Chapter 149: [ Book 2 ] Chapter 9: Emergency Procedures

The cart accelerated a few seconds before it maxed out on speed. Dash glanced at a passing storefront—and a pair of curious onlookers—and suspected he could get out and sprint faster.

He tapped on the control panel. A ‘restricted access’ message flashed at him. The borrowed construction coverall gave him driving access but nothing more.

“Damn safety protocols,” he grumbled and swerved around a vendor cart. Safety warnings flashed on the panel. He muted them, wondering if the station admins would waive fines for extenuating circumstances like fleeing covert operatives.

“Why were you following us?” Yanna barked into his ear from the second row.

Dash swallowed a few choice obscenities his ego attempted to catapult off his tongue. “How about a thank you? I just saved your asses. Again.”

Something pounded on the roof. A gruff voice called out. Trystais, still clinging to the back.

Dash slowed. Trystais ran to the front and slid in next to him. Dash sped up, swerving around two men walking against traffic on the wrong side of the corridor. They cursed as he passed.

Dash ignored them, focused on more important things like not crashing into a pedestrian or another cart. It took him a moment to notice Trystais’s gun had appeared in his hand, held low and aimed at Dash’s gut.

“Who the hell are you?” Trystais demanded.

Dash’s stomach tightened like it was anticipating a kick to the midsection. “I’m just a guy from the lounge who came out to help! I saw those spooks back there tail the old Pree after you left the conference room. I sure as hell wouldn’t go through all this trouble to screw with you.”

Trystais moved his gun away from Dash. “Fine. Take us to station security."

“Bad idea. Can't trust anyone at the moment. We're going to my ship. It’s the only place that I know is safe.”

“I’m running their security. I decide where we’re going,” Trystais said.

Dash opened his mouth to respond when he spotted a boxy cleaning bot exiting its storage alcove into the path of the cart. He braked hard to avoid a collision, the cart’s wheels screeching against the deck. Behind him, one of the singers cried out, the bodyguard cursing beside him.

Swerving wide, he shot the gap between the opposite wall and the bot’s sweeping turn. He breathed a sweet sigh of relief that a pedestrian hadn’t been in the way and sped along the corridor.

Trystais was going to be a problem unless Dash came up with a different approach. The bodyguard was riled up, angry that he’d failed to protect his team. Dash needed to appeal to the tactical acumen drilled in through training.

“You know this is the right move. Whoever that other team is, they had your contact under surveillance. I saw it with my own eyes. That Human with the gray eyes was following the old Pree. They knew a contact was inbound. They’ll have contingency plans to go along with the terrain advantage. My ship is an unknown variable they couldn’t have accounted for. We go there, and we have the advantage. Then you can decide what your next move is.”

The bodyguard bristled in his seat as he wrestled with his own thoughts. Dash understood the internal dialog to some degree. He’d been out of the HuCo military for over two decades, and even when he served, combat arms wasn’t his focus. But he’d seen the ego battles play out before him on countless occasions.

“It’s okay, Trystais. You can trust him,” Celescia said.

“I don’t,” Trystais said, “but he’s not given me a reason to not trust him either. Take us to your ship, captain.”

It was the closest Dash would get to a victory at the moment. He opened a comm to the Stardancer.

“Gaius, we’re coming in hot. Get ready to debark immediately.”

“Roger, Cap,” Gaius replied.

Dash pulled up the station map on his PD and frowned at the suggested route. Too circuitous. He dropped nav icons for a more direct path. The threat of fines for driving through construction zones gave him little concern with gun-toting spooks on their ass.

Fifty meters ahead, through a gap in the sparse foot traffic, a pair of security officers emerged from a side corridor. The two Pree immediately turned in the direction of the cart. A comm override appeared on the cart’s panel. “Attention occupants. Halt your vehicle immediately—"

The bodyguard muted the comm. “Get us out of here, Captain!”

“Roger that,” Dash said, and cut across the pedestrian traffic toward a secondary corridor.

The officers saw the escape attempt and broke into a full sprint. As Dash aimed for the opening the cart lost all sensation of propulsion and ground to a halt. He tapped on the controls, his brain running in circles.

“Someone killed it remotely.”

“I can fix that,” Trystais said. He opened the center panel, exposing the hardware beneath. He ripped out a piece of circuitry half the size of his palm and restarted the cart’s system. The panel flashed a spinning graphical icon as it booted.

The security officers had halved the distance from their original location to the cart. They’d be there in less than ten seconds.

“Come on,” Dash muttered. The icon minimized, replaced with a welcome message and a warning about the proper use of the cart. He pressed on the accelerator, willing it to work, but the cart remained in place.

The officers reached the cart, drawing their stunners.

One shouted, “Get out of the cart, now!”

The singers began pleading.

