MBryO: The Escape (11 page)

Pax was careful not to aim any higher for fear of hitting the too-still form lying on the medi-bed. Unfortunately, the shots drove Maxim closer to the elevator doors, instead of pining him down as Pax had intended.

At the sound of ricocheting bullets, Elias’ feet came unglued at the diversion. He raced across the balcony to the laboratory door and jumped down the stairs. The elevator chimed closed as he reached the medi-bed.

Maxim was smart. Withdrawing from the scene had been his wisest move. Elias was sure he had only retreated. He would rally his troops and try to stop them from leaving the building.

Slinging his blaster over his shoulder, Pax simply climbed onto the shattered balcony panel in front of him and jumped down into the laboratory.

It was some twenty feet from the observation deck to the parquet floor below. But Terra’s gravity was much lighter than the gravity on Nyla 6. It probably had something to do Nyla 6’s moons. Wasit was much closer than Terra’s moon. He landed easily on all fours, much like that of a large cat.

The red and blue warning lights spun from the ceiling in time to the earsplitting shriek of the security alarms.

“We must go, Elias,” Pax straightened and walked through the green slime to the medi-bed. He spared a glance for the other incubators lining the laboratory walls. There were some disturbing sights inside the jelly-like filling. He pulled his gaze from one eerily intelligent blue eye peering back at him through the neo-natal unit and gently prodded the older man.

“Melara will be here soon. She will be flying into an ambush by MBryO’s security guards. We must find a way to warn her.”

Elias visibly pulled himself together. He needed his wits about him if they were to escape the building with their lives. Shifting his own blaster to his shoulder, he leaned over the medi-bed and picked up the small figure.

She was incredibly light from years of cruelty and persecution suffered at the hands of Maxim Bryant. Mentally, Elias vowed to put an end to the man’s cruelty and see to it once and for all that he harmed no one else.

Inclining his head, Elias motioned silently for Pax to lead the way up the stairs to the balcony elevators. His weapon ready, Pax did so. The broken keypad made entry to the elevator doors easy. The blinking lights and alarms added urgency to their steps.

Their presence had already been discovered. Pax saw no need to disguise their retreat.

The original plan had been to join the others in the air vents and climb to the roof together. But by mutual consent, he and Elias decided to take the shortest route to the landing pad. The alarms and lights were sure indicators that something had gone wrong with their plan. Pax was sure the others continue to make their way to the roof.

The elevator ride seemed to take hours when in reality it was mere minutes. The alarms grew louder as the doors slid open on the rooftop of the MBryO UNIX building.

Pax assessed the situation in one glance. Stepping forward he sank to one knee, his blaster firing at a platoon of Terran Guardsmen waiting on them, armed and ready. They were hunkered down behind a row of hastily erected concrete girders located between them and the landing zone.

Reflexively, Pax fired the blaster, covering Elias as he carried his limp burden to a nearby metal casing housing one of the building’s many exhaust fans. The guards, mostly fresh out of cadet school, dived behind the concrete girders for cover as bullets rained down on them.

From the corner of his eye, Pax caught sight of Joshua and William crawling out of the air conditioning vents across the way. Hurriedly, the two reached behind them to help a rag-tag menagerie of humanoid mutants out of the vent behind them.

When the last mutant emerged from the shaft, Joshua led the way across the rooftop to an exhaust fan similar to the one Pax and Elias were using as cover. William was bringing up the rear, behind an odd looking set of youngsters.

The boys crept from one object to the next in an attempt to lead the group as close to the landing zone as possible. They would have to move quickly, as time would be of the essence when the space-hopper arrived.

Occupied with the battle that rage about them, no one noticed when a minute later, the snout of a snarling black wolf scampered out of the vent and onto the rooftop. Fangs bared, the winged animal lunged and then soared through the air to the nearest metal casing big enough to protect him from the blaster fire.

The sound of beating wings suddenly filled the air.

Right on time, Melara neared the launch pad in the space-hopper, unaware that she was flying into the middle of an ambush. The belly of the ship barely touched the launch pad before she threw open the cargo hold door, the engines still running.

