Code Breakers Complete Series: Books 1-4 (78 page)

“Holy crap!” Malik said. “How the hell did you manage that?”

She tapped the side of her head, grinning. “Targeting chips. One of Jimmy’s inventions.”
 

They didn’t have much time to enjoy the small success. The elevator came to a stop, jolting against the ground. She opened the door and lifted Malik up. She dragged him out of the car, wincing with every step. She gritted her teeth and tried to ignore the pain. They were somewhere in the middle of the warehouse district. On either side of the area, the tall security towers stood. Hurried voices came from around the corner of a large hangarlike building with a steel roof. Its siding reflected the midday sun so that it appeared white in the glare.
 

“We need to find somewhere safe until the security force arrive,” Malik said as he dropped his head to his chest again, battling against unconsciousness.

Sweat poured from him, darkening his clothes. With his injuries and the simulated sun, she had to get him somewhere cooler. She dragged him across a gap between the chimney and the hangar building. The voices came from behind them, so she continued forward until she came to the building’s edge. Carefully looking around, she saw the way was clear and set off.
 

They came to a door. She pressed her ear to it. No sound came from inside, so she tried the handle, and it opened. “In here,” she whispered to Malik.

Inside, the building lay mostly in darkness. A few small windows on the opposite side let in diffused beams of golden light. The place was indeed a hangar. Scattered around the vast space, which must have been at least seventy by thirty metres, were fifteen UAV drones in various states of repair.
 

They seemed much bigger up close. Must be a new design, she thought. Even though she’d worked with their own drones back at Criborg, these ones appeared much more threatening. She noticed that on their stub wings were brackets for heavier ordnance than a regular UAV drone was able to carry. On their pointed tips was a pair of automatic guns. And below the sleek fuselage, hanging like a great insect’s proboscis, was the barrel of a plasma rifle, its bore much wider than their regular counterparts.
 

Malik came around when she jostled him inside. Slurring his words, he said, “Looks like this group have been busy. Must have been working on these long before we discovered the extent of these chips.”

His voice echoed around the great space. She placed her finger in front of her lips to indicate silence. A noise of clattering metal came from behind the drones. There appeared to be an office or some other interior room towards the rear. Now that her eyes had acclimated to the dim light, she could tell there was a light on there. A glow shone from the corner.
 

Whispering into Malik’s ear, she said, “There’s someone there. I’ll just leave you here for a second and check it out.”

She rested him into a dark corner behind one of the drones, out of sight. She made to move off, but Malik gripped her wrist. “Don’t go,” he said in hushed tones. “Let’s just wait for the others.”

“Better to assess the risk now. I’ll be right back. You just stay hidden and quiet.”

Their eyes locked. She could see more than just concern for their safety there. She felt it too. A connection. She was unable to fully understand the meaning of it, especially in such a high-stress situation. She had to keep her emotions under control. Had to stay focussed until they were both safe. Anything else could come later.
 

The crashing noise continued, followed by the sound of a welding torch.
 

As she made her way stealthily through the shadows of the drones, all the time gritting her teeth as the pain of her burnt feet flared with each step, she noticed a short, bald man in a grey coverall bent over a piece of drone wing at a workbench. He wore a welding mask. Sweat poured from his dark skin under the heat of the welding torch.
 

As he worked, Sasha kept her back to the wall and stepped ever closer, making sure she didn’t see into the flare of the welding torch or catch a stray spark. He was situated roughly towards the middle and in front of an office with a single window and door. There didn’t appear to be anyone else inside. She noticed, like the others, he too wore a ronin-chip on his wrist. That confirmed what she thought: there were more than she expected, and they’d been working on these for some time, all the while under the nose of the Family and now the Libertas security force.

She considered her options: shoot him from her position in the shadows or take him up close, keep him alive for questioning. She was confident she could approach without being seen while he worked. And given his job here, he was bound to have useful information.
 

She decided: he’d be taken alive for questioning.
 

Before Sasha could step forward, the sudden clang of a door hitting the inside of the hangar rang out, sending her scurrying forward to hide beneath one of the drones. From her position, she first saw the welder look up and turn around. Following his gaze, she saw three people, guards in robes like those who had chased them through the tunnels. They must have tracked their footprints.
 

The three guards fanned out and started searching the place. Two women went off in the direction of where she had left Malik while a man headed towards the welder. He held a small slate in his right hand. She guessed that was the tracking device. He was coming right towards her.
 

She had to act first, before they found Malik. There were only two options open to her: go for the man with the tracking device, or...

“Has anyone come through here, Barak?” the guard said to the welder.
 

The small bald man looked up as he turned off the torch. He turned and removed his welding mask.

“Ya what?”

“Has anyone been through here, other than yourself?” the guard said again, all the time assessing his slate.
 

The welder shook his head. “What’s this about?”

“Doesn’t matter. Nothing to be concerned with.”

“Well, if you don’t mind, I got work to do. You mind closing the door on your way out?” The welder shook his head and tutted before returning his attentions to his work. The guard grunted and left.

The two women were weaving in and out of the drones at the other end of the hangar; it’d just be a matter of time before they found Malik. Sasha’s skin prickled with heat and tension. She gripped her pistol and clenched her teeth. Fuck it, she thought.
 

As the man with the slate passed by her, she rolled out from under the drone, rose up on her knees, aimed for the back of the man’s head and fired. Before anyone could react, she got to her feet, dashed to the falling body of the man, grabbed the slate and pocketed it, and swapped her pistol for his rifle.
 

