Approaching Oblivion (Jezebel's Ladder Book 4) (40 page)

“This is rough,” Oleander said.
“I’ll put Pratibha on the cameras at night. Risa should carry the second gauss
rifle and guard this room. Set it to projectiles the size of a pencil eraser
for quick stopping power. If anything in the control room needs a repair, Risa
can probably handle it. Come daylight, she can finish her repairs to
Ascension’s
hull.”

Yuki reminded her, “Tomorrow is
umbra. We won’t have light for long.”

“I’ll put Nadia in the shuttle with
the two men and have her arm the COIL just in case we need to bring down the
wrath of the
graniths
. She and the men can push the essential supplies
over on the antigravity sled and might be able to make a few of the repairs
while waiting. The moment the sniper situation is resolved, we can be ready to
leave.”

“After Toby makes it back here,”
Yuki reminded her.

“Damn. Right. He’ll take another
six hours or so to travel back here after his mission.” Oleander put her hands
behind her head and growled in frustration at the delay. The main assault would
arrive tomorrow night some time. This plan only left two hours’ safety margin.

Yuki tried to encourage and keep
her occupied with simple challenges so she wouldn’t think about the noose
closing around their necks. Any problem could be broken into manageable chunks.
“Sounds like you’ve made the best of a bad poker hand. I suppose when Rachael
snaps out of it, she can take guard duty on the control room.”

“I don’t know if I trust her near
me with a gun,” Oleander said.

“Right, but you’ll give Nadia a gun
that can mow me down from twenty klicks away?”

“Point,” the security specialist
said, chuckling.

“How are you planning on those
three people reaching the shuttle?”

“The invisibles could haul out the
cylindrical skylight covers,” Oleander brainstormed. “Spray paint them or toss
dust on them so the sniper can’t see inside. Our people could crawl through.”

“That would take too long,” Yuki
said, remembering when she’d watched Mercy hang laundry. “We have sheets for
twelve people, plus some extras, right? It would be cake to string a few ropes
from the door here to the shuttle airlock. We clip sheets along one side and
over the top so the sniper can’t see.”

“He can still fire through the
sheets when he sees movement.”

“We stake them down and have the
guys carry a sheet of metal as a safety precaution,” Yuki suggested.

“The reflecting panels from the solar
array would be perfect,” Oleander decided.

“Great. Have Herk carry about six
of those over when he’s done kissing Risa goodbye, and we have a plan. Can you
handle the board for ten minutes alone?”

“Sure.”

“I need to say goodbye to Park.”

“Make it fifteen,” Oleander said
with a shaky voice. She pulled out a computer pad to take down all the
assignments.

Once she ran out of life-or-death
problems, Yuki could tell that woman was going to fall apart.

When Yuki volunteered, she thought it would be a simple
assignment: call Momma panda over the cave radio, and Pear Blossom would leave.
No. When her door guardian collapsed due to a spear wound, she closed the door
to the cave of secrets and barricaded herself inside with the two cubs.

On to plan B: invisible, Yuki would
traipse through infested woods, sneak in the back tunnel, and lead the rebel
scholar out to safety. On her back, she carried the last gauss gun instead of a
water pouch. She had the dial set to throw chunks the size of a nine-millimeter
slug—one solid hit would take out an enemy, and a graze would certainly
discourage him for long enough for her to jog out of range. At the bottom of
the mesa path, Herk informed her that she would have about ten rounds per
magazine in this mode. She gripped the Über-Taser in her hand, hoping to
accomplish her goals by stealth.

Pandas were loud when they moved,
and most of the students were fleeing in terror. Burning rooftops lit her way
through the chaos. The Japanese woman had forgotten how well a nonmoving panda
could blend into his surroundings. A few meters from the cave’s back entrance,
she literally bumped into a large, black-furred native. The moment he turned
his head to look, her armor detectors went wild. He knocked Yuki into the underbrush
as he spun. The enemy soldier managed to shout a brief warning to the others
before she Tasered his fat ass and cut his throat. Then she picked up the
soldier’s spear to use as a staff while her weapon built up another charge.
Yuki slipped into the cave’s back entrance with no further problems.

As she led the family into the
woods, Voice who Shines frolicked ahead of the others. Then the assassins
struck. Spears rained from the tree branches above her, and one pinned the cub
through his right leg. As she leaned over the cub to shield him from further
harm, the armor held, but she felt like someone was beating her bare back with
a ball-peen hammer. She should have worn the neoprene underwear for more
cushioning, but it made her sweat so much. When the assault paused, Yuki could
hear Zeiss’ cautionary voice in her memory, like a parent lecturing.

“Full audio-visual with infrared,”
Yuki ordered the helmet, and her visor highlighted panda heat signatures. The
advantage was worth the heavier drain on her suit battery.

Starting with the one who might be
able to harm her before she unlimbered her gun, she chucked her spear at a
native crouched on a low branch, which caused him to plummet.

