She sprang away from the bike as the androids ran closer, grimacing when, thanks to the low gravity, it turned to far more of a spring than she’d intended. She was still in the air when one pointed his blazer rifle toward her chest.
Shield, she thought, a mental order for the staff. It didn’t need words, but using them helped her with her focus. She needed all the help she could get now, with adrenaline charging through her veins.
The android fired, and a crimson bolt streaked toward her.
“Careful, Jelena,” Erick barked, glancing at her and lifting a hand, as if to help.
As her boots touched down, the bolt bounced off the invisible barrier extending from either side of her staff. It was part mental construct and part a gift from the tool. The android fired again, bolts streaking toward her face. She kept her concentration, trying not to think about anything except keeping her shield up, but a quick thought darted through the back of her mind, that these androids were shooting to kill.
“Watch yourself,” Jelena said as the other android fired at Erick. She didn’t want him getting in trouble because he was worrying about her. “Your crew mates need your help to kick those virtual butts.”
The android shooting at her stopped, his expressionless face not giving any hint about whether he was alarmed that she could deflect his bolts or not. He simply raced toward her, then leaped for her.
Jelena threw herself to the side, rolling as she’d done thousands of times in practice with Leonidas. But this was different. The spacesuit and the light gravity made her awkward, and fear made her hurl herself farther than she intended. The android flew by her, which was good, but she didn’t have a chance to crack him on the back with her staff as she wished. It would take a lot of damage to down an android, and their opponents would never grow weary, not the way she and Erick would.
When Jelena jumped to her feet, the android had already landed, turned, and was leaping for her again. This time, she planted her feet, even though her instincts made her want to keep dodging, to avoid those lightning fast hands and the harm they could do. An android would be even stronger than Leonidas, and she had seen what he could do. She wished he were here now and regretted not trying to elicit her parents’ help in this.
Jelena jammed the butt of her staff into the ground and angled the tip outward. Airborne, the android could not halt its path, but he twisted in the air, trying to avoid striking the tip of her weapon. She shifted it to the side, keeping the butt on the ground to brace against his weight, but making sure it caught him.
A jolt ran up her arm as his side struck the tip of the staff, but silvery energy crackled in the air around the weapon. Her emotions—right now, her fear—powered it as much as her conscious thought. The energy flare was far greater than usual, and branches of lightning streaked out and around the android. Crashing into the staff might not have damaged him, but he stumbled back under this secondary assault. He tilted his head, as if with curiosity.
Jelena took advantage of what seemed like hesitation, or at least a pause for consideration. For the first time, she went on the offensive, gripping the staff in both hands and attacking. The android leaped back, avoiding a combination of swings and jabs. With his superior speed, he might have grabbed it out of the air, but he was eyeing it warily. She hoped the energy had done some damage to his system. Now, if she could just strike him again . . .
The wall rose behind the android, and she kept pressing, trying to back him up. He might have trouble maneuvering if he bumped against it.
But he must have realized the same thing. He raised his rifle, at first looking like he might try to shoot again, but instead, he gripped it in both hands. The next time she jabbed with the tip of her staff, instead of backing away, he stepped in and used the rifle to block her, trying to knock the weapon aside. But the touch once again elicited a surge of energy, the air crackling around the staff and the rifle, lightning branching up the android’s arms. Jelena channeled some of her own mental power into the staff, trying to enhance its effects.
The android stumbled back, dropping the rifle. She lunged after him, jabbing her staff into his chest.
Maybe some circuit of his had shorted out, because he seemed temporarily stunned. She connected solidly. More lightning leaped between them, and he stumbled back again, crashing against the wall, his arms spread.
She pressed the tip of the staff against his chest, again trying to enhance the energy flowing out of it. She wasn’t a toolmaker, the way Erick and her grandpa were, and she didn’t understand how the power worked, but after ten years of training, she had no trouble using it. She imagined the energy shorting out all the android’s circuitry and frying his neural network. She wasn’t rewarded with anything so satisfying as smoke coming out of his ears, but his silvery eyes grew dim, and he stopped moving.
Jelena stepped back, and the android tipped over with the grace of a coat rack toppling. Though she wasn’t positive he was permanently out of commission, she turned to check on Erick.
He stood by the bikes, the butt of his staff resting on the ground beside him as he watched. The torso of the android that had been attacking him lay under his boot. An arm rested a few feet away, cut circuits still sparking. She wasn’t sure where the head had gone. The pieces had been neatly severed, as if by some giant saw blade.
“You did that with your staff?” Jelena asked, wondering if she should feel betrayed that hers hadn’t come with such abilities, at least insofar as she knew.
Erick grinned behind his faceplate and held up a tool the length of his arm. “Plasmite torch. You’re not the only one who brought tools.”
“Showoff.”
“That’s why the ladies flock to me.” Erick jogged over to her android and fired up the tool, the orange blade flaring oddly in the missing atmosphere. He must not have trusted that her damage had permanently destroyed it because he severed the head.
Jelena turned away. Even though androids were machines, their resemblance to people made her uncomfortable. “Do they? I didn’t realize any of the crew mates meeting you at that pub were women.”
