Zero's Heart (Lathar Mercenaries: Warborne Book 1)

by Mina Carter

  “Not yours, I take it?” Sparky asked quickly. “‘Cause, sorry to break it to you, but thirteen will have locked everything of yours down six ways to Sunday, sweetheart.”

  She gave him a hard look. “Do you take me for a fucking idiot? Of course it’s not mine. I memorized the chief engineer’s codes the last time I went down there with him.”

  “Smart,” Zero commented to get their attention. “Corridor’s clear outside. We should move now before they start a level-by-level search.”

  Sparky locked and loaded his assault rifle. “After you, big guy.”

  ❖

  If anyone had told Eris yesterday she’d be trying to escape the station with an alien cyborg and an ex-con, she’d have laughed them off the damn thing. But here she was, creeping down the corridor hoping like hell they didn’t run into a team of the scariest special-forces soldiers in the known galaxy.

  “Hang left. Tangoes coming down the right-hand corridor,” Zero said quietly behind her.

  He’d been keeping up a quiet commentary, guiding them through the station corridors as they headed toward docking arm fifteen. Three times they’d had to double back or wait. She didn’t need to tell either of them that the frequency and number of enemy patrols weren’t a good sign. From the tone of Zero’s voice and the grim expression on Allen’s face as he took point and then held position to cover them as they moved, both already knew.

  They took the left corridor but halfway down Zero hissed. “Fuck, they doubled back.”

  They froze in place in the middle of the corridor. She and Allen covered opposite sides of the hallway.

  “Which way, big man?” Allen asked, voice terse. “We really don’t want to be caught here. They’ll cut us to fucking ribbons.”

  She didn’t take her eye off the corridor in front of her, finger coiled around the trigger. As soon as anything moved on her side, she was ready to toast it.

  “No direct route to the docking arm… shit… there’s too many,” Zero growled. “We’d need a tank to get through.”

  “Taking point,” she said abruptly, moving out of position as Zero took her place at the back of the group. “Got a plan.”

  Two corridors later, they walked into hell. As they were halfway down, they heard yelling behind them.

  “Contact rear!” Sparky bellowed, already returning fire.

  Half her brain paused to admire the way he moved. The joker disappeared, and in his place was a lethal soldier, his rifle barking as he cut down the commandoes filling the corridor behind them with a deadly aim.

  She and Zero joined the fray, and she lost herself in the rhythm of battle. Aim, fire, move… take cover, aim, fire. Move… Over and over. She ran out of ammo for her primary weapon, so she discarded it, going to the handguns she’d holstered to her hips.

  “Where the hell are we going?” Sparky demanded as she led them down to the storage units. “We can’t hide in one of these, they’re not shielded. We’ll be sitting ducks.”

  “Just hold the line,” she ordered. “Buy me a couple of minutes. That’s all I need.”

  She didn’t wait for an answer as she placed her weapon by Zero’s knee and sprinted down the corridor. Keeping low, she ran fast and tried to stay in cover as much as she could. Still, the skin between her shoulder blades itched. Any moment she expected to catch a bullet between them. Which would suck. After everything she’d been through, she didn’t intend to buy it in a scratty storage area on a rust bucket like Tarantus.

  She skidded to a halt in front of her storage unit and punched her access number in. Her fingers slipped on the pad, and the screen bleeped an error code at her.

  “Fuck!” she hissed, sweat trickling down her spine as she concentrated. She needed to get the numbers right. Three wrong tries and she’d be locked out. If that happened, they were fucked. Six ways to Sunday. Without lube.

  She tapped numbers again. Every second out of cover, her survival instincts screamed at her.

  “Code confirmed. Access granted,” the smooth voice of the computer announced. The door opened with a hiss of compressed air and a heavy clunk.

  She pushed at it, sliding through the gap as soon as it was wide enough. A hiss escaped her as she scraped the skin off her side on the way. Then she was through, almost falling onto the floor in the unit. Scrambling to her feet, she launched herself toward the tank suit at the back.

