Endurance: The Complete Series Page 14

  “I don’t know.” Okoro scratched his chin. “It seems a little far-fetched.”

  “I buy it,” said Chris.

  “The reason I bring this up is because we can use it to our advantage.” Viktor tucked his thumbs into his belt. “Whether or not this was part of Killian Yang’s plan, he will not let the opportunity pass him by. We can lure him out by letting him know that we are present on Enceladus.”

  “Use you as bait?” Withers asked. “I don’t like that. Cassius already tried to shoot you.”

  “He succeeded,” Areva said from beneath the desk. “I don’t like this either, Viktor.”

  Okoro seemed more open to the idea. “How do you plan to let him know we’re here?”

  “A man this high up in the Uprising does not settle down somewhere without ensuring he knows everything that happens in the area. We will conduct our investigation as we would normally. If he is here, he will find us.”

  “You’ll wear armor, I assume,” said Withers.

  Viktor nodded. “We will also set our intercoms to an open channel with the ship, to make sure we stay in contact. With your permission, I would also like to bring Dickens and Dante with me. I know they are not part of the uniform, but they are the weapons with which I am the most comfortable.”

  He was ready for an argument, but the captain only hesitated for a moment before he agreed. “That’s fine. I’ve seen your marksmanship, and I want you well-armed if we run with this plan. I know you’ve got Areva and that big guy from O&I watching your backs, but I want every other qualified officer on this ship organized into teams to keep an eye on you, too. We’ll form a perimeter, and when Yang’s men move in, we’ll get them before they can get you.”

  * * *

  Ten hours later, Viktor and Okoro walked away from yet another home and headed back down the street. They were in one of the tunnels that made up the suburban area of Portsmouth City on Enceladus. Viktor could smell salt water and assumed they were near one of the moon’s subterranean oceans. They’d chosen their position on purpose; they could maintain a more secure perimeter here than they could in the tightly packed city proper. The low ceiling of the suburban tunnel and its limited number of exits left few opportunities for someone to sneak up unnoticed. The road could potentially cause a problem, but the officers on the perimeter should spot any approaching vehicles in time to warn Viktor and Okoro of a drive-by. Viktor doubted Yang would try to kill them with such an imprecise method anyway. No, whoever came would come on foot, giving the perimeter enough time to close in and arrest them.

  The big guy from O&I sat on a bench on the opposite side of the street, keeping an eye on them over the top of his computer. Areva was out of sight, which surprised no one. The rest of the ship’s officers who had a Defensives ranking of two or higher (except Captain Withers, who stayed behind to coordinate everything from the ship, and an officer named Nina, who had food poisoning) were dispersed throughout the neighborhood to maintain the perimeter around Okoro and Viktor. The local police department had insisted on putting some of their own people on the team as well, and as a gesture of cooperation, Captain Withers had agreed.

  “Still nothing,” said Okoro as they approached the next house—a medium-sized home styled with swooping lines and soothing colors. “Nobody’s seen anything, and Yang hasn’t showed. We might be wrong about our presence luring him out.”

  “There is still time.” Viktor rang the doorbell, and a few moments later an older man, probably in his nineties, answered.

  The two officers flashed their badges at him. He looked unimpressed. “Can I help you?”

  “Yes.” For what felt like the hundredth time that day, Viktor pulled up the pictures of Killian Yang and Cassius the assassin on his pocket computer. “Have you seen either of these men?”

  The old man studied the photos for a few seconds. “No, can’t say that I have. What’d they do?”

  Okoro answered that one. “We traced a transmission between them to this area of Enceladus. Did you receive …”

  “What, sending messages is illegal now?”

  “No, the message was …”

  “Seems like every time I turn around, the government’s got its nose in something new. I moved out here to avoid those kinds of intrusions.”

  “Sir, the message itself isn’t …”

  “Tell me, do you read my mail now, too?”

  “No, sir. I promise you that the UELE respects your privacy.”

  “Good. Then leave.” The man shut the door in their faces.

  Okoro sighed. “I really don’t think Yang is coming, Ivanokoff. We should head back.”

  Viktor looked back at the bench across the street, where the big guy from O&I still sat watching them. “We may have alerted them. Your bodyguard is not being very subtle.”

  “At least mine is here. Where’s yours?”

  “Here,” Areva said from the bushes to the left of the door.

  Okoro jumped. “Seriously, that’s creepy.”

  Viktor kept watching the big guy on the bench. Was it just him, or had the bodyguard held that same pose for a long time? His pulse quickened as a disturbing possibility occurred to him. “Areva, watch from here,” he said. He headed down the driveway toward the street.

  Okoro caught up with him halfway across the road. “What’s wrong?”

  “I think your bodyguard is dead.”

  They reached the bench and looked down. The big guy still didn’t move. Viktor checked for a pulse, but felt nothing. He circled the bench and saw a small, neat hole burned in the back of the bodyguard’s head—a zap from an energy rifle. He hadn’t felt a thing. In his sitting position, death hadn’t even made him drop his computer.

