Escape (Blackout Book 2), page 5
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Roy charged out of the house where he’d last seen Captain Keogh and the others. His gaze skimmed the New Cooperative camp, but he didn’t see any sign of the crew. Were they all dead? Was this all some terrible trap?
He spotted the man who’d led him to meet Tollin. Roy charged him and seized the crackpot by the shoulders. He shook him hard. “Where are my people? Where are the people who were in that house?”
The shithead curled his lips in a sickly grin. “They’re perfectly safe.”
“Where are they?” Roy thundered. “Tell me now before I smash your brains out on that post.”
The guy only laughed in his face. “You’ll join them soon. You have nothing to worry about.”
His laughter enraged Roy even more. Roy spun around and, before he gave himself a chance to think if it might not be the best idea in the world, propelled the asshole into the post anyway.
The guy’s skull made a satisfying bonging noise when it struck wood. His head sounded hollow…or like the ringing of a bell. The man folded and collapsed to the ground, but Roy was already barging away. He had to find Captain Keogh.
That bastard Tollin had tricked him. He’d gotten Roy away from the others with that joke of a negotiation. Why? Why would he want to separate Roy from Captain Keogh? Maybe he thought Roy would be able to help the captain and the others escape…but if that was the case, why not take Quort? Hell, even Woolzi would be a better choice, if Tollin wanted to weaken the crew.
Roy raced back to the market he’d seen earlier. He dodged right and left, but since he didn’t know where to go or what to do, he didn’t make much headway. He halted in the middle of the stalls.
He forced himself to stand still and think while he caught his breath. Strangers crowded him on all sides, no matter where he looked. Their weird Keteran faces nauseated him. He hadn’t been completely alone since…well, ever, really. He’d always had people around him, people he knew and trusted.
Even after landing on Keter, he always had the captain. Not even getting interrogated by Kwex measured up to this.
He needed weapons. He needed ships. He needed explosives to raze this den of crackpots to the ground. That was the best solution he could come up with.
Where could he come up with hardware like that? Tollin said he had an army. Yeah. That’s what Roy needed right now—an army.
Tollin had an army, and Tollin wanted the Blackout crew to join it. At least, Tollin had said that was what he wanted. He wanted to use the Blackout to achieve his own aims.
A light went on in Roy’s brain. What was the last thing Tollin had said to him? The Cooperative will supply you with all the equipment and weapons you require. If you need anything before tomorrow morning, you have only to ask one of my people.
The pieces fit together into a perfect picture. Roy checked the crowd again, and ran to the nearest crackpot with the usual coat of many-colored rags. Five or six of these clowns danced and cavorted in adoration of Tollin’s greatness.
Roy grabbed the nearest worshipper. “Can you help me? I need help to do a job for the Grand Votek.”
That got the crackpot’s attention. He turned around and faced Roy. He couldn’t have been more than seventeen, and clear, dark eyes shone out of his smooth face.
In a heartbeat, the insane glee and wild ecstasy evaporated from his countenance. He looked up at Roy with a steady, attentive expression. “What do you need, man? We’re all ready to do the Grand Votek’s bidding.”
“Swell, dude. It’s like this. The Grand Votek wants me to join his army, but I don’t know where it is. He said, if I needed anything to carry out my mission, I only had to ask one of you. What do you say, kid? Will you show me where it is and... maybe get some weapons?”
The boy nodded. “Absolutely. We all know you and your friends are going to help us destroy the Community of Hinn. Come with me. I’ll take you where you need to go.”
The boy headed off into the crowd. Roy could hardly believe his luck. He cast a few backward glances on his way out of the tent, just to make sure no one came along and stopped him.
The boy shouldered through more dancing monkeys. He stopped once to get a hooded mask from under one of the stalls. He carried it to the edge of the tent, and halted again to pull it over his head. “The base is ten miles into the mountains. Do you need food or water before we get there?”
“I’m good, dude.” Roy paused. “What’s your name, kid?”
