Yeah. You’re right. I—How did you
know?”

“I have a lot of empath friends,”
Stu evaded. “Sit. Breathe. Search. He’ll be the brightest light in this place.
Oleander, work with the locals to see if they know what direction he might have
gone or what other outposts he might be able to reach.”

“Esperanza Base is probably
closest,” Oleander said.

****

Stu did his best to keep his wife calm. Eventually, Laura
clenched her fists, sobbing. “I can’t find him. I don’t have enough range.
After all this time, I missed my brother by minutes. He’s going to die because
I went to a damn party instead of flying here!”

“No. This is not your fault, and
we’re not giving up,” Stu insisted.

“I lost everything I owned. Grant
and all those university people died. Not Monty, too.”

“I have a plan. Be ready to travel
in ten minutes.” Stu left her to commiserate with Evangeline. Kaguya followed
him, stone-faced.
If this doesn’t work, she’s going to collect heads.

In the prison office, Stu spoke to
the warden. “Zygote 17 is beyond our tracker’s range. Do you have any vehicles
we could use?”

“A few snowmobiles. They go a
little faster than the dogs, but they have limited range before they need to
refuel.”

Asking a few questions, Stu planned
a search spiral based on Laura’s maximum range. “No good. This pattern would
take twenty times longer than we have.”

The warden shrugged. “I told you.”

Kaguya stepped forward. “I notice
you have an old VTOL shuttle.”

“We bought one retired from space
duty because it gets so cold here and radiation penetrates the thinner ozone.
That vehicle may only be used for medical emergencies and rescuing personnel.”

Stu closed his eyes. He felt an
urge to hit this man, probably because Kaguya really wanted to paste him. “I’ll
rent it for a day for a million dollars.”

“The search will still take seven
times longer than you have.”

“Let me worry about that. Ten
million.”

The man vacillated. “It’s worth a
hundred million.”

“Maybe new. I don’t want to own it.
Just rent. My plane will be here as collateral.”

“Eh. Flying in this weather is
tricky. None of my people will do it.”

“I have two pilots rated for this
craft.”

“It would mean my job,” complained
the warden.

Kaguya took off her glove and
extended two fingers in a martial-arts pose.

Stu raised his voice to forestall
violence. “Ten million and the secret of generating electricity from gravity.”

“But if you want to waste your
time, who am I to stop you?”

Stu used the office equipment to
print a bank draft from his stock account and a technical paper on generating
shipboard power from an Icarus generator, written by Park, a now-deceased
Sanctuary
crew member. Stu left the office with a set of keys and a deadline. He tossed
the shuttle keys to his mother-in-law. “Now I need something from you.”

“Anything.”

“Laura said you’re the world’s
leading authority on bonding.”

“I was.”

“Can you mix something using
materials on the base that can guarantee pair-bonding?”

“I have a cocktail that works in
minutes, but it’s highly illegal and unethical,” Kaguya said, stopping in her
tracks.

“Sometimes there’s a higher law,”
he replied.

“Don’t quote Conrad to me. Why? I
thought you were terrified of bonding. You won’t even take your underwear off
in front of your wife.”

Stu winced. “Yeah. When people bond
deeply enough, they can exchange pictures, memories. There are things I don’t
want to subject her to, and things I promised not to tell her.” They locked
gazes. “I’m willing to take that risk to save Monty, for all our sakes.”

Kaguya hugged him lightly. “Meet me
at the medical shuttle with Laura.”

****

Removing his coat, Stu closed the door to the shuttle
cockpit and turned the cabin heaters on maximum. Laura was crying in the
spacious cabin when her mother lifted off. The vehicle, patterned after the
Ascension
-class orbitals, could hold thirty. He downed a beaker of a vile
concoction in one gulp and then handed the second container to his wife. She
sloshed the contents and sniffed with disgust. “What
is
this?”

“Your mom thought it might relax you.
It will take several minutes to get to the start of the search grid. We’re
heading toward the Chilean sector first.”

She tipped her beaker back, a sip
at a time, gagging repeatedly.

He stripped off his flight suit
while she was distracted. When she looked up, he was completely naked. “Your
mom added a bonding agent to the drinks. If we’re together when the drug hits,
your range should be over ten times your old maximum. You can have everything
you wanted.”

She shed her own coat. “No.”

“What?”

Laura slid out of her sweater.
“What I
wanted
was for you to beg.”

Glancing at her breasts, his breath
quickened. “I can do that.”

****

The first attempt went a little fast, for which Stu
apologized.

Laura said, “I feel a little dizzy
and out of breath, but my empathy is no different.”

“I don’t understand,” Stu said. “We
should have … clicked.”

Laura said, “Maybe we’re doing it
wrong?”

“No, it was pretty awesome,” Stu
gasped, gazing at her adoringly. “I’m still buzzing, like I’m plugged into a
wall socket.”

“Maybe all the physical stuff is
getting in the way for me. I’ve done this a lot. Maybe I need something more
spiritual or emotional. How did your parents bond so fast?”

He pulled one of her costume veils
out of his flight-suit pocket and wrapped it around her head like a blindfold.
“Don’t look with your eyes. Look at me with the sense that you need to
sharpen.”

“This is silly,” she protested. “My
mother never bonded. Maybe I have that flaw, too.”

Stu squeezed her close, warming
her. “I know you can, if you just trust in us.”

Her breath quickened, but she
squirmed away. “We’re parked on the mountainside in a snow storm. We can’t stay
here long before we’ll have to dig ourselves out.”

“Shh. If you talk again, I’m going
to bite you.”

As if by suggestion, she chewed on
a thumbnail.

“Let me show you the stars,” he
begged, kissing her.

She giggled at the horrible pickup
line.

Each time he touched her in a new
place, he whispered fresh encouragement such as, “I won’t leave you, not ever.”

When he resorted to the physical
again, he told her, “This is different from every other man because you know
how much I love you.”

Under his ministration, her face
slowly changed from worry to pleasure and eventually to the wonder of
discovery. “Yes. I see … Oh. Hold there.” Over the ear link, she told her
mother, “Mom, fly! Fast.”

Several turbulent minutes later,
she cried out, “In the valley … oh … mmh … northeast … ah … ten kilometerrrrs.”

“Easy, dear. I’ll find us a landing
zone. You do what you need to.”

Stu heard Laura speak the words clearly
in his mind,
I’ll never forget you for this.
Then there were no more
words, only an avalanche of her.