Unchained_ A science fiction romance adventure Read online

  “Was he experimenting on them?” Keiko asked from the spot she’d taken up in front of the door.

  “So it seems.”

  “Is that allowed? I mean, can you experiment on people who are… on death row?”

  “Not unless they volunteered and there was a favorable risk/benefit analysis presented.” Skylar went hunting for tools and containers. “Random human experimentation has been outlawed since the Nuremberg Code was established.”

  “What kind of favorable benefit could someone about to be killed be offered?” Keiko sounded horrified, her gaze locked on the image of a brain being operated on. That might be striking her as more awful than Skylar's earlier somewhat academic arguments about cyborgs being treated poorly.

  “I doubt he was following acceptable medical practices,” Skylar said.

  “Maybe that’s why someone killed him.”

  “Maybe.”

  The asteroid shuddered again. Skylar grimaced as she bent over to start working and hoped the quakes wouldn’t get worse. She didn’t want to end up knocking Keiko and herself out. Or worse.

  8

  “You and Holster got the two airlock entrances covered, Pip?” Cortez asked into his wristcomp as he watched the camera display showing the active forcefield at the far end of the shuttle bay.

  He and his team of sixteen—six of his men and ten cyborg prisoners that they had freed and found weapons for—waited around the corner from the interior door to the shuttle bay. Ten darters, storm cannons on each of their four wings, hovered outside as someone no doubt attempted to override the forcefield controls.

  “We’re here, sir,” came Pip’s response. “All quiet so far. I’ve got cameras up to monitor a waste shaft too. That’s another spot they might try to come in. We didn’t have men enough to guard it, but Tek Tek planted a few booby traps.”

  “Good.”

  “We’re not rushing the shuttle bay when they get in, right, sir?” Driggs asked from behind his shoulder. The former sergeant crouched next to Jerick who, even though he didn’t have armor or anything other than a plastech rifle he’d liberated from a guard, was also behind Cortez. In what had always been his usual spot. The first year of Cortez’s command, Jerick had argued that he ought to stand out in front whenever they had defended the ship during forced boardings, but Cortez had never let him win those arguments.

  “Correct,” Cortez said. “Tek Tek set some traps out there.”

  “He’s been a busy boy,” Jerick said.

  “He was working in a robo-vacuum repair shop when I contacted him. To say his creativity has been stifled these last three years is an understatement.”

  “I understand how he feels. At least if I’d had a vacuum, I could have entertained myself.”

  “I don’t think I want to ask how that would work,” Cortez said.

  “You don’t.”

  “Prisoners get desperate after a while,” one of the men in the back said.

  “Tek Tek may have been too good,” Jerick said, watching the display. “Those fleet darters aren’t having any luck getting the forcefield down. Maybe they’ll give up and go home.”

  “That wouldn’t help us.” Cortez was watching the display too. “We need that ship.”

  He wondered if the darters were intentionally taking their time, keeping his attention occupied while Falconer launched some other attack. Right now, the Black Star lurked well away from the prison, half-hidden behind another asteroid in the belt.

  Cortez lifted his wristcomp. “Still keeping an eye on that waste shaft, Pip?”

  “Yes, sir. I love me some shafts.”

  “I think that was dirty,” Jerick said. “Maybe Pip needs some vacuums to entertain him too.”

  Cortez ignored the muttered speculation and elbowing the men gave each other. He knew they were nervous and simply distracting their minds from deadly concerns, and he liked that the prisoners joined in, falling back into the easy camaraderie of being in a unit again.

  The forcefield dropped, and the darters sailed in. Languidly.

  Cortez squinted suspiciously, once again wondering if this was a distraction. He checked on the warship again. It hadn’t moved, but that asteroid hid one of its airlock hatches. Falconer might be sending men out in combat armor and rocket boots to approach the prison from the back side.

  Meanwhile, he kept lobbing charges toward Antioch. They detonated close to the asteroid, but not as close as they could be.