The hole in the side of the ship beckoned to them. Unfortunately, the Terran Guard was held a position between them and Melara and the ship. They used the concrete girders to steady their blasters and a barrage of blaster fire was issuing from the nozzles of their weapons.

Both groups hiding behind the exhaust fans were effectively pinned down and cut off from the space-hopper.

The elevator chimed once more. A furious Maxim Bryant, and a half-dozen Terran Guards, stepped out. Pax’s heart sank as they aimed their blasters at him and Elias as well. Unless they surrendered, it was just a matter of time before they were cut to ribbons in the crossfire.

Melara stepped out of the space hopper, creating a diversion by throwing one, then two, hydrogen powered grenades in the direction of the concrete girders. The resulting explosion destroyed the barriers, sending debris and several body parts into the air. Her blaster strafed red in the darkness as she fired at the guardsmen that were left.

Turning, Pax focused on Maxim and his guards, sending some back inside the elevator and some flanking to the right and left with their blasters returning his fire.

Maxim simply strode forward, his psy-talent creating a shield that kept the bullets from striking him. Once again Pax was reminded of an avenging angel as he crossed the rooftop.

“Go,” he told Elias silently, nodding in the direction of the space-hopper. “I’ll be right behind you.”

On cue, Joshua ushered the group of strange looking mutants accompanying him toward the open cargo doors. Once more William brought up the rear.

Carrying his burden as gently as possible, Elias followed suit, careful not to get between Melara and the Terran Guard. No sooner than he was inside the ship than he gently deposited his burden on one of the sleepers.

Rushing forward he took a seat in the cockpit, relying on Joshua and William to help the others into the ship and assist with fastening their seatbelts. In the back of his mind he realized the ship seemed far more crowded than when they had entered Terra’s atmosphere earlier that evening. The added weight could affect the space-hopper’s ability to take off.

Outside, William finished helping Janus up and into the cargo bay. He was about to crawl inside himself when he felt arms snag him from behind, pulling him backwards out of the ship.

Struggling, William turned and looked into the bloody face of a Terran Guard. The boy could have been no older than his brother Joshua and his face was pitted and bleeding where shards of concrete had struck him after Melara had detonated the hydrogen grenades.

He grasped William by the front of his shirt with one pitted hand and held a wicked looking knife in the other. In one smooth motion the boy slashed downwards, aiming at William’s chest.

An angry growl stopped him, as the winged-wolf creature lunged through the air, knocking the cadet sideways onto the rooftop. Unexpectedly finding himself released, William stood there frozen to the spot, as the black creature lunged and soared once more, landing atop the fallen guardsman. His fangs bared, the creature ripped the boys’ throat open in a split second.

Growling, the wolf looked back at William and psy-talent tickled the edges of his mind as the creature said, “A life for a life! My debt to you is paid. We are even now, human!”

“William,” Joshua called anxiously from the open cargo bay. “You must hurry. We need to go!”

“Are you coming with us?” William asked. “We go to a place where those like us are protected.”

An unexpected feeling of sadness emanated from the wolf. “There is no one like me, human.”

With that, the wolf bounded into the air, his black wings spread wide as he soared into the sky, out into the darkness beyond.

William watched him disappear from the rooftop before turning back to the space-hopper. Joshua grasped his arm and pulled him inside as the ship lifted off the launching pad, hovering a few feet in mid-air.

Inside, a warning light on the console alerted Elias to the fact that the ship had reached her weight limit. If they did not lift off now, the overloaded ship would never make it back to Nyla 6.

Grimly, he pushed the button that closed the cargo bay doors just as William and Joshua found a sleeper and fastened themselves in. Grasping the stick, he activated the rocket boosters and launched into the atmosphere, leaving Melara and Pax behind.

Across the way, Melara watched as Maxim advanced on Pax’s position. Psy-talent flew from the man’s outstretched arms, tearing the blaster from Pax’s hands and sending it crashing over the side of the building, out of sight.

Desperate to reach him, she sprayed the space in front of her with bullets. The remaining guardsmen in front of her ran for cover, scurrying out of the way of her blaster fire.

