“We have secured the reactor core,” Tupi reported. “Defenders gave us a fight for it but withdrew before taking too many losses. I’m guessing there’s an armory around here, and I’m expecting trouble shortly.”
“Number estimates?” Damien snapped.
“Looked like a dozen or so,” the Marine told him. “All engineers, I think, not that you could tell from the hell they gave us. Two of them are dead, but so’s one of mine.”
“Do I want to know how?” he asked.
“Plasma arc welder,” Tupi replied. “It’s not designed to go through exosuit armor but it will do a number regardless.
“We’re in position and digging in. I expect a counterattack in the next few minutes, but I’ve got as many Marines in as I safely can. I’m going to hold until they’ve attacked to move in farther.”
“Understood. Keep me inform—”
“We have incoming!” a Royal Guard snapped. Whoever was attacking them hadn’t been expecting to run into magical barriers over both of the data center’s entrances, which meant that the initial wave of grenades simply bounced away from the room.
“They’re being careful,” Romanov murmured on his private channel. “Those were gas and flashbangs. Pretty much useless against armored troops but also won’t damage the server racks.”
“Get at least two of your people shielding the racks and the cyber-team,” Damien ordered.
“Already done, my lord,” the Guard officer told him. “We’ve played this game before, you and I.”
Gunfire now rang out, bullets ricocheting from the solidified air barriers.
“We can’t hold this forever. Let them get closer, then we drop the barrier for counter-fire,” Romanov continued calmly. “We have the numbers with the Marines. Sooner or later, they’re going to realize their only chance of anything resembling victory is to take out this place.”
“I know,” Damien agreed. “We could just seal both entrances and teleport out once we have the data.”
“Suit systems can’t hold this much data, my lord,” his subordinate told him. “We need to either bring in heavy gear or take the racks with us. I don’t think either’s an option without having a doorway.”
Damien grunted his acknowledgement as he assessed the situation. He had twenty Combat Mages in exosuit armor. Four were working on the server racks with two more protecting them, which meant he “only” had fourteen of the most powerful individual combatants in the galaxy.
Plus him.
“I’m going to seal the inner exit,” he told the Guard. “Then they can only come at us one way…and good luck to them with that.”
“Let’s give them one mo—”
Both barriers collapsed simultaneously, the magic of the Guards holding them overwhelmed by a simultaneous strike from multiple other Mages.
It took Damien a moment to put intent into action, his power flashing into the entrance he’d been planning to seal. Power yanked stones down from “above” the doorway—the station did have magical artificial gravity, which should have warned them there were Mages—to fill the space with debris.
Then more power flashed in and transmuted several thousand kilos of roughly piled stone into a meter-thick solid plug of titanium. Unless there was a Hand on the other side of the wall Damien had just created, they were secure from that side.
The other side was less certain. Exosuited soldiers were charging the entrance, penetrator rifles flashing in the dim lighting as they tried to target the Royal Guard. Magic flashed across the field, the Nemesis Mages trying to keep their mundane compatriots alive long enough to locate their enemies.
From what Damien could sense, there were three Mages behind the assault trying to push into the data center—but every one of his Royal Guard was a Mage. They were behind their own individual shields of magic that augmented their exosuit armor enough to sneer at even heavy-penetrator rounds.
The first wave of four troopers went down like tenpins, but a second wave of six more was right behind them, using exosuit muscles to leap the bodies spread across the gravity runes as they fired precisely at Damien’s people.
Despite their advantages, a Royal Guard went down before that wave was gone—and a third wave was on their heels.
Damien couldn’t just stand by. He reached out with his Sight, located the three Mages, and then summoned his power. He couldn’t conjure electricity inside the data center without straining the people protecting the server racks.
He had no such limitations outside the data center. He could barely see the actinic blue-white flash of the ball lightning he summoned around the Nemesis Mages, but he knew what it looked like. He knew what happened when the power of a Rune Wright was unleashed in a confined space.
The magical signature of all three Mages went dark within moments of each other, and Damien stifled a moment of weary grief. Despite everything, he still didn’t like killing people.
“Two more Mages coming from the other entrance,” he noted as the room quieted. “Probably with another fifteen or twenty troopers. I think we underestimated how many people are on this station.”
“I noticed,” Romanov said grimly. “No surrenders, either. Some of these guys might only be wounded or in wrecked armor, but they put three of mine down hard. Hirschel will live, but Pavone and Bristow are gone.”
“We hold,” Damien told him. “I’ve got your back.”
“I know. Tupi, report,” the Guard ordered.
“They’re fucking with me,” the Marine replied. “No attack so far, but they’ve got snipers with penetrator rifles on every corridor. I can rush them, but I’ll lose people.”
“What about Bravo Company?” Damien asked.
“Moving towards me; we’ll catch them in a vice but it will take time. Do you need us?” Tupi asked. “I can break out or direct Bravo Company units your way.”