“Yajak.” The kid stuck out his hand. “It’s a pleasure to help you fulfill the Grand Votek’s mission.”
Roy grasped the boy’s hand in relief. This was just like meeting someone from the Zenith Militia. At least someone around here had his head screwed on straight. “I’m Roy. Good to have you with us.”
Yajak pulled his hand back, drew on a pair of thick gloves, and plunged out of the tent. The sun hit his hood. He would have burned to a crisp without it. The hood made him look inhuman and almost mechanized.
He set off at a rapid clip toward the mountains. Roy stole one last peek behind him, but no one followed. The group of worshippers went back to dancing as though Yajak had never left them.
Roy hustled to keep up with the kid. Damn, he could move fast! He didn’t strike directly into the mountains, though. He traced a circuitous route around the nearest hill, keeping close to the valley floor.
Yajak skirted the highest peaks and eventually swerved into a canyon cut between two mountains. He kept his head and hands covered at all times, and the pair walked too fast to talk to each other.
He let Yajak take the lead. The kid climbed into a rocky crevice, where both had to clamber hand over hand to pull themselves to the top. Yajak stopped on the summit and surveyed the countryside. “The sun will be going down soon. It’ll be dark by the time we get to the base.”
“Will that make any difference? The friendlies won’t have any problem with you bringing me in, will they?”
“No problem at all. If anything, the dark will make things easier, because we won’t have to be hooded.”
Yajak headed off. He picked his way down the other side of the mountain, making for a different valley hidden between jagged peaks. He didn’t speak again for almost an hour.
When he stopped the second time on a high ledge, he trained his gaze down into the new valley. He stood still for longer than Roy considered normal. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”
“Something isn’t right down there.”
Roy squinted into the dark. “You can see the base from here?”
Yajak pointed. “There. See the landing strip? There should be racers doing runs out there, but there’s nothing.”
“I don’t see anything.”
“That’s the problem. There should be racer traffic, and there isn’t. That’s what’s wrong.”
“What do you want to do about it?”
Yajak veered sideways. “We have to check it out. If something’s wrong, we have to protect the base.”
He stalked off, leaving Roy scrambling to catch up. In a few minutes, Yajak hopped down into a crack that plunged into the cliff. He landed on a ledge cut into the sheer wall. Roy jumped down to join him. “What are we doing here?”
Yajak lifted his mask and laid the fabric veil across his brow so Roy could see his face. “You said you wanted weapons. We’re getting ‘em.”
Yajak stuffed his hand into a cleft in the rock. It extended horizontally into the wall at the level of his head. He pulled out several handheld weapons, and passed them to Roy before helping himself.
“Is this all you have?” Roy asked. “If something is going on down there, we’ll need more than this.”
“I have more, but this will do to look around. As soon as we figure out what’s going on, we’ll know what we need to rectify the situation.”
Roy raised his eyebrows. “Rectify! That’s a big word for someone as young as you.”
Yajak ignored the remark. He made the briefest check of his weapons, whipped down his mask, and scrambled out of the crack. Roy hoisted himself onto the shelf to find the kid already fifty yards off.
Yajak followed some unmarked route to yet another crack. He lowered himself into it, and this time he took his hood off completely. He stuffed it into a random hole and started inching sideways along a thin lip carved into the wall.
“Where are we going?” Roy asked. “If something is going on down there, we have no way of finding out what it is without going down there.”
“Here.” Yajak ducked into an opening. This one had to be handmade, because it was perfectly rectangular.
A thin slit allowed daylight into a tiny chamber barely big enough for the two men to stand. Yajak took out a pair of field glasses, pressed them to his eyes, and peered through the opening. “The Hinn! I should have known!”
“The what?” Roy returned. “Here?”
“They’re on the base. Look.”
Yajak shoved the glasses at Roy. Roy scanned the valley floor and immediately saw what the boy meant. The landing strip stuck out a mile. Forty craft similar to racers formed a line along one side. They definitely belonged there, and they all carried the same symbology on their hulls…like an army, actually, only much smaller.
