Unfortunately, the weight of the person atop her was such that, not only had the wind been knocked out of her, but she couldn’t get the leverage to thrust upward and knock him off her back. She struggled, she snarled, and then rough hands grabbed her by either arm and hauled her to her feet. She tried to angle her head around to bite one of her captors, but another pair of hands came in behind her, grabbing her by the back of the head and snapping her skull back. Her attempts to pull her head forward simply resulted in her nearly tearing her hair out by the roots.
Zolon Darg stood in front of her. He was staring at her with enough cold fury to peel the skin off her face just with the force of his glare. “Where’s your friend?” he demanded.
“What friend?” From closer than she would have liked to hear, an explosion sounded. Several of Darg’s men flinched or looked about nervously. Darg didn’t even glance in the direction of the noise.
“I understand now,” he said evenly. “Very elaborate. Very clever. You trick and seduce me into bringing you here so that your mysterious associate could follow you and track you to our hidden location.”
“You idiot! I’m the victim here! You’re giving me entirely too much credit. You’ve created some elaborate conspiracy theory where none exists!”
Darg circled her. “Then why did he stop to rescue you?”
“I don’t know! Ask him!” She tried in futility to pull free. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this entire place is going up!”
“I have my best people on it,” Darg replied confidently. “They will locate whatever further boobytraps your partner has laid and dispose of them. As for you…” And he aimed a disruptor squarely at her forehead. “Call your partner. Summon him, right now.”
“He’s not my partner!”
“Call him.” His tone didn’t waver.
“He’s probably long gone by now, because you’ve been too busy playing games with me!”
He fired a warning shot to her right. It grazed her upper thigh. To her credit, she still didn’t cry out, as much as she wanted to. The bolt almost struck the man who was standing behind her, holding her immobile. Aware of the near-hit, he cast a nervous glance at his associates.
“Last warning.” This time he aimed it straight at her face. The man who was holding her head steady angled around so that Darg would have a clear shot.
Realizing she had nothing to lose, Vandelia called out, “Mac!”
“That’s better. Call him again.”
“Maaaaac!”
“Mac what? What is his full name?”
“I have no idea.”
He activated the disruptor’s energy feed, preparing for another shot that would take her head off.
“Mac Morn Michelity,” she said without further hesitation, reasoning that they likely weren’t going to be around long enough for Darg to learn that she had no idea what she was talking about.
Suddenly there was a brief clatter from further down the rampway. Vandelia couldn’t help but notice that Darg and his men were well-trained: Half of them looked in the direction of the noise, but the rest of them looked instead behind them, just in case the noise was a diversion to allow Mac to get in behind them.
Nothing, however, seemed to come from either direction.
Darg waited impatiently for another noise, and when none was forthcoming, turned back to Vandelia and said—with very little trace of sadness—”It appears your friend has deserted you. Farewell, Vandelia.” He levelled the gun right at her face.
That was when the deafening roar sounded from behind them.
As one, they turned just in time to see a monstrous creature, reptilian in aspect, with leathery skin and a huge mouth filled with teeth that seemed capable of rending or shredding a shuttlecraft. It was poised above them on its hind legs, its whip-like tail snapping about with such ferocity that anyone within range of it would have been crushed instantly. When it roared, the hot, foul vapor of its breath washed over them, and the sound drowned out yet another explosion in the near distance.
The response among Darg’s men was instantaneous. With a collective shriek of terror, they broke and ran as the creature advanced on them, each stomp of its massive feet causing the rampway to shudder beneath it. In doing so, they released their hold on Vandelia. Her immediate instinct was to try and attack Darg, but the shot he’d taken at her leg had done her more damage than she’d first realized. It went out from under her and she found herself barely able to walk, much less capable of lunging to the attack.
The only one who did not break and run was Darg himself. He stood precisely where he was, utterly paralyzed. His mouth hung open, his eyes were wide and looked almost lifeless as he stared at the monstrosity before them.
Suddenly Vandelia’s view was blocked…by a rope which had just dropped directly into her line of sight. She glanced up and saw, on a ramp-way above her, Mac. He was holding the other end and mouthing the words, “Hurry up!”
She did not hesitate, but instead grabbed the rope with both hands and held on as tightly as she could. Mac pulled, and she was surprised how quickly and effortlessly he hauled her aloft. He had looked rather unprepossessing, but there was clearly more than ample strength in his arms if he was able to yank her upward so easily. He drew her upward, hand over hand, one foot braced against the hand railing, his mouth set and his eyes burning with a quiet intensity. He did not grunt, nor make any sound to give away any strain he might be feeling.
Darg still hadn’t budged. He was indeed so frozen by what he was witnessing that he didn’t appear to have noticed that Vandelia was no longer there. The monster roared once more, a particularly high-pitched shriek, and something in the piercing nature of the howl caused Darg’s finger to tighten spasmodically on the trigger. The disruptor ripped out a shot and it went straight through the creature without the monster even acknowledging that it had been hit.
It took a moment for Darg to register for himself what he had just seen. Then his eyes narrowed and he fired again. Once more the creature was utterly unharmed by the disruptor blast.
