Warriors For The Working Day
Chapter Ten
By
(UCSBdad)
Disclaimer: Stolen about equally from the Henson Co., David Drake and a bit from George MacDonald Fraser. Shakespeare is in the public domain, I hope. In any case, no money changes hands here. Rating: T due to language. Time: Some twenty-five plus years after Peacekeeper Wars.
"I have no idea what you think…"Kathleen began.
Natira cut her off by ramming the muzzle of her pistol into her throat. "I lost my eyes because of this traitorous Peacekeeper bitch. It was my punishment. My beautiful, beautiful eyes. Gone forever. My race can't have regenerative surgery to grow new eyes, so I'm left with these accursed, worthless artificial eyes."
"I can understand your bitterness. But it's affected your mind. This is one of my officers."
Natira laughed coldly. "I've been looking for Sun for decades now. I managed to buy things she had handled or worn to get her DNA. I have very sensitive and very precise equipment here to check the DNA of everyone who comes here. That's Aeryn Sun and she's mine."
Kathleen glared at Natira. Natira continued.
"If you want to go for your guns, please do so. Life without my eyes is such a burden I'd gladly die as long as I know Aeryn died with me."
"Oh, mah Goad." Howled McAuslan. "We're all deid!" He started crying and at the same time he lost control of his bladder. Urine poured from under his kilt onto the carpet.
"You fool," Natira shrieked, "that's an irreplaceable antique Dirras carpet, worth more..."
Kathleen slapped Natira's gun out of the way and I heard a slight pop. I was busy getting my head out of the way of the Sebacean's gun. Luckily for me, when someone throws a large metal box at you, your natural instinct is to put your hand up to block it, even if it is your gun hand. She did. It did her no good. The box hit her square in the face with all the strength Wee Wullie could put into it and slammed her backwards. I heard a distinct crack as she hit the wall. She collapsed in a heap, quite dead.
I glanced over to Natira. She was sitting quietly behind her desk, looking quite happy.
"What the frell happened?" I asked.
Kathleen held up her right index finger. "False fingernail. It has a few drops of the happy juice we use for interrogations under pressure. Natira will be very happy for a few minutes." Even as Kathleen was speaking, Corporal Grant, the medic that had treated me was working on Natira.
"Lady Natira?" Called a voice from outside the office. "What happened?"
"Nothing." Kathleen replied sweetly. "We're just having some fun. Natira's fine."
They didn't believe that. "Our sensors show a dead Sebacean in there. Release Lady Natira and come out unarmed and with your hands in the air."
"Grant?" Kathleen asked.
Grant had attached one of the human interrogation devices to Natira. "Okay, Ma'am. I'm going to see what we can get out of her about the defenses here."
A flurry of pulse weapons fire hit the door frame. Since that was the only apparent exit, we were in trouble.
"We could use a little help, Grant."
Grant nodded and got to work on both Natira and Natira's work station. "Just a minute, Ma'am." She muttered while her hands flew back and forth between the interrogator device and the Natira's computer control.
A pulse blast ripped through the ceiling, missing Kathleen by denches.
"A little help now?" Kathleen growled as she threw herself aside and another pulse blast shot through the wall just over her head.
"Got something!" Grant yelled. "There are surveillance pickups behind that picture on the wall by the door and in that vase thing behind the desk."
The human troops made short work of those.
"Okay!" grant yelled. "Now they can't monitor the inside of the office. They won't shoot for fear of hitting their boss."
"Ah hope." Muttered someone.
Grant got to work. She gave Natira another shot of the "happy juice" the humans used and Natira's smile grew to epic proportions as Grant interrogated her.
"I've got all of the security codes from Natira, Ma'am. I'm into the controls for her whole security system." Grant stopped talking for a few microns only favoring us with some "hmms" or "ahhs". Finally she gave us a smile. "Okay, this is going to be rough. I'm putting all of the internal weapons stations on computer control and ordering them to shoot up everything but us. Hang on."
