The Calypsis Project Boxed Set (Books 1-2 - The Echo-Alpha Duology)

by Brittany M. Willows

  “Thieving assholes,” Knoble muttered as he grabbed a pack of ammo from the bench’s lower shelf. Montoya’s crew must have ransacked Pioneer the second they left the bay . . .

  A volley of gunfire pelted the empty cargo racks beside Knoble. Two bullets grazed his unprotected scalp, spattering blood over the floor. He whipped around as horde of rebels streamed in from the hangar and dove for cover before they could knock out his shields.

  Kenon swiped his bow off the bench. He managed to loose an arrow as he slipped in behind a row of supply carts. The arrow pierced one rebel’s chest and sent her flying through the air.

  More gunshots rang out from the entrance.

  Margo Montoya had arrived with her personal security detail in tow. She cocked her firearm and projected her voice across the bay. “Nobody has to die here today, Lieutenant. Surrender the Drahkori and we’ll let you go!”

  Knoble smacked a fresh magazine into his rifle. “Sure thing, Cap,” he called over his shoulder. “Why don’t I hand over my balls while I’m at it?”

  A shotgun blast struck the crate he was hiding behind. He flinched, then tucked his head between his knees when another salvo pelted the lid.

  I’ll take that as a no.

  Chapter

  ———EIGHT———

  1300 Hours, September 08, 2442 (Earth Calendar) / UNPD Dropship Bandwagon, Theta Verra, near planet Alt

  No sooner had Echo Team left the Legacy of Night than Admiral Anderson assigned them another mission.

  According to a report from a shipping company in the Schwarzschild System, one of their freighters had been stolen during the night. They had since tracked the vessel to Theta Verra and lost it in Alt’s debris field, but not before they could identify the person behind the robbery.

  Captain Margo Montoya—a UNPD officer gone rogue. After she defected from the UNPD, Montoya went on to become the leader of one of Cap d’Ail’s most notorious militias. Now the woman was wanted for numerous crimes across human-controlled space, but she always found a way to elude the authorities.

  Today, however, it was Echo Team’s turn to join the fight. Their job was to rush in, take down Montoya and her crew, and return the stolen freighter to its rightful place on Mordecai XIII.

  “Target in sight,” Parker announced from the cockpit.

  Lieutenant Jenkinson rose from the copilot’s seat and slipped his helmet on. “Time to go dark. Parker, get us out of sight.” He descended the steps to the passenger cabin where Alana, Carter, and Jhiral were suiting up.

  The Bandwagon’s anchor sprang forth and grappled one of the larger pieces of wreckage orbiting Alt. Once its claws were buried deep in the battered hunk of metal, the line began to retract—dragging the dropship into the ring of debris.

  Alana shot a glance through the forward viewscreen as she fastened the clasps on her own helmet. A hundred meters past the glass sat an old civilian freighter nearly twice the size of a Falcon dropship. Painted in bold letters on the vessel’s port side was the name Wrangler—barely legible amidst the scratches that marked its discolored hull.

  “Someone’s gonna have to keep an eye on the old girl here.” Carter gave the bulkhead an affectionate pat. “Wouldn’t want anything to happen to her while we’re away.”

  Jenkinson nodded in agreement, then jerked his chin toward Jhiral. “Alume,” he said, “stow your weapons. I’m gonna have to ask you to stay behind.”

  “What?” The warrior paused as she holstered her carbine rifle. “Lieutenant, you can’t be serious. This isn’t fair! Have I not already proven my worth to you?”

  “Okay, first of all, lose the attitude.” Jenkinson stabbed his index finger at her. “In the field, you speak to me as your commanding officer. Second, I’m not questioning your ability, sweet cheeks. I’ve assessed the path we have to take, and if I’m gonna be totally honest, you’re just too damn big to crawl through a maintenance shaft built for humans.”

  Jhiral’s tail lashed in outrage, but she held her tongue. She knew better than to argue with him. “Yes, sir.” She shoved her carbine back into the weapons rack and stalked towards the cockpit to take Parker’s place. He quickly showed her around the terminal, then gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder and joined the rest of the team.

