At first, the escape had gone brilliantly.
They moved swiftly though the desolate corridors, dimly lit, doors sagging open, scattered with evidence of fighting — abandoned barricades, scorch marks on the walls, bullets littering the ground, in stretches enough to trip you up.
There were bodies, invariably Jurist security forces in various states of contorted rigor mortis. Then, suddenly, the lights came up full strength, and the doors all shuddered and sank into their housing, mute and closed.
About five minutes later the alarms blared to life, a series of low, bludgeoning tones, and an announcement: “All nonessential personnel, please return to your quarters. Please return immediately. All nonessential personnel …”
They ran through the din and were met at the transit hub by a full squad of Godless regulars, armed and armored, and as the bullets flew, pointlessly, Marchand broke ranks and fled back around the bend and up to a service corridor iris hatch.
He was sure at least one of the Godless would follow, and it turned out to be that two did, ambling lazily up out of the rapidly concluding melee, playing their hellish weapons over his brother Jurists, rendering them insensate and twitching on the floor.
Marchand ducked through the hatch as a clump of plasmic discharge hissed inches from his ear, impacting on the wall opposite in a shower of sparks and spattered ore.
“Set it to stun! Set it to fucking stun!” came a voice, amplified, hollow. “We want this guy alive, confound it! Heart still beating — please!”
“Oh, don’t you worry, just havin’ some fun, Carly, that’s all. Just a little fun …”
“Just set it to stun, please? They got plans for this one, Marchand.”
“I know all about this guy. I watch the threevee, I read the Web. He’s a big fish, all that means you gotta play out the line a little. Give ‘im a bit of a fight, is all.”
Marchand raced down the servicorridor, boots clattering against the hard metal floor, and positioned himself behind an upturned catering robot. There was smashed crystal and toothpicks and delicate h’ors d’oeuvres scattered amid smears of spilled, drying wine.
The voices followed him down the corridor, bantering, intrusive, expanding to fill every available space. At the end of the corridor was a corpse, the solemn judiciary gray and black stripe mottled by char and gore.
The door was pitted, shell casings littered the floor. He lunged towards the control panel, fell back at the sight of tangled, sparking wire and fused override switches, spun and dived again for the catering robot just as his pursuers rounded the corner, dark silhouettes in that unnerving, featureless armor of theirs.
He took aim, knowing full well what would happen, squeezed off a few rounds, saw the slugs literally halt in their tracks and clatter harmlessly to the ground.
“… just rough ‘im up a little,” the one who wasn’t Carly drawled, leveling the damnable energy gun at Marchand. A sizzling bolt flashed through the air and dissipated on the chassis on the ‘bot.
Then another one, and it connected, clipped him on the temple, and he was thrown back, rigid, numbness spreading down through his neck and face and out into his arms, a sweeping fringe of blackness just beyond that.
He felt the next shot like a cool splash of water, and Carly’s voice filled his ears like inky fluid suffusing though some viscous medium:
“See? Even on stun, it messes ‘em up real good.”
Coming soon: The Separation — Chapter Ten
copyright (c) by Josh Wilson