Pear Blossom charged the fallen
soldier to avenge her cub. The others wouldn’t use spears while the two were
rolling so close on the ground. While vicious snarls sounded to her right, Yuki
heard underbrush rustle to the left. She drew her fighting daggers. Three new
soldiers were creeping up on the melee. Yuki tripped the closest and then
sliced his throat. The two other ground soldiers froze in their tracks, alert
for attack.

Yuki danced around the next target,
knocking him flat on his face. When she stabbed between his ribs, the fat
sealed around the hilt of her long dagger. Blood made her grip too slippery to
pull out the knife. While she struggled, the soldier’s short partner grabbed
her chest in a meaty paw. If his other arm joined the first, she was dead.

When she shouted a frantic curse to
shrivel his member, the panda actually paused to look down and check for
genital shrinkage. She pithed him in the back of his skull with her second
knife. Even in death, the brute refused to release his prize, and as he
crumpled, she heard something snap.

Not only did blood decorate her
armor in polka dots, but a scale of her armor tore loose, displaying a tan,
camouflage target over her left breast. The time for subtle was over.

As another spear flew down at her,
Yuki fired the gauss rifle from her hip. It sounded like Chinese New Year. She
lost count of the shots she peppered into the sky and the bodies that dropped
like piñatas. After the clip ran out, there was a moment of silence that made
her ears ring.

The cub Memory that Endures poked
his head out of the cave, calling for his mama. Pear Blossom raised her bloody
muzzle and soothed her worried child. She had torn the assailant’s throat out
with her fangs. There was a dark patch of blood on the side of her forepaw, but
she seemed otherwise unharmed.

You go, girl,
thought Yuki.
She had to pry the piece of broken armor out of the dead panda’s claws. As she
shoved the piece into her pack to reattach later, Voice who Shines warned them
about the tenth killer sneaking up on them. Running, Yuki had to blind him
before he could get a fix on her. A flying kick to the nose took care of that
problem. It was a simple matter after that to wear him down until he made a
mistake and exposed a quick kill point.

Yuki took advantage of the breather
to slam her last ammunition clip into the rifle and dialed up the bullet size
to ‘stop a charging elephant’. She might get four rounds in this mode, but they
would count. However, each shot would draw more of the enemy down on her.

After making certain no members of
the kill team remained, Yuki liberated a few enemy spears, handing them to the
family. When she asked Pear Blossom to follow the floating gun to the copper
village, the mother panda refused. “My cub cannot run. I will not leave him.
The strong must defend the weak.”

“Can’t he walk on three legs?” Yuki
asked.

“Slowly,” Pear Blossom admitted.

Time for a creative plan C. “Bind
his wound with this,” Yuki said, tossing a wad of gauze to the rebel woman.
“Can he swim?”

“Very well,” the mother bragged.

Yuki had a choice: she could ask
permission, or she could save this family. Sighing, she activated the aqua
sled. “Come with me to the river. One of my magical water servants will carry
him. You two follow him from the shore; you may need to run.”

During the slow crawl to the river,
Pear Blossom kept encouraging her boys.

On the way to the muddy river bank,
Yuki emptied the entire clip, killing three of the targets outright. She could
tell by the size of the hole that the last bullet was smaller, the leftover.
Chasing them downhill, the injured soldier kept coming. She had to use that
momentum to flip him prone. A hasty rifle butt to the face didn’t convince the
behemoth to stay down. Worse, the guy’s fangs tore the padding on the stock.
Pear Blossom picked up the spare by thrusting with her spear into his lungs to
keep the soldier from calling for help.

“
Arigato
,” Yuki panted. She
was down to one short blade, and her mission wasn’t even half done.

Once in the water, the blood
dissolved and Yuki faded from sight. She showed the cub how to operate the sled
to carry him upstream. Delighted by the new toy, the boy wiped out twice trying
daredevil stunts. She had to urge him to be conservative. “Travel at your
mother’s pace. You are responsible for leading them to safety. If you hurt the
magic fish, the soldiers will catch you. If you’re careful, it will carry you
until nightfall. When it can go no further, release it, and the fish will
return to me.” Actually, it would probably smash on the rocks in the rapids and
end up at the bottom of the great lake, but that didn’t make a good fairy tale.

For a long while, Yuki and Pear
Blossom kept up with the whooping child by running along shore. Then the mother
had to take a brief rest. Several other students saw her white fur in the
distance and rushed to accompany the well-known leader. Others were drawn by
what they called the singing fish.

After shadowing the group farther
back until their next resting point, Yuki decided her job was done. They were
safely beyond the impending doom. She grabbed a large branch on the shore,
waded into the water, and surrendered herself to the current. Feeling Taoist,
she allowed the river to return her to the shores of Elysium.

****

Toby didn’t react well to the request. “It’s always the same
with those bastards. When I’m there, everyone says how much they hate me, but
the moment there’s trouble, they all come begging for me to save the day. I’m
good enough to rescue the world, but no one wants to sit next to me. Well,
screw them.”

“I sit by you . . . on you,
whatever,” Yvette said lightly. He smiled, thinking of their last night
together. “I’m on spook patrol. We’re all working on the defenses in our own
way. You were just in the right place at the right time. Herk can’t make the
climb without being seen, or he would. The team has faith in you. They all
believe you can do this.”