A dozen other racers—all the same build, but with different symbols—sat parked all over the base. A bunch of hooded Keterans held a bunch of other hooded Keterans at gunpoint on the landing strip. The two sides wore unmistakable uniforms, decorated with their own emblems.
The prisoners clasped their hands behind their heads while the enemy searched the base. “What are they doing here?”
“Isn’t it obvious? They want to stop the Grand Votek from fulfilling the prophecy.”
Roy took the glasses away from his face. “Oh, come off it, kid. Don’t you get it by now? You’re too smart to fall for that shit. Tollin is a pretender to the prophecy, and he’s trying to stop some other pretender from pretending to fulfill the prophecy. The other pretender found out about him, and now the other idiot is trying to stop him first. Any dope can see that.”
Yajak flushed and looked away before he would meet Roy’s gaze. “You’d better not let hear anyone from the New Cooperative hear you talking like that.”
“They won’t, because there isn’t anyone from the New Cooperative here to hear me. It’s just you and me, so let’s drop the faithful act. Don’t tell me you actually believe that malarkey about Tollin being the Grand Votek. He’s a power-hungry opportunist. He’s riding the faithful all the way to the bank and we both know it, so let’s not play games with each other.”
Yajak colored again. “You said it, not me.”
“That’s right. Now, what are we gonna do to get our base back?”
The two of them squinted through the slit. “They’ve taken the ground-to-air center, so air assault is out. If they hadn’t, we could have alerted the northern base for help.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Roy asked.
“By what?”
“That Tollin lets his people believe he’s helpless. He lets them and the Legion and everyone else think he’s toothless while he’s got ground-to-air defenses, and even more than one base.”
“He wouldn’t be much good as a Grand Votek without them, would he?” Yajak returned.
Roy lowered the glasses again and skewered the kid with his gaze. “If he has all this, why do you think he isn’t going after the Legion or the Krakzid? If he was really the Grand Votek, he would be using these resources to rid the planet of its oppressors, instead of going after another pretender.”
Yajak shrugged. “I never said he was the Grand Votek.”
“You’d better not.” Roy took another look. “What’s that thing over there?”
“That’s the…” Yajak jumped a foot in the air. “Oh, my God! Come on! We have to go! Hurry!”
He grabbed Roy’s jacket and towed him out of the chamber. Yajak scurried down the ledge, retrieved his hood, and sprang into the sunshine before he finished covering himself.
“Hold up, kid! Where are you going? What’s the big emergency?”
“They found the Smiasmiam stores!” Yajak yelled over his shoulder. “They never wanted the base. They came for the Smiasmiam.”
Roy still didn’t understand, but he trusted this kid. He followed Yajak back to the hollow where he got the weapons. How Yajak found his way around these featureless cliffs, Roy would never understand.
This time, Yajak took out two huge cannons. He gave one to Roy and slung the other over his own shoulder. Then he went to another cabinet and took out an absolutely massive crate. It was too heavy for him to lift on his own. He wrapped his gloved hand around a rope handle on one end and slid it into view.
“These are Smiasmiam charges, primed and ready to blow,” he half-whispered to Roy. “We have to blow the Smiasmiam stores before the Hinn lift them off. Understand?”
Roy leaned in close to him. “Why are we whispering? They can’t hear us.”
Yajak jerked back like he’d been stung. He ripped up his mask. “This is serious shit, Roy! I’m not messing around.”
“I can see that, kid, but I’d be able to understand better if you explained to me just exactly what the crap is going on.”
Yajak took a deep breath and forced himself to speak slowly and deliberately. “The Hinn attacked the base to steal our Smiasmiam. Do you realize what will happen if they succeed?”
“I’m guessing you won’t be able to fly or load your weapons. That’s the end of Tollin’s army.”
“Wrong,” Yajak snapped. “They’ll lift it off and then drop it on the camp.”
“What do you mean by ‘drop it’?”
