Stolen Flyght – Chapter 21

That’s it. I’m done. It’s been one crazy and insane finding after another in this place, and I’m ready to be rid of it all. If I had a flamethrower, I’d be setting fire to the whole damned base.

I push Nina along in front of me as we climb the stairs to the control room. If she wants off this frozen rock, then she’ll be following my orders from now on.

“Get changed. We’re blowing this place up and getting the hell out of here.”

“Blowing it up?” Lia asks, her voice climbing.

“Wait,” Gloria insists, pulling me to the door and away from everyone else. “If there are artifacts down there from distant systems, then there could be people here from distant systems as well, trapped without a way home if you blow this thing up.”

I stare her down as I wave Carlos to me. I hand him the datapad I’ve taken, and he slips it into his backpack before returning to Jinzo. If anyone knows what to do with it, he will. I zip open the hazmat suit and stuff the emblems into my bra.

“Look, I know I’ve been a pain in the ass since our first meeting,” Gloria says, and I’m taken aback by her candor. “But can you imagine being trapped here without a way home? Imagine coming here to retrieve your stolen items and then never seeing your family again?”

Yeah, that does sound super shitty.

To Gloria’s rear, Nina is stepping out of her hazmat suit. I can see the military career woman, the curious scientist, the loving mother, and the hard soldier in her all at once. She was both attracted to the allure of the jump gate and repulsed by it. She wants to use it for exploring, and she wants to enjoy its treasures. But she doesn’t want to be seen as a plundering pirate. She can’t have it both ways.

“Gloria, I have no doubts that the military will go full throttle with this experiment. In fact, I would wager real credits that this is not the only jump gate portal they’ve built. And I’ll also guess they’ll figure out how to visit each place more than once. Right now, they’re like a man in the dark, fumbling around, but eventually, someone will turn on the light.” I grab her upper arm and squeeze. “We blow this up, and it will give us the time and distraction we need to get the hell out of here.”

She sighs and drops her head. “I don’t want you to be right about this, but I know you are.”

I finish getting out of my hazmat suit while Gloria watches me.

“You know, they told me that some land heiress would be running this mission, and I didn’t believe you could handle it.”

I toss my hazmat suit aside. “Yeah, well, you and me both. This shit is nuts.”

She smiles at me, a genuine smile, and an ally appears where there used to be an enemy.

“Let’s finish this together,” I say to her. “You and me.” I gesture between us.

“A team?” she asks, lifting her eyebrows.

“Yeah. For real this time.” I hold back a smile, but I know it’s shining in my eyes.

“You’ve got a deal, Vivian.”

The mood cools as Jinzo and Carlos come running into the room.

“We’ve got three minutes to get the hell away from this place before it all comes crashing down.” Jinzo jumps out of his already unzipped suit and chucks it to the side.

Carlos sits on the bench, and Lia snaps his suit’s legs down and off.

We tumble out into the corridor. With a smaller party now, we should be able to sneak past guard patrols if we need to. But we don’t have muscle anymore, which could be a problem. Jinzo and Lia can fight. Gloria and Nina, too, now that I think about it. Let’s face it. I’m the only one here incapable of defending myself. I should really fix that.

If we make it out of this alive.

The process through the security door back to the stairwell that leads to sublevel five takes all of our available time. The lights flicker, and the floor rumbles right before everything goes dark in the corridor.

“Hey!” Carlos bangs on the door between the security chamber and his exit to the corridor. “Nothing’s working in here!”

Nina looks up at the emergency lighting. “Wait,” she says, raising her finger in the air before running the opposite direction to the end of the hall. I’m about to stop her and bring her back when she pulls the fire alarm switch.

Klaxons bellow, and red lights flash.

“Warning. Fire detected in sublevel six. Prepare for evacuation procedures.”

The security doors zip open, and Carlos blinks in surprise. “It’s really that easy?”

He laughs.

Panels open in the ceiling, and my stomach sinks right before gas and foam pour down on us. Everyone screams and throws their arms over their heads. Carlos slips and falls straight on his ass, taking down Eamon with him. Gloria and Skylar crash into each other. My feet slide underneath me, and I careen into the nearest wall.

“I jinxed it!” Carlos is behind me, crawling on his hands and knees… and coughing. My lungs burn, too. I cough, and I can’t stop.

“Come on!” Nina yells. She doubles-over coughing.

The floor jumps, and the hallway far behind us, past the open security doors, bursts into flames. The fire suppression equipment erupts again, drowning the hallway in gas and foam.