  Cortez knew the fleet wouldn’t risk hurting civilians, and he also knew those charges could be hitting the asteroid and blowing chunks out of it—and the facility carved into its core—if the ship’s artillery officer wanted them to.

  As the darters landed inside the bay, Cortez tapped a command on his wristcomp’s holo keyboard. Earlier, he had tied the device into the C&C computers. His command pressurized the bay and reenergized the forcefield behind the darters. He didn’t know if the fleet pilots had intended to do that—in their space-rated combat armor and magnetic boots, their teams didn’t need the shuttle bay to have air or gravity. But Cortez knew Tek Tek’s booby traps would require oxygen to work.

  The darters hovered for a minute. Discussing that they were trapped inside if they couldn’t get that field down again?

  Ultimately, it did not deter them. They landed, all ten of them. Hatches in the sides of several of the ships opened, and four men in black armor jumped out.

  Jerick stirred behind Cortez. Just adjusting his weight? Or was he thinking about how he’d once worn armor exactly like that and had led strike teams into enemy vessels?

  The men spread out rather than marching single-file across the shuttle bay deck. One heading to secure the door to the corridor landed on one of Tek Tek’s nearly invisible booby traps. It blew him into the air with enough force that his helmet struck the ceiling.

  As the soldier dropped back to the deck, gravity making him hammer down hard enough that he bounced, Cortez grimaced. Even though he had ordered this, it was hard not to see those black suits and think these were his allies. He hoped the soldier’s armor had protected him from serious injury.

  Some of the other soldiers activated the jets in their boots and tried to float toward the door, thus bypassing the booby traps. Cortez tapped the controls for the shuttle bay and increased the artificial gravity. It made the men too heavy for their small boot jets. One more hit a booby trap.

  “Now, sir?” one of the men whispered from behind Cortez, eagerness in his voice.

  With smoke filling the shuttle bay and the fleet soldiers unsure about where to step, Cortez was tempted to attack. He still worried this was a diversion, but if they dealt with it quickly, they would be ready for whatever came next.

  “Follow me to the door and stagger yourselves for firing into the bay,” Cortez said. “Do not step inside. There’s only a five-foot safe zone around the door before the booby traps start up.”

  A dozen yes, sirs sounded, and Jerick briefly rested a hand on his shoulder. Cortez felt encouraged by that touch, by the fact that Jerick had so far proven himself exactly the man he remembered. Prison hadn’t changed him, not drastically. Maybe he was more open with his feelings, but Cortez couldn’t blame him for that. He’d worried Jerick might have gone the other way, might have been destroyed by his years of incarceration and that this mission… would have been a mistake.

  Oh, it hadn’t just been for Jerick, but the announcement that he’d been slated for death had definitely been the impetus for doing it now.

  “Let’s do it,” Cortez said, whispering and running around the corner.

  He dropped into a roll when they reached the bank of windows looking out into the bay—smoke or not, the armored men had sensors and might spot the movement. When he reached the door, he moved to the far side and waited for the others to take position before opening it. Only when three men crouched at different heights on either side did he deem it time.

  He waved it open, leaned out, and opened fire. The other five cybo
rgs did the same. The rest of the men knelt under the windows farther back in the corridor, ready to jump in when they got a chance.

  As with their initial assault on the prison, Cortez threw several of the can-opener grenades. He had to compromise those men’s armor before anything would get through.

  A boom sounded, another booby trap being set off. With the door now open, it was ten times louder than first few had been.

  Return fire streaked through the smoke as the first can-opener grenades went off. Flashes of crimson burned through the air as plas-bolts hammered through the back of the shuttle bay, some of them finding the open doorway.

  “Alpha team,” one of the soldiers yelled, “back to the darters.”

  Some of the armored men ran toward the open hatches, but others knelt where they were, shooting through the smoke and toward the doorway. Cortez leaned back around the jamb whenever the assault grew too heavy, too many bolts flying to have a hope at deflecting them.

  “They retreating?” someone yelled from the corridor.

  Cortez shook his head. He doubted it.

