Collision Course (Class 5, #6)

Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8

Rose was cold.

This morning she had dressed in dark gray, comfortable pants and a tunic for a visit to the doctor’s office inside the Barrist , not a trek through a wild, rocky landscape.

She shivered a little, and wished she was wearing something warmer. The thought made her increase her pace, trying to generate a little heat that way, and she heard a shout behind her.

She glanced back, but the woman who’d been chasing her was far away, a mere shadow in the distance.

She kept moving and when she looked back again, the woman was gone.

The way was rocky here, with a lot of loose stones and dirt, and she turned her attention to the footing, to keep herself from falling while still going as fast as she could manage.

The smell of rain caught her attention, an unmistakeable scent she realized she hadn’t experienced since she’d left Earth.

She stopped to breathe it in and then looked upward. Far in the distance, toward the mountains, the sky was dark, and she could just make out the sheets of rain falling, sweeping toward her.

It was cold enough without rain, and she didn’t want to get wet, so she began looking for cover as she moved toward what she thought might be a lake.

There was a small overhang up ahead, but it was so narrow she debated the value of stopping and using it, rather than moving on and looking for something better.

She had been walking over open ground, but when she looked ahead, she saw what might be an actual path, and she hesitated a moment. A path would make the going easier, but it was also evidence that someone used it.

And no one here was a friend.

She felt the first few drops of rain hit her face and made her choice, running for the overhang, which when she reached it turned out to be a little deeper than she’d thought.

She pressed up against the far wall and hunched a little to conserve her body heat.

Now that she had stopped moving, stopped watching every step, she thought of Dav and Sazo. Of what must be going on up wherever they were.

Her hand came up to her ear, to the small earpiece she wore every day, and knew that Sazo would be sending out signals, trying to contact her.

Dav would be trying to negotiate with the grynicha , trying to convince them there was no one to swap Rose with. Fighting to get her back.

Her boys would be ready to burn things down.

The rain was hammering down now, and she supposed that was why she didn’t immediately hear the thumping. It came through the rock wall at her back, and she crouched down and half turned, pressing her hand against it. She felt the slightest vibration.

She turned back, disturbed, looking at the rock structure she had taken cover under. It didn’t look like it had been built, it looked like a natural part of the landscape, but now that she was really paying attention, there were a few things that struck her as odd.

The wall to her back was warm, which didn’t make sense, and the overhang was suspiciously even in width.

She was weighing her options when a man came running from the right to take shelter with her.

He was wearing a helmet and an all-in-one suit, and Rose realized she had actually seen one just like it, left behind inside one of the storage areas inside Irini.

The man hadn’t seen her.

He was getting out of the weather, looking behind him, and with her being crouched down, in her dark clothing, he hadn’t noticed she was there.

There was no chance he wouldn’t eventually see her, though. It was a very narrow space and the rain didn’t look as if it was going to let up any time soon.

She began to rise, and he must have caught sight of her from the corner of his eye. He made a sound, a shout of some kind, and spun away from her, back out into the rain.

She hadn’t noticed he was holding something in his right hand until he moved, and as he leapt away, it shot out a bright blue light.

The arc of light went sizzling out to the left as he turned, missing Rose completely, and it was only after she heard the cry and saw another helmeted figure fall, that she realized there had been a second person, coming in from the left.

For a moment, she and the man who’d just shot his colleague stared at each other in shock.

“I’m unarmed,” Rose said, hands out to show they were empty. She hunched over slightly, making herself smaller, sure that if she was hit by whatever weapon he held, there would be damage to her baby.

She felt a fizz of anger in her blood, but kept her face as relaxed as she could.

The man shook his head, pointed the weapon at her, and after a moment of confusion, she realized he wanted her to take a step to the side.

She did so, and he moved toward her, the helmet turned her way as he reached the wall, pulling off his glove to touch something to the side.

A door slid open, and Rose gently thunked the back of her head into the rock behind her.

She’d been hiding on their front porch.

Damn.

He jerked the weapon at the door, and Rose slid along the wall and then inside, and actually gasped as the warmth hit her.

The man barked something at her, and she guessed he was telling her to hurry up and get in. She moved deeper inside the room and he grabbed her wrist roughly, pulling her toward a handle that was set in the wall.

He reached back under his jacket, brought out what she could only assume were some kind of restraints, and clamped them around her wrist and then the handle.

As soon as that was done, he moved back to the door and disappeared outside.

He was back moments later, dragging his fallen colleague by the arms, and as soon as they were inside, the door closed and more lights flickered on.

The man pulled off his helmet, and then his partner’s, and she saw it was a woman who’d been shot.

