Handling

Nerin repeated, while she slipped earplugs in.

She said ‘we’, but really it had just been me. I wiped the metallic orange blood off my hand before it distracted me any more.

I pulled out a pair of earplugs too. I could have materialized my own, but I’d need every spare gram like this.

Serral said.

I said.

Nai replied.

I warned.

she replied.

Weith said from the Jack.

Option one had been simple, keep negotiating a peaceful release of humans. But we’d made sure to plan for the almost-inevitable failure of that route. We had whole flow charts of plans for different scenarios, branching and splitting depending on what conditions were met. It took a long time to make sure everyone understood the different branches to the plan, but we didn’t have that many people on our crew. Conditional and redundant planning was the one advantage of having spent so much time accomplishing nothing these last few months.

Options three and four were scrapped too now. The only avenue left was rescuing the humans by force.

I said.

Serral warned.

I said.

I shared the document with them and we formulated a plan. Any minute now, the thugs outside this room would get curious. The second they found their boss dead in his office…

Well, were it not for the humans in the basement, I’d have said we should get far away several minutes ago.

<…We have humans here too,> Nai said.

Whoa, really?

I said.

Nai said.

Serral added.

<…Okay. Understood,> I said.

I trusted her. I knew from having seen the most personal corners of her mind firsthand; she’d never give up on the abductees she’d found.

I said.

he said.

I said, walking over to the wall. It felt like drywall to the touch. Slightly moldy drywall, but still just…completely unreinforced material.

This wasn’t a secure room or facility.

Tasser said.

Rematerializing a knife, I hacked into the crumbly surface of the wall. The impact of chopping would made noise, but giving my knife a jagged series of teeth let me saw through the wall easily.

In less than a minute, we had a hole big enough for my torso.

On the other side of the wall, I went first, pausing only long enough for Nerin to tap my shoulder and confirm she was behind me.

Technically, with psionic radar, that kind of coordinating measure was redundant. But it was the way the Coalition had trained its personnel and it was the wrong moment to break from training.

I took the quiet moment going down the hall to materialize a chest plate and helmet for both of us. They weren’t invisible like Nai would have made them, and that much armor taxed my mass limit. But the protection was worthwhile.

I had just enough leftover mass and energy to create pistols for both of us.

My revolver, and more intricate semi-automatic for Nerin: again, what she was trained with. Neither of us had the most combat experience, so it was all the more important to stick to what we knew.

Nerin said nothing as we moved. She could tell I’d popped one of our candle-radars, and we had about four more minutes before it would peter out. I knew where all the enemies were—at least all the close ones.

Most of the Casti had withdrawn from this upper level of the factory. They were concentrated on the rooms by the entrance and the exterior of the factory itself. There were none in our path to the nearest stairwell.

Tasser reported.

He was two floors below us on the south side of the building, and there were more than a dozen pirates in the rooms attached to the hall leading there.

Our little meeting was not the only thing going on today.

<…We might be able to go down via the stairs,> I said.

he replied.

Something like a psionic klaxon went off.

There was screaming on the open channels the pirates were using. The radar told me that two Casti were shoving their way into the office we’d left behind.

The two guards…

I’d successfully diverted suspicion away from the dead leader’s silence, but someone must have tried to chat up the henchmen I’d silenced too.

I started, but gunshots were already sounding outside.

Okay then. Hopefully that would draw their attention outward. Just to make sure that was the only thing they had to focus on…

I warned.

All of my Jack allies adjusted their minds’ firewalls, battening down metaphorical hatches, sealing vents, and other analogues for defensive hardening. They all vanished from psionic contact for a moment; Nerin, standing right next to me, even vanished from the radar entirely.

I pulled the pin on the candle-construct of which I only held only single copy: a bomb.

A big bomb.

I’d made psionic-destroying-psionics before, but this was turned up to eleven.

More specifically, it was a bomb that would launch ten or twenty-thousand psionic javelins in every direction. We’d engineered the spears specifically to punch through the default firewall and destroy enemy psionics. But with no way to have them discriminate targets, we’d resorted to armoring our own constructs to withstand it.

The instant I pulled the pin, I ejected the construct from my mind and reinforced my own psionic defenses.

Even through the thick protections of my firewall, my finer tools trembled. Physically, there was no effect at all. But every psionic-equipped mind within several miles would have just experienced a devastating blow.

Two heartbeats later, Nerin reappeared on radar. Tasser too.

I asked.

sounded nine times from each crew member.

