The Hunt for the Halifax Fox, page 20
Rox reached the lift first and planted herself in front of it, blocking the other woman. Her hair was red. It looked natural too, though you never really could tell. An odd thing to notice when you were gearing up for a fight. Red moved left to go around. Rox moved with her, cutting her off. She put on a bright smile and spread her hands in welcome. "Hello, have you heard the good word of Jesus Christ?”
“I don’t have time to talk to you. Excuse me.” The woman stepped to the right.
Again, Rox mirrored her movement, putting herself in the way. “Does your life lack meaning?” She sidestepped and blocked her again. “Do you feel like you have a hole in your heart? Did you know it’s God-shaped?” Red was sizing her up, figuring out that she wasn’t here to bring her to Jesus. “Maybe you’d like a copy of our—magazine,” said Rox, on the last word plunging forward with a lunge kick at Red’s stomach.
The other woman’s reflexes overrode her surprise, and she stopped the kick with a hard block and a sidestep. Her blocking arm snapped back to throw an elbow into Rox’s ribs, and Rox doubled over. Smart move—break a few ribs, and your larger, stronger opponent suddenly can’t breathe.
But genest bones didn’t break so easily. As Red moved away toward the lift, Rox regained her wind, charged after her and threw an arm around her throat, using the other arm to lock down the choke hold.
That had been disappointingly easy. Red had probably trained at some fancy defense academy where turning your back didn’t get you clobbered. If time weren’t an issue, Rox might’ve drawn it out a little longer to see if her father was right, and Offlands Mixed Martial Arts really was superior to the sterile techniques taught to Coalitioners. Better yet, she’d love to put Red in the ring with Val in zero-g and watch that play out. Maybe next time.
In control and catching her breath, Rox noticed the alarm spreading through the watchers. “Just a misunderstanding,” she panted. “We’re okay.” That the blood was slowing to Red’s brain must’ve shown, because the people didn’t look convinced. “Pete, am I still on an open channel with—”
Someone grabbed Rox around the waist and wrenched her back. She let go of Red and pulled up her arms, but before she could jab her elbows down, her attacker's arms had shot up and gotten her in a full nelson. Well, shit. Red’s pal had arrived, and he was strong, and now had Rox in a hold she couldn’t break free of. That didn’t mean she wasn’t going to try, using every ounce of that genest strength.
“Stop... fighting,” said her attacker. He grunted between words as Rox’s writhing, curse-ridden attempts to free herself bucked him around. “We’re not after you. Just—"—he grunted as she smacked him back against the wall—"walk away, and we won’t—DAMN IT—turn you in.”
Rox tried to center herself enough to get out of the hold, but he knew to keep her off balance. Fucking gravity. Jos was in her ear, telling her he was coming to help. “Jos,” she gasped, “I've got this, go find her.” Then, to her captor, “Turn me in where, you fucking shafter?” Evil gods, her neck hurt.
His voice was low in her ear. “Belenus.” Rox's breath caught and her struggling ceased. “That mistake lost my boss a lot of mark, Dahar. But he’s willing to let it go. All you have to do is stop fighting and walk away from Anya Gabriel.”
She could walk away. If she did, she’d have one less person gunning for her in the universe. Walk away.
It was now that she registered the sensation in her gut, unnoticed with the adrenaline of the fight. Though not as strong as what she shared with Ash, the convergence was now unmistakable. The man restraining her was a Drifter.
“You're a Tachuri?” he said, incredulous. Red had risen, her face redder than her hair. “Get your weapon on her,” he said. Now there was alarm in his voice. He gave a sharp command to stop, but her fist was already in motion. He twisted just in time for the hit aimed at Rox’s nose to catch the lateral ridge of her brow. A shot of pain ushered in a swarm of black spots. “Get your gun on her! We're taking her to the ship.”
“Like hell you are,” Rox snarled, panting. A rivulet of blood trickled past her eye.