“You’ll lose people,” Damien said grimly. “We can hold. Unfortunately, these people are quite likely to know what it means to face a Hand, which means they have an idea of what my presence means.”
“I doubt it,” Romanov muttered. “They’re still here.”
“We didn’t leave them an escape,” he replied. “Can you link in to the station coms from here?”
“Let me check,” the Guard replied. A moment later, he held up one gauntlet with a thumb up.
“We can link you in,” he confirmed. “Going to tell them dark secrets and get them to break?”
Damien snorted.
“That only works when the dark secret is actually a secret,” he pointed out. “Pretty sure everyone in here already knows or suspects they arranged for Desmond’s death. No. Enough people are dead that I’ll give them one chance to lay down their guns.”
“And if they refuse, my lord?” Romanov asked.
“I may not be a Hand anymore, but I’m still familiar with the concept of Her Majesty’s Sword.”
“Station crew, this is Lord Regent Damien Montgomery,” Damien began. “From the unhesitating violence employed to defend this station, I suspect you know why I am here and what you have done to bring me here.
“You are not soldiers in a war that requires me to treat you with grace,” he reminded them. “You are not rebels in support of a cause that I would respect; you wear no uniform I recognize or am bound to respect.
“You are at best pirates and at worst terrorists. You are guilty of treason. Your lives are forfeit, but my people have already secured the critical components of this station’s infrastructure. Further conflict will only result in unnecessary loss of life on both sides.”
Damien figured the odds were less than twenty percent that anyone was going to listen to him, but he had to try.
“To avoid further bloodshed, I am prepared to treat anyone who surrenders as a civilian prisoner. You will face imprisonment for the crimes you have been involved in, but I will guarantee your lives and am prepared to negotiate further clemency in exchange for information.
“If you do not su
rrender, we will take this station by force and anyone who survives will be treated as a captured terrorist. The choice is yours.”
He cut the channel.
“Double-check your defenses,” he told Romanov.
“You’re not expecting crowds of surrendering Nemesis soldiers?” the Guard officer asked drily.
“No.”
The unsurprising lack of surrendering enemies was joined with a surprising few minutes of quiet. Damien had lost track of the two Mages, but his ability to locate Mages was minimal at best when they weren’t actively using their Gift. He’d expected to lose them.
“I don’t suppose we can get into the security system?” the Lord Regent asked Romanov.
“Technically, yes,” the Guard replied. “In a very literal sense, we are in complete control of the security system of this station.”
“Why does that sound less than promising?” Damien said.
“We cut off the servers to save them from being slagged,” Romanov reminded him. “But they slagged just about everything outside this room as far as computers go. That almost certainly has doomed both the stealth systems and the life support.”
“No one is planning on living here after the next few hours. Not us, not them. Anything out of the computers?”
“Not yet,” the Guard commander admitted. “The encryption is solid. From what my team is saying, we may need to get all of this over to Duke before we can get anything reliable. Or Mars.”
There was a shrug in his voice, though the armor didn’t convey the gesture.
“My people would prefer Mars, but I don’t think we want to spend that much time on this,” he told Damien.
“We don’t. Every minute we’re spending here is a chance that our real prey escapes,” Damien said. “Any sign of activity?”
“Nothing.”
Damien activated his com.
“Tupi. Anything going on near you?”
“Not yet,” the Marine replied. “I think they’ve pulled a few of the snipers out, but they’re still taking solid potshots at anyone who sticks their head out.” He paused. “I’m down two dead and half a dozen wounded. We’re not going to lose any of the wounded, but they’ve got us bottled up with maybe four guys.”
“How long until Bravo Company flanks them?” Damien asked.
“Five minutes, maybe. Then I can move to your position.”
“We already know our estimates of how many people were aboard were too low,” Damien replied. “But I’m guessing there’s only maybe another twenty troopers to back up those two Mages. If four or five are pinning you down, it can’t have taken them that long to pull everyone together.”
Nemesis had had their people in exosuits within minutes of the boarding action. They were very ready for this.
“Any signs of problems with the core?”
“Negative,” Tupi confirmed. “We cut off all data links elsewhere, but it’s a standard hundred-megawatt fusion plant. Recent installation.”
“Small power plants are expensive; none of the people who’ve moved in and out of this place would have left the cores behind,” Damien replied. “Duke scanned for other power sources, yes?”
“Of course,” the Marine confirmed. He paused. “I’d kill to talk to the Captain,” he admitted.
“And the people on this station would probably kill to talk to their friends,” Damien replied. “There’s a reason everything is jammed.”
Their gear—and presumably Nemesis’s gear—could penetrate the jamming at short range. Even the big transmitters on the outside of the relay station couldn’t send usable signals through Duke’s ECM field.
“Sensors say we have movement in the corridor,” one of the Guards reported. “Twenty-plus sources, heading our way and fast.”
“That’s got to be everyone on their feet except the snipers poking Tupi,” Romanov replied. “Where did they even get this many troops?”
