Rygel and the Shrike moved down the deserted hallway. The diagrams of the prison indicated that a stairway lay just around the corner from the office they had broken in through - and where the unlucky maintenance worker had met his grizzly end. They had thought it best in the planning stages to avoid the mechanical lifts, as they would be most likely monitored by the prison staff for activity and could be very easily turned into traps if the power was cut off to them. Not use to walking, the Dominar had to scurry to keep up with the tall assassin's pace. Berret resembled an armored reptile in his protective plates and for all their apparent weight, the Enforcer moved silently through the building.
They found the doorway to the staircase exactly were the plans said it would be. Rygel took out a handheld scanner and scanned the barrier's composition.
"Simple low-grade foundry steel," the Hynerian announced. Berret grunted in reply and unsheathed his claw-like blades. "Wait!" cried Rygel in alarm when he realized what the Shrike was about to do. "I want to check for..."
He didn't get to finish the statement as Berret attacked the lock on the door. Tortured metal screeched as he used his brace blades to slice through the entry barrier. The assassin notched the security device out of the frame and door, the access swung open on freshly oiled hinges while the section of dead bolt clunked to the floor.
"... any alarm devices," Rygel concluded as he helpless gazed at the hunk of torn metal at his feet.
Berret cocked his armored head to one side as if listening for something.
"There isn't," he said a few microts later.
Rygel scanned the door and frame anyway for any telltale signs they tripped a silent warning circuit.
"No, there isn't," the small being confirmed a moment later. "But there could have been. You need to stick closer to the plan we laid out. If there had been an alarm you would have brought the whole frelling place down on our heads."
"So what."
Rygel's lower lip curled in building fury at the Shrike's nonchalance. He was growing quite tired of the assassin's apathy. "Listen, you frellnik... you may enjoy a chance to massacre a few more people. But I didn't get dragged into this so you could have fun slaughtering whomever comes along. I'm here to rescue John and Aeryn... and get my eema out of here in one piece. I swear to all that's holy that once I get into duct system I will leave you here and call D'argo for a pick-up. I'm sure the Luxan will have no problem with leaving you behind if there's a chance."
The Shrike regarded the Hynerian for a moment, and then leaned down closer to him.
"You'll have a hard time getting back to the roof to be picked up with just some explosives and no detonators," the assassin retorted.
Rygel allowed himself a confident smirk. "Oh, you have no idea of how resourceful I can be when it comes to planning my escapes. Keep frelling around with the plan and you'll get to see first hand at how well I can take care of myself."
It was hard to tell what Berret was thinking under his helm. A microt later, the Shrike began to chuckle in his haunting electronic tones.
"It appears you're not as big a coward as I thought," he told the Hynerian ruler.
"Never mistake a strong instinct for survival for a lack of bravery."
Berret barked an even more unpleasant laugh with the comment. He cut it off even more abruptly, making Rygel even surer that the Shrike was far from being very sane.
"Very well, we shall stick exactly to your plan."
"How very kind of you," Rygel replied scathingly.
"Don't mention it," answered the Enforcer in a humorless tone. Before Rygel could come up with an appropriate cutting retort, the armored man reached down and hauled him upwards by the harness he was still wearing. Without a further word, Berret slung the Hynerian over one shoulder like one of the packs they carried and entered the stairwell, taking the steps two at a time, he moved swiftly toward the next floor above.
At the top of the staircase they found the high-security door they were expecting. Berret dropped Rygel and the packs to landing floor all in one lump. The Dominar was catching on to the Shrike's torturous games and was expecting the rough manhandling. He made sure to land with the larger pack underneath him and casually rolled onto his stubby legs as if acrobatics were an everyday routine to him. There was no way he was going to give Berret the satisfaction of knowing how affronted he was by the treatment by complaining this time.
Berret counted the ceiling tiles along the nearest wall until he found the one he wanted. The ceiling was just out of arm's reach for the tall assassin, so the climbing spikes in the toes of his boots deployed themselves and he drove them into the wall to give himself a boost.
He removed the tile and behind it they saw the metal ductwork for the vent system they wanted.
"Ah-hem!" Rygel cleared his throat before the Shrike could go ahead and cut into the ducts. When Berret looked down at him, Rygel held up the hand scanner to remind the ex-Enforcer about the possibilities of alarms. A slightly annoyed sound issued from the man's visor, but he stepped downward a bit until he was able to reach the Hynerian and lift him up into the sub-ceiling near the vent.
The Dominar quickly ran his scan and found no alarm circuitry hidden in the ductwork or surrounding walls.
"Its clean," he told Berret. The Shrike was hanging below him and without a word he extended the brace blades on one arm to cut the metal. "Make it neat and small," warned the Hynerian ruler, "We don't want a pile of metal scrap or shavings on the floor below to warn anyone we were here."
Berret turned back to his work, uttering under his breath, but still picked up by the visor microphone, something in Velkorian Sanskrita loosely equivalent to the age-old Hynerian riposte about telling someone to go teach their grandmother to suck eggs.
Rygel allowed himself a momentary grin at unexpectedly getting under the Shrike's skin.
The Shrike quickly cut the entrance hole in the ductwork. Rygel scurried inside and was extremely happy to see the assassin work the loose plate back into place behind him Even after Berret purposely shoved the smaller of the satchels into the vent behind him with more force then was necessary, he was glad to be away from the man for even this short time. The Hynerian gave the now unseen Enforcer a rude hand gesture and then turned on his small flashlight that was attached to his overalls by clips. The light showed him the somewhat dusty and gritty guts of the vent before him. Every so often dim places of daylight show up through the duct's floor, obviously grills carrying air to various rooms on the top floor.
He had to crawl about halfway across the width of the prison building to the chamber he wanted that housed the medical equipment, which was located almost dead center of the top level.
The space before him was barely large enough for him to crawl through let alone stand up in. Rygel was suddenly glad for Noranti's foresight to sewing extra padding into his black garb at the elbows and knees.
He wasn't going to enjoy this part in the least.
