Kaitlyn O'Connor (18 page)

* * * *

Kael knew that they had run out of time the moment Lecur closed their cell door and locked it. It was not the locking of the door in itself. He had heard other doors clang shut and the scrape of a key being turned and knew that, for some reason, Lecur had decided to lock down the gladiator quarters.

His first thought was that Lecur had realized that they had destroyed the collars of more than half of the slaves and he sent Dakaar and Balen a look that cautioned them to wait until they knew for certain what the situation was.

It was not until he saw the smug on Lecur
‟
s face that he began to have an inkling of what he was really up.

And the discovery that not all of the gladiators had been confined.

He still could not fully accept that Lecur had made good on his threat, however, until Lau-ren began to scream and he saw gladiators racing down the corridor toward her cell.

Her first shrill scream was all it took to break his determination to hold and wait for the best time to implement their plan. Breaking out of his cell was not any part of the plan, but the scream that shot adrenaline pumping through his blood and sent a cold wave over his flesh wiped the plan from his mind instantly.

Surging to his feet, he sucked in a lungful of air and uttered a roar to release the most powerful sound waves that he was capable of. Dakaar and Balenhad leapt up, as well, and blasted the door as he had. The bars vibrated. The walls holding the door began to crumble and abruptly the entire door, broken at its weakest point, shot out of the wall and slammed into the wall on the other side of the corridor. Kael, Dakaar, and Balen surged toward the opening they had made and out before the bars could fall. A veritable wall of gladiators, they discovered, were clogging the corridor between them and Lau-ren
‟
s cell.

The red haze of battle instantly closed over Kael
‟
s mind. Uttering a bellow of rage, he seized the nearest, lifted him over his head and threw him. Without waiting to see where he landed, he seized the next, plowing a path right down the middle of the men that stood between him and the one he meant to tear limb from limb.

His battle cries echoed throughout the basement, uttered by nearly a dozen throats as the Hirachi burst from their cells and clashed with the other gladiators. The walls, the ceiling, and the floor shook from the bellows and from the bodies slamming into them. Dust rained from the ceiling and the walls as the cheap plaster shattered and crumbled. The men who could, scattered.

81

Those who were trapped, fought and died where they stood.

Kael was climbing over bodies by the time he reached the open door of Lau-ren
‟
s cell. He did not see Lau-ren, but he saw the three men pinning her down. The bellow uttered then carried the burn of microwaves. They screamed and fell away from her as their flesh began to burn, rolling around on the floor. He lifted the first he came to and hurled him toward the far wall, narrowly missing Lecur, who was plastered against it in terror, his bulbous eyes nearly bulging from their sockets.

Kael hesitated for the first time, torn between the need to see about Lau-ren and the desire to pound his fists into Lecur until there was nothing left but bloody pulp. Discovering Dakaar and Balen had surged into the room behind him, he turned away from Lecur and went to Lau-ren.

She seemed dazed, but when she saw him, she burst into tears and reached for him. When he
‟
d gathered her close against his chest and risen, he turned to survey the threat and discovered there was no opposition to his escape. Dakaar was pounding on Lecur and Balen had seized one of the men who
‟
d attacked Lau-ren and was slamming him against the wall, over and over, even though Kael could see the man was either unconscious or dead.

“Weapons!” he bellowed.

A huge piece of the ceiling dropped and slammed against the floor at his yell, drawing his attention, finally, to the building around them. “Out! Now! The building is collapsing!” Without waiting to see if they
‟
d heard the shouted warning, he leapt toward the door of Lau-ren
‟
s cell and moved as fast as he could toward the exit. The corridor was so littered with bodies of dead and injured and unconscious that he could barely find a solid place to plant his feet and he finally merely bounded from body to body until he landed on the floor beyond them.

Gladiators were fleeing up the stairs when he reached them, among them the other Hirachi.

He joined them, pushing his way through the throng until he reached the upper floor and then racing down the corridor.

There was a crowd gathered outside Lecur
‟
s house and more men piling out of the nearest buildings armed with laser pistols and rifles. Assessing the threat, Kael shifted Lau-ren across one shoulder and bellowed for a weapon. Dakaar and Balen, he discovered, were close behind him. Dakaar tossed him his
kinsu
. Carrying their gladiatorial shields, Dakaar and Balen, armed with their weapons of choice, the
bolo
and the
plue
, raced to catch up. “Guard Lau-ren! We
‟
ll take point.”

Ordinarily, the shields would
‟
ve been completely ineffectual against the lasers, but the men carrying them had been forced to use the inhibitors to prevent damage to the outer walls of the space station. Some of the blasts still managed to pierce the shields, but far more struck them and deflected and there were no inhibitors on the lung power of the Hirachi. The moment they realized they were completely outnumbered, they began whittling down the opposition by sonic blasts that shattered windows and walls and lifted men clean off their feet and pitched them away as if they were nothing more than paper dolls.

The gladiators who
‟
d escaped had formed a wedge they were driving steadily along the thoroughfare toward the ships at dock. They
‟
d had to fight every step of the way, however, and Kael had begun to think they would be overwhelmed by sheer numbers when an alarm went up.

One man screamed and then another until there were dozens shouting the warning. “The dome
‟
s collapsing!”

Men broke off fighting and whirled to run. The gladiators cut them down and raced over them, unimpeded finally, but with the certain knowledge that they were going to be trapped in 82

the collapsing space station if they didn
‟
t get into one of the crafts quickly.