He shouted a profanity and suddenly looked around…and then up. He did so just in time to see Vandelia being pulled over the railing of the overhead rampway, and he caught a glimpse of Mac looking down at him. Vandelia saw the two of them lock eyes, two enemies truly knowing each other for the first time.
“Get back here!” bellowed Darg, and he fired. Vandelia and Mac ducked backward as the blast sizzled past them.
“Come on! And stick with me this time!” Mac admonished her. The last thing Vandelia wanted to do was admit that her thigh was throbbing, so she gritted her teeth and simply nodded. Mac grabbed her wrist and they started to run. It was all that Vandelia could do not to limp in a most pronounced fashion. “What was that monster?” she called out.
Without glancing behind himself to address her, Mac said, “Holo unit. Pre-set monster, emanating from a disk about the size of my palm.”
“That was the noise we heard…you activated it on a time delay and then tossed it down—”
“You’re going to hear more noises than you’ll want to hear if we don’t hurry—”
The rampway shook beneath their feet. There seemed to be a series of seismic shocks building, one upon the other, throughout the structure. Mac glanced around. There was a network of ramps some thirty feet away from them, and between them was a deep well that seemed to fall away nearly into infinity. The ramp trembled once more.
Suddenly there was a screech of metal and the ramp started to twist at an angle. “Hold on,” Mac said with a sort of resigned calm. He yanked off his belt buckle, twisted it, and suddenly he was holding a device that looked like a small gun. He tapped a button on the side and the end of the device was ejected, trailing a cord behind it. It “clacked” onto an upper rampway across the well.
At the far end of the ramp that they were upon, Darg was suddenly there. He was howling with fury, heedless of the chaos around him, as he charged straight toward them. H
e was firing his disruptor indiscriminately, no longer aiming but instead just shooting in their general direction. He lurched toward them, gripping the handrail, apparently not even aware that the ramp was in danger of collapsing.
Mac didn’t even bother to glance at him. Instead he gripped the device in his palm, threw an arm around Vandelia’s waist, and launched off the rampway. Vandelia had a brief glimpse of the ground, unspeakably far below, but it was all a blur, and suddenly they were on the other side. Mac snagged his legs around the railing and shoved Vandelia onto the ramp.
Zolon Darg brought his disruptor to bear, aiming at them across the divide, and then with a roar of metal the rampway that he was standing upon gave way. He tried to clutch onto something for support, but couldn’t find anything. The sounds of the tearing metal drowned out Darg’s shrieks as he tumbled downward and landed with a thud on the rampway below. He had about a second’s respite before the falling metal of the upper rampway landed on him. The last that Vandelia saw of him was his face twisted in fury before he was completely obscured by the mass of twisted metal that crunched down atop him.
Mac, for his part, didn’t appear to give it any notice. He seemed far more concerned about other things, such as survival. “This way,” he said, and pulled her wrist. She limped after him.
“But we’re heading toward the explosions!” she cried out to him, the same objection that she’d been raising before. But she was at that point somewhat resigned to her fate, convinced that she had only moments to live anyway. As if to underscore the point, there was another explosion, even louder than before.
“Here. Right here!” Mac called out to her. He hauled her over to a spot near a wall that was quivering from the most recent explosion. Then he stood perfectly still. “Don’t worry,” he said confidently.
“Don’t worry!”
“That’s right. Don’t worry.”
From deep within the well that the rampways surrounded, there was an explosion that was so loud Vandelia felt her teeth rattle.
Orion beliefs had one aspect in common with human theology. They shared a belief in an afterworld for the evil that was a scalding pit of torment. At that moment, Vandelia was suddenly convinced that she was within that very pit, for the air around her started to sizzle. She found it impossible to breathe, the air searing her very lungs. The entire area seemed bathed in light. She looked down into the well around which the rampways hung, and she saw a massive fireball roaring up toward them. Within seconds it would envelop them.
Part of her wanted to scream, to curse, to agonize in loud misery over the hideous and unfortunate set of circumstances which had brought her to this pointless end of her life. Instead, somewhat to her surprise, all she did was turn to Mac and say, sounding remarkably casual, “Can I worry now?”
He sighed. “If you must.”
And she saw a flash of amusement in his purple eyes…at which point his eyes abruptly started to haze out in front of her. Then she realized that she, too, was disappearing, as the entire area around them demolecularized. Considering the circumstances, it was understandable that she didn’t quite realize at first what was happening. So this is what death is like went through her head before she truly had a chance to register that she was not, in fact, dying, but that instead she was in the grip of a transporter beam.
Then the world reintegrated around her and she found herself in the back of some sort of small transport vehicle. Somewhat larger than a run-about, it seemed like a small freighter more than anything, designed for short runs with cargo that was generally contraband. The smaller the vessel, the less chance there was of attracting attention. Then she fell, for Mac was no longer supporting her. Instead he had moved quickly off the transporter pad and was at the helm. “Hold on!” he called.
“Hold on! To what?!” she cried out. Ultimately it didn’t matter; the freighter suddenly leaped forward, sending Vandelia tumbling backward, her feet up and over her head. She clambered to her feet, her leg still throbbing but starting to feel improvement.
