“I’ll shoot her,” he says, looking back down the sights at me.
“She’s not the one with the gun.”
Suddenly he wheels. Two gunshots ring out in quick succession as Brady dodges and falls to the ground, trying to get up in a hurry. Greenman steps back to aim for a kill shot, but I’m already sprinting at him, leaping at him before he can turn his weapon on me. I swing the paring knife and it digs deep underneath his collarbone, just below the neck.
A feeble wheeze escapes him and his revolver blasts off a stray shot as I tackle him to the ground. I give the knife a twist, then leave it stuck in his shoulder, the wound gushing blood. Catching his right wrist with both hands, I force his aim away. The old man’s whole arm jerks as the gun fires again, errant.
He forces his knees up into my stomach and puts all his strength into a shove with both feet and his free arm, knocking me onto my back. With surprising speed, he scrambles to his feet and takes aim.
A single shot rings out. Red bursts from one side of Greenman’s head, and his body gives a barely perceptible shake before it goes limp and falls to the cement in a heap. Blood gushes quickly from the hole in his skull, seeping into a red pool beneath him on the floor.
On one knee a few meters away, Brady Kearns trembles, pistol shaking in his hand. “Oh my god I shot him.”
I don’t know where the auditor stands right now, or what he plans to do next, so I jump to my feet and grab the dead man’s gun. The hefty weight of it is comforting in my hand. “Why did you turn on him?” I ask.
“I didn’t,” Kearns answers, his voice wavering with uncertainty and shock. “I needed his help, to help you. How do you think we got into the spaceport so easily?”
A grin forces its way onto my face. “Brady, you keep surprising me.”
“I keep surprising myself.” He rises to his feet. “If you’ve got no objection, I’m going to call the police. Hopefully we’ve got enough to clear our names, or at least have this place searched.” He pulls his phone out of his pocket and extends the screen. Frowning, he walks around a few paces, holding it high.
“Don’t tell me—”
“I think it’s jammed. They’re jamming it.”
“Who?”
“Greenman’s men. They’re outside.” Closing the phone and pocketing it, he’s growing quickly distraught. “We’re not going to get out of here,” he says, suddenly terrified and helpless. “They’ve got the whole building surrounded.”
“How many?”
“Best guess? Twenty-five.”
That’s a lot. Not what I wanted to hear. “All armed?”
“To the teeth. Automatic rifles, drones, gas.”
Not what I wanted to hear, either. Unable to think of any other option, I look around for resources. I pick up a few cylindrical fuel cells, carry them to the big bay door at the end of the hangar, and place them to cover the greatest area.
“What are you doing?” Brady asks.
“We can’t call the authorities in, so our only chance is to bring them here with the sound of a gunfight.”
“And what then? Where’s our proof?”
That’s a good question. If my original theory is even correct, the hidden calcium could be anywhere among the thousands of items in this hangar, and we don’t have the time to look. But I no longer believe it’s here. Greenman would not have led us right to it, even if he planned to kill me, even if he planned to kill us both. There would have been no reward for such a risk. So if not here, where? And does it really matter? Greenman saw us coming. He had plenty of opportunity to move the evidence.
“We can find it, we just have to hurry,” Brady babbles. “I did the math, and judging by the frequency of the shipments, my theory is that the calcium’s in a container of about two cubic meters, probably labeled as something else.”
“It’s not here.”
That seems to freak him out. “What?”
Ignoring him, I rip open a pack of emergency breather masks, the kind they keep on shuttles in case of a loss of pressure. I toss one to him and he catches it clumsily with his free hand. “For the gas,” I tell him, pulling another over my head and letting it hang by its strap from my neck. I remove a zero-atmosphere arc welder from its packaging and attach it to the end of a lightweight aluminum robotic jib arm, which is basically just a few aluminum poles connected by hydraulic joints. I place that next to a thick pallet of insulation foam which looks like the best option for cover, then drag two big, heavy sheets of ablative shielding across the floor and put them down there, too.
Kneeling down behind the pallet, I motion for Brady to join me. He scampers over and takes a knee. “Too close,” I tell him. “There.” He moves to the opposite end of the pallet a few meters away.
“They’re armored?” I whisper.
“Most of them.”
“Gotta be headshots, then. Only pull the trigger if you’ve got one you can land.”
We sit with our backs to the pallet, ready and on edge. Maybe a minute of silence passes before I hear the hum of the big bay doors sliding open.
“Mister Greenman?” a voice calls. “Mister Greenman, our orders were to enter if you didn’t come out in ten minutes.”
I put a finger to my lips, indicating to Brady not to answer.
“Mister Greenman?” the voice calls again. “Please acknowledge.”
Silence for a few seconds, then the sound of footsteps at the entrance. Slow, cautious. Probably two pairs.
“Stop right there,” I call out. “We’ve got Greenman.”
The footsteps stop. The voice calls back, “Who is ‘we?’”
“Doesn’t matter,” I answer, trying to sound in control. “Put down your arms, and we can discuss his return.”
“If he’s safe, let him tell us that himself.”
I look to Brady with a shrug. It was worth a try.
The two pairs of footsteps move in a hurry, and a few seconds later I hear the sound of a couple of metallic objects bouncing on the cement, followed by a hiss. I pull on my breather mask and loosen the valve, and Brady follows my lead. After a moment, gray vapor wafts into the air, spreading and thinning and reaching around the shelves and pallets and stacks of supplies. For a second, I’m terrified that they’ve used a chemical that can go through skin, and I even feel a panicked itching, but then I realize that it’s just paranoia. The gas is doing nothing.
After a minute or two goes by, a barely perceptible whir approaches. Drones.
I lift one side of the ablative plating and rest it on the edge of the foam pallet over my head, hunching low underneath it. Brady catches on, even in the low visibility, and does the same. I just hope the plating is thick and hard enough to stop whatever ammo they’re packing.
I get my answer soon enough, as the machines pick up on the movement, hover closer, and release a burst of fire, which plinks off the top of the plating. I turn the arc welder on, lighting a hot, thin line at the tip. Holding the jib arm at the end, I wait, and sure enough, the drone hovers down and sideways, searching for an angle in the few meters between the pallet and the stacks of boxes against the wall.
The drone creeps into view. I stab the jib arm forward, swiping with the hot spike of the arc welder. It hisses and sprays golden sparks, and the machine drops with a crack on the cement, broken.
A burst of small bullets pings off metal behind me. I turn to see Brady flat on the ground, the sheet of plating covering him like a blanket as the drone drops ever lower, trying to get at him. I push my own shield aside, swing the jib arm around in a wide arc, and stab it at the drone just as it turns to face me. The hot tip of the arc welder slices through one of the drone’s four rotors. It tips and spirals. I thrust at it again, piercing into the body, and the thing drops to the ground, stopped.