Chapter 16
When he awoke he was alone. The helmet had been removed, but the straps holding him to the bed were still in place. He noticed the smell of urine coming from Apela’s cell.
I feel alright, he thought. I still feel like myself. My name is Christopher Black. I’m from Mars and I live in New Haven. The year is 2327. I hope. I’m still here. The mind scrub didn’t work. But the memory transfer did. I have another man’s memories in my head.
Testing the straps, he found no weakness and decided not to waste any further energy on trying to break free of them using brute force. He looked around, trying to find something, anything, he could use to escape. He remembered a time when he had been tied down once before and had used a broken piece of glass to cut the ropes to escape. No. That wasn’t me. It was the other guy. Casey. His name was Casey. Casey used a piece of glass to cut the ropes. And so it begins, Chris thought. Someone else’s memories invading my mind. I wonder what will happen to me. Later. I need to focus on escaping.
The door slid open and a Pam in laboratory garb walked in. Had she been the one to save him from the mind scrub, Chris wondered, or had he gotten really lucky with the nanite system counteracting the scrub? If the Pam had done it, it meant she was conscious and aware. Hadn’t he picked up thoughts from her, just before sliding into unconsciousness. They are aware. Which is why they commit suicide when left alone. An ally. I need an ally. He looked at Pam intently.
“Pam, listen to me,’ he said. “I need to escape and I want to take you and your sisters with me. I need your help.”
Pam blinked twice and her pupils dilated. A pained expression crossed her face, as if she were rying hard to concentrate.
Chris assumed she had understood, but was having trouble getting past whatever inhibitors Leichter had implanted.
“Pam, please release the straps.”
Pam immediately began unstrapping him. It seemed the Pams would respond to orders from anyone. As the last strap was released, Chris sat up, feeling dizzy and nauseous.
Controlling himself, he said, “Do you have any way of communicating with the other Pams?”
Pam nodded “yes” very slowly.
“Can you have them, and yourself, meet me at Dock 8 in one hour?” he asked.
Pam nodded “yes” slowly, once again.
Chris decided to rephrase the request as a command. “Your assignment is to communicate with the other Pams, and instruct them they, and you, are to meet me at Dock 8 in one hour,” Chris looked at the clock on the wall, “at two-thirty. You are to do this quietly and discreetly, with no one else knowing about it.”
Pam looked at the clock also, then nodded and left.
Chris was uncomfortable with the abruptness of the interaction and worried she might not have understood, or she might completely forget about their one-sided conversation. He didn’t know what to expect from an individual whose thinking processes were inhibited by an plasmonic implant.
Get over it, he thought. Focus on locating Kelly, getting her and the Pams (if they show up) aboard the ambulance, and getting the hell out of here. He realized he was weak with hunger and shifted his body’s source of nutrition from his stomach to his body fat.
Going to a computer terminal on one side of the laboratory, Chris said, “Computer, list all prisoner holding stations and the prisoners being held in each.” He crossed his fingers and hoped this terminal had security clearance.
On the screen, a layout of the station three holding cell areas was shown. Two of them held a single prisoner, but neither of them was Kelly. The third was completely empty.
Not good! Chris thought.
“Display location of this terminal in reference to the ambulance, Saint Marie.”
Two colored dots appeared on the stations layout: a red one with “YOU ARE HERE” labeled above it and a green one Chris recognized as the location of the ship the last time he had looked for it. The ship hadn’t moved and he knew where he was in reference to it.
He decided to try a different tact in locating Kelly. “Computer, display location of Kelly Turner.”
“The location of Kelly Turner is unknown,” the computer responded.
Great! Either she’s dead or she hasn’t been registered with the computer. Wait. Maybe I’m asking the wrong question.
“Display the last known location of Kelly Turner.”
“The last known location of Kelly Turner was in holding cell two,” replied the computer as it lit up a blue dot on the screen in the empty holding cell.
The holding cell wasn’t far from his location, he thought. Under no circumstances could he allow himself to get caught, now that he had a group of enslaved clones meeting him at Dock 8. But I have nearly an hour to kill and it’s certainly worth checking out.
Typing an omega related equation into the computer, Chris said, “Computer, solve this equation. Maximum priority.” The equation was a tidbit of information supplied by one of Frank’s vocational tutors. It should keep the central computer tied up for at least an hour, Chris thought.
