IGO: Sudden Snow (12 page)

The lift’s doors slid back to reveal the commanding horseshoe flickering in shadows. Sparks shot out, casting temporary illumination onto three individuals before fading. “Rojas,” he growled, immediately recognizing one of them.

“Lights!” Darryl barked, but instead of lights, he received streams of neon green laser fire. They zipped into the elevator, sending him windmilling backward to avoid being hit. The blasts shattered the air around them.

Cricket screamed as the event unfolded in both slow motion and rapid-fire speed. She saw Darryl curl his arm backward around her, and he pivoted out of harm’s way, moving her along with him. It happened so fast. One second she was behind him, and the next one he pinned her against him, his back to her front -- her human shield. With the same fluid grace, Darryl fired back, gun in his right-hand fist so swiftly, Cricket couldn’t believe it.

Three rapid beams lit up the gloom, and two howls of anguish and grunts of pain shot up in their wake as they bore into the targets.

“Snow!” snarled the whiny JC Lee. “What a surprise! You should be dead.”

“That you, Lee?” Darryl asked, a wicked smile etched across his face. “Thought I smelled something foul. So glad I didn’t disappoint.”

In astonishment, Cricket watched him maneuver with finesse and skill.

“Lights!” Darryl shouted, but the A.I. failed to respond. “Offline.”

Cricket swallowed the terror building in her throat.

Darryl peered out into gloom. “What have you done?” he bellowed to the sinister dark. “IGO regulations state this is an act of mutiny! Where are Commander Taylor, Lars, and Kovacs?”

“Give me the doctor!” Lee roared. “That’s all I care about!”

Several more laser gun blasts plowed into the lift’s container, punctuating Lee’s demands.

Cricket plastered herself against the flat non-fabric section of the wall. Lee was one of the crew. What connection did he have to Wang? To her? She knew next to nothing about the junior commander. What did he want with her?

“You’re finished, Lee. Dr. Moore stays with me!” Darryl warned. He turned to the control panel behind him and began keying in items, bypassing screens and receiving flashes of scarlet alerts.

“Finished? We’ve only started, Snow! The doctor for the commander.”

Cricket smiled. “His dialogue is terrible.”

Darryl looked at her in complete confusion before cracking a brief smile. “No kidding,” he said, turning back to the screen. “There. Got it. The A.I. has been disabled by Lee’s authorization code. He couldn’t do that fully to the security modules without the commander’s codes entered as well.”

“Where
is
the commander?” Cricket asked, whispering too.

Darryl’s face mashed in anger. “I don’t know. But I will find him.”

The wall opposite Cricket erupted in flames as a phase ball slammed its deep navy material. A gloved hand swung out of the gloom and grabbed Darryl’s chest. With a fist full of his uniform, Private Rojas stumbled into the lift’s revealing light. Cricket squealed out a scream as Rojas, forearm bloody, teeth clenched, punched Darryl in the face. In an instant, her lover transformed. Darryl maneuvered his body to the left, throwing his right shoulder forward, and swung his left leg between Rojas’ legs.

Both men went sprawling to the floor -- Rojas on his back, smacked against the floor. Rojas’ bronze face swiftly deepened from crimson to puce as Darryl’s wide and often wonderful hands crushed his windpipe.

So intent on the rumble on the ground, Cricket didn’t hear the
click
until a full second after the gun’s safety was off. Ragged breathing reached her a split second before Lee appeared.

JC Lee pointed his weapon at the back of Darryl’s head. With enraged eyes narrowed in hatred, Lee’s flat nose wrinkled as if she and Darryl were the ones spreading the funkiness. Nope. That odor came from Lee himself. Cricket wondered if the man’s soul was rotting.

“Freeze,” Lee said, working hard to project a calm his face betrayed. “Let Rojas go.”

Darryl laughed -- it was anything but kind. “Shoot me then,” he retorted, eyes on Rojas. “I’m not letting go. He deserves to die for what he tried to do today. As do you.”

Before Cricket thought about it, she kicked -- hard. The gun flew into the air and cracked against the wall out of Lee’s reach. IGO conditioning took over. Rusty and out of practice, she swung a left, knowing as she threw it that it was too slow. To her surprise, it caught Lee clean on the jaw. The surprise of her disarming him froze him in place.

“Bastard!” she yelled, fury flowing out in volume. “Leave him alone!”

Lee gritted his teeth and dodged her next punch. He roared, holding his wrist, dodging her uppercut and her left punch. “Ow, fuck! You bitch!”