“I’m not a commando,” Toby warned.
“If I don’t succeed, they need another plan. They can vent the cold gasses from
the freezer and distillery and make a cloud for cover.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Yvette
said. “You’ll make it back in time.”

“Whenever you leave the base, carry
at least two flash-bang grenades like I do,” Toby suggested. “Don’t take any
chances.”

“I won’t.”

He took a deep breath. “I’ve never
loved anyone the way I love you. For you, I’ll try.”

“I’ve never given up hope for you,
no matter what you did,” she replied. “I’m proud of how far you’ve come.”

Yet she never used the word ‘love.’
She couldn’t lie. That one lack crushed every illusion he’d built.
Mechanically, he said, “For the sake of the charter binding our mission, I need
you to use the official phrasing.”

Yvette said, “We are at war with
the Bloo tribe. The sniper and all Magi weapons present a clear and present
danger.”

“Danger acknowledged. Baatjies
out,” he said, terminating the call.

Typing the coordinates into the
rover controls, Toby rode until he was within a kilometer. From here, he would
have to remain silent on the hunt. He called to talk to Yvette one last time.

“What comes next for us?” he asked.

“We’ll take the shuttle into orbit.
Sanctuary
is already on the way, but we may have to wait up to a day.
Lou will scoop us up, and we’ll go through decontamination. Every injury we
sustained here will be wiped away. Mercy said that on the ride home, we’ll
close our eyes and the rest of the way will be stasis. She’ll refuel once we’re
all safe. We’ll be back to Earth in the blink of an eye.”

“If I don’t make it back, promise
me you’ll go through the deep-clean cycle,” he said.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Our pair-bonding could be fatal to
you.”

“Yes.”

“If the Magi reset your memory, you
won’t waste away.” She would also forget the modifications he’d made to
Oleander’s gene therapy. He had learned so much studying the alien bones from
the cave. Pregnant women couldn’t pass through pod decontamination. The new DNA
sequences should give Oleander a smooth pregnancy and provide a nasty surprise
for any Magi still aboard
Sanctuary
.

“What’s really going on?” Yvette
asked.

“I’m so sorry I hurt you. My
biggest regret in this life is some part of you will always see me as that
monster. If you can’t remember what I did, maybe you can be the one person who
loves me. Someday.” Toby terminated the link, trying to shut down what little
emotion he had.

Toby programmed the rover to follow
him at a distance of 200 meters, unless he sent the ‘come’ command. He also
enabled the standard failsafe. If the pandas drew too close, the vehicle would
explode, destroying both evidence and witnesses. Out of his helmet, he cut the
friend-foe transponder, the device that prevented the rover or other Elysium
defenses from using weapons on him. Lastly, he put the wrist computer in his
pocket so he couldn’t read the messages.

Walking to the edge of the world,
he looked out with bare eyes. The edge wasn’t climbable without pitons he no
longer carried. The rover’s rope wasn’t long enough to reach the slopes below.
According to his charts, the nearest descent point was the mass grave. Not
including the climb, that would be an extra three hours of walking. Waiting for
him would doom the entire team, but he would have risked it for one word from
his wife.

But Persephone never did love
Hades. She tolerated him so the gods could have peace. They never had children,
though the daughter of Spring loved them dearly. His sins could be forgotten with
help from Magi technology.

He peed in a sample bag. If he had
to run, he wouldn’t want the distraction. The scent may even prove useful.

Closing his helmet, he tested the
wind and put his thermal sensors on their most sensitive setting. Finding the
large party of pandas was not difficult. The sniper had ten elite soldiers with
him, each with shoulder straps the same color as the weapon’s glow. They also
had a trio of sand dogs, but he confounded them by approaching from downwind.

He spoke Pandanese poorly, but
decided that his last words should be in his own voice, not Mercy’s. “You have
offended the Lurker in the Dark.”

When he incapacitated half the
spearmen with the flash grenade, they routed. One ran off the cliff blind.
Their leader struggled to maintain discipline as Toby crept up on the sniper,
hopping from rock to rock. The dogs were going wild, pulling at their leashes.
Still downwind, Toby flung the bag of urine at the sniper’s back.

The soldiers set loose the dogs,
and they immediately charged toward the urine scent.

The sniper saw the attack coming
and shot the lead animal. This ruined the night vision of the other half of the
spearmen and theoretically made the superweapon useless for a short time while
it built up another charge.

Toby fired his Über Taser into the
gunman, and the remaining dogs couldn’t resist the helpless, alien-scented
target. It was child’s play to hunt the soldiers in the confusion and steal
more weapons. He killed three before a huge bruiser connected with a wild
swing. The panda broke several of his ribs. Rather than face his foe, Toby
stabbed the panda behind him with a spear. The wound wasn’t fatal, but he made
it appear as if the bruiser was the culprit. Panda fought panda savagely with
fangs and claws, each convinced he had the
granith
.