Hell or Highwater (Hell's Jesters, #5), page 35
“The shuttle is always on standby, Master,” the woman replied, “as per your instructions.” She hesitated before adding, “We will force an exit by air when the time comes.”
Jerry wiped sweat from his brow. Means we’re going to blast our way out.
“Those attackers are Council Guard,” Anton ranted between hoarse breaths, his limping strides somehow still keeping time with the rest. “Who sent them? Who led them here? Who’s behind this?”
“Master,” the security woman said with impressive patience, “I think it’s more important we get you clear before we determine that.”
Anton wiped his horrid face and flicked the mess aside, nearly hitting Jerry with a tendril of blood and broken tooth. He half-turned that mauled-rat expression to Josie, trailing behind him. “Which did you get?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “The only one I could grab without getting shot.”
“All that data lost...” he muttered.
“You don’t have it backed up?” Jerry asked.
“And just where would you have me keep that kind of information, Mister Rodann?” Anton snarled. “The only other databanks are about to go up in flames. Bastards!” He hissed and blood misted out through his ruined gums. “Bastards!”
“Pick it up,” the security guard at the head of their frantic little column urged. “The auxiliary landing pad is just ahead.” Jerry could hear the tinny hiss of a transmission mostly-muffled by the man’s communicator earpiece. He slowed his gait and appeared to listen.
“Something’s wrong?” Tina called after him.
“Well?” Anton added in a near-shriek when the man didn’t respond.
“Just lost my link to the facility main security station,” he replied. “I’m still getting signals from the other posts. Maybe they—”
The ceiling exploded over the man’s head. The tight confines of the hall lent the shockwave a nerve-pulping immediacy, slammed security personnel flat to the floor, flung Jerry and others backwards. Sparks and shrapnel skirled along the walls, ricocheting. Dust followed, darkening it in choking fumes.
His hearing blanked to a dull ring again, Jerry found himself half-propped against a wall where he fallen. A shake of his head cause blood to drool from his nose and the world swam around him for a moment in drunken sluggishness. Beside him, Josie was rolling over onto her back, mouth open with a moan he couldn’t hear. She still clenched the peta-drive tome close to her chest.
One of the security men was getting up from behind her, calling out into the winding dust clouds. Another call answered him as the haze curtained away and Jerry could see Tina and the short-haired security woman helping Anton to his feet. Beyond them, the leader of the group was helping a comrade up. The comrade suddenly stiffened and pointed at the ceiling.
An object dropped down through the jagged hole blown in the roof on a hum of anti-gravity motors. Inky black casing covered a bulky globe of blastisteel around a cyclopean sensor eye that panned suddenly about to take them in. Jerry knew the type all too well—hunter-killer drone—wasn’t surprised when the machine fixed its gaze upon him and a panel recessed from beside the eye to reveal a plasma blaster muzzle.
A blaster bolt took the drone squarely in the eye, blew it to shreds. Jerry turned in shock to Josie, whose pistol glowed from the shot. A second one nearly blinded Jerry as she fired again.
The drone crashed to the floor in a spray of sparks and slag, settled between Jerry and Tina. More slivers of cyan cascaded from the hole in the ceiling, blowing divots from blastcrete, glancing off the wrecked globe, filling the air with their screech. Tina shoved Anton ahead of her, further down the hall, past his guards, who were blasting up into the hole.
A hand tugged Jerry the opposite direction, the violence of it likely saving him as blaster bolts walked up the hall at his heels. He found himself behind the guard who’d been tailing the group and Josie, both of them firing wildly at the steaming gap in the ceiling. A frenzy of fire scoured the air and they fell back further.
Jerry met Tina’s across that blazing space, fifteen meters of cyan-scorched air and the world full of racket. She was shouting something he’d never be able to hear, but her gestures made it clear; she was calling for them to split up, find another way.
Not that he had any idea what that would be.
