Arkadian Skies: Fallen Empire, Book 6 (12 page)

“Leonidas,” she said, blinking in surprise. She should have recognized the girth of that chest without seeing his face, but those weren’t the clothes he had been wearing earlier. “Make that
Janitor
Leonidas,” she added, recognizing the uniform.

“I’m here to collect the laundry.” He bent and removed a soldier’s weapons, then tossed the man into the laundry cart. Two other unconscious soldiers were already in there. Mostly unconscious. The one on the bottom groaned pitifully.

“Funny.” Alisa waved the fob toward Alejandro and clicked it again as she looked around the room. None of the soldiers in sight were standing. She didn’t see Gutteridge, but a door in the back of the room stood open.

“More are on the way,” Leonidas said, tapping a stolen earstar with Alliance markings. “They’ve been spread out, looking for me, but they know there’s a threat in here now.”

Leonidas helped Alejandro, who still appeared dazed from the stun, to his feet and nodded toward the door.

“My patient,” Alejandro blurted.

“Got him.” Leonidas hauled Durant over his shoulder.

Alisa spotted her weapons on a desk in a corner. She grabbed the Etcher but left the stun gun and took the one the captain had been wielding instead.

Abelardus waited in the corridor with several more soldiers unconscious on the floor at his feet. He, too, wore the gray janitorial clothing, though the Starseer staff wasn’t exactly a part of the uniform.

“Where did you two find clothing in your size?” Alisa asked as Leonidas led the way down the corridor, Durant bouncing on his shoulder as he ran.

“There were some burly janitors working in the laundry facilities in the basement,” Abelardus said, running at her side. Her legs were numb, so she was glad Leonidas was pausing at each intersection to check for soldiers. “I wish I could say they were all men.”

“Are you saying Leonidas is wearing a woman’s clothes?” Alisa asked.

“No, I am. And she wasn’t as intrigued with the idea of me removing them as you’d expect.”

Alejandro stumbled along behind them, alternating between cursing and telling Leonidas not to jostle Durant. Alisa hoped he had gotten the information he had been collecting earlier and that he could come up with a way to treat him. Maybe it would have been better to leave him in Gutteridge’s hands, no matter where his loyalties lay.

Blazer fire streaked at Leonidas at the next intersection. He ducked back behind the corner, the procession coming to a halt. Alisa glanced uneasily behind them, aware of the open corridor. They could easily be surrounded once the Alliance had their location pinpointed.

Leonidas returned fire much more carefully than he would have done in combat armor.

“Coming behind us,” Abelardus said, shifting his position to stand behind Alisa and Alejandro.

A side door clanged open, and two armored soldiers burst out of a stairwell. Alisa cursed. Neither her Etcher nor stun gun would do anything against chest plates and helmets.

Abelardus thrust his staff outward as the men lifted their weapons to fire. The soldiers flew away, helmets striking the ceiling.

Leonidas sent a barrage of blazer fire around the corner. Something popped in that corridor, and lights went out.

“Keep going, through the intersection,” he ordered, glancing back at Alisa. Then he jumped out into the intersection, continuing to lay down fire, his rifle in one hand as he held Durant on his shoulder with the other.

Alisa worried about him exposing himself, but the two armor-clad soldiers were already jumping back to their feet, and Abelardus jerked his head, indicating she should follow Leonidas.

She grabbed Alejandro’s hand, and they sprinted across the intersection. Darkness and smoke lay in the direction that Leonidas was firing, so she couldn’t see their enemies, but return fire streaked toward them. Alisa dove for cover at the same time as Leonidas did. He jumped behind the far corner and continued to shoot.

“Abelardus,” he said. “Your turn.”

The armored soldiers were stumbling under another attack, but one of them got off several rounds. Alisa ducked, expecting them to make it through the intersection, but they bounced off Abelardus’s invisible shield. He snarled and pointed his staff again. This time, instead of the men flying backward, several ceiling tiles were ripped off and tumbled down upon them. Startled, they scrambled away from the falling debris.

Abelardus ran backward through the intersection. Even though Leonidas continued to fire around the corner, someone dared to fire back through the smoke. A crimson blazer bolt slammed into Abelardus’s staff. He yelped and dropped it before making it behind the safety of the corner.

