Hostage To The Stars: A Sectors SF Romance (14 page)

The cherindor phantom whirled as he struggled to his feet, Sara helpless and moaning in his arms.
Now we go.
The beast went to the far door and stood on its hind legs, front paws braced against the portal. Flames spurted in all directions, obliterating the door, only a black smoking mess remaining. Johnny jumped the smoldering threshold and ran down the corridor he found, taking the left hand fork from force of habit. The smell of the Mawreg increased in intensity, the reek clogging his throat, but the stench came from behind, not ahead. The cherindor ghost ran at his heels.

A wave of the alien stench assaulted him and he nearly dropped Sara. A bolt of energy scored the wall at the level his head had been a moment prior as the enemy shot to kill. He wished for his blasters. All he could do was keep running, trying to get to safety.

Tlazomiccuhtli.

The voice in his head sounded enraged, more of a growl than a word. He turned his head as the cherindor pivoted on its hind paws, wheeling and bounding in the direction they’d just come. At the far end of the corridor, he caught a glimpse of several Mawreg oozing around the corner, and had to close his eyes for a moment against the sheer wrongness of the alien. With no idea what the cherindor might do, he kept the best pace he could manage, praying this corridor led away from immediate danger.

A tremendous explosion sent him sprawling, Sara under him, and flames shot above his head, singeing his hair, followed immediately by waves of thick, choking black smoke. “Can you crawl?” he said to her.

“Yes.” She got to her hands and knees and moved off.

The sound and shock wave of a second explosion, less powerful, reverberated in the corridor. Whatever offense the cherindor had mounted against what it perceived as the ancient enemy of its kind, had been extremely effective. And probably not repeatable. He tried thinking to the beast but got no answer. He was on his own now.

“Which way?” Sara asked, voice hoarse from the smoke and desperation.

The corridor branched ahead of them, with no indication what might lie in either direction.

Lords of Space grant he chose correctly. “Left.”

Able to rise to his feet now, he grabbed Sara by the elbow and ran. Closed portals lined both sides of the hall and frustration ate at his nerves, not knowing what lay behind the doors. Weapons, more prisoners, exits or disaster?

Sara slowed, plastering herself to the side of the corridor. She pointed ahead, where several doors stood open. Putting a finger to his lips and pressing her to remain motionless, he crept forward until he could peek cautiously into the chamber and assess the danger. He saw at a glance the room was empty. An awkwardly designed workstation sat in the center, and video and data were streaming in thin air in several spots around the room. Drawn by the subjects of the video, he took a step into the chamber and stopped, anger and disgust overcoming him.

He heard Sara behind him and moved to prevent her from seeing what he was watching but too late. She gasped, bending over, retching.

The video documented Mawreg experiments, mostly on Farduccir tribespeople, but also a few humans.

“What are they doing?” she asked, voice shaky, keeping her head averted.

“No one knows. The Mawreg are unfathomable to us. I should capture this data,” he said. He flipped a mental switch and concentrated on the data streams rather than the horrific visuals.

“Capture the data?” She checked the hall and paced to his side, tugging at his elbow. “We’ve got to keep running.”

“I have a memory upgrade implant,” he said, ignoring the building headache as data streamed into his head. “For occasions like this.”

“You can’t possibly capture it all.” Tears streaming down her face, she shoved and pushed. “You’ve got enough, we have to go.”

“If you had any idea how many good operators died on missions over the years, to retrieve a fraction of this kind of data, you wouldn’t stop me.” He shook her off as if she was nothing more than a small kitten, and focused on the displays wide eyed.

Sara prowled the room, anxiety making it difficult to breathe. She glanced at Johnny but he remained glassy eyed and locked on the data. How much could he take in without frying his brain? She’d heard rumors of the specialized memory implants but nothing encouraging. She stopped, drawn to a holographic display rotating in one corner. A web of colored lines and boxes, part of it seemed familiar to her. Excitement making her heart pound, she thought she recognized the room they’d been held in and the pattern of corridors she’d fled through. With her finger, she traced the line representing the hall she presently stood in, and memorized a set of twists and turns leading to the surface, or at least outside the confines of the construction.
 

She had a damn good memory, not up to the standard of Johnny’s military grade implants but enough. Taking a deep breath, she committed as much of the diagram to memory as she could and then walked over to deal with Johnny.

Blood dripped from his left ear in a steady stream and his eyes bulged. He swayed on his feet.

Alarmed, she grabbed his arm and made another desperate effort to tug him away from the data. “Snap out of it, soldier, you’ve done enough, we’ve got to go.”

He ignored her.

Sara took a deep breath, made a fist and socked him in the jaw with a roundhouse punch, putting all the power of her body behind it. She was afraid she’d broken her hand, the pain was so bad, but Johnny staggered and fell. With her good hand, she got a grip on his sleeve. “I know how to get out of here, come on.”

He focused on her and rose to his feet, rubbing his jaw.

Takin his silence for assent, she grabbed his hand and moved cautiously into the corridor, checking first to be sure it remained empty. The ghost creature did a number on the facility when it blew itself up but they couldn’t count on infinite time to escape. Together they ran to the first branch she’d seen on the diagram. She drew Johnny into the right hand fork and sprinted. “Not too far now, a door to the outside.”

Sara counted as she ran and almost overshot the portal she was aiming for. She couldn’t see any controls or buttons. “How do we open this?”

Johnny touched one of the many symbols incised into the door itself, which obligingly slid open. “Trick we learned on a previous mission.”

She smelled the fresh air. “Come on, let’s go.”

A strange noise began, grating on the ears, emanating from everywhere as it ululated from loud to earsplitting

“Alarm,” he said. Grabbing her good hand he ran through the open door and they sprinted into the Farduccir foothills.

