Chapter 25:

The Cell

Challengers


I couldn’t stop thinking about a cartoon I’d seen when I was six that had scared the crap out of me.

In it, a skeleton in a cramped dungeon cell had his bony arms stretched as far as possible through the bars, trying to reach a bucket of water just out of reach. The obvious conclusion was that the deceased had died of thirst trying to get the bucket. An evil witch passed by the cell, cackled with glee, then kicked the water in the skeleton’s face.

Seventeen years later saw me living the nightmare-- with some slight differences. My dungeon was a prison cell belonging to Yamanaki Future Technologies. Somehow, YFT’s influence extended so far into the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency that I’d been handed over to the megacorporation without even a raised eyebrow. And there wasn’t a pail of water just out of reach.

But there was a witch.

Instead of cackling she wore a nasty smirk on her face. With an air of deep satisfaction, Nakamura looked down at me through the slanted lattice in the cell's ceiling.

“Comfortable, Peterson?”

I squinted up at her from the floor of my cell, unaccustomed to the light coming through the louvers which marked my orange-clad body with harsh vertical shadows.

My spirit was already crushed but I still managed to put up a feeble front. “I thought a girl from Kansas and her little dog had dropped a house on you. Saw it in an old film.”

She either missed the comparison or disregarded it entirely. “You look simply awful. Motegi told me that you’d tried to resist arrest, and he and his men had been forced to -- oh, how did he put it -- ‘educate’ you.”

I remembered that event very well. When Motegi and his fellows had finished with me, I was unconscious and bleeding. Even now I found it painful to stand. My wrists were still bound together in front of me with a heavy leather strap I’d been wearing even before I’d been thrown into this cell.

Nakamura shook her head in mock sorrow, the curled tips of her perfect pageboy haircut almost immobile from all the hairspray. “You’re a spy and a saboteur, Peterson. Military justice is harsh in Japan. You’ll be found guilty at your court-martial, then executed as a traitor. A sad end to a distinguished career. Unless…”

She tapped her cheek with a pearlescent pink nail as if a thought had just occurred to her. “Unless you tell me the names of the other ROYAL operatives.”

I propped myself up on an elbow, trying not to show my surprise. “What’s a ROYAL operative?”

In response, Nakamura reached into her expensive designer bag and pulled out an AN/PRC-90 emergency radio. It was a twin to the one Aiko had found in my locker. “Voice channel at 282.8 megahertz, locator beacon at 243 megahertz. Am I right?”

I gaped at the transceiver she was dangling on a strap. “Where did you find --”

She continued as if she hadn’t heard me. “ROYAL Central, as you’ve probably suspected, has been compromised. This belonged to him. Before he started working for us.”

To prove her point she spoke a passcode into the radio’s microphone. “Omega four-five-five-six-niner-niner Oxford to Zeta three-two-eight-eight-two-four Houston.” She tilted her head to one side, and arched her eyebrows. “That is today’s passphrase, correct?”

“So it was you,” I said. “You were the one who sent the emergency request for assistance.”

“Correct!” She gave me a mocking smile. “And then you sent out a beacon signal for a non-existent wounded agent to follow. But all you did was confirm the existence and location of another ROYAL operative. You. And at the same time, paint a bulls-eye on your ship.”

My heart sank all the way down to my ankles. I’d thought I was helping an injured Central, the agent in charge of all ROYAL operations, find his way to the Mistral. From the point of view of my fellow officers, though, I had sent coded messages to a spy so that the Cyclad raiders and spider drones could locate and destroy the ship.

Maybe that’s exactly what I’d ended up doing, I thought. I felt sick to my stomach at the idea.

And since I was forbidden to talk about anything related to Project ROYAL, there was no way to explain or defend my actions.

“It started so nobly, didn’t it?” Nakamura continued. “All ROYAL operatives were tasked with gathering advanced technology and funneling it back to NATO member states. But instead, it ended up creating the largest corporation in the world.”

She seemed to remember something. “Oh, did you place your scuttling charges on the Mistral, as per ROYAL guidelines?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. I couldn’t believe how much of Project ROYAL this YFT executive knew. Probably the entire file.