Another drone descended into the hall to be ripped by the crossfire. This one blew apart with a punishing crash that filled the space with flame and metal slivers. One of these sliced across Jerry’s cheek with a hot-cold tickle. Cupping his face, he tugged at Josie, who grudging backpedaled with him away from the gunfire. The security guard marooned with them, retreated last.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” Jerry shouted at the man. “Is there another way to where we were going?”
The blaster fire sputtered off abruptly. Wreckage and haze obscured the view down the hall, but Jerry could barely make out Tina’s voice, urging, demanding. It faded into the distance. Good. Go, baby, go!
The stillness wouldn’t last.
“Is there another way?” Josie repeated the question with fear-driven savagery.
The man shook his head, seemed stunned by the violent turn of events. He was a big lug, all shoulders and freshly-clipped block head. “We passed the maintenance chute access on our way. Leads under the auxiliary pad. It’s not the most direct route.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed,” Jerry snapped, “the most direct route just got cut off.”
As if on cue, a spatter of blaster fire preceded another drone’s plunge into the hall, this one already blasting away, its fire chasing after Tina’s group and ignoring Jerry’s. Josie peppered its featureless back side panel in flame, but a flutter of blaster bolts shot back down the hall at her and she flattened against the well. The beams converged on the drone and it crashed apart like a blastisteel bubble.
“We’re going to get hit by our own people!” she shrieked over the din.
Jerry seized the security guard by his collar, shook him. “Where’s this chute?”
“B-back the way we came, on the left.” He gave another headshake. “But if they blew the passage here, maybe they got ahead of us. Maybe they’re already—”
Jerry gave him a shake so hard his head smacked off the wall. “The chute! Show us!”
Unsteadily at first, then picking up speed as they backtracked and left the clamor behind, the guard led the way. Stray bolts screamed up the corridor after them, compelled them to freeze more than once, pressed frantically to the walls. But the drones’ attention, and the racket of the firefight seemed to move the opposite direction.
“Here!”
The man paused at a squat side door that looked almost too small to pass a person. Jerry had vaguely noticed several like it in their rush. A flick of a lever clanked the hatch open and the security guard shoved it inward to reveal a grated crawlspace meandering off into dark distance. He stepped aside and waved the pair of the in. “This is the one.”
“Take this!” Josie slapped the peta-drive to Jerry’s chest, waited till he gripped it, then lurched through the hatchway, blastpistol aimed ahead of her.
Jerry followed into the shadows. He had to stoop to avoid gouging his skull on overhead grates and bulkheads. Cursing, he touched his wrist piece, ignited its tiny light. Ahead, Josie had already done the same, was a tossing series of freeze frame images scuttling ahead of him in ringing metal blackness.
The hatch slammed shut behind them. Jerry whirled in surprise.
The security guard wasn’t there.
“What the hell?” Jerry started to say.
A blaster bolt screamed, heard even through the metal and blastcrete mass. A flurry of more followed. Something thudded—an explosive, perhaps—sending a ringing blow down the chute. The fire intensified, then receded, a fight dragging off in a direction Jerry’s own disorientation made impossible to gauge.
“He’s leading them away,” Josie said with wonderment.
“Jesus.” Jerry turned to her. “Well, let’s not let it go to waste. Go.”
The scuttled on through the cramped darkness. Jerry had no sense of their direction, could only focus on one step at a time, one breath at a time. Heart pulsed agonizingly in his chest, thumped up through his neck. Sweat slid coldly into his eyes. Without the immediacy of the chase, fragments of thought went to Tina. But she got ahead of us, got past that bottleneck. Maybe she’ll make it.
The chute branched once. Josie ignored it, kept going. It forked a second time and she paused, then quickly chose the right. Jerry couldn’t tell if she was going on a sense of direction or some desperate intuition. A cold began to creep across his flesh and he realized with a jolt it wasn’t fear; it was an air current, smelling not of metal, but of snow and wind. Josie was simply following it to its source.
Something roared from above, reverberating through the grates. The racket rose to a whine Jerry knew well; gravity drives spooling up to ease a ship in for a landing. His nostrils flared as he picked up the acrid odor of burning machinery. A hint of smoke joined the cold of the chute as they crept on.
