Jack sneered and cursed under his breath as Garibaldi tried to reach for what he was sure was a PPG and the long-haired girl, one of the Vincent girls, in the sundress turned to look up at him.
"Ah, what the hell?" Ivanova demanded bitterly.
Jack tossed out the heavy briefcase past Shanti who was moving herself and trying to predict and avoid the line of fire. The briefcase smashed into Ivanova's already broken leg, toppling her painfully to the floor. Her crutches sprawled out, knocking into Garibaldi and sending him off balance. Given that Garibaldi was still recovering from the last time he'd been on the wrong end of Jack's gun, he was distracted from a pain in the back that slowed him down.
As Jack pulled his PPG out and started to level it, he felt a searing pain in his shoulder and almost dropped the weapon before he turned to look at the Vincent girl staring at where his clothes had spontaneously burst into flame and the skin underneath burned through.
Damn, the girl had a weapon somewhere, that made sense.
Jack shifted aside with a darting motion noting with relief that the heat on his shoulder faded fairly quickly. He closed on Shanti who entered a clear stance, her face rather eerily focused on him.
"Hey, kid, duck!" Ivanova shouted through gritted teeth.
A tossed crutch tangled up in Jack's legs sending him sprawling forward. The sudden change in motion broke the focus in Shanti's expression and she scrambled to change her intended action as the fugitive assassin slammed into her.
A PPG blast out of Garibaldi's gun passed through where Jack had been standing and struck the wall.
Even though she was well trained, Shanti was still inexperienced and depended more on raw instinct. Perhaps if Jack had come straight at her as the man intended, things would have been different, but she was slow to recover her center.
Jack, meanwhile, untangled himself and rolled up behind her, placing his PPG to her head and hauling her small form in front of him.
"Damn it, Jack," Garibladi snapped angrily as he straightened himself.
"I don't know what you think you can do, girl," Jack said, "but you're not fast enough. As for you, Michael..."
He grunted in pain as Shanti flung her head back into his face and then an elbow into his chest. Shoving the girl ahead of him and watching her twist about, apparently still intent on fighting, he leveled his weapon.
"Jack don't do it!" Garibaldi shouted.
"Put the weapon down before you go too far," Ivanova was shouting as well, pulling her own weapon.
Three PPGs fired at once, one aiming directly for Shanti, who focused forward intently herself. Halfway between the Vincent girl and Jack, the air exploded in a brilliant white flash as the three PPG bolts came close to intersecting.
All three standing individuals were thrown off their feet, Shanti slamming painfully into wall behind her. Jack was to his feet first and started to run out of the scene when he heard the sound of running feet and shouted orders.
Grabbing a dazed Shanti back to her feet, he was heading down the corridor as Garibaldi and Ivanova found their weapons and security personnel came out of the halls to level weapons at the man, drawn by the sounds of gunfire and fighting.
"Don't let him get away," Garibaldi shouted, chasing after him around a corner.
He caught sight of Jack dragging the Vincent girl around another turn and guessed that Shanti was at least mildly concussed at the moment. Looked like she'd taken that wall face first going by the bloody nose, actually.
"Don't worry about me," Ivanova shouted from back where she'd fallen. "Get that traitor before I put this crutch somewhere you'll need Dr. Franklin to remove it! Now!"
He smirked at the sound, a bit of humor in the serious situation.
Calls were made to cut off Jack from escaping deeper into the station and he heard returns over the various links indicating more security was coming down from other passages.
Unfortunately, Garibaldi saw those reinforcements before he saw Jack. Cursing, he immediately backtracked until he found a maintenance shaft that was unsecured.
"Do you think he went in there, Chief?" one of the security asked.
"Unless he's been taking lessons from the Invisible Man," Garibaldi said. "Yeah, I think he went in there. Get on the link and start locking down the maintenance shafts. I'd like everybody on this, but we also have a group of Drazi intent on mass murder to intercept."
"Does this mean you're back on the job, Chief?" one of the other security staff asked.
"If I say yes, are you going to get started moving already?" Garibaldi demanded, immediately producing a reaction in the security personnel.
Getting into Blue Sector should have been a little bit more difficult, but Rally found that with the increased patrols in the other parts of the station, meant to control the Drazi, that it was relatively easy to get in the halls unnoticed.
She and Vivian had pulled on some staff overalls, snatched from a laundry some week or so previous just in case they needed to fit in somewhere, and were walking in through the halls, searching for the number of Sheridan's quarters.
"Do we know where we're going?" Vivian asked in a hushed tone as she looked over her shoulder.
"Becky got me information on quarters before we came here," Rally said. "Including where the station commander's quarters were set to be. It's apparently really easy information to get to."
Both stepped aside out of ease view as a pair of security patrol stepped into view, both members of it chatting casually as they moved through.
The two were almost passing when their link buzzed.
"All security personnel begin search of Brown Sector maintenance shafts," the voice said. "Former security officer Jack is loose in the maintenance shafts. Be aware that he has a hostage, one Shanti Vincent."
Rally and Vivian froze where they were for a moment and then, regardless of their appearance rushed past the two security personnel and ran for the lifts they had left not too long ago.
