On the Command Tier, Chiana paced. Five steps forward, turn around, and five steps straight back again. She repeated the process over and over; positive that the deck before her was reasonably clear of objects she might stumble over in her blindness. The activity help calm her ragged nerves... and it helped take her mind off the annoying itch that had developed behind her swathe eyelids.
"Any word yet?" she asked for what sounded like the hundredth time in the last arn. Absently her hand began to rub at the bandage over her eyes.
"Nothing yet," replied Noranti in her ever-patient voice.
Off to one side she heard Stark take a shuffling step in her direction. "Are your eyes bothering you?" he asked the Nebari girl. The tone of his voice held its usual hint of hyperactivity that didn't help Chiana's own nerves at the moment... even if he did seem genuinely concerned about her comfort.
"A little," she answered the Banik slave. She forced her hand away from the bandage as she realized what she was doing and considered that constantly touching them could only make the irritation worse.
"The itch means the herbs are acting as they are suppose to," the old woman added.
"Its annoying, but I guess I can live with it," Chiana said, "Where's the Transport Pod at? The same place as last time?"
"Yes," answered Noranti, "He is still waiting."
"Dren," muttered the gray girl to herself. She reached up to her tunic and fumbled a few times to key her comm badge. The channel opened on an encoded wavelength to the cargo craft that had left Moya a few arns earlier. "D'argo?" she asked.
"What is it?" came the scratchy static-tinted voice of the Luxan over the comm.
"Any word from Rygel or Berret?" she wanted to know.
"Nothing," answered D'argo's grim voice. "They traveled on foot to the prison's location." He checked his timepiece, "If 'his' calculations are correct, they should have arrived in the vicinity a quarter arn ago."
Chiana let out a heavy sigh. "I guess we keep waiting then," she replied.
"That is all we can do for the moment," said D'argo, sounding less then thrilled with the prospect.
Berret dropped the heavy satchel to the rooftop's deck next to him. At the rim of the tall building's rooftop he rested one armored boot on the knee-high ledge and leaned slightly over to peer down at the prison that lay below the level of his current position. He smiled to himself as he set his occulars over his eyes and adjusted them to far focus. The rooftop of the other structure came into sharp view and he scanned the area looking for any new additions to the building's layout. Nothing appeared changed from the plans he had acquired. All the major security measures seemed to have been instituted to the lower floors where he had make his entrance the first time into the penal complex.
Part of him wondered why these people had placed a maximum-security prison in such a central location inside the city limits. It would have been more tactically sound to have placed it further away from any major inhabited locations. Secluded, it would have been easier to defend against what he had done and what he was about to attempt once again. The natives of this world probably believed having the prison inside the city limits allowed for better protection and containment of their captives. They didn't take into account the perimeter weakness nearby taller buildings presented. Still, no matter what their reasoning, it was a flaw in the security design he was going to take full advantage of.
"What the yotz did we come up here for?" asked Rygel in a complaining tone.
Berret turned to look upon the Hynerian, who had given up his normal attire of royal robes for a flat-black colored jumpsuit that Noranti had quickly sewn for the Dominar's tiny statue. The suit had extra padding at the elbows and knees and a cut-down Peacekeeper web belt that held the Hynerian ruler's tools and weapons.
"To access our way in," replied Berret in his toneless voice as he put away the occulars.
"From up here?" Rygel put it with some puzzlement. "How the hezmana are we going to get from here to over there?"
Berret stepped away from the building's edge and knelt back down to the satchel he'd carried up to the rooftop. "Can you fly?" he asked nonchalantly.
"No, you frellnik," answered the Hynerian acidly, "But if you want to try, you can go first."
The Shrike paused to regard the Dominar again with silver-tinted eyes. Rygel swallowed hard at the glare and wondered if he'd pushed Chiana's unpredictable pet too far with the cutting retort. The thought that Berret could very well toss him off the building should he get the notion, and there would be nobody there to stop him, or witness the murder entered his mind. His small hand eased is way toward the Laser Knife in his belt. Being too small to wield a full-size pulse pistol proficiently, the Laser Knife was capable of shooting a small pulse bolt a short distance. Many PK commandoes used them as back-up weapons as well as cutting implements. Rygel knew that his only hope would be to hit Berret in the head with his first shot. The armor he wore over the rest of his body would easily defeat the small bolt from the knife. The assassin had forgone wearing his usual billowing cloak for this operation, and Rygel could very well see that almost every henta of the Shrike's tall body was covered by pulse-blast resistant armor.
To his immediate relief, the assassin seemed to dismiss him from thought and went back to digging around in the large satchel they had brought to the rooftop with them.
