The Saffron Malformation (101 page)

             
“You’re also the ones who came up with the plan and have, again, the people with the skills to make it happen,” Eric said.  “So lets get to that.”

             
They went over the plan again.  Ryla would alter the supply records, they’d stow aboard a transport and get inside the island facility.  When everything was quiet they’d emerge, disrupt the global communications and find the ship whereupon they’d press Ryla’s button and let the compounds creatures take offensive action on west continent.  Amiss the chaos they steal the ship and fly it within range of the universal uplink where they override the global network and broadcast all of Richter Crows dirty secrets across the signal.

             
“You call that a simple plan?” Carmen Tully asked.

             
“Simple?  No,” Quey said plainly, “But it’s to the point.  Been my experience that a good plan is the sort that doesn’t leave a whole lot of places you might snag your sleeve.”

             
“He’s right on that,” Ren Lemmy said.  “If you want my opinion I like this plan.  It’s the best we’ve had in years.”

             
“I agree,” Eric said.  “That only leaves one last thing.”  He looked at Ryla and asked, “How do I get into your little compound?”

             
She looked up at him and said, solidly, “You don’t.”

             
“Come now,” he insisted.  “According to your plan you’re going to be floating around in space, very far from this place for a very long time.”

             
“The building isn’t what you think it is,” she informed him.

             
“And what do I think it is?” he asked smiling.

             
“A tool.  Something you can use.”

             
Quey could tell by the way his smile faded and he adjusted himself, glancing briefly to the man on his right, that she’d guessed correctly.  “What is it then?”

             
“There are things in that building,” she trailed off, glaring at him slightly, but it wasn’t an angry glare it was a thoughtful one.

             
“Yes?” he asked.

             
“You know what?” she stood and went to the holographic interface on the table.  Then she accessed his terminal and began to type.  Screens popped into existence before her as her fingers danced over the keys and a string of code began to form.  A handful of ticks and tocks passed and finally she was done and a new file was created.  “When this is over take this file to the compound.  On the northwest corner you’ll find a panel, connect to it and run this program.  The building will rise and open.”

             
Eric was surprised.  He looked to Carmen and Ren with a degree of smug satisfaction.  “It’s a trick,” he said.  “I’m no fool, you said yourself you’d set me up if it came to this.”

             
“Possibly,” she admitted.  “But as you’re aware of this already I think you’ll take it.  If you weren’t ready for a trick you wouldn’t have asked for this again.”

             
He thought for a moment then nodded slowly.  “Clever,” he finally said.  “And correct, of course.  I accept,” he added before saving the program Ryla created.

             
Ryla smiled devilishly and said, “Good luck.”

             
The way she said it unnerved him slightly, but Quey wasn’t sure if it was enough to cause him to second guess.

             
“In the morning,” Eric began, “We’ll have the trucks pulled around front.  We have four cargo trailers, the sort that a crane can lift and set on a transport.  We’ll fill those with our men and gear.  From here we proceed to the supply depot where our little computer wizard will set up a delivery to the island base.”

             
It was agreed.

             
Morning broke along the horizon and along with the first light of day, it carried dread that loomed over all of them.  Quey felt like he was carrying bricks when he stood and dressed.  He saw the case of supplies sitting just outside his door, weapons and body armors and spare ammunition.  Standing over the case, his hands jittered with nervous energy and at the same time he found it hard to breath.  He went into the hall and knocked on his companion’s doors, checking to be sure they were up and on the way to ready and when he was done he barely recalled any of it.  Maybe he was still dreaming.

             
Rachel was sitting on the edge of the bed crying slightly.  When she noticed him she swallowed the emotion and did her best to fake composure.  He went in and sat beside her.  “What the hell am I going to do?” she asked, running a hand across the slight swell of her stomach.

             
Quey touched her shoulder and said, “You’re going to move forward, one step at a time.”

             
She looked up at him, eyes shimmering and said, “If something happens,” but he shushed her with a look.

             
“Nothing’s going to happen.  There’s going to be close to a hundred men between you and harm.  Besides,” he said with a smirk, as he thought of the night they’d first met all those years ago. “We’re going to make it out of this okay.”

             
She looked at him sideways.  “And what makes you think that?”

             
“I still owe you a dance.”

             
She laughed a bit and threw her arms around him.

             
He held her and said, “Only so much tragedy a life can take, and leaving that debt unpaid would be too much.”

             
“I wish he were here,” she whispered.  And he replied, “Me too.  I wish they were all here.”

             
As the soldiers were gearing up Natalie found Quey sitting with Rachel and said, “We need to get gear.  At least something bullet resistant for the kids.”

