Their defensive fire created spheres that the Luyten weaponry was pushing back.
A rail cannon round slammed into the Yard. Thrusters fired to course correct as a section was turned into metal shards that spiraled away.
More rounds started to land, punching into the Yard. Their velocities turned them into kinetic bombs as they tore and wrecked the Yard.
Jerome looked to another plot as he saw hundreds of signals starting to drop toward Emarl, picking up incredible speed.
The command center shuddered.
“Power station three is offline. Moving to batteries,” Jess said. The entire engineering team had come up to support the Yard. Those who were merging-capable were in the Yard, assisting with the damage control teams.
“Use anti-matter if needed,” Jerome said. They were running anti-matter power stations. Although they were small and heavily armored, they gave them a backup system that was hard to get to and could supply the entire Yard with power.
“Nanites repairs being carried out on the port side,” Nerva said.
Mergers were working to repair the weapon systems there as there was a great big hole in their defenses.
The Yard continued to shake with impacts even as it was destroying seventy percent of the incoming fire. Against so many ships, there was only so much they could do.
Missiles were making it closer and closer, destroying sections of the Yard. Entire sections were being removed.
“Command center forty-nine, get the fuck out of there!” Jerome said, seeing an exposed emergency room.
The people started to evacuate but they weren’t fast enough. Three more rounds landed on the ship, followed by a missile opening up the Yard’s exterior.
“We just lost command centers fifty-eight and sixty-three!”
“Command station seventeen is lost!”
“We’ve got cracking in the structural supports.”
The Yard was literally coming down around them.
“Come on, you mother fuckers! Come in closer!” Jerome yelled at the command table.
“Eighty-three to eighty-seven are lost!”
“We’ve got separation. Structural members E-17 through to G-19 are gone!”
“Pull back the command teams in the port side—we’re losing stability there,” Jerome yelled.
“We’ve got incoming gliders!” Nerva said.
“The RSDs are seven minutes away.”
A section of the command center blew out as it was overloaded with power.
“Explosive blow-out from air storage tank nine!”
Jerome saw the sections of the ship being blasted out into the darkness. The Yard was coming apart. Rounds and missiles struck the massive metal behemoth, but not even it was able to take this kind of abuse.
“Get that sorted out! Everyone, make sure you’re sealed up!” Jerome checked the seal on his helmet.
“Fire command, ready Praetors and missiles!”
“Yes, sir!” Nerva said, shaking with the constant hits. All of them were braced by harnesses or holding on tightly to the command console.
Suddenly it went quiet, eerily so.
“Time till gliders arrive!” Jerome said, knowing what that silence meant.
“They’re three minutes out.”
“RSDs?”
“One minute!”
Jerome accessed his NIAI, checking the positioning of the Luyten ships that were coming in nice and close to the Yard. They were already inside the range of the Praetors and missile launchers, but they were breaking their momentum; that would take them out of the range of the weapons.
“Looks like the Luyten forces have seen the RSDs!”
Jerome’s eyes snapped to Nerva. “Have them focus on the ships! Weapons, Praetors, and missiles systems are cleared hot! Make it count!” Jerome’s eyes locked on the communication staff as well as Jess. “Damage control, I want priority on people and pulling them back into the Yard. I want everyone with medical training out there!”
His gaze caught on the screens as systems lit up around the Ark.
Chapter One Hundred and Four
LMFC Righteous
Ark’s High Orbit, Emarl System
10/3557
Karain’s murderous smile turned into pale-faced shock.
“It’s a trap! Get us out of here!” Strong yelled as hundreds of cannons and missile batteries that had been hiding around the Yard were revealed.
“We have ships coming up from the planet’s surface! It looks like fighters—there’s hundreds of them!”
Karain’s blood chilled. She had gone through shock after shock, thinking that she had the upper hand. Every time, she had been shown the folly of her ways.
The gliders were in disarray as they saw the hell they were wandering into.
They might be brainwashed and lied to, but the people of Emarl had no mercy for them.
Gliders were torn apart as they tried to dodge the attacks and fight back, expending their ammunition to try to stay alive.
“Defensive fire!” Strong said, taking over full command as the ships turned to chaos and started to try to flee in any direction they thought held the best bet of survival.
Their defensive fire wasn’t able to stop the incoming fire, nor were they able to escape, even pressed into their chairs.
Karain watched with haunted eyes as ships were torn apart.
It felt as if she were in a daydream. A daze had fallen over her, as if she weren’t living her own life.
She started to laugh to herself. Wasn’t this all too ridiculous?
The Righteous shuddered to the side as missiles tore off their exterior. Karain slammed her head against her helmet and seat. She felt pain and blood from the impact as her blurry vision fell on the main screen.
The fighters that had accelerated using the planet below were coming out like hell’s own demons. Their cannons opened fire on the gliders. The heavier weapons shifted their fire to the Luyten fleet while the RSDs cut through the gliders, moving through their formations. The lead fighters didn’t get them all, but as successive wings of ships passed one another, the gliders’ formations turned into a graveyard.
