“There they are,” Danae murmured, indicating a spot somewhere outside the access tube below her perch. She and Jeremy silently lowered themselves to just above the vent, a stout metal grille of overlapping circles. While Danae tapped on the screen of her iPad, Jeremy folded down a band of thin black gauze over his eyes; sidling down below the vent, he peered through.
The ceiling of the cell block was less than half a meter above the vent; the floor lay six meters below it. Recessed light panels cast a dull blue gloom over a short but wide corridor, a trio of blue-gray uniformed guards making staggered patrols up and down the rows of cells, tiny cubbyholes probably no more than three meters by five judging by the spacing between narrow doorways cut into reinforced bulkheads. Of the twelve doorways Jeremy could see, yellow energy seals cascaded in a tight sine down all but three; across from them, faint splotches of greenish light cast on the floor gave away the position of eight more occupied cells. A slight shift of position revealed two more Guado, seated at a monitoring console on a low platform at the closed end of the cell block.
“Security check,” Danae whispered above him.
“Three guards on patrol,” Jeremy replied, “two sitting at a console. They’re all armed with a pistol and a stun baton.”
“Entry door is secured with a coded electronic lock,” Danae supplemented, “combination cycles every six hours. Algorithms … not in the database. Main console has redundant data links directly to the bridge and two security stations on this deck — wait … Samus is analyzing link traffic.” Her display switched to a new diagram. “One surveillance camera at each end of the block. Give the guards a minute to make a round — Samus is recording …” Jeremy watched the three guards march up and down the corridor. “Done. Splicing a video loop … uploading … done.” A pause stretched out into a minute, then two. “Aha. Data link traffic analyzed; Samus is emulating. Data links disabled. Voice communications … disabled. Alarm circuit … heh heh, malfunctioning. Okay, good stuff. We’re clear.” Danae slipped the iPad into a pocket.
“Small problem,” Jeremy growled.
“Problem?”
“The vent is welded on. I may have to kick it out.”
“Maybe not.” Danae descended. She slid her slim black-gloved fingers through the grille and tugged experimentally. Nothing happened. “All right … it should dissolve pretty easily.” Danae straightened her left arm, thumb and pinky touching. Her spellbrand flared briefly, its light muffled beneath the fabric of the glove, leaving a glowing point of white light between her fingertips as it faded. The point of light stretched into a line as Danae spread her fingers, then bowed into an arc along the plane of her hand. Like a film of bubble soap, a translucent glowing sheet of white filled the space defined by the white quarter-circle connecting her thumb and pinky. She extracted the iPad stylus from her pocket, with which she carefully scribed the glyphs Invert, Increase, and Density on the white surface, then tucked the stylus back into its slot. She glanced up at Jeremy.
“Hold that thought,” he whispered. Carefully levering himself up above the vent, he bridged a tube brace to leave his hands free. Peering through the grille, he grasped at the air in front of him for a few moments, then seized an invisible vertical bar, jerked it up and pulled it aside. Danae heard the Guado at the console say “Huh?” a moment before Jeremy turned his hands and jabbed forward; Danae heard an electric snap and crackle, an “Unh!” from the Guado, then the satisfying thump of a body as it struck the deck, followed almost immediately by cries of surprise from the patrolling guards and running footsteps. Jeremy raised one arm as if pumping a victorious fist into the air; but instead of shouting or laughing he only muttered, “Your move!”
Danae reached up and laid her hand against the vent grille, transferring the glowing white glyphs to the metal. The glyphs blurred and faded, briefly making the metalwork appear illuminated from within. Grasping the Softened vent grille with both hands, Danae silently tore it apart as though it were made of gossamer. “After you.”
“Thanks.” Jeremy scrambled out the vent, landing in a crouch next to a trio of very angry Guado. Three stun pistols covered him instantly. Rising cautiously to his feet, Jeremy passed a look of feigned disinterest over the three guards. Seriously unimpressed, one of the guards growled a question.
Blinking in genuine puzzlement, Jeremy turned to face the one who had spoken. Lacking knowledge of the Guado language, Jeremy was limited to pointing and body language for communication: he shrugged and spread his hands in a gesture of helpless incomprehension.
In doing so, he dropped the stun baton he’d been holding up near the ceiling down on one of the Guado guards’ skulls, business-end first. It bounced off his head in a most comical manner; his exclamation of suprise became a gurgle as he crumpled, unconscious, to the deck. At the same time, Jeremy made a claw of his other hand and turned it smartly, as if he were unscrewing the lid from a jar. This had the effect of torquing the remaining stun pistols’ muzzles away from him, making two guards come very close to stunning another when they fired.
Danae landed beside him just then, spellplate open and loaded. The nearer Guado froze as soon as she planted her hand on his chest, leaving the glyphs Negate, Motion and Body etched in white on his blue-gray uniform. She snatched his stun baton out of its holster and lunged at the third Guado. He twisted aside just so she barely brushed him across the ribs with the electrified end, emitting a cry of surprise and pain; his pistol slid out of slender, nerveless fingers and went bouncing into a corner. Grabbing his own stun baton, he lunging at Danae in return. A fencing match ensued between mage and Guado.
