Ode To Defiance Chapter 16

11

Shattered

Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald

As Jam hurtled the Jeep down the road, Ping asked Ciara to repeat what she’d just said.

Ciara sounded on the verge of hysteria. “It’s Dash. And it’s the whole

Chiron

. Someone released a new plague on board. They’re locked down, but some kind of terrorists were already inside. Now the comm is down. Amanda is writing messages on the windows of the bridge to communicate with the outside world, but she doesn’t know much at this point either.”

Ping reacted fastest. “Can you drop a Global Express ship here in the middle of the desert? Like you did in Iran and Baotong?”

Ciara spoke in frustration. “The Black Titan is back at the BrainTrust. If we send it, it won’t have enough fuel to make it back there.”

Jam jumped in. “So, send a regular Titan from the Prometheus archipelago or from Europe, whichever’s available. Can we make it to the BrainTrust with one of those?”

Ciara sighed. “A regular Global Express ship will light up all the radars on the continent.”

Ping waved an arm wildly across the empty landscape. “There’s nothing here, and not a government closer than you with an Air Force worthy of the name. Just send it.”

Ciara paused. “As you wish.”

They stopped beside a vast, reasonably flat chunk of desert. Within the hour, a Kestrel Titan, with its gloriously colorful exterior surface, fell from the sky and landed with the grace of an eagle.

Jam observed, “You know, I suspect Matt is making a fortune off all these emergency ship flights for just a couple of people. I wonder if the BrainTrust should maybe buy a few Titans for itself.”

Ping grumbled. “For the moment, I suspect I’m paying for this one out of my empress fund. You better believe I’m gonna make Amanda reimburse me, though.” She had a thought. “You think I should buy a Titan for Benin? I could use my own spaceship.”

“I don’t think you should buy one unless you’re planning an endless series of kidnappings, nuclear emergencies, and attacks on the

Chiron

. Are you?”

Ping sighed. “Well, truthfully, my people can’t afford it anyway. I’ve got all this money, but I’ve got to plow it back into the country. Still, it was worth a thought.”

Two hours later, they ran out of the space capsule onto the deck of the

Heinlein

and jumped into the copter awaiting them. They left the Benin Beloved Advisor, whom they’d brought along because they couldn’t figure out what else to do, behind to wait for the trip back to the Prometheus archipelago.

As Ping pushed the throttle until it was pegged at max, Jam looked around the ocean near the main BrainTrust archipelago. “Oh, no.”

Ping blew out an exasperated breath. “Now what?”

“All the warships that usually hang out to the east watching each other, the Chinese, Russians, Americans, and Californians, they’re all moving to form a circle around the archipelago.” She smiled ruefully. “I’d guess Amanda arranged for somebody outside the

Chiron

to broadcast a general warning to the world about the attack. She probably ordered a full quarantine. And now everybody is going to enforce the quarantine with a blockade.”

Ping dived the copter until it was just barely missing the waves. “Are they close to us yet? Did they see us?”

Jam stared around. “I don’t think so.” She frowned. “We’re probably the last people going in or out, though.”

Ping sighed. “A plague, terrorists, and now a blockade. Couldn’t we just start the day over again?”

Jam answered grimly. “Honestly, the terrorists are the ones who concern me most. They’ve had three hours to roam free. I just hope we’re not too late. What’ve they been up to?”

After zip-tying the unconscious Chance and her fighting companion, Uwais got back on the shipwide speaker system. “Dr. Dash. We have Dr. Dixon here, and she’d like to say something to you.”

Sabaah chortled, and said loudly enough for the speaker system, “Except she’s unconscious. But if she were conscious, she’d say, ‘Dash, they have a knife at my throat. Please do what they say.’”

Uwais just shook his head. “And there you have it. Surrender yourself to me, wherever you are, or Chance dies. You have thirty seconds. And remember. I have plenty more people I can kill here while we’re waiting for you.”

Less than ten seconds later a voice with a Balinese accent came back on the broadcast system. “I will wait for you at the aft elevator entrance to the Wenara Wana deck. If you don’t know, that’s the deck just above you.”

The last thing Uwais wanted to risk was having someone fry the circuits for the elevator while he was halfway between floors. “At the starboard ramp, not the elevator.”

“As you wish.”

Having memorized almost every square foot of this ship, Uwais and Sabaah jogged directly to the ramp without a pause. Uwais tapped on his phone as he ran, opening the automated sealed doors separating Red Planet from Wenara Wana, leaving the rest of the seals between decks closed.

