Page 13 of Escape from Nova Nine
The griffin launched from Zade’s shoulder and flew toward the airlock. It veered away at the last moment and circled back around toward Zade.
“Blowout!” Sutrio’s voice was loud and sharp.
Julke’s stomach went leaden as she scrambled to her feet, stumbling to avoid the still-cycling scanner.
Sutrio slowed only to pull the cutter’s emergency cutoff, then bolted toward the airlock.
Julke grabbed Zade’s shoulder and pointed to the airlock where Sutrio was headed. “Run!”
The man rose fast and lunged forward, only pausing to help Lantham get off the jig’s ladder. Astonishingly, the stealth griffin latched itself onto Zade’s shoulder again as he ran.
At the airlock, Sutrio punched the emergency exit controls. Both doors irised open. “Blowout!” she yelled again as she charged into the tunnel.
By the time Julke passed the door, the guards were already ahead of Sutrio. The bright lights on their mech suits made them easy to track.
The angled blue stripes of the extraction tunnel made her dizzy, especially when the tunnel randomly changed direction and orientation. Down suddenly became sideways, but she had to keep running. Focusing on the gravity-plated floor helped, but her stomach was not on board with the effort. With her short legs, she had to take more steps than the others just to keep up.
Her heavy breathing created brief fog clouds on her helmet until the suit’s systems recaptured the moisture. Only the daily physical work she did in the mine kept her in any condition at all, but she could already feel her knees creaking.
Still, the rhythmic pumping of her arms and legs reminded her of her childhood. She’d run down herfamilieschip’s longest corridors, hair loose and whipping behind her like a solar sail, arms stretched back like a slant-wing shuttle. Imagining she could take flight and go wherever in the galaxy the bright, beckoning stars led her.
Incongruously, she heard chanting. It took her a couple dozen steps to realize Zade was singing something as he ran, puffing out the tune between breaths and footfalls. It’d been too long since she’d heard actual music. He had a soothing singing voice. Maybe he’d sing the entire song sometime so she could call up the memory whenever she wanted.
After running for what seemed like kilometers, the tunnel’s stripes abruptly ended and the corridor color became all bright yellow. Hope shot through her. They’d made it to the refinery before the danger the little griffin had warned them about.
After she ran through the shuttle-sized door, one of their guards punched the controls. The heavy incalloy blast doors closed behind her.
Slowing to a standstill, throat dry as her chest heaved, she was relieved to discover the refinery floor had at least fifty heavily-breathing prisoners, nearly half the current population. Their presence killed her insidious worry that Sutrio had called a false alarm. The punishment would have been harsh if she had.
Zade was bent at the waist, hands on his flexed knees, gasping for air. Sutrio and Lantham were nearby, with her helping Lantham to stay upright as his breath bellowed, fogging his helmet.
Julke waved to get their attention, then motioned for them to follow. She led their little group to an area out of the traffic pattern and with some privacy. Once all the doors were sealed and the guards got organized, they’d order the prisoners to sit along the walls. Picking a good spot now meant that once they were allowed to open their helmets and unseal their suits, they wouldn’t also have to smell the chemical stink from the refinery circulation vents.
Besides, Zade needed the shadows. Otherwise, anyone looking at him for long might notice his suit had an asymmetrical, griffin-shaped lump on one shoulder.
After the other three were situated, she allowed herself to sit, back the rock wall, and drop her head between her knees. All the muscles and joint in her body were already stiffening up, her ankle tendons especially. The medics wouldn’t waste precious autodoc meds on routine body maintenance for prisoners.
She tried to be grateful that gods of Chaos had let her survive another brush with death, but she was still furious with them for sending her to Nova Nine in the first place.
5
NOVA NINE FACILITY • GDAT 3243.117
Zade stood and stretched, then took a couple of sidesteps to look at the clock display embedded in the refinery’s rough-hewn wall. It claimed they’d been there for four hours. Based on how numb his butt was from sitting on the hard, cold, gravity-plated floor, it felt twice as long.
Almost the second after he’d sat on the floor next to Julke, the griffin on his shoulder had climbed up the wall behind him and into the shadows. By the time the guards came around to record his prisoner ID and tell him he could open his helmet and remove his gloves, but not take the suit off, meeting the little griffin seemed like an isolation delusion.
According to Julke, they’d get an idea of how big the blowout was based on how long they were stuck in the refinery. If they were all still there after eight hours, the news would be bad. The last blowout had killed more than thirty prisoners and guards. And lucky him, he’d been in the first group of replacements.
One good thing about the exosuits was that comms powered off when helmets were open. At least they wouldn’t have to watch what they said. The guards had already stepped out of their mech suits, leaving the empty units standing in a huddle like they were discussing where to go for shore leave. The refinery workers on the levels above all wore open exosuits, but they also wore ankle shackles that kept them at their stations.
Thoughts kept tumbling in his head like cargo that hadn’t been tied down before atmosphere liftoff. After recovering from the thrill-ride of a run, he’d failed at napping like Lantham and Sutrio. Julke looked dozy, with a half-lidded gaze fixed on her boots, but her dexterous fingers twitched like they wished they were braiding something.
Brushing off his backside out of habit, he sat back down and stretched his legs out straight. He turned his ankle to tap Julke’s boot with his. “If you’re staying awake because you’re responsible for me, I promise to behave.”Or at least not get caught.
She shook her head. “Can’t sleep.” She circled a finger to encompass the room. “Too many uncontained.”
Now that he thought about it, he realized the only crowds in the mine were at mealtime. The cell layout kept all the prisoners in small groups surrounded by thick walls. His usual working environment on starships commonly put meters of incalloy between him and the rest of the crew. He wasn’t used to having to keep his empath talent tamped down for long periods. No wonder he couldn’t nap.
