He looked back over his shoulder. The creature was picking up speed again.
16
Lao Pak didn’t mind the blaster fire. As the firefight between the slavers, guards, and prisoners intensified, the pirate felt himself growing richer with each casualty. He kept himself safe by staying close to the ramp of his freighter. While the mines’ auto-turrets had been shut down, the modified repeating blasters on Lao Pak’s ship had not. Synced to his bio-signature, the blaster turrets made short work of anyone who got too close.
Only Lao Pak was safe within three meters of the turrets. Though he still used his nasty little holdout blaster a couple of times, when a fast runner got a little too close for comfort. No point in taking chances.
The first casualties were frantic prisoners and guards seeking to find shelter—or escape—on the galaxy-class freighter. They brandished only whips and rocks; the guards armed with blaster rifles were too busy fighting the legionnaires who had acquired their own. They stopped coming only when they saw that death awaited them. And that allowed Lao Pak to… inspect the bodies. What he found was synth. Lots of it. He already had a stash growing on board his ship.
From his position of safety, he observed the chaos. The two sides fought a back-and-forth battle. The legionnaires had the edge in experience, but the guards had more firepower. And after the initial human wave of rioters was cut down by a line of entrenched Gomarii and Republic guards, much of the fighting had been reduced to more of a brawl. Skirmishers in the middle of the docking bay fought tooth and claw, both sides occasionally having their own picked off by rifle-wielding enemies hidden all about.
None of that really concerned the pirate, though. His mind was fixed on getting more synth. Never turn down an opportunity to increase profits.
A group of prisoners ran by the opening of the freighter. Too fast for the turrets to get a lock. Lao Pak called after them, “This way! Get on board, I rescue you!”
Some of the prisoners stopped and turned to take the pirate up on his offer. The auto-turrets cut them down at the foot of the ramp, causing the rest to scatter into the maelstrom.
“Doesn’t matter,” Lao Pak said as he rummaged through the dead for their bags of synth. “Not everyone see trap. More come. I get big rich.”
He examined the bags of synth. No jackpots. Probably not even a gram, all told. The guards tended to carry more, since they collected the quotas. But all of them had grown wise to the death trap sitting in the middle of the war zone.
Lao Pak walked back up his ramp and placed the delicate synth in a cargo container. He paused to admire his stash. “So wealthy, Lao Pak. You best pirate king.”
As he turned to walk back down the ramp, hoping to entice more to give up their treasures, he heard the roar. It was… otherworldly. It sent a shiver down the pirate’s spine.
And then he saw it. A tremendous creature with rows of eyes and teeth rampaging through a crowd of prisoners running toward the docking bay. The monster took wanton bites from the fleeing throng, and blood, viscera, and body parts flew everywhere as it literally chewed its way through the panicked crowd.
“Maybe I have enough!” Lao Pak said as he ran back inside his ship. He shut the ramp behind him and ran for the bridge. He was getting off this rock. He had more than enough synth. Keel could keep his money.
***
Owens was glad to be holding a blaster rifle again, even if it was an odd Gomarii make. Rowdy had brought it to him, and after test-firing it to get a feel for how it handled, Owens was confident it could KTF if the need arose.
Though that didn’t seem likely. At least, not inside the command center. He and Chhun had systematically cleared the structure after locking it down.
Now Owens was overlooking the battle outside, wishing he had an L-comm to communicate to his legionnaires with. And not just Victory Squad. Synth Squad, too.
A warning light sounded at one of the control consoles. Owens investigated it and read the screen aloud.
“Unauthorized departure in progress?” Owens checked the holocam and saw the docking platform beginning to rise up the shaft, the freighter moving up with it. “Dammit!”
Owens pounded the console. That freighter was their ticket out. Chhun had said they’d used an actual pirate to bring them in, and now the man was proving himself to be just that—a pirate, with no interest but his own.
“What’s going on, Major?”