  Alana unwound a cord from one of the six spools mounted to the bulkhead. These safety lines would bind them to the dropship until they reached the freighter, ensuring that no one could drift too far. She hooked the clip onto her belt and gave it a tug to make sure it was secure.

  “Everyone ready?” Jenkinson asked. When they gave the signal, he ordered them to form up at the rear and called out for Jhiral to open the door.

  The adrenaline was already pumping through Alana’s veins when the passenger cabin began venting atmosphere. In all her years in the military, no mission had ever taken her on a spacewalk. The excitement of it, and the thought of what could go wrong, had her stomach doing somersaults.

  Focus. She banished the gruesome possibilities from her mind and poised herself to jump.

  Jenkinson raised his right hand. “On my mark . . .” He waited for the hatch to open fully, watching the light by the door. As soon as it turned green, he swiped his arm downward and the four of them leapt into the debris field.

  Pebble-sized chunks of metal ricocheted off Alana’s armor. Up ahead, a much larger piece crashed into Carter’s line and yanked him off course. He recovered quickly with the help of his thrusters and pressed on, muttering curses over the radio.

  “Almost there,” Jenkinson said. “Brace yourselves!”

  Alana concentrated on the freighter’s battered hull and counted down the seconds until impact. Three, two, one . . .

  Four pairs of boots slammed into the Wrangler’s starboard side. The magstrips on their soles kept them rooted to the ship as they traversed its slippery armor plating. Once the team had regrouped at one of the vessel’s exterior maintenance hatches, they detached from their safety lines.

  Jenkinson yanked a rusty lever beside the hatch to release the locking mechanism, then wrenched it open. “This tunnel should take us straight to the bridge,” he said. “We’ll come down right on top of them.”

  Carter grinned. “They’ll never know what him ‘em.”

  The team packed into the inner compartment and closed the outer door before entering the main passage. Careful not to make too much noise, they shuffled through the narrow shaft on all fours. When they reached the exit panel above the bridge, Alana was surprised by the lack of activity on her motion sensor. If it was reading correctly, that meant there were only two people on deck.

  She shot a look at Jenkinson as if to ask, what’s the deal?

  “Ambush?” Carter whispered.

  Parker hunched his shoulders. “An older freighter like this shouldn’t be able to detect the Bandwagon amongst the wreckage. Even if it could, they wouldn’t be able to identify it without a direct line of sight.”

  “Only one way to find out.” Jenkinson pried open the air duct and dropped down into the bridge. The rest of the team followed suit, snapping out their weapons the second they hit the ground.

  Two chairs spun to face them, revealing a rosy-cheeked woman and a one-eyed man whose left arm was in a sling. They were the Wrangler’s current navigation and communications officers, judging by the silver bars on the collars of their olive-and-gold uniforms.

  But if they’re the only ones here . . . where’s Montoya?

  “Get down on the ground, hands behind your head!” Carter motioned to the floor with a wave of his pistol and both officers dropped to their knees, begging him not to shoot. He stormed over, a set of handcuffs in his grasp, and chained them to the console.

  Jenkinson lowered his rifle. “Where’s your captain?”

  “Montoya?” the woman said. “She’s—”

  The one-eyed man kicked her in the thigh, no doubt he was scared of what would happen if they betrayed their leader. But the woman didn’t seem to care. She stuck he
r leg out to keep him from kicking her again and continued.

  “M-Montoya and the others went to speak with the crew of a shuttle we picked up,” she confessed, stumbling over her own tongue. “I think they’re in the lounge.”

  “Alright. Carter, you stay here and keep an eye on these two. Carmen, Parker—you’re with me. Let’s take this bitch down.”

  “Wait!” the woman cried as they turned to leave. “I helped you. That means you’ll let me go, right? That’s how these deals work!”

  “Sorry, we don’t do deals with terrorists.” With that, Jenkinson led Alana and Parker off the bridge.

  The corridors were eerily vacant, almost as if the rest of the rebels had vanished into thin air. Surely not everyone on board had gone to meet this shuttle crew? What could be so interesting about them that it would drag everyone from their posts?