A flash of what looked like a searchlight beam dazzled the passage ahead. Josie froze as the beam flicked towards them, white brilliance licking through the grates and casting wild, worming shadow patterns over them. But it fluttered on quickly. The howl of the gravity drives built to a crescendo and fell to a moan. Metal groaned faintly around them as something settled upon it.
Josie waved down a side chute and started that way. Wind whistled amongst struts, its iciness biting the skin. It was clear they were in the superstructure supporting a landing pad. Emerging suddenly from the chute, they found themselves scuttling out along a catwalk with the dizzying panorama of a snowy night dropping away down a sheer cliff face.
Jerry gripped a hand rail reflexively, hissed as the chilled steel bit his palm. A look up showed him the girder-web underside of the landing pad that looked to have been fashioned from the far side of the mountain upon which Anton’s fortress sat, a steel plate jutting out from an alcove formed from some past, monstrous rockslide.
Josie pointed to a flutter of flames bleeding down through the girders from the far side. Beams reddened from the heat and bits of slag dripped through to fall in fading cherry flecks through the snow-shot emptiness. Something—or someone—had run out of luck on the landing pad. But the clatter of boots on grating above and helm-amplified shouts made it clear someone else had taken advantage.
A ladder climbed up from the catwalk ahead, into the superstructure. Josie approached this gingerly and paused at its side, turned to shoot Jerry a questioning look. He nodded and waved her up, followed when she began the scuttle skyward.
They emerged from the climb into what looked like a dugout for flight crews, cut into the far side of the platform. A holpanel blinked to one side, a schematic of a spacecraft pulsing red upon it. Warnings scrolled across the top, referencing damage to the ship and the structure of the pad.
Huddled low, Josie raised herself just to the top. Jerry joined her to peer up and over. He had a view of nearly the whole landing pad. What looked like an orbital shuttle smoldering near the center, struck where it sat by blaster fire and sagging on one fused wing with landing gear crumpled beneath it. Two more craft, similar to the first, but bulkier with amor and weapons crouched near it, silhouetted by the glare of its dying blaze.
Men in Council Guard black fanned out around these, casually panning their visored gazes about, but clearly easing off triggers now that the fight of insertion was winding down. Jerry and Josie flinched down as one stared their way, but no cry of alarm or flurry oy blaster bolts followed. Rising cautiously back to their viewpoint, they saw the man had wandered on, calling something to comrades lost in the howling winds.
A scuffle from the far side of the platform drew Jerry’s attention. Amplified shouts crackled. Guardsmen scampered to the cave mouth that opened onto the platform as another squad of their own came out, dragging struggling, cursing figures forth. Jerry’s guts twisted to a pinch that drove a hiss of pain from his voice. One of those captive forms was unmistakable.
“Ah, shit,” Josie muttered at his side.
Tina wrenched free of the grip of the Guardsman pulling her onto the platform. Her wrists were bound, but she got an elbow up, free, and slammed it backwards into the grated breathing mask of the man at her back. Something crumpled and a choked scream sent the Guardsman crumpling. But a second trooper stepped in and slammed the butt of his blastrifle into her belly, folded her to the steel of the landing pad.
Jerry flinched, but Josie had a grip on his arm. “Hold,” she whispered. “Won’t help her.”
A pair of Guardsmen were dragging a fluttering black shape forth from the cave like a huge, tattered crow. They brought it out into the lash of the winds’ current and dropped it before the rear boarding ramp of one of the two armored shuttles. Light from within the craft shafted down over Anton, who slowly pulled himself up to hands and knees from the pile of his outmoded suit. A shadow obscured part of the light, drew a block of darkness into his bloody face. Footsteps clanked and a young-looking, athletic figure strode down from the ramp, came to stand over the cowering Methuselah.
“Bastard,” Anton hissed and spat bloody saliva at the newcomer’s feet. “I should have known it’d be you.”
“And I warned you it was too soon to go against him,” the other said. Wind tousled luxurious brown hair, caused stylish lapels and a half-undone tie to flutter. The man looked like a HoloActor. “Now you’ve forced everyone’s hands.”