The question came from Rowdy, returning after going with Chhun to take out the last two Gomarii—the ones guarding the door without cam access.
“Where’s Chhun?” Owens asked.
“He’s fine as far as I know,” Rowdy answered. “He got a call over L-comm, said he needed to get out into the fight. Seemed pretty serious, so I let him go.”
“Well, we got a serious problem here too. Our ride just left without us.”
“That’s… not good.”
Owens frowned. “Not good at all. We need to end this fight and prepare for the next Republic arrival. We’ll get a ship then.”
“What about the Legion commander? You were going to send a message—have him send help.”
Owens shook his head. “Yeah, about that. Should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. The comm systems are hard-coded to only reach a few designated relays. And I’ll bet you a fistful of synth those relays are manned by people who aren’t going to be too happy to hear about a leej takeover. A good code slicer would probably have no trouble getting around that, but that ain’t me. You?”
Rowdy shook his head. It was beyond him, too.
“So we’re on our own here,” Owens said. “We’ll have to hang out until the next delivery of supplies or prisoners comes.”
"Longer wait than I would've liked," Rowdy said. “But what’s a few more days?”
“Did you find out what those Gomarii were guarding?”
“Yeah,” Rowdy said, pointing back over his shoulder. “Holding cell full of slaves for transport. Looks like they gathered them up earlier than we anticipated.”
“Where are they now?”
“Still in the holding cell. I told them to hang tight, then re-sealed the door.” Rowdy shook his head. “I wanted to check with you before releasing them, on account of some… stuff that looked out of place.”
“What ‘stuff’?” asked Owens.
“Republic stuff,” Rowdy said with a sniff. He gestured to the monitor. “See for yourself. There are cams linked to the room. They were just turned off. I switched them back on.”
Owens cycled through feeds until he found the right one. The room was nearly wall to wall with humanoids. Owens squinted at the scene and understood what had Rowdy concerned. A handful of the prisoners had on Republic uniforms.
He zoomed in. “Well I’ll be. I know that one. Lieutenant Pratell. She’s the one who brought me in.” He zoomed back out a bit. Sitting next to Pratell were the two Republic army basics from the transport shuttle, along with two navy pilots—must have been them who’d piloted them in. “Looks like they all knew too much and were about to pay the price.”
Rowdy tapped the image of the two navy pilots. “If the pilots are still here, maybe your shuttle is, too?”
“There wasn’t any shuttle out there on the landing pad,” said Owens.
“No, there wouldn’t be,” Rowdy answered. “Only one ship can take off and land at a time. But there’s a separate maintenance and repair area. Most smaller ships like shuttles need to be fixed up before they can leave again—the sand gets everywhere. And if the ship is still here, all we need is to get those pilots to agree to fly us out.”
Owens smiled. “Whether the shuttle is here or we have to wait for the next arrival, something tells me our featherheads will be more than willing to fly whatever we find after all this. Listen, I know your men are busy, but if you can spare anyone to check the repair bay for an escape vehicle, I’d like to know our options.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. I’m heading out into the fig
ht.”
***
Chhun watched in disbelief as the repulsor platform lifted Lao Pak’s freighter up the shaft toward Herbeer’s raging surface. The ceiling irised closed behind it. If the team made it out of here, Chhun would make a point of contacting Wraith. Not to chew him out, but to learn how to track that pirate down and make him pay.
But all of that depended on his ability to overcome two substantial obstacles, both of which were intertwined. He needed to put down the guards—or get their full surrender—so that he could turn the auto-turrets back on and try to drive back the monster. The beast—it looked like a bipedal row of teeth and eyes, with scales and fur—was now stalking the edges of the docking bay platform, keeping to the shadows where it could, shrugging off blaster fire and destroying any light source in its path. Chhun noted that it also destroyed every auto-turret it came upon.
Everyone was pouring their blaster fire into the beast. Its fur was being burnt away with each volley of incoming fire, but the rifles apparently didn’t have the power necessary to burn through the thing’s tough hide.
