Ghosts of Empire (Book 4 of The Empire of Bones Saga) (24 page)

To his credit, the man didn’t look intimidated. “Yes, ma’am. They won’t get away with this treachery. We’ll make them pay for what they did to Coordinator West.”

“I want a full report as soon as you have the island secure. Take it, no matter the cost.”

“I’ll contact you as soon as we’re done, Deputy Coordinator.”

Abigail terminated the call. At least
he
sounded like he might get his task accomplished. She wanted that island under their control before she executed Project Damocles. It would be best to keep these fake Fleet people from being able to react.

The timer at the corner of her implant display told her she had less than twelve hours to go.

* * * * *

“If you’ll step into the warehouse, I think I can explain everything,” Sean said.

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” the man snarled at Sean. “You tell me why my cargo is on the dock and where my lifts are right goddamn now.”

“Okay. We hijacked them.”

The man stared at Sean for a moment and then grew even redder. “You son of a bitch, stop trying to piss me off. Tell me where they really are.”

Sean produced his stunner and jabbed it into the man’s gut. “I just did. Now get inside the damned warehouse before I do something we’ll both regret.”

For a few seconds, Sean thought the man was going to resist. “Seriously? You’ll never get away with this. And why the hell even bother? Lifts aren’t that valuable. Hell, you left the expensive cargo on the dock. You are the
dumbest
criminal ever.”

A few more pokes of the pistol got the man started into the warehouse. Sean kept him under control while his men surrounded them to keep anyone from seeing what was really going on.

“That’s because I’m not a criminal. You’ll get the lifts back. Cooperate and no one gets hurt.”

They stuffed him in the storage room with the other workers and headed back out front.

“Heads up,” one of the marines said. “We have company.”

An air car had landed on the dock and a dozen camp guards climbed out. Some went toward the remaining lifts and others trotted toward the warehouse. All of them held flechette rifles. They looked pissed.

Three of the men came toward Sean and his team. The one in front was obviously in charge.

“You there,” the man said. “I need everyone gathered on the dock. This port is closed. No lifts in or out.”

“The hell you say,” Sean snarled, giving his best impression of the man they’d just locked up. In the warehouse where the guards were going. The clock was ticking. They had to get out of here right now or they’d never make it.

The two men flanking the guard leader half-raised their rifles in a show of intimidation. Their leader poked his finger in Sean’s chest. “The hell I say. We’re looking for some escaped prisoners that killed two guards. Friends of mine. Give me any crap and I’ll have my boys show you what a rifle butt feels like on that thick skull of yours.”

Sean raised his hands a little. “Hey, I don’t know nothing about any prisoners. We’re just trying to make a living here.”

“You can make a living when we’re done. Go over to the right side of the dock and wait for us to get everyone out of the warehouse.”

Other air cars were delivering guards to the rest of the docks. The other guards were in the warehouse now, so it wouldn’t be very long at all before they wondered where everyone was. The men dispatched to the lifts were out of sight. If Sean and his men were going to escape, now was the time.

He pulled his stunner from his coveralls and shot the leader. The man went down without a peep.

The corporal followed his lead and shot one of the remaining guards as the man was raising his rifle.

Sean had the last man. The pistol crackled as soon as he pulled the trigger again and the smell of fried circuitry filled the air. And the man got his rifle up, obviously not stunned.

One of the other marines tackled the guard from the side, which didn’t stop him from pulling the trigger, but it saved Sean’s life. The burst went high and tore the siding on the warehouse.

Every head on the docks turned toward them as the marine smashed the man in the face three times, knocking him out. Every guard in sight began heading in their general direction at a run.

Time to get the hell out of there.

“Grab the rifles and spare magazines. Come on!”

They piled into the guards’ air car as quickly as they could. One of the marines fired at the warehouse when some of the guards inside came running out. He shot over their heads and they threw themselves flat.

Sean had the air car up and speeding over the lifts as the men on them came out. Guards further up the docks fired on them, but nothing connected. He took them out over the water and gunned the air car toward the city.

“They’re in pursuit,” one of the marines said. “Three…no, four air cars on our six.”

“Keep them back and hang on.”

Sean took the air car into a sharp turn and began making it a more difficult target. That would make the marines’ aim shaky at best, but it beat getting a flechette through the head. He called out his maneuvers before he executed them, trying to give the shooters as much of an edge as he could.

Their whooping told him they’d hit something, but he couldn’t spare the attention to look back. The city was coming up fast and he wasn’t planning to slow down. They’d need time to get lost in the general population and he’d do whatever it took to give it to them.

The windscreen shattered. He flinched in spite of himself and hunched lower. Apparently, the bad guys had a few good shooters of their own. He just prayed that they’d make it in one piece.

The air car screamed over the docks, sending the people below diving for safety. He cut over the road between buildings and found himself going the wrong way down a stream of traffic. The air car beeped a warning that no doubt meant something to people trained in its use.

Sean resisted the urge to pull up and dove for ground level. In the relative safety below traffic, he pushed his luck, sped across an intersection, and raced a few feet over the pedestrian’s heads.

“How are we doing back there?” he asked over his shoulder.

“We took out one of the air cars over the bay, sir. I’m not sure what happened to the second one, but we only have two behind us now. It’s way too crowded with civilians for us to take any shots at them. You think you can lose them?”

“That’s the plan. Hold on, I’m about to do something my driving instructor would fail me for.”

“Like he’d give you a passing grade right now?”

Sean laughed. “Here we go!”

He took the air car around a corner at what he’d conservatively call insane speed. He banked it and pulled back on the controls.

The air car missed the far building by what felt like centimeters, racing along perpendicular to the ground with cars seemingly right over his head. Under other circumstances, he’d have been amazed at the sheer number of terrified faces that screamed past them. Literally screamed.