The Dominar sighed and then tied off the shoulder straps of the pack to his utility belt so that it would drag along behind him. At least he was away from that mad Shrike for a while he consoled himself as he began his slow journey through the cramped metal tunnel.
Berret shouldered the remaining larger pack and moved further down the stairwell away from where Rygel had entered the ducts so if he was discovered, the prison guards might not find the cut out vent right away. He stopped two floors down and scaled the corner wall up into the largest shadow in the staircase that he could find. Or rather, the largest shadow he could make for himself after he rapped on the light fixtures hard enough to break whatever was inside the device without causing apparent outer damage. With a thought he switched his visor's optics from infrared to standard night-vision, and the red glow of the eye lens on his face guard faded.
Several microns later he had just decided he was becoming incredibly bored when the doorway on that landing opened and two guards on patrol entered the stairway. Berret froze solid in his perch high up in a dark corner of the landing, trusting in the climbing spikes on the heels and toes of his boots he had driven into the wall to support him and keep him hidden in place over the men's heads.
One of the patrolmen uttered a curse as he noticed the malfunctioning lights on that level. He walked over and tapped the device to no avail. His partner told him not to bother trying to get it to work and to just log the lights as being out so they could continue their rounds. Both men made they're way up to the next landing never seeing the armored assassin or realizing he was just an arm's length away from them as they fooled with the illumination system. They entered the next doorway above.
It was Berret's turn to curse as they were now on the floor that Rygel and he had broken into. And he was laying odds that the large broken window and dead body they had left in the office would be very hard to miss. He dropped soundlessly to the landing and rushed up the staircase to the door. Just as quickly and silently, he slipped through the port just a few microts behind the men.
At least he wasn't bored anymore.
The two men efficiently checked door after door to be sure they were secured. Neither one noticed the shadow that trailed some distance behind them. As luck would have it, the wing that the Shrike and Hynerian had made they're entrance in was the last one the guards decided to patrol. Just as the returned to the intersection and where about to go down and check the final sets of doors, one Qujagan officer turned to the other.
"Let's forget about this wing and just go check the security door on the top floor... then will be done and we can head back down to the office and relax for an arn," he told his partner.
"That's against regs," the other replied, "Every door as to be check on rounds."
"Look, there's nothing important up here anyway," countered the first officer. "Its all just office space. No weapons, no prisoners, nothing of interest. Lets just log we did them all, check the last door and head down and relax. Who's going to know but us?"
Berret was glad to hear that the pair would probably be leaving without finishing their task; it would make things much easier if they decided to be lazy tonight. The more rule-oriented guard's eyes swiveled out on their stalk-like appendages for a moment, revealing several more sets of eyes, and then returned to their normal place in the middle of his face.
"You better hope everything is secure up here," the guard finally relented and made as if to reluctantly follow the officer willing to cut short the rounds back toward the stairwell. The pair took several steps back that way and Berret forced himself deeper into a shadow before they passed his hiding place. The reluctant guard suddenly paused halfway down the hall with an odd expression on his sectional face.
"Wait... do you feel that?" he asked his partner.
"What?"
"Like a draft somewhere."
"You're imagining it," replied the lax man. "We're forty-seven stories up. There are no windows that open up this high, let alone in the entire complex at all."
"I'm telling you I feel a draft," his partner answered stubbornly. Berret cursed again at the same time that the guard who wanted to leave did. The other man had turned around and walked back toward the wing they hadn't checked.
They had only taken a few steps down the new hallway when the suspicious man paused again.
"Do you hear that?" the stubborn Qujagan asked, "It sounds like noise from the outside."
The other guard frowned. "Yes, I do hear it now too... and I feel air moving. You were right!"
The pair quickly traced the disturbance to one office. They curiously opened the door and were faced with the gapping hole where the high-strength tempered glass use to be. The remains were shattered and littering the office floor below the open framework.
"Will you look at that?" said one officer in disbelief.
"What could have shattered armor-glass this high up?" asked the other.
Both guard's eyes were bobbing in and out on their stalks as they attempted to take in all the details of the bizarre scene. They moved closer and rounded a desk and inspected the pitch-black hole.
"We better call this in," one said.
"Yes, we'd better..." his partner started to agree but he was cut off as he stumbled over something.
He caught his balance, looked down at what had tripped him and gasped out loud.
"What?" asked the other in growing alarm.
"Look!" came the answer as the second guard pointed at the shape on the floor.
The first patrolman's mouth hung open and his eyes drooped downward in shock.
"A maintenance drone," he announced needlessly. "Do you think he was caught in whatever burst through the glass and some shards killed him?"
The other man had bent down to examine the body. He looked back up and quickly shook his head.
"He's not cut anywhere," he reported. "His throat looks to have been crushed and his vision appendages show sights of oxygen deprivation."
"That could only mean..." started the standing guard.
"... Intruders!" finished the still kneeling man.
The standing officer fumbled for his radio, shouting into it before he brought it all the way up to his lips.
"Section 41! Section 41! Perimeter breech alert, Intruders and casualties on floor... Urgh!"
The other guard had drawn his weapon instead of his radio, but at the abrupt cut-off of his partner's radio call he glanced back up at him and started to rise to his feet.
"What's wrong?" he asked urgently at the stunned look on the other man's segmented face. The parts that made up his visage began to tremble and sag away from one another.
Instead of answering the question, bluish-black blood began to dribble from the other guard's trembling lips. There was a wet ripping sound and a pair of metal claws tore through the front of the bleeding man's uniform. A dark form rose from behind the wounded man, there was a metallic ringing sound and a second set of claws bisected their way through the junction of the man's neck and shoulder while the first set tore their way out through the side of his rib cage.
The unlucky prison officer died before he could comprehend what was happening to him. The remaining patrolman wasn't so lucky. As his partner's body limply slid to the office floor, the Qujagan came face to face with the something that resembled the being that had broken the alien prisoners out of their cells a few weeken ago. Only this thing looked to be covered head to toe in metal scales and its eyes shone with red hell fire.
He screamed in terror as the beast began to move in his direction. Raising his weapon he fired several time, only to have a few of his projectiles spark and bounce off its armored hide.
