For breakfast?
“Stay out of my mind, bastard.”
Ean left him there, losing himself in the music of the lines.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: DOMINIQUE RADKO
Radko was still paralyzed when the shuttle finally landed. She hoped it was the tranquilizer. It was a scarily long time to be helpless. The sounds and the smells reminded her of Confluence Station. They were on a space station. Or a very large ship.
“Take the prisoners down to the cells,” Martel ordered. “Get them out of my sight until they’re fit to be questioned.”
Radko lost track of the time. Here, in the lockup, it was quiet. Ean would have been handy right now. He could have used the lines to see where the others were, see what was going on.
She didn’t know how much later it was that her toes and the tips of her fingers started to tingle with pins and needles. Not long after that she found she could flutter her eyelids although it was another hour before she could open her eyes.
She had plenty of time after that to stare at the ceiling. It was made of the same tiles as those at Confluence Station. If she had her knife, she’d be able to prise the tiles off and make her way through the ceiling to escape. Once she could move, that was. Her eyes tracked to the camera set in the ceiling. Of course, they’d know as soon as she tried.
Still, she had inspected Confluence Station thoroughly prior to Ean’s taking up residence. A station was a station. If she could get herself and her people into the access corridors, she knew places they could hide.
About the time she could move her arms, Martel arrived back. He wore the navy and pale blue uniform of a Worlds of the Lesser Gods officer, and the pips of commander.
“Ready to talk yet?”
She wasn’t sure she could even if she wanted to.
“Amazing stuff, that tranquilizer. I didn’t realize how good until now. All three of you are still immobilized.”
Still only three. Thank the lines one of them was still free.
“It’s a pity because there’s nothing I can do to make you answer while you’re in this state although I could have fun trying.”
Radko damped down the surge of unease.
“Unfortunately, the first captain will be back soon, and he’ll want answers, so we don’t have the time.” He beckoned to someone outside the door. “Get Dr. Quinn here. He must have something to counter the effects of the tranquilizer. After all, they use it often enough.”
Five minutes later, Dr. Quinn arrived with two assistants.
“I need her talking in twenty minutes. Pump in a fast-acting truth serum as well.”
“I’m not your personal interrogation chemist.”
“If you want to keep testing drugs on your linesmen, you’ll do the occasional side job.”
Martel left.
“Occasional.” Dr. Quinn hooked Radko up to an intravenous feed. “This is the second one today.”
“The other man did break onto the station,” one of the assistants said. “We were lucky they caught him.”
Chaudry or Han, it if was a “he.” Did that mean they were all captured?
“We were unlucky he had enzymes in his stomach to counteract the truth serum,” Quinn said. “First Captain Jakob will bite our heads off for that. And Martel won’t take two failures in one day well.”
He snapped a solution into the end of the IV. “Monitor that,” he ordered one of the assistants. “Don’t let it get above 0.3. You,” to the other one. “Be ready to give her 700 mls of Dromalan as soon as it stabilizes. And whatever you do, don’t give her the truth serum before she stabilizes. If you do, you’re answering to the commander.”
Both assistants shuddered.
Dromalan truth serum took two to three hours to take effect. Once they administered it, Radko had a maximum of two hours before she’d start to talk. She had to escape by then or avoid taking the drug in the first place.
Worse, if a linesman had Dromalan truth serum in their system when they traveled through the void, it destroyed their line ability. Early experiments with the serum had been to improve line ability. It was only later they’d found it useful as a truth drug. If van Heel or Chaudry had been given the serum, the whole team would be stuck in this sector for a week.
Quinn hurried out.
One of the assistants checked the feed. “Get this wrong, and we’ll both be dead. Commander Martel is in a mood. So is First Captain Jakob, I hear.”
“Because he’s coming back empty-handed?”
They both sniggered.
“I heard he got arrested.”
The other assistant glanced at the camera, then nudged the one who’d spoken.
Neither of them stood as straight as regular soldiers. Pure medical staff, then. Radko’s reflexes would be slow. Could she overcome two untrained people? And if she did, how long would she have to get away? They were on a station, with cameras in every corridor.
Radko waited.
“Stabilized,” the first assistant said, finally. “Are you ready?” He looked over to the other assistant. The second assistant checked the syringe of green liquid and nodded. Radko couldn’t wait any longer. She rolled off the bed and knocked the first assistant off his feet.
“Hey. You shouldn’t be moving yet.” The second assistant came running around the bed. Radko rolled under it, came out the other side, and pushed the bed into him. It was a weak push, not enough to push him off his feet even. The assistant was back before Radko could stand. She scissored her legs—just enough to pull him off his stride.
“This is personal now.” He fell onto Radko to hold her into place and jabbed his syringe downward. Radko pushed his arm aside. It wasn’t much, but the syringe missed her and scraped the assistant’s arm, just enough to draw blood.
He cursed, flung the syringe away, and raced over to the basin, scrubbing at the scratch.
If Radko had been closer, she’d have snatched the syringe up. Instead, she rolled away, into the first assistant’s legs. He’d regained his feet and was reaching toward the intercom. This time, Radko controlled the roll and brought the assistant crashing down.
She got up and ran. Not that it was much of a run, more of a drunken roll. She focused on keeping on her feet.
She made for the nearest emergency alarm station, clearly marked on the wall, broke the glass, and pressed the hull-breach button. The station’s airtight partitions slammed into place over the whoop of the alarm.
Now it was just her and the people in her section.
She ran back to the room she’d exited. Both assistants were gone, as was the syringe. She looked around.
The door had a pop-lock mechanism. Sometimes the luck ran your way.
She reached inside and pulled wires. That one. And that one. In exercises, she could do this in fifteen seconds. She had that now, no more. She pushed the wires together, and counted as the feedback from the electronics built. Ten seconds. Twelve. Fourteen. There was a tiny fizz, and the overload on the wires blacked out the wiring for the doors in this section of the station. Doors around her slid open. Except the breach partitions, of course. They didn’t open when you lost power. They had to be opened manually. Once the crew determined where the breach was or wasn’t.
She grabbed oxygen and a mask from one of the emergency stations. They’d gas the area soon because they had to be watching what had happened.
Where was everyone?
She ducked into a nearby room. An oxygen cylinder hurtled toward her. She threw herself sideways.
“What the hell?” Van Heel had a second cylinder primed to use. She dropped it with a clatter. “What’s happening?”