“Are you ready for my report?”
That’s odd, thought X, and he didn’t even bother to weigh it before he nodded and replied, “Let’s have it.”
Why didn’t you catch that?
Because you wanted to know what this was all about so badly. So you just said Let’s be done with it and have at it. That’s what you did.
When really… what she’d said was very odd.
Are you ready for my report?
It seemed like the right thing to say but really wasn’t. Nothing was ever so formal in a place that called strangling, snipers on rooftops, and regime change, “doing business.”
Far too formal.
Like she’d been asking him to identify himself as her handler. Like a spotter. Or an informant. For someone else to give some order of arrest. Or…
The sergeant major was knocking fuddy old X to the ground because he’d seen her pull her weapon lightning quick. Seen it while X was lost in self-criticism and fixations on the long game of what this all meant for his sacred Galactic Republic he was still desperate to save with all the games he could play.
He felt the sergeant major on top of him, covering him, as Andien Broxin began to fire at X, closing on the two old men. X tried to reach for his weapon, put he was pinned to the wet grass and the weapon was in the pocket beneath him.
The sergeant major was firing back.
Firing at the advancing girl.
Firing and missing? Or hitting her and it wasn’t doing much?
Then the sniper team opened fire from out in the woods. A shot from the N-18 hit Andien Broxin in the chest. Knocked her down.
X saw all this from the ground, the wet grass kissing his face.
And the girl who’d just been hit by a shot from a high-powered state-of-the-art sniper rifle… got up and ran back into the ship.
The sniper team tried to hit her, but she was moving far too fast.
Even though she should be dead.
A moment later the boarding ramp was up, and the sergeant major was dragging X back through the dark, screaming into his comm for the sniper team and whatever other assets the sergeant major had waiting around, telling them to take out the ship.
The sniper team could disable critical systems or just shoot the pilot.
They were firing, and the rain was falling harder. The sergeant major was breathing heavily, dragging X into the cottage. X felt distant. Not himself. As though possibly he’d been hit?
He didn’t feel hit.
The sergeant major slammed the cottage door and pulled up a trap door in the floor. X remembered they’d had a bunker installed. Right here.
“In,” bellowed the sergeant major. “Now!”
They weren’t halfway down the ladder when the Forresaw exploded, leveling the farm.
01
Dark Ops Headquarters
Deep Space Supply Station 9
Galaxy’s Edge
Major Ellek Owens hadn’t been in ener-chain binders in… how long had it been? Owens tried to think back as he marched down the dilapidated corridors of the deep space supply station his Dark Ops HQ used as a base of operations.
Perhaps it was during the Legion’s standard REES training—Resistance, Evasion, Escape, and Survival. A brutal course that denied its students their buckets and weapons, forcing them to live off the land as long as possible, evading patrolling bots and Legion instructors. Owens had managed to remain loose for three months in the wilderness of Pratna-Kao. Until the instructors had to call for him to come out through amplification towers and messenger bots.
Owens shook his head at the memory. When he’d revealed himself, smiling, to a pair of instructors traveling in an open-air repulsor sled along a mountain road, the two leej instructors smiled back, hopped out, and put him in ener-chains before laying on a beating and “graduating” him to the next phase of the program, where he sat in a makeshift prison complex with other captured leejes, forced to endure physical and psychological stresses designed to get him to abandon the Legion code and flip on his brothers. That was the only time in all of Owens’s training that he thought he might actually die from the experience.
But that memory wasn’t the last time he’d been in ener-chains. He recalled a Dark Ops training program that augmented the REES course. Only in this one, the joke was that the “R” stood for “restraints.” In that course, the instructors taught their students how to disable all sorts of restraints—including the top-issue Republic models that were supposedly foolproof.
The red-bearded major looked at the two Republic Army soldiers marching in front of him. Each of the men held a Miif-7 blaster rifle at the two-handed carry position. It wouldn’t be difficult for him to escape the ener-chains and take both men out. There were two more behind him, and they wouldn’t be hard to neutralize, either.
But things in the Republic were tense. Owens knew that Kill Team Victory’s mission to destroy the shipyards at Tarrago had been against the desires of the House of Reason, even though it was tactically the best move in the blossoming war against this Goth Sullus idiot. And Legion Commander Keller had warned him that if the mission was successful—and it had been a huge success—someone was going to take a political hit for it.
That someone was Owens.
“Hey! Basics! Where the hell are you going with Major Owens?”
The shout came from one of the Dark Ops leejes based on the station. Sergeant Jason Henderson. DO-360, “Trident.”
The army escorts, clearly rattled by this, quickened their pace. Trident stepped directly in their path and crossed his arms, covering the Legion crest on his black T-shirt. He stood a head taller than the Rep Army soldiers, and looked down on them with distaste. As though those standing before him were not quite men.
“I’m talking to you, Basics,” he said with a sneer. “Where you taking Major Owens?”
Owens popped his gum loudly and smiled, his eyes hidden behind seemingly opaque black shades. “Better answer the man, boys. I would if I was you.”
One of the two soldiers in the front sagged his shoulders in an exaggerated manner and dropped his head, as if to show that he wasn’t looking for trouble and was put off by its arrival.