The thing growled low and the metal claws slid back into its forearms as it rushed forward even more rapidly. His sidearm clicked empty as the creature reached him and seized him in metal covered hands. The officer felt himself being lifted bodily off his feet and that the living nightmare was moving again with him in it's grasp. The thing's fury eyes held him, as the breeze against his back grew stronger. He beat frantically against the apparition with his now useless weapon and his empty free hand. The firearm clanked futilely against the creature's hide and he felt the bones in his hand break as he repeated pounded his fist against a shoulder that felt like cold unyielding metal.
Suddenly the beast let go of him and it seemed to recede swiftly away from him. It took his mind a moment to realize it wasn't the thing that had attack them that was moving away at an ever increasing velocity - it was him!
He was halfway down to the street and falling ever faster before he even thought to scream again.
Berret perched on the windowsill and watched the Qujagan man he'd just tossed out the broken casement shrink in size before he was lost in the darkness some stories below.
"Oops," the Shrike remarked casually out loud even though he was the only living thing left inside the office. "The Dominar will surely not be happy with that."
Berret chucked darkly to himself and moved away from the opened window. Somewhere inside, a part of him wondered what Chiana would say if she could have seen what he had just done. The black mirth died for a moment at the thought. The effect didn't last long as the demented voice in his head reminded him that the Nebari had chosen D'argo over him. She had asked him to help... and she had no right to complain about how he handled matters... or rather in the case of the flying guardsman, how matters 'slipped' out of his hands the voice reasoned. The dark chuckled returned just as the alarms sounded throughout the complex.
'Comp - pan - yee," the Shrike announced in a slightly unhinged singsong manner as he headed out the office doorway and back toward the stairwell. The voice in his head started to dance in glee at the thought of more destruction to come.
He paused by the twin elevators and ripped the metal doors off. The microbes made his flash and muscles burn, but the pain seemed to thrill him somehow. The lift cars had been called to the floors below him and were probably filling with armed man at that very moment. He quickly attached explosive charges to the thick cables and then strolled away. Near the door to the stairwell, he heard the elevator's hum to life as somebody below used them. He casually took out a remote detonator. Holding the device back over his shoulder, he waited a few moments and then pressed a button. Somewhere in the lift shaft there were several loud pops as the cutting charges severed the elevator cables. Next came the high-speed whine of metal cable uncontrollably unwinding.
"Ground floor," intoned the assassin, "Boots, evening wear, and slightly smashed prison officials."
There next came muffled double thumps from deep within the complex, Berret nodded his armor-covered head in satisfaction. "Very... smashed... prison officials," he repeated to himself.
He keyed his comm badge a microt later.
"Rygel...now would be a good time to hurry. We have guests coming... and they're not in the Terza Tea and Marjool mood," he said in a pleasant tone.
He made it into the stairwell just in time to hear the pounding feet rushing up the staircase toward him.
The captain of the watch reached the mob of riot guards massed on the final stairwell landing just below the top level that contained the medical facilities and the bio-deconstructor device. He pushed his way through his men until he located his lieutenant near the front.
"What's going on?" he barked at his subordinate. "Why haven't you secured the area? Why are you all standing here?"
The lieutenant, his multi-sectional face half-hidden under a helmet, simply pointed upwards.
"Its because of him," he explained.
"What the kireza are you talking about? Haven't you located the intruder..." he started as he gradually turned to look at what the other guard was pointing up at. Balanced on the handrail on the landing above them was an armor-plated creature with glowing red eyes. It squatted casually on the safety guard looking down at them seeming with idle interest. Its arms were nonchalantly resting across its knees so that its metal-covered hands hung loosely between its thighs. It indifferently shuffled some long, thin, and metallic objects between the hands that the supervisor couldn't get a clear look at.
"Why didn't you and your men just shoot it?" the watch commander asked next.
"We did," protested the officer, "The projectiles from the riot guns just bounce off whatever it's covered with. The rounds didn't even knock it off the banister. It just sits there looking at us and not moving."
The supervisor cursed and then pulled the lieutenant in closer to him. "Have one of your men run down to the armory and drew a laser projector," he instructed in a low voice so the intruder wouldn't overhear the order. "Must I think of everything for you?"
"No, sir," the man answered and than immediately dispatched another lower ranking man for the weapon. The commander gazed back up at the invader and took a few steps toward it to draw its attention. Trying to by time for the heavier weaponry to arrive.
"Who are you?" he called, attempting to engage it in conversation.
The thing let out an eerie chuckle.
"No one," came the unexpected response. Its voice had a strange machine quality to it.
Still the watch commander had gotten its attention; hopefully he could distract the thing from causing any more damage until the laser arrived. Then they would see how it handled a beam of irradiated light at near solar temperature.
"What do you want? What are you here for?" he tried next.
The creature oddly titled its metal head before answering, still passing whatever it had back and forth between its hands.
"What I want... you cannot give me," it replied. "What I am here for... I am going to take."
The men around him started muttering and becoming restless. He didn't want anyone to start shooting again and possibly force the intruder into moving too soon, so he ordered the prison guards to be silent and to retreat a few steps back. The creature watched them comply with dim interest it seemed.
"Are you the one who broke in here before and released the outworlders we had in custody?" the commander than asked.
"Guilty as charged," answered the dark figure in a slow drawl.
The men began to mutter once more but the captain ignored them for the moment.
"Why?" he than asked.
This time the invader didn't answer. It just squatted there looking at him; still shuffling it's objects. The officer-in-charge suddenly had the feeling that the creature might have been grinning at him like he was a play-thing.
"What are you? Man or machine?" the man inquired next when no answer to his prior question was forth coming.
"Neither," it hissed out, "What I am... is death."
The watch commander nodded, the thing was attempting to unsettle his men. It partly succeeded judging by the whispered conversations that bloomed behind him, the commander ended the talk with a single displeased hand gesture. He had to keep the thing on the landing above him talking. The laser projector should be arriving at any moment. "You certainly killed enough of my people here - tonight and before."