Cricket’s anger flooded her system with savage adrenaline.

“Caught me off guard, doctor,” he said, shaking his wrist and face as if he could toss away the pain. “Got a thing for the sergeant?”

“Oh, it’s more than a thing,” Cricket shot back and swung. “Slime like you couldn’t understand.”

Lee snagged her fist and bent her arm behind her, twisting it upward until she screamed. The pain flared up to her shoulders like wildfire.

“Let go of me!” she shouted.

Just then, Darryl whirled up, a rising tsunami of fists, jabs, punches, and grunts of fury so foreign she hardly knew it was him. It took Cricket a moment to realize Darryl was muttering curses. Lee released her -- he had no choice if he wanted to ward off Darryl. Fighting Darryl required two hands. Distorted by rage, Darryl’s words overshadowed Lee’s groans. Lee responded in kind, but it was obvious he was losing the battle.

“Not… my… woman!” Darryl shouted in plain English. “If… you… ever… touch… her again…”

Cricket knew she couldn’t stand here and wait around to see how it ended. With her heart thundering in her ears, she scooped up Lee’s discarded weapon. She pointed it at the wrestling soldiers, the tangle of IGO gray uniforms, legs and arms, on the floor. Trying her best to ignore her trembling hand, she trained her eyes on Lee’s sneering mouth.

“Stop!” she shouted. “Or I’ll shoot!”

The tumbling continued until she fired into the ceiling, successfully damaging the stainless steel surface.

Darryl cast a glance from the corner of his eye. Lee yelped as Darryl threw one final punch and pushed himself off of Lee’s now unconscious body. He yanked down his uniform and, breathing heavily, held his hand out for the gun. “Thank you, baby.”

She passed it to him, all too aware of her relief to have it out of her hands. Fighting hadn’t been her calling -- she was a scientist. Though she’d trained long enough to pass her soldier field tests, she hadn’t ever been in live combat, not like this. Simulation, mock combat sessions and VR trials aside -- real blood and real damage had been inflicted here.

“Lee’s out of it,” she said, aware she was whispering. “Rojas is too.”

“Not enough hours logged in combat training,” Darryl said, running a punishing hand through his buzzed hair, smearing a streak of blood across his forehead. He searched around, evaluating the scene, still logged into security chief mode.

Sweat dripped from his face, and a slash had been added to his left cheek already littered with the downward edge of his scar. A bite mark also decorated his person, an inch below his right ear. His lower lip bled, and Cricket wanted to kiss it all away. The once pristine IGO uniform hadn’t fared any better. Frayed, torn and in some places darkened where blood, saliva and other liquids had soaked into the fabric, the uniform had been battered as well as the body beneath.

Darryl opened a small rectangular panel at the bottom right of the lift. He removed a dense plastic box and from it he took out two IGO gray squares, flat like gum but more durable. Cricket knew at once what they were, although she hadn’t seen them used in ages -- since her time at the IGO institution on Earth Prime.

Darryl placed one on JC Lee’s wrists and pressed the tiny button in the underbelly of each one’s center. Two electronic circles erupted, vibrating in dark lavender, joining and locking Lee’s wrists together. He wouldn’t be able to break out of them, even if he could push the small button on each one. Once on, the ECS, electronic containment spheres, couldn’t be disabled without the A.I., Darryl’s or Commander Taylor’s codes. Lee’s codes would have to be discontinued. Cricket saw Darryl at the screen and its flat keypad. He entered codes of some sort.

Ruckus from the rear of the lift knocked Cricket out of her memory of the stale air and humid days on Earth Prime and back to the danger in the lift.

Rojas shoved himself to a standing position, using his legs to propel himself upward. His hand massaged his injured throat, but he was shaking his head
no
. The glare frosted over his somewhat handsome face and it was all for Darryl. If looks could kill, Darryl would be dead.

“Don’t,” Cricket said to Rojas, the alarm clear in that single word. He had to know she wouldn’t tolerate him attacking Darryl. No longer a bystander, she’d fight him if he threatened. “Don’t make him kill you. You’re already injured.”

The laser beam hole in his shoulder had plowed through skin, muscle and bone. Cricket could see the wound clearly as the hot beam had cauterized the injury so it wasn’t still bleeding. Sweat poured from Rojas’ face, and he puffed out each effort to breathe.

