Working together, we managed to empty the safe. We also managed to alert the Outsiders. The door"s lock beeped. I glanced at the clock. It had taken us two hours to complete our task.
"Go," I said to Logan. "Get back to level one."
"How?"
"Laundry chute. Wait thirty seconds after you send the last weapons. I"ll let them know you"re coming." I closed the vent and signaled Riley.
More beeps emanated from the door, then pounding and, finally the buzz of a cutter.
"And when can we expect you?" Riley asked.
"I"ll meet you on level five."
"You better," he grumped.
I removed the vent from the heating duct as the door flew open. By the time five people rushed into the room aiming their weapons at me, I had the stun bomb in hand. I recognized Phelen, one of Hank"s supervisors.
"Don"t move," Phelen said.
Counting on my collar"s protection, I yanked the pin on Ivie and Kadar"s stun bomb and rolled it toward the group. They all glanced down, but nothing happened. A dud. d.a.m.n.
"Made you look," I said.
"Ha. Ha." Phelen deadpanned. He gestured to the door with his stunner. "Let"sa""
A bright flash cut him off. I dove for the heating vent as a wave of energy exploded from the bomb. The gla.s.s shards pelted the walls as the men grunted. When quiet returned, I peeked out from the duct. Lying on the floor, Phelen and his team remained motionless. A few sported cuts from the gla.s.s.
I checked to make sure the gashes weren"t too deep and they all had strong pulses. Then I removed all their weapons and anything else that looked interesting, like Phelen"s communication device.
Back in the air shaft, I signaled Riley, warning him of incoming and sent my loot down to the laundry room. I kept one stunner. "Any damage?" I asked him.
"One really annoyed Tech No, but otherwise all came through fine. How many did you neutralize?"
"Only five."
"Better than getting caught. What are you planning now?"
Good question. "I"ll spy around level five. See what we"re up against."
"Be careful. We"re starting our ascent. Bubba Boom is leading the Quad I team, and I have the Quad A stairs."
I ghosted through the air shafts on level five for the next hour. No one guarded the brig. It was my first clue of something strange. Groups of Hank"s supporters raced through the hallways, but I didn"t see any Outsiders. And Lamont failed to answer my hail.
Sloan reported success in the air plant.
Riley and Bubba Boom encountered only a token resistance as they secured each level.
The fight to reach Hank"s control room in Quad A5 lasted a mere five minutes. We met up outside the double doors. They opened without trouble.
The control room appeared the same. Banks of computers. Half completed consoles leaking wires. And Hank, sitting in the big captain"s chair in the center. He was alone.
22.
"RIGHT ON TIME," HANK SAID.
"For what?" I asked.
"Nothing. Absolutely nothing. All thanks to you," he said.
Riley and Bubba Boom flanked Hank, but he was unarmed. All his supporters had been stunned, but a threat still hung in the air.
"Okay, I"ll bite. What are you talking about?" I asked.
"The Controllers have made some changes to their plans. They"ve acknowledged their growing sterility so they"re going to keep that transport full of people alive to breed with. That"s the good news."
"And the bad?"
"They"re going to clean house." Hank swept his arm out, indicating all the people standing in the control room. "They"re going to kill us all."
"How?" Riley asked. "We have the air plant."
"They"re going to hide in those transport ships and turn the power plant off," Hank said.
No power meant no electricity, no heat and no pumps to move the air around. It would be a slow death. So much for not wanting to dispose of corpses.
"How?" I gestured to the computers. "They don"t have control of the network."
"They don"t need all this for control," Hank said. "There"s an antenna on the Outside. That"s what they used to hijack our network." He explained how the Outsiders could communicate with the network without wires.
"Maybe Logan can bypa.s.s the power plant controls," I said. I signaled and asked him to join us.
"Logan"s one sharp fellow," Hank said. "The Controllers are well aware of his knowledge and don"t plan to wait for us to save ourselves."
"Why are you telling us all this?" I asked.
"I"m in the same position you"re in. Since I couldn"t handle one small problem," he glared at me, "I was left behind. Ponife couldn"t handle you either, but that didn"t seem to matter to him." He continued to stare at me. "You know, Karla was right. I should have kill-zapped you long ago. Before Ponife put that d.a.m.n collar on you." Hank mimed shooting me with his finger and thumb.
"Where is Karla?"
"Up with the Controllers. Along with your mother and Jacy."
Worry mixed with relief. Lamont would be safe with the Outsiders. They would need her expertise if they planned to repopulate.
"What did you mean by the Controllers don"t plan for us to save ourselves?" Riley asked.
"They"re not playing around this time. They"re going to open up Gateway and all our air will blow out into Outer s.p.a.ce. I"m guessing it"ll take us four to six minutes to die of asphyxiation."
"You don"t seem upset," I said.
"Wellawhen your saviors turn out to be thugs from the past and you"ve been nothing but a fool, endangering the entire population of Inside, then dying seems insignificant in comparison."
I understood the feeling.
"How do we stop them?" Riley asked.
"You can"t. Not in time," Hank said. "They"re already up in the port."
"And even if the lift is working, we could only get a few people up there at a time. Easy pickings." I considered. "What about their transport? Is it still attached to Gateway?"
"No. They flew it up to the port," Hank said. "All they left is a couple of their s.p.a.ce suits and a bunch of empty gas cylinders."
