“Escaping,” Radko said. “What’s happened with you?”
“Same. I only just got out of that prison they put me in, when the doors all flew open. I should have waited.”
“Have they given you any drugs?”
“Not yet.”
That was something.
“They were about to interrogate me when they caught someone else. I thought it was you. There was a lot of excitement about that.”
The man Quinn’s two assistants had spoken about? The one who’d broken onto the station? Chaudry or Han.
“Grab oxygen and a mask,” Radko said. “They’ll gas this section eventually.” The oxygen tanks also made a primitive weapon, which was better than nothing.
Radko glanced out the door. “Han and Chaudry will be around here somewhere. We need to find them. And we need to arm ourselves with something better than oxygen cylinders.” There wouldn’t be any weapons in the jail cells. If they hadn’t been in space, there wouldn’t have been any oxygen, either.
Chaudry was two doors down. Still groggy from the tranquilizer but moving, if slowly.
“Han?”
“Haven’t found him yet,” Radko said.
They found the two assistants Radko had bested earlier hiding in a cell close to the breach partition. One had his comms out. Radko kicked it out of his hands, and stomped on it. Anything they said would be feeding out to the rest of the station. Chaudry loomed over them, his face scrunched into a mean-looking scowl, threatening to brain them with his oxygen cylinder.
Van Heel finished checking the other rooms. “Han’s not here.”
Radko looked at the two assistants. It would have been smart to knock them out, but she didn’t. “Give me your comms,” she said to the other assistant.
He handed it over, keeping one eye on Chaudry.
She made sure it was off, then put it in her pocket. “Stay here. If you come after us, we’ll kill you.”
She led the way back to her own room. She’d had time to look at the ceiling on this one. “Chaudry, I’m going to stand on your shoulders.”
He stood rock solid and silent.
Behind them, she could hear the crew hauling the breach doors open. She pushed the ceiling tile up and swung herself into the roof space. She found the nearest support. “Over here. Van Heel first.” Because Chaudry would be too heavy for just one of them to lift.
Chaudry boosted her up.
“Now you, Chaudry. Push the bed over, stand on it, and we’ll haul you the rest of the way.”
“You can’t lift—”
“Lift your hands, Chaudry, or we’ll be caught.”
It might have been the shouts of the crew as they pushed the breach doors open that spurred him. It was certainly the shouts that gave Radko an adrenaline boost as she and van Heel hauled him up.
She thought her arms would drop off.
“Go, go,” Radko said to van Heel, as Chaudry scrabbled for a foothold along the beam. “That way. There’ll be a walkway at the end. Wait for us there. Chaudry?”
Chaudry was nimble, for all that he was bulky. He slipped, but recovered, and crawled along the beam as fast as he could go.
The burn of a blaster singed Radko’s boot as she followed him.
Ahead, she heard the unmistakable sound of someone’s opening an access hatch. Van Heel, in front, hesitated. Radko pushed past her. “Watch our backs,” she ordered, and ran for the hatch.
She was in time to kick the head of the first person entering. He fell backward, and she slammed the hatch shut. It was a pity she couldn’t have grabbed his blaster. A weapon would be handy right now.
She motioned van Heel and Chaudry forward. The hatch started to move under her feet. She stepped off quietly and waited. The hatch lifted enough to let the nozzle of a blaster through. A beam on stun, sprayed indiscriminately. Chaudry opened his mouth and Radko motioned him to silence. The user gained more courage and ventured farther into the access space. Radko jumped on the hatch cover, catching the blaster between the edges as she did so. There was a yelp, and the blaster dropped. Radko snatched it up.
Armed, and it felt good.
There was silence from outside.
They wouldn’t get far without getting caught. For the moment, though, they were better off in the access passages than in the main corridors of the station. This way, anyone coming after them had to travel single file. She could pick them off one by one.
Unfortunately, the enemy could pick her team off the same way.
First, they had to get themselves somewhere safe.
The soldiers started shooting at the ceiling. This time the blasters were on burn. Chaudry grunted and jumped back. Van Heel grabbed him before he could fall through the weakened ceiling. They moved back.
Behind them, the first soldier came into sight. Radko stunned them.
“Stop.” His voice was familiar. Commander Martel. “You’re on a station. Do you want to breach the hull?”
The body Radko had downed blocked the way back. Radko leaned close to Chaudry and van Heel, so she could speak softly. “Use the pipes”—and she pointed above—“to help you get across the damaged part. Van Heel first, then Chaudry. Make for the nearest junction. Don’t wait for me. I’ll catch up.”
She fired again over the top of the fallen pursuer. Someone swore and ducked. She hadn’t hit him.
The ceiling under Chaudry’s feet creaked. Chaudry stopped.
“Get across there,” Radko hissed. “Use the pipes.”
He started moving again. The overhead pipes creaked.
Radko sweated with him.
He stopped at the other side, with van Heel.
A small piece of paneling dropped away. Someone fired.
“Fire again, and you won’t live to regret it.” Martel again. “We’ll get them at the next entry.”
Radko waved the others on. It would have been handy to have Ean right now. He could watch through the lines, know where everyone was and what they were doing.
They moved on reluctantly.
Below her, more people entered the room.
Radko waited until she was sure no one below would fire before she grabbed for the pipes and swung along carefully, keeping her legs raised from the treacherous floor.
She hesitated as she recognized a voice below.
Sergey Bach. Head of Palace Security on Lancia. Commodore Vega’s equivalent for Emperor Yu.
“I don’t know what the hell you’re doing.” Bach was practically spitting. “And it’s obvious you don’t know, either. I feel as if I’ve walked into a farce. You can’t run a station, let alone plan to win a war. Who are these people?”
“Lancastrians,” Commander Martel said. “Maybe you could tell us how they got here.”
“Lan—”
Another voice cut in. “Why don’t you tell us how that happened, Commodore Bach.”
“Lancastrians. Prove it to me.”
“We will as soon as we recapture them.”
Bach laughed. “How convenient. You balls-up a simple effort to steal a ship—even though we went out of our way to make it easy for you—and you try to draw attention away by blaming us for problems you’re having.”
“If you made it so easy for us”—this was the man whose voice Radko didn’t recognize—“how did the farce of my arrest come about?”
“I got you access to the alien ships. You got caught.”
Radko smiled grimly. They didn’t realize yet, but with Ean around, they’d never steal an alien ship.
The pipe above her gave way without warning. She crashed through the damaged ceiling, onto the floor in front of the speakers.
Three blasters swung toward her.
She recognized the speaker. First Captain Jakob. The Lesser Gods’ equivalent of a commodore. The head of the Factor’s personal security and Bach’s equivalent. She’d looked him up after learning about Michelle’s proposed marriage, still doing her job, finding out about potential threats to Michelle and Ean. Old habits.