In slow motion, the five prowlers converged on me, jumping up on the hover-cart. I saw their quad-blasters pivot towards me, sighting on my head.
I took a deep breath, knowing that it would be my last. But all I could feel was the intense pain throbbing in my chest. It was like I had been hit with a sledgehammer.
I’m sorry, I thought.
I’m sorry that I failed.
Failed my father. Failed the mission. Failed Chiraine.
Failed myself.
Tears burned at my eyes, and my ears were ringing so loud I thought I’d go insane. I felt sick to my stomach. I tried to calm myself down so I could die in peace, but my thoughts were racing uncontrollably.
What kind of life had I led?
The last fifteen years were a wasteland of drugs and sex and not giving a shit about anyone except myself. Check that. I hadn’t really given a shit about myself either.
It was pathetic. I was pathetic.
But it would all be over soon.
I tried to get my eyes to focus, but they were bleary from the tears.
I could barely make out the prowlers. I registered their movement. But not towards me.
They were swaying in slow motion. Then stumbling, toppling, falling—like marionettes whose strings had been cut.
What the hell—?
A far-off voice called my name.
But the sound was lost, like a leaf bobbing on the currents of a river. Like the river in my head.
15
Ana-Zhi Agrada shook me awake. “Jannigan, you’re okay.”
What…?
She helped me to my feet. All around me were scattered inert prowlers.
“How?” I gasped. A spasm of pain jolted through my chest.
“EMP jiggler,” Ana-Zhi said. “Perfect when they’re all clustered up tight like that. Took them all out. Also may have glitched your life support. Sorry. But I got it back up and running so you should be fine.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“I just tracked your last position. I knew something was going down when our comm jammed.”
As my suit administered a blast of high-concentration oxygen, my head started to clear.
“My father,” I gasped. “I found him. He’s alive.”
“What are you talking about?”
“My father—”
“You’re still messed up from being shot.”
“No. I’ll show you.”
We made our way back to the depot room and I led Ana-Zhi through the maze of machinery and down to the coupler closet in the pit where my father was.
“Holy shit.”
She checked his vitals same as I had.
“He’s alive.”
“I know,” I said.
“But…how…?”
“His suit kept him alive,” I said. “We need to get him back to the ship.”
Ana-Zhi stood up and activated her comm unit. “Yates, do you read me?”
I heard her voice loud and clear on the group channel. Whatever had jammed our frequency had stopped.
“Yates, come in.”
But there was no answer. A sinking feeling grew in the pit of my stomach.
“Yates!” Ana-Zhi barked, losing patience. “Hap? Anyone?”
“Incursion team, do come in.” The voice was Obarral’s.
“Ana-Zhi, here. Have you heard from Yates or Galish?”
“Negative, Captain.”
“Keep trying them. Use the multiband. And let me know when you find them.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Ana-Zhi used her scanner to try to locate Yates and Galish, but they weren’t coming up.
“Something’s screwed here,” she said.
“I think I know why Yates isn’t answering,” I said.
“Why?”
I quickly explained my theory about Yates intentionally leaving my father to die. At first Ana-Zhi thought I was crazy, but I could tell she was thinking about it.
“We’ll talk about this later,” she said. “We need to get back. Find out what’s going on. And we need the sled to get Sean back to the ship.”
We headed west past the four-way intersection back towards the depot room. Ana-Zhi kept trying to get Yates and Galish on the comm, but there was no answer.
“This doesn’t make sense,” she muttered.
But, to me, it made perfect sense. Yates knew we were on to him.
Ana-Zhi led the way back into the depot with the hatch down to the gallery. Near the archway into the depot, something caught my eye. There were bootprints in the dust. Mine, Ana-Zhi’s, and then another set.
“Check this out.” I shone my hand-lamp at the ground. There was a set of prints heading north. I pulled up the topo on my Aura to confirm my suspicion. “That’s Yates. He’s going for the Kryrk.”
Ana-Zhi started to contradict me, then stopped. I think she was coming around to the realization that something wasn’t right with Yates.
“Do you think Galish went with him?” I asked.
“For his sake, I hope not.” She loosened the RB in her holster. “Let’s get him.”
It was fairly easy to follow Yates’s tracks. They led west down the corridor for a hundred meters or so, then north into another depot room. This one didn’t have any machinery, other than some dead hover-carts, but it did have a dozen or so cargo tunnels fanning off to the north. We just followed the bootprints.
It wasn’t long before we reached another gallery—the one where the Kryrk was located.
Ana-Zhi double-checked her topographics. “This is the place.”
Five minutes of searching led us to a vault with a half open door.
The vault was empty.
“Son of a bitch,” Ana-Zhi said. “He stole the Kryrk.”
“We need to alert the ship.” I had visions of Yates—and maybe Galish—murdering Obarral and Chiraine. Unless the ship’s engineer was in on it as well.
“Freya, come in.”
There was no answer.
“Freya!”
Nothing.
Ana-Zhi cursed. “We need to get back to the ship. What the fuck is going on?”
We jogged back down the cargo tunnel, through the east/west corridor, and back to the depot room. Something had been nagging at me as we jogged and it finally came to me.
“There were none of Yates’s bootprints going back this way,” I said.
“What?”
“We’ve been following his trail. He went to that other gallery, took the Kryrk, but didn’t come back.”
Ana-Zhi looked confused for a second. Then she said, “He must have found another way down.