  “They must’ve figured out he was with us.” Okoro looked up and down the street. “Can’t tell where they shot from, but they aren’t going to show up now. I’ll call off the perimeter. The local force is going to want to run the investigation on this one.”

  Viktor studied the corpse. Something didn’t make sense about it. “Why kill him?”

  “What?”

  “If they saw that he was part of a surveillance team, why would they kill him? Why not simply leave the area? Why let us know they were here at all?”

  “I don’t know. They’re Uprising. They don’t always make sense.”

  “No, but they usually do.” Viktor looked toward the row of houses lining the street. “What was unique about this man?”

  “I didn’t get to know him.”

  “Neither did I. If we assume he was not personally a target, what was unique about him?”

  “Ivanokoff, you’re not Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Perhaps not, but I have read all of his stories. He was positioned near the street.”

  “What?”

  “That is the uniqueness. He was the only one on the surveillance team positioned near the …”

  The whirring sound of a low-altitude hover vehicle rose from around the corner, just as Viktor heard his earpiece chirp with an incoming page from someone on the team. He didn’t need to answer the call to know it was a warning. He drew Dante from his belt. “Okoro, move away from the road!”

  The next few seconds blurred together. Viktor shoved Okoro toward the houses, but the other man didn’t move quickly enough. A black hover vehicle rounded the turn and came to a sudden stop in front of the bench. Three men in full-body armor and face masks jumped out of the vehicle, right next to the two officers. Viktor brought Dante up but only had time to fire one round before the assailants moved in. His bullet hit one of the men in the chest, but it only elicited an annoyed grunt as it struck his armor.

  The man he’d shot aimed a small energy pistol at him and fired, but Viktor saw it coming and dove behind the little protection offered by the bench. The lance of energy impacted harmlessly into the pavement.

  Viktor crouched in a combat stance and raised Dante to fire again. He peered over the top of the bench and saw the three men hustle Okoro, who looked un
conscious, into the hover. The door slammed shut behind them, and the vehicle sped off. Viktor stood and aimed at the retreating car, but with Okoro inside and so many civilian homes around, he didn’t want to risk ricocheting a shot.

  Areva appeared at his elbow. “I’m sorry, it was all too fast. I hit one of them in the back, but it didn’t even slow him down.”

  “They took Okoro.”

  “I saw.”

  “We must follow them.”

  “How? We’re on foot.”

  Viktor looked toward the house of the old man he’d interviewed not five minutes earlier. More specifically, he looked at the driveway. “Follow me.”

  * * *

  “We just stole a car,” Areva said. She slouched down a bit further in the passenger seat and looked over at Viktor. “We stole a car, Viktor.”

  “Commandeered.”

  “That’s stealing.”

  “But legal.”

  “Barely.”

  Viktor executed a sharp turn and continued following the black hover that had abducted Okoro. It had no identification number, but the back fender bore a distinctive dent that made it recognizable. Also, the driver was speeding and weaving through the tunnels of Enceladus like a madman. That made him stand out a little.

  Viktor kept his eyes on the road and his target. “If we had not left immediately, they would have escaped. We will return the hover once we are finished.”

  “We could have at least brought backup.”

  “The other officers were dispersed throughout the neighborhood. We had no time to wait for them.” Viktor tapped the intercom interface attached around his ear and said, “Subject is heading back toward the center of the city. He may be trying to reach the spaceship parking lots.”

  “Understood,” said Captain Withers’s voice. “I’m keeping the local office updated. I still can’t believe you stole a car, Lieutenant.”

  Viktor ignored the comment as he increased the altitude on his hover in order to hop over a slower-moving vehicle. In the rearview, he saw the other driver gesticulating furiously at him.

  “Dispatch is going to be livid,” Areva said.

  “They already hate us.”

  “They’ll hate us more than usual.”

  “It was technically legal. They cannot punish us.”

  “Not officially. But they can do something else.”

  “We already work on the Endurance, Areva. What else could they possibly do?”

  “Not let you transfer back to Org Crime,” she said quietly.

  The thought of losing that opportunity gave Viktor myriad conflicting emotions, but he shoved them aside. “That may never have been an option.”

  “Why not?”

  “The abduction of Okoro does not make sense. If Killian Yang wanted revenge, the hit men should have simply shot him. They should have shot both of us.”

  “I thought one of them did shoot you. The second time, I mean.”

  “He missed. And he was too preoccupied with Okoro to try again.”

  “Maybe Yang wants to take revenge himself.”

  “Then why not take both of us? Why leave me behind? I was the one who killed his nephew. Okoro was just a member of the team.” Viktor shook his head. “There is something else afoot.”

  Areva chuckled. “Did you really just say ‘afoot’?”

  “Okoro made a Holmes reference. It is on my mind.” Viktor wove around a caravan of hover bikers and hit an empty stretch of tunnel. He increased his speed, hoping to get in front of the other hover and cut it off before the road cluttered up again, but it seemed the Uprising operatives had the same idea. Viktor only closed the distance between them by a small amount before the tunnel ended in the underground dome that contained the downtown area of Portsmouth City.