The whine of guns powering up froze them all. Station security? More exclamations of alarm went up from the ring of watchers, and here came Hachi, strolling toward them like he had all the time in the world. With the tide of people parting before him and each raised hand leveling one of his enormous hybrid handguns, Rox saw a giant, bald, heavily armed Moses, walking through the sea back the way he’d come to claim Egypt for his own. It would be funny if the bastard behind her wasn’t separating her neck vertebrae, and if Hachi hadn’t ignored her order to protect Ash. Rox tried to lock eyes with him, burning with frustration and anger. The forced downward angle of her head prevented it, which made her angrier.
“You might think about letting her go,” Hachi said in his deep, effortless boom. He stopped a few body lengths away, clearly giving them the chance to follow his advice. “Don’t,” he said, his voice now as sharp as his initial words had been effortless and lazy. The gun he had trained on Red had snapped to attention. “You’ll both be on the deck before you pull it halfway.”
Red, frozen like she’d been caught with her hand down her pants, carefully withdrew her hand from her holster. The Drifter tightened his grip on Rox, which her joints swore couldn’t be done, and began to pull her away. “Nope,” said Hachi.
The guy hesitated. “I'll break her neck,” he warned.
“You'll regret it,” Hachi said companionably.
“Are you going to shoot your own sister?” said the Drifter.
“Yep.” Rox eyed the ominous gray double-muzzle of the gun pointed at her. They were set to paralyze, but still.
“And then what? We’ll be down, but so will she. This doesn’t have to involve you people. Just tell me you’ll back off, and we’ll leave you out of it.”
“She’ll go over my shoulder.”
Rox could almost sense the guy’s blink. “What?”
“You asked what then. I’ll pick her up, put her over my shoulder, and meet up with our crew back at the ship. You’ll stay here in your own drool ‘til security shows.”
The Drifter abruptly pushed Rox away and must have reached for his weapon, because Hachi's gun flashed and a blast seared invisibly past Rox’s head. Hachi lunged forward and caught her mid-stumble before the guy’s inert form even hit the deck. He aimed at Red, but she had darted into the crowd and away.
Rox regained her feet and shoved him away—or rather, shoved, and ended up propelling herself away from his planted bulk. He got the point. She adjusted the coil around her ear, knocked askew during the fight. Rubbing her neck, she said, “Halifax crew, who has eyes on Eli?”
Jos answered. “She’s with me.”
“Good. Everyone get back to the ship fast and be prepared to fight your way there. We’ll have to come up with another plan. I just tangled with a couple of these jerks, and I don’t trust them to not dial their shots all the way up. We need to get out of here, right now.” One of the aforementioned jerks had been a Drifter. A Drifter working for Varga; not a captive test subject, but a thug.
"Captain." Hachi nodded her attention to the far end of the warehouse, where several of the onlookers were now pointing them out to a wheeled security mech. The mech was quickly joined by two uniformed security officers.
She turned and led Hachi away at a brisk walk, leaving the Drifter twitching on the ground. "Back to the ship," she told her crew. She got affirmatives from Val and Mar-Sadiqa, and quiet from Jos. “Benjoska, tell the doctor to accept my audio request. Tell her I’m saying please.” Another quiet pause. “Tell her I’m crying.”
“You’re not, but she’s on.”
“Stop,” yelled a voice behind her.
Rox picked up her pace. “Ashrael, you can’t stay here. They found you. Game over. Think about this.” She looked behind her to find the uniforms trotting after them. The mech extended helicopter arms and took to the air.
Chaos erupted, fed through her auditory implants. Gunfire.
“Three—no, four attackers,” yelled Jos. “Level two...” He cut off under another burst of fire, then let out a scream of agony that forced Pete to lower the volume in her eardrums. “APDs...” The word ended in a drawn-out wail of, “Oh God...”
“Those dirty bastards,” growled Rox. An amplified pain device. She’d been hit with that once and was surprised he could even talk. “Hold on, Benjoska. Mosi and Ellison, get within visual of him but keep back. Everyone keep the crew channel open." Hachi had pulled up a navigation display without breaking his stride and held it for her to look over. "Go," she said. He dismissed the display and took off at a loping run she couldn’t match at her fastest. The security behind her had veered off in a different direction, having likely been directed to the bigger issue now playing out on level two.