  Reaching it, she slapped her hand on the quick-release plate in the center of the chest. It registered her print and unfolded with a hiss of hydraulics. Not wasting a second, she hauled herself up and into the cockpit with practiced grace.

  Sliding into place, she started powering up the suit even as it closed around her.

  “Armored suit series three-zero-seven online. Calibrating for operator… lower limb obstruction present. Please advise.”

  “Shit!”

  She shoved at the closing panels to hold them open while she leaned down. Pulling the dagger from the sheath on her tac rig, she cut her pant leg off and ripped the exoskeleton free. It clattered to the deck in front of the suit as the panels closed.

  “Obstruction removed. Recalibrate and align with neural implants,” she ordered, checking the power levels and bringing the weapons systems online.

  “Calibrating… neural implants location, aligning to operator nervous system… warning, nervous system damage detected. Warning. Operating this unit may cause further damage.”

  “Fucking bullets will cause further damage!” she hissed, punching buttons. “Override. Initiate link anyway.”

  “Link initiated…. Confirmed. Engage upper torso systems?”

  Her lower body was locked into place, and the breath escaped her lungs as she felt the familiar prickle of the suit interfacing with her neural implants. Making sure her harness was secured, she slipped her arms into the arms of the suit. The clamps wrapped around her arms just above the elbow and over her wrists. She reached out and took hold of the controls.

  “Engage upper torso systems now,” she confirmed. “Close unit and armor up. Going weapons hot.”

  The last panel slid into place over her head, covering her face, her heads up display flickering to life on her side of the transparent panel. Pushing the unit into motion, she strode across to the door, her metal “feet” clunking on the deck.

  She rolled her shoulders and arms, making the guns on her shoulders—both machine and plasma—turn on their mounting to ensure she had full firing arcs.

  “Confirm weapons hot,” the suit replied. “Targeting systems active.”

  She nodded, bringing her current ammunition levels up to display in the corner of her screen. Not one hundred percent, but she wouldn’t need it for this. They had to get to the docking arm.

  Her lips compressed as she reached the door, ducking down to step out into the corridor. The air was alive with bullets and energy bolts, both pinging off her armor as she turned to see Zero and Sparky pinned in place at the end of the corridor.

  “Computer, acquire enemy targets,” she ordered calmly, waiting the fraction of a second for the computer to lock on. Then she rolled her shoulders again and bellowed.

  “Take cover!”

  6

  Zero had been in combat as long as he could remember.

  Sure, his memory only stretched back as far as T’Raal digging him out of the wreckage of that shuttle in the ass-end of beyond, severely wounded. Even without any memory of what had gone before, his body told the tale of a lifetime of violence. Scars... Evidence of repaired damage in his physical and cybernetic systems. Unit tattoos that didn’t match anything on record in any known galaxy or species military.

  In other words, he’d been a soldier all his life. Somewhere. And since then, he’d fought with the Warborne against some of the most dangerous and brutal enemies out there.

  But he couldn’t remember any of them being quite so determined and tenacious as the humans firing on them right now. It was all he and Sparky could do to stop their opponents overru
nning their position at the end of the corridor to buy Eris the time she needed.

  But where the fuck was she?

  He didn’t have time or chance to look over his shoulder the way she’d run. She had a plan. He had to trust that. She wouldn’t have cut and run, leaving them here to die… No, she wouldn’t have. She wasn’t built that way.

  He might not have known her for long, and he might not know her as well as he wanted just yet, but he knew her. Knew the kind of person she was. Like him, she was a soldier through and through.

  Which meant she wasn’t the kind of person to leave her comrades to die.

  “Will you lot just fucking fuck off and fucking die?” Sparky bellowed as he and Zero fired in concert, laying down a lethal net of suppressive fire. But despite it, despite their combined training and experience, the black-armored humans were creeping closer. It was only a matter of time.

