More conscious of their odor now, Achanei had to tone down her sense of smell. She thought of the two making their way through the muck and grime, and who knows what else that was off-loaded into the disposal system. “I don’t know what to say.”
Jiab grunted, “You’re our friend, Achanei!”
“You don’t need to say anything,” Neikkia reprimanded her. She fidgeted with a patch of fur that needed smoothing.
“Well, thank you for coming then.” Achanei grinned at them despite the growing unease in the pit of her stomach. “Do you two have a ship ready? Can we get to it?”
Before either of them could answer, Achanei’s nanomechs caught the unmistakable sound of heavy-booted footfalls and the sinister hum of a patrolmech echoing down the hallway.
“Guards!”
Everyone sprang into simultaneous action. Jiab dug into the pack he had carried into the room and produced two energy pistols, one of which he thumbed to active and flung to Achanei. She snatched the gun in mid-flight as she jumped for the door and palmed the switch to seal it closed. She clicked off a burst of violet energy that melted the lock’s components. She hoped that would prevent them from opening it without having to burn through the other side. At the same time, Neikkia Noonak tipped over the cell’s table, pulled it in front of the window, and dug into her own pack behind it.
She began setting up some equipment in front of the energy grill, which Achanei couldn’t identify. Jiab took hold of the bed frame, overturned it with a clatter, and spilled the old stained mattress onto the floor in a puff of yellow dust. The smaller Oobellian scraped the frame across the floor. He drew it as close as possible to the table without interfering with Neikkia’s handiwork. He yelled for Achanei to take cover with him behind the steel palette that had been her bed. She dove behind it just in time.
The white-hot fire of the patrolmech’s energy cannon burned through the door. Jiab and Achanei greeted the intruders with shots from behind the over-turned bed. The patrolmech was the first to die. It exploded from a round of energy bolts Jiab squeezed off into its mechanical belly. Flaming shrapnel flew in all directions and pierced one of the soldiers behind it. Some of the projectiles smashed against their protective cover and others ignited the mattress. Precision shots from Achanei’s pistol felled a second guard as he tried to navigate around the burning remnants of the mech.
“Neikkia?” Jiab coughed in the stifling smoke.
The taller Oobellian was still busy behind them, working the controls of the unknown device. Achanei hoped that whatever she was doing, it was all part of an escape plan they hadn’t had time to tell her about.
Meanwhile, the remaining Zenzani guard had wised up. He positioned himself to the side of the cell door, where he could pop off shots at random intervals, and then duck back for cover. Pieces of mattress and steel sprang into the air as his energy bolts sheared them off. Jiab and Achanei wormed their way closer to Neikkia as each burst of energy drove the bed frame farther back.
“Neikkia?” Jiab yelled again, but much more frantic this time. The flames had completely covered the mattress now and the steel palette was beginning to fracture.
“Now!” Neikkia screamed over the whine of discharging weapons.
In the confusion that followed, Achanei couldn’t be sure what happened next. Jiab jumped up from his position and moved behind her. A loud pop-fizz made her turn just in time to see him place his foot into Neikkia’s clasped hands. The larger Oobellian flung her smaller companion through the window! The device Neikkia had set up had shut down the energy grill and blown out its conductors. Before Achanei could react, an energy bolt zished past her head, close enough to pull her attention back to the remaining guard. She tried to let off a volley of her own, but Neikkia grabbed her from behind, bounded up and flung them both out of the window into the crowded skies surrounding Abri Mor’s docking tower.
The cold air threatened to freeze Achanei’s face as it rushed past and enveloped her. She wasn’t screaming aloud because the wind pummeling her face had taken away her voice, but inside, she was shrieking with terror. Her stomach felt like it was in free-fall, turned on end and shook up. The mind-numbing blur of flying vehicles and jutting structures raced past her and made her dizzy as it encompassed her every view. She tried to compensate for the tumultuous stimuli with her nanomechs, but she was having trouble concentrating. She was sure she was going to die by smashing into a docking ramp or a hovering ship.