Grabbing a lab smock he turned to leave the laboratory. He saw a ring of keys hanging on a hook near the laboratory door and looked at Apela. It took him a few minutes to figure out how to turn off the force field covering the cell bars. After he had gotten it switched off, Chris took the keys and tossed them at the cell holding Apela.
Kelly had just returned with food and the girls were gratefully shoving it into their mouths. Hunger had counteracted any training in the social graces and Kelly smiled with amusement at the girls’ feeding frenzy. As soon as they finished eating they would leave for the ambulance.
She had just set up the force field generator to cover the storage room’s entrance and was about to plug it in when she heard noises at the door. Kelly paused and waited for the door to slide open. As it did, someone attempted to step in. She plugged the bare wires into the outlet and the person disappeared, causing a thud from the impact with the opposite hallway wall.
Cutting the power to the force field and motioning Sharon to come with her, she stepped out into the hallway hoping there was only one individual to deal with. Her mouth actually dropped open when she recognized Christopher Black. First looking left and then right down the hallway to make sure no one was observing them, she and Sharon dragged Chris into the storage room.
Chris started to come to. “Kelly!” he said as he recognized her.
“Hello, Mr. Black. Fancy meeting you here.”
“Yes. It’s such a small universe we live in,” he said with a lopsided grin while rubbing a bump on the back of his head.
“How did you find us?” Kelly asked.
“Food crumbs outside the door.”
Kelly remembered balancing the food precariously as she stood outside the door giving the secret knock. Some crumbs of food must have fallen to the floor.
“My, aren’t you the observant one,” she said with some irritability at her own sloppiness.
“Let’s not forget, I am a private investigator. My powers of observation have been finely honed,” Chris replied with a thoughtful look. Gazing around he added. “Looks like you’ve started a rescue operation of your own.”
Kelly wasn’t sure what to make of Chris. Was he really cracking jokes at a time like this. “These girls were kidnapped by Apela when she took their ship.”
Chris gave the five girls a quick once-over. “Well, aside from you, I have my own little rescue operation going on. I have a small number of clones named Pam I’m trying to free from slavery.”
“We’re talking about a lot of people, I don’t think we can fit them all in the ambulance.”
“What about the White Hawk?” one of the girls chimed in.
Chris looked at Kelly and Kelly looked at Tina, the girl who had spoken.
“How many people will it sleep?” asked Kelly.
“Twenty,” answered Sharon.
“Sounds big enough to me. Any idea where it’s located?” Chris asked.
“None,” said Kelly. “But we should be able to locate it easily enough.
“I wonder if the corbinite is still on board? It might be. Most of it anyway. Some of it would have been removed,” Chris said, thinking of the impressions he had gotten from his telepathic experience with Ginyit. “Javis has three thousand kilograms of it for making a bomb.” Changing subjects he said, “I have to meet the clones in a little less than half an hour.”
“Split up or stay together?” asked Kelly.
“Together,” said Chris. Stopping for an instant, he said, “How about if we loosely bind everyone’s wrists and then I, in my lab smock, lead the way to the ambulance.”
“It might work. We still need to find the yacht.”
“I think the clones can help us. It’s quite possible one of them will be able to access its location with no problems. We’ll have to see after we meet up with them.”
“Do you have any weapons?” asked Kelly.
“None. How about you?”
“We have a laser cutter and a force field generator. You’ve already bumped into the force field,” Kelly said with a quirky smile, trying to embrace his positive attitude.
Chris looked at the generator with its bared wires. “If we put it in a box, you can carry it and no one will suspect we’re walking around with our own portable force field. Too bad it requires a multiple cycle current. Otherwise, we might be able to hook it to a battery.”
The group moved through the corridors of the station without incident. Two individuals passed them, nodding to Chris in their friendly way, but paying no attention to the “prisoners”, who stayed in a straight, orderly line and kept their eyes focused on the floor. Approaching Dock 8, they were joined by two Pam clones and, as they entered the docking bay area, they discovered a group of six Pam clones waiting for them. Chris noted there were no ships docked outside any of the three airlocks. They had moved the ambulance.
Chris approached the only one wearing a lab smock and assumed it was the one he had first spoken to. “This is very important. We need another ship. There was a ship here recently. It had these girls, a woman named Martha Apela, and a shipment of corbinite. It’s called the White Hawk. It is the ship we want to use for our escape. Do you know where it is?”