“Pax,” she yelled, firing at Maxim. “Come on! We need to go! Run!”

Pax leaped over the casing of the exhaust fan and did as she bade him. In the distance, he watched astonished as the space-hopper lifted off the building and careened off into the night sky. Elias had abandoned them on top of the rooftop.

Her weapon empty, Melara threw it aside, watching it clatter across the rooftop. Reaching down, she picked up two discarded blasters lying beside one of the concrete girders.

“Let’s go!” She tossed one of the weapons to him and ran to the edge of the rooftop. When she leaped over the side of the building, he was right behind her.

The screech of Maxim Bryant’s fury echoed in their ears as they jumped through the air, landing on the metal turbine housing below, with twin thuds. Once again Terra’s lighter gravity worked to their advantage and after landing successfully, they used the thin metal alloy to catapult down to the grass below.

Bullets dogged their every step as Pax and Melara raced side-by-side, across the crowded construction site. Breathing heavily, they sought refuge in the cover of the dense forest.

“Wait, Elias!”

William yelled frantically at the edges of the older man’s mind. “We must go back! Pax and Melara are still down there.”

“I am sorry, William,” Elias replied aloud, even though everyone on board had some degree of telepathic psy-talent. “It is too dangerous. We are exceeding the planet-hopper’s weight capacity, as it is.”

“But, Pax and Melara are in terrible danger! Our father will not hesitate to hunt them down and kill them.”

“We must stick to the plan,” Elias returned, his hands busy with the blinking dials and knobs in the cockpit.

“Pax and Melara are aware of the alternate rendezvous schedule. For now, we must concentrate on getting these people to safety as soon as possible. We have to leave Terran airspace as quickly as possible if we are to evade the Terran Guard and keep them from discovering our destination.”

“How is she doing, Joshua?”

Elias called over the sound of the engines thrusters as they exited Terra’s atmosphere. He made himself concentrate on manning the controls instead of turning to look at the unconscious form strapped in the sleeper console behind him.

“Her vital signs are critical, Elias. The medi-bed is doing everything it can to help her. She is just very weak.”

Maybe, too weak, Joshua thought privately, his shield held tightly in place to keep anyone from reading his thoughts. He did not know if Freezhia could survive an eighteen hour trip through hyperspace, even in the confines of the sleeper.

“William let me know if her condition changes. As soon as we reach the next star system I will plot a course to Nyla 6. Until then, Joshua, I need you to take the co-pilot’s seat. You will need to monitor the radar screen. We need to be on the lookout for any rogue Terran drone ships.”

Joshua left the sleeper and took up a position in front of the radar screen. A spinning dial circled the screen every few seconds. So far it appeared they had evaded detection.

“Where is this Nyla 6?” Janus asked. His psy-talent was incredibly strong, but not nearly as strong as his dark haired twin sister.

“Will we be there soon?” Jenasus questioned.

“Nyla 6 is a dwarf planet located in the Lyastra System,” Joshua answered them. “And we will travel several hundred light years from Terra over the course of the next few hours. It will take approximately a day and a half in Terran time,” he added.

“That is good,” Janus said.

“The farther we are from MBryO, the better we will like it!” Where the telekinetic strands of Janus’ thought patterns began, Jenasus’ ended. As if they shared each other’s thoughts and could finish each other’s sentences.

“Why don’t you rest for a while,” William added. “Sleep will make the time pass faster.”

“I am too excited to sleep,” Jenasus told him. “Do you think we are really free?”

Elias’ fingers worked frantically on the dials in front of him.

Melara had already plotted a course that would place them on the far side of Terra’s silvery moon. The ship was a bit overloaded and sluggish, but he thought they could make the destination, if a little slower than they had originally anticipated. Once they were out of Terran air space, they would use the sun’s gravity and the ship’s thrusters to sling-shot into hyperspace.

He had lowered the barriers to his telepathic ability when he boarded the ship. His senses were on high alert. Even as his fingers worked frantically to get them as far away from MBryO as he could, he kept one ear open for the ongoing conversations taking place behind him.