"I've killed many things," the intruder replied. "I am going to kill a lot more before I am finished."
"Why?"
The creature's head jerked upright a little. Its red eyes seemed to glow a little brighter also.
"Because neither of us are in a position where we can turn around and just leave," came the reply.
Suddenly the watch commander knew that the invader was playing the same waiting game he was. It was trying to buy time for something else by keeping him and his men distracted on the stairway.
"Perhaps we can talk this out," the Qujagan man offered. "No one else needs to be hurt."
"Fine," the creature said. It ceased passing the long cylindrical objects around it hands. It held them all gathered in its metal-sheathed left hand and passed the other hand over the collective ends. When the watch commander could see the items again, he noticed that there were five or six of the metal sticks, each about the diameter of his smallest finger. He also saw now after the thing's hand had passed over them that the end caps now each had a single glowing red light on them. The creature casually dropped one of the metal sticks down the open space in the middle of the stairwell. The commander and his men watched it pass their level and continue to fall to the levels below. The device didn't appear to be large enough to be a concern to him or his men, but it still left him with a slight feeling of apprehension.
"You and your men leave the upper floors now," the armored thing continued on, "And I'll let you live."
"Why?" asked the leader, "What's up here that you want?"
In answer, the invader dropped two more of the sticks down the stairwell. It remained squatting on the railing, not saying anything more.
"Lieutenant!" the watch commander stage hissed to the man behind him. "Where is that projector?" he demanded. "The other officer whispered into his radio and reported back a moment later.
"On the way," the Qujagan said lowly, "Its five floors below us now."
"Tell them to hurry up!" snapped the leader. He turned his attention back to the intruder above him.
"Are you going to answer my question so that we might work this out without further violence," he asked the thing in a louder voice.
The creature tossed another metal object out into the air, this time giving it an odd spin with the flick of its wrist. A second one followed immediately with the same strange spinning motion. This time the commander could hear the metal objects strike somewhere on the landings below him and his men.
"No," finally said the being in ebony armor as it began to toss the single remaining object up in the air only to catch it again as if playing a game. The red light made odd dancing designs in the air.
Suddenly the watch commander knew what the metal stick-like devices were. Even if they were too small and thin to resemble anything he was use to, he knew instinctively then what they were. The way the creature tossed them out, the timing of each throw, the place where each had struck in the staircase. They could be only one thing.
"Explosives!" he shouted to the group. "Get out! Get everyone out of the stairwell now!"
The men began to rush for exits, some bottlenecking at the near doorway, others heading down to the next floor to get out of danger. The invader chuckled manically then and casually tossed the remaining bomb down the stairway.
"You - You said you were willing to talk!" the watch commander yelled as he backed away until his path was blocked by men still trying to scramble through the door. "Talk instead of killing anyone!"
The thing cocked its armored head as if it were amused.
"I lied," it replied.
Below them, an impossibly loud explosion took place. The building shook to the ground floors and then there was a hideous sucking sound. The commander could feel the very air in the stairwell being abruptly sucked downward toward the lower floors as if it were rushing to fill a vacuum. He briefly glanced back up just in time to see the invader leap backwards off the banister and disappear somewhere on the landing above.
Before he could do anything else, two more of the massive explosions came in successive order. This time the air pulled at his clothing like a hurricane. Below him a few of his guards screamed as they were dragged off the staircase and sent plummeting toward the center of the blasts beneath them. The Qujagan's blood froze as he realized that whatever the unknown weapon the creature had used, there were still three more of them left... and they would be much closer to where he and his men now were when they detonated.
He began to frantically claw his way toward the nearest doorway, shoving other guards out of his way as he went. Pushing several of them down the staircase if needed.
On the final and last landing, Berret threw himself against the security door that Rygel was to open. Every possible blade and spike his armor held was deployed and driven into the floor or wall to anchor him.
The last three grenades blew and the stairway was filled with a boiling sea for flame. Almost just as suddenly, the fire was sucked back downward as the plasma burned itself out creating a vacuum. The air rushed back to fill the empty space with hurricane-force, dragging anything not nailed down with it to be crushed into the size of a Falgonian pea as the last dregs of plasma imploded. Inside his facemask, Berret gritted his teeth as he held on for dear life. Inside his head, the voice howled with laughter and without warning the Shrike found himself joining in with it. The glorious death and beautiful destruction, the thrill of not knowing if his spikes and blades were going to hold their grip, or lose their purchase and send him to the same grisly death that the prison guards had just met...the lovely chaos! How much fun was that the voice screamed, wanting to know? How much now, did he finally feel... alive?
Rygel had just finished cutting out the grill he need to allow him to enter the security office and open the heavy door for the Shrike. Just as he kicked the grate off, the five explosions rocked the complex. The first so surprised him that he almost tumbled headfirst from the duct. His finely honed survival instincts warned him to hold on and he rode out the last four without falling. Before he could do anything else, he felt the sudden drop in air pressure and then heard the familiar sucking sound of displaced air. Long cycles as the military leader of the Hynerian Armed Forces told the Dominar immediately what kind of weapon had just been used.
"Plasma grenades?" Rygel asked himself as the pressure finally equalized. "Here? Inside a structure?"
The feeling of befuddlement he first felt at who in their right mind would do such a dren-head thing left him as he suddenly knew without asking just who was responsible.
"That frelling lunatic set off plasma grenades inside a goddess-damned building?" he shouted. "What the frell was he thinking..." he started to ask himself, then cut the comment off. "Wait a microt... if that idiot was brainless enough to use a plasma weapon, in a stairwell no less... the frellnik surely killed himself along with whoever he was trying to murder," the Hynerian reasoned. He stroked one stubbly chin in thought. "This is not necessary a bad thing," Rygel concluded. "Chiana's pet stupidly killed himself, taking all the timed detonators with him. We can't complete this insane quest without them, so no one will blame me in the slightest for getting myself out of here and calling the Luxan for a pick-up. 'Sorry, my fellow crewmates... but we tried and failed to save Crichton and Aeryn...' " he rehearsed out loud. "Let us mourn our lost comrades and leave this system as far behind us as we can starburst away from it." He nodded his head in satisfaction. "Even that dumb Luxan would have to see the logic in that move," he told himself.