Standard procedure for ROYAL operatives was to identify ways to destroy advanced vehicles and aircraft, such as the Mistral, if it was necessary to keep them out of Soviet hands. But I drew the line at actually planting bombs on the ship.

I had been such a fool. Nakamura and YFT had compromised both Project ROYAL and JAXA. Now, because of my blind obedience to orders and secrecy protocols everyone on board the Mistral thought I was a traitor. And I was headed to a firing squad.

Nakamura dropped the subject. “I guess you also figured out that each time you sent a beacon signal a rip would appear, full of bad things intent on harming your precious ship and crew. Too bad we weren’t able to capture the Mistral with our raiders and robots.”

“We being Yamanaki Future Technologies?” I was fairly certain I already knew the answer to that, though.

She ignored my question and tucked the radio back in her bag. “We’re out of time. I really didn’t think you’d know anything worthwhile. Operational security protocols wouldn’t let you know who your fellow agents were, anyway.”

Nakamura turned to go, then stopped. “Oh, I almost forgot. The Mistral Challenger will be leaving for the Okinawa shipyard today. I thought you might like to see the ship and crew that you betrayed as it leaves you to your fate.”

I groaned inside. Nakamura really knew how to twist the knife.

The smirk on her face grew wider as she watched me squirm. But she couldn’t resist leaving me with another bit of mental torture. “Just be thankful you’re not aboard. Since we couldn’t capture her, I’ll have to rely on other means to make sure the Mistral Challenger never makes it to Okinawa.”

A cold chill passed down my spine that had nothing to do with the temperature. “Wait, what do you mean? What’s going to happen?”

“Goodbye, Peterson.” After a final vindictive sneer, Nakamura mashed a button, closing the security shutters with a metallic snap. I could hear the triumphant tap of her heels as she strode away, leaving me in the gloom of my cell.

***

I watched the Mistral Challenger’s departure through the tiny slit in the cell wall. I was as depressed, as low as I’d ever been in my life. I knew that Minori, Aiko, Rio, and Keenan were sitting at their bridge stations at that very moment, trying to ignore my empty copilot seat as they went about the business of flying the ship.

Had Nakamura been bluffing about the Mistral being destroyed? I wouldn’t put it past her to rub salt in my wound. But something in my gut told me it was probably the one thing she’d said that was closest to the truth.

I sank back against the wall and slowly slid to the hard floor, wondering what would happen to me next.

I didn’t have to wait long to find out. Right after the Mistral had made her slow way out of port, I heard the sound of heavy footsteps coming my way. They stopped above my cell as I pulled myself up from the stony floor. The shutters over the grill snapped open and a guard peered down at me.

Satisfied that I wasn’t dead or setting up an ambush, he slammed the cover shut. An electronic lock buzzed and a staircase folded down from the ceiling, revealing the entrance to the cell.

Two thuggish types I recognized as Motegi’s men clomped down the metal stairs, their footsteps echoing from the bare concrete walls. In addition to the heavy leather strap tying my hands together in front of me, they fastened steel manacles around my wrists.

Without any fanfare, they spun me around and marched me up the steps where Motegi waited.

Unlike last time, his face was blank and empty, almost bored, like the other two guards. And just like the other two, he didn’t bother to speak to me or look me in the eyes. My escorts and I fell in behind Motegi and followed him down the hall.

We went through a security gate and past a guard station with multiple monitors manned by three more YFT guards. None of them bothered to look our way as I was half-pushed, half-dragged into a nearby elevator.

I was getting a bad feeling. Any YFT prison guard is going to tell their escorted prisoner something, whether it’s instructions, threats, or insults.

Motegi and his men were carrying pistols, I noticed, not the Stinger super-Tasers the other guards wore. That meant I was being taken out of the prison facilities. But for what purpose?

One of the guards punched the button to the top floors, where the port facilities were located. No one spoke or said a word.

I could tell what was about to go down when Motegi drew his .50 recoilless pistol and pressed a selector switch on the hand grips, then twisted the stubby cylinder surrounding the barrel of the weapon. The projectile coming out of the pistol would now be subsonic and silenced. Perfect for an execution.