"We are both going together," the Shrike cryptically replied, not giving Rygel a hint as to how he hoped to accomplish the seemingly improbable feat. He pulled out two smaller packs from the larger bag and a big collapsible metallic tube. He put the packs to one side and then unfolded a handle and several other gadgets from the sides of the cylinder. The Shrike did something to both ends of the tube and the hidden lengths of the cylinder telescoped outward making the tube even longer then it originally had been. Rygel then realized the device was some kind of portable mass driver that used magnetic fields to launch objects at high speeds. Though the device now looked longer than any other he had seen before. As he looked closer he saw the ignition chamber was double sided and off-center making one end a longer barrel than the other. Both chamber ends held shiny Macro-steel grappling barbs. The claws folded against the shaft sides to make the projectile more aerodynamic. The Shrike attached a spool of cable to the launch tube and after making the proper cable connections closed the loading gates on the launcher.
"Are you frelling insane?" asked the Dominar as he realized how Berret planed on crossing the open-air gap between the buildings. Berret just smiled sarcastically.
"You're the one who suggested we fly, Dominar," the ex-Enforcer replied mockingly as he lifted the tube and settled it over one shoulder. Rygel again swallowed hard as he thought about their height from the ground... the very, very hard ground below them.
Berret pointed the device at the other building and almost as an afterthought turned and said, "Oh... and Rygel..."
"What?" the smaller being managed to squeak out.
"The next time you reach for a weapon... be sure you intend to use it."
Without waiting for a reply from the Hynerian, Berret turned back to the launcher and set one eye to the sighting scoped attached to one side of the tube. A microt or two later, the Shrike squeezed the trigger and one of the grappler missiles was propelled at high speed by a magnetic pulse from the longer barrel end of the launcher.
Berret maintained his sight picture of his intended target with the scope to guide the grappler. Halfway between the buildings a small powerful rocket motor ignited and burned for less than three microts, increasing the projectile's velocity suddenly. The cable dragging behind the spearhead played out faster that the eye could follow with a thrill hum. The grappler hit the opposite building at point of aim and went on to bury itself into the concrete structure of the rooftop. Once inside the claws used their own detonating device to drive themselves deeper into the masonry, giving the grappler an even stronger hold deep in the material of the opposite roof.
Berret immediately turned to a place he already picked out nearby on their own current rooftop. Reversing the launcher tube to the shorter barreled end, he fired that barbed grappler into the wall of the stairwell alcove with the same results. A flick of a control on the cable spool made that part of the device draw the remaining slack out of the cable until it was taut between the two buildings.
The last piece of equipment inside the satchel was a trolley with handgrips that Berret attached and secured on the cable
"You can't be serious? Do you have any idea about how high up we are?" Rygel asked again. Berret gave him another half-mad grin. "I was afraid of that," the Dominar muttered dismally.
Rygel made the twenty-five-microt journey strapped to Berret's back in a harness with both eyes closed tightly. In that relatively short span of time, he'd managed to call on all the major Hynerian deities and some he hadn't prayed to or remembered since his early childhood. The wind seemed to howl in his ears forever and it was with great relief when he finally felt Berret release his hold on the trolley's handgrips and drop to the new roof. He opened his eyes just in time to witness the Shrike deploy one set of brace blades and slice through the cable they had just slid across on.
With the tension gone on the cable, the spool on the launcher began to reel the line back into itself. The Hynerian sighed to himself as he watched the wire disappear into the night. For good or ill, now they had no other choice but to find their way out of the prison building itself. Rygel took a moment to survey the area and had no trouble in locating the only entrance on the entire flat surface of the building apex. His eyebrows drooped at what he'd discovered there.
"This door's made of Dura-Iridium too! You idiot! How do you expect us to get through it?" Rygel exclaimed in an excited low growl. "Didn't you check what it was before you decided to try and get in this way?"
Berret gave him a contemptuous frown. "Of course I did," he grunted in reply as he unfastened a side flap on one backpack. "What did you think it was made of?" he asked.
"Something we could get through," the Dominar replied contemptuously. "Now we're stuck up here until somebody finds us. We're going to end up dead or back in cells."
"No, we are not," the Shrike answered. He had pulled out a dark metallic object from the pack and it began to unfold itself in his hands. An instant later, Rygel saw that it battle helmet that went to Berret's armor. It was the first time that the Hynerian had ever seen that part of Berret's protective suit and he idly wonder why the fool assassin had decided to play with it now of all times. He pushed the observation aside for the moment, more concerned with how they were going to get off the roof.
"Do you mind sharing with me how we're going to get out of here?" he asked.
Berret fastened the helmet to the neck ring of his breast and shoulder plates. Half his face was still visible through the opened helm visor.
"One floor down," the ex-Enforcer explained with another unhinged smile that left Rygel's three stomachs queasy.
"What for the love of Jovanna are you talking about?" the small being had to ask, even if he was afraid of the answer. Berret picked up the packs and head over to the roof's edge.
"Over the side and one floor down," he said as he tied a short length of rope to the packs. After finding a window he tossed the packs over and lowered them until they dangled along side the glass panes.
"You can't be seri... never mind! I know you are," started the Dominar as he boosted himself up to look over the edge at the hanging backpacks. It was then that he noticed that the floor directly below them actually had no windows at all. The packs were really hanging outside the window of the floor below the very top one where their objective was... two floors below them. Rygel swallowed hard again as he noticed how far down the street really was. "You have noticed we actually have to go two floors down, didn't you?" he asked the assassin.