After several seconds of sheer panic, she realized Neikkia Noonak still clasped her in her arms and that their descent was now slowing. She forced her head down against the gale and saw that Jiab was right below them and moving quite a bit faster than they were. He was just seconds from entering the smog layer, which surrounded the docking tower below them. She could see that a hoverpack hung across his shoulders and he was controlling his fall with it. She turned her head halfway, where she could see Neikkia’s twitching nose out of the corner of one eye. She recognized the sign of Oobellian embarrassment.
“I’m sorry we didn’t warn you,” Neikkia said. The hot air of her breath shot into Achanei’s ear, defying the thundering and chilling wind surrounding them. “There wasn’t time to tell you what we were going to do.”
Achanei just nodded, not having caught her breath yet anyway. In the uproar of the firefight in her cell, she hadn’t noticed that her Oobellian rescuers had donned hoverpacks before jumping out the window. She promised herself she wouldn’t make such an observational oversight again. Oand-ib himself would drum her out of the Cybermancer Guild if word ever got out, she thought to herself wryly.
Below, Jiab had just disappeared into the bank of smog. A patrolmech suddenly zished out of its hiding place from around the side of a loading crane at the end of a protruding dock and occluded her view. Doubtless, an alarm had alerted it to their escape and was rushing to intercept them.
“Neikkia, there’s a patrol mech coming for us!” Achanei cried over the din of the rushing air, finally finding her voice. She tugged Neikkia’s arm and gestured towards the metal monster speeding its way towards them. A second patrolmech corkscrewed from around the other side of the docking platform and plunged into the smog layer after Jiab. She wished she could yell loud enough to warn her other friend too. She had to hope Jiab was alert enough that the patrolmech wouldn’t catch him by surprise.
“Your gun!” Neikkia yelled.
“What?”
“Your gun, I can’t reach mine.”
Achanei was still clutching the energy pistol Jiab had given her, but the tempest had numbed her hand to a point almost beyond feeling. She willed herself to strengthen her grip and felt the tightness in her fingers as they began to tingle. Nanomechs were warming them and the rest of her frigid body. Neikkia had Achanei’s upper-arms pinned at her sides so she had to aim the gun by moving just her forearms. When she thought she had the advancing patrolmech in her sights, she took several shots.
All of the bolts flew wide except for one, but the patrolmech flung up a protective screen to encase its metallic body from the energy. She squeezed off several more shots, but they sizzled out like wilting flowers of purple fire against the mech’s shield. The robotic enforcer cast a tractor net over the two and pulled them back towards the docking tower’s main trunk. A giant iris grated open to receive them. They couldn’t do anything about it.
Achanei took one last look below, hoping to see that they hadn’t caught Jiab also. There was no sign at all of the other Oobellian, but what she did see was a spectacular scene playing out a few hundred feet beneath them. Two men and a mechanoid were clinging to the top of a speeding hoverbus, holding on for dear life to its cheap decorative molding. She tried to zoom in her vision with the nanomechs, but the energy bleed from the tractor net kept interfering. Her vision would start to zoom, but it would go blurry and snap back to normal. There was something strangely familiar about one of the men in particular. He was the smaller of the two, but to her, stood out as distinct a
s a spotlight in the dark.
She had a clear feeling, although technical difficulties wouldn’t allow her to prove it, that he was looking at her as well. She felt like she knew him, and an unexpected feeling of elation rushed through her entire body. She watched in fascination as a fourth figure with a hoverpack rocketed off a nearby platform towards the three, but before she could see their final fate, the patrolmech pulled them through the docking port and back into the main tower. The sectioned leaves of the door twisted together, sealing off all hope of finding out the ultimate outcome of the strange scene.
CHAPTER 28
“Aiben?” Ballis poked his younger companion in the shoulder. “Hey, are you in there?”
Aiben had been scanning the hypernet for the past several minutes. He had used Oand-ib’s master code to pry open the hyperportal and was allowing the fingers of his mind to weave their way throughout the expanse of Mora Bentia’s networks. He no longer cared if he were detected; the Protectorate already knew he was here, and no one seemed to be connected that would sense him and come after him anyway. He had been trying, without luck, to locate a cybermancer anywhere within range.