  As far as cities went, it was tiny. The tallest buildings only reached three stories—nowhere near the grandeur of Median or Tokyo or New York. The stone ceiling only cleared the buildings by about three meters. Even the domed cities on the moon dwarfed it by comparison. But the dome’s small size and the tightly packed buildings somehow produced the same claustrophobic effect as the biggest metropolises on Earth. Strange what effect proportions could have on the senses.

  Captain Withers’s voice came through the intercom after Viktor again reported their position. “Local law enforcement has set up barricades around the spaceship lots, and they’re blocking off some of the major streets, too. We should be able to stop them from getting away. Just don’t let them lose you, or they might double back.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  They chased the Uprising vehicle up and down the city streets, although they couldn’t tell whether the other car wanted to lose them or simply reach its destination. “We are turning from Eighteenth onto Wood,” Viktor said into his intercom as he caught sight of the unfamiliar street signs.

  “That’s right near the lot where we parked the Endurance,” Withers said. “If they head down Sixteenth next, they’re going straight for it.”

  “You don’t think they’d try to steal the ship, do you?” asked Areva.

  “The Endurance?” Viktor shook his head. “Our security system is too good. They would never get past the airlocks.”

  “Tell me about it,” Withers said over the open intercom channel. “Even the people who are supposed to be on the ship have trouble with those.”

  “It is more likely that they have their own ship waiting to take off. But the local barricade will stop them.”

  “It’d better,” Withers said. “I don’t have anybody on the ship to send out to help. All of our defensives people are still stuck at that neighborhood where you left them.”

  “Sixteenth!” Areva said, pointing out the window. “They turned on Sixteenth!”

  “You were right, sir,” said Viktor into his intercom. “They are coming straight for you.”

  He peeled around the corner, following the other vehicle as closely as possible. Far ahead, he saw a standard three-level barricade blocking the road—concrete walls and a ground car on the street, as well as two pairs of police hovers occupying the air above. Behind all the hullaballoo, he could see the spaceship parking lot, crowded with vehicles.

  The Uprising hover didn’t slow down. If anything, it sped up and began increasing its altitude.

  “What’s he doing?” Areva asked. “He’s going to ram the barricade! Probably at the third level!”

  Viktor watched the hover’s trajectory. “No, he is …”

  “Aiming for the rooftops,” Areva finished his realization with him.

  Viktor nodded and began increasing his own altitude as well. “I will follow him.”

  “You’ll have to switch altitudes fast. The dome ceiling only looks about three meters up. If the car is still set to a ten-meter height when you put it on top of the building …”

  “We will die. I know.” He glanced at her. “Do not worry. This will work. If it does not, at least it will be quick.”

  Areva exhaled a short breath, but nodded. “Good luck.”

  Both hovers climbed past the second and third stories of the buildings, rising until their tops nearly brushed the roof of the dome. The barricade continued to come closer and closer, and Viktor began to worry that the Uprising men did, indeed, plan to crash into the vehicles ahead and go out in a blaze of glory. He could see the police hovers positioning themselves to absorb the impact with the least amount of damage possible, for all the good that would do.

  At the last second, the Uprising hover swung to the right and hopped onto the tops of the buildings lining the street. They shot straight up for a fraction of a second, and Viktor feared they would crash into the roof and destroy themselves, but whoever was in control had quick instincts. They shifted to a ground-level altitude, and the hover evened out, zooming forward a foot or so off the tops of the buildings.

  Viktor took a deep breath. “Our turn.” He jerked the controls in a hard right and followed the other hover’s path to jump on top of the r
ow of buildings.

  He felt the jolt as the hover sensed ground immediately beneath itself and shot into a rapid ascent. His stomach flew down into the floor as he punched at the hover’s altitude controls to set it back to the lowest flight level.

  For a moment, he didn’t think he’d done it in time. The ceiling took up the entire view through the front windshield. Its smooth, domed surface threatened an imminent impact. Then the front of the vehicle tilted downward, and he saw the row of buildings extending in front of him. The top of the hover grazed the dome, but the impact only caused a slight bump. The angle of the hover evened out, Viktor’s stomach returned to its proper place, and he knew that he’d done the maneuver properly.

  Areva looked up at the ceiling, then over at Viktor. “Good thing we stole a short car.”

  Up ahead, the Uprising vehicle shot over the edge of the last building in the row and dropped out of sight. It briefly looked as if the driver forgot to change altitudes and plummeted into the ground, but a second later the car reappeared at a high hover, flying over a row of spaceships in the parking lot.

  Viktor hit the accelerator and followed them, adjusting from rooftops back to ground far more easily than he had done the reverse. He set the vehicle back to a low hover altitude and threaded his way between the ships instead of going over them. They quickly passed out of earshot from the street and disappeared amidst the jungle of parked ships.

  “I am letting them think they lost us,” he explained to Areva. “They will have to board their spaceship from the ground. With the barricade in place, no civilians can access the lot, so if we find a ship prepared for takeoff, we will know it is theirs and can wait for them.”

  “Like that one?” Areva sat up enough to point out the window to a small, family-sized ship with its airlock open and a boarding staircase situated next to it. Then she slid back down in her seat.