  Fire pummeled his team mercilessly, hammering through the doorway to blast the wall behind it and shattering the shatterproof-windows. At the same time, four of the darters rose, their powerful thrusters handling the extra gravity.

  They didn’t fly toward the exit—the forcefield was still in place—but toward the doorway where Cortez and the others crouched. He realized the pilots were bringing their men closer so they could spring inside without worrying about booby traps.

  “Brace yourselves,” Cortez barked, firing into one of the open hatches when a darter swooped close and turned its side toward them.

  His bolts bounced off the soldiers’ armor, doing no damage.

  One of his men hurled two can-opener grenades through the darter’s hatchway. One got past the soldiers and landed inside, but another armored figure smacked the second one back using a rifle like a baseball bat. It sailed straight toward their doorway.

  Cortez jumped up, knocking it out of the air with his own rifle. The can opener shrapnel would hurt even more burrowing into bare flesh. Fortunately, the grenade bounced back out, hitting the nose of the darter before it exploded.

  “Duck,” Cortez barked, leaning back behind the cover of the wall as shrapnel flew in a million directions.

  The armored soldiers sprang out of their hatchway, trying to barrel into the corridor while the cyborgs were distracted.

  Cortez roared and jumped up, catching one man around his armored waist. He spun and hurled his foe against the back wall with all his enhanced strength. Jerick and the other cyborgs surged forward to engage other fleet soldiers.

  As soon as his adversary hit the back wall, Cortez hurled him in another direction. The man tried to fire while he was swinging through the air, but Cortez kicked his rifle free before letting go. When he released his foe, the fleet soldier flew down the corridor, bouncing off the deck and the walls.

  The man’s armor cushioned him, but that still had to hurt. He collapsed, stunned or unconscious. Or feigning it.

  Another man gripped Cortez from behind, locking arms strengthened by armor around him. Cortez roared and bent forward, trying to hurl his assailant over his shoulder. But his foe hung on like a tick. They went down in a tumble, and a powerful elbow cracked into Cortez’s side. He found his feet and backed up, battering the human tick against the wall.

  But it wasn’t until one of the other men—Jerick—punched the soldier in his faceplate that the grip loosened. Jerick yanked him off Cortez, hurling the figure toward the other cyborgs, cyborgs eager to get into the fray. They descended on the soldier like ants crawling over discarded bread.

  “Thanks,” Cortez barked, whirling to check the doorway.

  Another darter had maneuvered into place to disgorge more men, but his people had it covered. Two of them sprang inside the craft before the soldiers could leap out.

  Cortez turned to check on the man he’d hurled down the corridor. The soldier had found his feet, and he crouched, his rifle raised for what he’d no doubt meant to be a sneak attack. Cortez tensed, ready to spring aside or shoot the bolts out of the air if he could.

  The man met his eyes, then turned and fled.

  “Shit,” Cortez growled, imagining him disappearing in the facility, finding and releasing the staff, and causing all manner of trouble. “Keep the soldiers out,” he yelled to his men, then sprinted after the escaping figure.

  The soldier’s armor gave him greater speed than usual, but the implants in Cortez’s leg muscles also gave him great speed. Further, he had the height advantage. He pumped his arms, keeping his target in sight as he sped around corners and turned toward… the sewer disposal station.

  The man didn’t know where he was going. Hadn’t he studied a map before infiltrating what had become an enemy stronghold?

  Cortez chased him into the disposal station, lights coming on as they entered. Though he suspected his enemy had simply made a mistake, racing into a dead end, he slowed down and pulled his last can-opener grenade from his belt. It could be a trap.

  The man ran into a pile of machinery—a dead end. Realizing he’d made a mistake, he whirled and fired wildly toward the door.

  Cortez dove to the side as he threw the grenade. He followed it up with fire of his own, hoping to keep the man pinned while the can opener did its work.

  The soldier tried to spring to the side, but his own fire struck the grenade in midair. It exploded in front of him, flashing white and filling the station with smoke.