“Maybe we should chance turning the turrets back on?” suggested Bear over the L-comm. “This is the first animal I ever saw that looked like it could take me in a straight-up fight.”
“Not an option with those guards still around,” Chhun said. “It’s a three-minute process to shut them down once they’re back up, and I guarantee you the guards will use that time to take us out. We’re just as dead that way.”
Most of the prisoners had fled the scene by this point, probably hiding somewhere in the mines, leaving the guards and legionnaires locked in a game of nerves. Avoid the beast, and avoid the enemy fire sure to come if you broke position.
“Guess we just gotta kill the guards then,” said Fish.
“Gonna have to,” agreed Chhun.
Suddenly the L-comm was filled with a pain-wracked scream.
“What is it?” asked Chhun. “Who’s hit?” His eyes frantically searched his HUD to see any change in status on the dots that represented what remained of his team. To his surprise, a dot that had been black—indicating killed-in-action—was now a faint yellow. Wounded.
“Pike?” Chhun called into his comm.
“Hurts… so bad,” Pike said, his voice muffled and pained. He screamed again. “I’m inside of it! I’m being eaten alive!”
“Hang on, man!” shouted Masters. “We’ll kill this thing and get you out!”
All of Chhun’s legionnaires fired in unison on the creature, instinctively targeting a single spot in the hopes of multiplying the damage. But this, too, was ineffectual.
“My legs are burning,” reported Pike. “Bucket… says… five minutes.”
That was an estimation of how long Pike’s combat AI projected he had before lapsing back into unconsciousness… or, more likely, death. Chhun was reading the report on his own HUD. Pike had lost a lot of blood; his suit’s tourniquet had probably been undone by whatever acids were dissolving him inside the beast’s stomach. That he was alive at all was likely only due to his armor.
“Hang in there, buddy,” Chhun said. “You’re gonna be fine.”
“No…” Pike said, weakly. “Going… to die.”
“You ain’t dyin’, man,” Fish answered between volleys of blaster fire.
“It’s… okay…” Pike said, his breathing labored. “Gonna die on my terms. Got… some… det-cord.”
Pike carried enough charge to blow off a hinge or a hand, but Chhun wasn’t sure it would be enough to take down that monster. In fact, it would probably only add to Pike’s suffering, unless he wrapped the cord around his neck to make sure he…
Chhun didn’t want to think about that.
“Don’t think you’ve got enough, Pike,” Chhun said. “You’re in shock, not thinking clearly. Just hang on while we figure out a way to kill this thing. Then we’ll cut you out. Get you patched up.”
“Am… thinking… clearly,” said Pike. “Got… a ton of… synth… in here. Raw… pressed it into… more… det—ungh—cord.”
“Pike, man…” Masters said, his voice choking with emotion. “Don’t. We’ll get you out. Don’t.”
“Tell them…” rasped Pike into the L-comm. “Tell them I didn’t… forget… nothing.”
“What’s he talking about?” Bear asked Chhun on a private channel.
“It’s something the old leejes used to say at the end of the Savage Wars. Before KTF got popular.”
The beast strode around defiantly, bellowing in anger and using its clawed hands—digging hands—to swipe away guards and prisoners like so many pieces from a game board.
Chhun watched. Waited. Pike…
The explosion was tremendous. The creature blew apart from the inside out, bits and pieces flying in all directions.
Chhun gave himself one second to be stunned. Then he gave an order. “Push! Push on those guards now!”
At once the surviving legionnaires went in hard, blaster rifles firing. The Legion prisoners, some with rifles and some without, followed suit. It was a textbook surprise assault, the legionnaires forming both ends of a pincer that trapped the shocked guards. Unarmored legionnaires fell to desperate blaster fire, but the guards were losing five men to one.
It was the humans, the Republic, who threw down their weapons first. The Gomarii didn’t hold out much longer. Soon the entire element had their hands up.