From his position in the cockpit, he intercepted William’s promise to the young girl with the unusual complexion. He looked up at the mirror on the control panel above.

The three young clones were seated in the second row of sleepers, the odd looking brother and sister holding hands. As he watched, William reached for the little girl’s hand next to him. With her odd coloring she stood out among her dozen or so pale companions.

“I make you a promise, Jenasus. You will never again return to MBryO!”

Elias sincerely hoped that William could keep his promise to the little girl.

At that moment the ship’s avatar announced their destination in a computer modulated voice, reverberating around the dimly lit cabin.

“Our present course has taken us just outside the orbit of Terra’s International Space Station. We are currently in the process of circling around behind the moon; nearing the entrance to the hyperspace launch portal. Beginning countdown now… ten, nine, eight…”

Elias spared a glance for the figure strapped into the sleeper directly behind him. The medi-bed computer flashed and beeped as it made adjustments to the unconscious figure enclosed within it. She hadn’t so much as stirred since he had carried her from Maxim’s laboratory. He only hoped they could keep her alive until they reached the bunker.

“Switching to the portal coordinates as Captain Sivanza previously directed,” the avatar instructed them. “The ship’s navigational system is overriding the ship’s thrusters, adjusting to new flight path.”

Elias flipped the switch that placed them in the sling-shot. The overloaded ship shuddered, once…twice…then slipped into hyperdrive. Silver streaks marked their passage as the space-hopper made a beeline across the heavens for the safety of Nyla 6.

Pax led the way through the dense underbrush, using tree trunks and bushes for cover. He found himself longing for the lushness of the tree canopy back on Nyla 6. Examining the tree line above, he could find no viable escape route up there. Terran’s obviously preferred to travel on the ground, rather than through the treetops.

By memory, Pax was making his way to the picnic area where their landing party had stash their gear earlier that evening. He circumvented the main access route, staying away from the concrete paths leading to and from the area.

He took his time, preferring to do some reconnoitering before taking the chance of being caught out in the open by MBryO’s security guards. The last thing he wanted was to be a sitting duck for a blaster happy Terran cadet. Or, find himself a prisoner in one of Maxim Bryant’s laboratory cells.

His psy-talent was in hyperdrive. He admitted to himself that the situation was extremely dangerous.

The space-hopper had left without them.

A glance at Melara’s wrist told him that neither one of them was wearing the flat communications bracelet that Elias had given issued at the beginning of the mission. From here on out, they were on their own!

All they had to do now was survive until Elias could return for them. Their next rendezvous point was more than fifty miles away, in the middle of the Mohave Desert.

It didn’t take a genius to know their situation was critical. Automatically adapting to his needs, his psy-talent slid into hyperdrive, enabling him to see his surroundings in a strange type of shadowy x-ray vision. It was like looking at red shadows on a dark vid screen.

He watched as the shadow of a mouse scurried through the leaves, seeking the protection of its burrow. A twig snapped just up ahead and off to their right. A winged shadow was walking its own path through the dark woods.

Was it an animal of some sort? Yes, definitely! But was it the four-legged kind or did it walk upright on two?

He sent feelers to probe the darkness, looking for sentient thought processes. His attempts to penetrate the mental wall met with failure, making him wonder what kind of entity could possess such strong psy-talent.

Was it cloned like Sasha and the boys? Or was it the result of one of Maxim’s mutation experiments? Since the creature had wings, Pax decided it had to be the latter.

Nyla 6 was never shrouded in darkness, as Terra was each night. He always had Wasit’s golden light to see by. So, Pax sensed more than heard Melara moving stealthily behind him. She seemed content to let him set their pace. Her instincts were as alert as his, and she was blaster-ready, keeping watch over their back trail.

When they came to the edge of the picnic area, Pax drew up, his eyes searching the property for signs that Maxim Bryant had set a trap for them. His psy-talent was at a critical level, the heat signatures of the shadows reflecting a distorted, dull, red aura.

Only once before, could he remember reaching this level of sensory overload. And on that unfortunate occasion, he had come face to face with a eughi while exploring one of the Myconeum caves that pitted Nyla 6.

