Chapter Twelve
"I need to go back to that other building before we go back to the ship," Alibi tells the others as they ride up to ground level. "There's something I have to do."
"Maybe we should trash the place," Piccolo suggests with an evil grin.
"Maybe we shouldn't," Alibi barks back at him. The grin fades fast.
The elevator door opens. They walk out into the small building, past the transport, to the airlock door.
"SAIF will clean things up here," Alibi says. "Maybe Aunt Anita can get the Project scientists to comb through the stuff in that lab, find out what Masakov was doing. Plus, who knows what sort of bio hazards might be packed away on the shelves in there?" He looks over at Piccolo. "You sure you wanna start 'trashing' a place like that?"
Piccolo drops his head.
"I didn't think about the bio hazards and stuff," he says in a small voice, defeated. "Let's just go."
Alibi opens the transport and climbs up into the driver's seat. The other three climb in. They seal the transport and head out through the airlock, back toward the lab building.
"Who's Masakov?" Katie asks as they travel.
"Dimitri Masakov?" Alibi tries. She shakes her head no. "That's the name of your 'doctor', according to the SAIF infobase," Alibi tries to explain. She still looks puzzled. "The mad scientist guy?"
"Oh!" Katie exclaims, getting it. "That's not what he called himself."
"Musta used an alias," Alibi figures.
"Ashumeth," Katie says. "He called himself 'Ashumeth'. At least, I think that's what he was saying. Hard to tell. He talked funny."
They reach the lab building. Alibi opens the building's airlock from inside the transport. The vehicle rolls back into the vast operating room filled with bizarre equipment and the Human and Eldred victims of Masakov's experimentation. Alibi unseals the transport and jumps down out of it. He starts to walk off but then turns back.
"This shouldn't take too long," he tells the three still inside the transport. "I'll be right back." Katie unseals her side of the transport and hops out. She walks over to Alibi.
"I want to come with you," she says to Alibi in a loud whisper. "I don't trust Piccolo and the cat man gives me the creeps!"
Alibi sighs.
Least she seems to trust me.
But I don't want any company for this.
"I really wanted to go alone," he tells her. "I'm sure you'll be fine here by the transport. I won't be gone long," he says, trying to reassure her. She isn't hearing it.
"Please?" She pleads. "I'll stay out of your way, whatever it is you're doing. I can even help, if you need it," she offers. Alibi stares at her. "Okay, so I'll just stay out of the way! Please?"
Huh. She doesn't seem like the clingy type...
He gives in.
"Okay. Come on," he says, "we're wasting time."
Katie brightens. She follows Alibi in silence, a satisfied smirk on her face.
Alibi is not smiling. His steps feel leaden, as each brings him closer to doing something no one should ever have to do.
And now he has the girl along. Last thing he wanted.
She's lightened up a little. He realizes she's younger than he thought.
Probably only eighteen or nineteen. Would've guessed around my age, mid twenties or so, earlier. It's something about those gray eyes. She's aged her beyond her years. Feels like I'm about to get a lot older, too.
They walk past rows of operating tables, past the open-chested, vivisected Eldred. They pass by humans surgically opened up in cruel fashion, and walk by the man Alibi saw before with his groin and brain pan removed. Katie gasps when she sees testicles and part of the man's brain in jars on the shelves next to him. They pass the gaping hulk, the strong man, still strapped in place against the wall, still drooling and apparently brain dead. Finally, they reach the table on which Miss Kay lays.
She remains strapped to the table, the top of her head open and wired in to the machinery behind her. Her wide open, unseeing eyes dart about chaotically, as if looking for something flying erratically through the air over her head.
"Is somebody there? Doctor? Or are you the other one, from earlier?" she calls out. "Can you hear me? I can't hear myself, but I feel the vibrations. Can you hear me?"
Alibi steps up and lays the back of his hand tenderly against her face.
"Hello Miss Kay," he says softly. "I'm sorry you can't hear me."
Katie realizes this is why Alibi wanted to go alone.
She backs away, giving Alibi his space.
