MBryO: The Escape (16 page)

Sasha, and her ever faithful friend, Calista, were there to greet them, with Dogg and the doll-like, Gayla, at her side. After hugging her brothers, and checking for signs of injuries, Sasha turned to look at the graying man standing in the door of the cargo hold.

If he hadn’t known better, Elias would have thought her stoic ivory features actually looked worried.

“Pax and Melara?” she questioned aloud, her pale blue eyes meeting his, as she waited breathlessly for an answer.

“There wasn’t room on board,” he replied, coldly. “I had to leave them. Once we get the space-hopper fixed and ready to go, I’ll go back for them.”

“And…the ‘Old One’?” there was trepidation in her tone. Had they been too late to save their mother?

“I am here, daughter!”

Elias stepped back as Freezhia emerged from inside the ship. Tended by the medi-beds, she had regained the majority of her strength. She still had a ways to go, but Elias was no longer frightened for her life.

Everyone in the docking bay stopped what they were doing as Freezhia accepted Elias’ hand, and climbed down from the open doorway. A collective sigh of appreciation to rumbled through the open room. Her graceful carriage and perfect beauty testified to the fact that Freezhia was the epitome of a queen.

Elias, himself, felt the same awe and fascination that consumed them all. He had adored this woman, his Xenaclon queen, from the moment he had first laid eyes on her.

The ‘Old One’ was the common link, the glue that held them together. Saving her life was the reason they had found the courage to escape MBryO UNIX.

And Elias knew that he, at least, would die before he let Maxim Bryant get his hands on her again.

When the architects had designed the Barriosi, they had laid out the permanent detention center out in a square, five miles long by five miles wide with an impenetrable six feet fence topped by glass and barbed wire. They had built three guard shacks on each side of the ‘pen’. An iron gate had been set into the center of the northern and southern ends of the enclosure.

Every Terran Cadet underwent a mandatory nine month deployment at the Barriosi. Melara had been no exception to that rule. She had cut her military teeth during the daily eight hour rotation tending the ‘pen’.

Twice a month, goods were trucked to the warehouses that were located just inside the fence. From those warehouses the produce meandered their way inside the labyrinth to the meat markets and the farmer’s market on the square.

When it had been built, right after the Xenaclon Wars, there had been enough room for all of the Barriosi, and then some. Now, their population had quadrupled in size and the city was severely overcrowded. Multi-leveled haciendas rose into the air and shoddily erected cardboard shacks and canvas tents sat practically on top of each other. Truth-be-told, the perimeter of the barrio was threatening to spill outside the metal fence that enforced their exile.

Narrow alleyways wound haphazardly around the dwellings, filled with old furniture, bicycles and the like. Most of it was junk, which the denizens hung onto for parts or recycled into something useable when necessary.

Without available land for farming, the Barriosi had built hydroponic gardens to support many of their fruit and vegetable needs. The heavy copper troughs terraced high into the air, connected to the huge silver pipes that brought water into and sewage out of the city.

Pax understood now why Mimosa kept the barriers around her thoughts. Everyone possessed psy-talent to some degree in the barrio. It hadn’t taken him long to realize that the deeper one lived inside the small city, the more powerful their telekinetic ability. Bits and pieces of conversation assaulted his ears every time he let his guard down.

Unsurprisingly, Mimosa’s three story casa was located at the very center of the burg. They had been at the casa for three days now.

Nameless and the gray she-wolf had claimed possession of the casa roof. Pax figured that Nameless preferred to be out in the open, as close to the freedom of the sky as he could get, rather than be shut up once again. The white walls inside the casa reminded him of the cage back at MBryO UNIX.

Pax and Melara had made the trip through the tunnel to the hillside every day for the eight days, checking the perimeter for MBryO drones ships. The first rendezvous time had come and gone. Now, they must find a way to make it to the next pick up point. So far, there had been no sign of Elias, or Maxim Bryant.

In the time they had been at the casa, Melara and Pax had grown very fond of Mimosa. She was ornery and bad tempered, but she had a heart of gold.

The old woman had divulged her story not long after their arrival at the casa.

They knew that the founder of MBryO was, in fact, her grandson, Maximillian. Maxim was an evil mastermind, determined to create a super race of warriors. He had left the Barriosi to fulfill his evil ambitions. He had developed an extraction procedure with which he combined his own DNA with that of the Xenaclons.