“One does have long hair.”
“Well, that’s almost the same thing, isn’t it?”
She looked toward the corner the androids had originally run around. What would she and Erick do if living, breathing guards were sent out? They couldn’t cut up real people.
The ship that had been approaching was no longer in sight. Had it landed? Somewhere inside? She stretched out her senses to check behind the wall. Yes, there it was in a courtyard out front, extending an airlock tube to a building.
“The forcefield is back up,” she noticed.
“I know,” Erick said, his tone turning grim as he strode back to his bike. “Let’s get your animals and hope nobody inside is keeping track of those androids. I’ll work on trying to figure out how to get the forcefield down while we work.”
Jelena slung a leg over her bike, fired up the thrusters again, and flew toward the top of the wall as she checked for life—guards—along it. She couldn’t navigate with her staff in her hands, so she wouldn’t be able to deflect weapons fire while riding, at least not without risking falling off.
There wasn’t anyone striding along the wall, but when she eased her bike above it, she came face-to-face with a giant artillery gun. With her heart trying to lurch into her throat, she steered around it. It was one of dozens of massive weapons along the wall, and her earlier thoughts of ancient fortresses guarding borders came to mind again. Why did a research facility need such defenses?
“I bet they don’t invite kids in on field trips,” Erick muttered, bringing his bike even with hers as he peered up and down the wall and into the compound.
“What?” Jelena asked.
“When I was seven, my school went on a field trip to a hospital. There was a research wing with all these dead fetuses and mutated organs in jars.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“To a seven-year-old, it was magn
ificent. I got to touch a heart with two extra chambers.”
Jelena had been much more excited about touching horses at seven. That seemed far more normal. Her younger twin sisters had been the same way at that age. For the most part. Nika might not have been that horrified by a grotesque mutated organ.
“There are a couple of people going down that tunnel and into that building to meet the people from the ship,” Erick said quietly, waving toward the front half of the compound. All of the twenty or thirty buildings were connected via hard tunnels or flexible tubing.
“Our warehouse is that way.”
Jelena pointed in the opposite direction, hoping the arrival of the newcomers would distract the guards, and that they would forget that a couple of androids had wandered out to check on something and hadn’t returned. She also hoped nobody was looking up at the walls. All it would take was a glance for someone to notice them, especially with the bulky hoverboards trailing Erick’s bike. But as far as she could tell, nobody was outside the facility.
Erick turned his bike along the wall and headed in the indicated direction. He was careful not to touch anything, and Jelena followed his example. Who knew what alarms might light up if they bumped one of those guns?
They descended into the interior as soon as they could, slipping into an alley between the wall and a building, and Jelena felt slightly more at ease, even though there weren’t nearly as many shadows as she would have preferred. Harsh lights shone down from the walls and every building corner, stealing hiding spots.
A flash came from the front of the compound. It wasn’t the forcefield this time. Maybe something to do with the ship being unloaded? Jelena wondered what kind of cargo was coming in and imagined a fresh delivery of hapless animals, but she supposed the odds leaned toward something more prosaic, like food and water for the researchers. She thought of the explosives in her satchel, and couldn’t help but fantasize about destroying the supplies of the people who let those animals go hungry.
“That’s it, right?” Erick said, stopping at the corner of a building and looking across to another one.
With drab gray walls and no windows, there was nothing to make it stand apart from the rest of the structures they had passed, but Jelena could sense the animals inside. “Yes.”
A tunnel led into the building, but she didn’t see a way in from the outside. Would they have to cut a hole in the wall? If so, all the air would escape, and some alarm would surely go off. Worse, the animals would be in danger. She couldn’t imagine getting the pods inflated and all of them inside before they ran out of air.
“Let’s go around to the back,” Jelena said, nudging her bike into the lead. “See if there’s a door.”
“Wait.” Erick gripped her arm and waved her back against the wall. His helmet tilted upward.
Jelena looked and, out of habit, listened, though she wouldn’t be able to hear anything in the nonexistent atmosphere. One of the drones flew overhead in a lazy circle, and she froze. She hadn’t seen them since they’d approached the wall, so she’d forgotten about them. Had they been put on pause while the ship approached?
It passed out of view without slowing down, continuing on some programmed route.
“Did it see us?” she whispered.
“No way to tell.” Erick released her arm.
Jelena kept an eye toward the sky as she drove out into the open, then along the wall of the animal building. She rounded a corner and her grip tightened on the handlebars when she spotted a back entrance. It looked more like a spaceship hatch than a door, and she hoped that meant there was an airlock that they could get inside without venting the building’s air.
“Cargo door,” Erick said, driving up to a control panel and examining it. He avoided stepping in front of a small hole that might have been a camera.
“Can your smart, computer-loving brain convince that panel to let us in?” Jelena asked.
“If not, my smart plasmite torch can.” He tapped the case where he’d secured the weapon.
“You sound like Leonidas.”
“Really? I’d assumed he would just punch his fist into the panel.”
“He would, but it would be a smart fist.”