“Do you know where we are?” she asked in between gasps for air.

“Yes, close to one of our own bolt hole facilities. We get inside there, we can seal it off and the Mawreg won’t be able to get at us. If the systems are activated or can be booted up.” He looked her over for a moment. “Are you ok?”

“My hand hurts where I hit you. I think I might have broken something.”

He’d have to deal with the injured hand later. Escape was the priority right now. “Can you run?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll check your knuckles later. Not much I can do for a broken hand in the field.”

“No worries, I understand.” She nodded. “Let’s just get going.”

They ran as long and a far as they could, stopping several times while major quakes shook the ground beneath them. A pillar of light and smoke rose in the sky behind them at one point. As far as Sara could tell, there was no pursuit.

“Do you think maybe we destroyed their base?” she asked during one all too brief rest stop.

He shook his head. “Part of it maybe. Mawreg facilities tend to be huge so damage was probably localized. I hope they think we died in the blast.”

“Yeah, I saw how extensive the place was, when I read the diagram displayed in the room where you were capturing data. There were hundreds of levels below the one we were on.”

He gave her a strange look. “You found a layout of their base?”

“How did you think I knew a way to get us out of there? “

“I was dazed from the memory download, not thinking too clearly,” he admitted. Hands on his hips, he stared at her. “You seemed pretty confident so I followed your lead. Do you remember it in detail?”

“Yes. I figured you didn’t have to be the only person acquiring data.”

He laughed and clapped her gently on the shoulder. “Well done. Command will salivate over a schematic of the base. Not too much further now and we can relax for the first time in a long time.”

She was dubious about any installation staying viable for fifteen years after abandonment. Sure, parts of Ancient Observer bases stayed powered and viable for a million years—she ‘d seen the reality for herself, having studied the mysteries of such an outpost — but the ancients controlled mysteries of science and technology so far advanced from anything humans had as to be magical. Unfortunately the Sectors tech wasn’t designed and built by AO.

He led her at a tangent into the foothills and then climbing through brush clinging to steep inclines again. They edged along a crumbling narrow ledge over a gorge so deep she wanted to shut her eyes and refuse to move another step but Johnny patiently coaxed her and praised her into doing what he wanted.

“I hate you,” she said at one point when the anxiety became overwhelming, eyes shut against the terrifying drop. “You move like a damn mountain goat. Have you no fear of heights?”

“No,” he answered in a voice so cheerful her anger ratcheted even higher. “Just a tiny bit farther, Sara, and then I promise, we’ll be safe where no one can find us, much less get at us. You have to take maybe twenty more steps on the path.”

“I’m counting,” she said. “And I’m not going a single step more than the twenty you promised me.”

He laughed. “I take bigger steps than you do, so it might be a few more.”

Teasing, keeping his grip on her hand, he got her to shuffle to the spot he designated, where the path, which was too grandiose a name for the track she was following at his insistence, ended at a dead end wall of stone.

“Don’t tell me we took a wrong turn?” she said, sinking to her knees and breathing hard, cradling her aching hand in her lap. “And here I thought you were infallible, soldier. At least give me a break before we have to retrace our steps over the crumbling excuse for a ledge.”

“Watch the magic happen.” With a mischievous expression, Johnny rested his open right hand on a piece of the rock identical to every other piece of the slab. Under his palm there was a green glow and a number pad appeared in lights to his right. Reaching over, he tapped in a code. The lights winked out and the rock slid to one side, vanishing into the mountain as if it had never been there. A long corridor beckoned, lights coming to life.

“Allow me to welcome you to Special Forces outpost 12,” he said, giving her a bow. “All the comforts of home. Well, selected amenities. Ladies first.”

She gave him a giddy hug and stepped into the corridor. Johnny was right on her heels and the portal slid shut immediately behind him.

“Straight ahead,” he said. “There’ll be another coded entry and then we’re inside the outpost.”

Sure enough, five minutes later she was walking into a brightly lit chamber reminding her of a conference room or a masculine-themed living room, with chairs and a trideo caster, AI panels, a table.
 

“As if whoever owns this recently walked out,” she said, gazing at her surroundings wide-eyed.

“Fifteen years ago or more.” He went into a small kitchen off the main room. “Hungry? The squad left odds and ends of rations.”

“Sure, berries and energy bars have lost their appeal for me.” She joined him.

Grinning, he held up a packet of freeze dried meat. “How about a taste of home? My home.”

She took it, flipping it over to read the label. “Varone Terran Descent Beef, Azrigone’s Finest.” She read. “Special Forces eats well, don’t you?” As he continued to grin at her, she checked the label once more and did a double take. “Lords of Space, your Mike is one of
those
Varones? I never made the connection when you talked about him.”

He took the package. “Yup, the family outfit all right. Let me cook this and we’ll have fine dining. It’s a good omen, don’t you think? Can you check in the pantry and see what else there might be?”

She wandered into the cupboard area he indicated. A lot of the shelves were empty but at the rear she found a stack of sealed containers boasting vegetables, most of which were alien to her, and brought those to him.

“Have a seat and watch the magic happen.” He’d washed his hands and was fussing with an instacooker, to prepare the beef. “One thing all of us in the extended family know how to do is cook beef to perfection. Even with the limited facilities here.”

She dragged one of the stools to the edge of the kitchen and sat. “Why would the soldiers leave all this? I’m grateful but it seems wasteful.”

Taking the meat from the cooker, he was adding spices he’d apparently found. “Withdrawal from a planet is a chancy thing. Depends how much time Command allows and the priorities set for logistics. The last people to use this outpost may not have known they wouldn’t be spending any more time here. Or they may not have made it back from their last mission.”