Alibi notices Miss Kay's left hand twitching at his side. Not twitching. Grasping. He puts his left hand into hers. Her fingers curl around his hand and hold his almost too tight for just a moment. She lets go but suddenly grasps his hand again, only to ease up and repeat the process. He tries to hold on, to let her keep pumping his left hand.
He notices his right hand is wet. Still resting against her cheek, his hand has caught her tears. He wishes he could comfort her by stroking her hair, but the way her scalp is cut and folded back makes that impossible.
Alibi sighs. He knows what he has to do, but he's not sure how to do it. He looks around. A small, thin pillow sits on a lower shelf nearby. He lowers his hand from her cheek and lets go of Miss Kay's left hand.
"Wait! No! Don't go! I can't see you or hear you but I know you're there. Help me! Please help me! Come back!" she cries out. Alibi comes back to her side, the pillow in hand. He grabs her grasping left hand again with his own and holds her smaller hand tight inside of his for a minute or so.
"It's me. It's Alibi, Miss Kay," he says, even though he knows she can't hear him. "I'm so sorry. I wish I found you sooner. I wish I'd found out you were missing sooner. Might have been able to stop this. I'm so sorry." He looks down at the ground, sees the pillow in his hand. His vision blurs. He blinks the tears from his eyes.
He lets her left hand go.
Alibi does not want to do this.
This isn't fair. She doesn't deserve to be a lab rat. A brilliant woman. Great teacher. All she knows, all her experience... do I even have the right to do this?
I didn't do this. Masakov did. Or Ashumeth, whatever he called himself.
I just get stuck cleaning up his mess.
Fuck.
This is a mess.
Can't think about it. Just have to...
He lifts the pillow with both hands and brings it down over Miss Kay's face, covering her nose and mouth. Her head begins moving, shaking back and forth, but he holds the pillow down firmly in place.
Katie can't watch. She turns away too quickly and crashes into a gurney she's unknowingly backed herself up against. There in front of her, covered in dried black blood, lies the body of a young woman, her entire reproductive system removed, her gut left cut wide open.
"AAAAAIIIIEEEEEEE!!!" Katie screams. Alibi reflexively lets up pressure. Miss Kay lets out a gasp as she sucks in air past the no longer so firmly pressed pillow.
"Sorry!" Katie apologizes as she turns back from the horror she's just seen. "I'm sorrysorry sorry..." she trails off.
"Please," Alibi hears Miss Kay's hoarse voice call up past the pillow.
I can't do this.
He lowers the pillow from her face.
"Please," she says again. "Don't stop. Please?"
I can't!
Alibi stands frozen in place, hovering over her, holding the pillow.
"Please," she says again, "make it stop."
Alibi pushes the pillow back down over her mouth and nose and holds it down as firmly as he can. He realizes at some point that tears are streaming down his face. He can't stop, and can't lift his hands to wipe the tears away.
Finally, he feels a hand on his shoulder.
Katie.
"I think she's gone," she says softly.
Alibi lifts the pillow. Surprised, he sees a smile on Miss Kay's now waxen face. She is gone.
Alibi and Katie look down on her now restful face.
"A f
riend of yours, huh?" Katie asks.
"Yeah. An old friend and teacher."
"You were looking for her? That's why you're here with Piccolo, huh?"
"Yeah," Alibi says. He looks away from Miss Kay and Katie, lets the pillow drop from his hands onto the floor.
"You did the right thing," Katie tells him, trying to help.
He doesn't look at her. "I don't want to talk right now."
Alibi walks back towards the transport. Katie follows behind, catching up as they approach the vehicle.
"You did the right thing," she says again, stubbornly. "It was what she wanted. I heard her!"
"Thanks. Thanks for what you're trying to do," he says to her, as he continues to walk away, still not making eye contact. "But it doesn't help. I told you. I don't want to talk right now, okay? Okay!" He says the last word louder than he means to, and Katie shrinks back away from his anger. She pouts as she walks around the transport to get back up and inside. She and Alibi both settle into their seats in silence.
"All set?" Piccolo asks as Alibi straps himself back into the transport's drivers seat.