Despite his threat to pull out the tool, Erick withdrew his netdisc instead. He brought up the holodisplay, tapped in a couple of commands, and held it up to the panel. “My decryption program is going to have a chat with it.”
“I didn’t know you’d taken hacking courses while you were away at school.” As far as she remembered, Erick had always been more fond of working with physical components rather than dithering with software.
“There were a few extracurricular activities. And I have a sys-net buddy who specializes in this sort of thing.”
A green light came on, and the hatch opened into an airlock chamber. Good. It was large enough to accommodate their thrust bikes. Even better.
As Jelena flew in, she glanced skyward one more time. There weren’t any drones hovering overhead, but she feared this had been too easy, aside from the androids. Could this be a trap? But who could have expected them? As Erick closed the hatch behind them and cycled the lock, she prayed to the three suns that their luck would hold, that drones weren’t delivering footage of their intrusion—or of them beating up the security androids.
It didn’t take any fancy software for Erick to open the interior door. There was indeed atmosphere inside, as the animal sounds that greeted her ears told her. The lights came on automatically, and whimpers, grunts, mews, and hoots followed.
Jelena didn’t even have to reach out with her senses to feel all the life around them as the dogs, pigs, cats, and monkeys awoke. But they awoke in pain and in fear, cringing back as far as they could in their cages. Jelena sent out waves of reassurance and shared images of grasslands and forests, places where they might run free and not need to fear experimentation. She had the sense that not all of them had ever seen grass or trees. Had they been born and bred in some lab? Solely for this fate? Even if that was so, they seemed to understand what she shared, some genetic memory recognizing the idea of freedom.
Despite her resolve not to cry, tears pricked her eyes at the helplessness and hopelessness that they all felt. And not all of them, she realized as she scanned the warehouse, were alive. Some animals had died in their cages and not yet been removed by whatever cold-hearted bastard tended this place, if this could be called tending. She didn’t see water dishes anywhere and sensed the animals’ thirst, as well as their hunger.
“All Earth-descended animals?” Erick asked, glancing at the cages that lined the wide aisle stretching before them as he pulled the inflatable pods off the hoverboards.
“I think so.” Jelena headed to the closest cages, hoping they weren’t bolted down so she could simply move them into the pods without worrying about finding keys for doors until later. “If the experiments are for the benefits of humans—” she sneered as she spoke, finding no justification for the way the animals had been treated, no matter who was to benefit, “—then they’d need to use animals that share a lot of our DNA. The creatures native to the system are weird, the ones that weren’t introduced by us and modified to survive here. Not that the mutants aren’t weird too.”
“Nothing wrong with being a mutant,” Erick said dryly, no doubt thinking of his own genes.
The colonists who had landed on Kir long ago had come from Earth, the same as the rest of the humans settling on the habitable planets and moons in the Tri Suns System, but those who had become the Kirians hadn’t realized from afar how much radiation their planet held. Their colony ships had only been made for the one-way trip, so the residents had been stuck on the planet for generations, until resources were gathered and an infrastructure built that could once again make spaceflight possible. In the meantime, the scientists among the colonists had tinkered with people’s genes, trying to change them so they could better survive on their harsh planet. Many had died. Those who had lived and had offspring had been able to to
lerate the radiation, but the genetic tinkering had caused a few side effects.
A sore-covered dog with patchy fur whined hopefully at Jelena. In a surge of anger over the animal’s state, she waved at the cage lock, snapping it off with her mind. Telekinesis wasn’t her specialty, but she could do enough. Especially when properly motivated.
Even when the door swung open, the dog did not come out. She coaxed it with her mind, and finally it—she—limped out, barely able to stand. She pulled her into her arms, careful not to put pressure against her wounds, and soothed the shivering body. She glared down the aisle at other cages, snapping the locks on those too. Her throat tightened at the sight of several of the animals not even moving in response, barely alive.
It looked like the situation had grown even worse since the guard posted those pictures. Surely, Stellacor couldn’t be doing legitimate experiments on the animals when they were in so poor a condition.
“Uh,” Erick said, from where he was inflating two of the pods. “Might be better to leave them caged until we get them back to the ship.”
Jelena sighed. “I know. I’m just . . .”
“It’s horrible, I know,” Erick said with sympathy in his voice, and a hint of the indignation she felt as he glanced toward the animals. “We’ll get them all out.”
Not all of them. For some it was too late. But she couldn’t chastise herself for that. They would get the ones that they could. It was better than nothing.
She set down the dog, which stayed close, leaning against her leg. She pulled out a couple of her ration bars, tore them open, and fed the animals trundling out, but she dared not spend much time on that. Mostly, she left bits of bars on the floor to help entice out the ones she freed.
Then she went to detach cages from the wall, using the laser knife on her multitool to cut them away from their mountings. Erick had the first pod inflated, and she hurried to load their living cargo into it. The animals had been forced to defecate in their cages, and she was glad she couldn’t smell anything through her helmet. Washing them and cleaning the Snapper would be her fun project while Erick was off not meeting women. Otherwise, it would be hard to explain to her parents how their newly acquired freighter had come to smell like a sewer.