The sound of gunfire paused. Through the implants Rox heard shouts some distance from Jos. Another voice rose above the others. “Give yourself up. Come with us and we’ll let the rest go.”
“Ashrael, that is not an option. We’re almost to you,” said Rox. Why weren’t they just going in for her? Had she picked up Jos’s gun? “Ash, I need to know you understand.” She was halfway to them now, her words coming in panting breaths as she ran.
The same voice spoke. “You’ll have a choice this time. More freedom, a say in how it goes. You have his word, Anya.” Rox was close now. She pushed herself harder, willing her legs to comply. Now the voice was tinged with unmistakable warning. “We’ll kill them all.”
Abruptly, a thick wave of convergence swept into her. Her headlong run became a stumbling jog that ended in a crouch, arms wrapped around her middle. Then, a sound assaulted her ears at such a brutal level as to cut the audio for several seconds. The tremor that shook the decking brought the people around her to a halt. “What was that?” asked Mar-Sadiqa.
“I’m almost there,” said Hachi. Rox drove herself back into a run as the sound of shocked voices around her layered with the sounds coming from Jos’s position: shouting, chaos, and another, menacingly familiar sound—the collapsing rubble of station walls and decking.
“Captain, permission to double back to Hachi’s position,” said Val.
“No. Keep back but be ready.”
The lifts had stopped. Rox found a set of service stairs and took them three at a time, dodging a stream of panicked people coming down, away from the danger. She caught up with Hachi at an entrance to an office plaza.
It took her a moment to absorb what she saw, and where she’d seen it before. A pile of rubble almost bisected the plaza, partly obscured by the thick cloud of dust suspended around it. A rain of debris dropped from a jagged fissure in the vaulted ceiling. The decking on Caballus Landing appeared to be thicker than that on Clearwater; the fissure was more of an inverted gash, with only a few glimpses of light peeking through from the space above. The other difference, Rox saw, was that the Landing’s decking also contained much more metal than the Offlander standard. That was a thin layer not for structure, but for magnetic pull should loss of spin provide need for mag boots. From the Landing’s overhead decking, thick metal beams had warped, separated, and bent outward from the gash, breaking loose those fractured boulders of decking.
Rox stared at the ceiling, uncomprehending. A rasping cry pulled her attention back to the scene. Someone was alive under the collapse. Through the fog of settling dust, a prone figure began to pull itself from the wreckage.
Her heart in her throat, Rox started toward the person, but Hachi stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “There,” he said, pointing. Against the wall opposite them, Ash crouched next to Jos, who lay curled on the floor with one hand tightly clutching the opposite shoulder. An old injury to that shoulder occasionally gave him trouble, and now the APDs were working their amplifying magic on it. He lay writhing weakly, face contorted with pain. Ash bore a flat, blank expression. Only the flutter of her chest, like an airlocked body’s reflexive attempt to draw in breath, gave away her terror.
The collapse on Clearwater... were these explosions someone's attempt to kill her? Why, and why go to such trouble as this, when there were dozens of easier methods to end someone? And to miss, twice...
How could an explosive so uniformly bend metal beams of that thickness?
Something told her these weren’t the questions she should be asking. Her mind numb, she put a hand on her gut, where even the panting ache of that all-out run couldn’t mask the remnant of the forceful convergence she’d felt. But modern Drifters could do nothing more than parlor tricks.
The figure crawling from the wreckage stopped moving. Rox squinted to see. It was Red, still and silent.
“Great burning shite.”
“Ellison? Where are you?” said Rox.
“We’re at the other end of the plaza. People are trying to dig somebody out. What happened?”
A voice rang across the space. “This is Caballus Landing Security. Show yourselves. If you have weapons, lay them on the floor.” Peering across the hill of debris, Rox spotted armed figures climbing to higher vantage points, peering at her and Hachi through their gun sights. Someone tried to climb over through a gap in the rubble. They quickly withdrew as the ceiling let loose a layered multitude of snaps, a sound like popcorn. Spider vein cracks shot from the gap, snaking out across the unbroken ceiling.