The Righteous’s systems started to fail as parts of the ship were destroyed. Rail cannon rounds with anti-matter payloads found a reactor.
Admiral Karain never recovered from her state of disbelief as her ship went up, the debris getting hit again and again.
The Praetor cannons and missile launchers slowly went silent, guarding the Yard and Ark.
The Yard was covered in silver as nanites worked to rebuild sections.
At that moment, the Luyten fleet ceased to exist.
Chapter One Hundred and Five
Merger Laboratory
Roma, Hellenic System
10/3557
Rimateus hid well, and for a few days, he waited while things settled. Wanting to move, and doing so, were two very different things at the moment. He hadn’t visited the base at all. This was Atia’s job and, after messaging her, he realized that his facility had tightened up all their protocols. Atia was good at some things, it seemed. Even if she hadn’t been able to deliver him a merger, now he’d get to see what was truly happening within its walls.
Rimateus knew of only one door inside, but she sent him details so that he could slip in even from his own people’s clear watch.
Now he followed her direction—which, for him, was a first—and while he was doing so, all the time he could only think of one thing: how it would feel when he would rise again with the army he was creating.
That alone spurred him on, and into the depths of a side of the city he’d sooner quickly forget.
Atia met him at the back door, and he was soon in and heading down to the depths of the facility.
“We have an escape route planned,” she said. “The scientists were about to try out their latest formula for the merger process just before the lockdown happened.”
“Oh, that’s good. Are they close?”
/> “As close as they’ve ever been.” She smiled.
Atia led him toward an open office, where a few people milled about. She pointed to the room. “You can watch from in there.”
Rimateus stepped inside. Only a glass partition separated them from the scientists, and it looked as if a man was about to get into a nanite vat. Of course, he knew how it was supposed to work. How the nanites invaded the mind, re-wrote the pathways the brain relied on, and then rebuilt the body from the organs up.
He’d never seen it, though, and with as much going on outside as there had been, he relished the thought of the past year’s failings to witnessing it finally come through for him today.
The man looked just like a regular guy—well built, fit—he knew what he was doing, and Rimateus respected that.
When the two white coats near the tank motioned for him to do so, the man hopped on in.
Rimateus moved closer to the screen, placing his hand on it. He expected something, anything.
Then came the screams.
Rimateus’s anger mounted with each agonizing sound coming from that tank. When he turned to see Atia and her reddened face, he saw nothing but blind fury.
He forced himself past her and into the chamber. The screaming from the man inside was even more horrifying and loud. Rimateus lurched for one of the doctors. “You’ve had more than time than anyone I’ve ever given to a project and you still can’t deliver!” He wrapped his fingers around the man’s throat, partially crushing his windpipe.
The scientist looked at his friend for help, but he wasn’t moving. Atia had a gun to his head.
Rimateus choked the life from him, reveling in the pain and terror that shone in his eyes as he did so. “You’re all the same. Stupid, stupid people. I put my trust in you and you give me nothing but rubbish.”
When the scientist stopped struggling, Rimateus looked to the other man. “Make sure everything is packed up and ready to leave. We go as soon as it’s done. I’m not staying one more minute on this godforsaken planet. We’ll find somewhere to take this. I’ve contacts I can and will call on.”
It was Atia who raised an eyebrow at this.
Rimateus clutched at straws, his anger and fear crawling to the surface, and he visibly fought to control himself. To the other scientists and worker around, he screamed, “Get this out of here now! We’ll set anything that’s left to self-destruct.”
The man nodded, and Atia lowered her weapon.
Rimateus saw something else move out of the corner of his eye.
Atia frowned. “Checking it out.” Then she was gone, leaving Rimateus and the scientists alone. The man quickly called in some helpers and they started to clean up their dead colleague and to remove the still screaming man from the tank.
As the body was raised from the silver liquid, Rimateus stared at it. There was hardly anything left of the man’s body, but he was still wriggling and squirming.
The scientist answered his question without him even voicing it. “With some, the nanites can convert the brain, but not the body, so essentially the mind stays alive in agony because the job’s not completed. There’s only one way to dispose of them when this happens.”
Rimateus held up his hand. He didn’t need any other information. Instead, he followed Atia out, and then wherever it was that she was leading him.
***
Sertoria had watched the man she knew to be Senator Rimateus come in through some back door. Instantly she slipped away to her room under the real bowels of the base. She was looking for somewhere her signal out to Moretti would work. There’d been some serious interruptions; no matter how much she’d tried, it was hard to get through.
The problem was she was being blocked.
Down in the lowest depths of the base, she finally found a signal and sent a request to Moretti.
“Sertoria?” His voice came across with a strange hint of concern.
“They’re upping the move. The last experiment didn’t work. Strike now.”
***
Sertoria’s voice seemed off, and then the link cut.
“Everyone ready?” Moretti asked.
Damus waited with his men. Once Moretti was able to get into the system, he would open all the doorways and they’d have free access to the base. Hopefully, they would be in time. They had to be. Sertoria had been compromised.