Kael discarded any notion of choosing among them, racing toward the closest. Even as his foot settled on the gangplank of the first he came to, however, he spied the trader two vessels over fighting his way up his own gangplank. “That one!” he bellowed, leaping off the gangplank and battling his way through the mindless mob racing to get to safety.

The trader had made it inside and was already trying to retract the gangplank when they reached it. It moved sluggishly, weighed down by those still standing on it. Gathering himself, Kael leapt up onto the gangplank and raced toward the door that was closing, shoving his sword into the swiftly closing aperture. Dakaar and Balen arrived as he was struggling to get leverage to pry the door open again. Grasping the edge, they began prying at the door, straining every muscle in their efforts to pull it wider.

The trader began screaming obscenities at them in a half a dozen tongues. “You
‟
ll break it and breach the hull, you stupid bastards!”

“Open it!” Kael bellowed.

Unfortunately, he was still caught in the grips of battle fever. The sonar blast he projected picked the trader up and sent him flying across the bay and slammed him into the wall. He slid down it and lay unmoving on the floor.

“Fuck!” Kael bellowed.

“Let me down!” Loren screamed. “I can get in and open it.”

Kael hesitated as it flickered through his mind that she might well seize the opportunity to rid herself of them permanently, but he only hesitated a moment. Grasping her waist, he hauled her from his shoulder and settled her on her feet. She sent him a look he could not quite interpret as she wedged herself into the narrow opening and then she disappeared. “Give me a second!”

“We only have one!” Dakaar bellowed. “The top of the station is cracking!”

Realizing Dakaar had spoken in their own tongue, Kael was about to repeat his warning in Unduleze when the door began to open wider. He charged inside the moment it was wide enough. Dakaar and Balen leapt in behind him and the remainder of the Hirachi poured in behind them, carrying Ka-ren and Shara. Kael hesitated when he saw three of the other gladiators struggling up the plank and then held the door for them.

“I close!” he told Lau-ren. “Go! Make de machine go!”

Nodding jerkily, she glanced around the bay. “Oh god! I don
‟
t even know where the damned control room is!”

Spying the trader, she raced to him and dropped to her knees. “The control room! Where is it!”

He opened his eyes and stared at her blankly.

She grabbed the front of his suit and jerked him upright. “Tell me, you stupid bastard or we
‟
re all dead!” she screamed at him.

His head wobbled. Blood gurgled in his throat when he tried to speak and he began coughing, spattering her with tiny droplets of blood. He lifted his arm and pointed, however.

“Lift there. Top level.”

Releasing him, she leapt to her feet and raced across the bay, nearly skidding past the lift.

Thankfully, the door opened the moment she touched the control panel and she leapt inside.

After searching the interior control frantically for a moment, she finally simply pressed the 83

button at the top. The doors closed and then promptly opened again. She gaped at the bay and then looked at the panel again. That time she pressed the bottom button. The lift shot up at a dizzying speed that almost made her knees buckle when it stopped. The door opened and she staggered off, glancing wildly around.

She was on the bridge. She knew it was, but it was filled with electronics and panic threatened to overwhelm her. She didn
‟
t know what might happen when the space station imploded, but she didn
‟
t want to be anywhere near it!

After surveying everything within sight, she began jogging through the control room, scanning and dismissing each console she passed until she spied one that had a seat in front of it.

Breathing a sigh of relief, she rushed to it and plopped down in the chair, scanning the controls and trying to focus. Panic was riding her, however, and she couldn
‟
t calm herself enough to tell if anything looked even vaguely familiar or not. Finally, in desperation, she began touching first once button and then another. The computer spoke—thankfully in Unduleze! “Bay door opening.”

“No! Close the bay door!”

“Bay door closing.”

A yawning hole of panic threatened to open up and swallow her whole. “Help me out here, damn it!”

“Does not compute.”

“Start engines!”

“Initiating start sequence.”

The relief that went through her threatened to rip the tenuous hold she had on her composure from her grasp. Loren dragged in a calming breath, fighting for her life and everyone else
‟
s by trying to force her shocked mind into functioning, searching her memory for anything at all that she might have picked up about space ships—anytime, anywhere. Finally recalling that she
‟
d watched several televised launches and they always performed a systems check, she told the computer to perform a systems check. She thought she would be eternally grateful that that had occurred to her. The computer immediately began reeling off various systems and their status.

“Artificial gravity off.”

“Wait! Activate artificial gravity!”

“Affirmative. Artificial gravity on.”

The computer went back to the systems check.

“Alert! Cargo door open.”

“Close cargo door.”

“There is a crate in the cargo door.”

Loren leapt out of her seat, whipped around the chair, and plowed into Kael. For a split second, she couldn
‟
t even figure out what she
‟
d hit. She
‟
d been so gripped by panic she hadn
‟
t realized he
‟
d followed her up.

“There
‟
s something blocking the cargo door! It won
‟
t close until somebody moves it!”

“Where?”

“Directions to the cargo hold, computer!” Loren demanded and then glanced at Kael.

“Where
‟
s everybody else?”

84

“Still down in bottom ship.”

“Wait! Computer, open all communications channels!”

“Ship wide com links open.”

She glanced around for a microphone. “Where
‟
s the bridge com?”