Barak spun round. She was already bearing down on him, rifle raised.
 

“What the hell?” he screamed.
 

Sasha cracked the rifle down onto his head, knocking him to the floor unconscious. She vaulted the workbench and knelt behind it for cover. Using the surface as a platform to aim the rifle, she waited and held her breath.
 

Within seconds, the two women came running out into the clear, right into her firing line.

***

A bead of sweat dripped into Sasha’s eye, making her blink as she sighted down the rifle’s scope. The two women had seen their dead compatriot and the unconscious welder, and taken cover behind the drones. They had split either side of the hangar. Sasha saw shadows moving, but didn’t have a clear shot. She breathed slowly, trying to reduce her heart rate. They’d make a mistake soon, and she would capitalise on it.
 

To the left, the side she and Malik had entered, she saw the shadows shift forward. She tracked the movement with the rifle.
 

A voice called out to her right. “If you put down the weapon, we won’t have to kill you. There’s a way out of this.” She heard footsteps, a scuffing sound, slightly muffled. The guard couldn’t be much further away.

“Come any closer and I’ll kill the welder,” Sasha said. That ceased the footsteps. The shadows stopped too. She used the time to check her ammo: six shots left.
 

“Just don’t do anything stupid. There’s been enough blood spilled already.” Again the voice from the right. This time, Sasha noticed an arm poking out just a few centimetres from behind a drone no more than ten metres away.
 

She breathed out slowly as she sighted down the scope, pressed her finger against the trigger, and squeezed until a bullet fired, catching the woman’s arm, sending her stumbling out into the open with a scream as she clutched her wrist.

That roused her partner on the other side. Sasha twisted to her left a few degrees and repeated the procedure. This time she had a bigger target. The woman had turned to face the scream and backed away from her position, exposing her flank.
 

Sight. Breathe out. Finger on trigger...
 

The door flew open, dousing the woman in bright light. Two men in Libertas security uniforms rushed in. She raised the gun and removed her finger from the trigger. They’d found them! They were safe.
 

But someone else came in behind them: a short, wiry man with silver-grey hair. He wore a dark grey tailored suit with a straight collar. He looked Japanese with his tanned skin and almond-shaped, dark eyes. He wore a gold band around his neck. She didn’t recognise him; he certainly wasn’t anyone she’d seen before in the security department.
 

Without stopping, he pointed towards Malik. “Get him out of here. Fix his leg, and chip him.”

Chip him?

With barely contained horror bubbling up from deep inside, she watched as the two Libertas security men lifted Malik and dragged him away.
 

Malik resisted, but one of the men stunned him with a stun-baton before taking him out.
 

The suited man continued towards Sasha. He passed the woman and said something to her in a language she didn’t understand. It was clear he was in charge; the woman bowed her head and followed Malik and the others out of the hangar. The woman on the right now lay in a hump, mewling with pain.
 

“Why don’t you put the rifle down and talk to me?” The man was clearly looking at Sasha now. She trained the sights on him. Got a closer look. His skin was pockmarked, and like Gabriel and Petal, he wore a chromed port on the right side of his neck.
 

“Who the hell are you?” Sasha said, dividing her attention between him and the injured woman. “What do you want?”

“All rather big questions,” he said with a smile, all the time walking closer. “Why don’t we start with something easier?”
 

Sasha didn’t respond. Placed her finger on the trigger. Squeezed. A short blast belched from the rifle, sending a shock into the crook of her shoulder. She took the kick, steadied her aim, and prepared a second shot, but as the smoke from the shot cleared, she realised she missed. He stood a couple of metres to the side, still smiling.
 

“Barak,” he said casually, “do the honours, please.”

A hand squeezed around her neck.

She spun round. The welder pushed her back onto the table, bearing his weight down on her throat. The rifle clattered to the floor as she lost feeling in her hands, then arms. The place started to spin, and her lips moved uselessly. She should have paid more attention.

As he squeezed further, he overbalanced. Sasha took advantage and rolled to the side a few centimetres, freeing her arm. She punched him in the kidney, feeling her knuckles sink into his flab.
 

He wheezed and coughed with the strike; his grip loosened. She head-butted him across the bridge of his nose, cracking the cartilage and sending him sprawling backwards while he gripped his face.

Taking a deep breath, she lunged for the rifle and turned back to face the Japanese man. He was sprinting now, just a few metres from the workbench. Firing on instinct, she let off two rounds.
 

The first missed, sending the onrushing man diving to his right, but the second one winged his chest, eliciting a yell from him as he collapsed to his side clutching the wound.
 

Wasting no time, she turned back to the welder and struck him on the side of the head with the butt of the rifle before vaulting the workbench and sprinting to the door, all the time trying to ignore the flares of pain from her burned feet with each step. She considered stopping and finishing off the man she had shot, but she couldn’t afford to lose sight of Malik.

Back outside, the sun shining and making everything look like it was on fire with the brightness, she heard Malik’s protestations. Just before he was taken into one of the large warehouse buildings, she caught a glimpse of him struggling with the pair of Libertas security officers—why had they turned on Malik? Had the insurgents always had people in Libertas’ administration? Behind them was a woman with dark hair and a designer suit. She was smiling and directing the officers.
 

She looked like Rosario Fuentes.