Feeling an overwhelming sense of relief that his ordeal was almost over, he reached upwards to key his comm badge and reopen the link to D'argo.
They found the doorway to the staircase exactly were the plans said it would be. Rygel took out a handheld scanner and scanned the barrier's composition.
"Simple low-grade foundry steel," the Hynerian announced. Berret grunted in reply and unsheathed his claw-like blades. "Wait!" cried Rygel in alarm when he realized what the Shrike was about to do. "I want to check for..."
He didn't get to finish the statement as Berret attacked the lock on the door. Tortured metal screeched as he used his brace blades to slice through the entry barrier. The assassin notched the security device out of the frame and door, the access swung open on freshly oiled hinges while the section of dead bolt clunked to the floor.
"... any alarm devices," Rygel concluded as he helpless gazed at the hunk of torn metal at his feet.
Berret cocked his armored head to one side as if listening for something.
"There isn't," he said a few microts later.
Rygel scanned the door and frame anyway for any telltale signs they tripped a silent warning circuit.
"No, there isn't," the small being confirmed a moment later. "But there could have been. You need to stick closer to the plan we laid out. If there had been an alarm you would have brought the whole frelling place down on our heads."
"So what."
Rygel's lower lip curled in building fury at the Shrike's nonchalance. He was growing quite tired of the assassin's apathy. "Listen, you frellnik... you may enjoy a chance to massacre a few more people. But I didn't get dragged into this so you could have fun slaughtering whomever comes along. I'm here to rescue John and Aeryn... and get my eema out of here in one piece. I swear to all that's holy that once I get into duct system I will leave you here and call D'argo for a pick-up. I'm sure the Luxan will have no problem with leaving you behind if there's a chance."
The Shrike regarded the Hynerian for a moment, and then leaned down closer to him.
"You'll have a hard time getting back to the roof to be picked up with just some explosives and no detonators," the assassin retorted.
Rygel allowed himself a confident smirk. "Oh, you have no idea of how resourceful I can be when it comes to planning my escapes. Keep frelling around with the plan and you'll get to see first hand at how well I can take care of myself."
It was hard to tell what Berret was thinking under his helm. A microt later, the Shrike began to chuckle in his haunting electronic tones.
"It appears you're not as big a coward as I thought," he told the Hynerian ruler.
"Never mistake a strong instinct for survival for a lack of bravery."
Berret barked an even more unpleasant laugh with the comment. He cut it off even more abruptly, making Rygel even surer that the Shrike was far from being very sane.
"Very well, we shall stick exactly to your plan."
"How very kind of you," Rygel replied scathingly.
"Don't mention it," answered the Enforcer in a humorless tone. Before Rygel could come up with an appropriate cutting retort, the armored man reached down and hauled him upwards by the harness he was still wearing. Without a further word, Berret slung the Hynerian over one shoulder like one of the packs they carried and entered the stairwell, taking the steps two at a time, he moved swiftly toward the next floor above.
At the top of the staircase they found the high-security door they were expecting. Berret dropped Rygel and the packs to landing floor all in one lump. The Dominar was catching on to the Shrike's torturous games and was expecting the rough manhandling. He made sure to land with the larger pack underneath him and casually rolled onto his stubby legs as if acrobatics were an everyday routine to him. There was no way he was going to give Berret the satisfaction of knowing how affronted he was by the treatment by complaining this time.
Berret counted the ceiling tiles along the nearest wall until he found the one he wanted. The ceiling was just out of arm's reach for the tall assassin, so the climbing spikes in the toes of his boots deployed themselves and he drove them into the wall to give himself a boost.
He removed the tile and behind it they saw the metal ductwork for the vent system they wanted.
"Ah-hem!" Rygel cleared his throat before the Shrike could go ahead and cut into the ducts. When Berret looked down at him, Rygel held up the hand scanner to remind the ex-Enforcer about the possibilities of alarms. A slightly annoyed sound issued from the man's visor, but he stepped downward a bit until he was able to reach the Hynerian and lift him up into the sub-ceiling near the vent.
The Dominar quickly ran his scan and found no alarm circuitry hidden in the ductwork or surrounding walls.
"Its clean," he told Berret. The Shrike was hanging below him and without a word he extended the brace blades on one arm to cut the metal. "Make it neat and small," warned the Hynerian ruler, "We don't want a pile of metal scrap or shavings on the floor below to warn anyone we were here."
Berret turned back to his work, uttering under his breath, but still picked up by the visor microphone, something in Velkorian Sanskrita loosely equivalent to the age-old Hynerian riposte about telling someone to go teach their grandmother to suck eggs.
Rygel allowed himself a momentary grin at unexpectedly getting under the Shrike's skin.
The Shrike quickly cut the entrance hole in the ductwork. Rygel scurried inside and was extremely happy to see the assassin work the loose plate back into place behind him Even after Berret purposely shoved the smaller of the satchels into the vent behind him with more force then was necessary, he was glad to be away from the man for even this short time. The Hynerian gave the now unseen Enforcer a rude hand gesture and then turned on his small flashlight that was attached to his overalls by clips. The light showed him the somewhat dusty and gritty guts of the vent before him. Every so often dim places of daylight show up through the duct's floor, obviously grills carrying air to various rooms on the top floor.
He had to crawl about halfway across the width of the prison building to the chamber he wanted that housed the medical equipment, which was located almost dead center of the top level.
The space before him was barely large enough for him to crawl through let alone stand up in. Rygel was suddenly glad for Noranti's foresight to sewing extra padding into his black garb at the elbows and knees.
He wasn't going to enjoy this part in the least.
The Dominar sighed and then tied off the shoulder straps of the pack to his utility belt so that it would drag along behind him. At least he was away from that mad Shrike for a while he consoled himself as he began his slow journey through the cramped metal tunnel.
