Collision Course (Class 5, #6)

Chapter 26

CHAPTER 26

Rose had never felt so uncomfortable in her life.

The baby was still moving, but space was obviously getting tight.

“What are you doing in there, baby girl?” she murmured, running her hand in small circles over her belly. “Other than pressing hard on my bladder, that is?”

She felt cold, and then hot. Unable to sit, and then so exhausted, she just wanted to lie down.

She had only been in the large hall where they were keeping the Hasmarga for about an hour, but she eventually asked to be taken to her room, where at least she could be restless and irritable by herself.

“You are drawing close to your time?” Gerna asked her.

“I think so.” Rose glanced at the soft pearl-like eggs under Gerna’s wings. “And yourself?”

“It’s hard to say. The cold will have slowed the hatching time.” Gerna shook her head. “I feel the shiver of life, but not as vigorous as before. I hope the new lives survive.”

“I hope so, too.” Rose didn’t know what more to say. The Hasmarga had suffered a great deal more than she had.

“You are the only one here who does.” Gerna nodded toward the guards at the door.

“Could Pyre have lied to us both?” The words were out before Rose could think better of them, despite the danger of saying anything important while using the translator Sartie had given her. She held it up. “This is not the same translator that Pyre gave us. The Kimol said that one was inaccurate. That it mistranslated some of what I said.”

Gerna suddenly focused her attention on it. “How did they know?”

“The one who came in with me, and brought the mattresses, she speaks Tecran, the language this device translates your speech into. She heard the translation, and said it was completely wrong.”

“Could it be a mistake?” Gerna wondered.

“I think Pyre was nearby or able to access the translator when I was using it to speak to the Kimol, and she changed my meaning. I wondered if she’d done it before.” In fact, she was sure of it.

Gerna tilted her head, and Rose noticed she and Ecdre exchanged a look.

“Ecdre said your views seemed different when the two of you were away from Pyre, at the watch station, compared to when we were in the bunker with Pyre.” Gerna rubbed her hands together suddenly, and Rose sensed rather than heard the high-pitched noise they produced.

“So, it’s possible?”

Gerna let her hands dropped to her sides. “It’s likely.” She tilted her head. “There was no warning from her when the Kimol retook the bunker. A different ship transported us in groups to this base, but when we were captured and taken outside, her ship was gone. I don’t know if they were able to disable her, or whether she got away without telling us.”

“I thought her ship was the one used to snatch me back from the Bandri,” Rose said. “But I couldn’t be sure. If it was her, she never said anything to me.”

“She helped us survive. Her intervention saved my new lives, so I am unwilling to think the worst,” Gerna said.

“She helped me, too.” Rose didn’t want to believe Pyre had sold them out or abandoned them because it didn’t serve her cause. But she couldn’t completely rule it out.

As she made her way back to her room, with a guard on either side of her, she wondered what she would do if she went into labor here.

It was not a good thought.

The bunker was right ahead, and Sazo had really done a number on it.

It was a smoking wreck.

“She’s in there?” Vanuti asked, voice hesitant.

They had hidden the skimmers under some bushes, and were all lying on their stomachs, using the vision enhancers in their helmets to get a closer look at their target.

“She’s underground.” Sazo’s response in all their ears told Dav he was still very tuned in to what they were doing. He had dropped a new satellite down at the same time as the Barrist had dropped Dav and his team in their drones. “They told me they’re keeping her on the upper level. The rest of them are below her, to prevent me from damaging the structure further.”

“That seems to be the entrance.” Nortega pointed to a ramp that angled down into the ground. A few skimmers and small vehicles seemed to move toward it and then disappear below the horizon.

“How are we going to get there unseen?” Mostert asked.

“Let’s get closer,” Dav said. “Our camouflage tech seemed to work when we encountered the Bandri. No reason it shouldn’t work on the Kimol.”

He activated it, and the others did the same before they ventured closer, keeping their movements smooth and slow.

Dav watched the vehicles coming and going, but there wasn’t that much traffic. Either the Kimol were locked down while they dealt with the Barrist and Sazo, or it was normal for them to keep their traffic light.

It made sense that they wouldn’t want to draw attention to the bunker if they were hiding it from the Bandri.

By the time Dav reached the ruined building, and could make use of the shattered walls and the piles of rubble that were left for cover, no skimmer or ship had come across the plain and down the ramp in nearly ten minutes.

He waited for the rest of the team to reach him, tucking up behind a blackened wall, and as soon as they were all there, he crouched and looked around the side.

“It’s clear.” He ran toward the ramp, keeping as much as possible to the shadows thrown by the morning sun. The ramp had a shallow incline, but there was almost no lighting when he reached the bottom.

It looked like a parking floor, but parts had collapsed, and he could hear the murmur of voices behind a collapsed pillar, and saw the few skimmers and ships he’d seen go in earlier were neatly parked in a row.

Nortega came up behind him, and when he glanced back, he saw the team had done the same as him, keeping to the shadows as they moved silently into enemy territory.

A crate sat open beside one of the small ships, as if it was either being loaded up or unloaded, and suddenly, from up ahead and to his left, a door opened.

He stood absolutely still as a Fisone guard strode out, backlit for a moment until the door swung closed behind him. He walked toward the crate and didn’t so much as look Dav’s way.

“Close,” Nortega whispered, her voice coming through his helmet, and he gave a tiny nod.

Then he moved toward the door the soldier had come through and tried the handle.

It was locked.

He turned to Nortega just as she took a step back, facing away from him, her gaze on the arc of soldiers who had surrounded them seemingly out of nowhere.

They were neatly caught against the back wall, and every Fisone soldier had a weapon raised, and very strangely, were moving them side to side.

They couldn’t see them, Dav suddenly realized. But they knew he and his team were there.

They had had some warning of a breach.

Dav considered their options.

They could show themselves. But that didn’t mean they wouldn’t still be shot.

“They can’t see us,” he murmured into his helmet mike. “Crouch low and shoot in three, two, one . . .”

Then he lit up the gloom with shockgun fire.