Carlos and I lock arms and push harder to move. Wedging our feet into the intersection of the wall and floor, we glide forward until we’re past the barrage of foam. Nina opens the door at the end of the hallway, and we all fall into the stairwell.

I collapse forward and don’t stop crawling until I reach Jinzo. I’m so thankful he was not back there when the place exploded.

“What did you do?” I ask between coughs. I can barely breathe; my lungs burn and my eyes water.

“Battery. Overload.” He hacks into his arm and turns on his side. “They may… be able… to dig it out.”

Nina struggles to take in a long breath. “The burning will pass. It’s not harmful to humans. Well…” She coughs a few times. “Not long-term.”

Skylar gets to her feet and shakes the foam off her arms and hands. “How are we going to get out of here like this?” She coughs and wheezes.

“One floor up, back on five” — Nina points up and coughs — “we can change into something else. But that’s not our biggest problem.”

She clears her throat a few times, and the coughing subsides.

The more clean air I pull into my lungs, the better. I’m coughing enough to make my eyes water and clear out the gas and foam from them too.

Gloria tries to stop coughing long enough to listen. “Fire teams are on their way.”

When I strain to stop coughing, I can hear the boots pounding on the stairs a few floors up.

“Come on. We have to go.” I pick Carlos up and shove everyone to the stairs.

Slipping on the first flight, we shuck off enough foam to move without crashing into walls and falling down the stairs.

Jinzo peers up the stairwell. “They’re coming from two floors up.” He looks behind us at the mess we made on the stairs. “We can’t cover this up.”

Nina scans herself and opens the door to sublevel five. “Doesn’t matter. They’ll follow us eventually, but the fire is a top priority.”

Sublevel five is blessedly quiet. Everyone must have evacuated when the alarms went off and the building started shaking. We pass open offices, and when I look inside a few, coffee cups are spilled, lamps are knocked over, and art has fallen off of walls. The building shakes again, and the lights flicker.

Shit. This is bad. But I told them to burn it all to the ground…

The building rocks side to side, and an office at the far end of the hall explodes. We all dive to the floor of the hallway. Flames shoot from the door and climb up the walls. The fire suppression system in there erupts and attempts to put out the fire. It’s useless, though. The fire is too hot, and it’s climbing up the floors, one at a time.

The lights blink out, and all the emergency lights come on. They’ve cut power off to this floor, and that means we’ll only be able to use the stairwells to get out.

“This way,” Gloria calls. I look up from my spot on the floor, and she’s already on her feet, heading away from the flaming office. “There’s a gym on this floor, and they provide clothes and towels for everyone.”

Is it wrong that I want to cower where I am and wait for someone to come rescue us?

I get up anyway.

The gym is on the opposite side of the building from the portal gate, so at least we’re safe for a few minutes. The workout clothes are all long and short sleeve shirts and shorts and sweatpants, so I slip out of the cover-alls and into a long-sleeved shirt and pants, and I use the towels to wipe any last foam from my arms and shoes.

“Everyone grab an extra towel,” I say, stuffing a clean one in my back waist. “We may need them along the way.”

I remember an old science fiction story that put a lot of emphasis on towels needed on future worlds, and I figure it’s worth it to carry one. I can use it to disguise myself or protect myself. Jinzo raises his eyebrows as he grabs his towel and follows along.

“Which way?” Carlos asks at the door. “If we can make it to a section that still has power, I can signal to our escape team.”

“You haven’t done that yet?” Nina asks. She curses and closes her eyes. “Of course not. I’ve had you in custody.”

Carlos shrugs. “I didn’t realize we were going to blow the place up.”

“There’s a stairwell on the opposite side of the wing.”

We head away from the fire, but it won’t matter in about five minutes. The air is thick with heat and smoke no matter how much the ventilation system is sucking away. I’m not coughing anymore from the fire suppression system, but my lungs tickle from the smoke. We need to get out of here.

Jinzo, Carlos, and Eamon have to strong-arm the stairwell door open. The building has shaken and shifted enough for doors to stick in uneven jambs. My legs burn as we climb four levels to sublevel one. I’m not in the best shape, and it shows.

“What’s going on?” Someone asks as we come through the door with a burst of smoke.

I shield my eyes from the lights. They’re on here, which means they have power, so Carlos should be able to signal for our rescue.

“Everyone should evacuate. There’s a fire on sublevel five.” Nina points to the stairwell that leads to the main levels. I hold back a sarcastic comment about how the fire is actually on a secret sublevel six these people don’t even know exists. “The whole place could blow at any minute.”