“Look, man,” the soldier said, nodding as if trying to reach an accord through some unseen rhythm. “I’m only in the army because the Reason judge said it was this or penitential confinement. My lieutenant says to go grab your boy, I do what she says.”
“He does what she says,” Owens parroted. “Don’t want to get your lieutenant mad at you. She’ll ruin your life.”
“That’s what I’m saying,” added one of the basics behind Owens. “Have us on waste disposal with orders to outclean the bots.”
“The major came with us willingly,” offered the other soldier in the front, his tone carrying a note of hope that the comment might help.
“No kidding he came willingly,” Trident said, as though the statement was the dumbest thing he’d heard all day. “If he didn’t want to, you’d all be in line for emergency cybernetics. He’d already be out of the ener-chains if he didn’t want to be in them, skipworms.”
The soldiers looked at Owens, who sheepishly nodded that this was correct. This was the perfect diversion before whatever tongue-lashing the House had in store for him. A reprieve from reality. One more good time with the boys.
That’s what it would have to be.
He was going to have to face some punishment, like it or not. Owens knew that Keller would protect him, ultimately. The Legion wasn’t going to lose a Dark Ops sector commander just because the House of Reason was too obtuse to recognize sound tactics. The ener-chains were probably by order of no one higher up than the soldier’s lieutenant. An overzealous know-nothing who took herself far too seriously.
“Yo!” shouted another legionnaire. His dark complexion betrayed significant annoyance. “Why is there a basic parade in my hallway, dammit?”
The soldier who had chosen army over jail shifted his feet.
“Maaan…” he mumbled to himself.
The newly arrived legionnaire wore a captain’s fatigues and had a jaw so hard he could chew impervisteel and then blow bubbles. He joined Trident in blocking the corridor.
“What do my wondering eyes see?” asked the new arrival.
None of the soldiers escorting Owens said anything. This only seemed to make the captain angrier.
“Y’all basics don’t answer captains when they ask you a question? What I gotta be? A general? I gotta summon General Rex from the grave? That it, basics?” shouted the captain so rapidly that the soldiers were able to do little more than flinch at his every word.
“No, sir,” they answered in unison.
“‘No, sir,’ what?” the captain shot back. “No, you don’t answer captains? Well, seeing as how I earned these two bars fighting through McCoy Cluster while you four were gettin’ fat off commissary life, I take offense! Yes, I do! O-F-F-E-N-S-E. What’s that spell?”
“Offense!” shouted back the soldiers.
“Damn right. Now answer my other question!”
“Sir, we answer captains, sir!” shouted one of the basics, a remnant of his essential training camp experience springing back to him.
“I hear you say that, but I still don’t know why a basic parade is marching through this supply station!”
“Sir, we have orders to escort Major Owens to a shuttle docked at Bay D-3.”
“Orders from who?” bellowed the captain. He pointed at his chest. “I didn’t give you no orders like that. Major Owens? Did you order these men to parade you through these halls like a prisoner? Is that how you get your jollies, you sick, sick man?”
Owens laughed out loud and shook his head. “Let ’em go, Drayus. Gotta be done, and the sooner it is, the better.”
“All right,” Captain Drayus replied, stepping aside. “I’m good.” He stared daggers at the soldiers all the same. “Y’all know there’s a war on, right? You gonna need Major Owens in his place, or Dark Ops ain’t gonna be able to keep the big bad dire wolf from gobbling y’all basics right up.”
Trident chomped his teeth at the basics, then gave a wolfish smile.
Footfalls sounded from farther up the hallway as a Republic Army lieutenant power-walked toward the blockage. “There you four are! You were supposed to be at the bay ten minutes ago!”
“Here we go,” mumbled the hapless basic in the front, sounding as though he was strongly questioning the wisdom of choosing the army over prison.
The lieutenant pushed her way into the midst of the group. She stood at least a foot shorter than everyone, with red hair pulled back into a tight bun, stowed neatly beneath her cap.
“This is Major Owens?” she asked, directing the question at no one in particular.
Owens disabled the ener-chains and held out his hand. “That’s me, Lieutenant…” he read the name from her uniform, “… Pratell.”
Pratell’s eyes fumed. Her wrath fell on the soldiers under her command. “Get those ener-chains back on the major right now!”
The soldiers hesitated, as if looking to the legionnaires for approval prior to moving.
“Do I have to do this myself?” shrieked Pratell. She strode next to Owens, standing only as high as the burly legionnaire’s chest. She pointed at the binders on the floor and ordered one of the soldiers to “Pick those up!”
Ener-chains in hands, she re-fastened them on Owens’s wrists. For his part, the Dark Ops major was behaving with complete compliance, though the smirk behind his beard conveyed an amused contempt for the whole show. This seemed to kindle a deeper anger inside of Lieutenant Pratell. She hooked her hand into the crook of Owens’s arm and yanked him as hard as she seemed able to.
Owens took a step, following her, then dug in his heels, causing her to come to a complete halt, no matter how hard she pulled on the legionnaire’s granite-like arms.
“Hold up,” Owens said, his voice full of severe concern.