He grunted as he lifted her off the ground and carried her out of the room, and suddenly alone, Rose took stock of her surroundings.

The warmth wasn’t a bad trade off for the surprise of bumping into more grynicha . At least for a little while.

The room was a general space, part entrance hall, part monitoring station.

She could see screens to one side, and if anyone had been inside when she’d taken shelter, they would have seen her, because one of the cameras was pointed right outside the front door.

The others were set outward, looking in all directions.

The time to escape was now, but she was worried about the weapon, and the easy way it had gone off in the man’s hands.

She also wasn’t exactly able to go anywhere.

She rattled the restraint around her wrist, and to her surprise, the handle it was attached to swung toward her, and she realized she had been attached to a cupboard door.

That was interesting.

She peered behind the door, saw a wall of lights, and touched her finger to one of them. The whole panel lit up, and she was suddenly incredibly grateful for everything Irini had shown her before they set out on this mission.

Irini had been cut off from the society that had developed her, and she told Rose she didn’t have a good idea of its culture and political environment, but she did understand its technology.

She studied what was in front of her, and touched her finger to a familiar-looking circle. The whole front wall shimmered and became transparent, and even though she couldn’t escape right away, she felt immediately better, as if she was outside, rather than chained by her wrist to a cupboard door.

It did mean that the man who’d restrained her had either nothing better to attach her too, or he was too flustered to think of something better.

She hoped it was the former. Because that meant this wasn’t a prison, and they might have to move her. All of that spelled more chances to escape.

She noticed there were things stacked on the ground below the panel, and she crouched down to study them.

Tools, maybe? She picked one up, and pressed the faint circle at the base of it. A sharp blade shot out the top.

Hmm.

She could see screws on the inside of the cupboard door, where the handle was attached, and she set the blade into one of them and began turning it.

It spun extremely easily.

She moved fast, now she could see a viable way to get free, and had the second one undone in moments.

She pulled, and now she had a bracelet on her left hand, with a D-shaped door handle attached to it.

She touched the circle again, and pocketed the slim cylinder in the side pocket of her pants.

She straightened, and turned to study the room.

She should run right now, but the rain was still hammering down. She just didn’t want to go out there.

She moved across to what she guessed was a kitchen, and found a neat stack of sturdy-looking saucepans under the counter. She took one out, hefted it, and went to stand with her back pressed against the door to the back of the building.

The man had already been a while, and she guessed he’d be coming back soon.

She didn’t have to wait long.

She heard his footsteps, lifted the pan up on her right side with both hands, and as he stepped through, swung it hard at his head.

He went down without a sound, hitting the ground and sprawling, completely limp.

“Sorry,” she said, but she wasn’t really. He had almost shot her.

She stared down at him, and felt a wave of relief. She’d turned the tables.

She bent down to pick up his weapon, which was attached to the small of his back, and left him where he lay, moving to the room beyond.

It was a more personalized space. A lounge perhaps, or a rec room. Beyond, there were two doors and both were open. She peeked down one, saw it opened to a passage which held bedrooms and bathrooms. The other one was the med bay. It was tiny, but there were two beds.

She didn’t know much about how the grynicha tech worked, but she would at least be able to put him on the spare bed.

The woman was lying on the other bed, hooked up to a machine that was emitting a soothing swooshing sound as if in time to a heart beat. When she’d first seen the grynicha , it had looked as if they didn’t have eyelids, but now she noticed as she looked down on the woman, with her eyes closed, that they did, but the lid came from the outer side of the eye.

She turned and made her way back to the front room, rolled the man over and searched for some way to get the restraints off. She eventually found a short metal tube with a blue strip on the top, and when she touched it to a similar blue strip on her restraints, they fell open.

That done, she dragged him into the med bay by his ankles.

She tried to lift him, but he weighed more than she’d guessed, and she refused to do any damage to herself or the baby. She studied the woman, and what was attached to her, and moved the spare bed out of the way so she had better access to the machines. She pulled what looked a bit like a hairdresser’s drying hood over to her patient, lifted his head, and set the hood on top.

Lights went on, and a blue glow lit up from within, just like the woman’s one, and satisfied she’d done what she could, Rose backed out of the room, closed the door, and set a chair under the handle.

She was surprised by the handle, having become used to the automatic doors and keypads on the Barrist and in Sazo’s ship, but this looked like a rough and ready structure, and although the front door and the control panel were high tech, the rest of the inside didn’t seem very sophisticated.

She walked back to the front room, stared out of the transparent walls, and then looked over at the screens. She saw nothing but empty landscape and falling rain.

“Yay, me,” she said into the silence, almost more surprised than relieved. She had made herself safe.