“They’ll drop it on the camp, Roy,” Yajak snarled. “They’ll release it from the air and ignite it over the camp. Everyone under the tent dome will be incinerated. That’s how they plan to wipe out the New Cooperative, and Tollin along with it.”
“Oh.” Roy frowned. “Are you sure?”
“Of course! Why else would they need that much Smiasmiam?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Feiko wants to rid Keter of the oppressor. How the hell should I know?”
Yajak ignored him. “Pick it up. We’re leaving.”
Yajak pulled his mask down again. Roy took one of the handles, and the kid took the other. The crate weighed a ton, but between the two of them, they heaved it up to the cliff.
Once on top, they emerged into the mountains falling into dusk. The sun grazed the uppermost peaks and cast the valleys in shadow. Yajak wasn’t fooling when he said it would be dark when they reached the base.
Yajak took his end of the crate, and the pair manhandled it down the cliffs to the tree line. They put it down to get their breath.
“Listen, kid,” Roy panted. “There has to be a better way. Can’t we just carry the charges down there? This crate isn’t doing us any favors.”
Yajak didn’t answer. His hood didn’t let Roy see his expression.
On a whim, Roy bent down, flipped the hasp, and lifted the lid. Yajak spun around, but when the boy didn’t intervene, Roy pried the lid the rest of the way off. Eight charges rested in a bed of packing straw. They gleamed in the fading light.
“Eight charges,” Roy calculated. “That’s four each. I say we carry them. How fragile are they?”
“They aren’t. They need a cannon to activate the detonation mechanism.”
Roy picked up one of the charges. It was one smooth oblong of shiny metal. He didn’t see any triggering mechanism at all, but he didn’t trust it.
Roy scanned Yajak’s clothing, but the boy already had so many weapons on him that he couldn’t carry anything more. Roy laid his cannon on the ground and folded his legs underneath him.
“What are you doing?” Yajak practically shrieked. “We have to get down to the base! We have to stop them from lifting off the—”
“So you keep telling me, but we won’t be stopping them from pissing against a tree without these charges, and I don’t want to be weak from exhaustion when we get there.”
He picked up a pinch of straw and started twisting it into a braid. Yajak’s masked countenance watched him. “What are you doing?”
“I’m rigging up a harness to carry these charges. Don’t worry. I’ll make one for you, too, but I’ll be damned if I carry this crate all the way there. We’ll break our spines doing that.”
Yajak watched him for a few minutes before he finally sat down too. “The Hinn won’t be able to lift off all the Smiasmiam right away, anyway. They need to bring in a freighter, and I didn’t see one anywhere around.”
“If you’re right, we’d have better luck sneaking onto the base under cover of darkness the way we originally planned. We’ll be able to take out more of them without being seen, and if everything goes well, we can slip away afterward. They’ll never know what hit them in the first place.”
Yajak watched Roy’s fingers twist the strands into a longer and longer braid. After he constructed several feet, he looped them into a makeshift sling with baskets to carry four charges, one strung on top of another.
“You’re really good at that,” Yajak remarked.
“Yeah, I’m a real Boy Scout.”
“Could you teach me to do that?”
“Not now. We don’t have time.” Roy passed the first harness to him. “Sling this over your shoulder where it won’t knock against anything else.”
Yajak arranged the harness in a comfortable position, while Roy whipped up another one for himself. In a few minutes, they moved out and left that wretched crate lying right there.
“Find a place near the base where we can wait for dark,” Roy told Yajak.
“What will we do when we get onto the base? We don’t have enough charges to disable all their racers.”
“We could blow the Smiasmiam.”
Yajak stopped dead in his tracks. His mask stared at Roy. “No way! We can’t destroy five thousand sogs of fuel! Are you nuts?”
“Suit yourself. That would be one way of stopping the Community of Hinn from either dropping it on the camp or using it for themselves. Let me guess. Tollin has a reliable source of Smiasmiam somewhere else, doesn’t he?”