I surreptitiously examined the steel manacles binding my hands and saw that the guards had deliberately left them unlocked. With just a twist of my wrists they’d fall to the floor and I’d be a free man.

But I was being set up.

A post-mortem would reveal I had somehow escaped from the manacles. One or two guards would show where I’d injured them during my escape attempt. And they would conveniently remove the leather wrist restraint before the investigation into my death.

I spoke for the first time since leaving my cell. “So instead of ‘resisting arrest’ this time, you’re going to tell the authorities I was ‘shot while attempting to escape.’ Right, Motegi?”

A corner of his mouth quirked upward. “Nakamura said you’d be unable to bear the shame of being a traitor, and told us to put you out of your misery.”

Right on cue, the red light underneath the elevator’s security camera winked out as it lost power. The other two guards chuckled. I guess I’d called the situation correctly.

Too bad for them I’d been working on the leather restraints with a small push dagger I’d managed to conceal. It’s a dangerous world out there, after all.

I took a deep, deep breath…

It came as a total surprise to my guards when I dropped both my manacles and wrist restraints at the same time. I took Motegi out first, dropping him with a solid right hook that smashed into his head and bounced his skull off the metal elevator wall. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel good.

The other two guards grabbed me by the elbows and went for their sidearms. I drew my arms up and twisted around, slamming the two together as I yanked my arms back. One of them kicked me in the ribs, but I was able to sink a fist deep into his partner’s gut. He doubled over, holding his arms over his stomach. I hit him in the jaw, knocking him senseless and putting him on the floor with his boss.

The elevator lurched when he collapsed. With hundreds of kilograms of angry combatants fighting each other, the elevator car rattled and jerked so hard I was afraid it would come off its tracks.

The remaining guard punched me in the face and threw me back against the wall. Snarling, he snatched his pistol from its holster and thrust it forward.

We were fighting in a confined space, though. I was close enough to seize the pistol by the barrel, twisting it and the hand holding it upside down. He shouted in pain as I levered it forward and broke his wrist. I slugged him as hard as I could, dropping him on top of his friends, unconscious.

The fight was over. I took several rapid breaths while leaning against the wall and feeling around inside my mouth with a finger. I was sure a tooth had come loose.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement and spun around.

Motegi had risen to his feet. The open barrel of the pistol he aimed at me looked as cavernous as a railroad tunnel.

At that moment, the elevator doors slid apart and I was greeted by the sunshine of Chiba-1’s open top deck and a fresh breeze coming in from the Pacific. I wondered if it would be my last.

The big security chief wiped the back of a hand across his bloody mouth and squeezed the trigger….

A pair of tiny darts smacked into his neck. Motegi yelped and jerked uncontrollably as voltage from the Stinger bolts poured into his nervous system. He collapsed into a heap.

“What a mess,” I heard a familiar voice say. A few meters away, Doc appeared from behind a cargo jeep, holstering a Stinger similar to the ones used by the YFT security force. Doc hated to put holes in people because he’d likely have to patch them back up later.

He nodded in greeting. “You look good in orange.”

“Benji!” I shouted. “Am I glad to see you! Don’t take this the wrong way, but -- why are you here?”

“Minori requested my services to give you a, quote, ‘physical and mental assessment prior to your formal arraignment on charges,’ end quote. And while I was here, I wanted to pick up some items the Mistral left for me.” He speared me with a stern look. “I’ll want the whole story later, but what just happened?”

“You want the short version? These guys were about to kill me and make it look like I was shot while escaping. You’ll probably recognize them as the thugs from the pub that Aiko and I worked over.”

I could feel a little of my old self coming back to life as I waved at the unconscious guards piled on the elevator floor behind me. “Hey, friends help you move, but good friends help you move bodies. Why don’t you be a good friend and help me out here?”

“Sure, but not by myself.” He grinned and looked past me. “Lev, you can come out now.”

He couldn’t help but laugh at the pleased expression on my face when I saw Lev Semenov’s massive bulk step out from the stack of steel containers he’d been hiding behind and flash me a thumbs-up sign.

Suddenly, every alarm and flashing red light on the upper floor went off.

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