Armageddon (19 page)

* * * *

It wasn’t as difficult to find the off loading level as it might have been. Lena merely waited until the soldiers had moved out and followed them.

Dax was in the hold.

Since she was fairly certain he wouldn’t be at all pleased to find her down in the hold with the troops, she moved to the back.

“I don’t expect any ground force, but look alive out there. And keep a sharp eye out for any survivors.”

Any? Did that mean he wasn’t expecting to find any? Nigel might be out there, she thought in sudden fear. Dax had said he might be!

The moment the hatch opened, even before the gang plank was extended, the troops began pouring out the side of the ship. Lena followed them, determined to search for Nigel if there was any possibility that he might have been in the base when it was hit.

She’d managed to make it half way down the gang plank when Dax spotted her.

He caught her around the waist as she leapt from the side to run.

“Get back on the damned ship!”

“I’ve got to look for Nigel! He might be hurt!”

“We’ll look for Nigel. We’re looking for any survivors.”

Lena looked up at him in horror. “Any?”

His lips tightened. “Just go back inside and wait. If he’s here, I’ll find him.”

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She was tempted to try to escape him and go anyway, but it occurred to her that as long as she held him up, he wasn’t looking and if Nigel was hurt minutes counted.

Finally, she nodded. He caught her cheeks in one hand. “Promise me you’ll stay put!”

She looked away. “All right!”

When he released her, she trudged back up the gang plank, glancing around at the rubble and wondering if there was any possibility that they were going to find any survivors at all.

He didn’t trust her to keep her word and stay. As she reached the airlock, he whistled, making a hand motion when one of the men turned to look at him. The soldier glanced at her and nodded. Turning, he trotted back to the ship and up the gang plank behind her.

He caught her arm when he reached the top.

“He didn’t say I couldn’t stay here and watch!” she snapped, trying to wrest her arm loose.

He let her go. “Stay back from the door.”

“I’m just looking!”

“You’re liable to catch one between the eyes if you stand there,” the guard snapped back at her.

Glaring at the man, she moved behind the edge of the door and peered out, searching the rubble with her gaze for any sign of someone that might be trapped beneath it. It was a waste of time, or more accurately, only something to do to keep her from feeling so helpless and useless. The soldiers were making a sweep. If there’d been anyone nearby, they would already have found them.

Time seemed to drag by, but her anxiety only sharpened the longer she waited to hear if Nigel was among those who’d been here when the feds had attacked. The soldier who’d been sent back to watch her began to fidget. She tried to ignore him, but his restlessness began to grate on her nerves.

“I’ve got to take a leak,” he announced.

Lena turned to stare at him with a mixture of embarrassment and outrage. Like she wanted to know that, she thought indignantly!

“Stay put.”

Lena blinked. Finally, she nodded.

Apparently her hesitation was enough to alert him. Instead of dashing off to find the head, he glared at her, snatched the lower seam free and dragged the thing out right in front of her.

Lena’s eyes narrowed. Pursing her lips, she looked away. When she slid a glance at him again, she saw that he’d turned his back to her and was pissing off to one side of the gangplank. Without even stopping to consider the possible consequences, she burst into a run and slammed into his back with her palms. He yelped as he went out the door, but Lena didn’t pause to see if he landed on his feet. The moment she gave him a shove, she whirled and raced down the gang plank, leaping off when she neared the end and dashing toward what was left of the building that had once been the rebel base camp.

A shout behind her to stop alerted her to the fact that he was giving chase. Instead of stopping, she ran faster. She didn’t dare look back to see if he was closing in on her, fearful that she’d trip, or that it would slow her down enough to help him catch her.

The moment she managed to jump behind a wall that blocked her from his view,

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she began a frantic search for some place to hide. A section of one wall had cracked and folded over, leaving a narrow space at the floor. It looked impossibly small, but she figured if she could squeeze her ass into it, that would work in her favor.

Making a scrambling dive for it as she heard a curse not far behind her, she managed to get the front half of her body in on her hands and knees, and then flattened out and slithered snake-like the rest of the way. She froze when she heard the scrape of a boot and the sound of scattering rumble nearby, holding her breath, hoping against hope that she’d crawled in far enough that her feet weren’t sticking out the end.

Her heart was pounding so frantically in her ears that many moments passed before she realized the sounds were moving away from her. When she’d caught her breath, she began to back slowly out of the narrow, tunnel like space.

She eased up onto her hands and knees and looked around cautiously when she’d backed completely out. When she saw no sign of the guard, she got to her feet and looked round. There was no sign of anyone in any direction and she wondered if she was even in the building that had housed the secret base.

There were broken walls, shattered windows, and bits and pieces of furniture everywhere, but no sign that anyone had been in this particular area. Climbing out of the hole that had been created by falling debris, she glanced around again. Far into the distance, she could see the troops spread out now in a line.

They’d swept the area for the enemy first, she realized, and were moving back slowly now in search of survivors.

There was one soldier between the line of soldiers and the building where she stood, jogging quickly away from her.