Rojas’ black eyes slid over to her. Face crumbling when he didn’t find her sympathetic, he made no attempt to disguise his disappointment at her words. He opened his mouth, and his lips moved. There wasn’t any sound. He punched the wall with a tight fist, and tried again. The noise drew Darryl’s attention away from Lee, who lay sprawled beneath him.

Darryl rose up, standing and seeming to fill the doorway. “Don’t get carried away, Rojas. She doesn’t want anyone to die. You’re in the soup, so spill it. How many on your side still in the ’shoe?” he asked, stepping over Lee and closing the distance between them.

Cricket crept out of his way. Darryl wouldn’t hurt her, she knew that. But he did need room to work. She inched along the wall to the panel where Darryl had disabled the cameras. The urge to peer around the corner was overwhelming, but she didn’t want to get new head decorations -- like a laser beam hole to the brain.

“Don’t do this, Rojas,” Darryl was saying as she turned to him. “Use your fingers. Two more? Three?”

Rojas put down his hand.

None or has he simply refused to answer?

“My patience wanes, Private,” Darryl said.

Darryl was so near to breaking Rojas’ face, Cricket had to look away.

“None. No more,” Rojas croaked at last.

When Cricket dared to look again, she saw that Darryl, however, had relaxed the pressure only a bit. Rojas’ eyes rolled over, showing whites, but Darryl smacked him across the cheek, drawing the angry pits back to him.

“There are no others? Are you sure?”

Rojas nodded.

Cricket didn’t believe him. And for good reason.

Chapter 14

“So where is the commander?” Darryl asked again. His fingers burrowed deep into Rojas’ tanned cheek. He could feel a thin layer of muscle and bone beneath Rojas’ flesh. He locked the traitor’s head against the wall. His heartbeat, revved up on adrenaline, threatened to bounce from his chest, and right out onto Rojas’ uni. “Don’t make me ask you again.”

Rojas gave him a one-finger salute.

“Fine.” Darryl punched Rojas so hard across the face spit flew out of his mouth. The impact sent the younger man tumbling backward to the ground like a discarded bag. “Have it your way.”

In the same efficient manner, Darryl spun around to Cricket. “I’m going in. Stay. Please, Cricket, don’t argue with me, baby. Stay here until I give the all clear.”

Faint sounds of computers and life support cut through the shadows. A stillness blanketed everything. He allowed himself a swift look at her before stepping into the unknown abyss. With a deep inhale, he summoned his courage and ventured into the uncertainty. Only the illumination from the various consoles lit up small hunks of space. The spill from the lift’s opened doors gave a bit more light, but not much. Crouched low to the ground, he took slow deliberate steps, gun at the ready. Though he didn’t think anyone else remained on the ’shoe who was willing to shoot at him. They would’ve rushed him already.

No new shots or calls met his hearing. Every movement he made seemed too loud -- even his soft boots resounded against the flooring. It was plausible and possible the mutiny was born and contained with Lee. Those traders were supposed to kill Darryl on the EPSS and take Cricket hostage or back to Wang.

Neither of those things had occurred.

Yeah, sure, I’m going to let that shit happen. Not her. Over my dead body
.

Lee had planned badly, leaving Darryl’s death to certainty when he should’ve worked on a contingency. No, Lee hadn’t expected him to step off the turbo lift and he damn sure didn’t expect Cricket to be with him.

“Commander?” moaned a mournful voice through the shadow-filled room.

Darryl’s eyes adjusted to the somber dark. Using his familiarity coupled with his eyesight, he steered toward the slope of the ’shoe’s lower level and upward to the communication console. The groan came from this area and Darryl hurried to the seat. Frantic, he groped the gloom until he brushed the mop of curls. “Kovacs!”

The motionless lump of Kovacs’ body sprawled in front of his seat as if unexpectedly he’d collapsed from the chair. Darryl knelt down, putting his weapon on the ground, and eagerly sought out a pulse. Alive. Barely. The weak pulse beat feebly against his fingertips.

“Sir… Lee… shot…”

“Don’t talk,” Darryl advised, fury rising. “I’ve taken care of Lee.”

Gritting his teeth, Darryl pressed his earpiece with his heart in his throat and fury spinning in his belly.
Please be there. Come on, come on
…

“Medic,” he said, eyes returning to the lift where he spied Cricket hunched over the control panel. Crafty and smart, Cricket would get the lights back online. Darryl realized with relief that he wasn’t alone up here with this mess. Static rose and washed through the comm, but just when Darryl was about to switch it off, Dr. Krongkon’s voice shot through like steel through flesh.