That particular cave had a freshwater stream flowing through it. Pax had wanted to trace the stream to its natural source on the off-chance the reservoir inside the bunker ever run dry.

Unfortunately the eughi had chosen the darkened cave to take its monthly nap.

Pax remembered how enraged the big monster had been at having its nap disturbed that day. His vision had experienced something similar then as well, causing him to see the creature as a distorted red shadow.

He had high-tailed it out of there, just inches away from the monster’s lethal, razor sharp claws. He hadn’t so much as breathed until he reached the safety of the zip-basket, and successfully camouflaged in the canopy above.

The eughi had been enraged, rearing up on its back legs and swiping at the bottom of the carrier. It had eventually given up, the hair on the back of its neck raised in futile anger, and lumbered back toward the cave entrance.

After the furor was over, his psy-talent had crashed, leaving him face down in the zip-basket for several hours, his system weak, disoriented and psy-drained. Luckily he had hit the switch out of habit and the tram had returned him automatically to the bunker. He could still remember waking up much later and making his way inside the starbase, literally ‘in the dark’ so to speak. It had taken him days to recover his psy-ability after that. His psy-senses had shut down.

He had a feeling when he and Melara were safely away from MBryO UNIX; the same sort of shut-down would happen again. They were going to need a safe place to hunker down when his psy-talent eventually burned out.

He set those thoughts aside and concentrated on the dark woods, sending psy-feelers into the dark forest. With his senses heightened, he rode the tongues of psy-energy through the night, winding, surfing the waves of psy-current. The probes encountered at least three sentient presences, not counting the strange winged entity that had stalked a parallel path alongside them through the forest.

He could distinguish two red heat signatures hidden inside the perimeter, near the garbage receptacles where they had stashed the jet packs. Another guard was camped out inside the edge of the woods directly across from them, his blaster braced against a thick tree trunk.

It happened so fast, that Pax almost didn’t catch sight of the winged mutant before it lunged into the air, pouncing on the lone guard. He felt, rather than heard, the man’s muffled grunt as the creature knocked him to the ground, landing on top of his chest. Canine-like incisors ripped the man’s horrified scream from his throat.

One instant the distorted red shadow was there and, in the next it was slowly growing colder, before eventually fading away completely.

Pax didn’t know what the winged creature was, but it obviously had the same goal in mind as he and Melara. And, that goal was to escape MBryO, at any cost.

Motioning to Melara’s distorted heat signature to come up beside him, he gestured to the two figures waiting to ambush them from the picnic tables. Hiding behind the columns that held up either end of the pavilion, the cadets were prepared to cut them to ribbons the minute they emerged from the woods.

Melara, blissfully unaware of the psy-changes to his sight and the sentient presence of the winged creature in the woods with them, nodded, initiating a flanking position to his right. Silently, she began to circle around the tree line, finding a position behind the two guards.

Pax waited until she was in position, and then stepped into the glare of one of the floodlights, hopping to draw the cadets’ attention away from her. He approached the covered picnic area slowly, pretending ignorance of the guard’s presence.

It was like taking candy from a baby.

He stepped onto the pavilion. The guard nearest him rose up, blaster ready. Pax’s hand slapped the weapon nozzle toward the ground, deflecting the round, which ricochet off one of the metal picnic tables. Spinning backwards in a spiraling blow, he kicked the guard in the head knocking him out cold.

Simultaneously, Melara’s heat signature emerged from the forest directly behind the other guard. Pax caught sight of the glint of silver metal as she flung the stiletto she normally carried in the top of her boot at the man. With a dull thud, it landed between his shoulder blades.

With a muffled grunt, the guard slumped to his knees, his blaster clattering loudly to the concrete.

With long strides, Pax walked past the crumpled form to the garbage cans. Pushing the covers to the ground he removed two of the jet packs, handing one to Melara. In seconds they were strapped into the devices and preparing to lift off.

“Melara,” Pax said silently. His vision was beginning to fade. He knew it was just a matter of time before his senses crashed, leaving his body useless.

He reached through the handlebars and tightened the straps around her narrow waist.