The Republic soldiers escorting him looked at each other with worry in their eyes.
“My shades are all catawampus,” Owens said. “Captain Drayus, would you straighten them out for me before we head off to the docking bay?”
“Sure thing, Major,” Drayus answered, standing inches from Lieutenant Pratell as he faced Owens. Drayus straighted out the black shades and then took a step back to appraise. “Oh, yeah. You look iced, Major. Parminthean.”
Drayus looked down at Pratell, holding out his index finger like a scolding schoolteacher. “You’re escorting a Republic hero, so you best treat ’im right. Major Owens saved the House of Reason once already, and his team just saved the Republic again at Tarrago.”
Trident leaned against the wall, giving the Republic soldiers room to move past. “Not that you points have an interest in anything other than yourselves…”
“I’m not a point,” hissed Pratell as she pulled Owens past the mocking legionnaires, her soldiers in tow. “I earned my way out of the edge.”
***
Owens stood calmly outside the docking bay door as mechanic and tech crews blended among hovering maintenance bots to form a current of bustling activity in this busiest part of the space station.
“Comin’ through,” shouted a loadmaster in a green coverall jumpsuit. Behind him, a train of repulsor pallets carrying what looked like crates of aero-precision missiles and launchers moved toward one of the big loading stations that the destroyers and corvettes used for resupply. A pair of legionnaires in that horrible reflective armor followed the supply train.
Owens clenched his teeth. Dark Ops was a different world from the Legion, but they were kindred warriors. Each Dark Ops kill team member had served in the Legion at one time or another, and Owens didn’t know of a single regular leej who was happy with just how degraded the Legion had become—other than the points, who didn’t seem to notice. Yes, the Legion was still the galaxy’s premier fighting force. But Republic “innovation” and cost-saving measures outfitted this current generation with armor that could barely stop a sport blaster. The reflective shine might look dazzling on parade grounds, but it was a liability on the battlefield. Hopefully Legion Commander Keller would make good on his promise to get the legionnaires back into the old gray model of armor. Stuff that had no problem stopping most small arms fire and didn’t announce its presence like a beacon.
The supply train disappeared behind mammoth blast doors that irised shut behind them. Owens couldn’t see through the docking station’s many transparent impervisteel windows what ship was being loaded up, but the cargo made it plain that they were expecting to see action. And those leejes were going to die unnecessary deaths because of politicians who didn’t care enough to send the equipment over that would keep them alive.
“Man, look at that,” mumbled one of the basics guarding Owens.
A platoon of Republic Army soldiers in full combat kit were being led to the personnel access blast doors. Going to the same ship as the missiles.
“When’s the last time you saw R-A going all out like that?”
“Heard they’re massing to retake Tarrago.”
“Thought that was the Legion’s job,” replied another soldier.
Owens lifted his ener-chained hands to stroke his beard. “My guess, boys, is that everyone in the galaxy with a blaster to their name is gonna end up using it before long. You four included.”
This seemed to deflate the soldiers, who watched as their counterparts—men in whose position they could just as easily have been—walked up the docking ramp to be kicked out on rotation into a full-scale war zone.
Lieutenant Pratell had her hand up to her ear, obviously listening to something over her comm. She addressed Owens and her four soldiers. “We have clearance to enter the ship.”
The docking bay door slid open, revealing a long, pressurized hall that connected the station to what appeared to be an armored transport shuttle. Owens had only been able to see a glimpse of the ship’s nose and fins from inside the docking
station, but that was probably what it was. A spacefaring fortress. Something that could take a licking from starfighters long enough to escape into hyperspace. Popular for dignitaries entering pirate-heavy space and for the transfer of high-value targets.
Owens had shuttled more than a few MCRs in these things, screaming away from pursuing Preyhunters until they could reach the safety of a waiting destroyer or the protective folds of hyperspace.
“Thought you said they were in a hurry for me,” Owens remarked to Pratell as they walked the brightly lit corridor to the shuttle.
“What?”
“Just seems odd that after all that rushing, they’d make us wait outside for nearly ten minutes.”
Pratell shrugged her shoulders. She seemed somewhat more soothed now that she’d regained control of Owens’s transfer. “I couldn’t say, Major. I’m stationed here with the rest of the Fifth Quartermasters Company.”
“Quartermasters?” Owens said. “I figured you for a headquarter division type.”
“You take your promotions out of the edge where you can get them, Major.”
Pratell’s tone still had an edge of offense waiting to be taken. Owens snapped his gum in reply. He was going to get a serious dressing-down. Maybe get busted down a rank. Still, he felt confident that he’d back in his office coordinating with Victory Squad and the rest of his kill teams within a few hours’ time.
The shuttle’s dock-door hissed open, and Owens was ushered inside the spacecraft’s large cargo hold.
He looked around, bewildered.
“What the… hell?”
All hope of quickly returning to work left him.
***
Owens knew he was inside an armored transport shuttle. He’d been escorted from a very real deep space supply station across an unassuming docking bridge, and through an airlock before reaching what—on every transport shuttle he’d ever been on—should be the cargo hold.
Prisoners of Darkness Page 2