At a glance, not a single Casti in this half of the colony had even a single tool still functioning. Even passive constructs like documents or maps were probably irreparably damaged.

That would cripple the enemy’s ability to coordinate a response.

Gunfire rang out, much closer this time. More defenders were responding to Serral and Fenno. With just the two of them, it would make for a pitiful assault. But they apparently had some experience making smaller forces appear larger, and even just the two of them could pin down a large number of enemies.

But there were so, so many enemies…

Four of which were chasing us. The hole we’d cut in the office was pretty obvious.

I pointed where we’d come from.

Nerin and I both aimed our weapons at the spot.

Both of our first bullets were a hair too quick, but they gave the pirates no warning. They’d run past the corner with too much momentum to react.

We both fired several bursts until four Casti fell to the floor. Orange blood splattered the walls and floor. My hand started trembling again, and I bit my tongue.

I said, distracting myself with the pain.

Nerin tapped my shoulder, and we moved forward again, down the stairs. We didn’t bother aiming anywhere we didn’t sense minds, and that let us move quickly.

Reaching the ground floor helped little though, because the stairs didn’t go into any basement.

Was Tasser’s elevator shaft the only way down?

Before I could check the floorplan again, pirates barreled toward us.

I frowned. Eradicating their psionics might have actually been a mistake. We could have listened in on their plans, but now they were forced to communicate conventionally. And we didn’t have a way of cracking those communications.

Tracking their moments was enough though.

I said, indicating the spot these next ones would appear.

This group was slightly more careful. Instead of barreling through their own territory, they were checking corners and peeking for enemies before advancing.

Unfortunately for them, the building’s drywall was only concealment, not cover.

My mother had taught me the difference after a school shooting a few counties over. I’d never really thought I’d need to rely on that lesson.

The first Casti to poke their head out earned a bullet through the cheek, and their backup quickly ducked backward. But Nerin and I kept firing into the wall.

Tracking the approximate locations of their brains, several fell over, or at least ducked down.

I said, dissolving the chest armor on both of us. I wanted to have it, but the mass was better put toward a shield.

I stayed put with the shield. My gun stayed trained on the corner while Nerin bolted down the hall towards Tasser’s position.

Tasser asked me.

I said.

I sensed Tasser ignite one of his candled radars instead of responding. It wasn’t ideal doubling up on radar usage. We had a limited stock and only Nai could make them—I hadn’t quite figured out how yet. But I wanted every scrap of my attention on my enemies. Tasser could handle himself.

Nerin said.

I started backing my way towards her position, keeping my focus on the corner our enemies would be forced to come around.

Both of us were ready when two more Casti rounded the corner sporting rifles—the kind that had been posted to the factory exterior.

The bullets slammed into my shield, but didn’t penetrate. The shield paid off; this kind of firepower likely would have pierced our vests.

Nerin returned fire when I leaned only an inch to the side. I felt the bullets pass just a few inches from my shoulder, but didn’t stop. The rifle sporting Casti retreated before we could really bloody them. So we kept moving.

Our priority was the abductees. We had to reach them. But even before that, if we were ever pinned down, they had us. We’d die.

Stay moving…

I asked Tasser.

he said.

<…The psionic floorplan was labeled ‘official’,> I said.

he said.

I said.

Checking the radar, I found the next hallway we needed to move through was empty. Its adjoining rooms were too.

I suggested, materializing a thick cloud of smoke at the hall junction.

“I. Am. Not. Suited. For. This,” Nerin huffed as we both ran.

“Me neither,” I said.

As soon as I stopped biting my tongue to speak, my hand twitched.

“You’re handling it fine,” she said. She’d noticed after all. Darn it, she was younger than me…

“Thought you’d have more trouble with fighting than me,” I said. “Being a doctor and all.”

“Sometimes the most effective way to save a life is to take another,” she said. “It’s not pretty, and it’s easy to take it too far. But in some circumstances, it remains true.”

“Nai teach you that?” I asked.

“Other way around,” she said. “I’ve been in surgery longer than she’s been in the military.”

“…The Farnata education system sounds so messed up,” I told her.

“It really is,” she said soberly.

The fact that we were just two teenagers handling firearms with a climbing body count might have been more sobering if not for the stories about the World Wars. How many people had lied about their age to enlist?

This wasn’t war, per se, but the motivating factors weren’t so different.

We arrived at the top of the elevator shaft without any more pirates finding us. They were really skittish about pushing through the smoke I’d left.

The doors were already pried open, presumably by Tasser, and the cable extended all the way down the shaft.