  Within a few minutes, they located the lounge—only to discover that the room was empty and the door had been forced open. The control panel inside was damaged. It looked like someone had severed the wires with a plasma torch to override the lock systems.

  “Looks like they had prisoners.” Parker ran his fingers over the door’s handle, which was bent completely out of shape. “Emphasis on had. Didn’t Admiral Anderson say the real captain and his crew were fine?”

  “All personnel were accounted for,” Jenkinson confirmed, wandering over to a desk in the corner of the room. All of its drawers were open, their contents clearly disturbed. “There’s a lot of infighting amongst rebels. Some poor sap probably pissed off Montoya and got themselves locked in here until somebody could pay their dues. Guess they got tired of waiting.”

  “You’d have to be pretty damn strong to get this door open without power, though. Wouldn’t you?” Alana asked, leaning against the wall next to Parker.

  Before he could answer, a violent tremor raced through the freighter’s deck and sent the fish in the aquarium into a frenzy.

  The three of them exchanged uneasy looks, then bolted from the lounge and headed aft—following the sporadic pop of gunfire. As they neared the cargo bay, it grew louder. And when they rounded the next bend, a volley of stray bullets zipped past Alana’s visor.

  Suddenly her motion tracker was buzzing with activity.

  Alana ducked beside a stack of metal crates. She counted fifteen white blips on her sensor, each one indicative of a rebel’s position. They didn’t wear neural implants, so the radar couldn’t properly identify them.

  Then she noticed two more signatures winking further ahead: one red and one yellow—an enemy and an ally within close proximity of each other. While the red likely belonged to a rogue soldier whose service number had been flagged by the UNPD, she could only assume the latter belonged to the prisoner who’d escaped from the lounge.

  The rhythmic thump of a rotary machine gun rang across the bay, and a barrage of high-velocity rounds pelted the entryway.

  “Parker, get down!” Jenkinson yelled.

  Several bullets caught Parker in the shin of his artificial leg as Jenkinson dragged him down behind a forklift. He landed with a thud, but recovered quickly and lobbed a fragmentation grenade over the vehicle’s canopy.

  The grenade landed at the foot of a man decked out in riot gear. He didn’t have time to escape the blast zone. Shrapnel burst upwards and shredded his exposed neck. He fell to the floor, blood gushing from his throat.

  Alana took out two more rebels who were hiding between the supply carts lined up along the right-hand wall, and shot a third in the chest.

  He wasn’t going down without a fight.

  With the last of his strength, he sat up and fired full-auto. The volley knocked Alana’s shields down to half capacity before she could slip back into cover.

  “What’s going on out there?” Carter’s concerned voice crackled over the team’s headsets. “Are you guys all right?”

  “Define all right.” Jenkinson clasped his right arm, blood oozing through his gloved fingers. “We found the rebels. They’ve got us pinned down in the cargo bay.”

  “Need a hand?”

  “Situation’s under control for the moment. I’ll call you if things get too rough.”

  “Understood. I’ll keep the line open.”

  Tink, tink, tink.

  A fragmentation grenade bounced across the deck and rolled under the forklift. Parker shouted at Jenkinson to move. They leapt out of the way just as it detonated and ruptured the vehicle’s fuel tank.

  Alana glanced at her tracker. Only one enemy signature remained—right next to the yellow ally indicator. They were still huddled within a foot of each other, and neither had made a move toward Echo Team for the duration of the battle. Perhaps the escaped prisoner was being held hostage.

  Once Alana’s shields had recharged, she popped up from behind the crates and looked around for the last rebel. She caught something out the corner of her eye: a dazzling blue bolt hurtling straight towards her.

  She spun around with a shriek and dropped to her haunches as the bolt screamed over her head. It struck the wall in front of her, showering the floor with sparks. When she looked up to see what had almost punched a hole in her skull, her breath hitched in her throat.

  An arrow. Almost as long as she was tall, black as night with a head that gleamed like lightning caught in a freeze frame . . . In all her life, she had only seen one weapon that could launch projectiles like this.