"What the hell happened?" Rally wondered out loud as the lift doors closed behind them, leaving the stunned security personnel with only a brief glimpse of who had been run past them.
They stripped off the worker overalls to reveal their own clothes underneath and stepped off as soon as the door opened on brown sector.
What they found outside their living quarters was a small group of security personnel interviewing or guarding Commander Ivanova who was sitting on the ground with a medic looking over her leg and checking it for new injuries.
"Would someone remind Commander Ivanova," a voice over the links said, "that she needs to come into medlab after rebreaking a leg."
"Someone needs to remind Dr. Franklin who's second in command on this crate," Susan responded irately. "As soon as we find Miss Vincent. Someone has to explain what's going on to her."
Rally came marching up the corridor determinedly at that point with Vivian behind her and looking over the area.
"Then tell me, how is my girl someone's hostage?" she demanded.
Susan grimaced and tried to sit up with out shifting her re-injured leg.
"Sheer bad luck," Susan said. "Garibaldi and I were moving through Brown Sector with this Drazi thing and that bastard was apparently making his move to try and leave the station. We just cross paths."
"And how'd Shanti get involved?" Rally demanded.
"She walked out of your door at just exactly the wrong time," Susan said. "We pushed him into the maintenance shafts, should be able to nail him down pretty soon."
Rally bit her lip, Shanti's reaction to being held prisoner was unpredictable. Even if she was probably disoriented right now, that amount of stress would build and then who knew what would happen.
Probably nothing overly healthy for Shanti.
"Did he drop anything?" Vivian asked.
"What?" Susan asked.
"Susan..." Franklin's voice called out of the link.
"Not now, Doctor," Susan snapped.
"Vivi, Little Girl," Rally said cautiously.
"It's Shanti, Rally," Vivian said.
Reluctantly, the gunsmith nodded and turned back to Susan.
"Did he drop anything?" Rally repeated.
Susan was about to ask why they were asking, but had a feeling herself and nodded cautiously.
"Get me that briefcase and it's contents, then go to the hunt with Garibaldi," she ordered.
"Leave you here alone, Ma'am?" one of the officers asked. "We need to make sure you..."
Susan raised up her crutch and wrapped it hard against the floor.
"Right away, Ma'am," the guard said.
The briefcase that Jack had dropped was soon in Ivanova's hands and the guards were soon walking away at a rush from the scene.
"You too," Ivanova insisted as she pointed to the medic.
Vivian didn't wait for the medic to leave before opening the briefcase and starting to look through the items.
"He's heading to an emergency cache," Vivian muttered as she first touched the briefcase and then started looking through various things. "No, nothing, not enough..."
Rally took items discarded by her daughter and started looking at them a little more carefully herself. She didn't have any psychic ability to see the imprints carried by items, but she could make deductions.
"I'm curious what you expect to find," Ivanova said cautiously.
"Just some clue as to where he's gone to..." Rally started to say.
"This one," Vivian gasped as she shivered visibly while holding an identi-card in her hand.
Susan watched with narrowed eyes as Rally cautiously looked over toward her.
"He killed the owner," Vivi said. "And spent sometime altering it. I don't see any colors on the wall, just metal. There are some pumps or something making noise. There's a number..."
Susan stared at the girl, and nodded, putting some pieces together.
She had read more than a few texts on the matter, and she knew the term psychometry. It wasn't supposed to be possible for thoughts to linger on an item. No one had ever really successfully done it...well at least not until now.
"That's Downbelow," Susan said starting to raise her hand to her link.
"Right," Rally said, starting to stand up and look toward the sections of Brown Sector that were part of the unfinished areas of Downbelow.
Both Susan and Rally were interrupted as Vivian took another item out of the briefcase, a data crystal, and gasped loudly before dropping it as if it had burned her.
"What is it?" Rally asked.
"A psi-cop, he's short and smiles a lot," Vivian said. "And he never opens his left hand. It's a closed fist and he's empty inside."
Susan and Rally both frowned deeply as the implications came in.
"Bloody Psi-Corp," Susan muttered, drawing Rally's eyes. "Go and help find your daughter. This little one can stay here, and I promise she'll be safe."
"Little Girl?" Rally asked, seeing what Vivian thought.
"Umm, do you mind?" Vivian asked, holding out a hand nervously.
"You want proof, yeah, I would too," Susan said, reaching for one of her commander's bars off her shoulder and hesitated just a moment before placing it into Vivian's hand.
Susan had no idea whether her own minor telepathy would be revealed or not, but
The girl shook as she felt the recent spike of intense disgust that Susan had had at the realization that the Psi-Corp was behind Jack, and then she turned to her mother.
"I'll be fine," Vivian said. "She doesn't like Psi-Corps at all."
Rally nodded, giving Susan a warning look.
"If anything happens to her," Rally said.
"Then you can try to kick my ass," Susan agreed.
Rally nodded and then was running down the hall.
Susan's link buzzed again.
"That's it, Commander Ivanova," Franklin said emphatically. "I've waited long enough, you're officially getting ordered back to Medlab. I have a stretcher already being sent your way."
"Oi, doctors," Susan said rolling her eyes.
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(Posted Thu, 23 Dec 2010 22:24)
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