Berret looked over the side again at the comment. He looked back up at Rygel and shrugged his metal covered shoulder.
"Whatever," he said without apparent care.
"Just lovely," muttered the Hynerian glumly.
Without explaining further, Berret had Rygel re-secure himself back into his five-point harness that they'd used for the cable slide over. The Shrike then reattached the smaller being to his back and after testing the harness belt's buckles and locks; he closed his helmet visor and leaped up onto the flange that surrounded the rooftop.
"What the frell are you doing," Rygel screamed.
"Quiet, Slug!" Berret shot back, something in the helm gave his normally emotionless voice an electronic quality. The effect was very disturbing as it gave his tone an even more sinister property. "Don't break my concentration. I would not want... to drop you. Or something equally as hideous."
The Dominar could almost swear her heard Berret utter a dark chuckle but the sudden noise of metal against metal stole his attention.
Without warning... Berret flung them both off the building.
Rygel had planned on screaming all the way down, but the cry was abruptly cut short as he was suddenly slammed into the hard metal plate that covered the assassin's back.
Berret's body made a quick thumping motion that was accompanied by the sound of tortured masonry. The Shrike's tall frame made another odd jerk and the teeth grinding sound happened again. It was then that Rygel regained enough of his senses to realize that he didn't have the expected weightlessness of freefall and that his harness had grown strangely tight... in all the wrong places.
He opened his eyes and found himself looking straight down at the street below them, but they weren't plummeting to their deaths. Berret lifted up one arm and stretched it out before him, slamming it into the wall. He jerked one leg and then they both seemed to move forward down the wall about half a drec. He then slammed the leg he had lifted back against the buildings wall. Both times the annoying grinding brick noise happened.
Somehow Berret was crawling headfirst down the wall like an insect Rygel then realized.
The initial rush of fear left him and he began to notice the slight pounding in his head that was being caused by gravity causing all the blood in his body to head that way.
"You're doing this on purpose," the Hynerian muttered irately. He knew that if the Shrike could scale a building's wall without ropes or lines... he could just as well done it feet first and spared Rygel the headache!
Berret turned his head slightly to gaze back over his shoulder at the Dominar. Rygel only saw the angled faceplate of the helm with it slanted eye visors glowing a dim evil red... probably a device to add the Shrike's night vision further the Hynerian ruler considered idly in the back of his mind... but he knew that Chiana's damn frelling pet was probably grinning ear-to-disgusting-pink-ear at the position he'd forced the Dominar into.
"Frelling madman!" Rygel grunted to himself as Berret continued crawling forward down the wall. He turned his attention elsewhere besides the waiting ground or the raving frellnik whose back he was strapped to. He looked upwards at the dark skyline and decided he'd keep looking there... as if he concentrated enough, he could trick himself and it didn't seem they we're that high up then.
The movement of Berret's foot broke the illusion and he found his eyes locking on it before he could stop himself. It was then he noticed that the soles of his armored boots had sprouted three henta long spikes around them. He watched the Shrike kick forward and the spikes buried themselves into the brickwork. That's what was making that Goddess awful grating sound... and it was how Berret was scaling the wall.
Rygel concluded that they had to also be made out of whatever the assassin's blades were to cut so easily into the stone and that there had to be a like set of climbing spikes somewhere on both his gauntlet braces that he was driving into the wall as they moved closer to the window.
"No, Chiana, I have not heard anything yet," D'argo told his lover while doing his best to keep the growing testiness from his voice. It was the third time in the last half arn that the Nebari girl had commed asking for an update. "When I hear anything I'll..."
He was cut off when the telltale light for the Hynerian's comm badge lit up on the Pod's communication board. "Hold a moment, Rygel is signing. I will tie the comm channels together."
"Thanks, D'argo," Chiana commed over the frequency.
The Luxan set the appropriate switches and Rygel's voice broke over the comm link.
"D'argo! D'argo, are you there?" came the Hynerian's hushed request.
"I read you, Rygel," answered the warrior.
"We're all here, Ryg," Chiana added in.
There was a gasp of relief from the small being.
"Thank the seven Hynerian gods of fortune!" the Dominar exclaimed, "Chiana's lunatic nearly killed me! Several times! Do you know how he got us here?"
D'argo rolled his eyes. If he didn't do something quick, Rygel would spend the next arn describing in great detail the imagined atrocities he'd suffered at the Shrike's hands. So he cut the deposed ruler off.
"Well if you can still speak, obviously you are still alive. Do you make it inside the prison?"
"Oh, we made it all right," Rygel replied irately.
Chiana's more acute hearing picked up an odd gurgling noise in the transmission's background.
"Rygel?" she asked, "What's that strange noise I hear in the background?"
"Ummmm... You don't want to know," the Hynerian replied hesitantly.