A glance back revealed that one of the air cars pursuing them hadn’t made the turn. Thankfully, it hadn’t injured any pedestrians. There was no sign of the other one, so he guessed it had gone straight.

“I’m going to find a spot to drop you,” he shouted as he ducked back under traffic. “The security forces will be along pretty quickly and we don’t want get into a fight with them. Get ready to bail out. We’ll meet at the safe house.”

They’d rented a place in one of the more run down suburbs to use as a base of operations. It had their vehicles and a cache of weapons that would give the security forces even more of a heart attack. Once they shook all their pursuers, they could plan the next step toward finding their missing people.

Pedestrians scattered as he came in for a fast landing at a small plaza. The marines piled out, separated into three groups, and headed off to get lost in the crowd.

Sean started to join them, but an air car full of guards found him again. Rather than let them get out and start chasing his men, Sean pulled his own vehicle back into the air. This time, with the traffic flow.

The guards opened fire on him, making him curse. Every flechette went somewhere. Those bastards would kill someone.

He headed back toward the waterfront. With him above traffic, perhaps they wouldn’t hit any noncombatants.

Of course, that meant they had a much better chance of hitting him. With the number of shots the air car took as he pulled around the corner, he hoped they didn’t hit anything important.

Like the grav drives.

Warning lights flashed on the dash. Not the drives, but some of the automated controls. The car wanted to set down, but he found the override switch. He needed to get out while he could, but he wasn’t going to allow his vehicle to crash into anyone. Ahead, he could see the water of the bay.

Time to make a flashy and dangerous exit.

He savagely jerked the air car into an almost vertical climb and aimed for a large building’s roof. It was almost on the waterfront, so the view must be spectacular from the top floors. He had to time this just right or he was going to have a very exciting drop to the plascrete hundreds of meters below.

That, of course, opened him up for even more hits and the air car began to make some terrifying shimmies as it flew. One of the grav drives was out of alignment. He needed it to stay working for just one more minute.

Sean threw himself out of the air car and hit the roof at what felt like a hundred kilometers an hour. He rolled uncontrollably and slammed into something that stopped him dead in his tracks. A loud “crack” and intense pain told him he’d broken his left arm below the elbow, and his knee on that side was on fire.

He lurched to his feet just as the guard’s air car howled overhead in pursuit of his former ride. They didn’t even look down. Of course not. Only a complete mental defective would jump out of a speeding air car onto a roof.

The range was opening up, but he pulled his flechette pistol and shot at them. In one of the action vids, he’d have brought them down with his coolly aimed flechettes.

As far as he could tell, they never even realized he’d been firing at them.

His air car slammed into the bay, thankfully far away from any of the small craft on the surface. The guards began circling around it, obviously looking for the bodies of the idiots crazy enough to try those stunts.

The security forces chose that moment to show up. The guards found themselves under the guns of what looked like some seriously pissed security forces.

Satisfied that they wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while, Sean looked for a way off the roof. With his luck, they’d have locked the door.

They had. Thankfully, his pistol made short work of the locking mechanism.

He started painfully down the stairs. He needed to get out of the area before more members of the security forces showed up. Once clear, he could make his way to the suburb via cab and walk to the safe house. It’d be dark by the time he got there, but after all the excitement, a nice walk sounded relaxing.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Olivia left Admiral Mertz and Princess Kelsey in Captain Black’s capable hands. She had to organize the resistance against Abigail’s coup. Aaron would see the admiral safely toward the island and William would help Princess Kelsey find out where the prisoners were.

That is, if Olivia didn’t get the information when she got her hands on Abigail.

The grav train saw her back to the diner in short order and she changed into clothes from the stash below the freezer. Now she’d pass as a working woman, so long as no one looked closely at her hands. Her pampered digits would never pass muster.

Two of the facility guards came with her, both women. A group stood out less than a single person. They borrowed one of the beat up vehicles in the lot from one of the cooks. It would raise no eyebrows.

While one of the guards drove them toward the city, Olivia got on the com to one of her people through a backup channel. No video, but she had a passphrase that let him know it was her and that she wasn’t under duress.

“What’s the status?” she asked.

“About two-thirds of our allies escaped. Government forces have been on lockdown since they shot your air car. They supposedly have footage of a Fleet pinnace blowing it up. Emotions are running high. Deputy Coordinator King is scheduled to give a live address in about an hour.”

“Not supposedly. They really have a pinnace stashed away somewhere. That means they’ve been playing some other long-term game that we haven’t figured out yet. What about our security teams?”

“We have everyone on alert. Once you decide where we should strike, we can move. We don’t have the same number of bodies as the security forces, though. We’ll need to be choosy.”

“Be ready for my call.”

She disconnected and considered her options. A straight up fight would kill a lot of good people on both sides. She was the damned coordinator. Surely, she could turn this on its head and put Abigail on the run.

After a minute, the bare bones of a plan formed. She smiled. It would be perfect, if she could pull it off. And since Abigail thought she was dead, Olivia had a better than even chance of making it work.

If it failed, well, she wasn’t any worse off than she was now.

Olivia gave the guard driving the air car her instructions and called one of the cells to meet her inside the city.

About fifteen minutes before Abigail was scheduled to speak, they pulled up in front of a building in the lower business district. Half a dozen men and women loitered on the walk waiting for her. One stood ready in what looked like his son’s tricked out air racer.

The man smiled sheepishly when she raised an eyebrow. “It’s all I could get on short notice.”

“It’ll do fine if we need a speedy getaway,” she assured him. “Wait here and be ready to leave quickly. Once this goes down, we need to be somewhere else fast.”

She turned to the women from the research facility. “Head a few blocks to the south and wait. If I don’t call in half an hour, head back home.”