Sabaah, as usual, complained. “You should have made her come to us.”

Uwais shrugged. “She wanted to get us away from the scientists we were promising to kill. It was easier to just agree.”

Sabaah persisted, “But what if she lied?”

Uwais shook his head. “Worst case, we can just start killing her patients. She knows that.”

Uwais had his own bone to pick. “And it would have been better if you’d threatened anybody but Dr. Dixon back there. If Dash proves too resistant, she’s our backup interrogation partner.”

Sabaah choked on laughter. “A little Balinese girl, timid and shy, resisting? Oh, come on.”

As they ran up the ramp, they saw the little Balinese girl in her signature white lab coat and her distinctive glasses standing against the backdrop of the Wenara Wana tropical jungle motif. She looked so frail, and her lip trembled ever so slightly.

Sabaah murmured, “Oh, this is going to be so easy.”

They stopped before her. Uwais explained the situation. “This can be easy or hard. We have a few questions we need—Aagh!”

The trembling, frail scientist leapt at him and bit him on the neck.

Sabaah whipped forward and threw her against the wall.

The scientist slumped, dazed.

Uwais rubbed his neck, then looked at his hand. “She drew blood,” he said with a mixture of surprise, bafflement, and a certain grudging respect.

Sabaah hoisted her up and trotted to the nearest conference room. “Hard way it is, then.”

Uwais stood outside the conference room, watching to make sure nothing went wrong as Sabaah zip-tied her to a chair. He stepped away as Sabaah started asking the list of questions Khalid had given them that he wanted answered about the CRISPIER. When noises started coming from the room that did not sound like answers, he stepped farther away.

Ping and Jam wound up having the same argument with Wolf and Aar they’d had on the phone while they were in zero-G on the Global Express, but this time they reached a conclusion.

Ping held up a hand to count off the points. “Allow me to sum up. Amanda has signaled for us to wait for her to get more information. Which she has failed to do. So we’re ignoring the top boss.”

Wolf nodded suspiciously. “So far we agree.”

Ping counted off another finger. ”We can’t go in without a moonsuit or the virus will kill us.” Her next finger went up. “We can’t go in

with

a moonsuit or we’ll be so handicapped the terrorists will kill us.”

Wolf looked down at her with as much of a twinkle in his eye as he could muster under the circumstances. “I think you’ve described the fundamental pickle right there.”

Ping used the non-counting hand to hold up a “wait one” finger. “We also can’t use the smart guns developed by those guys in the GS Gun Club.” The terrorists had knocked out the vid feeds the guns needed to accurately bounce bullets off the walls and hit targets. “And we can’t use normal guns because the ricochets will kill the people we’re trying to save. And mess up the equipment, and poke holes in the biosafety cabinets.”

Aar interjected, “That’s a pretty good pickle too.”

Jam spoke at last. “So the answer is obvious.”

Wolf and Aar just stared at her.

Ping grinned at Jam in appreciation. “We’ll blow out a window on the Red Planet deck. Jam and I will go in. Without moonsuits. You’ll wait out here with the reinforcements.” She looked over the assembled team of peacekeepers, every last one from every last ship in the archipelago, watching the debate with grim determination.

Aar got out the stiff words even before Wolf. “We’re going with you.”

Jam spoke with the quiet authority she’d developed on her journey to Baotong. “On this first foray, we will risk a minimum number of people. Two will do. If two cannot succeed, we need everyone. If we do not contact you in an hour, breach multiple windows.” Nobody even suggested just breaching the main gangways, figuring that those obvious infiltration points would be booby-trapped.

Wolf glared. “If it’s gonna be just two people—”

Ping poked him in the chest, which required raising her hand above her head. “You remember what happened the last time you and I sparred?”

Wolf kept glaring down at her. Ping glared back.

Aar broke the standoff with the obvious objection. “But without the moonsuits, the virus will kill you.”

Ping grinned, waving the problem away. “We’ll save Dash, then Dash will cure it and save us all.”

Jam and Ping ran like the wind of vengeance through the passages of the Red Planet deck as a team of bots put a plate over the blown window through which they’d entered. In moments, they reached the main area to find a host of scientists barely recovered from a daze. Many of them were now holding odd scientific implements as if they were weapons.

Velma stood unsteadily before them describing a plan of attack.

Jubair lead a team kneeling over Simon; Hilaal had a team working on Chance.

Jam and Ping came up on either side of Velma. Jam whispered urgently. “Stand down, girl. The Marines have landed.”

