Terminus (Fringe Worlds #1) (20 page)

Chapter 26

The trip up in the elevator only took a few seconds. When the lift doors parted they revealed a second set of doors, which – after Maker inserted the digi-key into a conspicuous slot – opened directly into a palatial suite, full of expensive furnishings and fine art.

Maker had his gun in his hand as he exited the lift, treading as softly as possible. The place was well-lit, but he didn’t see anyone.

He was currently in what appeared to be the living area, with lots of furniture for lounging around. One wall was made entirely of panes of glass. Stepping over to it, Maker realized that the giant window presented a view of all the action in the Pit below.

A sound from the far end of a nearby hallway drew Maker’s attention. Quickly but silently, he dashed down the hallway, passing a few bedrooms, a media room, and something that looked like a torture chamber along the way.

The end of the hallway opened up into a small sitting area, with a set of stairs leading up. Cautiously, he began heading up the stairs. However, he’d advanced no more than three steps when Croy appeared at the top of the stairs.

Something akin to shock spread across Croy’s features, and he froze, just staring at Maker. A moment later he blinked, then opened his mouth – presumably to cry out. Maker shot him in the face.

Maker’s modified gun didn’t make much noise, but Croy’s body (sans facial features) did as it collapsed and went tumbling down the stairs. Maker pressed himself flush against the wall, letting the corpse roll past and then rushed up the stairs.

The landing at the top of the stairway opened up into another sitting area and connected to a short, dimly-lit hallway.

“Croy?” inquired a voice that Maker recognized as belonging to Quinzen. “What was that noise?”

The voice had come from the hallway, and Maker scrambled to the side of the entrance to the corridor, pretty confident that he hadn’t been seen.

Footsteps sounded in the hallway, coming closer. Maker tightened his grip on his gun, held his breath. When he thought that the Panoptes was almost at the end of the corridor, he stepped in front of the hallway and fired.

There was an agonizing squawk, followed by Quinzen falling to the floor, screeching in pain. Maker grabbed him by the beak and dragged him out onto the landing.

Out of the shadowy hallway, Maker could see the damage that had been done. A whole crop of Quinzen’s eyestalks had been blasted away on his right side, where a nasty wound now gushed out violet blood.

It was obviously a painful injury, but clearly not a fatal one – nor was it intended to be. (It would be difficult to get answers from a corpse.)

“Your bodyguards!” Maker hissed. “Where are they?”

“Not…not here,” Quinzen weakly replied, his remaining eyestalks flopping around feebly. “Take Graxel…arm…medic.”

Maker understood. The ursine Graxel had lost an arm trying to hold Erlen, and his companion had taken him for treatment. Also, he suddenly remembered Quinzen’s question about Erlen possibly fighting in the arena. The Panoptes must have taken Maker’s negative response to mean that Erlen was docile – a miscalculation that had cost Graxel dearly.

“Jwaedin…poison…” Quinzen mumbled. “You, alive…how?”

“Forget that! Why did you set us up?”

“Money…” Quinzen muttered almost matter-of-factly. “Also, no choice…Vacra…humans…”

Quinzen shuddered involuntarily, almost as if he were having a seizure, and several of his eyestalks were now weeping blood.

Movement at the edge of his peripheral vision caused Maker to turn towards the stairway. There, coming up the stairs in full battle armor, was a Vacra.

Maker almost couldn’t believe it. Finally, one of the filth decided to show themselves. (Not Skullcap, but a Vacra nonetheless.) After years of waiting–

Movement near the Vacra’s hands cut into Maker’s thoughts, and a second later he flung himself to the side as laser fire sliced through the space he’d just vacated. Firing from his prone position on the floor, Maker made several direct – but ineffectual – hits on the insectoid’s thorax. His weapon couldn’t penetrate its armor.

An odd chirping drew Maker’s attention back to Quinzen…except he was no longer lying where Maker had left him. Whether he’d been playing possum or the fear of getting shot again had given him a boost of adrenaline, the Panoptes was now shambling down the hallway he’d come from.