The Dominar glanced back over at Berret who held an unlucky maintenance worker up in the air by his throat. One handed, the Shrike crushed the life from the humanoid until his neck broke with an audible snap. The man's legs stopped kicking as the assassin let the body fall to the floor.
Rygel covered his comm badge with one hand. "Frelling bastard," he hissed in Berret's direction. "You didn't have to kill him!"
The ex-Enforcer's armor covered head swung his way to regard him for a moment. The crimson eye slits of the visor gave nothing away as to what the Shrike was thinking.
"Frell you!" Rygel spat a moment later. He was growing tired of Berret's attempts of intimidation.
The assassin barked a short electronically tinted laugh and turned away to examine the doorway leading out of the room they had broken into.
"Goddess frelled animal," the Hynerian muttered and uncovered his comm badge.
"Rygel? What's going on?" D'argo demanded to know.
"Nothing... I just wanted to report that we're in," the small being supplied in answer.
"Are you both okay?" asked Chiana.
"As okay as can be expected. Nice of you to ask... unlike you did when you volunteered me for this."
The Luxan broke back in before Rygel could affix any more retorts to the comment.
"Did anyone detect your arrival?" the warrior asked.
Rygel glanced down at the worker's lifeless body.
"Not anyone who cares anymore," he responded dryly.
"What?"
Rygel cleared his throat and put aside the thoughts he was thinking. He had a job to do and the sooner he got it done, the sooner he could get out of this place... and as far away from Berret as Moya's massive hull would allow him to get.
"Never mind. I'll fill you in later," he told the big Luxan. "We're getting ready to go after the device now. As soon as everything is ready I'll call with a warning. You just be ready to get your useless eema here as quick as possible and get me out of here when this place goes."
He shut off his comm link before D'argo or the Nebari girl could ask him any further questions.
Berret had opened the door and was scanning the corridor outside for any more prison personnel.
Rygel jumped to the floor and grabbing up the smaller of the packs, moved to join him in the hallway.
"Aeryn and Crichton had better appreciate this!" he muttered to himself.
"Well... they're inside," said Chiana as she closed the comm channel.
"Yes. They are," agreed Noranti absentmindedly.
The Nebari's ears detected a low moan from the corner of the Command Tier. "What's the matter, Stark?" she asked, knowing immediately from whom the calamitous sound originated from.
"Ummm... all ready there is death!" the half-mad Banik exclaimed. "We have unleashed a terrible evil on that planet. We must call this off before other innocents perish! Call D'argo! Call D'argo... and have the brave Luxan kill the Shrike before any others die!"
Chiana sighed and would have rolled her eyes if the bandages had allowed her to. She really wasn't in the mood to put up with any more of Stark's ranting at the moment.
"Blez out, One-eye," she told him. "You don't know that anyone's died yet."
She heard the Banik shuffle toward but he stopped some distance away, knowing that even blind, Chiana could still judge distance by his voice to strike him if she were annoyed enough.
"He has... I heard the unfortunate soul calling to me," Stark replied somewhat defiantly. "You are more then sight-blind, Chiana. He reveals in it, he cannot help himself... no matter how hard he tries, the madness drives him. The kindness you feel for him leaves you morally blind as sure as your injured eyes hide the evidence that we all see in his face."
"Stark... you're kinkoid," Chiana hurled at the man in frustration. "Wrinkles, tell him he's imagining things, will you?" she added.
Noranti paused at mixing the concoction of herbs in the iron pot she had brought up to the Command Tier with her and shrugged her ancient shoulders. The remembering Chiana couldn't see her, said out loud,
"All things have a time and place deemed by the gods to die."
Noranti sprouted the comment off almost idly and went back to tossing some more ingredients into her pot.
The old woman dipped a forefinger into the substance and tasted it... then made a sour face.
"You see," the Nebari then said, "Berret hasn't killed anybody."
Noranti paused at stripping a few leaves off a plant's stem and looked up.
"Oh, I didn't say that," she commented.
Chiana frowned deeply and began to sputter.
"I said nobody has died who wasn't meant to die at this time and place."
"Ah-ha! You see?" broke in Stark triumphantly.
The old woman picked up a large wooden spoon and started mashing the new leaves into mess inside the pot. "That does not mean you are correct either," Noranti admonished Stark. She absently began to use the spoon as a pointer to emphasize her lecture, not seeming to notice the green splatters of goop she was flinging about the command chamber. "The Shrike serves a purpose in the scheme of destiny just as we all do. Those that die, do so because it is their time and place. Just as should Rygel or Berret die on the planet, it will be because it is the time. If they fail, it will be because it is John and Aeryn's time and place. Fate has a funny way of turning out as it should."
During her sermon, a big blob of the herbal mixture landed on the tip of her nose. Noranti seemed to notice it all of a sudden and spent a microt or two looking at it with crossed eyes. She finally gave up trying to focus on it and wiped it off with a fingertip. She sniffed cautiously at it, made a pleased face and then stuck the finger in her mouth. She swished the concoction around for a moment as if she were sampling a fine wine and then swallowed it.