"You – shut up," Alibi replies.
The trip to the ship is made in silence. Alibi broods as he drives the short distance. He's also trying to figure out how they'll get Katie from the transport onto the Cruiser Ship. The rest of them have EVA suits, but she doesn't, and the transport, although sealed, doesn't have an airlock of its own. He thinks through the problem as the transport hums along.
"Maintenance cowl," Alibi says, the first words he or anyone has spoken in the last ten minutes.
"What?" Kit asks.
"Maintenance cowl. It's how we'll get her onto the ship," Alibi explains.
He can control the Cruiser with his Wand. He punches in commands as they pull up next to the ship in the transport. The inflatable cowl begins deploying, pushing out around the ship's airlock, puffing up and out from a seam around the door. Alibi maneuvers the transport in next to the ship so its side door is surrounded by the inflating ring, creating a makeshift airlock. A few more commands on the Wand and the ship's airlock fills with oxygen.
When Alibi opens the transport door, their ears pop and it gets harder to breathe. It's not perfect. The seal between the cowl and the transport is leaking like a sieve. The vacuum pulls air from the transport. Alibi leans out into the inflated ring and manually pulls it down against the irregular side of the transport, trying to get it to seal all the way. He's working as fast as he can. Their lives depend on it.
Seal, damn you!
It's not perfect but the seal starts to hold, at least for the time being. He leans through the cowl to open the Cruiser's outer airlock door. Air flows into the cowl and the transport and the pressure stabilizes.
"Go ahead," Alibi says to Katie. She climbs over him, out of the transport and into the Cruiser ship, followed by Kit, Piccolo and Alibi. He closes the airlock's outer door and punches commands into the panel next to the door.
Alibi steps out of the airlock into the ship's corridor next to Katie, Kit and Piccolo.
BA-BA-BA-BA-BA-BA-BAM!!
The other three jump at the sound – like a machine gun going off outside the airlock. Alibi sees their shocked expressions and can't help himself. He smiles.
"Explosive bolts. I just blew the cowl off the side of the ship. They're disposable, one use things," he explains. "Let's go." He turns and heads for the bridge.
Alibi sits down in the pilot's chair and fires up the Cruiser's power plant. As he checks in with SAIF on the com, Alibi discovers that the SAIF ship the mediation service is sending should be here within the hour. Their Cruiser should be back at Cat's Eye by then. He goes through the pre-flight checklist and gets the ship ready to take off. Kit sits in the co-pilot's seat. Piccolo and Katie eye each other warily from passenger seats in the row behind them on the bridge.
"Did you see this?" Kit asks Alibi. He throws a com readout up on the heads up display.
"What's that?" Alibi asks.
"A distress beacon," Kit says.
"Really? Why didn't we pick it up immediately?" Alibi asks, puzzled.
"It is not a normal frequency," Kit tells him, "certainly not a Solar Alliance frequency."
"Whose is it?"
"I do not know. But it originates here. Masakov must have triggered it."
"And we're off!" Alibi declares, changing the subject by announcing the ship's liftoff.
"That beacon..." Kit trails off. "Who do you suppose it is calling?"
"Uh oh," Alibi says. The tactical display in front of him is filling up with little yellow triangles. He turns to Kit as he puts the tactical display on the heads up display. He looks back at the display, pointing. "Them?"
"Who are they?" Katie asks, leaning forward trying to read the display.
Alibi is just discovering that himself.
"Tek'Tah," he tells the others. "Looks like Masakov called in his trading partners for backup."
"Damn. Sure are a lot of them," Piccolo observes.
Alibi tries to call any SAIF ships nearby.
"They're jamming our communication," he says aloud as he realizes he's not getting through. He begins angling the ship away from the massing Tek'Tah armada.
"Let's fire up the Transpace engines and get out of here!" Piccolo shouts excitedly.
"Yeah, yeah," Alibi agrees, but he's thinking more than he's listening to what Piccolo is saying. "Yeah, ordinarily that's what I'd be doing but..." he trails off, losing the thought as he tries to figure out what the Tek'Tah weapons' range might be so he can pilot around it.