No sooner had she said that than a roar of heavy weapons fire shook the building. Small parts of the ceiling were shaken loose and floated down on us. Through the door I could see larger chunks of the inside of the building flying by along with what appeared to be pieces of some guards. Quickly, smoke started to fill the depository.
"One more thing!" Grant screamed over the roar of the firing and the sound of collapsing walls.
"Attention! Attention!" blared a computer voice, almost drowning out the roar of battle. "There is a failure in the fusion containment bottle. Repeat! There is a failure in the fusion containment bottle. Fusion bottle breach will occur in one hundred and twenty five microns. Repeat! There is a failure…"
Another even louder voice filled the air. "Biological and chemical weapons alert. All personnel are to don protective gear at once. A level seven alert is in effect."
As the two voices warred with each other, more voices filled the air warning of volcanic eruptions, floods, attacks from space, epidemics, a mutiny by the planetary space navy and a whole host of apparently fatal problems.
"Get ready for our escort out!" Grant managed to make herself heard over the colossal din.
In a microt, something large and dark filled the doorway.
Kathleen had us all gather by the doorway. "Do we need Natira?" She asked Corporal Grant.
Grant nodded. "We'd best keep her, Ma'am. Just in case." As she moved away from the computer, I saw Grant had removed the remote control.
Kathleen nodded to Lieutenant MacNeill. "Dand, have someone help Grant with Natira. Do you have your nanobots out?"
The lieutenant nodded. "All hell is breaking loose out there, Ma'am, but I don't think anyone's still out there waiting for us to come out. That tank, or whatever it is, out in the hall just has to roll to the end of the hallway and blast through the door and we're outside."
"Any word from our transport?"
One of the soldiers shook her head. "They said they were taking fire and then I lost them. Comms are being jammed for sure, so I don't know where they are."
"Well, we won't get anywhere standing here." Kathleen said and stepped out in the hall.
Although there was an enormous amount of weapons fire in the depository, none of it seemed to be aimed at us. Apparently the computer controlled weapons were still programmed to shoot at anything but us. In the hallway was a huge armored machine on rollers. Pulse weapons in the front and back of it were firing continuously, but apparently not at any target.
The armored vehicle rolled down the hallway, spitting fire until it got to the door. It stopped shooting for a microt and then let loose a tremendous blast. The frelling door sagged a little but remained closed.
"Nanobots indicate someone's coming up behind us!" MacNeill yelled.
The vehicle fired again, if anything an even heavier blast. The door sagged some more and then part of it fell to the ground.
"I'm going to have it back up and ram the door!" Grant yelled. "Stand back."
The vehicle rammed the door once. Twice. Three times. A burst of fire zipped past us from behind. Three of the troops and I returned fire.
We heard a mighty crash and felt cool air. The door was open. The armored vehicle lumbered out of the depository and into an open park-like area behind where we had landed.
"Shit! The transport was hit badly. They managed to get out of the city, but then crashed. Two wounded, one dead. We've got a stealthed transport inbound. Be here in ten minutes." Shouted the soldier with the comm gear.
"Shit, indeed." Kathleen muttered as the now stationary armored vehicle started taking heavy fire. "We've got hostiles in front of us and in back of us now. Grant? Any ideas?"
Grant was holding Natira up with one arm, holding the interrogator onto Natira's head. With the other she worked the computer remote control.
"Through the doorway to the left and down!" Grant yelled.
We went. The doorway led to a ramp going down. In twenty motras we found ourselves in an underground vehicle park with half a dozen vehicles in it.
"The green one looks the fastest." Someone yelled.
"Too small!" Kathleen yelled. "We'd never get everyone inside."
Grant worked the remote and a large vehicle rose a few denches off the floor on its grav bladders.
"Everyone inside" Kathleen yelled as pulse blasts started to strike the concrete ramp we had just been on.
"Can you drive this, Aeryn?"
I slid into the center seat and looked quickly at the controls. Standard two stick controls, accelerator on the top of the left stick, decelerator on the top of the right stick. The monitors in front of the sticks were standard.
"Yes!"
"Go down!" Grant yelled to me. "There's an exit down there."
As we left, the troops fired out of the windows at the other vehicles, assuring that any pursuit would be on foot.