“Please, officers, someone is chasing us—“

“Don’t hurt us!”

“We’re not the ones at fault—“

The other officer shouted, “Out of the cart!”

Trystais held his hands out in a gesture of appeasement. “Calm down. We’ll cooperate.”

Dash sensed a looming presence appear in his blindside as Trystais stood from the cart and went to offer himself to the officers.

Wheels scrapped against the floor behind him. Dash swiveled his head, spotting a security cart with darkened windows. Two of the Pree ambushers hopped out and started forward, each holding something low and behind their bodies.

“Behind you!” Dash shouted.

The two security officers managed to register the incoming threat before the operatives hit them with stunners. The officers went rigid as their muscles locked up and dropped.

“Go!” Trystais shouted and drew his pistol. A muffled bark of violence sounded. He flinched, face contorting in agony, and crumbled against the side of the cart. He slid lower, and a form came into focus behind him.

The Gray Eyed man, staring down the low-profile optic of a pistol.

His gaze shifted to Dash. Behind it lingered the sweet satisfaction of a successful hunt, but also of a thirst for more blood. The man’s animalistic visage left Dash with a chill.

Something pulled Dash’s focus to Trystais. His eyes pleaded to Dash as the life drained out.

Go.

One of the singers screamed, or maybe all three. Dash couldn’t discern between the wailing noises. Some sense of survival, detached from his conscience self, pulled his body down as he mashed the throttle.

“Down!” he shouted.

A sliver of heat streaked by where his head had been. Glass cracked as a gunshot cut through the cart a few centimeters overhead. The cart launched itself toward the secondary corridor. He peeked high enough to swerve into the outlet, registering the impact of more gunshots against the back of the cart.

Pedestrians saw the cart bearing down on them and flattened themselves against the walls. He turned at the next junction, the flooring transitioning from a sound-dampening composite to pure metal grating.

“We can’t leave Trystais behind!” Ruki cried out.

“He’s gone,” Dash said.

The singer made a noise like she might be sick.

Dash saw motion in the rear cam on the panel. He expanded the view, enlarging the security cart chasing after them. And gaining fast.

“They’re right behind us!” Celescia said.

“Go faster!” Yanna said.

“I can’t! Their cart’s faster than ours. It must have no restriction,” Dash said. He skimmed over the map. Long stretches of corridor gave the operatives the advantage. He found what he was looking for.

“Hang on.”

He swerved the cart into a narrow maintenance tunnel, praying to the Lords or anyone else who would listen that it was empty. The cart straightened out without a person in sight. Relieved, he glanced at the rear cam feed.

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The higher speed of their pursuers meant less reaction time. They tried to make the same turn but ended up jamming one side of the cart’s front into the corner of the opening. The cart began to reverse to unstick itself, buying Dash a few seconds to increase his lead.

His focus returned forward in time to see something skitter along the ground ahead. His heart jumped in his chest as the cart ran it over. The wheels bumped up and down in a rhythmic thump thump. Something cracked and shattered beneath the cart.

“What did we just hit?” Celescia asked, the same dread Dash felt imbued in her voice.

In the rear cam, Dash spotted a set of diminutive wheels bounce off the wall behind them. “It was only a little bot,” he answered.

“Thank the Spirits.”

The cart shot out of the maintenance corridor back into a throughway. Dash turned hard, throttling to max acceleration with the hope the cart might break free of the restriction through sheer force of will. It didn’t work.

Yanna gripped the back of her seat and pulled herself to the side of his head.

“Where are you going?”

Dash clenched his jaw, wondering what the hell was the lady’s problem with him.

“Shortcut.”

“Watch out!” Ruki said, pointing straight ahead. Thin cylinders topped with blinking lights lined the corridor.

“Hold on,” Dash answered.

Ruki cried out as the cart smashed through the barrier, knocking the barrels aside and bursting into an unfinished corridor. The barrels bounced off the walls and clattered atop the floor.

“You cannot go this way!"

“Lady, I know what I’m doing.“

Dash jerked the cart around a pallet of interior wall panels, saw no viable path forward, and slammed the brakes. Yanna and Ruki bumped into the backs of the front seats. Celescia—sitting in the middle—went through the gap and landed on Dash’s shoulder.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said with an angry bite. She pushed herself back into the second row.

Yanna pointed out the front window.

“I told you to not go this way!”

Dash followed her gesture. Further down the corridor, past more pallets of materials, was a temporary construction bulkhead capping the end of the compartment. Beyond the small translucent barrier was the bare station superstructure and a several meter gap to the next section. A handful of insect-like bots climbed the walls. The mini sun-like flares of welding torches shone from one tip of their legs.

Dash’s hard-set expression dissolved. He muttered an obscenity.

Yanna didn’t let up on him. “What is the matter with you? Are you blind?”