  “Kurt!” she called out, pointing to the arrow when he turned to look at her. The second he saw it, he opened his visor and thrust his rifle into the air.

  “Stop!” he cried. “Everybody cease fire!”

  ————

  Lieutenant Knoble paused as he smacked a fresh magazine into his rifle. Had he heard that correctly? Did they seriously just call for a ceasefire? Rebels never surrendered—not in the middle of a firefight, not ever. Surely this had to be some kind of trick to draw them out of hiding?

  Then he noticed Kenon had stopped firing as well.

  “What the hell are you waiting for?” Knoble hissed through clenched teeth. The warrior stood, his bow drawn, yet he did not loose an arrow. What was stopping him? “Either shoot the bastards or get behind something!”

  But he did neither. Instead, Kenon lowered his weapon, jaws parted in disbelief, and from his lips slipped a most unexpected name: “Alana?”

  What? Knoble thought. It can’t be. He threw a glance over the top of the battered steel crate. Impossible as it seemed, there she was—standing by the cargo bay doors with her helmet in her hands. Two of her teammates peered out from the smoldering chassis of a nearby forklift.

  Their expressions were a reflection of his own shock.

  Alana made her way across the deck with uncertain steps. She reached out and ran her trembling fingers over the scratches in Knoble’s harness, almost as if to confirm he was really here.

  Knoble couldn’t help but smile. “Hey, sport.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. She threw her arms around him and buried her face in his shoulder. “I thought I would never see you again,” she whimpered, struggling to speak past the sobs that wracked her small frame.

  “I know, sweetheart. I know.” Knoble hugged her close, scarcely able to keep his own emotions in check. He almost couldn’t bear to let her go again.

  After giving her one last squeeze, he withdrew and cupped her reddened face in his hands. The longer he looked at her, the more he began to notice subtle differences in her appearance.

  Her features had become thinner, her gaze a little more weary. The gash across her cheek had closed, leaving only a thin scar stretching from brow to chin. That wound was deep. It should have taken weeks to heal.

  Before he could ask her about it, Knoble caught movement out the corner of his vision. A twinge of anger shot through him when he saw Captain Montoya crawling towards a rifle one of her men had dropped. He was about to storm over and apprehend her, but Echo Team’s leader beat him to the punch.

  Jenkinson slamm
ed his foot down on her wrist. She gasped in pain, fingers flexing under his boot. “It’s over, Montoya. I hope you enjoy the rest of your life behind bars.” He kicked the rifle out of reach and dragged her to her feet.

  She thrashed about in an attempt to pull free, repeatedly jabbing her elbows into his ribs. “You’re making a mistake,” she growled. “You’ve disrupted a vital operation!”

  Jenkinson wasn’t having any of it. “I didn’t want to have to do this . . .” Drawing a pre-loaded jet injector from his belt, he caught Montoya in a headlock to hold her still and drove it into her arm. It only took a second for the tranquilizer to take effect. She fell limp, and he handed her over to Sergeant Parker. “Take her to the bridge. We’ll question her and the other two once we’ve sorted things out here.”

  Parker hefted Montoya’s unconscious body onto his shoulders. As he hauled her out of the cargo hold, Jenkinson strode over to Alana, Knoble, and Kenon.

  “I don’t know what to say,” he said with flustered flap of his arms. “How did you two get here? How are you even here at all?”

  Knoble shrugged. “Orion must have made a mistake triangulating the portal’s destination. We arrived in Theta Verra, dropped a beacon, and these assholes picked us up a few hours later.” He motioned to the rebel bodies scattered about the bay, then pointed to Kenon. “I think they knew he was on board.”

  “That would explain the sudden increase in traffic. Drocain, Nephera, rebels . . . they’ve all have been frequenting this system lately. Margo Montoya wasn’t first on the scene. They must have been searching for you.”

  “Wait, did you say a few hours?” Alana blurted out, focus darting between her stepfather and the young warrior. “Wrangler was stolen yesterday. How long were you guys stranded out there?”

  Without his helmet, and due to most of Pioneer’s systems being offline when he awoke, Knoble had lost track of the time. He could only guess. “A day, maybe. Why?”