             
“Should be enough for each of us in the case in the hall,” Quey said.  Natalie nodded and hurried away.  She was scared and that meant she had to keep active, had to fill her time with little tasks so as to keep her attention occupied.  If she stopped she would think and if she thought she’d unravel like a ball of yarn and become nothing more than a tangled mess on the floor.

             
Natalie found the case and then found Leone and Amber sitting close together in her room.  The air was unsettling, full of fear and uncertainty.  “Keep these on,” she told them and saw them shrivel at the sight of the armor.  “Chances are you won’t need them, but better to not need them and have them then,” she trailed off.  “Well, you know.”  She went to Amber and kissed her forehead then placed the armor on the bed.

             
She’d misjudged Leone’s reaction, however.  He’d been practicing with the guns and he wasn’t afraid of what was to come.  It was calmness that settled on him when she left the body armor, not fear.

             
Ryla took a step into the room and said, “Anything happens keep low and tight.  If you see cover, use it.”

             
Amber and Leone nodded.

             
“You won’t be a threat so they’ll shoot at you last,” she assured them, but it didn’t seem to have the desired effect.  Amber’s eyes began to tremble as she looked to her mother.

             
“We’ll be far in the back,” Natalie assured her daughter.  “Well away from the shooting.”

             
“Unless we get flanked,” Ryla said, thoughtfully chewing her lower lip just a bit.

             
Natalie shot her a look and said, “Ryla.”  When she looked up Natalie said, “Maybe you should check on something.”

             
“What?”

             
“Anything.”

             
Ryla furrowed her brow, then looked at the kids and thought she understood.  Information wasn’t helpful right now.  She turned and walked away.  She supposed she could check on her robots once again.

             
“Here,” Quey said, shoving a set of armor into her hands as she glided down the hall.  He was near the doors to their rooms, standing over the crate.  She reached in and pulled another set from within and shoved it at him, “here, yourself.”

             
He laughed a bit and they took the gear from the others hands.  He looked at her for a long moment before reaching up and touching her cheek.  “I think,” he began.

             
She looked up at him and said, “It’s easy to say things now you might not otherwise.  Probably best not to.”

             
He pulled her tight against him for a spell, breathing deep and taking in the smell of her hair.  Silently he wished for more time as the announcement came.  “Five minutes and out.”

             
The pair of buildings were a frenzy of movement.  Eric’s men and women dashed about loading gear into the cargo trailers.  Ryla immediately found the truck with Mechaganon and Bowswerbot and climbed inside.  Eric was happy to have them along, as he saw them as an example of what he might find inside her compound.  Ryla knew this was the case and she let him believe it.

             
Quey felt like he was in a dream through most of the morning.  This whole mess was coming to an end and no matter how it went, good or bad, maybe he could finally get some rest.  Real rest, the sort where your dreams aren’t an expression of the anxiety you feel while awake over the number of people looking to kill you.

             
Quey looked over at Rachel, checking her rifle and thought of Fen Quada, the city that had burned on account of him.  Well, really it was on account of Rain… no, he corrected that thought.  It was on account of Richter Crow.  He was the man whose pride had led him to hunt his own daughter.  He was the one who hired Sticklan Stone.  All of this was on him.

             
Or was it?  Richter Crow was a monster, sure, but people allowed him to be by not standing against him.  People were the ones who allowed Blue Moon to take over.  They allowed profit margins to dictate how they were treated and the quality of product available to them.

             
“Load up,” Ren Lemmy barked.

             
“Come on, you heard him,” Carmen added, chasing a cluster of men into the back of a truck as if they were cattle on a ranch.

             
Quey gave Rachel a look that he hoped would say it all.  Apparently it did because she said, “It’s not your fault,” before walking toward the trailer where Ryla was checking on her robots.

             
He let the words sink into him for a spell before the sound of engines turning over brought him back to the present and he realized he was in danger of being left behind.  As the first of the vehicles shifted into gear he climbed into the back of the truck with Natalie, Arnie, Amber, Leone, Rachel, Ryla and her two robots.  His crew of seven.  It didn’t seem long ago that number was ten.

Quey and Crew Verses … Well Everyone

             
Nearly two hours passed between when Ryla returned from the supply depot and the cranes began loading the cargo trailers onto a transport ship.  The first part of the plan had gone smoothly.  It was all down hill from there.

             
Rachel, Ryla, Natalie, Leone, Amber, Arnie, Quey and the robots were packed into a small rectangle of metal with more than a dozen of Eric’s soldiers.  The black protective gear they wore fit snug but didn’t hinder movement as much as Quey thought it would.  The armor also seemed to breathe fairly well, as he caught a bit of a chill from his metallic surroundings.  Part of him wondered, as he looked down at the chest piece, how well would it hold up against a bullet considering how light it was.  Of course they were developing new ways of making such things all the time, and even if the answer was not very well what was he to do about it now?

