Page 16 of Galactic Search and Rescue
Taz grabbed the rail and swung up into the airsled, pretending she hadn’t sensed all the lies. Get the lifesigns out and move on.
Inside the airsled, Rylando was encouraging Shen into Moyo’s crate. “Even if I put all the animals in Moyo’s crate, and abandon the empties, it’s still not enough room for four humans.”
“I can carry the empty crates.” She touched her earwire and subvocalized her next words. “The adults are spiky. I don’t trust them. It’s not a happy family reunion.”
He touched his earlier. “Agreed, but we can’t leave them. Otak says the storage unit reeks of explosives. So do the adults, but that could be because they were in the storage unit for so long.”
She released Moyo’s large crate from its holdfasts and put it in the doorway. “How did Otak get close enough… Oh, I get it. You put him in Moyo’s saddlebags. Clever.” She blew out a frustrated breath. “Not enough evidence to Section 79-A the adults. But I don’t want to leave the kid with them.”
“Yeah, they haven’t threatened our safety, and whatever twist they’ re perpetrating, law enforcement isn’t our job.” He stood with his hands on his hips, frowning at the crates as he spoke out loud. “Damnit. We’re going to have to make two trips.”
A solution occurred to her, but he probably wouldn’t go for it, since it meant being separated from his animals. “If you keep Mariposa and Otak with you, I could carry two crates with the rest of your team.” She pointed a thumb toward the door. “You fly our targets up. I’ll take the ladder.”
Instead of shutting her down, his eyes narrowed in thought. “They mass almost two hundred kilos with their crates. Can you handle that?”
“My suit can carry twice that. Size and weight distribution will be a problem, though. Could we put Moyo in Shen’s crate, and the rest in Lerox’s?”
The corner of his mouth quirked. “They won’t like it, but they’ll put up with it if I reward them later.”
Warmed by his trust, she held four fingers over her heart. “Your team is safe with me.”
He stilled and met her eyes, his expression serious. “I know. You’re the best rescuer Unit 1051 has ever had.”
Taz’s heart skipped a beat. She turned away quickly before she did something stupid, like reach out to him. Desperate for distraction, she hoisted Moyo’s empty crate. “I can strap this to the airsled’s roof if we leave both sets of doors open a crack.” She didn’t dare look at him again until her stupid heart faced reality for once. His words were a frickin’ job performance review, not a declaration of passionate love.
“That would be good. Big crates are expensive.” His voice sounded matter of fact, so she must not have given her turmoil away.
It only took a couple of minutes to pull out one of the sled’s many straps and secure the sturdy crate to the roof. It made the airsled look like a frontier planet’s rural transport kludge, but it didn’t have to stay there for long.
Getting the hooks set on her suit to carry the crates full of animals was easy. Getting the humans and their apparently priceless luggage into the airsled took all her diplomatic skill.
Stramlo refused to stand anywhere near where the animal crates had been. Po commandeered the jump seat, meaning Jhidelle had to cram herself up front between the vehicle’s wall and the hot and vibrating sensor column, and avoid Rylando’s elbow. When the doors opened again, tall Pelvannor would be lucky if she didn’t pop out like a grav ball in play.
With a final sensor check, Taz rose slowly to standing height. “You are very good beasties,” she told her passengers. She raised her camera post so she could see behind her over the top of the smaller crate. After two practice steps and one adjustment, she pinged Rylando. “Mechanized autocab for rescue team Canis Gulo Felis is green-go. Lead on, illustrious Field Commander, sir.”
“Watch it,” he said with a growl, “or I’ll promote you to field commander, too.”
Taz chuckled. “Oh, no, sir! Anything but that, sir!”
With a reverberating whine, the airsled lifted sluggishly, then rotated and floated toward the shaft. She followed, trying to walk with a smooth gait.
The airsled floated into the shaft, then slowly rose. She gave it a few extra seconds, then extended her grab bars to the ladder and let them hold her weight while she stepped onto the closest rung.
Above her, the airsled’s lights illuminated the shaft. Her own lights let her see the wide doubled rungs as she climbed. Scanning each one briefly slowed her down, but she couldn’t afford carelessness. Counting her progress up the rungs helped her manage her impatience.
On her fourteenth step, her suit’s sensory interface reported rising vibrations coming from the rungs. Dust arose.
She swore and pinged Rylando.“Aftershock.”
“I’ll speed up top and come–”
A bone-rattling thump came from above. Falling dust and jagged pieces of heavy blue denscrete accompanied the second and third thumps.
Quelling the instinct to hunch her head and shoulders, she swung herself and her cargo sideways to make them as small a target as possible.
Above her, the airsled stalled. The hatch cover for the left coil turned an ominous pink.
More thumps. Moyo’s empty crate shifted, the strap straining. When it snapped, the crate fell off the airsled and smashed onto the lift below. Helplessly, Taz watched the coil’s hatch door turn lava red. The airsled tilted to one side and started to sink.