Pam looked at him blankly and pointed to a nearby computer console. Moving to it, she slowly typed in a request. The computer responded by displaying the station’s layout, with which Chris was by now quite familiar, but this display showed information on the restricted areas. The yacht was only three docking ports down.
A male voice in the background exclaimed, “Hellfire! What the fuck is this?”
Kelly was nearest the maintenance technician and reacted immediately. She ran and tackled the man. Chris was right behind her, but even so, she had the tech on the floor and pinned before he reached the two of them. Chris brought out the laser cutter and held it to the man’s throat.
“If you take the laser cutter, I’ll tie him up and gag him,” Chris said to Kelly.
“Right!” she responded.
After a few moments they began to hurry down the corridor. An unusual group like this was bound to draw attention from anyone they crossed paths with. The first person they met on their way to the yacht was a security guard. Chris kicked the woman in the solar plexus and, as she buckled, he brought his fist down hard to the side of her head. They continued moving at a steady jog. Another person came into view, but this one turned and ran the other way.
Chris said loudly, so everyone could hear, “If they didn’t know where we were before, they will in a few minutes. Let’s move a little faster. Kelly, take the lead. I’m going to cover the rear.”
A few minutes later they were in the corridor to the yacht. Kelly found an outlet and plugged in the force field generator just as a security team came around the corner. They stopped and looked at the yellowish-green force field curiously. One man threw a set of keys at it and everyone watched them bounce away.
“Kelly, get everyone on the ship,” Chris said.
Another security guard fired a phaser pulse at the field. It was absorbed and rechanneled back into the force field’s wave harmonization matrix.
A woman at the head of the team, and seemingly its leader, spoke to her wrist communicator. Chris could just make out what she was saying. “Computer, this is Captain Daryl. Shut off all power suppl......”
She never finished her sentence. Someone was attacking the small security force from behind. The team leader was the third to die as Apela caved in her skull with a single blow. Chris watched in amazement as Martha Apela cut through the team using her bare hands. Human bone seemed unable to resist the force of her blows. Blood was flying in all directions.
Apela then focused her attention on Chris.
The force field saved him. She smashed into the it and bounced off as though she didn’t see it. Recovering quickly, she repeated the process. This time she was a little slower in recovering. She looked at the force field and shook her head in disgust. Martha Apela got up and returned to the main corridor. Chris assumed she was looking for new prey to kill and hoped it would be Liechter.
He refocused on the immediate problems in the here and now. As Chris ran to the airlock connecting to the yacht, he noticed what looked like the ambulance outside another airlock. Stepping into the yacht, he yelled, “A change in plans. I’m going to take the ambulance and follow Javis.”
“Are you nuts?” Kelly yelled back.
“Probably. How long until you’re ready?”
“About two minutes. And the corbinite is on board,” she yelled.
“Not all of it! That’s why I have to go after Javis. I’ll follow you out in the ambulance and try to cover your rear.”
“I’d rather have you covering my rear from in here,” she muttered under her breath, and then wondered if she had made a Freudian slip.
Kelly cut the magnetic anchors and backed the ship out fast. Sending an antigravity pulse from the forward left steering thruster, she turned the ship 180 degrees as the momentum of backing the ship out carried them further from the station. It was the kind of maneuver only a gifted and experienced pilot could pull off and Chris admired it from the window of the airlock.
The full impact of Chris piloting the Saint Marie hit her. There were secrets about the ambulance only a few people knew. And there was no time to educate Chris.
Entering the ambulance, Chris saw Homer, still in the corner in sleep mode. Javis had never been told he was aboard and apparently wasn’t familiar enough with the ambulance to recognize an extra piece of equipment. Homer did blend in quite well and looked like he belonged there.
Chris brought the antigrav thrusters on line and released the magnetic anchors. The ambulance was designed for immediate departures, with no warmup time or complicated take-off procedures. He followed Kelly out 45 seconds later, wishing he had her subtle touch and feeling clumsy by comparison.
The two ships sped away from the station. Chris hoped the central computer would stay off line for another few minutes. He got his wish, but only by seconds.
A missile was launched. Chris saw it on the holoscreen. He saw Kelly had brought up her force field and was accelerating to fatal speeds. With the females safely on their way, he decided to do likewise.
I wonder what happens to missiles after losing their targets? he wondered.