"The people," Katie says, finishing for Alibi. "He's not going to just leave those people down there for the Tek'Tah to capture all over again!" she chastises Piccolo.
Kit begins to understand what Alibi is doing at the same time Katie does.
"Delaying tactics?" the cat man asks Alibi.
"Delaying and distracting," Alibi adds, "I hope. Their ships are arrayed in orbit in a kind of bent cylinder formation. I'm going to fly in just beyond weapons range, come in from below and to their right; Then I'll bring us back over and around them and down like so," he says, tracing a loose spiral in the air with his finger.
"Like so," Piccolo imitates him, twirls his finger in a loose spiral in the air next to his ear to wordlessly infer that Alibi's crazy.
"Like a Moebius strip," Kit comments. "Elegant, but I am not sure it is practical."
"Guess we'll see," Alibi says as he finishes plotting the course.
The ship begins diving towards the lower "right" side of the oncoming Tek'Tah forces. Alibi checks and then double checks the range he's keeping between himself and the nearest Tek'Tah ship.
"There is a problem," Kit says as Alibi watches for a sign of Tek'Tah weapons' lock.
"What?" Alibi asks.
"I do not think they have noticed us," Kit observes. "It is hard to be a distraction if they do not see you."
"Fire something at them!" Alibi orders. Kit merely looks at him.
"Really?" the cat man finally asks. "As you wish." He looses a volley of ineffectual fire from the Cruiser's cannons. The yellow triangles on the heads up tactical display begin shifting in their direction. "Ah. That did the trick. Now, they notice us."
Alibi adjusts the ship's trajectory to accommodate the Tek'Tah's shift in position and keep the Cruiser out of their weapons' range. As they come up around behind the opposition many of the Tek'Tah ships are forced to turn around to attempt pursuit. This confuses their ranks, as Alibi hoped it would.
"Fire at 'em again!" Alibi calls over to Kit.
Kit obliges with more meaningless fire from the Cruiser's cannons. It's enough to shift a few more ships in their direction. Alibi pushes the Cruiser over the Tek'Tah forces and doubles back to his start point, slightly further out than where he began due to the changing position of the Tek'Tah. They turn again to follow his movements. Soon entire wings of the enemy armada are in the firing line of other wings, facing eac
h other instead of Alibi's Cruiser.
"I think it's working!" Alibi exclaims.
Beepbeepbeepbeep...
A red light is flashing across the heads up display. Alibi has brought them in too close. One of the Tek'Tah ships has managed to fix a firing solution on them.
BOOM-THANG!
They're rocked sideways as the Cruiser's shields absorb a blast from a nearby Tek'Tah warship. Alibi scans the ship's displays, but the damage is minimal. They are still far enough away from the enemy to render the blast ineffectual. He tries to move them further away from the Tek'Tah. A flash on the display lets him know the ships are still firing at them, but missing. Alibi steers the Cruiser down beneath the Tek'Tah positions and begins heading away from the planet entirely.
An explosion flares among the Tek'Tah. Two ships have collided – Alibi's crazy, looping maneuvers have thrown their fleet into chaos! Alibi brings their ship around to face the fleet and the planet from the other side.
"Transpace signature developing," Kit tells him. "Something else is coming this way."
A large SAIF transport ship and four Stinger ship escorts emerge from Transpace nearly on top of them.
"This is Starship Promethea of the Solar Alliance Interplanetary Force. We have Solar Alliance citizens on the planetoid in this system who have requested emergency extraction. As this system is part of the old Eldred expanses, this planetoid is designated neutral territory under the agreements between the Solar Alliance and the Tek'Tah. Any attempt to interfere with or delay our rescue of Solar Alliance citizens will be considered an act of war. Please vacate this system.".
A Tek'Tah voice hisses over the speaker, immediately translated.
"We are also responding to a distress call," the Tek'Tah commander says. "We, too, would regard any interference with hostility. Therefore, we cannot vacate this system."
"Then stand aside while we complete our mission," the SAIF commander says over the open com. "We will then leave and you can attend to yours. We have an emergency situation."