Berret shouldered the remaining larger pack and moved further down the stairwell away from where Rygel had entered the ducts so if he was discovered, the prison guards might not find the cut out vent right away. He stopped two floors down and scaled the corner wall up into the largest shadow in the staircase that he could find. Or rather, the largest shadow he could make for himself after he rapped on the light fixtures hard enough to break whatever was inside the device without causing apparent outer damage. With a thought he switched his visor's optics from infrared to standard night-vision, and the red glow of the eye lens on his face guard faded.
Several microns later he had just decided he was becoming incredibly bored when the doorway on that landing opened and two guards on patrol entered the stairway. Berret froze solid in his perch high up in a dark corner of the landing, trusting in the climbing spikes on the heels and toes of his boots he had driven into the wall to support him and keep him hidden in place over the men's heads.
One of the patrolmen uttered a curse as he noticed the malfunctioning lights on that level. He walked over and tapped the device to no avail. His partner told him not to bother trying to get it to work and to just log the lights as being out so they could continue their rounds. Both men made they're way up to the next landing never seeing the armored assassin or realizing he was just an arm's length away from them as they fooled with the illumination system. They entered the next doorway above.
It was Berret's turn to curse as they were now on the floor that Rygel and he had broken into. And he was laying odds that the large broken window and dead body they had left in the office would be very hard to miss. He dropped soundlessly to the landing and rushed up the staircase to the door. Just as quickly and silently, he slipped through the port just a few microts behind the men.
At least he wasn't bored anymore.
The two men efficiently checked door after door to be sure they were secured. Neither one noticed the shadow that trailed some distance behind them. As luck would have it, the wing that the Shrike and Hynerian had made they're entrance in was the last one the guards decided to patrol. Just as the returned to the intersection and where about to go down and check the final sets of doors, one Qujagan officer turned to the other.
"Let's forget about this wing and just go check the security door on the top floor... then will be done and we can head back down to the office and relax for an arn," he told his partner.
"That's against regs," the other replied, "Every door as to be check on rounds."
"Look, there's nothing important up here anyway," countered the first officer. "Its all just office space. No weapons, no prisoners, nothing of interest. Lets just log we did them all, check the last door and head down and relax. Who's going to know but us?"
Berret was glad to hear that the pair would probably be leaving without finishing their task; it would make things much easier if they decided to be lazy tonight. The more rule-oriented guard's eyes swiveled out on their stalk-like appendages for a moment, revealing several more sets of eyes, and then returned to their normal place in the middle of his face.
"You better hope everything is secure up here," the guard finally relented and made as if to reluctantly follow the officer willing to cut short the rounds back toward the stairwell. The pair took several steps back that way and Berret forced himself deeper into a shadow before they passed his hiding place. The reluctant guard suddenly paused halfway down the hall with an odd expression on his sectional face.
"Wait... do you feel that?" he asked his partner.
"What?"
"Like a draft somewhere."
"You're imagining it," replied the lax man. "We're forty-seven stories up. There are no windows that open up this high, let alone in the entire complex at all."
"I'm telling you I feel a draft," his partner answered stubbornly. Berret cursed again at the same time that the guard who wanted to leave did. The other man had turned around and walked back toward the wing they hadn't checked.
They had only taken a few steps down the new hallway when the suspicious man paused again.
"Do you hear that?" the stubborn Qujagan asked, "It sounds like noise from the outside."
The other guard frowned. "Yes, I do hear it now too... and I feel air moving. You were right!"
The pair quickly traced the disturbance to one office. They curiously opened the door and were faced with the gapping hole where the high-strength tempered glass use to be. The remains were shattered and littering the office floor below the open framework.
"Will you look at that?" said one officer in disbelief.
"What could have shattered armor-glass this high up?" asked the other.
Both guard's eyes were bobbing in and out on their stalks as they attempted to take in all the details of the bizarre scene. They moved closer and rounded a desk and inspected the pitch-black hole.
"We better call this in," one said.
"Yes, we'd better..." his partner started to agree but he was cut off as he stumbled over something.
He caught his balance, looked down at what had tripped him and gasped out loud.
"What?" asked the other in growing alarm.
"Look!" came the answer as the second guard pointed at the shape on the floor.
The first patrolman's mouth hung open and his eyes drooped downward in shock.
"A maintenance drone," he announced needlessly. "Do you think he was caught in whatever burst through the glass and some shards killed him?"
The other man had bent down to examine the body. He looked back up and quickly shook his head.
"He's not cut anywhere," he reported. "His throat looks to have been crushed and his vision appendages show sights of oxygen deprivation."
"That could only mean..." started the standing guard.
"... Intruders!" finished the still kneeling man.
The standing officer fumbled for his radio, shouting into it before he brought it all the way up to his lips.
"Section 41! Section 41! Perimeter breech alert, Intruders and casualties on floor... Urgh!"
The other guard had drawn his weapon instead of his radio, but at the abrupt cut-off of his partner's radio call he glanced back up at him and started to rise to his feet.
"What's wrong?" he asked urgently at the stunned look on the other man's segmented face. The parts that made up his visage began to tremble and sag away from one another.
Instead of answering the question, bluish-black blood began to dribble from the other guard's trembling lips. There was a wet ripping sound and a pair of metal claws tore through the front of the bleeding man's uniform. A dark form rose from behind the wounded man, there was a metallic ringing sound and a second set of claws bisected their way through the junction of the man's neck and shoulder while the first set tore their way out through the side of his rib cage.
The unlucky prison officer died before he could comprehend what was happening to him. The remaining patrolman wasn't so lucky. As his partner's body limply slid to the office floor, the Qujagan came face to face with the something that resembled the being that had broken the alien prisoners out of their cells a few weeken ago. Only this thing looked to be covered head to toe in metal scales and its eyes shone with red hell fire.
He screamed in terror as the beast began to move in his direction. Raising his weapon he fired several time, only to have a few of his projectiles spark and bounce off its armored hide.