“Not going to be big on dignity, this,” I told her. “Climb onto my back.”

She didn’t argue, wrapping one arm over my shoulder, clasping her wrist with the other arm. It was an awkward position for both of us, but dainty was not a priority for anyone today.

I grabbed the cable with two hands and slid down, once again thanking my lucky stars for augmentations. I’d even slid down an elevator cable like this once before…

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Going down, we quickly plunged into darkness. It was underground, but even basements had lighting. But we passed blank concrete walls of the elevator shaft with no gaps for doors or lights.

Where were the other floors? Was there nothing between the ground floor and this deep basement?

There was not.

For five or six stories below the car factory, there was nothing but dirt. But further beneath that, another facility slept.

It was completely different to the place upstairs. No mold or graffiti down here. Everything was modular panels and gentle green emergency lighting.

The elevator shaft, I noted, wasn’t for an elevator at all. Instead of finding doors and buttons to operate it, access to the shaft was a bashed out panel of wall. The elevator cable was crudely attached to a platform with a lever at the bottom of the shaft.

It was a rickety custom setup, like those for old-timey mineshafts, rather than any kind of modern elevator.

I asked Serral.

I said.

The ‘while still being careful’ part went unsaid.

“Nerin, where the hell are we?” I asked.

I didn’t recognize any of the writing on the walls. Signage wasn’t in Starspeak.

“I have no idea,” she said. “”

Two gunshots down the hall answered us, and a mind began to fade from the radar.

I started.

he said.

I noted that, based on his location, he must have taken the right path.

Ah, I saw what he was going for.

Despite there being two human minds on this sub-level, they weren’t together. One of them was down the hall Tasser had picked, and the other was further into this strange sublevel. Not having a floor plan for this section of the building made me nervous, but we still had radar coverage to confirm the presence of only three more nonhumans on this level.

Tasser reminded us.

And it was a good thing he did, because no sooner than we were five seconds down the hall when a clink sounded in the shaft behind us.

A second later the bottom of the shaft exploded, spraying concrete shrapnel into the hall where we’d been standing just seconds before.

Even with earplugs in, the sound still rattled my jaw.

Nerin and I kept moving, more recklessly now as my radar uptime dwindled. The fact that there were so few enemies on this level made it easier to anticipate exactly how to approach them. Fewer complications.

One of them was in Tasser’s direction, and we could give him some support from the other side of the wall.

I warned.

Tasser posted himself outside the door, while Nerin and I paused, carefully lining up behind the wall of the room’s far side. Between us and Tasser was the room’s occupant. Cascading through the wall, I just barely couldn’t reach far enough to sense their position.

Tasser said.

The moment between ‘two’ and ‘now’ I kicked the wall as hard as I could. On radar, I saw a jolt of surprise go through the pirate’s mind, and they turned toward the wall behind them on reflex…just in time for Tasser to come through the doorway they’d just been watching.

One gunshot rang out, but Nerin and I had already moved out of Tasser’s line of fire.

He hadn’t shot the pirate or the wall though.

I could barely make out the words, but the pirate was standing stock still while Tasser warned them.

“Don’t even reach for it,” he said.

I couldn’t make out the mumbling response.

“Don’t try—”

Three gunshots rang out in a quick burst. Then a fourth a moment later.

I said.

Tasser said.

he warned.

I said.

I sidled up to the last corner before the two enemies in question. They weren’t twenty feet away, so they heard my footsteps. They didn’t try shooting through the walls like we had. Whatever this underground facility was, it was made of sterner stuff, it seemed.

“You two throw down your guns, and I’ll see about being gentle,” I said.

“You the Adept?” one of the pirates asked.

“Five seconds, and then you find out,” I said. “Five…four…”

I’d planned on darting out on ‘three’, to take them by surprise, but they gave me pause when a heavy metal latch could be heard releasing.

“You’re here for the Terran,” the other voice said. “Unless you stand down, we’ll just kill ‘em.”

They’d opened the heavy steel door to the room our abductee was in, and they were using it for cover. Presumably also holding the human hostage.

“You touch the human and it’ll be the last thing you do,” I promised. “You’re getting hurt one way or another. The only question is whether or not you’ll wake up tomorrow morning.”

While I spoke, I carefully stretched my cascade through the wall and around the corner. I couldn’t quite reach the doorway, even thinning my cascade to a ribbon. But I could use it to aim.