So far, Sasha and her brothers had been his greatest success. Maximillian would stop at nothing to get them back.

When Pax wasn’t keeping watch for drone ships, he meandered through the narrow, noisy streets of the Barriosi. He enjoyed watching the children, running and playing ‘pop-n-go’, a street ball game similar to the old baseball games played by humanoids centuries before.

On this particular morning, Pax found himself laughing at the crazy competition between the merchants hawking their wares in the farmer’s market. Most of them grew their own produce in the hydroponic gardens overhead. They traded or bartered for other necessities from the cardboard booths that made up the market.

The rest made their way twice a month to the warehouses down by the fences. They bartered and traded for the items that were trucked into the city from outside the barrio. Then, the merchants would load the items onto carts and wagons, hauling them to the marketplace.

Pax had discovered that the next truckload would arrive at the warehouse the following morning. He intended to be in a position to take advantage of that drop.

Pax noticed interestedly, after taking a tour of the hardware booths, that wood for building was at a premium. Luckily for those manning the cardboard booths, and those living in the cardboard shacks and canvas tents, it didn’t rain very often in the desert.

As he had every morning since their arrival at the barrio, he visited the market place with Mimosa’s shopping list. Placing the fresh vegetables and frozen fish in one of the intricately woven baskets that Mimosa created to sell in the marketplace, he carried his groceries through the winding maze of crowded alleyways back to the elegant hacienda.

Upon impulse, he gave in to the temptation to lower the barriers guarding his mind, leaving it open to probing tendrils of psy-feelers.

Instantly his mind was assaulted by conversation after conversation, making him rein his psy-feelers in just a bit. He wasn’t able to handle the huge sonic blast of words that pummeled him from every psy-talent in the Barriosi. Patiently, he shifted through the influx of psy-ability, tying threads of feelings and desires to the faces around him.

“Who is he?” asked a pudgy little girl with blue-black curls, playing in an old bathtub that had been filled with sand.

“Mind your business,
‘amanita
,” said a gangly youth with a sullen face. Pax assimilated the fact the boy had called the girl by the familiar name of
‘little sister’
. His dark eyes avoided from making contact with Pax’s, though.

He had received a similar reaction from all of the Barriosi he had come in contact with. It was as if they knew all about their visitors, hiding in their matriarch’s home, but were either reluctant or uninterested enough to get involved.

Pax walked on past the youngsters, arriving at the hacienda well before breakfast. As he usually did, he sat the woven basket on the old-fashioned, chipped Formica, kitchen counter.

Like all the other dwellings in the barrio, the hacienda was in drastic need of remodeling. Though, everything in the hacienda still functioned efficiently, from the hydro-powered icebox to the solar powered stove.

Melara emerged from the cellar door, her blaster raised skyward. Her expression was tense.

“Any sign of MBryO or Terran drone ships?” he asked.

“No. I don’t know what they are waiting for. We know the scout bots followed us to the gate. Maxim has to know where the manhole leads. Mimosa said her grandson used the tunnel to escape the Barriosi.”

“It’s a mind game. He wants us to know that he can choose when and where he wants to attack us,” Pax told her, turning he hoisted his lean body onto the counter.

Taking a shiny red apple from the basket, he bit into the succulent white flesh. He wiped the excess juice from the corner of his mouth.

Melara turned to put her blaster beside the door, deliberately blocking out the unnerving way he devoured the apple. The more time she spent with Pax Vitar, the more uncomfortable she found her growing fondness for him.

“Well, I refuse to give that monster the satisfaction of seeing us sweat. We have been here too long! We are supposed to be at the second rendezvous site at midnight tomorrow. We need to get some reliable transportation if we want to make the deadline.” Melara couldn’t keep the grumpiness from her tone. “Unfortunately, there are no working vehicles in this Zander-forgotten burg.”

“I’m sure the DOD had that in mind when they built the fence,” Pax told her.

He studied the apple core in his hand, looking for more of the fruit to extract from the core. Deciding there was none, he flung the apple core across the room into the open wastebasket Mimosa kept between the pantry and the icebox.

“I do have some ideas about getting out of here. But we’re going to have to get closer to the warehouse.”

Mimosa chose that moment to enter the kitchen, the gray she-wolf on her heels. The raggedy animal wandered over to the rug in front of the back door and curled up.

