Marauder (Oregon Files 15)

In a fit of fury, he forgot the gun and lunged at Sylvia with his good hand. He grabbed on to the canister of her face mask. He yanked her toward him, his eyes wide with rage, a terrifying sight through the eyeholes of his own mask. With the rubber seal loose now, only the straps were keeping it on her head.

Sylvia strained to pull the ax free, but she couldn’t get it out of the wall. If Polk got any presence of mind back, he would let go of the mask and grab her around the throat to choke the life out of her.

She angled her head so that the straps came off, and she fell backward onto her rear. So did Polk, who landed on his wounded arm and let out an agonized shriek.

Sylvia took advantage of the distraction and ran for it. As she neared the end of the corridor, bullets whizzed by her, but Polk’s one-handed aim was wild.

She went down the next hall and realized she was near the mess and galley. Polk wouldn’t give up until he found her, so she decided to make it easy for him. After all, she wasn’t wearing a mask anymore, and he knew it.

SEVENTY-ONE

Eric woke with a start. His face felt like it was pressing against some buttons. He opened his eyes and saw that he was lying across the bridge control console. He racked his brain but didn’t know how he got there. Even worse, other than his head, he couldn’t move.

The last thing he remembered was tinkering with the lock pick set to try to abort the rocket launch. Then everything was a blank until this moment.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Linc lying on the floor. He was conscious and blinked at Eric, but he said nothing.

On the floor next to him was the cylindrical canister of a smoke grenade.

That’s when Eric realized they must have been gassed. In addition to paralysis, one of the symptoms was short-term memory loss. Murph hadn’t remembered losing consciousness, either.

Eric lifted his head as much as he could, but he couldn’t see Sylvia anywhere. The lock picks were where he’d left them, jutting out of the rocket control system keyhole. The display in the case’s lid was still counting down to midnight.

Movement on one of the bridge monitors caught his attention. He could see the Chairman and Eddie pounding at a door, trying to get it open. They were trapped in the citadel by the fire doors.

Eric tried to move his arms, but the best he could do was bang his hand against the panel. There was no way he’d be able to release them.

Then he made one other disturbing observation. The switches controlling the cargo bay doors had been destroyed since he’d been gassed.

He had to warn someone. Although he couldn’t form words, Eric could still move his tongue. He activated his molar mic to contact the Oregon.

The only thing he could do was click his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

* * *

—

I’m getting a strange signal over the comm system,” Hali said from his post in the Oregon’s op center. “I thought it was static, but . . .” He sat up straighter, excited. “Wait. It’s Morse code.”

Max sat forward in the captain’s chair. “Put it on speaker.”

A series of tsking clicks tapped out a pattern of dots and dashes.

“That’s Eric,” Murph said, adding a “Woohoo” cheer for emphasis at hearing from his friend. Although all three of them knew Morse code, Murph spoke the words aloud as they listened.

“Eric here. On bridge. Linc alive. Paralyzed by gas.”

“So Polk wasn’t bluffing when he told Juan that everyone on the bridge was gassed,” Max said.

“What about Sylvia?” Murph asked, his brow knitted in concern for his sister.

“Not here. Where she?”

“We don’t know,” Max replied. “We haven’t heard from her.”

“Are cargo doors closed?” Eric asked.

“No,” Murph said. “Open.”