"Ah, that is much better," she announced to the room. She pulled out a nearby chair and grabbing Chiana by one arm, guided her into it. "Come sit here, child," she said to the young Nebari girl, "Its time I changed your poultice."
"Any word yet?" she asked for what sounded like the hundredth time in the last arn. Absently her hand began to rub at the bandage over her eyes.
"Nothing yet," replied Noranti in her ever-patient voice.
Off to one side she heard Stark take a shuffling step in her direction. "Are your eyes bothering you?" he asked the Nebari girl. The tone of his voice held its usual hint of hyperactivity that didn't help Chiana's own nerves at the moment... even if he did seem genuinely concerned about her comfort.
"A little," she answered the Banik slave. She forced her hand away from the bandage as she realized what she was doing and considered that constantly touching them could only make the irritation worse.
"The itch means the herbs are acting as they are suppose to," the old woman added.
"Its annoying, but I guess I can live with it," Chiana said, "Where's the Transport Pod at? The same place as last time?"
"Yes," answered Noranti, "He is still waiting."
"Dren," muttered the gray girl to herself. She reached up to her tunic and fumbled a few times to key her comm badge. The channel opened on an encoded wavelength to the cargo craft that had left Moya a few arns earlier. "D'argo?" she asked.
"What is it?" came the scratchy static-tinted voice of the Luxan over the comm.
"Any word from Rygel or Berret?" she wanted to know.
"Nothing," answered D'argo's grim voice. "They traveled on foot to the prison's location." He checked his timepiece, "If 'his' calculations are correct, they should have arrived in the vicinity a quarter arn ago."
Chiana let out a heavy sigh. "I guess we keep waiting then," she replied.
"That is all we can do for the moment," said D'argo, sounding less then thrilled with the prospect.
Berret dropped the heavy satchel to the rooftop's deck next to him. At the rim of the tall building's rooftop he rested one armored boot on the knee-high ledge and leaned slightly over to peer down at the prison that lay below the level of his current position. He smiled to himself as he set his occulars over his eyes and adjusted them to far focus. The rooftop of the other structure came into sharp view and he scanned the area looking for any new additions to the building's layout. Nothing appeared changed from the plans he had acquired. All the major security measures seemed to have been instituted to the lower floors where he had make his entrance the first time into the penal complex.
Part of him wondered why these people had placed a maximum-security prison in such a central location inside the city limits. It would have been more tactically sound to have placed it further away from any major inhabited locations. Secluded, it would have been easier to defend against what he had done and what he was about to attempt once again. The natives of this world probably believed having the prison inside the city limits allowed for better protection and containment of their captives. They didn't take into account the perimeter weakness nearby taller buildings presented. Still, no matter what their reasoning, it was a flaw in the security design he was going to take full advantage of.
"What the yotz did we come up here for?" asked Rygel in a complaining tone.
Berret turned to look upon the Hynerian, who had given up his normal attire of royal robes for a flat-black colored jumpsuit that Noranti had quickly sewn for the Dominar's tiny statue. The suit had extra padding at the elbows and knees and a cut-down Peacekeeper web belt that held the Hynerian ruler's tools and weapons.
"To access our way in," replied Berret in his toneless voice as he put away the occulars.
"From up here?" Rygel put it with some puzzlement. "How the hezmana are we going to get from here to over there?"
Berret stepped away from the building's edge and knelt back down to the satchel he'd carried up to the rooftop. "Can you fly?" he asked nonchalantly.
"No, you frellnik," answered the Hynerian acidly, "But if you want to try, you can go first."
The Shrike paused to regard the Dominar again with silver-tinted eyes. Rygel swallowed hard at the glare and wondered if he'd pushed Chiana's unpredictable pet too far with the cutting retort. The thought that Berret could very well toss him off the building should he get the notion, and there would be nobody there to stop him, or witness the murder entered his mind. His small hand eased is way toward the Laser Knife in his belt. Being too small to wield a full-size pulse pistol proficiently, the Laser Knife was capable of shooting a small pulse bolt a short distance. Many PK commandoes used them as back-up weapons as well as cutting implements. Rygel knew that his only hope would be to hit Berret in the head with his first shot. The armor he wore over the rest of his body would easily defeat the small bolt from the knife. The assassin had forgone wearing his usual billowing cloak for this operation, and Rygel could very well see that almost every henta of the Shrike's tall body was covered by pulse-blast resistant armor.
To his immediate relief, the assassin seemed to dismiss him from thought and went back to digging around in the large satchel they had brought to the rooftop with them.
"We are both going together," the Shrike cryptically replied, not giving Rygel a hint as to how he hoped to accomplish the seemingly improbable feat. He pulled out two smaller packs from the larger bag and a big collapsible metallic tube. He put the packs to one side and then unfolded a handle and several other gadgets from the sides of the cylinder. The Shrike did something to both ends of the tube and the hidden lengths of the cylinder telescoped outward making the tube even longer then it originally had been. Rygel then realized the device was some kind of portable mass driver that used magnetic fields to launch objects at high speeds. Though the device now looked longer than any other he had seen before. As he looked closer he saw the ignition chamber was double sided and off-center making one end a longer barrel than the other. Both chamber ends held shiny Macro-steel grappling barbs. The claws folded against the shaft sides to make the projectile more aerodynamic. The Shrike attached a spool of cable to the launch tube and after making the proper cable connections closed the loading gates on the launcher.