Velma looked at her with a bit of wildness still in her eyes. She then looked at Jam with an expression that flickered between relief and determination. “We’re coming with you.”

Jam continued, “You’d get in the way. You know it. Tell us about the enemy.”

Ping chimed in. “And for heaven’s sake, keep your voice down. They knocked out all our vidcams, but they may still have a way of listening in.”

Velma blew out a breath and told them about the attackers.

Jam relaxed. “Just two of them?”

Velma glared at her. “They knocked out Chance and me in a heartbeat.”

Neither Jam nor Ping paid any attention to this. Ping looked at Jam. “Just run up the same ramp?”

Jam frowned. “Let’s not attack uphill if we can avoid it.”

Velma offered, “We can go up the ramp, offer a distraction, and outflank them.”

Ping smiled at her. “Thank you for your help. Please keep your people ready, but don’t go up there. In an hour the entire peacekeeping force of the BrainTrust is gonna bust in. Wait for them if at all possible.”

Ping and Jam trotted to the other ramp. Ping pulled out her chura. “Never leave home without it.”

Jam similarly pulled out her K-Bar. “Another thing we agree upon.”

They were hurtling down a passage filled with patient compartments when Jam saw a man collapsed against the wall, struggling to move their way. Jam practically cried when she heard him whisper her name.

Ping saw the man and whispered back in a strangled shout. “Colin!”

Colin collapsed into Jam’s arms, and she settled him gently on the deck.

Both women knelt over him. He turned to Jam, held his mouth up to her ear, and started speaking in a voice so weak even Jam could barely make it out.

Ping tried to lean in to hear as well, but Colin, either intentionally or just struggling to hold himself up, pushed her out of range. He continued to whisper.

Jam shook her head vigorously, but Colin’s grip on her neck held fast, with the desperate strength of a dying man with a last desperate message. Jam shook her head again and again until she finally sagged into him.

He released her and thumped unconscious to the deck.

Ping couldn’t contain herself. “What was that all about?”

Jam looked at her with eyes wide and filled with horror.

Ping continued, “You look like you just lost your best friend.”

Jam stared at her in dismay for one more moment. Then she blinked, her eyes refocused, and her mouth set in a thin line of implacable determination. She rose with balletic grace to her feet. “Hurry.”

They left Colin lying there and ran once more to save Dash.

Shortly thereafter, they came hurtling around a corner into the passage where the terrorists had last been seen.

Standing outside a conference room was the big one, Uwais.

Uwais sang out pleasantly, “Sabaah, the company we’ve been expecting has arrived.” Uwais dug into his belt, and with shocking speed, started throwing shurikens.

Dodging the flying blades slowed Ping and Jam enough that Sabaah joined the party before they could team up on Uwais.

And then the battle began in earnest.

Ping found herself matched with Sabaah. He had pulled a throwing knife from his belt but jammed it back when he found they were too close and swung with his fighting knife, a Gerber Mark II with its double-edged, wasp-waisted blade. Ping twisted while still charging and swung with her chura.

Jam, instead of flying into action as Ping did with her incredible speed, danced to the side, hoping to swing Uwais around off-balance.

The maneuver failed, and Uwais snaked forward with a slashing strike.

Jam foresaw it, blocked his arm with her free hand, and thrust with her own knife.

Uwais foresaw it, slid out of the way, and struck again.

She foresaw it and moved once more to parry and riposte.

He foresaw it.

And so it continued for an impossibly long time.

But an impossibly long time in a knife fight is a very short time indeed. It ended when Ping sliced at Sabaah’s neck. He bent backward just in time to evade, then twisted forward and cut her side.

Ping gasped just loud enough for Jam to hear and know what had happened.

For just a moment, Jam moved with Ping’s speed, not her own, and leapt to Ping’s side.

She then drove her knife into and through Ping’s abdomen just beneath her ribcage, just beneath her heart.

Ping stared at Jam in helpless astonishment as she slid off the blade.

Uwais and Sabaah stood in open-mouthed astonishment.

The tableaux held for barely a second. Jam turned to them. “I hope you’re done with whatever you’re doing here. Any minute now every peacekeeper in this fleet is going to charge through breaches all over the ship. Skilled as you are, you’ll still be dead in a heartbeat.”

They looked down at Ping, unconscious, lying in a rapidly growing pool of her own blood.

Jam put her hands on her hips. “You think you’re the only ones who dream of the end times, the coming of the Mahdi? You doubt my faith? We must go

now

.”

Uwais and Sabaah both shook themselves.

Uwais spoke. “She’s right. Let’s go.”