“To that escape door down there,” Leonidas ordered, using his head to point. “Go, I’ll keep covering.”

Abelardus was grabbing his hand and cursing, so Alisa ducked low and snatched his staff out of the intersection. Abelardus turned his cursing into a roar and thrust his arm toward the armored soldiers. They had recovered from their surprise at the ceiling attack and were advancing again. This time, their rifles were torn from their hands and flung down the corridor behind them.

Knowing they had more weapons built into their armor, Alisa ran down the corridor after Alejandro. He was already heading toward the door. Alisa hated to flee instead of helping, but Abelardus and Leonidas would move a lot faster if they didn’t feel they needed to protect her and Alejandro.

She and Alejandro charged through the door, a manual one instead of an electronic one, and out onto a landing with stairs and a service elevator. An alarm light flashed over the elevator doors. Alisa did not know if that had to do with her team or if it meant someone was coming up to their floor. There was a fire alarm button and a sprinkler access panel on the opposite side. She punched the alarm button on the chance that more confusion might help with their escape.

“Stairs,” Leonidas said, as he leaped through the doorway.

Abelardus was right behind him.

“Start down,” Leonidas ordered. “All the way to the basement.”

He whirled on the landing as Alisa started down, trailing Alejandro.

Leonidas paused to tear into a wall panel as if it were made from paper instead of cement board, and as if he didn’t have a big man slung over his shoulder. He found and yanked out a portion of the pipe attached to the sprinkler. Water sprayed everywhere, but he ripped off the pipe and jammed it against the door. He also broke the handle off and dropped it on the landing.

If he did more, Alisa did not see it. She leaped down the stairs four at a time. It was a long way to the basement. Assuming the main entrances were all blocked, she hoped Leonidas had a plan for getting out from there.

“Are you going to give me back my staff?” Abelardus asked, catching up with her somewhere around the tenth floor. “Or are you enjoying holding it that much?”

She thrust it toward him, shaking her hand as water dripped onto it from above, glad to get rid of the staff. She’d kept bumping it on the wall and railing.

“Take it. It’s wet and awkward.”

“You just have to know how to handle it.”

“Does this seem like the time for innuendos to you?” Alisa asked as they rounded the landing to the ninth floor. “What’s in the basement? Do we have a plan?”

How were they going to get out of the hospital and back to the junkyard without being spotted?

“Hope it doesn’t… involve… sewers,” Alejandro panted. They were all winded, all except Leonidas, who had caught up to them and ran silently down the wet stairs behind them.

Banging came from the top of the stairwell.

“Just laundry,” Abelardus said.

“Not sure that puts my mind to rest,” Alisa said.

“I could distract you with delightful innuendos.”

“That definitely wouldn’t put my mind to rest.” Alisa sucked in a gulp of air as they reached the sixth floor.

“Such an odd woman you are,” he said.

A crash sounded from above, that door flying open.

“Watch our backs,” Leonidas ordered Abelardus as he hopped over a railing to cut to the head of the group.

As he neared the landing for the fourth level, the door flew open. A soldier leaned through, a rifle in hand. He must not have expected his foes to be right there, because he jerked in surprise instead of firing right away. The split-second delay was enough time for Leonidas to pounce on him. He yanked the man onto the landing, ripping his rifle from his hands, then spun the man around and shoved him back the way he had come.

Alisa raced past as Leonidas fired into the corridor. She glimpsed blue and gray Alliance uniforms, soldiers diving for cover in doorways, but then she was past, descending to the next floor.

“Don’t shoot to kill,” she called back, hoping that order wasn’t coming far too late. He had aimed for lights before, and Abelardus, too, hadn’t been trying to kill anyone, but was it delusional to hope they could get out of a firefight without any fatalities?

The squeal of metal answered her, Leonidas destroying another door, and then he caught up to their group again, still carrying Durant as if he were a pillow instead of a man.

“Basement,” Alisa said, the sign for the last landing coming into sight. Several inches of water had pooled in the space.

Abelardus surged into the lead, passing Alisa and Alejandro. He stopped at the door leading into the basement, holding up a hand.