"Are you frelling insane?" asked the Dominar as he realized how Berret planed on crossing the open-air gap between the buildings. Berret just smiled sarcastically.
"You're the one who suggested we fly, Dominar," the ex-Enforcer replied mockingly as he lifted the tube and settled it over one shoulder. Rygel again swallowed hard as he thought about their height from the ground... the very, very hard ground below them.
Berret pointed the device at the other building and almost as an afterthought turned and said, "Oh... and Rygel..."
"What?" the smaller being managed to squeak out.
"The next time you reach for a weapon... be sure you intend to use it."
Without waiting for a reply from the Hynerian, Berret turned back to the launcher and set one eye to the sighting scoped attached to one side of the tube. A microt or two later, the Shrike squeezed the trigger and one of the grappler missiles was propelled at high speed by a magnetic pulse from the longer barrel end of the launcher.
Berret maintained his sight picture of his intended target with the scope to guide the grappler. Halfway between the buildings a small powerful rocket motor ignited and burned for less than three microts, increasing the projectile's velocity suddenly. The cable dragging behind the spearhead played out faster that the eye could follow with a thrill hum. The grappler hit the opposite building at point of aim and went on to bury itself into the concrete structure of the rooftop. Once inside the claws used their own detonating device to drive themselves deeper into the masonry, giving the grappler an even stronger hold deep in the material of the opposite roof.
Berret immediately turned to a place he already picked out nearby on their own current rooftop. Reversing the launcher tube to the shorter barreled end, he fired that barbed grappler into the wall of the stairwell alcove with the same results. A flick of a control on the cable spool made that part of the device draw the remaining slack out of the cable until it was taut between the two buildings.
The last piece of equipment inside the satchel was a trolley with handgrips that Berret attached and secured on the cable
"You can't be serious? Do you have any idea about how high up we are?" Rygel asked again. Berret gave him another half-mad grin. "I was afraid of that," the Dominar muttered dismally.
Rygel made the twenty-five-microt journey strapped to Berret's back in a harness with both eyes closed tightly. In that relatively short span of time, he'd managed to call on all the major Hynerian deities and some he hadn't prayed to or remembered since his early childhood. The wind seemed to howl in his ears forever and it was with great relief when he finally felt Berret release his hold on the trolley's handgrips and drop to the new roof. He opened his eyes just in time to witness the Shrike deploy one set of brace blades and slice through the cable they had just slid across on.
With the tension gone on the cable, the spool on the launcher began to reel the line back into itself. The Hynerian sighed to himself as he watched the wire disappear into the night. For good or ill, now they had no other choice but to find their way out of the prison building itself. Rygel took a moment to survey the area and had no trouble in locating the only entrance on the entire flat surface of the building apex. His eyebrows drooped at what he'd discovered there.
"This door's made of Dura-Iridium too! You idiot! How do you expect us to get through it?" Rygel exclaimed in an excited low growl. "Didn't you check what it was before you decided to try and get in this way?"
Berret gave him a contemptuous frown. "Of course I did," he grunted in reply as he unfastened a side flap on one backpack. "What did you think it was made of?" he asked.
"Something we could get through," the Dominar replied contemptuously. "Now we're stuck up here until somebody finds us. We're going to end up dead or back in cells."
"No, we are not," the Shrike answered. He had pulled out a dark metallic object from the pack and it began to unfold itself in his hands. An instant later, Rygel saw that it battle helmet that went to Berret's armor. It was the first time that the Hynerian had ever seen that part of Berret's protective suit and he idly wonder why the fool assassin had decided to play with it now of all times. He pushed the observation aside for the moment, more concerned with how they were going to get off the roof.
"Do you mind sharing with me how we're going to get out of here?" he asked.
Berret fastened the helmet to the neck ring of his breast and shoulder plates. Half his face was still visible through the opened helm visor.
"One floor down," the ex-Enforcer explained with another unhinged smile that left Rygel's three stomachs queasy.
"What for the love of Jovanna are you talking about?" the small being had to ask, even if he was afraid of the answer. Berret picked up the packs and head over to the roof's edge.
"Over the side and one floor down," he said as he tied a short length of rope to the packs. After finding a window he tossed the packs over and lowered them until they dangled along side the glass panes.
"You can't be seri... never mind! I know you are," started the Dominar as he boosted himself up to look over the edge at the hanging backpacks. It was then that he noticed that the floor directly below them actually had no windows at all. The packs were really hanging outside the window of the floor below the very top one where their objective was... two floors below them. Rygel swallowed hard again as he noticed how far down the street really was. "You have noticed we actually have to go two floors down, didn't you?" he asked the assassin.