Maker took one last shot at the Vacra and then dashed after Quinzen, who entered a doorway at the end of the hall. The Panoptes slammed the door in Maker’s face. Maker didn’t have to try the knob to know that it was locked, but did it anyway. Sadly, his prediction was confirmed.

He was about to shoot off the lock when laser-fire came blasting through the door from the inside. Maker dropped to the ground; Quinzen obviously had a weapon in there. Moreover, he heard some kind of mechanical grinding noise coming from the other side of the door.

Glancing back the way he’d come, Maker saw a shadow fall across the hallway entrance. In a moment, he was going to be pinned down. Deciding which was the lesser of two evils, Maker fired indiscriminately through the door, sending splinters of wood flying everywhere. He heard a squawk from inside the room, and then a thud. Without wasting a second, Maker ran forward and dove through the remainder of the door, essentially demolishing it.

He hit the floor inside and rolled, coming up with his gun in his hand. He need not have bothered; Quinzen was lying on the floor with a hole in his chest, obviously dead (although a few of his eyestalks still twitched spasmodically). More interesting was the fact that, at the moment, a metal ladder was slowly descending from the twenty-foot ceiling.

Of course, Quinzen had had a secret escape route. It fit the type of duplicitous personality he’d proved to have at the end.

Laser fire came through the door, reminding Maker that he still had an enemy to deal with. Looking around for what was really the first time, Maker noticed that he appeared to be in Quinzen’s private bedroom. In addition to the large window-wall for viewing the action in the Pit, there were also several vidscreens and a large case full of unusual objects – some sort of collection.

Maker gripped the case and manhandled it into position in front of the door. It wasn’t much of a barrier, but it would buy him some time.

Turning back to the ladder, Maker found himself mentally hurrying it to finish descending when, with a creak and a groan, it came to a sudden stop with the lowest rung still about eight feet from the floor.

No! No! NO!!!
Maker mentally wailed. Obviously, Quinzen hadn’t made regular maintenance of his escape route a part of his normal routine. Now Maker was going to pay the price for it.

“Thanks a lot,” Maker mumbled, kicking the dead Panoptes for good measure. Then he took a powerful leap, grabbed the bottom of the ladder, and began to pull himself up, hand over hand. After a few seconds, he was able to get a foot on the bottom rung, and it was easy going after that.

At the top of the ladder was a hatch. Maker gripped the handle, twisted, and then pushed up. With a screech of grating metal, the hatch slowly swung open. Maker scrambled out, then slammed the hatch shut before looking around.

He was on a flattened, square-shaped portion of the Pit’s domed roof. He did a quick recon, noting that the area where he found himself – while railed – joined the sloped segment of the roof without any way to safely descend. There were other buildings nearby, but much too far away for him to jump to.

A weird droning noise seemed to permeate through the air, indicating that some type of machinery was in operation. A few moments later it stopped and suddenly the wind began to buffet Maker on all sides. Almost immediately, it came to him what the droning sound had been: a force field. (He should have realized that Quinzen wouldn’t have had an undefended point of entry into his residence.) Now that it was gone, the wind whipped wildly across the rooftop, making him squint.

Maker thought furiously. It didn’t make any sense. Quinzen wouldn’t have an escape route that was essentially a dead end. There had to be a way down from the roof. He went back to scouting the edge of the rooftop, going slowly and more deliberately this time, looking for anything he might have missed before.

There!
On the domed portion of the roof just below the railing on the south side of the building was a panel that wasn’t flush with its fellows. Maker got down on his hands and knees and reached for it. The panel, attached by some type of hinge, swung open. Inside was a hoverboard.

Maker sent up a silent thanks to the heavens, then pulled the hoverboard out of the hidden slot. It was a little old, but that was somehow fitting since he hadn’t ridden one of these things since he was a kid. In fact, as he placed it on the ground and then stepped on it, he realized that he really wouldn’t be riding it now; his plan was only to use it to get down from the roof, not do a bunch of adolescent tricks like some juvenile trying to impress a girl.

As he stepped on, his weight activated the board. The foot-frames on it closed in on his boots, locking his feet in place on the panel so he wouldn’t fall off. Then the anti-grav cells activated, lifting the board up. Maker wobbled slightly, trying to remember how to keep his balance. Behind him, he heard the hatch being swung open.