“You’re a coward, Julian!” Anton snarled back. “Don’t try to make it sound like you had a decision in this! He found out, somehow, and cornered you and ordered you to take care of it. And like the cur you are, you’re complying.”
“Like you left me a choice,” the man called Julian replied—and Jerry couldn’t help the impression that this must be another Methuselah, one their Sabbat. “We’ve all suspected for some time. The scheming was too subtle, too long-ranged. The Chiaroscuro had to have at least one Methuselah behind it.” He looked over at Tina, still wheezing to catch her breath. “There were two others.” He glowered at one of the Guardsmen. “Where are they?”
“Escaped!” Anton cackled.
Anton ignored him, kept his gaze on the trooper. “Well?”
“Still searching, sir.”
“Your search had better turn up the Jesters that accompanied this one, Lieutenant,” he replied with chill that rivaled the winds. “Don’t return to my sight until you have them.”
“Yes sir!” The officer led a black-clad squad scurrying back into the cave mouth.
Julian stepped past Anton, who jerked towards him, but was held restrained by a Guardsman’s gauntleted fist gripping his collar like the scruff of a discarded kitten. Kneeling before Tina, he examined her with a vague leer that sent shivers across Jerry’s flesh. “This must be the one,” he purred. “Harrison’s mole” he glanced back at Anton “who you turned into your mole.”
Anton flinched at the revelation.
“Oh, yes, we found out.” He reached out to touch Tina’s hair, but she twitched out his grasp, had enough strength now to glower up into his face and bare her teeth. “Traced you back to Fury and on...until we lost you. I wasn’t sure we’d reacquire you. But then here you were, right on Tartan. Remarkable.” Perfect lips peeled back from perfect teeth. “The legendary Succubus.”
“The job’s already done, friend,” she rasped at him. “You may have got me, but you missed the mark.”
Julian chortled. “Not for long.” He rose up and stepped back around Anton to face him. “Tobruk’s dead, as are his conspirators in the Admiralty. We’ve tipped off the AIB. They’ve likely cleaned out that rat’s nest on Coronado, by now. And Greer and his rebels face annihilation, even as we speak.”
“You can’t stop what’s coming.” Anton shivered with what seemed a combination of fear and fury. His voice became a weird giggle. “You’re going to get fucked along with all the rest!”
Julian grimaced. “It’s always the ugliness with you. I think that’s what I always hated, Anton. You’ve no sense for beauty. Or order.”
“Order,” Anton sneered. “You’ll find the grave orderly enough! Because that’s what you can expect from him, Julian. That’s what I finally realized. Alexi doesn’t need us! In fact, we’re a liability!”
“You’re right.” Julian drew a compact derringer blaster from the breast pocket of his suit and aimed it at Anton’s rat-face. “You are.”
At barely a centimeters’ distance, the blaster bolt expended virtually all its energy on the Methuselah’s skull. A crash of cyan fire sent tags of meat and bone flying in every direction. The force of the blast flung the twitching, headless corpse onto its back and side, left it there smoldering, twitching on the steel grates.
Smirking, Julian flicked a bit of Anton from a sleeve with an index finger and holstered the weapon. “Been wanting to do that for a quarter of a millennium.” He regarded Tina. “Take her on the first shuttle, up to my yacht,” he told one of the Guardsmen standing behind her. “Make certain she’s quite secure. Alexi will enjoy peeling her apart. After I do.”
Guardsmen wrestled Tina to her feet and dragged her towards the other shuttle. She glanced at Anton’s smoking body once before her features smoothed over into something akin to concentration. She was bracing herself. For the worst. In another moment, she was out of sight, tugged up into the spacecraft.
“Jerry...” Josie set her hand upon his shoulder, pulled a little.
“Scanning team,” Julian snapped over his shoulder. A foursome of hover drones whirred down from his shuttle, followed quickly by unarmored, but still black-adorned Council Guard specialists. The Methuselah strode across the pad, more Guardsmen falling in around him. “I want this whole palace checked,” he said as he moved on, voice echoing as he reached the cave.
