1.27.1

The Best Laid Plans

Astrid hoisted to her feet, with Tenya at her side. But all around them, the Tetrians kept their arms in tight aim on the team in their middle.

Sid darted his cold eyes between them, then pointed with his gun that they should move. “Dismount.”

“Jenna?!” Anders flung at the merc woman, incredulous. “What is this?”

“Sorry, Andy.” Jenna gave a little smile, even as she kept her own pistol trained on him. “Pay is nice and all, but it doesn’t compete with the promise of turning Tetris into an independent colony. When Governor Dara is gone, we’ll be holding the reins. And all we had to do was bring you in.”

“I said ‘dismount’,” Sid repeated, harsher. “Move.”

From the entrance of the base ahead, three men descended from their perch to converge on the presumed prisoners.

“Are we really going to let this happen, Lieutenant?” Tenya edged her voice to emphasize the man’s title, her own preference clear. “We should stick to the plan.”

“You’ve already got three guns on you alone, girlie, and nowhere to hide. Don’t be stupid,” Sid cautioned.

Still, the team, rigid as statues, awaited their leader’s order. Until finally, Anders answered grudgingly.

“If they wanted to just kill us, they would have already started shooting…”

After a last moment of reluctance, Anders looked to his squad, then hopped down from the caravan onto the tundra terrain.

“Weapons.” An S.O. guard gestured to his fellows, who came to collect. “And comms.”

“Anders…” Tenya growled lowly.

“Cool it. They’ve got the numbers. This isn’t over.”

“Smart boy,” Sid mocked. He stepped back to allow the rest of the team to disembark.

Astrid felt her own glare burn when the men came to each of them in turn, to receive their tools and weapons.

The crew was lined up, and fervent glances alone couldn’t devise a strategy to proceed.

“Which one of you is the Channeler?” The S.O. giving orders called down the line.

But none responded.

“Come on, we know you have one. One of your little buddies told us so. Rue, wasn’t it? And she’s not here so… I take it that cat’s out of the bag.” The man shared a smarmy grin with his fellows. “Which one is it?”

“It’s me.” Tenya volunteered.

Jenna snickered. “She’s lying. It’s one of the other three.”

“Bitch!” Tenya hissed at the Tetrian.

Tenya twitched for her weapon before remembering its removal, and Jenna, too, corrected her aim to target the chief.

The huddle of humans stirred to action on reflex to see who would draw first blood.

“Easy,” the guard spoke again. “There’s a simple way to find out.”

From his belt, the man drew a recognizable pronged wand that made Astrid wince. A pulsar stick.

“You.” The man noted her flicker of discomfort. “You know what this is?”

Her team looked to her, and Astrid hardened herself under the courage they gave her.

“No?” he responded to her silence. “Yes?”

He swung the tool in front of her face, and she emboldened herself to remain dauntless.

“It’s me!” Romo declared. “I’m the Channeler.”

The S.O. man looked to the agent. Beside Astrid, Tenya tensed. They counted their opposition, nearly two to one, while the lead guard took issue with Romo’s profession.

“Is that so? Then you know what this is?”

Romo scowled.

The man smirked, and too soon the splitting noise of a high-frequency burst pierced the air and set painful vibrations upon Astrid’s brain.

She barely resisted the urge to scream. As her power increased since her last exposure to the pulse, so too, it seemed, had her sensitivity to it.

Her knees turned to jelly, and she stumbled, helpless to hands that, driven by the mind-numbing madness, clutched at her quaking skull.

She caught herself in a kneel and stifled her cries behind gritted teeth, deaf to the calls of her companions around, until finally the noise relented.

Sanity returned as if waking from a sudden and exhaustive illness. Her senses flooded back to the sensation of air on a light sheen of sweat over her face.

She weakly pushed herself back on her feet, ragged, and mustered a glower for the man.

He only smiled.

“Yeah… there you are.”

~~~

The man directed the Tetrians and fellow S.O. members to herd the group inside.

“Get them to the caverns until the heads return. Make sure this one gets some distance,” he nodded to Astrid.

“I don’t like this,” Tenya said under her breath.

“It gets us inside,” Romo mumbled.

But Anders said nothing as he took the lead. The first into a trap, should one await them.

Behind them, as they were prompted toward the entrance, the Opposition’s grunts were commanded to destroy the comm units and stash the crew’s weapons.

The Tetrians displayed their deception further, as they showed themselves quite knowledgeable of the compound. Astrid and the others were pushed further inside the hollowed structure, through stone passageways hewn into the landscape.

Deep into the rock, they passed nearly a dozen passages, most of which bore a handful of strangers, who stared and scowled at the prisoners as they passed.

Each time the team’s attention wandered, their ushers pushed them onward, and barked at them to keep their eyes to themselves.

They were finally led to a dark room carved into the bedrock. Wires of electricity fixed to the walls conducted power from the generators elsewhere to a single swinging light bulb attached to the top of the chamber.

Eight men and women, Jenna included, oversaw the binding of wrists and ankles. Then, the group was secured to load-bearing beams on either side of the room. Anders and Romo near the entrance, Dell and Tenya across from them, and at the back of the room, with greatest distance to each, Astrid was tied, alone.

“Comfy?” Jenna teased her old friends.

The S.O. in charge saw to Astrid himself. He patted her down to check for weapons one last time. He found her battery pack at her hip, and his lips tilted in a wicked quirk.

“Clever.”

Astrid didn’t answer. He unlatched the pack and handed it off to one of his associates before he continued.

“I’m Lucas, by the way. You might have cause to remember later.” He continued to search her. “You want to tell me your name?”

“No.”

The man’s charms might have seemed boyish were his body language not rank with arrogance. All confidence and sleaze. No different than Jenna, the woman who still teased her ex-lover on the other side of the room with cloying sweetness.

“There’s no need to be like that,” the man, Lucas, smiled. “We don’t have to be enemies. That’s why you’re still alive. Why don’t you tell me your name, and I won’t have beat it out of one of your friends.”

Astrid’s teal eyes darted aside at the threat.

“Astrid,” she bit out.

“Astrid,” the man tested the name himself. “You know, to be honest, I kind of thought you’d have a prettier name. I’ll try not to be disappointed.”

“Don’t bother.”

“Hm,” Lucas tossed, unaffected by her rejection. “Well, Astrid, I’m going to need that crystal now.”

Astrid stiffened. The first flutters of true fear writhed in her stomach. He’d already revealed a knowledge of Guardians and their tools. She knew denying her own possession to be fruitless. But still, she wished to resist.

“Why?”

“Well, Astrid, because you don’t need it.”

“I do. It’s harmless to you. And it prevents chaotic discharges. Isn’t in your interest to make sure that energy goes to something benign?”

“The thing is, Astrid,” he repeated her name again, impish in his expression, “you’re not going to need to channel energy anywhere. See, I don’t need you draining the lights or generators and I’m not going to let you keep a free conduit to do so. You want to steal some of our power here, it’s going to cost you. Because I know you can’t hold onto it. You’ll need to expel it.

“Maybe on us but… Maybe on your friends, here. Maybe that’s how I keep you from trying. So, let’s have it. It’s under your armor, right? I mean, unless you have it in a pocket somewhere and you can save yourself the embarrassment but, frankly,” he winked, “I’m hoping it’s under the armor.”