I headed down the connecting ramps as fast as I could, damaging the bodywork on our vehicle and on parked vehicles.
I had counted fifteen levels we had dropped when the next ramp ended in a blank wall.
"Hold on." Grant said, working busily. "It'll open."
She kept working, but nothing was happening.
"Ah kin hear summat behind us." Someone said.
"Damn! You're clever, aren't you Natira?" Grant said with a smile. "We need to give the damned wall a sample of her DNA before it'll open. Open the frigging door and hold her hand against the dark square by the side."
Wee Wullie opened the door and held Natira out and slammed her hand against the dark square. The wall slid smoothly to one side and I rushed through into a tunnel.
Natira wasn't quite back in the vehicle when I drove through and the door snapped half shut on her. I heard a loud crack.
"Her exoskeleton's damaged." Grant said.
I looked back. Natira's happy smile was starting to fade.
"Dren!" I shouted. "There aren't any lights in this frelling tunnel!" I felt us hit the sides of the tunnel, but nothing apparently major was damaged. More by good luck than anything, I got the night vision working on the windscreen.
The tunnel appeared to go fairly straight so I risked a glance back to Natira. A bandage of some kind was over her cracked exoskeleton and her drug induced smile was back.
"Light ahead." Kathleen said, bringing my attention back to my driving.
I slowed down and looked ahead of us. "Looks like the exit." I said. "I don't see anything barring our way."
Kathleen nodded. "Best to be sure. Stop about ten metras from the exit. Hepburn, take a look."
I slowed to a stop and one of the soldiers hopped out and checked the exit. After a few microns he came jogging back.
"It comes out in some sort of a huge concrete lined drainage ditch. The thing's about three quarters of a klick wide, and I don't know how long. I can see more of the city on the other side, but I can't see what's on our side. The concrete banks are really gentle though. No problem getting down or getting back up the other side."
Kathleen cranked her head around to the comm trooper in the back. "Andrews, have we been able to contact anyone."
Andrews shook her head. "Not while we're under all this concrete and metal, Ma'am. Can we pull out just a bit?"
We could and did. In microns Andrews contacted our incoming lander. A quick check of the map and we decided to have them pick us up at a large park not more than a few motras away.
I eased the car down the concrete bank and we were soon on the other side. Between us and a surface street was a short, wire fence.
"Fence doesn't appear to be alarmed." Commented Lieutenant MacNeill. "I think it's just here to keep out stray dogs."
"Aeryn?" Kathleen asked.
I looked carefully at the fence. "I think we should go through it."
Kathleen nodded and I backed up a bit. The first time I hit the fence, we didn't go through, although we did damage the fence. I backed up further and we punched through the fence on the second try.
In a few microns we were at a broad avenue that seemed to lead straight to the park we were meeting the lander at. I swung onto the avenue and almost hit another vehicle.
"What the frell are they doing?" I said, silently cursing the driver ahead of me.
"Christ! Look at those vehicles!" Grant said.
The cars on the street were minor works of art in their own rights. Some were painted with murals that seemed to feature the drivers. Others looked like they had been painted by just throwing the brightest paints imaginable on them. All were going at only a few motras an arn and seemed to stop every few denches so the occupants could get out and talk to each other. A group to the left had decided to hold an impromptu dance on the street.
"Dammit! We'll be here all night at this rate." Kathleen growled.
"And we're attracting attention." MacNeill noted.
He was right. Our vehicle had once been an expensive runabout for Natira. Now, after being chased through an underground garage, through an unlit tunnel and then a fence, we looked as out of place as a drannit in a Delvian monastery.
"Trouble at six o'clock."
Just in time I remembered that was a human method of expressing direction. Sure enough, coming up behind us were a uniformed pair. Both carried sidearms. One carried what looked like a communicator, the other a wide muzzled shoulder weapon of some sort.
"Can we get out of here?" Kathleen asked.
I swung left, pushed the accelerator down and passed a stopped car ahead of us. He had his door open and there was no way for me to avoid it. Too frelling bad.