“They’re not all ‘troops,’” Damien told him. “Everyone in the station was trained on and had heavy arms and an exosuit. That’s not cheap…but it would allow every member of the crew to fight.”
“Thirty meters and closing.”
No one moved at the report. The Guards had moved their wounded behind the barrier protecting the server racks, but that still left them with nine active combatants. Twenty-plus attackers was something nine Royal Guards could handle.
Damien hoped.
Nemesis opened fire, loosing a hail of bullets through the only entrance Damien had left to the data center. The few remaining shreds of the door didn’t survive the storm, but the sustained fire served the purpose of keeping the Guards out of the line of fire of the door.
“Grenades,” Romanov ordered, his voice surprisingly calm.
One of the Royal Guards had a grenade launcher and the rest had secondary launchers on their heavy-penetrator rifles. A salvo of explosives answered the storm of incoming fire, rocking the station.
And then the Nemesis first wave was there, exosuited soldiers emerging from the smoke with penetrator rifles of their own. They were clearly no longer trying to save the data center, leading the way with armor-piercing grenades as well as the tungsten-cored penetrator rounds.
Damien couldn’t carry a gun anymore, but he’d never been much of one for weapons. Holding a shield steady around himself, he lashed out at the attackers with beams of fire that sliced through armor like it was warm butter.
The Guards were focusing their own magic on their defenses, staying alive as double their own numbers pushed through the limited space.
It was chaotic enough that Damien missed the three soldiers not firing their guns for several critical seconds. They were through the door and charging for the data servers before anyone realized that they weren’t carrying ammunition at all.
Those three suits had been fitted with special harnesses carrying black cylinders exactly one meter tall and thirty-seven centimeters in diameter.
Damien knew the dimensions the moment he saw the cylinders. His training hadn’t spent much focus on the Protectorate’s portable thermonuclear demolition charges, but they’d stuck in his head for some reason.
“Nukes!” Romanov snapped. “Take them down.”
And now Damien knew what the two Mages he hadn’t sensed until that moment were doing. He couldn’t tell if they were in the exosuits carrying the nuclear weapons, but it didn’t matter. The entirety of their power was dedicated to covering the three suicide bombers as they tried to close with the server racks.
It wasn’t even overkill. Anything short of a point-blank detonation might not break through the shield—especially if, say, Damien had been reinforcing it.
He was running to meet them before he even consciously had a plan, letting bullets ping off his own shields as his movement drew fire. Somewhere along the way, Romanov realized his plan.
“Cover Montgomery and keep them from the shield!” he ordered on the main channel.
A bullet sliced through Damien’s shield. It was a fluke, the kind of perfectly angled round that could cut through any defense, and it slammed into his leg just above the knee. The Lord Regent went flying, hitting the ground in a heap that slid into the middle of the three suicide bombers.
All three looked down at him in surprise, and he managed to grin up at them before he teleported all four of them into deep space. They couldn’t see it, but it made him feel better!
The silence of the void wrapped around him, only to be instantly interrupted by a warning from his suit. It was maintaining integrity, but his armor had taken serious damage—and so, incidentally, had his leg.
And then a new warning.
ACTIVE NUCLEAR CHARGE DETECTED.
Damien looked at his new companions in hell and saw one of them extend an armored middle finger his way…and then new deep space surrounded him as he teleported himself away in a random direction.
The fireball roughly fifty kilometers away was useful for getting his bearings and he took a deep breath as
he studied the space around him. He was pretty sure that was the station, which meant that Duke of Magnificence was that.
Fortunately, his suit had a laser com. He wasn’t going to try and teleport himself into a battlecruiser based on “pretty sure!”
45
Denis Romanov had just enough time to curse at the disappearance of Montgomery and the three suicide bombers before a bullet pinged off his armor, refocusing his attention.
He’d expect his idiot charge to teleport the enemy away, not go with them.
“Move up,” he barked at his Guards in lieu of chewing out his missing boss. “They’re down to the dregs now. Let anyone surrender who tries, but this ends now.”
He suited his actions to his words by hammering a solidified air barrier back into the entrance, sending the handful of surviving Nemesis troopers in the data center falling to the ground. One still tried to train a rifle on Denis, so the Guard officer shot them.
There was something about these troopers that was niggling at the back of his mind as his people moved up. None of them surrendered, though several of the crippled suits in the hall might have living soldiers in them.
“Black armor, no identifiers, fight like Marine spec ops…fuck,” he said aloud.
“Sir?” Afolabi asked, his second-in-command falling to one knee behind an impromptu barricade of several wrecked Nemesis exosuits and their occupants.
“Didn’t realize I was live,” Denis admitted, firing a grenade down the corridor. “Were you guys cleared for the mess at Andala?”
“It was included in the briefing when we moved to your team,” the Guard confirmed, sending a five-round volley into the door. If he was aiming at anything in particular, Denis missed it.
“Someone bombed the dig site and then went in after Montgomery with ground troops. You nuked them with antimatter, right?”
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