  Odd noises sounded behind them—whirring and heavy clunking that sounded like footsteps. If there were eight feet instead of two, he could almost imagine a drakeen approaching to back them up. Gods, what he’d do for one of the heavy-duty combat bots right about now. It would easily cut a swathe through the humans in front of them, and they could use it as cover when they moved forward.

  “Take cover!”

  The voice was mechanized, female, and came from behind them. Zero and Sparky both hit cover at the same time, heads ducked as the air around them filled with bullets and energy fire the like of which he’d never seen before.

  “What the fuck?” he murmured, turning just as Sparky whooped.

  “Fuck me! She’s a tanker!”

  His jaw dropped as he turned. A behemoth of a machine walked toward them, guns on its shoulders recoiling in their rails as it fired mechanically, cutting down the humans trying to kill them. His thoughts of a drakeen hadn’t been too far off the mark. Bipedal, it was a hulking brute and heavily armored. Bullets from the humans pinged off it in showers of sparks. He could just see Eris’s face through a screen on the thing’s chest.

  “Get behind me!” she ordered, her voice strange and distorted as she walked toward them.

  “Tanker?” he asked Sparky as the two of them ran low and fast, getting behind the bulk of the machine she drove. As they moved, he caught a glimpse of her name painted on the breastplate.

  “Armored Infantry Unit!” Sparky yelled, falling in behind Eris’s leg and using the machine as cover as he started to fire back at the humans. He explained between bursts of firing, “Basically portable tanks. They were decommissioned about a decade ago. I didn’t think any were left. These things are antiques now!”

  “Moving left!” she warned them. They adjusted their movement, staying behind her as she pushed the human forces up while backing into the corridor that would lead them toward the docks. Only a few humans were left now, and it took the work of a minute for Eris to pick them off.

  “Okay, we need to move. Not much power left.”

  They broke into a run, Zero and Sparky taking point as Eris covered the rear. With the increased firepower, the resistance they met along the way was minimal and quickly dealt with.

  “There she is,” Sparky nodded toward the airlock as they emerged onto the docking arm. “The Aegis. You might wanna do your thing, big man. You’ll be quicker than me cracking her security systems.”

  “Make it quick,” Eris advised, clunking to take a position in the center of the corridor while facing the central station. Her guns rotated and reset in their rails, covering the passage. “We got incoming!”

  Without the need to check on the station security feeds, Zero instead dove into the system. Freezing in place, he concentrated on racing through cyberspace. Data flowed past him in its rawest form, constructs for different departments, routines, and subroutines blooming like flowers in a garden. He ignored them all, searching for what he needed. He raced along the data stream like it was a highway until the construct that was the Aegis rose up in front of him like a mountain rising from the deep.

  Skidding as he changed direction, he raced for it, his data-self already analyzing the shape and form of its defenses. It was more complicated than he’d thought and would be hard to hack. If only he was a… the memory glitch hit him out of the blue, the thought incomplete. If only he was a what?

  Shaking his head, he ignored it. Every so often his systems would reach for information that wasn’t quite there. Like an idea that was on the tip of his tongue, but as soon as he reached for it, it vanished like early morning mist in the sun.

  He didn’t have the finesse to break the Aegis systems covertly, not at this speed. Instead, he changed his digital form and sped up. Like a battering ram, he hit the ship’s firewall at full speed. There was a moment of profound digital silence, a freeze-frame in the flow of data. Then it tumbled down around him in a cascade effect that allowed him to surge forward and take control.

  “I’m in,” he announced, hitting his body with a rush and surging into motion toward the airlock. Sparky moved with him, Eris still firing at the human forces that had appeared in the corridor while he’d been out. He realized the human had been covering him with his own body.

  Humans… they were the strangest things.

  “Fuck me. That was fucking weird. You were here, but you weren’t there!” Sparky turned and fired as they ran, even as Eris walked backward, keeping the human forces off their backs. “I thought I was fucking god with a keyboard, but you’re something else. Aren’t you?”