Maker bent his knees and did a little hop. The hoverboard, sensing his intentions, rose up and Maker guided it over the railing. He smiled as he floated there alongside the dome, waiting for the Vacra to catch sight of him as it crawled out onto the roof. When it did, Maker flipped it the middle finger on both hands, and then directed the board to descend as the insectoid raised its weapon.

The board descended about four feet and then halted, sputtering. A moment later, it also began shooting sparks. Maker’s arms pinwheeled as he struggled to maintain his balance, wondering what was wrong. Then the anti-grav cells cut out.

Maker reached crazily for the roof as he dropped, managing to get a hand on the edge of the flattened portion. It was all that kept him from falling to his death.

Damn you, Quinzen
, he thought. Apparently the escape ladder wasn’t the only thing that the Panoptes failed to maintain.

Wriggling like a worm on a hook, Maker managed swing around and get a grip on the roof with his free hand. He was just about to start pulling himself up when he heard footsteps approaching. Looking up, he saw the Vacra standing at the railing above him, its weapon pointed at his head.

Maker stared at the Vacra, wondering whether it would be better to fall and die by his own hand rather than give this thing the satisfaction of shooting him. No, letting go would be the equivalent of giving up, and he was determined to fight to the bitter end.

“Go on, then,” he said to the Vacra. “Do it.”

He kept his eyes on its helmet, determined not to look away as the Vacra seemed to tighten its grip on its weapon. Then half the insectoid’s head was sheared away, and it fell over backwards, twitching.

The comm piece in his ear, which Maker had practically forgotten about, crackled with life, and Loyola’s voice – laced with static – came through in a flat tone, saying, “You’re welcome.”

Chapter 27

For one of the few times in his military career, Maker was actually happy that a subordinate had disobeyed one of his direct orders.

“It wasn’t really disobedience,” Loyola explained when he asked her. “Right after you and Snick left, Adames ordered me to hop on a hovercycle and go after you. Thus, I was actually obeying the orders of the ranking military member on hand.”

Happy to be alive, Maker wasn’t about to argue with her. As he understood it, both Loyola and Wayne had followed Snick and himself to the Pit. (Apparently Wayne, still feeling that he owed his life to Maker, had insisted on coming when he found out where Loyola was headed.) By Maker’s estimate, they had arrived around the time he was sneaking into Quinzen’s suite.

“The dampening field in the Pit is weaker the higher you go,” Wayne had said when telling the story from his perspective, “so by the time we got here, my tracker had a little bit of a fix on you via your p-comp. We debated on it for a few minutes, then decided to split up. I went inside to see what was going on, while Loyola turned the anti-gravs on her hovercycle to high and floated up outside.”

And it was from the seat of a floating hovercycle, while being buffeted by high winds, that Loyola fired the shot that saved his life.

At present, they were all huddled in Quinzen’s bedroom (courtesy of the Panoptes’ secret hatch): Maker, Loyola, Wayne, Snick, and even Diviana. They sat lounging in several easy chairs around a small table, after having performed a thorough search of the premises.

Maker had tried to show some decency by tossing a sheet over their late host’s body, but no one seemed particularly disturbed by its presence. Also, feeling that it was kind of conspicuous on the roof, Maker had also dumped the Vacra’s body – stripped of all weapons – back inside, but it sat uncovered (and occasionally twitching) in a corner.

“So,” Snick said, summing things up, “Quinzen was in bed with the Vacra.”

“Yes,” Maker answered. Then he turned to Diviana. “Have you had a chance to take a good look at the Vacra?”

Diviana nodded. “Yes.”

“Well, you’ve been here all night – at least since me and Wayne got here that first time. Did you ever see that thing come in?”

“No,” she answered, shaking her head. “I can’t swear that I saw everyone who came and went, but we’ve seen images of the Vacra before and I was on the lookout for them. I mean, they’re the reason we’re here.”

Maker nodded, chewing his lip.

“What are you thinking, el-tee?” Loyola asked.