Jeremy didn’t observe; he was busy wrestling the stun pistol out of the remaining console jockey’s grip. In moments this endeavor degenerated into a real, physical wrestling match, Jeremy’s strength and weight pitted against the sinewy Guado’s height and long-limbed leverage. It was all Jeremy could do to keep from getting a point-blank bolt to the chest as they rolled across the floor, finally crashing into a wall. Jeremy poured all his concentration on keeping the stun pistol pointed away from his body. Then the furious Guado shifted his weight, meaning to knee Jeremy in the gut. Jeremy reacted by planting his shoulders and elbows against the floor, arching his back so it bumped the Guado away, keeping Jeremy’s solar plexus safe — but giving the Guado room and time to hook a forearm around Jeremy’s throat. He struggled a moment, fighting the urge to gasp for breath, concentrated instead on finding a grip on his attacker. An abrupt twist of his head levered his chin into the crook of the Guado’s elbow, wrenching his neck in the process, making it painful to open his mouth around the forearm formerly crushing his throat. Jeremy bit down hard. His teeth tore into the Guado’s flesh through the fabric of his uniform, blunt tusks piercing deep, ripping an agonized shriek from the Guado’s throat. The pistol dropped from its owner’s long-fingered hand; a moment later Jeremy was free and another Guado lay senseless on the deck, with a bloody forearm and a bruise developing on his temple. Looking over the pistol in his hand, however, he realized that — other than using it as a blunt instrument — he had no idea how to work the damn thing.
Meanwhile, Danae parried the Guado’s wild attacks with a feeling of mild euphoria. Her fencing form was good enough that it took finesse, rather than brute strength, to get past her defense; her opponent had too little of the former and too much of the latter. Eventually he’d tire, but until then his long-limbed jabbing gave her no way in. The euphoria vanished as soon as her baton broke. Damn shoddy Guado workmanship, Danae quipped ruefully to herself. Her defense changed focus to avoiding the Guado’s gleeful flailing; now past trying to zap her, he seemed to be content with bashing her over the head. She retreated several steps, then backed into the outside of the console. She dodged another swipe, tore a display from its gravlock to block the baton, then planted her feet and leaped high, intending to hop over the console’s beveled corner, through the gap provided by the missing display. A sudden yank on her belt threw her behind the console before she could get her footing; she landed stumbling and would have twisted an ankle if she hadn’t conceded the fall. The Guado, his aim suddenly short, bashed the console and broke his own baton.
“Give it up, kiddo,” Jeremy advised, taking aim at the Guado. The guard shot him a glance and did a double take. Realizing what he must look like, brandishing a stun pistol with blood all over his chin, Jeremy favored the guard with a wicked grin. It had, more or less, its intended effect: he dropped the stub of his baton, backed off a couple of steps, turned and sprinted for the door.
“Yeesh,” Jeremy groused. His bluff called, he tossed the useless pistol to Danae, already back on her feet, and cast about for something sturdy to wield. On one side of the entry door, he spied what seemed to be an access panel built into the bulkhead; Jeremy pried off the panel cover and waggled it warningly at the Guado. The guard, for his part, skidded to a stop at the sight of an oblong section of bulkhead bobbling in midair between him and the door. He glanced back nervously; what he saw seemed to make him even more nervous, because he continued trying to approach the keypad beside the door. Jeremy realized after a moment that the guard hadn’t glanced at him, but slightly to his left. He did the same and saw Danae fiddling with the pistol. “You know how to use those things?”
“Sort of. These things aren’t easy to come by.” She whacked the pistol with the heel of her hand.
“So plug him already.”
Danae shot him a dirty look. “There is a stun setting on this, you know,” she informed him, then added under her breath, “somewhere.”
While Jeremy was thus distracted, the Guado scooted around the floating plate and started jabbing at the keypad.
“Oh crap, he’s going for help,” Jeremy said. “Batter up!” He crushed the plate into a tube and used it to thump the guard hard on the forearms, making him jerk back his hands, shoved him away from the door with a strike to the shoulder, and wound up a swing across the chest so hard the poor guard skidded a couple of meters back up the corridor.
“Ah-hah,” Danae said, and fired a stun bolt into the prone Guado’s forehead.
Both operatives whipped around at the sound and motion: Danae’s Paralyze rune had finally worn off the second Guado. Danae fired; the guard dodged. The bolt missed him and Jeremy by centimeters.
“Hey!”
“Sorry.”
Jeremy thrust his makeshift club toward the last conscious Guado. Pinned between the two operatives, it was a matter of moments before he would succumb either to energetic neuromotor disruption or a full-blown concussion. Jeremy was about to administer the coup de grâce when a bolt ricocheted off it and into the Guado’s back. He dropped.
“Nice shot.”
“Uh … thanks.”