Sabaah argued briefly, pointing at the conference room. “But Dash didn’t answer even one question.” He threw his hands in the air. “Last thing.” He stepped to the door.

Jam started to speak. “Just leave her—”

Sabaah whipped the throwing knife from his belt and threw it into the room. “Task completed.”

Uwais turned to watch Jam’s reaction to this final bit of brutality, but she had already turned away.

A few moments later Jam spoke as if nothing had happened. “You better have a copter on this ship. Preferably two, and a remarkable plan for getting out of here.”

They followed her to the ramp leading up to the top of the ship.

Chance finally came around and looked up to see Hilaal and Velma hovering over her. “What’s happening?”

Velma told her about how Hilaal had brought her around and coaxed the scientists into arming themselves. Then she told her about the brief arrival and departure of Jam and Ping. She huffed as she told Chance that Jam and Ping had told her not to help in the counterattack.

Looking around the crowd of scientists grimly clutching diverse medical instruments with clear intent to bash anyone who challenged them, Chance shook her head. “Well, Ping and Jam were right, you know. Charging up that ramp with a bunch of scientists armed with scalpels would get a lot of good people killed. People we need.”

Velma stamped her foot. “We have to do something.”

Hilaal spoke softly. “Velma, it sounds like Chance has a plan.”

Chance rose to her feet, shook her head, then rocked back and forth to loosen up. “Sort of. It’s not that

we

have to do something.

I

have to do something.” She led all the scientists over to the bottom of the ramp and turned to Velma. “I’m going up. Come when I call.”

Velma growled, then remembered what had happened the last time, and nodded.

Chance ran lightly up the ramp. Neither the terrorists nor Jam were anywhere to be seen. Ping lay in a pool of blood. Chance shouted down the ramp, “Drop the weapons. We need a crash cart stat, and a gurney!”

Before kneeling over Ping, Chance walked over to the conference room to glance inside. As her eyes roamed to the back of the room, to a corner not easily seen until you reached the doorway, she stopped. She blinked in horror, then stood transfixed for what seemed an eternity. A look of implacable defiance crossed her face and disappeared.

Finally, respectfully and ever so gently, she pulled the door closed.

Everyone came running up the ramp, a crash cart and a gurney in the lead. As soon as Chance had shot FoamClot into both Ping’s wounds, the minor one on the right, the terrible one on the left, they hoisted her onto the gurney and wheeled her toward the nearest operating room.

Chance was not done giving orders. “Simon!”

He turned from watching the gurney roll away.

Chance spoke more gently. “Simon, put a couple of people in front of this conference room. Don’t let anyone in, do you understand? No one.”

Simon raised an eyebrow. “What’s in the room?”

Chance took a deep breath. “Nothing we can do anything about.” She put a hand on his cheek. “Please trust me in this. We’ll deal with it later. Let no one in. Don’t even look yourself.”

Simon frowned, then nodded.

The lighting brightened, and automated hatches opened all over the ship.

Chance blinked away tears. “It’s all going to be all right. Somehow, it will all be OK.”

Before leaving the deck full of bed-ridden patients, Jam slipped into one of the rooms, grabbed a sheet, and pulled it over her head. A few quick slashes with her K-Bar left a slit through which she could see. After tying a few knots and making a few tucks, she had a crude but serviceable burqa.

Sabaah murmured. “So very modest so suddenly.”

Jam answered, “It’s good to be properly dressed again. I had the opportunity while in Tehran recently. You probably know more about that than I do, of course. But it was relaxing to be able to wear the burqa once more.”

They reached the deck with the copters. Uwais admitted apologetically. “We don’t actually have a copter. Sabaah was planning to hotwire one.”

Jam just grunted. “BrainTrust copters are reasonably pretty hard to steal.”

Sabaah defended himself. “Hey, I specialize in vehicle automation. You have a machine that flies or drives, I can make it sing and dance. Two’ll be as easy as one.”

Soon they had the copters spinning up. Uwais insisted Jam sit in the passenger seat with him. Jam gave him an exasperated sound, then acquiesced. “Like I could go anywhere or do anything except join you at this point.”

Uwais grinned. “Safety first.” He flew out, with Sabaah in the copter behind them.

Jam changed the subject. “You’ll need to fly low. The Americans are putting up a blockade around the archipelago to enforce a quarantine.”

“Ah.” Uwais dropped the copter down to ocean level. “I see what you mean.”

The blockading fleet had already completed the encirclement of the BrainTrust. But the copters were flying into the west, and the only ships that had come all the way around to that side were the California Coastal Patrol, barely modified yachts that had no anti-aircraft weaponry. The two copters surged through unmolested.

