Profiteer

He threw himself into a manic dive into the number three engine as the room behind him evaporated into a billowing cloud of pulverized concrete. He slammed inside the bell of the containment nozzle with a force that dimmed his vision; part of the room followed him, slamming across his back and making part of his world fade out.

 

As Dom sank his left hand into the electromagnetic mesh of the engine, he hoped the pilot wouldn’t fire the thing any time soon. Then he let the world float away.

 

* * * *

 

Dom was somewhat surprised that he didn’t wake up dead.

 

His first conscious thought was that his back and his left arm were screaming pain messages at him. His self-diagnostics were telling him that nothing irreparable had been done to him. It didn’t help much with the pain. Something huge had fallen across his back, pinning him to the inside of the engine.

 

All he could see was the mesh in front of him. He couldn’t even get a view of what was pinning him down. Wreckage held him in place from the shoulders down. At least the ship seemed to have stopped moving.

 

Dom pulled his left hand free of the mesh. It seemed redundant to clutch at the engine when he was pinned in place. As he let go, he tried to turn his neck—

 

“Shit!” he yelled in pain.

 

He was suddenly aware of what kind of trouble he was in. Wherever the Blood-Tide had landed, there would be marines surrounding the site in short order. He had just volunteered his location-—and he was pretty damn helpless at the moment.

 

Dom held himself still, letting the pain fade for a moment, and hoped no one had been within earshot of his curse. It was a vain hope. In moments he could hear someone at work behind him, at the throat of the engine.

 

Dom steeled himself against the pain—even if he severed his spinal column, it was only a sheaf of easily replaced superconducting monofilament—and turned his neck to see the rear of the engine.

 

He finally saw that what held him in place was a ten-by-two-meter chunk of polyceram-reinforced concrete. Also, to his surprise, the engine was now clogged with wood. Chunks of trees had been broken off and wedged in the engine.

 

As Dom watched, a large log dotted with purple-orange foliage shifted and started to slide out. It was followed by another. And suddenly, there in a two-meter gap, was Mosasa.

 

“What the hell happened?” Dom asked.

 

Mosasa managed to answer that question as he did his utmost to quickly extricate Dom and get him to Ivor’s waiting getaway vehicle before Klaus’ marines showed up.

 

Mosasa told Dom what had happened aboard the Blood-Tide. Trapped inside the ship, with no way out, Mosasa had climbed into the support system for the contragrav and had wired control directly into the hardware. He had flown blindly north, eventually slamming into the wooded foothills high up on the Diderot Mountains.

 

Ivor had caught up with the Blood-Tide within a few seconds. His vehicle had been up and ready to bug out on Dom’s orders, and the spinning-out-of-control troopship was hard to miss.

 

As Mosasa—possessing a strength that Dom didn’t expect—helped move the concrete slab off him, Dom asked about the other team members.

 

The news wasn’t good. While Random had managed to fuse the access to the hatch controls on the ship, five marines had been aboard the Blood-Tide to ambush the team. Shane had managed to take out the marines when they’d cut through the hatch of the secondary core, but only at the expense of critically injuring herself in a plasma backwash. The life support on her suit was barely keeping her alive. Ivor was waiting to evac her to Godwin.

 

As Mosasa helped to half carry Dom out of the engine, he said, “We need to get you to a doctor, too.”

 

Dom shook his head. “We can’t risk travel to the city. They’ll see that. If we’re north of GA&A, we might manage the commune unseen. There’re medical facilities there.”

 

Mosasa clasped Dom’s arm. “You don’t know. Klaus—”

 

“I know what Klaus did.” Dom looked up at Mosasa. “We have to get to the commune rendezvous.”

 

Mosasa looked at Dom and nodded.

 

Despite the plan going badly wrong, it had worked. Dom knew it had all come together. Badly, and costing more than it should’ve. But it had all worked.

 

Best of all, the way everything had gone, Klaus was going to assume everyone was dead.

 

<>

 

* * * *

 

 

EPILOGUE

 

Economic Indicators

 

 

“You are free and that is why you are lost.”

—Franz Kafka

(1883-1924)

 

 

<>

 

* * * *

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

 

Closing Costs

 

 

“No one can be quite as annoying as a potential lover.”

—The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

 

“It is much more secure to be feared than to be loved.”

—Niccolo Machiavelli

(1469-1527)