As was her habit, Mimosa began dragging her copper pots and pans over to the stove top. As she walked past Pax, she shooed him off the counter with a flick of a tea towel.

Pax gave a muffled chuckle, and obediently unfolded his long length and settled at the butcher block table in the middle of the room. Both he and Melara had come to appreciate the older woman’s dry sense of humor.

Mimosa couldn’t control the small smile that tilted her lips.

“When they rounded us up and exiled us to the Barriosi, the Department of Defense decreed that no automobiles be brought inside the fence. They did not want us escaping.”

“But that didn’t stop you from building the tunnel,” Melara pointed out.

“All the days and months I stood watch in the guard houses outside the fence, thinking that I was helping the illustrious Terran Guard contain you. I can’t begin to tell you how foolish I feel, knowing you could have escaped at any time!”

Mimosa ‘tsked’ in the sardonic way they had come to expect from her.

“In all the years that the Barriosi has been in existence, we have kept our agreement with the Robotic Morality Bureau. Only one person has ever left our home. And that was my grandson, Maximillian de Hoya, on the night he brought eternal shame to his ancestors.”

“He is coming for you, I think!” she added, her words ringing with an inexplicable certainty. Mimosa’s dark eyes gazed into space, as if she was seeing or hearing something they weren’t privy to.

“Maybe it will be tonight, or even tomorrow! He is angry. Never before has he been thwarted in anything he desired. As much as I hate to see you go, you must leave here, my friends, and soon! The barrio is no longer a safe place for you to hide.”

“Well, we cannot use the tunnel,” Melara told them, setting down across the table from Pax. “The desert is a treasure trove of hiding places. I’m sure that MBryO drone ships are just waiting for us to step outside, hoping that the space-hopper will return to pick us up!”

“Then we’ll just have to figure another way out!” Pax stated enigmatically, accepting the warm plate of scrambled eggs and fresh hydroponically grown squash Mimosa put in front of him.

“I take it, you have a plan?” Melara asked him, her blue eyes doubtful. If anyone knew how impenetrable the Barriosi was, it was her. The place was a veritable fortress. Nothing was going in or out of the fence without permission from the DOD’s Terran Guards.

“Tonight the fence will be opened to allow the food trucks inside. Mimosa, do you know what time the warehouses will open to receive them?”

“In the wee hours of the morning, between two o’clock and three, I think.”

“We must wait for nightfall,” he told her. “And then we will make our move.”

Time seemed to move very slowly, there in the cool darkness of the casa. Lunch time came and went. Mimosa broiled the fish and fresh vegetables that Pax had bought in the market place that morning, using butter and small pinches of the herbs that grew in the pots on the window sill. He and Melara had eaten every succulent bite, knowing that it might be their only source of food for some time to come.

Pax spent the afternoon, prowling from window to window.

His psy-feelers probed the thoughts and conversations coming from depths of the Barriosi, picking up bits and pieces of information. He stopped every now and then simply listened. He shifted through the information, mentally filing anything that could aid them in escaping from the noisy, bustling, maze that was the barrio.

To fill the time, Melara sat in the worn depths of a faded salon chair and systematically broke apart, and cleaned, her mass-blaster. Deliberately keeping her mind on the task at hand, so that none of the sentient beings in the house could probe her thoughts, she methodically laid the pieces of shiny black metal across the ancient, scarred coffee table in front of her.

When the weapon was as ship-shape as she could make it, then she, just as systematically, reassembled it.

That job over, she pulled a serrated-edged scimitar from her boot and began the process of caring for the blade, as well.

From his place on the roof of the casa, Nameless curled the tip of one dark wing over the sleeping she-wolf at his side, and dozed in the warmth of the sun. A stray breeze wafted gently in from the foothills to the west, tickling his nose, reminding him of the freedom to be found in the vast desert beyond.

As daylight drew to a close and dusk began to settle over the barrio, Mimosa came down the staircase carrying a small casket in her gnarled hands. She placed gently it on the coffee table and flipped open the lid, revealing a mound of glittering silver rocks.

“Myconeum?” Pax asked, recognizing the diamond like substance from the mines on back home on Nyla 6.

“Yes,” Mimosa said. “Myconeum, it is!”

“It must be worth a small fortune,” Melara remarked, awed at the sparkling sight. There was a small fortune inside the faded casket.