Berret looked over the side again at the comment. He looked back up at Rygel and shrugged his metal covered shoulder.
"Whatever," he said without apparent care.
"Just lovely," muttered the Hynerian glumly.
Without explaining further, Berret had Rygel re-secure himself back into his five-point harness that they'd used for the cable slide over. The Shrike then reattached the smaller being to his back and after testing the harness belt's buckles and locks; he closed his helmet visor and leaped up onto the flange that surrounded the rooftop.
"What the frell are you doing," Rygel screamed.
"Quiet, Slug!" Berret shot back, something in the helm gave his normally emotionless voice an electronic quality. The effect was very disturbing as it gave his tone an even more sinister property. "Don't break my concentration. I would not want... to drop you. Or something equally as hideous."
The Dominar could almost swear her heard Berret utter a dark chuckle but the sudden noise of metal against metal stole his attention.
Without warning... Berret flung them both off the building.
Rygel had planned on screaming all the way down, but the cry was abruptly cut short as he was suddenly slammed into the hard metal plate that covered the assassin's back.
Berret's body made a quick thumping motion that was accompanied by the sound of tortured masonry. The Shrike's tall frame made another odd jerk and the teeth grinding sound happened again. It was then that Rygel regained enough of his senses to realize that he didn't have the expected weightlessness of freefall and that his harness had grown strangely tight... in all the wrong places.
He opened his eyes and found himself looking straight down at the street below them, but they weren't plummeting to their deaths. Berret lifted up one arm and stretched it out before him, slamming it into the wall. He jerked one leg and then they both seemed to move forward down the wall about half a drec. He then slammed the leg he had lifted back against the buildings wall. Both times the annoying grinding brick noise happened.
Somehow Berret was crawling headfirst down the wall like an insect Rygel then realized.
The initial rush of fear left him and he began to notice the slight pounding in his head that was being caused by gravity causing all the blood in his body to head that way.
"You're doing this on purpose," the Hynerian muttered irately. He knew that if the Shrike could scale a building's wall without ropes or lines... he could just as well done it feet first and spared Rygel the headache!
Berret turned his head slightly to gaze back over his shoulder at the Dominar. Rygel only saw the angled faceplate of the helm with it slanted eye visors glowing a dim evil red... probably a device to add the Shrike's night vision further the Hynerian ruler considered idly in the back of his mind... but he knew that Chiana's damn frelling pet was probably grinning ear-to-disgusting-pink-ear at the position he'd forced the Dominar into.
"Frelling madman!" Rygel grunted to himself as Berret continued crawling forward down the wall. He turned his attention elsewhere besides the waiting ground or the raving frellnik whose back he was strapped to. He looked upwards at the dark skyline and decided he'd keep looking there... as if he concentrated enough, he could trick himself and it didn't seem they we're that high up then.
The movement of Berret's foot broke the illusion and he found his eyes locking on it before he could stop himself. It was then he noticed that the soles of his armored boots had sprouted three henta long spikes around them. He watched the Shrike kick forward and the spikes buried themselves into the brickwork. That's what was making that Goddess awful grating sound... and it was how Berret was scaling the wall.
Rygel concluded that they had to also be made out of whatever the assassin's blades were to cut so easily into the stone and that there had to be a like set of climbing spikes somewhere on both his gauntlet braces that he was driving into the wall as they moved closer to the window.
"No, Chiana, I have not heard anything yet," D'argo told his lover while doing his best to keep the growing testiness from his voice. It was the third time in the last half arn that the Nebari girl had commed asking for an update. "When I hear anything I'll..."
He was cut off when the telltale light for the Hynerian's comm badge lit up on the Pod's communication board. "Hold a moment, Rygel is signing. I will tie the comm channels together."
"Thanks, D'argo," Chiana commed over the frequency.
The Luxan set the appropriate switches and Rygel's voice broke over the comm link.
"D'argo! D'argo, are you there?" came the Hynerian's hushed request.
"I read you, Rygel," answered the warrior.
"We're all here, Ryg," Chiana added in.
There was a gasp of relief from the small being.
"Thank the seven Hynerian gods of fortune!" the Dominar exclaimed, "Chiana's lunatic nearly killed me! Several times! Do you know how he got us here?"
D'argo rolled his eyes. If he didn't do something quick, Rygel would spend the next arn describing in great detail the imagined atrocities he'd suffered at the Shrike's hands. So he cut the deposed ruler off.
"Well if you can still speak, obviously you are still alive. Do you make it inside the prison?"
"Oh, we made it all right," Rygel replied irately.
Chiana's more acute hearing picked up an odd gurgling noise in the transmission's background.
"Rygel?" she asked, "What's that strange noise I hear in the background?"
"Ummmm... You don't want to know," the Hynerian replied hesitantly.
The Dominar glanced back over at Berret who held an unlucky maintenance worker up in the air by his throat. One handed, the Shrike crushed the life from the humanoid until his neck broke with an audible snap. The man's legs stopped kicking as the assassin let the body fall to the floor.
