The Ocean in the Sky by Gene Doucette

Author:Gene Doucette [Doucette, Gene]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Eugene Doucette

There was not, strictly speaking, a “back door” to the apartment. Legally, every residential space in Velon proper (and probably in Inimata as a whole, although Leemie wasn’t familiar with all of the federal statutes in this regard) had to have multiple points of egress in the event of a fire. And he did, after a fashion. It’s just that the second exit after the front door was not the intended one. He’d bricked up that one—the rear door at the top of the stairs—a long time ago.

Leemie paid his landlord considerably more than he could otherwise get for such a crap place in such a crap part of a crap quarter, and in return his landlord ignored Leemie’s non-standard adjustments to the property. Every few years a building inspector would sniff around, and then Leemie would have to either kick in a bribe or find some other way to incentivize the inspector to leave them alone, but that was the worst of it.

So they weren’t getting out the back door, but that didn’t mean the Sentries wouldn’t try to get in that way. The steel inner door at the front of the place could take a direct hit from a drone missile, but the brick wall at the back wouldn’t. Neither would the windows Leemie had boarded up.

They had to use a different second exit to escape…Leemie just had to create it.

After he and Dorn got the couch out of the way—scattering files everywhere—Leemie rolled back the threadbare rug to reveal what appeared to be a solid concrete floor, with an X painted in the middle.

Dorn stepped back. “Perhaps you should have painted a door instead,” they suggested drily.

“Funny. Come on.”

Leemie led Dorn to the “bedroom” portion of the basement. He lifted and tossed the small cot on which he (occasionally) rested. Underneath it was two large bags. He lifted one and handed it to Dorn.

“Guns,” he said. “They’re loaded and ready to go. I’m giving them to you to carry because I don’t think you know how to use them.”

“You’re correct,” Dorn said.

“Keep them safe, dry and away from fire.”

“Will…will there be fire?”

Leemie ignored the question. He lifted the second bag and carried it to the X in the floor, unzipped the bag and pulled out one of the shaped charges.

Viselle Daska saw the explosive, muted herself, and said, “Honus’s balls, you’re going to kill all of us with that.”

“I know what I’m doing,” he said.

“Your plan is to blow a hole through the foundation rock?”

“I am not fond of that plan,” Dorn said.

“We only need to go down a half mader,” Leemie said. “That’s the depth at the X. It’s thicker everywhere else, and yes I know this for sure.”

Daska’s eyes were fixed on the charge in his hands. “And you know how to use that?”

“This is a Barlis grade three doorbuster. Black Market surplus. And yes, I know what I’m doing with it. Now mind your job and I’ll mind mine.”

“All right, but I’m running out of demands.

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