             
Quey felt the engines rumbling through the floor and looked around the room at the other faces in the cargo hold.  Most of them were sitting on benches that lined the wall with equipment laid out across the floor between them while others sat on the floor with the gear.

             
“Fuck,” Rachel said.

             
Eyes moved to her and she met a few before whispering, “I have to pee.”

             
This was met with a subtle groan.  “Didn’t you go before we left?” Quey asked.

             
“Yeah,” she snapped, “It’s called being pregnant in a vibrating box.”

             
A slight chuckle rumbled through the group.

             
Everyone was on edge.  Rachel perhaps more than any of them as she had more to lose if this thing went sour.  Strange, that she should worry so deeply on a life that hadn’t started yet.  Still she did, and couldn’t help it.  Ever since she felt it move, or thought she did, that day on the highway when she’d let go of the wheel, it was all that kept her going.  This baby would be born and born healthy and it would grow up.  That was how she would honor Dusty.  She’d lie in bed with their child and tell him or her stories about their father.  He or she would never know him personally, but Rachel’d be damned if they didn’t know who he was.

             
Her nerves quivered under this sort of reflection and accentuated the dilemma with her bladder.  The vibrations from the transports engine weren’t helping the matter either.  She took a deep breath and tried to think about anything else, of course that only made the task impossible.

             
Quey said something to her she didn’t quite catch but understood he was asking about her so she replied, “I’ll be alright.”

             
The transport continued on.

             
“How far along are you?” one of the female soldiers asked.

             
Rachel looked at her.  She was hard for a woman, sharp features framed by short dark hair, but not unfeminine, there was softness to her as well.  “Not too shy of four months,” Rachel told her.

             
The woman smiled.  “My sister had a baby last year.  Had to pee all the time.  Used to tell me her life had become an endless cycle of eat-piss-sleep.”

             
Rachel chuckled.

             
The woman produced a metallic cylinder from one of the bags in front of her, opened it and took a sip of water then passed it to the man next to her.  He looked at her queerly so she said, “Take a sip.”  When he didn’t move she added, “She’s not going to be able to hold it forever so unless you want this place to start smelling like a neglected rest stop take a fucking sip.”

             
The man took the water bottle and obliged.

             
“Not too much now, don’t need to fill yourself up too,” she told him.  “Pass it around.”

             
And they did.  They passed the water bottle around the cargo hold, draining it sip by sip until it was empty and then the woman passed it to Rachel.  “Thank you… uh,” she said.

             
“Elvy,” the soldier replied.

             
The women exchanged a smile and Rachel took the container.  Quey and Natalie did their best to position themselves so she’d have as much privacy as possible and everyone else endured the next few awkward ticks as best they could.

             
As the transport began to slow Ryla reached into her armored vest and pulled out her device.  Quey smiled as he watched her.  She looked so small in the armor, her thin arms emerging from the sides of the thick chest piece.  He watched her tap the sheet a few times to engage the program that would disrupt the bases signal when they tried to scan the cargo.  As he watched her he realized this might be the first time he’d ever seen her in pants.

             
Ryla tapped a few buttons and her device conformed to her forearm and displayed information as a hologram in the air above.  She tapped a few more buttons and the image rescinded.

             
The cargo container jostled as the crane took hold of them and lifted them from the transport boat.  They could feel themselves going up, and then over and then down again before landing rough.  Hands reached for something solid to steady against as the container settled on the dock.  Some people gripped the benches they sat on or the people beside them but a few of the more foolish souls chose the walls and caused a series of unnecessary bangs.

             
“Shh,” someone hissed as curtly as possible.  Everyone settled into silence as they listened to the whirr of the crane moving to scoop up another container.  When all four were off the transport voices approached outside.

             
Ryla lifted her forearm and it displayed a hologram of information that glowed pale blue against her face.  She tapped a few keys and waited.

             
“…be some kind of mistake,” they heard a man say.  “What possible need would we have for all this shit?”

             
“You have the receiving order?” another voice asked shortly.

             
“You see I do but—”

             
“And I have a shipping order.  Anything else isn’t our fucking problem.”

             
The voices moved past the container, one of them was walking away and the other was following.  “Easy enough for you to say, I’m the one who has to store all this shit,” the first voice protested.

             
“Not my problem,” the second said bluntly, and continued moving.  “Leave it right where it is for all I care.”

             
A silent signal passed between the soldiers and the ones closest to the gear began passing out firearms.

             
“This isn’t going well,” Rachel whispered to Quey.  He nodded.

             
“Sir,” a new voice shouted and they watched the wall as hurried footsteps approached. Heavy boots slapping hard on pavement ran past the crates to join the others.