There was a scream of outrage from the driver whose car I had damaged and an amplified bellow from the peace enforcers.
"Damaged vehicle. Stop now. You are in violation of…."
I didn't bother to listen to the rest. I cut to the right and went up on the sidewalk. There was a nice outdoor café just to my right, bordered with some flowering plants. I managed to miss the customers, but I sent flowers all over.
Frell! Some stupid frellnik was standing on the sidewalk in front of me, screaming her fool head off and not moving a dench. I tried to miss her and heard metal tearing as I jammed our vehicle against those to our left. At the last possible microt, someone pulled her out of the way and I missed her by half a dench.
Ahead I saw that two idiots had tried to move their vehicles out of our way and had managed to hit each other, blocking the street completely. A pulse blast shot past my head, spraying molten metal into the car.
I swung to the left and headed for a shop window. We slammed through it and into a shopping mall. Luckily, it featured a large open space with the shops along the walls. The crowds in front of me parted as I gunned the engine. The mall covered at least two city blocks and I had reached a good speed when I suddenly saw we weren't going be to drive out as easily as we'd driven in. Ahead of us was a solid wall. I hit the decelerator and swung to the left. No luck. There was another wall ahead of us. I looked back the way we had come and saw a dozen or more peace enforcers. As I hit the accelerator, and turned hard, a burst of weapons fire cut through where we had just been.
"There!" I yelled. "There's a door up ahead."
"It's too small." Kathleen yelled.
"Probably." I shouted back. "But it's our only way out."
I pushed down on the accelerator as hard as I could and the car shot forward, scattering customers and merchandise in all directions. I aimed straight at the door. Frell! It was small!
Kathleen was right. The door was too small. We left a lot of body work behind and part of a grav bladder. But we got through!
We came out on a wide and almost deserted boulevard. To our left I could just see the trees that marked the park where we were to be picked up. I gunned the engine and we lurched slowly towards the park.
"The frelling engine's damaged as well as the grav bladder!" I pushed the accelerator all the way down, and headed for the park, shedding parts from the grav bladder that hung down under the car.
I cut across a large square and stopped at the edge of the park. The park was bordered by a low, thick hedge. Normally, we would have driven right through it, but with all of the damage we had taken I didn't want to try.
Kathleen pulled out her map again. "Aeryn, the map shows an entrance just to the south of here. We should be able to get in.
"Lander's five miles out and have us on their sensors." Andrews announced. "They're asking if we can head for a large lake at our end of the park.
In half a micron I was able to answer.
"There's a break in the hedge. Tell them we'll be there before they are."
The park entrance was for foot traffic only and some officious idiot yelled at us as we drove into the park. McAuslan made a human gesture in response that translated well with anthropoids.
"There!" Someone shouted. "Something's pushing that tree against the wind!"
I stopped ten metras from the tree and a hatchway opened in the stealthed lander.
As we piled out of the vehicle, Kathleen drew her pistol and pointed it at Natira who was still smiling idiotically.
"No one threatens one of my officers, or one of my friends." She leaned slightly forward, put the muzzle of her pistol against Natira's forehead and fired.
"McAuslan!" She barked. "Drop a thermal next to her and light it up."
As I entered the lander, there was a very brief but intense flash of light. Then we were off.
The flight back to the Agincourt was anticlimactic. The authorities on Droon had no desire to take on two heavily armed warships.
As soon as we were back on Agincourt, Kathleen started feeding the intelligence we'd stolen from Natira's shadow depository into the ship's computers. In a few arns it was spewing out reams of data concerning myself and John. I grabbed a desk and a workstation and began plowing through the data. I read for almost a complete solar day, cross checking references, going back to check information I'd previously seen, and accessing the ship's own database for more information. To make sure I didn't miss anything, Kathleen worked at a station beside me, often exchanging information or ideas with me.
At the end of twenty four arns I was exhausted and depressed.
"Frell!"I moaned. "I still have no idea where John is or what happened to him. I have all the data I need to know who to kill when this is all over, but where's my husband?"