“The map didn’t show a missing section!” Dash said. He began to back the cart up, then stopped. Behind them, blocking the corridor they had just driven through, was the security cart. The front glass lightened, going from near-opaque to almost clear. Seated inside of it was the Gray Eyed man and three of his Pree partners.

Clutching pistols, and looking none too pleased.

---

“So much for your rescue.”

“Shut up, Yanna!” Celescia said. She looked to Dash, fear and helplessness infused in her expression. “I cannot ask you to fight for us, Captain. But if there’s any way you can save us…”

She couldn’t finish the rest, but Dash understood. But understanding what she asked and making it happen was a whole different thing.

He peered at the other cart, the operatives staring back at him, daring him to try something. If he could get to the Stardancer, they’d be safe. But there was only one way out of that construction zone, and the security cart blocked the way. He couldn’t go through them, or around them.

He flicked his eyes to the walls on either side. “You still trust me, right?” he asked the troupe.

“Yes,” Celescia and Ruki answered while Yanna said, “No.”

“Majority wins,” Dash said as the Gray-eyed man spotted the same thing Dash had. The operative's mouth moved to order his security cart forward.

“Hold on!” Dash said, and accelerated hard. The cart rocketed down the compartment toward the construction bulkhead. A few of the construction bots scattered out of the way, the flash of their safety lights reflecting off the freshly painted walls.

Seconds to impact, Dash veered to one side then cut back to the other, sending the cart drifting through the open hatch of a small compartment. The wheels screeched against the metal floor as the cart skidded to a stop. He stretched his arm out of the cart and slapped a panel on the wall, closing the hatch behind them.

The singers looked around, recognizing the airlock they were now inside.

“How is this any better, Captain?” Yanna said.

“I locked us in with a security alert. No other option."

“Can’t they override it?”

“Only a station admin can do that. Maybe they’ll leave now that they can't get to us."

He stepped out of the cart and peered out the viewport of the inner airlock hatch. The security cart pulled to a stop outside. The occupants dismounted. The Gray-eyed man and the supervisor approached the hatch while the other two Pree operatives formed a defensive perimeter. The grizzled man moved his face so close to the viewport that Dash could’ve socked him in the nose if the thick glass was not present.

Dash tapped the panel again, opening a comm to the outside panel. “Security will be here shortly. You better leave while you can.”

The Gray-eyed man didn’t react. Not even a twitch of an eye or a flare of a nostril. The Pree supervisor frowned a bit while glaring at Dash.

“This is the last time I’m going to offer you a way out," the man said. "Open the hatch now, you can walk away. Otherwise, you’re going to die.”

“I don’t know what you want these ladies for, but you’re not getting your hands on them.”

The Gray-eyed man’s face remained frozen like it was etched in stone. Dash could see right through to the man’s heart. He was a killer, same as the commandoes and marine raiders Dash had run across in his military career.

One of the construction bots rolled closer, caution lights flashing. It blurted out a warning about trespassing in a construction zone. The Gray-eyed man broke the staring contest and turned to the bot. He tilted his head at it, then shot it in the blink of an eye.

His Pree teammates flinched at the action, then watched in curiosity. The Gray-eyed man holstered his weapon and kneeled next to the destroyed bot. He sorted through the remains and stood, holding something in his hand.

A cutting torch.

The supervisor eyed the torch and said something to his team. One of the operatives holstered his weapon and took the torch from the Gray-eyed man. He fired it up and adjusted the flame.

“How long?” Celescia said.

“A few minutes tops,” Dash said. He scanned the airlock’s interior. There were emergency suits, but there wasn’t enough time to put them on and depressurize before the hostile team cut through. He slipped around to the back of the cart and dug through the rear storage compartment.

“Nothing here, except…” He paused, his eyes drawn to something.

“What is it?” Ruki said.

Dash rushed to his seat, then sealed the cart. He tried opening a comm to the Stardancer but couldn't connect to either the station or ship's hub. "They're still jamming us. But we'll get a clear connection once we're out of range."

Yanna leaned over the back of the front row seats. "And how are we going to do that?"

Dash tapped on the cart’s panel, opening the one hub on its system he knew he could access. A small door swung open next to the panel, exposing a hand-sized mechanical lever. He spotted movement at the hatch. The Gray-eyed man and the team lead had reappeared. They stared into the airlock.

Dash met eyes with the Gray Eyed man. The killer. He’d be going home empty-handed today. “Emergency evacuation. No time to explain. Strap in and hold on."

A hand gripped Dash’s shoulder. Celescia said, “Please tell me you know what you’re doing."

“I do.”

Celescia let go and settled into her seat.

“Brace yourselves,” Dash said. He yanked the lever down then gripped the armrests of his seat. The airlock’s outer hatch opened, and with a horrific rush of air, they jettisoned into space.

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