Rygel covered his comm badge with one hand. "Frelling bastard," he hissed in Berret's direction. "You didn't have to kill him!"
The ex-Enforcer's armor covered head swung his way to regard him for a moment. The crimson eye slits of the visor gave nothing away as to what the Shrike was thinking.
"Frell you!" Rygel spat a moment later. He was growing tired of Berret's attempts of intimidation.
The assassin barked a short electronically tinted laugh and turned away to examine the doorway leading out of the room they had broken into.
"Goddess frelled animal," the Hynerian muttered and uncovered his comm badge.
"Rygel? What's going on?" D'argo demanded to know.
"Nothing... I just wanted to report that we're in," the small being supplied in answer.
"Are you both okay?" asked Chiana.
"As okay as can be expected. Nice of you to ask... unlike you did when you volunteered me for this."
The Luxan broke back in before Rygel could affix any more retorts to the comment.
"Did anyone detect your arrival?" the warrior asked.
Rygel glanced down at the worker's lifeless body.
"Not anyone who cares anymore," he responded dryly.
"What?"
Rygel cleared his throat and put aside the thoughts he was thinking. He had a job to do and the sooner he got it done, the sooner he could get out of this place... and as far away from Berret as Moya's massive hull would allow him to get.
"Never mind. I'll fill you in later," he told the big Luxan. "We're getting ready to go after the device now. As soon as everything is ready I'll call with a warning. You just be ready to get your useless eema here as quick as possible and get me out of here when this place goes."
He shut off his comm link before D'argo or the Nebari girl could ask him any further questions.
Berret had opened the door and was scanning the corridor outside for any more prison personnel.
Rygel jumped to the floor and grabbing up the smaller of the packs, moved to join him in the hallway.
"Aeryn and Crichton had better appreciate this!" he muttered to himself.
"Well... they're inside," said Chiana as she closed the comm channel.
"Yes. They are," agreed Noranti absentmindedly.
The Nebari's ears detected a low moan from the corner of the Command Tier. "What's the matter, Stark?" she asked, knowing immediately from whom the calamitous sound originated from.
"Ummm... all ready there is death!" the half-mad Banik exclaimed. "We have unleashed a terrible evil on that planet. We must call this off before other innocents perish! Call D'argo! Call D'argo... and have the brave Luxan kill the Shrike before any others die!"
Chiana sighed and would have rolled her eyes if the bandages had allowed her to. She really wasn't in the mood to put up with any more of Stark's ranting at the moment.
"Blez out, One-eye," she told him. "You don't know that anyone's died yet."
She heard the Banik shuffle toward but he stopped some distance away, knowing that even blind, Chiana could still judge distance by his voice to strike him if she were annoyed enough.
"He has... I heard the unfortunate soul calling to me," Stark replied somewhat defiantly. "You are more then sight-blind, Chiana. He reveals in it, he cannot help himself... no matter how hard he tries, the madness drives him. The kindness you feel for him leaves you morally blind as sure as your injured eyes hide the evidence that we all see in his face."
"Stark... you're kinkoid," Chiana hurled at the man in frustration. "Wrinkles, tell him he's imagining things, will you?" she added.
Noranti paused at mixing the concoction of herbs in the iron pot she had brought up to the Command Tier with her and shrugged her ancient shoulders. The remembering Chiana couldn't see her, said out loud,
"All things have a time and place deemed by the gods to die."
Noranti sprouted the comment off almost idly and went back to tossing some more ingredients into her pot.
The old woman dipped a forefinger into the substance and tasted it... then made a sour face.
"You see," the Nebari then said, "Berret hasn't killed anybody."
Noranti paused at stripping a few leaves off a plant's stem and looked up.
"Oh, I didn't say that," she commented.
Chiana frowned deeply and began to sputter.
"I said nobody has died who wasn't meant to die at this time and place."
"Ah-ha! You see?" broke in Stark triumphantly.
The old woman picked up a large wooden spoon and started mashing the new leaves into mess inside the pot. "That does not mean you are correct either," Noranti admonished Stark. She absently began to use the spoon as a pointer to emphasize her lecture, not seeming to notice the green splatters of goop she was flinging about the command chamber. "The Shrike serves a purpose in the scheme of destiny just as we all do. Those that die, do so because it is their time and place. Just as should Rygel or Berret die on the planet, it will be because it is the time. If they fail, it will be because it is John and Aeryn's time and place. Fate has a funny way of turning out as it should."
During her sermon, a big blob of the herbal mixture landed on the tip of her nose. Noranti seemed to notice it all of a sudden and spent a microt or two looking at it with crossed eyes. She finally gave up trying to focus on it and wiped it off with a fingertip. She sniffed cautiously at it, made a pleased face and then stuck the finger in her mouth. She swished the concoction around for a moment as if she were sampling a fine wine and then swallowed it.
"Ah, that is much better," she announced to the room. She pulled out a nearby chair and grabbing Chiana by one arm, guided her into it. "Come sit here, child," she said to the young Nebari girl, "Its time I changed your poultice."