  “You’d better believe it.” He winked, shoving Sparky ahead of him into the airlock. Even without his body armor, he could still take a fuckload more damage than a human. “Taking control of the ship now. Cycling the engines up. Eris, get your metal ass in here now!”

  The two men fired from the cover of the airlock as Eris cut and ran, her steps reverberating through the deck beneath their feet. Shouts rang out behind her as bullets pinged off her armored back.

  “Shut the lock!” she ordered, her face grim behind the screen. “I’ll make it!”

  He nodded, ignoring the screams from his protective male side as he hit the controls. If she didn’t make it… he shut the thought down, firing back as the door started to slide down, cutting off his view of the corridor. His heart pounded. Eris was still too far away.

  “Shit, she’s not going to make it,” he hissed, reaching out to slam into the controls to open the lock again. A hand shot out, wrapping around his wrist with surprising strength. Sparky shook his head.

  “She’ll make it, squire. Believe me. Those tankers are fucking hard bitches to put down.”

  “They’ll kill her!” Zero hissed, yanking his arm away and going for the control. But before he could hit it, he heard a screech of metal on metal. Then Eris’s tank suit appeared under the door, sliding across the deck into the airlock. She’d barely cleared it when it slammed shut inches from her “head.”

  “Told ya!” Sparky winked and patted the armored chest. “Good on you, girl. Now you wanna get your lazy ass up off the floor? We still gotta get this tub outta here.”

  “Yeah, yeah… keep your fucking hair on,” Eris replied, lying still in the suit. She hadn’t been in combat for years, and she could tell. Every cell in her body ached from operating the suit even for that small amount of time. “Need to shut this baby down. I’ll catch up.”

  The two men nodded and then were gone, leaving her on her own. She closed her eyes and sighed in relief. Alone, she didn’t have to hide the pain on her face. Shit. She really should have taken this thing out for a spin a time or two to keep her skill levels up.

  But…

  “Neural link lost to lower right limb,” the suit warned her. “Recalibrating.”

  And there it was. The implants in her leg had finally burned out. A tear leaked from the corner of her eye and rolled down her cheek as she spoke, her voice thick. “Cancel recalibration and initiate shutdown.”

  “Warning: optimal position for storage not achieved. Please confirm shutdown.�
�

  “Confirmed. Initiate shutdown.”

  “Affirmative. Shutdown procedure initiated.”

  She felt the suit release her, going dead and inert as the front panels opened. Taking a deep breath, she started to haul herself up and out of the thing. Her right leg was useless, as dead as the suit, trailing behind her as she moved.

  With a heave, she rolled herself up and over the head of the unit. All operators practiced and practiced the movement in case their suits got snarled in something and they needed to make a quick exit. It gave them cover if they needed to operate the shoulder weapons from behind.

  She landed hard, a hiss escaping her as she fought to keep her feet. Her right leg was utterly useless, the left not far behind it. Holding herself up with a hand on the edge of the open suit, she looked around for something to use as a crutch.

  “Wherever you are, beautiful, hold onto something,” Zero’s voice came over the ships comm. “Going engines hot.”

  “Warning: Inner airlock doors open.” The ship’s computer informed her. “Warning: Inner airlock doors open.”

  Abandoning her search, she held onto the suit for dear life. Not a moment too soon. Less than a second later, the deck lurched, the roar of the engines assaulting her ears as they burned fuel to get away from the station. Down here she was blind to what was going on, so she closed her eyes and hoped the outer airlock doors held.

  The next half-minute of her life was lost to deafening noise and fervent prayer. She didn’t know anything about the Aegis, hadn’t seen the logs… how was she to know if the engineering team kept up their maintenance schedules?

  Grimly, she focused on something else—anything else—to take her mind off the precarious situation she was in. Like the way Zero had held her… The hardness of his body against hers, the satin-over-steel of his skin, and the way he kissed her, like she was the only woman in the universe. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the memory as hard as she could. Just a little longer. If she survived this, she was taking him up on his offer of making her pass out from pleasure.