             
“What is it?” the second voice asked agitated.

             
“Look at this.”

             
A moment, then, “What the fuck?”

             
“That can’t be right can it?” the new voice asked, it sounded young.

             
“What can’t be right?” the first man asked.

             
“The weight.”

             
Ryla’s eyes widened.  She’d taken the weighing mechanism into account but neglected to consider that they would likely know what cargo should weigh.  Of course they would.  A program would match one number to another but a person would consider them all.

             
“It matches what I have,” the first man said.

             
“Yeah, but doesn’t that seem light.  I mean our usual food stock is almost three times this amount and the containers aren’t near this size,” the kid pointed out.

             
“Come on,” the other voice barked.  “This whole mess smells suspect.”

             
Glances were exchanged inside the cargo hold.  Quey followed suit with the soldiers by collecting his pistol and chambering a round.  Rachel did the same with her rifle.

             
Outside there was a clang followed by the metallic creek of one of the containers being opened.  “Shit!” someone screamed.  Shots followed.  Metal slammed.  An explosion boomed against the walls and shuddered through everyone inside.  Heads shook as ears popped.

             
“Sound the alarm,” the second voice shouted and that’s when they moved.  The first pair of soldiers to the door opened it and poured out onto the loading area of the dock.  It was a massive sheet of concrete at the edge of the island with a pair of docks running out into the ocean and other bits of cargo stacked around the sides and in smaller piles across the center.

             
Shots rang out.  Bodies fell to the ground, crumpling over in heaps that slowly reddened the ground.  Quey’s eyes were wide as he looked about at the chaos.  Their ambush was blown but they still had a bit of surprise left on their side.

             
Ryla tapped her device fiercely, thin fingers dancing over glowing buttons and Mechaganon and Bowserbot came to life.  They rolled onto the dock, the sounds of their engines amplified by the metallic container as they emerged.  Eric’s people cleared the way, dispersing toward the edges of the room where cover was plentiful.  Some of the braver of them made for the crates and other machinery—cranes and lifts and such—spread across the middle of the dock.  Many of them didn’t make it.

             
Ryla activated her robots and they opened fire, a loud burst of automatic gunfire echoed off the concrete and steel, nearly deadening the screams that followed.

             
Quey's eyes caught movement and he tracked it.  It was a grenade and it bounced off the dock and flew into the container beside him.  Two others followed but only one found its mark.  A set of explosions rocked the container and screams followed the blast as the stragglers inside met the end of their line.  Quey saw that the two cargo containers furthest from him were warped from explosions and smoke poured from the open doors.  Bodies and parts of bodies lie in a cone of blood and gore around the openings, as if they’d been chewed up and vomited out.

             
From his position behind a small rover type vehicle in the center of the room, Eric Hoss was screaming orders to his men.

             
Above them automatic gunfire cracked as a pair of turrets opened fire.  They were on opposite ends of the control platform that lay up some stairs in the middle of the far wall.  The distance seemed vast to Quey as he watched a cluster of soldiers collapse, blood gurgling from severed veins and pooling on the dock around them.  Soon this whole place would just be a sea of red.  He swallowed hard.

             
Below the platform, near the corners of the far wall, a pair of cargo doors opened on both sides.  Blue Moon security loosed a heavy burst of rounds across the docks as men in uniforms and body armor dashed in and found cover amidst the crates and bits of machinery.

             
“Cover!” Quey heard someone shout and so he looked for some.  There were crates scattered near the walls.  He looked about, spotted Leone with Amber behind him.  The boy watched the chaos slowly escalate throughout the area while she stood wide-eyed and trembling.

             
Explosions shivered the air as the base’s security personnel loosed more grenades from their new points of cover.  Quey ran toward the kids, gunfire erupting to either side and felt his belly knot as a bullet passed close enough for him to hear.

             
Ryla crooked her elbow, tapped her device and Mechaganon took a special interest in the turret on the left corner of the control platform, loosing his own steady stream of high caliber ammunition.

             
Quey grabbed Leone and Amber and hurried them toward one side of the cargo bay, shoving them down between some crates.  ‘Hopefully they don’t contain anything flammable,’ he thought but there was no time for that so he let it go.

             
“What do we do?” Leone asked him and when he looked at the boy he was surprised by what he saw.  Cold rage without sense enough for fear.

             
“We nothing,” he barked and shoved the boy down.  “This is the fucking closet, understand?” Leone glared at him but after a split he nodded.

             
When Quey turned to assess the situation he thought the boy’s question had been a good one.  As he watched the battle rage, as more and more of Blue Moon’s security personnel arrived in the doors on opposite ends of the far wall and on the platform above, he indeed wondered what they were going to do.