Zedra looked at him, making sure that her people and his were in total sync. “Everyone’s ready.”
Moretti announced through their links, “Execute.” And when the quick-fire response came back, they rushed for the door.
Zedra stayed by his side as he attempted to get into the complex. Nothing he had code-wise, plan-wise was working. They’d blocked everything that she’d been doing in a heartbeat, and that meant it was bad news for her.
Moretti looked to Zedra. “Watch my back.” Concentrating, he allowed his nanites to enter through the main control pad into the complex systems that managed the base. It didn’t take that long before he had another way in.
All the doors opened.
Moretti could hear rapid fire through his NIAI, and he wished he had other mergers with him. They were so valuable and he could see it now more than ever. His link to Mark was faster than any link-up.
Mark’s voice came through the net. “Everything all right?”
As M and Zedra advanced, Moretti spoke with Mark. “Sertoria’s been compromised. We were told Rimateus was evacuating.”
The feeling that came from Mark was more than he needed. But Mark made sure he followed with, “End this, end them. Any of them survive, release Z471.”
“Sir.”
Zedra came across a small pocket of resistance; shots fired in their direction. But it was small. She pushed forward and so did the other men in their teams. Their path down to the real heart of the base grew easier by the minute.
Damus met them partway from the other side of the base. “Only one way down.”
That’s when the base started to rumble. The whole ground area shook.
Moretti frowned. “What the hell?”
He paused at the next set of computer systems. Placing his palm to the glass, his nanites seeped out and once more invaded everywhere. This time, what he saw totally freaked him out. He let out a gasp. “This base—it’s...”
Zedra nodded. “I know. I’ve had a couple of extra reports from Sertoria. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
Moretti knew from the outside world around him that the soil and grounds would be crumbling, vibrating loose so that this ship could escape. It wasn’t just a base; it was an underground and very well concealed freighter.
“Do they have weapons?” he asked. But a moment later, his nanites answered for him. They had weapons, and much more advanced tech too.
The lift down was as compromised as it came, shattered and blasted into oblivion. Now they needed to climb. This would take awhile, but Moretti quickly picked up Zedra and Damus. “Don’t ask, just hold on.” And with a step off the side of the doorframe, he dropped. One hand took the strain of them as they did; the fall ripped through skin and muscle, tearing his hand apart. But he didn’t wince. Instead, he concentrated on what he needed to keep the pain at bay.
Bending his knees, he could just about take the force of the drop. Zedra and Damus moaned at the force, though. But they were up and battle ready again in a flash.
“You good?” Moretti could see Zedra had taken a bit too much of the drop.
“Winded is all,” she said.
Moretti did a quick scan. “No, broken rib. I’m sorry.”
Zedra frowned. “I don’t like this ability to look inside someone.”
Moretti pushed forward, weapons now in hand. “Scared I’ll see something I don’t like?”
Zedra slapped him on the back. “No.” Then she said, “You don’t see anything else?”
Moretti puzzled over this, looked back over her health files and the scan he had just performed. “No, there’s nothing else at all. Why
do you ask?”
“I was also put in cryo for a reason. And I’m glad you don’t see it. That means that at some point in the past that the emperor managed to find and sort out a cure for what I had.”
Moretti didn’t have a chance to ask anymore. Ahead of them was a room, and when he scanned it, he also saw the familiar health profile of Sertoria. “They’re up ahead.”
Gunfire exploded around them again, and this time Damus took a hit. Ducking in, they started to retaliate, but there was movement from inside the room.
“We’re making a run for it. I’ll burst it through. Be ready for anything.” M said.
Damus and Zedra nodded, so he ran.
The sheer force of nature that accompanied being a merger forced through the door ahead of them with tremendous effort. Moretti stopped with his gun pointed at Senator Rimateus’s face. He almost pulled the trigger, till he heard a female voice beside him. When he turned, there was Sertoria perched over a nanite vat. Another woman stood behind her.
“You stop this or she goes in!”
Moretti wasn’t going to be one to take blackmail; he couldn’t be. So he turned back to Rimateus as Atia pushed Sertoria into the vat. Her screams ripped him apart on the inside just as much as the nanites were forcing skin from her flesh. “Mark,” he spoke aloud, “anything you wish to say to this man?”
Mark Victor’s voice came through his vocal cords as if they were his own.
“For the deaths of the sixty-two mergers, for the strife and the harm you’ve cause not only the legion, or Roma, but to all around the known galaxies, I sentence you to immediate death, executed by one of us.”
Rimateus started at Moretti. “You’re not a merger. You look...”
“What—small, human?” Moretti asked.
When Sertoria’s screams elevated beyond anything he could bear, he pulled the trigger, moving to check that he’d actually killed the asshole. Then gave him one extra shot to the brain stem. There would be no reviving this bastard. Very quickly, he turned to see Zedra take out Atia as well. The woman fell from the side of the vat in a pool of blood. Moretti rushed to it, hoping he could see her inside.
Enemies on All Sides (Maraukian War Book 4) Page 38