“You can’t—”

I materialized a kinetic bomb a few inches away from the open door. It opened out into the hall, meaning my bomb blasted it shut. The swinging metal knocked the first pirate into the second, bowling them over backward. That impact kept the first pirate from being pushed out of the door’s way.

Instead, the door caught them full on and slammed them against the frame as it tried to close. There was a sickening crunch, which I could only assume was that Casti’s ribcage.

As Nerin and I advanced, both stunned pirates still tried to aim guns.

We each put bullets in them.

My adrenaline was pumping now, and it was easier to keep my hand from shaking. There was no ambiguity with these enemies. They were definitely dead. Nerin and I had both found headshots.

<…I think that’s the floor cleared,> I said, approaching the room with the human mind in it.

Even with that assumption, Nerin and I still burst into the room guns drawn. We knew it was possible to hide from psionics, though this group hadn’t shown the ability yet.

The room was a very sparse cell, with just a cot and not even a latrine. Instead of the paneling the halls outside had, the cell was only concrete. This far underground, it was cold too.

From the corner of my eye, I saw something dart toward my face. But I threw a hand up to catch a knife by the blade, wrenching it from the hand of—

Our human.

She must have been lying in wait in the corner by the door, hoping to ambush whatever pirate entered the room next.

I blinked.

She was a girl about my age, with long dirty black hair. Her clothing fit poorly and was stained dark with dust and grime. The only remotely clean-looking part of her outfit were the socks and shoes that looked almost new.

Adept made, for sure.

But my psionics twitched looking at her. Where my eyes saw her, and where I sensed her mind…were two different locations, adjacent corners of the cell.

“Spoofing your mind’s position?” I said, genuinely impressed. “How’d you figure out that one?”

She froze too, recognizing that I was human too.

“[H-ha…human!]” she rasped. Then she realized she was still holding one end of the knife she’d tried to put through my temple. “[Sorry.]”

“[No worries,]” I said, switching to English. I’d opened in Starspeak out of habit again. “[This is a rescue mission. Can you move?]”

She nodded. “[A bit. What about Elaine and the others?]”

I asked.

he confirmed.

“” I said. “[I’m Caleb, this is Nerin. We’ve got someone getting Elaine now. Who are these ‘others’ and where are they?]”

“[I’m Jordan,]” she said. Her voice was dry and hoarse. “[I don’t know where the others are. These guys only wanted the Adepts kept here. But there’s four more of us.]”

she sent.

“[You were in contact with them?]” I asked Jordan.

She nodded. “[Something knocked out our psionics a minute ago—you know what those are, right?]”

“[Yeah we do, and sorry, that was us,]” I said, switching my attention to Nai.

<…It did,> she reported.

Tasser said.

“[Follow us,]” I told Jordan. “[We’re going to connect with the person with us and make an escape plan.]”

I took point, with Jordan at my heels while Nerin had our backs.

“[But what about the others?]” Jordan repeated. “[They aren’t being kept here.]”

“[Right, sorry,]” I said, tapping my temple. “[I’m in psionic contact with our other team. They’re rescuing the other four abductees. Um…actually, here. Take this.]”

I materialized and handed her a rod embedded with fresh psionics.

She frowned at it for a moment but realized to push her cascade into it before I had to explain it.

“[…That’s…whoa…]” she muttered.

<[Reading me?]> I asked, pointing out the non-default telepathy channels.

<[Yes,]> she said. “<[…I can’t reach the others.]>”

<[Our psionic bomb had a radius of several miles,]> I said. <[It probably knocked out their stuff too.]>

“[Okay,]” she said.

We jogged down the hallway, not pausing for any of the bodies. Tasser quickly came into earshot.

“[Please do not throw—]” I heard him say. He ducked under something that smashed against the wall outside the cell door.

“[Elaine?]” Jordan said, breaking formation and running forward.

“[Jordan?]”

Jordan only slowed as she laid eyes on Tasser, unsure for a moment. Her eyes flicked between his plain jumpsuit and the guard he’d shot earlier, still writhing on the ground. Bullets in their wrists and ankles.

Good shots, I noticed.

“[He’s friendly,]” I promised.

The slowly expanding pool of orange blood beneath Tasser’s opponent seemed to convince her more than my words, but who could blame her?

Tasser stood aside while Jordan poked her head into the cell, and another girl lunged into her arms on sight.

Like Jordan, I sensed she was Adept, but holy cow she was young…eleven or twelve, thirteen at the very most.

My hand shook again, but not from nerves. I had to resist the urge to put a fifth bullet in Tasser’s opponent.