“Victory Team,” Chhun said, advancing on the guards even as the prisoners surged and began beating their captors. “Secure the new prisoners, and keep the old ones back. A lot of them are here for a reason. They’re not all like the major.”
Chhun saw Owens giving orders to the Legion prisoners, now free. They formed a protective wall in front of their former captors and fired their blaster rifles over the heads of the rioting synth miners.
“Prisoners of Herbeer,” came a voice over the mine’s central comm system. Chhun recognized the voice as Rowdy’s. “This facility is now under control of the Legion. You are to disperse back into the appointed areas designated for prisoners. All quotas are hereby considered fulfilled.”
The prisoners gave a somewhat lackluster cheer at this news. Pleased at the news about quotas, but obviously disheartened over still remaining captive.
How many of these had been incarcerated for all the wrong reasons? Chhun didn’t know. It would be up to someone else to sort through it all. He and his team still had a war to fight. And he was grateful that their Dark Ops commander would be there to help wage it.
17
Victory Squad pulled security as Major Owens saw to the last of the legionnaires that were to board the armored Republic shuttle. The shuttle had indeed still been on-planet, in the maintenance bay, and hadn’t yet been stripped down for parts, as Owens had feared. The pilots, saved from a life of slavery, were only too happy to take their former cargo off of Herbeer.
The legionnaires not joining Owens on the initial trip out—the shuttle could only hold so many—were now suited in surplus Republic uniforms. They would run the prison. There would be no work… that was agreed to. But order was required until further arrangements could be made. Owens had reappointed Rowdy as their leader, and Synth Company would be in his capable hands until Owens could arrange for them to be relieved.
To Owens’s surprise, Lieutenant Pratell had foregone his offer to leave with them, instead volunteering to stay behind and research who should and shouldn’t be serving out their sentences in the mines. Owens was confident she would do a fine job. Like the pilots, she had been quick to support Owens when confronted with the reality of what the Republic had allowed to happen on Herbeer. Had encouraged to happen on Herbeer. Republic citizens were being handed over to Gomarii slavers. It didn’t matter that they were criminals. It went against what the Republic stood for. What it was supposed to stand for.
And clearly, as Pratell’s own experience demonstrated, not everyone taken prisoner here was a criminal. Some were just… inconvenient to th
e Republic. It had been a Republic officer who had issued the order for Pratell’s arrest after Owens was processed, and neither Pratell nor Owens believed for one second that that officer had been acting on his own initiative. It was because she knew too much. Because news of what had been done to Owens couldn’t be allowed to reach the galaxy.
To reach the Legion.
After a short trip, all that would change. And the galaxy wouldn’t be the same.
Standing at the base of the ramp, Owens watched as the big drusic, Orpe, approached.
“You sure about this?” Orpe asked.
Owens nodded. “Figure you earned your freedom today. No sense making you wait… unless you’d rather stay down here.”
The big ape snorted. “Hell no.” He walked inside the shuttle.
Chhun was standing at the opposite side of the ramp. “This everyone?” he asked.
Owens saw a few legionnaires moving in his direction, only one of whom would be leaving Herbeer today.
“Not quite.”
Owens straightened his posture and snapped a perfect salute.
As the frail old body of Crux, wrapped in cloth, was carried toward the shuttle, the Dark Ops leejes saluted as well. Crux—killed in the fight—would have a proper Legion burial from the Mercutio.
He hadn’t forgotten anything.
The leejes who carried the old man aboard came back out, saluted Owens, and returned to the command center.
“Okay,” said Owens, turning and heading up the ramp. “Now we can go.”
***
The flight up was every bit as rough as the flight down, but the pilots seemed calm. That made Owens feel calm.
“How long until we can hail the legion commander?” he asked.
“As soon as we exit Herbeer’s atmosphere, sir.”
Owens looked over to Chhun. The legionnaire was staring into the swirling viewport, probably thinking of the life he’d lost in Pike. He was a good team leader. One of the finest leejes Owens had ever known.
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