"I do not see..." the Tek'Tah commander begins to hiss but stops. Another six SAIF ships appear out of Transpace. "Now. I do see. We will stand aside," the Tek'Tah says, backing down.
The Tek'Tah ships begin to reassemble their formation as they move away from the SAIF ships and the planetoid. The SAIF ships move into orbit. The small Tek'Tah fleet stands by at a safe distance.
"Keeping the universe SAIF once again!" Alibi jokes. No one else on the bridge laughs.
The ten SAIF ships show up on the bridge's heads-up display as glowing white dots moving toward the glowing yellow symbolic mass of the planetoid. Alibi watches them move in.
"Can we go now?" Piccolo asks, breaking the silence.
"We can," Alibi says, "Already have the jump plotted and ready." He fires up the Cruiser's Transpace engines and they flash out of the system. In Transpace, Alibi breathes a sigh of relief and finally relaxes. The short Transpace transition ends and they flash back into normal space about an hours' distance out from Ceres Central. The asteroid field around Ceres shifts. Sometimes you can come out of Transpace fairly close to the solar system's largest asteroid. Other times, like now, there are too many rocks around to plot a Transpace point any closer.
Alibi sets a course to bring them in to the colony. He engages the autopilot and leans back in the pilot's seat.
"Can you keep an eye on things?" Alibi asks Kit. "I wanna grab a ca... a nap. Okay?"
"Not a problem," Kit tells him.
Alibi nods off for what seems like no time, but when he wakes up they're over halfway to Ceres. Alibi looks back. Neither Piccolo nor Katie is sitting back where they had been.
"Kit? You seen the other two?"
"No. I have been making small adjustments to our course and guiding our ship in towards Ceres Central. I did notice they were gone a short time ago..."
FWAAAASSSHHH!
Laser rifle fire – inside the ship!
"HEY!" Alibi hears Piccolo on the ship's internal com. "Help! Hey!"
FWAAASSSHHHH!
Piccolo comes running, stumbling up onto the bridge.
"She's trying to kill me!" he shouts as he tries to hide in a corner.
Katie appears on the bridge, laser rifle in hand, a crazy gleam in her eyes.
"Where is he?" she asks, a disturbing, primal edge in her voice. In one swift, smooth motion, Alibi rises up out of his seat, eases up next to Katie and grabs the rifle. A second later he stands staring her down, the laser rifle in his hands.
"Stop shooting up my ship!" He shouts at her. "Ever hear of explosive decompression? You could have killed us all!"
She locks eyes with him, crazed. Then calm returns to her gaze.
"He's not taking me back with him," she says to Alibi, pointing past him to Piccolo.
"No. He's not. He won't. I won't let him," Alibi promises her. "Go sit down. We're almost there."
Katie sits back down behind Alibi's pilot chair. Piccolo edges into his seat. Alibi takes the rifle with him as he sits back down. Kit looks over at Alibi.
"Do you want to take the ship in?" he asks, as if nothing had happened.
"Yeah, I'll take the helm. Thank you, Kit."
Alibi brings the ship in toward Ceres Central's port. They're assigned a berth and he maneuvers the Cruiser into the station. There's little traffic now, but the SAIF ships carrying the victims and their escorts will be arriving here soon. As their Cruiser settles into its berth, Alibi gets a report: The SAIF ships have rescued all of the kidnap victims. They've left the planetoid and its system to the Tek'Tah.
On the planetoid, Tek'Tah forces land and begin surveying the scene. Inside the dark lab, the drooling hulk pinned to the wall by metal straps suddenly looks alert. A nimbus of crackling blue energy surrounds him, enveloping the man. He looks around as if in pain, stretching and squirming. The energy field around him intensifies. A look of grim intelligence crosses his face.
As the energy field begins to dissipate, the man stretches and tests his bindings. He strains against the metal straps and they snap, releasing his arms and legs. He unbuckles the metal strap around his waist and walks a few, tentative steps. A smile crosses the brute's face.
He's not drooling anymore.
"Yes. Much better."