He had hoped to find one, even one loyal to the Protectorate, because he suspected the sudden fit of pain that had kept Gormy from killing Ballis was the work of nanomechs. It was discouraged in the Cybermancer Guild to use them like this, but it was a well-known trick and any rogue mind-linker could have used it. Without anyone else linked in, though, there had to be some other explanation for Ballis’s good fortune with the Chibbi.
Then he felt it. It was the faint echo of a mind somewhere out there among the denizens of the small metropolis. It drew at him and tickled his thoughts like a soft summer breeze. He couldn’t tell where it was coming from and he couldn’t make full contact with it. One thing was for sure, it wasn’t coming through the hyperportal. It couldn’t have been any of Jerekiel’s or Corag-mar’s people either. It wasn’t strong enough. It was someone different altogether.
Ballis poked him again.
“Sorry Ballis.” Aiben pulled his mind back to their present situation. “I was searching the hypernet for signs of anyone out there.” His stomach gnarled up. He hadn’t found any answers just more questions. Maybe it was the faint echo he had sensed. Maybe it was just hunger.
“Who were you hoping to find?” Ballis eyed his friend. He was rubbing his jaw again and worked it back and forth several more times.
“Anyone. But it seems the Protectorate has already taken care of that.”
After experiencing Besti first-hand, Ballis didn’t need to ask what he meant. Instead, he said, “Let’s eat.”
They had found Corag-mar’s restaurant easily enough. It was a small, unassuming grill hanging off the side of the main docking tower just above the cloud ring that encircled the immense structure. Once a service mech had seated them, Lev-9 produced a credit chit from somewhere and left the two humanoids to eat while he connected himself to one of the public power kiosks to charge his systems.
The establishment was already bursting at the seams with people and mechanoids. They were the crews of merchant ships that the Protectorate had pressed into service. Some of them wore various uniforms and outfits, many others wore off-duty clothes, which helped Aiben and his companions to blend in and throw off any suspicion. A surreal mixture of exotic music, piping out of a hidden sound system, twisted its way into the random noise that was a dozen odd languages being spoken at once. Foreign smells banded together and broke away from the kitchen. Aiben’s eyes and nose stung from spicy oils and his mouth watered from pungent herbs. Ballis dug into his pocket for the guilders Corag-Mar had given them.
After their food had come, and Ballis had taken a few bites of a dish filled with hot, dripping meat, he suddenly waved his eating utensil at Aiben. “You know, I’m getting a little worried about all of this.”
“How so?”
“Our ship gets knocked down in a firefight. A warmech attacks us out of nowhere. We spend weeks in the woods being stalked by a Chibbi and a group of mercenaries, who suddenly become our friends, and now we’re sitting here in the...” Ballis turned the spice dispenser around so he could read the name of the restaurant printed on it, “...the Spacer’s Grotto, in the middle of a Zenzani military installation, without so much as a hostile look in our direction. It’s all a bit too strange for me. Something has to go wrong really soon.”
“Yeah, I’m surprised we’ve gotten this far without anyone recognizing us,” Aiben agreed. “Obviously, it hasn’t been widely broadcast that we’re on Mora Bentia and wanted by the Protectorate.” He glanced around the small eatery, ran a hand across the top of his head, clenched his teeth, and then said, “Who could have informed the Protectorate in the first place that we were coming here?”
“It had to have been someone that was there when Besti was attacked,” Ballis said. “I’m starting to agree with you now that they were specifically pinpointing you. They must have known why you were coming here. I can’t imagine they’d put this much effort and secrecy into capturing a few simple refugees from a war zone.”
“Someone is definitely trying to stop me from getting im shalal,” Aiben said. His temples worked. He was convinced now, more than ever, that whoever had been pulling Gormy’s strings also controlled nanomechs. He told himself unconvincingly that it couldn’t be Nairom. “It’s someone who’s been trained as a cybermancer.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Pain induction.”