Uwais offered an apology. “It’s just as well you made yourself a burqa. We’re going to be in very close quarters very shortly. Very close quarters.”

Jam pointed ahead, where a small yacht rose and fell gently in the waves. “Is that our getaway ship? It doesn’t look so cramped to me.”

Uwais chuckled. “That’s our getaway yacht. It is not, however, our getaway ship.” He chuckled again. “You’ll see.”

Ping rolled her head and opened her eyes.

Chance smiled at her. “Welcome back.”

Ping winced. “What happened?”

Chance turned sober. “You were stabbed. Twice.”

Ping’s wince turned into a grimace. “Oh, right.”

“One of the knife wounds, the one that almost killed you, was made by a wider blade. Like Jam’s K-Bar.”

Ping closed her eyes. “Yeah.”

A commotion in the hall made them both turn their heads.

Cameron Ballard, with half his face covered in a purple bruise, charged into the room. “Tell me everything you know about this traitor, Jam.”

Both women pursed their lips and a lengthy pause ensued, as if both were trying to decide how to respond.

Ping answered first. “She stabbed me with her K-Bar.” She turned her head away. “I worked with her for a long time. We’ve saved each other’s lives. I never would have believed it.”

Ballard nodded gravely. “She was deep undercover. That’s how they work.” He touched his eye where she’d hit him when they first met in Georgia—gingerly, since now that whole side of his face was swollen. “Now you see what she’s really like.”

Chance added, “If Jam had stabbed Ping like that anywhere but right here in the middle of a top-notch hospital, Ping would’ve died.”

Ping switched topics. “When you find her, call me. I’ll kill her for you.” An expression suggesting she had just bitten into a lemon crossed her face before she concluded, “Sorry about the way we roughed you up the last time we met. Most unfortunate.”

Ballard acknowledged the apology with a smile. “Glad we’re on the same team now.”

Chance finished up, “Now, Mr. Ballard, you have to leave. I need time with my patient. We’ll talk later.”

After his footsteps disappeared down the passage, Chance stepped lightly to the door and looked both ways. She came back and whispered, “He’s gone.”

Ping exhaled a huge sigh. “Hallelujah.”

Chance leaned forward. “So you don’t think Jam betrayed us?”

Ping shook her head so vigorously that she winced from the pain. “Not a chance, Chance. In retrospect, it’s obvious. She’s gone off with them to find the mastermind, the man who’s creating all these plagues. She’ll let us know when she finds him.”

Chance took up the position of Devil’s Advocate. “Ping, that really was a fatal knife wound. I told Ballard the truth: anyplace else except here, you would’ve died.”

Ping restrained herself from offering the chuckle she knew would hurt too much. “Exactly, but we

were

here. In the one place where it would not be fatal. She knew it all along.”

Chance’s expression turned exquisitely sorrowful, as if she were about to tell Ping something horrific, but Ping was still ruminating on the fight. “At least I got a piece of that guy I faced off with. Not as big a piece as he got of me, but still something.”

Chance looked at her quizzically.

Ping glanced around. “Is my chura here somewhere?”

Chance reached toward a table close at hand, having known that Ping would want her weapon near. But she had placed the table far enough away so Ping couldn’t, in her current condition, reach it without help, also knowing that Ping would need to lash out when she heard the rest of the news awaiting her.

Chance carefully handed the knife to her.

Ping examined the keen edge. “Ha! Just as I thought.” She pointed to a barely visible thin red line. “His blood.”

Chance blinked, then carefully took the blade from Ping to inspect it. “You’re sure?”

“Chance, I am maniacal about cleaning my weapons. It couldn’t be anything else. Fact is, I should probably clean it right now.”

Chance jumped away, holding the knife with both hands as if it were the world’s greatest treasure. She continued to stare at the blood. “Ping, you just saved a whole lot of people.”

Ping raised an eyebrow. “Really? I mean, of course. Uh, how?”

Chance smiled, a dark smile full of determination. “I was dreading having to develop a vaccine from scratch against this hairball of a virus, but now we don’t have to.” She tapped the blade. “This guy was surely vaccinated before he came aboard. I can almost certainly find traces of it here.”

She danced like a martial artist hanging just out of reach of an opponent, seeking the moment to strike. “With this, we don’t have to start from scratch to make a vaccine. We can just reverse-engineer it.”

Ping lay back, eyes closing as she fell suddenly asleep. “Glad I could help.”