No doubt to report that she’d escaped him.

Dismissing them, she began to pick her way carefully through the rubble, pausing to listen for any faint sound that might indicate anyone was buried beneath the broken bits of mortar and stone. “Nigel? It’s me, Lena!” she called softly.

She kept calling as she looked, softly at first and then, as she grew more focused on finding Nigel and less on being caught by Dax, louder.

She saw no one, no one at all. Instead of feeling comforted by that, she grew more distressed, moving more quickly, shoving pieces of wallboard out of her way, flipping others over. She’d covered most of what seemed to have been the main part of the building and began to climb carefully down into what looked like it might have been a bunker, or possibly only a basement when she heard something. She stopped abruptly.

“Nigel?” she called, her voice quavering on a note of fear as it occurred to her belatedly that it might not be Nigel at all.

“Lena!”

It was little more than a harsh whisper, but Lena whirled toward the sound.

“Nigel?” she called again, feeling her heart began to hammer with hopefulness as she looked around.

He emerged from a pile of rubble, so dusty with the powdered mortar that she didn’t recognize him at once. He was holding a pistol, however, and it was leveled on her. “Say something so that I know it’s really you!”

“Oh, Nigel,” she said in dismay. “Don’t tell me you don’t know me!”

“What color were mother’s eyes?”

She was on the point of telling him she’d finally remembered when she realized

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that she had always told him she couldn’t remember their mother. “I was just a baby when she died. You know I don’t remember her!”

He grinned, but even as she started toward him, the smile froze on his face. He swallowed. “Get out of the way, Lena!”

Realizing his gaze was focused beyond her, Lena turned.

Dax had frozen halfway down the pile of rubble she’d just climbed through.

“Dax! I found Nigel!”

“That’s not Dax,” Nigel said harshly. “It’s a fucking clone.”

Lena’s head whipped around, her eyes widening. “It’s not. I came here with him!”

His lips tightened. “Then who’s that?”

When Lena turned to look again, she saw that another Dax was standing at the edge of the pit, looking down. “Oh my god!” she whispered, covering her mouth with her hands.

“Come to me, Lena. You’re in the line of fire,” Nigel ground out.

Reluctantly, she took a step toward him, wondering how she was going to prevent him from shooting Dax if she moved out of the way.

“Don’t!”

Startled at Dax’s voice, Lena turned to see which man had spoken.

“He’s a clone,” the Dax standing nearest her said.

“Just get out of the way, Lena!” the other Dax said sharply.

Uncertain now of whom to trust, she stood perfectly still, glancing from one man to the other. Striving for calm, she examined each of the Dax’s, but she couldn’t tell any difference even in their clothing, for both were wearing similar uniforms and she couldn’t recall enough detail about the one she’d last seen Dax in to know which was which.

She knew Nigel though. Did that mean the one who’d warned her against him was the clone? Or was it Dax, trying to protect her in case he
was
a clone?

Her chin wobbled. “I don’t know what to do,” she murmured, unwilling to move in any direction until she was certain she wouldn’t get Dax killed. She closed her eyes.

“Dax! I love you!”

“I love you, too, Lena.”

Lena’s eyes popped open. She stared at the man who’d just spoken as he took a step toward her.

“Move your ass, baby girl!” Dax snarled.

Whirling abruptly, Lena fled toward the man standing atop the wall. The moment she moved, all three men began to fire.

“Get down!” Dax bellowed as he leapt from the top of the wall and landed just in front of her.

Lena dove for the floor, closing her eyes as she saw the broken, uneven bits of stone rushing up to greet her. Something hot sliced across her arm even as she fell, seemingly in slow motion, toward the rubble strewn floor. Her arm gave way as she tried to catch herself with her palms. Pain seemed to pelt her from every direction at once, her shoulder, her knees and palms. The worst of it, however, was pain that exploded in her head as she skidded across the floor and slammed into something sharp and hard.

Blackness crowded in around her.

Someone grabbed her shoulder and rolled her over. She heard her name in stereo

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and opened her eyes with an effort. Two faces were leaning over her. “I bumped my head,” she murmured, lifting a hand to examine the throbbing area and finding a knot on her forehead.

“I feel like beating your ass,” Dax growled. “Didn’t I tell you to stay in the ship?”

“Try it and I’ll knock your head off,” Nigel snarled at him.

“Shut up, Nigel!” Lena murmured, pushing herself upright. “He’s trying to tell me he loves me.”

Both men gaped at her, but Dax recovered first, pulling her to her feet and examining her head and then her arm. “It doesn’t look too bad,” he said finally.

“Exactly what is ‘bad’ in your opinion?” Nigel demanded.

Still wobbly legged, Lena managed to wedge herself between her brother and Dax. “Actually, I really don’t feel at all well.”

She’d barely uttered the last word when Dax scooped her into his arms and turned to survey the climb. “You can’t carry me and climb up that!” Lena protested.