This sends people scrambling in a panic for the nearest set of stairs.

And now we don’t have freedom of movement anymore.

Gloria throws her arms up in the air. “Did you have to tell them before we got to the stairs?”

Nina clenches her jaw.

“Never mind,” I say, reaching over to place my hand on her chest and keep her from lunging at Gloria.

Now we’re stuck. There are hundreds of people streaming from offices and common rooms to the stairwells in front of us, and the other stairwell is towards exploding sublevel six. Why aren’t there more staircases here? Because they relied on elevators instead.

“We can join the people taking these stairs —” I start, but Gloria waves my suggestion away.

“If they panic, we’ll be crushed with everyone else. And we don’t have our android escorts with us any longer.” She points to the crowd. Half the people heading to the stairs are the androids.

We back away from the crowd as a group. Step, step, step. Each step backwards takes us out of sight of this crush of humanity that could turn on us at any moment. A man in a military police uniform glances my way. His eyes coast over our group, and he jerks as if to leave the stream of moving people and confront us, but the flow is too swift. He’s carried off before he can come after us.

Lia’s eyes are locked on the officer being swept away. “We’re in trouble if we stay here any longer.”

She’s right. In the depths of the station with Nina’s old super-soldier androids, we could have gotten away with no android pairs. In the common areas, no such luck.

There’s no time to get Carlos to an office to signal for help. No time to debate our situation and make a careful choice. It’s fight-or-flight time.

I choose flight.

“Let’s go.”

It’s taking far too long to leave this base. We need out, and we need it right away. The building shakes, something explodes, and the ceiling breaks away about ten meters to our right. People scream and throw their arms up, but it’s not enough to stop them from being flattened by the structure.

Gloria tries to dash forward to help.

“No!” I grab the back of her shirt and hold on. “Don’t. You’ll end up in a military prison.”

“I can help. I have medical skills.” She rips out of my grip, but Jinzo steps in front of her right before another piece of the roof caves in and traps them even further.

We all jump to the side as the stream of people heading for the stairs shifts like a school of fish. Tears fill Gloria’s eyes as I drag her by her arm in the direction Nina is heading.

Smoke is now billowing out of the other set of stairs, and the visibility in the giant room is decreasing. Screams pierce the air between warning sirens. Panic bubbles up from my stomach, and my thought processes freeze.

This is madness. We’re never going to get out of here.

“Where else can we go?” Eamon asks, breaking the group out of a trance. “I don’t want to die here. I have too much more to do.”

“Yes.” I turn Gloria from the carnage. “I have a farm and consorts I want to return to.”

I touch Eamon’s arm as I pass. “Sorry.” I know my apology isn’t enough, but I got him out of the brig. He shrugs, but his eyes are distant and shocked by what’s going on around us.

“Where else can we go?” I shout over the screams and sirens.

Nina’s face is a blank slate, her posture grim and defeated.

But only for a moment.

She snaps into combat mode right before my eyes. A woman of her stature in the military has been through multiple conflicts in her time. She may be ready to retire, but she has a wealth of strength and knowledge to draw on. This woman has a large family and still held a successful career. She gave birth to strong and caring Gus. I may not trust her, but I’ve grown to respect her over the last few hours.

“We’ll move away from this area and assess our options,” she says, waving us all forward.

Gloria marches along next to me, keeping her eyes to the front and her jaw tight. I glance at her a few times as I hold on to Jinzo. My knee is still smarting, but adrenaline has kept me upright and moving.

“You’re going to be okay.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Gloria’s voice is far off. She blinks a few times and looks around. “Wait. We’re on sublevel one?” She turns around as she walks. “Yeah. Sublevel one. Corridor 2B.” Her gaze travels along the ceiling. “Here. Stop.”

Nina’s feet grind to a halt. “What? What’s here?” She looks around. “Nothing. Look. We’ve got to keep moving. I thought maybe we could open the elevators and climb up the cables.” Nina points to the silent elevators at the end of the hall.

“No. Here,” Gloria says, pointing at an air duct. “If we enter the air shaft here, we’ll come to a service duct that we can climb to level one.”

Air duct? Most of the air ducts in this place have smoke coming out of them.

But not this one.

“Where does it go? It’s not spewing smoke.”

A small smile returns to Gloria’s face. “This duct stops here but goes up into the upper layers of the base.” She folds her arms over her chest. “But not before it stops at the hangar bay.”

The hangar bay.

And the Amagi.