Banished Worlds (9 page)

I walked into my quarters to find Jenkins, Bikes, Bender, and Roberts. “Get out,” I ordered. Maybe it was the metal pipe over my shoulder, or the tone of my voice, I could not tell, but they all jumped to their feet and approached me. As they reached me at the door, I barred it with the pipe. “Did you find my other men in red section?”

“Yes, sir, we have your men Nelson, Price, and Damian. They are safe and locked up in a parts storage area, so they can be left alone to rest,” Bender informed me.

I moved the pipe out of the door’s path. “The three of you return here in one hour and bring them with you,” I ordered.

“Three hours.” Roberts countermanded my order.

“Three hours.” I left the group and headed further into the room. I heard Roberts close the door and whisper to the group as she did.

She came up beside me, stood there, and stared at my battered face. “What happened, you’ve been there over a day?” She reached for the pipe, but I was reluctant to release the last weapon I had. She touched my fingers and lifted them off the pipe which she then placed on the nearby table.

I stood there not wanting to move, or think. I exhaled, then drew in a slow deep breath. “I need a shower and fresh clothes. Can you find me some fresh clothes?”

“Sure, let’s get you in the shower first.” She walked with me to the shower and helped me out of my clothes.

“My god!” She gasped at the welts and bruises that covered my body.

I climbed into the shower.

“Would you like me in there?” Roberts asked and pointed at her ear.

“No, it doesn’t matter about the water to cover our conversations. Highman is an ape, a caveman without a clue about modern spyware. He doesn’t have this place bugged.”

She nodded. “We have four days to find Jane Garrett and escape. We still don’t have any clue as to her whereabouts other than the off schedule drop.”

“I know and I’ve worn out my welcome. The next time Highman sees me, he’ll kill me on sight.” I rubbed at the sore muscles in my shoulders; first one shoulder, then the other, and winced at the pain. But everywhere hurt, so I focused on washing, not massaging the pain. I noticed Roberts watching me, and for the first time in a very long time I cared what someone thought of me. I cared and I was damaged and weak. I had to get her mind off of my injuries. “Can we get off world without her if we have to?”

“The way it works …” Roberts started.

I raised my hand. “Don’t tell me. Don’t tell anyone.” I stepped closer. “Does Price know? Did you tell him?”

“Nelson knows, but Price no. And Nelson doesn’t know everything, just the very basics.”

“Keep it that way. Let him think he knows it all, but keep him out of the loop from this point on.” I reached to the shower curtain. “I need a couple of minutes, stay in here though.” I closed the curtain, bent over my knees, and vomited, which revealed a small amount of blood with the rest of the bile. I knew this was not good, but I did not want Roberts to know. I had been beaten up several times in only a few days. Something had to give, and in this case it would appear to be me. I stayed bent over with my hands on my knees, head forward, and under the spray of water. I just stood there for a few minutes, trying not to think about the world, my current problems, or how hurt I might be. I spit more blood into the stream of water running down the drain.

“Harry, are you okay, tell me you’re okay?”

I turned off the water and started to reach for the curtain, but Roberts opened it first.

She handed me a towel. “What are we going to do?”

I toweled off and explained.

***

“Settle down, everybody calm yourselves.”

At the table, there was Bender, Jenkins, Bikes, Nelson, Price, and the only guard of our rescue team we could find. Nelson looked better than I did, but not by much. I heard from Roberts that the first night here, Nelson had tried to sneak around looking for the team, and the area guards beat the hell out of him.

Price was just the skinny timid type that needed someone bigger and stronger to protect him. In red section, he did not have that. He had been picked on, pushed around, and bullied.

The guard, Daiman, was the one on the ship that had wanted to kill me; the one Roberts had promised to help. He still did not look happy to see me, especially with me in charge. I sat at the head of the table. Roberts stood behind my chair.

“So you’re going to leave,” Bikes said.

“Yes, Bikes, you, me, and Little Boss. Everyone here plus one more that we have to go find,” I told him. “My team members are agents, and we have a priority code to collect this girl and extract her. We can’t do that without help from all of you. I am authorized to use whoever I need to complete this task. All who help will be extracted with us.”

“Of course, all who help us will be pardoned by the President,” Nelson added. “Free to return to the network if you help us.”

“Free to return to the network,” Jenkins said. He looked at me. “What do you need?”

“We need a vehicle, enabling us to find the drop zone package from a couple of days ago,” Roberts told him.

“We need it now, so we can go tonight,” I added.

“We can’t tonight, the scavs have an advantage. They know the ins-and-outs of the old buildings and will see us before we get where we’re going. We can’t go until first light,” Bender informed the group.

“Scavs?” Price questioned. He did not look a lot healthier than Nelson did.

“Scavengers,” I explained. “They are people living outside the compounds. Some are in packs like animals, and they would see all of us as a tasty meal.”

“You’ve seen them?” Price asked.

“I ran across three of them. Escaping, I injured one, and his friends killed and ate him. Yeah, I’ve come across them.”

“So, at first light, you want this group to go out there, find this girl, and bring her back here. Then we’ll all get off this planet and be free men again.” Jenkins recited the plan as he understood it.

“No. We’re all going, and no one is coming back here. We all go, we find her, and we all get out. Just this group, no one else.” I reiterated my point.

“What about weapons?” Daiman asked. “Maybe something more than clubs?”

“Some of the area guards have guns, but most don’t. Big Chin had a gun, so we have that one,” Jenkins said.

“Jenkins, take Daiman around to the area guards that have guns, collect them for redistribution. If they argue about giving up their weapons, bring them here to me.” I waved them off.