  Cortez scrambled to get behind some of the tanks in the room. A couple of pieces pierced the back of his tweed jacket, and he gritted his teeth to keep from crying out. Fortunately, he made it behind a tank. A cacophony of pings sounded as the rest of the shrapnel hit it and the walls. He grimaced, imagining sewage leaking out after the acid ate through the tank.

  “A problem to worry about later,” he whispered, leaning out to fire again.

  But the soldier was on the deck, writhing on his back like a turtle as the acid-covered shrapnel made it through his armor and into him. Cortez changed weapons as he sprinted forward, trading rifle for stunner. He fired, and the stun beam made it through the holes in the soldier’s armor, just enough to slow the man. Two more shots, and he stopped moving.

  Cortez, not willing to leave someone behind who might wake up and cause trouble, hoisted the man over his shoulder. He grunted as the heavy weight—made heavier by all that armor—settled on him, but he was still able to run out of the room and back toward his team.

  “A good thing you kept up with the gym,” he muttered to himself, racing back through the corridors, the dead weight thumping on his shoulder. He prayed his men hadn’t been overrun.

  A surge of pride filled him as the battle zone came back into view. His people were still holding that doorway, and two darters were down beyond the windows, plumes of smoke coming from their engine compartments. The armored soldiers that had leaped inside the corridor were also down.

  Dead or stunned? Cortez had given his people the order to disable, not to kill, but he couldn’t know yet if they’d been able to follow through on it. He couldn’t blame his men for doing whatever it took to stay alive, but he also knew that dead men would mean the death sentence for him. There was no chance of going back to his old life now.

  He gritted his teeth as he rejoined the men, thumping a couple of them on the shoulders. He hadn’t intended to go back anyway.

  On the other side of the doorway, Jerick rose up from the deck, blood and soot smearing his bare chest, and his bare hands clenched. He’d lost his weapon somewhere, but it didn’t look like he had needed it. Two armored soldiers lay unmoving at his feet. He lowered into a fighting stance and looked around for more.

  Cortez’s wristcomp beeped—he almost missed it over the continuing noise of rifles firing.

  “Report,” he barked, crouching below one of the windows, letting the men who’d taken over gu
arding the doorway continue to do so.

  “You were right, sir,” Pip said. “You’re dealing with a diversion. Tek Tek is interfaced with the mainframe right now, or we would have missed it. There’s some kind of tunnel borer working its way in through the rock, making its own door.

  “Location?”

  “Transmitting it.”

  The location flashed on his wristcomp. Several levels up, near C&C. If the borer got in and was large enough to open the way for men in armor, they could gain control of the whole station from there. The hostages were also locked up on that level.

  Cortez eyed his men, noting injuries and debating how many he could take to deal with the borer. He couldn’t take many—they were having trouble stemming the flow of the strike teams as it was.

  “I need one man,” Cortez yelled over the noise. “We’ve got a bot drilling in upstairs.”

  Several men looked toward him, raising their weapons, but Jerick snatched up a rifle and sprang to his side first.

  “You’ve got him,” he said, eyes fierce.

  “Good.” Cortez slapped him on the back. “Driggs, you’re in charge here. Hold that doorway.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  As Cortez raced toward an access shaft, Jerick right behind him, he hoped they had enough power to handle the machine on their own.

  The fast-paced rhymes of the Unknown Soldier’s “Someone Moved the Stars of Home” played while Skylar worked, the song helping drown out the booms that continued to assail the asteroid. So far, no alarms had gone off informing everyone that the facility had been breached, so maybe they were only warning shots, but they were distracting, nonetheless.

  After a few minutes—or maybe it had been hours—Skylar brushed hair out of her eyes and leaned back from the sickbay desk, looking down at her handiwork. Six large vials were ready to be thrown, to knock out their enemies. The liquid would turn gaseous when it contacted air, so breaking the glass would be necessary. It wasn’t a tidy method of distribution, but she’d been lucky to even find vials in the corner of sickbay that passed as a very meager lab.