Rox kept her voice even. “Mosi, Ellison, go back the way you came. Don’t try to come to us—too much security. We’ll meet you at the ship.”
“Captain.” Hachi was waiting for her to transfer combat command.
After ignoring her direct order? Fat chance, asshole. Cupping her hands around her mouth, she called, “There are injured people over here. I was not involved in this. I'm going to cross to them.”
“Come out slowly, lay down your weapons and walk away from them with your hands on your head.”
Mar-Sadiqa said, “Captain, there’s security coming your way.”
“A lot of ‘em,” offered Val.
“We weren’t the ones shooting!” called Rox. It wouldn’t matter. They’d all get hauled in, if the ceiling didn’t collapse first. Smaller bits of cosphalt detritus now rained from the cracks that continued to spread across its surface. To Hachi, she said, “Get Ash to the lift, then come back and help me with Jos. Pete can help me override the emergency stop.” She sank to a ready half-crouch.
"Come out with your hands on your head!" From their vantage points across the wreckage, the armed figures curled themselves tighter around their rifles.
Rox called, “We’ve dropped our weapons. Please don't shoot," then snapped up her gun and sent a burst of fire across the space. It wasn’t enough to keep Hachi from taking a hit as he surged out into the plaza. Shocks were never dialed for someone his size, a fact they’d relied on a dozen times. He staggered slightly, regained his footing and finished the distance. Ignoring Ash, he hauled Jos up and carried him back toward the lift, shouting as another shot got him in the butt.
“Tavarres! God DAMN it!” Rox’s voice cracked with fury. Hachi lurched into the shelter of the lift and laid down vicious, single-bolt fire from one of his handguns. Ash, alone, pressed herself tighter to the wall.
Rox launched across the space, barrel-rolling around a pillar as shots sizzled past her, perilously close and originating from the entrance she’d just been in. Nearing Ash, she dove for cover from the shots now coming at them laterally.
With Rox out of the way, Hachi let loose the full fury of both of those double-barrel guns. He sprayed the space with a barrage of shock blasts that kept the security people pinned behind their cover, focusing all their firepower on him. A few shrieked as deck shots conducted the charge into them. It would buy her a minute, maybe two. She muted herself from the crew channel. “You’re coming with us. Do not argue.”
“Get away from me. Why do you still want to help me? I deleted the entry, I’m not a threat to you.”
“I just do. They’ve got you, Ash. If you get locked up here, you’ll be an easy kidnap job for Varga. Or these Union occupiers figure out what you are first, and you’ll find out what happens to Drifters when they vanish.”
There was another rumble and crack from overhead, then shouts of alarm and a pause in the shooting. The lights went out, instantly replaced with dimmer floor lights that climbed the walls in fingers of orange.
Ash tried to shove her away. “I’m not your friend. Do you understand? It was an act. I was using you to get out of Lir.”
A fine rain of crumbled cosphalt fell on them from the cracks above. “I know.” A sharp order rang out and Rox hit the floor, pulling Ash down with her as a shot hit the wall close by. More shouted commands, the crack and whine of shock weapons, and they lay face to face, breathing fast, Rox’s hands tight on the grip of her handgun.
“You were right about the lab.” Ash labored to steady her breathing. “He’s trying to replicate Convergence. When he finds out what you are, you’ll never get away.”
“So we won’t get caught. Ashrael—”
“Leave me here. If I’m with you, he’ll find you. He’ll kill the crew.”
“What the hell is wrong with you? Do you want to die here?”
Hachi’s strained voice fed through her implants. “If we stay here much longer, we’re gonna get caught.” Rox glanced at the lift. “It’s her or us,” he said.
When she looked back at Ash, she saw what she hadn’t caught before. Ashrael’s eyes were wide and unblinking. A sheen of sweat trapped ambient light against her skin. Her right hand had gone to the decking behind her, hidden from view between her and the wall. Rox reached around her, eased Jos’s gun out of her hand, and dialed it back down from the kill setting.
“He won’t let you die.” When Ash closed her eyes, the tears that had gathered in them slipped down her cheeks. “You’ll wish he would let you die.”
