He walked over with only a slight limp. “I don’t need it. Nice glasses. You got a spare gun?”
Thanks to the high-tech lenses, I had forgotten that it was completely dark in here. But watching Loch, I’d never know it. I vowed to get a closer look at his ocular implants before we parted ways.
I handed over the spare pistol, a knife, and a radio earpiece, then turned and ran back down the long hallway. Loch kept up without even a grunt of pain. It had been two and a half minutes since the first drone strike.
I stopped by the door and peeked out. No obvious snipers and no one took a potshot at me. Loch tried to stop me before I stepped outside, but I darted out of reach. “I’m wearing ballistic armor,” I said. “And we need to move.”
No one shot at us as we crossed the plaza to the shelter of the nearby buildings. “We’re meeting Veronica the fence,” I said. “Don’t shoot her unless she has betrayed us.”
“I heard that,” Veronica’s quiet voice said through my earpiece.
Another minute and I slowed. Veronica should be just around the corner. Now was the time of truth: either she’d be there alone, or Richard and his crew would be waiting.
“You think she’ll betray you?” Loch asked.
“It’s a possibility,” I said at the same time she said, “No.” A quick glance around the corner revealed Veronica. An overloaded, tarp-covered sled floated beside her. She saw me immediately and smiled a huge, relieved smile. “Told you,” she said.
The three of us made our way to the wall around the spaceport. I pulled out my portable plasma cutter. “Will your sled go over the wall?”
“Yes,” Veronica said.
That made things easier. Portable cutters didn’t have as much power as their full-sized counterparts. Precious seconds ticked by as I cut a hole big enough for the three of us to squeeze through one at a time.
The timer had climbed past five minutes by the time we made it through the fence. Richard would be at the detention center and he would likely guess our next target. Not to mention the spaceport security forces.
“Can you fight the soldiers on board Richard’s ship or do we need to take the von Hasenberg ship instead?” I asked Loch.
“I can fight,” he said. His heaving chest and pinched brow threatened to undermine his words, but the resolution in his expression said that come hell or high water, he could get it done. I took him at his word.
We arrived at Richard’s ship just as the spaceport alarm sounded. “Stay here,” I said. I climbed the cargo ramp and slid open the control panel. On a whim, I hit the door-open button.
When the door actually started opening, I stared at it in shock. Was the door unlocked because of hubris or because I was about to face a platoon of men? As soon as the door cleared ten centimeters, I pulled a flash-bang grenade and rolled it into the cargo bay. I followed it with one of my modified smoke bombs.
“Masks!”
Veronica handed us each a nose and mouth mask from her bag.
“Give me the foxy,” Loch said. I handed him the injector and he jabbed it in his thigh. The rush would hit in thirty seconds and last for twenty minutes.
“I will need cover,” I said. “I’ll be stuck at the access panel in the cargo bay until I override the ship’s control. Don’t take your mask off even if the smoke clears. If we need to retreat, give me warning.”
He nodded then ducked under the door and disappeared. I took a deep breath, threw back my hood, and followed him. It was time to do or die.
The cargo hold was piled with various pieces of equipment lashed to the floor. Loch was nowhere to be seen and neither were any Rockhurst soldiers. I heard an occasional shot through the earpiece, but Loch was eerily silent.
Once Veronica and her sled cleared the door, I hit the manual close button. “When that closes,” I said, “lock it.” I pointed to the lock control. It wouldn’t keep out someone with the access codes, but it would prevent spaceport security from opening the door as easily as we had.
I dropped my backpack by the door, then found the internal access panel and slid it open to reveal the control terminal. While I had access to the door functions, everything else was locked down.