Jenkins stood up.

Daiman got up more slowly. His eyes were on me.

“Problem, Daiman?” I asked and waited for a reply.

“What if I need to disarm them?” he questioned.

“Do your job, but if you start a fight out there they have the advantage, here we do. Use your best judgment.” I did not have that much confidence in his best judgment, but Jenkins would be there and he wanted off of this planet. They headed to the door and left. “Bender, can you come up with some alternatives in case those guns don’t work out?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never tried to make weapons.”

“Price, go with Bender. See what he has, and what you can come up with,” Roberts ordered. By this time everyone knew her orders were the same as mine.

I got up as they did. “Nelson, walk with me, just Nelson.” He and I moved across the room. “You okay?”

“Like you, I’ve been better,” he replied.

“I want a survey of the compound. I did not get to finish mine. Bikes knows this place, he can show you around. I need you to do this because only you and I have the experienced eye to look at the place. If we end up having to fight here, we have to know what is defensible.”

“You don’t have to fluff me, Harry, not here, just give me the order.”

“I’m not, Nelson. Roberts is a kid, talented, but a kid. Price isn’t a field agent, and Daiman, well, I just don’t know him. That leaves you and me to figure out how to defend this compound if we’re not out of here as fast as I would like.” I turned back to the others. “Bikes, take Nelson on a tour of the compound. Go everywhere, okay,” I instructed him. They left, leaving Roberts and me. I noticed her removing everything from the table.

“Come here,” she said to me. “Take off your shirt and shoes.”

“Why?”

“Just come over here,” she ordered.

I did as I was ordered and followed the next order to stretch out with belly down on the table. Mia started to knead my shoulders and arms.

She massaged my neck, went down to my feet, and worked her way back up. She leaned over close to my ear. “We have a problem,” she informed me.

“I know Mia, but I can’t do anything about it. We need everyone we have, and with Highman now gunning for me too, well, I just don’t have time for niceties like looking for the other missing agents.”

“I mean about the extraction. Your guest list is too long.”

“I can’t change that right now. I’ll deal with it then, it’s the best I can do, but keep your concerns between us.”

“Of course, but it’s still not going to be easy to deal with them.”

I closed my eyes and let Roberts work on my aching body. I could feel her strong hands and fingers dig into knotted muscles and tight tendons. “You do remember I got dragged into this problem. Lark was a civilized world you just couldn’t get off of. I didn’t expect this, a prison inside of a prison.”

“There are a lot of prisons here inside each other.” Roberts reached down to my right hand and began to flex my fingers, popping the joints, and working on the tendons to each finger.

I twisted her direction, turned over, and lay there looking up at her crystal blue eyes. “I’m sorry I’ve been hard on you and your agent friends. I want off of this banished prison world.”

Roberts studied me a minute, then bent forward and kissed me. “I want off of this banished world too. I want us off of this planet.” She kissed me again with a deeply passionate kiss. “Now turn back over, so I can get you ready to fight, just in case you have to.”

I reached up and caught her throat. I held her, but did not apply pressure. “Is that what this kiss is about? Do you think you have to do that, or this, for me to protect you until we escape?”

Roberts started to push my hand off of her throat and I did not let up. She leaned close to my face. “Before this mission, my views of you were very different than they are now. I’ve read your file. I talked to Nelson, who you might want to know lies about you.”

“So are your pretty blues eyes lying to me now?” I asked with my fingers resting on the pulse at her throat. There was no reaction to the question.

“I know who I can trust and who I can’t. I hope you get to that point too.”

I still held her throat and pushed her up, as I moved to a sitting position. “What are you basing your trust of me on?”

Roberts touched my ribs. “On this, you took a hell of a beating, and Highman didn’t storm in here with his more heavily armed guards and grab the rest of us. You didn’t talk even to save yourself. That is how I know I can trust you.”

I released her throat. “So does that mean you trust Nelson? He got beat up also.”

“Not the same. The guards just beat him up, no one questioned him.” Roberts put her hand against my chest. “Now lay down, so I can help you.”

I nodded and stretched back out on the table, belly up this time, as Mia Roberts worked on my aches and pains.

***

We found out that not as many of the area guards had usable guns. More accurately, the compound population thought the available weapons were operational. These guns were more for show than for actual force. All of the weapons were hand-me-down guns from the days before the planet had been a commissioned prison world. All of the weapons were hundreds of years old and abused.

Nine guns were collected in total. One of the issues with the working guns proved to be ammunition. All of it was as old as the guns. Old, unfired rounds were as risky for the person shooting the weapon, as it was for the person getting shot at. Then there was the parts problem. Over the years, parts broke, and there were no new parts available. Guns also broke, and there were fewer and fewer people that knew how to fix them, even to piece them together correctly.

I had Nelson, Daiman, and Roberts strip all the guns apart and make us usable weapons. Nine turned into two usable guns and one hopeful weapon.

Mia’s gun from Big Chin proved to be the best kept one. It had ten rounds available, plus six in the gun. For the other pieces, we also had ammunition issues. The second revolver had no ammunition; it was hopeful that we might trip across someone from one of Bender’s sources. We had the two-clip feed pistols that seemed mostly functional, each of which had one clip in the gun and one spare removed from the non-functional weapons.

Bender and Price proved more useful assembling two make-shift but fully functional flamethrowers; these two worked well together. From what Roberts said, Price was a genius at creating things, everything from mechanical devices to high end electronics. If it worked out that we got stuck on this planet, I would be keeping Roberts and Price with me no matter who else survived.