She could see that they were on the surface of a planet, but the freighter was already firing up and leaping skyward. Vandelia lurched to the front and dropped into the copilot seat next to Mac. He barely afforded her a sidelong glance as he checked readings on the control dash. “How’s the leg?” he asked. Considering the circumstances, he sounded relatively calm.
“Getting better.”
“Good. Let’s see if we can keep the rest of you intact.”
He urged the freighter forward, and it rocketed upward, faster and faster.
“That place you had us stand. It was a preprogrammed transporter point,” she said.
“Yes,” he said tersely. “I didn’t know the exact layout of the place, but I knew they had scanners that would detect transporter homing beacons or comm units, as well as any beam-ins. So I had to sneak in on my own, and make a guess as to coordinates when I set a time and place for a beam-out.”
“You could have explained that.”
He didn’t reply. The chances were that he wouldn’t have done so anyway, but he was actually handed an excuse for not continuing the conversation as several explosions around them caused the freighter to rock wildly.
“Oh, now what?” demanded Vandelia.
“We have company,” Mac muttered. “Computer, rear view.”
A section of the screen in front of them shifted. It was only then that Vandelia realized they weren’t looking through a window, but instead through a computer-generated representation of what was outside. Most of that view remained, but now part of it had altered to present the view from behind them. Three small vessels were approaching them most rapidly. They were so small that they appeared to be one-man fighters each, but because of their diminutive size, they were fast and very maneuverable. The odds were that they would be able to catch up with the freighter in short order.
But that wasn’t the only thing that attracted Vandelia’s attention. What she noticed in particular was a tall tower in the distance. It was surrounded by rich and green forest, but stood high above it, almost a mile high, it seemed. It had a wide base, becoming progressively narrower as it got higher. It was silver and gleaming and would have been far more impressive if it hadn’t been for the huge gusts of black smoke wafting out of a number of places. Then, as Vandelia watched, the lower third of the tower was engulfed in flame. She saw the upper two-thirds start to wobble, teeter, and then tumble over in excruciatingly slow motion.
“Impressive,” was all she managed to say.
Then the pursuing vessels began to fire. Mac’s fingers flew over the board, handling the freighter’s course with astonishing confidence, sending it zigzagging one way and then another, dodging a number of the blasts with facility even as he continued them on their upward course. Nevertheless, the freighter shuddered as several of the shots got through.
“Rear deflector at eighty percent and dropping,” the computer informed him.
“Concentrate all deflector power to rear shields. Shore it up,” he ordered.
“We’re not going to make it,” Vandelia said.
The vote of no-confidence didn’t seem to perturb him. “Then we don’t make it.”
“You seem rather sanguine about the prospect.”
“Would you rather I started to panic?”
“No.”
“Then shut up.”
She opened her mouth to reply, but came to the realization that perhaps shutting up would indeed be the smarter course of action.
The freighter angled down abruptly. The ground seemed to be approaching them at horrifying speed and Vandelia was certain that there was no way, absolutely no way, that they were going to forestall a crash, at which point the freighter zoomed upward once more. Mac tapped the control board again, and Vandelia was surprised to see on the rear view that a suddenly great gust of white was billowing behind them. “Are we hit? Are we leaking something?”
“No.”
For a moment she could see nothing
on the rear view, and then the pursuing vessels burst through the mist and continued after them. But then Vandelia noticed something: Their hulls were starting to change colors.
“What’s happening to them?”
“Watch,” he replied. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the front view, but she could see a touch of amusement at the edges of his mouth.
The vessels that had been pursuing them were slowing, and then Vandelia looked on in amazement as she saw their lower hulls start to be eaten away. Huge spots of corrosion appeared on them and then rapidly spread. With each moment it spread faster and faster, eating through the exterior of the ships with the greed and velocity of a hungry child being handed a handful of sweets. Breaking off the pursuit, the three vessels dove as quickly as they could for the ground, but they didn’t quite make it in time. Within seconds the ships had fallen apart completely, and Vandelia watched with smug delight as the erstwhile pilots of the vessels tumbled toward the ground, waving their arms and legs in a most entertaining manner. She felt as much remorse and pity for them as they likely did for her…which was to say, of course, none.
Seconds later, the freighter tore loose completely of the planet’s surface, spiralling into space. “We’re clear of the planet’s atmosphere and gravity,” Mac announced. “Taking her to Warp One.”
“This ship has warp capacity?” Vandelia said in surprise. But then she reined in her surprise with clear amusement. “Well, why shouldn’t it? Apparently it packs some sort of gas that eats ships.”
“Only unshielded ships. We were lucky. Vessels that small don’t pack enough power or equipment to generate anything beyond the most minimal of shielding. They count on their speed to avoid attackers. Leaves them vulnerable. Warp on line.”
Space twisted slightly around them and the ship leaped into warp space. Vandelia leaned back in her chair, shaking her head in amazement. “I still can’t believe it,” she said. “An hour ago, everything seemed hopeless.”
“An hour ago, it was. Things change.”