The little girl—Elaine, of course—hesitated when she set eyes on Tasser again.

“[Friendly,]” he said.

She didn’t believe him.

“[My English is…only okay,]” he admitted.

Nerin was probably the alien second most proficient in English, but even she would struggle to communicate in the language.

But wait, Nai had said…

“[Do you two speak] Starspeak?” I asked.

“Yes,” Jordan said.

Elaine nodded too. “[Wait, you’re human!]” she realized.

“[Sure am,]” I grinned behind my air mask. The two of them weren’t wearing them, I noticed. “[This is a rescue mission.]”

Elaine’s scared eyes found Nerin next and softened. She was unfamiliar. Unlike Tasser, Elaine didn’t have any bad memories of Faranta.

Nerin waved to try putting her at ease.

“[That’s Tasser. I’m Caleb, and this is Nerin,]” I said. “[She’s a doctor. Are you hurt at all?]”

“[…Just a bunch of scabs,]” she said hoarsely. She and Jordan both sounded like they hadn’t been given water in hours.

“[Well, we have…]” I trailed off. “…Nerin, we left the case of medicine back in the office.”

She blinked.

We’d both missed it.

“[Well, crap]. Okay, we’ll just get out of here now then. Jordan, you keep track of Elaine. Nerin, Tasser, and I will fight you a path.”

I realized I swapped back to Starspeak about halfway through, but Jordan nodded like she’d understood the instructions.

“The elevator can’t be the only access,” Tasser said as we got moving again. “There must be another entrance, disconnected from the factory.”

Serral said.

We tromped down the hallways we hadn’t yet explored and found that two of them went much further than we’d anticipated.

I asked.

Nerin remarked.

Tasser was silent as we paused at a new junction, one of the branches of which was collapsed just a few feet down its length.

<…Yes,> he said urgently.

We all reversed course—confusing Elaine and Jordan.

Except, our timing proved fortuitous. The thunder of our footsteps paused just long enough for us to hear another bomb go off in the direction of the elevator.

Sorry, Tasser, I trusted him to relay pertinent tactical information, but he trusted me to know when I needed more than what he could pass on.

With his candle-radar still up, I pulled the pin on another.

“That’s more than twelve, Tasser!” I said.

There were at least twenty pirates storming towards us. Worse, the explosions weren’t the only threat at the elevator shaft. From what little I could still sense of the surface, they were mustering their strength to descend after us.

“What’s wrong?” Jordan asked. She did know Starspeak.

“We’re stuck between a [rock] and a [hard place,]” I said.

These long hallways were about the worst tactical possibility I could imagine too. Long sightlines, no cover…

My heart was pounding. We had maybe two minutes before the pirates arrived into the same hallway as us. Serral and Fenno couldn’t give any more support than they already were. Nai was too far away to back us up.

Get a grip, I thought.

I’d all known the risks going in. My back had been against the wall before, and I hadn’t given up then. No reason to start now.

Nerin was looking at me expectantly, and I was surprised to find Tasser wearing a similar look. But of course they would. I was the one with Adeptry. If a solution existed, it would have to come from me.

“I only have the one trump card…” I muttered, mostly to myself.

Commit, I told myself. All the other options are worse.

“I need time,” I told Tasser.

“Then duck down here.” My friend pulled our group into the collapsed hallway branch. It would at least give some meager cover.

First things first.

“[Elaine, your psionics are damaged, right?]”

“[Totally gone,]” she nodded.

“[Replacements,]” I said, putting my hand on her head and tossing the same bundle I’d given Jordan.

“[Both of you,]” I said, “[see the map construct?]” I sent a small ping toward their minds, aimed at the construct in question.

They both nodded.

“[Load this map into it,]” I said passing them a copy of the floorplan from earlier. “[It should be intuitive. Just feed it into—]”

“[Got it,]” they said in unison.

“[I’m going to put flags on it to show you where to go and when. Green means go. Red means stop. It’s critical you only move when we say. There’s going to be bullets flying…Actually, Jordan, can you make earplugs for the two of you?]”

“[Yes,]” she did so, and helped Elaine put in her pair.

“You have a plan then?” Tasser asked.

“Same one as always,” I said. “Coalescence.”

Nerin’s eyebrows rose. “You’re going to connect with Nai from here?”

“Nope,” I said. “I’m going to connect with both of you.”

Tasser looked at me blankly. “…Is that…possible?”

“I think it is,” I said. “So, with no other choice I can see, we’re going to roll the dice.”