“If Diviana never saw the Vacra come in, that means it was already in the suite. It was already here when Wayne and I were down there watching the jwaedin in the arena.”

“Then how’d you ever slip by it and get in position to kill Croy and Quinzen?” Diviana asked.

Maker shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe it was eating. Maybe it was indisposed. Maybe it needed to don its armor.”

“Or maybe it’s nocturnal,” Wayne said. “Maybe it was sleeping.”

Maker chewed on that for a moment. “Could be. That might explain why Quinzen didn’t seem too happy about us showing up early – and why he wasn’t particularly eager to get down to business. Maybe the plan was to invite us up to the suite and let the Vacra blast us as soon as we walked in, but he wasn’t sure if his buddy would be ready.”

“But what’s the point?” Loyola asked. “What’s to be gained by killing any of us?”

“I have a theory about that,” Maker said, “but I don’t think I want to share it just–”

The Vacra shuddered in its armor, the sound causing everyone to look in its direction.

“Maybe that’s the corpse you should have covered up,” Diviana said. “The way it keeps jerking around keeps me on edge.”

“Oh, it’s not dead,” Maker said. “At least, I don’t think so.”

“What?” Loyola said, completely surprised. “I blew half its head off!”

“On Old Earth,” Maker said, “there’s an insect called a roach that can live for days – even weeks – after its head has been cut off. I’ve come across insectoids that are the same way, and I think the same may be true of the Vacra.”

“Then maybe we need to finish the job,” Diviana said, pulling out a blade that Maker hadn’t seen on her person (and couldn’t imagine where she could have had it hidden considering the ensemble she was wearing).

“No need,” Maker assured her. “Just because it’s alive doesn’t mean it’s functional. Half the thing’s brain is gone; it’s a vegetable.”

While Maker had been talking, Wayne had pulled out his tracker, the one he had apparently used to locate Maker earlier. He began fiddling with it, pointing it in the direction of the Vacra.

“What are you doing?” Loyola finally asked him.

“Something just occurred to me,” Wayne replied. “You know what happens when we’re in our armor and get injured?”

“Yes,” Snick said. “The armor can assess the injury, administer meds, etc.”

“All true,” Wayne said, getting up and walking over to the Vacra. “But it also does something else.”

“The beacon,” Maker said, coming to his feet in alarm and walking towards Wayne. “It sends out a signal on a coded frequency to the soldier’s unit, so they’ll know where to find him.”

At that moment, everyone else seemed to catch on simultaneously. Diviana, Snick, and Loyola all stood up and joined the others over by the Vacra.

“Do you think that the Vacra’s armor–” Loyola began.

“Yes,” Wayne said. “I’m picking up a signal from it.”

Maker closed his eyes in concentration. How long had it been since Loyola had shot the insectoid on the roof…maybe thirty minutes? How long would it be before a bunch of other Vacra showed up?

“There’s good news and bad news,” Wayne finally said, lowering his tracker. “The bad news you already know – the armor here is sending a signal. What it’s saying I don’t know, but I’m guessing it’s broadcasting distress of some form.”

“And the good news?” Snick asked.

“As best I can tell, the dampening field from the Pit is interfering with the signal. My guess is that any friends he has around here may be able to home in on the vicinity, but not his exact location.”

“Nice work,” Diviana said. “Except for the little fact that we’re in the suite of one of their known allies – where this thing may actually have been staying – so I’m assuming that, regardless of what any signal tells them, this is one of the first places his fellow Vacra will look.”

They all stared at each other in silence for a moment, contemplating what that meant.

“Alright,” Maker said after a few seconds, “let’s move out. Snick, get the vehicles ready. Loyola, you’re in charge of the weapons we secured from the Vacra. Diviana, you’ve got two minutes to go through this place for any intel we can use.”

As everyone scurried off to carry out their orders, Maker turned to Wayne. “I don’t suppose there’s any way you could tell us how close any of the Vacra tracking that signal might be.”

“No,” Wayne said, shaking his head. “I can’t tell you how close any trackers might be that are picking the signal up. I can only pinpoint the main hub it’s broadcasting to.”

“What?!” Maker shouted incredulously.