Kathleen leaned back and rubbed her eyes. "Where ever he is, the odds are he's alive. The last messages Corbellote sent were for his thugs to find and kill John."
I snorted. "And none of those bastards knows that their boss is a prisoner and will never to be in a position to pay them for John's murder."
Before the conversation went ant further, there was a soft chime from Kathleen's work station.
"Aha!" She said with a smile. "Vice Marshall O'Donnell, also known as my mom, wants to see us ASAP."
We shut down the work stations and walked down a passageway to Aida's headquarters. One of her aides met us at the door and ushered us into her private office.
"Please sit, Aeryn, Colonel O'Donnell. " Aida said solemnly. There was one item on her desk, a blood red folder.
Aida gestured to the folder. "We're done with Goro and Corbellote. It took a little while longer than we'd thought, but they're of no further use to us. Do you two know of any reason we should keep them alive?"
Kathleen replied first. "From an intelligence point of view, we have no use for them."
I thought for a while. I had been around John for a lot. When we first met, I would have executed the two bastards at once. Now I was considering their fates.
"We might be in a position to trade them for John sometime in the future." Aida said.
I shook my head. "Now that the news of the raid on that slave planet is common knowledge, their enemies and subordinates will be too busy trying to grab off pieces of their operations to care about Goro and Corbellote." I inhaled and let a breath out slowly. "Execute them."
Aida nodded, opened the folder and signed the document inside. "Do you want to attend the execution, Aeryn?"
I shook my head." Just make sure they're dead."
"Next item." Aida continued. "We've parted company with Scipio Africanus. We're going to rejoin the task force and return to our base at Arsenal."
I shook my head vigorously. "Arsenal is dozens of light cycles from anywhere John might be. Give me one of Redd's Prowlers and leave me behind so I can hunt for John."
"Hunt where?" She shot back. "You have no idea where to look for him. He could be on any one of a thousand planets in a space of thousands of cubic light years. Your chances of being any use to John are just about nil."
Frell! She was right, but I hated that she was right.
"Aeryn, we can send all of the intel we got from the shadow depository that concerns you and John to Dominar Rygel. We can also send him some information we got concerning the loyalty, or lack of same, of some of his subordinates. As you said before, Rygel has lots of resources. He can track down the people who helped Corbellote capture you all at once and go after all of the people who may still be hunting John. You can only go after them one at a time."
I stared at her, trying to find some flaw in her argument that wouldn't mean I'd be heading away from John to the human's base.
"I frelling hate this." I finally grumped.
"I know you do." Aida said sympathetically. "But all of our intelligence goes straight back to Arsenal. If our intelligence service picks up anything about John, the news will get to Arsenal long before it'll get to us in the task force out in the middle of the Uncharted Territories. Or to you."
She rose from behind her desk and gave me a smile. "Now, we need to record another message to Dominar Rygel as well as one to your children."
Aida led me to her outer office and handed Kathleen and I over to an aide to make the message to Rygel.
"Have you thought about my proposal, Vice Marshall?" Kathleen suddenly said.
Aida nodded. "I don't like telling the ruler of one of the more important powers any more about us than we can avoid, but I think you're right. We can open up indirect communications with Dominar Rygel. He knows Aeryn has some sort of friends out here that are powerful enough to keep her safe. Word of the raid on the slave planet and on the shadow depository will spread soon enough. Dominar Rygel will certainly connect the two, and connect them to Aeryn's new friends. We may as well contact him first and be done with it. Both our jobs in finding John will be a lot easier if we can contact each other."
And so, a message was sent to Rygel and my children.
In the following weekens, the task force headed deeper and deeper into the Uncharted Territories, taking me with it. We were far deeper into the Uncharted Territories than any prior explorers had bothered going, headed to a previously uninhabited solar system, now the home of a powerful human military force.
"Holy shit!" Said an officer in the other end of the Combat Information Center, looking at the holo of the Arsenal system that filled a quarter of the CIC.
Admiral Nagumo had rejoined the Agincourt when we rejoined the task force. She glared at the officers in the CIC to try to find which one had spoken.
"Holy shit, indeed." Aida said. "We have visitors."