Apparently Dax agreed. Placing two fingers against his lower lip, he let out an earsplitting whistle that, within a very few minutes, had drawn a pack of soldiers to ring the top of the pit, staring down at them. “Get me a sling to bring her up!”

She didn’t especially like the sound of that, but she knew Dax could carry her up and she still felt a little dizzy and disoriented. “Did you kill the clone?” she asked, dropping her head against his shoulder.

“Nigel did.”

Lena looked at her brother in surprise. “How did you know which one was the clone?”

“It wasn’t that difficult, actually,” Nigel said dryly. “I knew the moment Dax started bellowing which was the real asshole.”

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Lena’s head hurt, but it wasn’t entirely from the knot she’d given herself when she dove to try to avoid the laser fire. Dax and Nigel bristled like two cur dogs every time they looked at each other.

She had a pretty good feeling she knew why.

Nigel sensed that Dax had done a lot more than just rescue her, and Dax didn’t appreciate Nigel’s possessiveness toward his sister.

“Did you find anyone?” she asked, joining the two men at the table they’d taken in the rec room of Dax’s ship.

Dax shook his head. “Most of the personnel evacked before the attack.”

Lena glanced from Dax to Nigel questioningly.

Nigel shrugged. “I went in to retrieve the data, but I knew the minute I set eyes on Dax’s clone that something wasn’t right. After a while, I realized I’d walked into a trap, but they weren’t after me and they weren’t after the data. They wanted me to lead them back to the base. That’s what they
really
wanted. As soon as I realized that, I used the code I’d been given to warn them.”

“What data?”

“The memo that everyone’s been dying over,” Dax responded, tossing a roll of film onto the table.

Grabbing it up, Lena looked the e-paper over thoroughly and finally read the message. “My god! This is an order to replace the Prez!”

Nigel and Dax exchanged a look. “We should’ve just gotten Lena to figure it out for us before.”

Lena looked at both of them with a touch of indignation. “All right. What do you think it means?”

Nigel gave her a sour look. “Exactly what you think it means.”

Mollified, she went back to studying the memo. “You think this is authentic? I mean, why would they let us get the real thing?”

“Because it isn’t the big boss behind this operation,” Dax said. “It’s one of his recruits.”

Lena frowned. “Morris?”

Dax’s lips thinned. “The informant worked for Quasar Corp. I don’t know how he managed to find his way to Morris, but he’d run across something that scared the hell out of him. Fortunately, as scared as he was, his conscience just wouldn’t allow him to destroy it and forget it, so he started asking some really dangerous questions. When he learned about Morris’ ties to the rebel army, he went to see him. He didn’t particularly trust Morris either, though, and he didn’t take the memo with him when he went, wouldn’t even tell Morris what it was all about--only that it was something that was tied to the rumors about clones.

“That’s why Morris was so upset when he found out you’d been to Quasar Corp, because the minute the guy contacted him, Morris contacted me to nose around and see what I could find out about the informant. And it didn’t take long to find out where he

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worked.”

Lena frowned. “You mean the guy was in on it?”

Nigel shook his head. “I don’t think so. He was just a bookkeeper. I think the memo got mixed in with some of the work he was sent to pick up. An accident that ended up costing him his life--but it probably would’ve when they discovered the memo was missing and tracked it back to him whether he’d done anything or not.”

“Why didn’t they just retrieve it
then
?”

“Because the guy had led them to Morris, and it didn’t take them long to connect the dots between Morris and the leader of the rebels--Dax.”

Lena sent Dax a startled glance.

“Claxton, the head of Quasar Corp, probably decided that it would look a lot better to go to the big boss with the information that he’d tracked down the headquarters of the rebels and destroyed it instead of having to tell him that he’d gotten sloppy and let dangerous information out.”

“That still doesn’t mean that this memo is the one the guy found.”

“No. There is a way to be sure though,” Dax said.

Lena and Nigel both turned to stare at him. “How?”

“We have a pretty good idea of which gov officials have been replaced. If we can connect any of the known clones with Quasar Corp and the big boss, then we can be pretty damned sure we’re on the right track. You said yourself that Cameron Mitchell was probably our guy. And he sure as hell fits the profile. He doesn’t owe his office to elections. His branch of the gov is more secretive than the CIA, and as heavily protected as the national treasury. From where I’m sitting it seems to me that he has more power and more money at his disposal than anyone else in the gov … probably in the world.”

“Yes, but … I was just guessing. I don’t know anything for sure. We couldn’t just kill the man because we think he might be the one. And he doesn’t control the money. He has nothing to do with where it goes after it’s collected.”

“Unless he’s replaced everybody that might call him to account. And the memo certainly seems to indicate that.”

Nigel stroked his chin thoughtfully. “We’ll have to move fast. The big boss is bound to hear about all of this before much longer.”

“As far as Claxton knows, he wiped out the rebel base--and the leak. He knows by now that the ships he sent to attack the base were destroyed, but he doesn’t know, yet, that the base had been evacuated before hand. That’ll buy us some time to hack into the security system at base beta and see what we can see about the head of the IRS.”