"s.p.a.ce suits? Can you survive in Outer s.p.a.ce wearing one?" I asked.
"Yes, but that would only save four or five people and not for long. As you said, easy pickings," Hank said.
He was right. Except I hadn"t been thinking along those lines. "Can you install a sheet of metal over Gateway?"
"It"ll still leak air," Hank said.
"But it"ll give us some more time." I glanced at the people who had volunteered to fight. Not many had the arm strength to climb up the Expanse. "And I have an idea. I"ll need those suits, a few volunteers, safety harnesses and some magnets. Can you help us, Hank?"
His considered for a moment, keeping his gaze locked on mine. "Ponife underestimated you. h.e.l.l, we all underestimated you. Yes, I"ll help."
Riley, Sloan and Bubba Boom all volunteered right away. By the time Hank had collected the other supplies we needed, Logan had joined us.
"Logan, do you remember seeing the symbols about the port?" I asked.
"Sure. I read a bunch of them when I was up there. Until the Outsiders came for me."
I explained my plan to him. "Will it work?"
"It should, but I"d better come along to make sure," Logan said.
"It"s suicide," Riley said.
"Do you have any better ideas?" I asked.
"No."
"Then let"s move."
Hank shouted orders and we dressed in the Outsiders" suits. Captain Trava rushed up from the air plant with the gas cylinders now full of our air. We hurried to Gateway before the Outsiders could open it. The code to open it hadn"t changed from when Cog and I had used ita"our first lucky break.
The outer door swung open. Squeezing into the inner room, which wasn"t designed for five people in s.p.a.ce suits, I gave the signal. Hank and his crew closed the door and would seal it with a sheet of metal. Once he finished with that, he had another job to do.
As the room emptied of air, I explained to the others what to expect and not to panic, trying not to let my own fear taint my voice. Of all my adventures, this was the scariest so far. To keep from floating away, we were all harnessed to magnets which clung to the side wall.
I felt light as the door to Outer s.p.a.ce swung open. My stomach rolled as if I fell from a great height. Various exclamations and curses reached me through my receiver.
Funny thing about Outer s.p.a.ce, I couldn"t hear the door as it opened but I could hear Logan"s voice inside my helmet. He thought he was going to get sick.
"If you puke, try not to cover the gla.s.s on your helmet," was Sloan"s advice to him.
The magnets keeping us attached could be turned off by squeezing the handle. I released one magnet and moved it, then the other, working my way to Outside.
The nothingness didn"t seem so empty this time. p.r.i.c.ks of light dotted the blackness. I ignored the beauty behind me and climbed slowly up the side of Inside. The others followed.
"Don"t let go," I said again. "One magnet on the metal at all times."
"Yes, mother," Logan said.
The climb was easy because we were weightless, but difficult due to our c.u.mbersome suits and magnets. I marveled over the audacity of this attempt, at whata"or rather, wherea"we were. On the outside of Inside. In Outer s.p.a.ce. It was humbling, thrilling and terrifying at the same time.
When we finally reached the top of Inside, we all took a moment to drink in the amazing sight of Outer s.p.a.ce and to catch our breaths.
"Okay, Logan. Do your thing," I said.
While Logan hunted for the antenna and the override controls, I signaled Lamont. "If you can, it"s time to start acting like my mother."
The plan was to disable the antenna and then access the override controls for the port"s big bay doors. Once it was activated, the air would empty in the main hangar. From the Video Cameras, we knew the transport full of Insiders remained in the side bay with a dozen Outsiders guarding it.
We hoped the transport of Outsiders was in the hangar. By opening the hangar doors, the bay doors would seal shut, protecting our ship and trapping the rest of the Outsiders in their ship.
Lots of hopes and speculations, but anything was better than waiting around to die.
"It"s a go," Logan said.
The doors widened. Our second lucky breaka"the transport was in the hangar. Figures moved behind that strange black metal, which Hank had called metalastic, a combination of metal and something named Plastic, making the vehicle lighter than if it had been made entirely of metal, but just as strong. It also let in the radiation Lamont had talked about, which was why it was only supposed to be used as a temporary transport.
We climbed down into the hangar before the doors closed. Since we had a limited amount of air in our tanks, we couldn"t keep the hangar doors open. Bubba Boom unhooked his welding gun from his tool belt. Air began filling the hangar. It would take some time before we could remove our helmets.
As Bubba Boom headed toward the transport ship"s access hatch, the Outsiders figured out what we planned to doa"melt the metalastic so they couldn"t open the hatch and escape their ship.
A long thin tube on the underside of the ship swiveled and pointed at Bubba Boom. I yelled for him to duck as the tube spat out bright disks. Our luck had run out.
"Get in close," Riley yelled.
Everyone scrambled to get underneath the ship, hoping the gun had a limited turning radius. Bubba Boom remained flat on the ground. Two more guns spun as if searching for targets. Sloan pulled a wrench from his belt and attacked the one gun. Riley grabbed the other, hanging from it with both hands. And I shoved the handle of a screwdriver into the opening of the last one.
Riley"s gun jerked back and forth, shaking him like a toy. Mine belched. The screwdriver shot out and dented the far wall. Only Sloan had success.
"Take out the rest," I called to Sloan as Riley flew off his. "Before theya"