A bang came from above them, another door block thwarted.

“Abelardus,” Leonidas warned.

“The laundry staff is gone,” Abelardus said, his eyes narrowed in concentration. “The ones we got the uniforms from and all the others.”

“Soldiers?”

“I think the robots are still there, but no people, not in the basement.”

Leonidas hesitated. Shouts came from above as footfalls rang on the stair treads.

Alisa danced from foot to foot, sweat streaming down her temples and cheeks.

“Take a deep breath before we go in,” Leonidas said. “Try to hold it until we get to our escape. Go in and run about four hundred meters that way.” He pointed off to the side, in the direction of the west tower. “There’s a door, but don’t go out. Wait for me there.”

Alisa thought that was a long way to run on a single breath, especially if it involved waiting at the end, but there wasn’t time to do more than nod in acknowledgment. They couldn’t risk one person testing the air at a time, not with soldiers thundering down the stairs.

Leonidas squeezed her shoulder and met her eyes as he visibly drew in a deep breath. Alisa sucked one in too. The door was locked, but he yanked it open with a cracking of metal. He leaped into the basement first, rifles at the ready, despite Abelardus’s promise that nobody was down there. The lights were out, with only the yellow or red indicators of a few machines burning in the darkness.

Alisa rushed inside and only hesitated a second to get her bearings before turning and running in the direction he had indicated. The basement was open aside from support posts and machinery looming here and there, the outlines barely visible in the dimness. As she ran, aware of Alejandro and Abelardus behind her, she yanked out her multitool and thumbed on the flashlight. It played over ducts and pipes and light fixtures on the ceiling. A huge laundry facility lay ahead and to the right with robots sorting and folding in the darkness.

Something bothered Alisa’s eyes, and her nostrils stung, irritated. If Leonidas had guessed right, it was some gas that had been pumped down here to thwart them. She hoped she could hold her breath long enough to escape.

The sound of blazer fire came from behind, and Alisa glanced back. Leonidas was still at the doorway, firing up into the stairwell. She grimaced, wishing he would simply run after them. As far as she knew, he wouldn’t be able to hold his breath longer than a human. And if he passed out… he had Durant with him. How would Alisa stage an effective rescue without Leonidas’s help?

The darkness lessened ahead where a wide ramp led up to a loading dock or some door or window that let daylight inside. It must be the spot Leonidas had mentioned. She increased her pace, seeing that light as a beacon of safety. Whether that was true or not, she had no idea. If the other exits were being monitored by the soldiers, wouldn’t this one be too?

But Leonidas had said to go this way. And her lungs were starting to beg for air, so she did not hesitate.

With her gaze fixed on the light, she almost missed the movement off to her side. A hulking robot rolled toward her on treads, a pallet fork outstretched as if it meant to impale her.

At first, she thought she had simply gotten in the way of some laundry robot’s path, but when she sprinted to get past it, it turned to follow her. She zigzagged, still half-believing it couldn’t truly be after her, but someone must have called up a security program buried in the robots’ circuitry. Several more rolled out of the laundry area, trying to intercept her party. When she glanced back to see how close her pursuer was, she saw Leonidas hurling one of the robots away from him.

Abelardus sprang onto the back of the hulk chasing Alisa. It did not slow down. It sped up, its fork-like twin spears driving toward her. Alisa sprang to the side, ducking behind a support post. One side of the fork clipped it with a crunch. The robot barely slowed, continuing past with Abelardus on its back, trying to find an effective attack with his staff. The robot rolled in a circle, and Alisa expected it to turn back toward her, but its turn became a spin as it tried to fling Abelardus off.

Leonidas caught up with her, pointing toward the darkness off to one side of the ramp with the light at the top. Three robots chased after him. Alejandro was still running toward the ramp, but he halted a few meters away, waving his arms in a frantic warning.

Alisa fired the stun gun at one of the robots. Maybe they should simply run. Her lungs burned, and she imagined she could see black dots swimming through her vision. In the darkness, who knew for sure?

Her stun blasted the robot but did nothing to stop it. It didn’t even notice the attack.

Leonidas opened fire on the robots behind him, the blazer rifle far more effective. Metal screeched and exploded, parts springing free.