The thing growled low and the metal claws slid back into its forearms as it rushed forward even more rapidly. His sidearm clicked empty as the creature reached him and seized him in metal covered hands. The officer felt himself being lifted bodily off his feet and that the living nightmare was moving again with him in it's grasp. The thing's fury eyes held him, as the breeze against his back grew stronger. He beat frantically against the apparition with his now useless weapon and his empty free hand. The firearm clanked futilely against the creature's hide and he felt the bones in his hand break as he repeated pounded his fist against a shoulder that felt like cold unyielding metal.
Suddenly the beast let go of him and it seemed to recede swiftly away from him. It took his mind a moment to realize it wasn't the thing that had attack them that was moving away at an ever increasing velocity - it was him!
He was halfway down to the street and falling ever faster before he even thought to scream again.
Berret perched on the windowsill and watched the Qujagan man he'd just tossed out the broken casement shrink in size before he was lost in the darkness some stories below.
"Oops," the Shrike remarked casually out loud even though he was the only living thing left inside the office. "The Dominar will surely not be happy with that."
Berret chucked darkly to himself and moved away from the opened window. Somewhere inside, a part of him wondered what Chiana would say if she could have seen what he had just done. The black mirth died for a moment at the thought. The effect didn't last long as the demented voice in his head reminded him that the Nebari had chosen D'argo over him. She had asked him to help... and she had no right to complain about how he handled matters... or rather in the case of the flying guardsman, how matters 'slipped' out of his hands the voice reasoned. The dark chuckled returned just as the alarms sounded throughout the complex.
'Comp - pan - yee," the Shrike announced in a slightly unhinged singsong manner as he headed out the office doorway and back toward the stairwell. The voice in his head started to dance in glee at the thought of more destruction to come.
He paused by the twin elevators and ripped the metal doors off. The microbes made his flash and muscles burn, but the pain seemed to thrill him somehow. The lift cars had been called to the floors below him and were probably filling with armed man at that very moment. He quickly attached explosive charges to the thick cables and then strolled away. Near the door to the stairwell, he heard the elevator's hum to life as somebody below used them. He casually took out a remote detonator. Holding the device back over his shoulder, he waited a few moments and then pressed a button. Somewhere in the lift shaft there were several loud pops as the cutting charges severed the elevator cables. Next came the high-speed whine of metal cable uncontrollably unwinding.
"Ground floor," intoned the assassin, "Boots, evening wear, and slightly smashed prison officials."
There next came muffled double thumps from deep within the complex, Berret nodded his armor-covered head in satisfaction. "Very... smashed... prison officials," he repeated to himself.
He keyed his comm badge a microt later.
"Rygel...now would be a good time to hurry. We have guests coming... and they're not in the Terza Tea and Marjool mood," he said in a pleasant tone.
He made it into the stairwell just in time to hear the pounding feet rushing up the staircase toward him.
The captain of the watch reached the mob of riot guards massed on the final stairwell landing just below the top level that contained the medical facilities and the bio-deconstructor device. He pushed his way through his men until he located his lieutenant near the front.
"What's going on?" he barked at his subordinate. "Why haven't you secured the area? Why are you all standing here?"
The lieutenant, his multi-sectional face half-hidden under a helmet, simply pointed upwards.
"Its because of him," he explained.
"What the kireza are you talking about? Haven't you located the intruder..." he started as he gradually turned to look at what the other guard was pointing up at. Balanced on the handrail on the landing above them was an armor-plated creature with glowing red eyes. It squatted casually on the safety guard looking down at them seeming with idle interest. Its arms were nonchalantly resting across its knees so that its metal-covered hands hung loosely between its thighs. It indifferently shuffled some long, thin, and metallic objects between the hands that the supervisor couldn't get a clear look at.
"Why didn't you and your men just shoot it?" the watch commander asked next.
"We did," protested the officer, "The projectiles from the riot guns just bounce off whatever it's covered with. The rounds didn't even knock it off the banister. It just sits there looking at us and not moving."
The supervisor cursed and then pulled the lieutenant in closer to him. "Have one of your men run down to the armory and drew a laser projector," he instructed in a low voice so the intruder wouldn't overhear the order. "Must I think of everything for you?"
"No, sir," the man answered and than immediately dispatched another lower ranking man for the weapon. The commander gazed back up at the invader and took a few steps toward it to draw its attention. Trying to by time for the heavier weaponry to arrive.
"Who are you?" he called, attempting to engage it in conversation.
The thing let out an eerie chuckle.
"No one," came the unexpected response. Its voice had a strange machine quality to it.
Still the watch commander had gotten its attention; hopefully he could distract the thing from causing any more damage until the laser arrived. Then they would see how it handled a beam of irradiated light at near solar temperature.
"What do you want? What are you here for?" he tried next.
The creature oddly titled its metal head before answering, still passing whatever it had back and forth between its hands.
"What I want... you cannot give me," it replied. "What I am here for... I am going to take."
The men around him started muttering and becoming restless. He didn't want anyone to start shooting again and possibly force the intruder into moving too soon, so he ordered the prison guards to be silent and to retreat a few steps back. The creature watched them comply with dim interest it seemed.
"Are you the one who broke in here before and released the outworlders we had in custody?" the commander than asked.
"Guilty as charged," answered the dark figure in a slow drawl.
The men began to mutter once more but the captain ignored them for the moment.
"Why?" he than asked.
This time the invader didn't answer. It just squatted there looking at him; still shuffling it's objects. The officer-in-charge suddenly had the feeling that the creature might have been grinning at him like he was a play-thing.
"What are you? Man or machine?" the man inquired next when no answer to his prior question was forth coming.
"Neither," it hissed out, "What I am... is death."
The watch commander nodded, the thing was attempting to unsettle his men. It partly succeeded judging by the whispered conversations that bloomed behind him, the commander ended the talk with a single displeased hand gesture. He had to keep the thing on the landing above him talking. The laser projector should be arriving at any moment. "You certainly killed enough of my people here - tonight and before."
"I've killed many things," the intruder replied. "I am going to kill a lot more before I am finished."
"Why?"
The creature's head jerked upright a little. Its red eyes seemed to glow a little brighter also.
"Because neither of us are in a position where we can turn around and just leave," came the reply.