“What?” Ballis cocked his head.
“You take some nanomechs and inject them or feed them to someone. They latch onto the intestinal tract of the intended victim, or anywhere else they can get to through the blood stream, and then a cybermancer controls them to deliver excruciating pain.”
“Sounds pretty unpleasant.”
“It is. It’s forbidden by the Cybermancer Guild, but with the war and Magron’s growing faction of cybermancers, I can see where that wouldn’t matter much anymore,” Aiben shrugged.
“Makes sense all right,” Ballis nodded. “That would explain why the ratty would double over every time he tried to finish me off.”
“Exactly what I thought.”
“But why?” Ballis wondered aloud. “Why would someone who has been trying to capture you, spare my life? Something’s not right. Something’s still missing.”
“I don’t know,” Aiben lied. It would only be a matter of time before Ballis thought of Nairom.
“Well, if we don’t figure it out soon, and we let our guard down, even for a second, that could end everything really quick.”
Aiben stared into those deep blue eyes that told entire stories if you knew how to read them. “Why have you even come this far, Ballis? You don’t have to be involved, you know. You don’t have any obligation to do this.”
Ballis reached across the table and clasped Aiben’s shoulder. “Of course I have to do it. How can I run that shop back on Besti if I don’t make sure you come back alive?”
“You mean who’s going to sweep the floors for you if I don’t? If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re getting soft in your old age.”
“Well, now that you put it that way, there are plenty of pretty young women and grizzly old men at the Citadel who could do your job just fine.”
Both men were grinning. Friendly banter had always been an important part of the strong friendship that had grown over the years between them. It had been missing since they had hit ground on Mora Bentia. It was good to have it back. It helped Aiben think a little less about the responsibility he had inherited as his thoughts transported him to simpler times.
“Thanks, Ballis.”
The old soldier nodded and let go.
Lev-9 unhooked from the power outlet and came back to the table, putting their parley to an end. He took a seat between them.
“So, what do you think is going on here, Lev?”
It was so fast that it was almost over be
fore Aiben realized it. Ballis stood up in mid-sentence and yanked the energy pistol the Neilemi’aak had given him from underneath his jacket and discharged it. The bolt hummed over Aiben’s head. He twisted around just in time to see two men duck for cover behind a food dispenser, one grasping a pistol of his own. It would have been pointing at his back mere seconds earlier! The other man clutched a com device and was jabbering Zenzani into it. Aiben didn’t have to hear him to know he was calling in their position.
“Come on!” Ballis barked. Aiben and Lev-9 pushed up from the table. “I think this is our cue to get out of here!”
Several confused and nervous patrons jumped up from their tables. Some brandished a sidearm of their own; others were ready to draw in case they needed to defend themselves.
“I think this pretty much kills our worries that no one is looking for us anymore,” Aiben yelled as the three renegades spilled out of the Spacer’s Grotto.
They stood on a crescent-shaped platform that wrapped around the central docking tower. There were three possible directions for the group to go. To the left, or to the right, where the ends of the platform terminated at entrances back into the main tower, or straight ahead onto a docking causeway that thrust out into the sky at mid-point. Ballis started to the right and Lev-9 followed. Aiben increased his senses to their full range and threw them forward in the same direction. This wasn’t the first time on this mission that he hadn’t been completely aware of his surroundings. In a very real sense, he was still just an error-prone, inexperienced halath, not the Hegirith the ilud’hi wished him to be.
“No, wait! Someone’s coming from that direction,” Aiben called.
Ballis spun in mid-run and almost crashed into Lev-9. He sidestepped the mechanoid and swept past Aiben in the opposite direction. “This way then!” He yelled.
Aiben sensed others were also coming from that side. “Not that way either!”
With only one option left now, the old soldier raced down the causeway with considerable more speed. Lev-9 rotated his cranial sensor band from left to right to confirm what Aiben had said, and then hurried after the Ballis. Aiben sprinted towards them.