Suddenly the watch commander knew that the invader was playing the same waiting game he was. It was trying to buy time for something else by keeping him and his men distracted on the stairway.
"Perhaps we can talk this out," the Qujagan man offered. "No one else needs to be hurt."
"Fine," the creature said. It ceased passing the long cylindrical objects around it hands. It held them all gathered in its metal-sheathed left hand and passed the other hand over the collective ends. When the watch commander could see the items again, he noticed that there were five or six of the metal sticks, each about the diameter of his smallest finger. He also saw now after the thing's hand had passed over them that the end caps now each had a single glowing red light on them. The creature casually dropped one of the metal sticks down the open space in the middle of the stairwell. The commander and his men watched it pass their level and continue to fall to the levels below. The device didn't appear to be large enough to be a concern to him or his men, but it still left him with a slight feeling of apprehension.
"You and your men leave the upper floors now," the armored thing continued on, "And I'll let you live."
"Why?" asked the leader, "What's up here that you want?"
In answer, the invader dropped two more of the sticks down the stairwell. It remained squatting on the railing, not saying anything more.
"Lieutenant!" the watch commander stage hissed to the man behind him. "Where is that projector?" he demanded. "The other officer whispered into his radio and reported back a moment later.
"On the way," the Qujagan said lowly, "Its five floors below us now."
"Tell them to hurry up!" snapped the leader. He turned his attention back to the intruder above him.
"Are you going to answer my question so that we might work this out without further violence," he asked the thing in a louder voice.
The creature tossed another metal object out into the air, this time giving it an odd spin with the flick of its wrist. A second one followed immediately with the same strange spinning motion. This time the commander could hear the metal objects strike somewhere on the landings below him and his men.
"No," finally said the being in ebony armor as it began to toss the single remaining object up in the air only to catch it again as if playing a game. The red light made odd dancing designs in the air.
Suddenly the watch commander knew what the metal stick-like devices were. Even if they were too small and thin to resemble anything he was use to, he knew instinctively then what they were. The way the creature tossed them out, the timing of each throw, the place where each had struck in the staircase. They could be only one thing.
"Explosives!" he shouted to the group. "Get out! Get everyone out of the stairwell now!"
The men began to rush for exits, some bottlenecking at the near doorway, others heading down to the next floor to get out of danger. The invader chuckled manically then and casually tossed the remaining bomb down the stairway.
"You - You said you were willing to talk!" the watch commander yelled as he backed away until his path was blocked by men still trying to scramble through the door. "Talk instead of killing anyone!"
The thing cocked its armored head as if it were amused.
"I lied," it replied.
Below them, an impossibly loud explosion took place. The building shook to the ground floors and then there was a hideous sucking sound. The commander could feel the very air in the stairwell being abruptly sucked downward toward the lower floors as if it were rushing to fill a vacuum. He briefly glanced back up just in time to see the invader leap backwards off the banister and disappear somewhere on the landing above.
Before he could do anything else, two more of the massive explosions came in successive order. This time the air pulled at his clothing like a hurricane. Below him a few of his guards screamed as they were dragged off the staircase and sent plummeting toward the center of the blasts beneath them. The Qujagan's blood froze as he realized that whatever the unknown weapon the creature had used, there were still three more of them left... and they would be much closer to where he and his men now were when they detonated.
He began to frantically claw his way toward the nearest doorway, shoving other guards out of his way as he went. Pushing several of them down the staircase if needed.
On the final and last landing, Berret threw himself against the security door that Rygel was to open. Every possible blade and spike his armor held was deployed and driven into the floor or wall to anchor him.
The last three grenades blew and the stairway was filled with a boiling sea for flame. Almost just as suddenly, the fire was sucked back downward as the plasma burned itself out creating a vacuum. The air rushed back to fill the empty space with hurricane-force, dragging anything not nailed down with it to be crushed into the size of a Falgonian pea as the last dregs of plasma imploded. Inside his facemask, Berret gritted his teeth as he held on for dear life. Inside his head, the voice howled with laughter and without warning the Shrike found himself joining in with it. The glorious death and beautiful destruction, the thrill of not knowing if his spikes and blades were going to hold their grip, or lose their purchase and send him to the same grisly death that the prison guards had just met...the lovely chaos! How much fun was that the voice screamed, wanting to know? How much now, did he finally feel... alive?
Rygel had just finished cutting out the grill he need to allow him to enter the security office and open the heavy door for the Shrike. Just as he kicked the grate off, the five explosions rocked the complex. The first so surprised him that he almost tumbled headfirst from the duct. His finely honed survival instincts warned him to hold on and he rode out the last four without falling. Before he could do anything else, he felt the sudden drop in air pressure and then heard the familiar sucking sound of displaced air. Long cycles as the military leader of the Hynerian Armed Forces told the Dominar immediately what kind of weapon had just been used.
"Plasma grenades?" Rygel asked himself as the pressure finally equalized. "Here? Inside a structure?"
The feeling of befuddlement he first felt at who in their right mind would do such a dren-head thing left him as he suddenly knew without asking just who was responsible.
"That frelling lunatic set off plasma grenades inside a goddess-damned building?" he shouted. "What the frell was he thinking..." he started to ask himself, then cut the comment off. "Wait a microt... if that idiot was brainless enough to use a plasma weapon, in a stairwell no less... the frellnik surely killed himself along with whoever he was trying to murder," the Hynerian reasoned. He stroked one stubbly chin in thought. "This is not necessary a bad thing," Rygel concluded. "Chiana's pet stupidly killed himself, taking all the timed detonators with him. We can't complete this insane quest without them, so no one will blame me in the slightest for getting myself out of here and calling the Luxan for a pick-up. 'Sorry, my fellow crewmates... but we tried and failed to save Crichton and Aeryn...' " he rehearsed out loud. "Let us mourn our lost comrades and leave this system as far behind us as we can starburst away from it." He nodded his head in satisfaction. "Even that dumb Luxan would have to see the logic in that move," he told himself.
Feeling an overwhelming sense of relief that his ordeal was almost over, he reached upwards to key his comm badge and reopen the link to D'argo.