“Fine, but pull back as soon as you can. I need you alive. So don’t go overboard on the hero stuff.”
“Will do, Captain.”
Sebastiàn sighted his weapon as a squad of armed soldiers came down the ramp, ready to deploy. With a calm efficiency, he shot the front man in the knee. With a howl, the man doubled up. The trooper behind stumbled over his prone body. For the next few seconds there was chaos on the landing ramp as Sebastiàn selected his next targets. He hit exposed legs and ankles, bringing down the entire squad in a tangle of bodies.
Somehow, a pair of the more clear-headed members of the squad managed to make it to the bottom of the ramp. They fell to a prone position in the tall grass and set up a covering fire. Sebastiàn heard a grinding hum as one of the shuttle’s wing guns oriented on him. With a quick intake of breath, he slid down the side of the shaft. The area above him erupted in a geyser of flame.
He came down hard at the base of the ladder. Felt a sharp twinge in his left ankle. Painfully, he limped back a step and then started down the straight central passage with a loping stride. Whatever the captain was going to do, he hoped it was good.
* * *
“You’ve got to keep them away for a few more minutes!” Tally pleaded.
“We don’t have a few minutes!” Drake shouted. “The Ranger is gone, and I’m not sure that we can fight our way out of here. You’ve got to—” He stopped, remembered what Tally had done the first time he had seen her in battle. “You’ve got to remember that Ruger’s come to take all of this away. He’s going to take what’s yours and use it to his own purposes.”
Her expression went cold, and he knew that he had hit the right nerve.
“No one gets away with that. If I can’t have this engine, no one will.”
“I second that notion.” Kincaid held up a pile of brick-shaped explosive charges. “I can help place these, but only Ferra knows how to set them off.”
Tally looked at the explosive’s timing device, a small cube wrapped in black cable. She looked to the muscular engineer. “I don’t recognize any of these items.”
Ferra took the cube and began unwinding the wire. “I’d be surprised if you had. The Guard doesn’t rate real demolition equipment, so I brought along some old mining equipment. They’ll do the job, but they’ve got two limitations.”
“That’s just great,” groused Kincaid.
“They’ve got a pair of safety devices. The detonator is a series circuit, so if even one of these charges isn’t set properly, the whole thing’s a fizz out. And once I hit the detonator, it does a three-minute countdown before going ‘boom’.”
Drake’s head came up as he heard the distant sound of blasters going off. A moment later, Lieutenant Sebastiàn limped into the main chamber, his face beaded with sweat.
“You’d better get to work,” Drake insisted. “We’ll buy you more time. We can’t let Ruger’s men get their hands on this engine. No matter what.”
“Don’t worry, Captain. So long as Kincaid doesn’t slack off, we’ll get it done.”
Drake clasped her shoulder briefly, and then motioned for Tally to follow him. In the meantime, Ferra tossed a packet of the bricks to Kincaid. Together they began to place a ring of explosive around the bulk of the alien machine.
“How many?” Drake asked, when they reached Sebastiàn. The Lieutenant’s jacket was covered in dust, and his face was smeared with dirt, but he seemed unhurt.
“Couldn’t get an exact count,” Sebastiàn gasped, as he fought for breath. “At least two squads, I’m guessing. Fifteen, twenty men.”
“No matter the numbers, have to buy more time for Ferra and Kincaid to blow the engine.” Drake pointed to the roof of one of the abandoned trailer units. “Lieutenant, get up there and take point. We’ll move off to the left, cover the entrance.”
Drake and Tally made it to a chest-high pile of debris by what had been the area’s cargo dock. He began stacking containers to the side, hoping to get a little more cover.
“This should be a good spot,” Tally remarked. “As long as Ruger doesn’t figure out that there’s at least nine other ways down here.”
Drake shook his head. “If I know Sebastiàn, he did a number on Ruger’s men. They’ll want to take him out, and that means they’ll be coming this way.”
At that moment, the hallway entrance erupted in flame. Ruger’s men poured through the opening, weapons blazing. Tally and Drake pulled their weapons and returned fire.
“Next charge,” Ferra called.
“They’re shooting at us!” Kincaid exclaimed.
“Yeah, I can see that. Ignore that for the moment. Next charge!”
“Set!” Kincaid called back, as he twisted the wire on the cap pin.
“That’s half of them,” she said. “C’mon, you don’t have to do brain surgery on these things!”
Kincaid’s reply was inaudible, but they tried to work even faster.
Drake’s blaster blew a ragged hole in another soldier’s chest. So far he and Tally had been able to contain the squad in the narrow bottleneck of the passage. But the return fire threw up showers of deadly shrapnel from the debris pile, making them fire blindly.
“Where’s Sebastiàn?” Tally asked, as she let off another volley of shots.
“If he’s not firing, it’s for a good reason,” Drake said.
“Maybe he’s waiting for a better target. I could swear I saw Captain Mackall back there.”
Drake risked a quick look. He recognized the man’s weasel face. “That’s him, all right.”
He pulled the trigger. The shot went high, but at least he got the satisfaction of making Mackall eat dirt.
“That’s got him thinking—” he began.
The flash of a muzzle from the right. He shouted a warning and hit the ground, Tally next to him. He tried to make his backbone meet his stomach as a deadly rain of blast gun shots whizzed by overhead from both sides. The hellish fusillade let up for a second, and from one of the side passages to the left, he saw a familiar, thuggish face.
“Greetings, Drake,” Ruger called over. “It looks like I’ve got you pinned in a little crossfire. How are you doing?”
Lieutenant Armano Sebastiàn picked that very moment to show Ruger his mistake at revealing himself. Steadying himself, he took aim at the man’s exposed head.
He squeezed the trigger.
Sebastiàn’s shot missed by millimeters, glanced off a pile of debris and slammed a piece of shrapnel into Ruger’s upper arm.
Ruger fell back with a cry of agony.
Sebastiàn shouted back. “We’re not doing too bad, Commander. How about yourself?”
Ruger struggled to a sitting position. The man made guttural sounds, animal noises of pain and hate.
“Kill them!” he shrieked. “Kill them all!”
Sebastiàn rolled off of the trailer’s roof and dropped to the ground. Needles of white-hot blast gun fire lanced the air around him as he leaped for the shelter of a bank of computer consoles near the temporal engine. He belly-crawled to a new position, checked himself for wounds, and then slapped a new charging unit into his blaster.
Tally and Drake crawled to the relative safety of a similar makeshift barricade nearby. Kincaid, placed his last blasting cap, drew his own weapon and managed to make it over to where Sebastiàn lay panting from his exertions.
“Are we set yet?” Drake’s voice came out in a harsh whisper.
“The charges are in place,” came the reply. “Give Ferra another minute to finish the wiring, and we’re set to blow it.”
“Right, then.” Drake’s face was set with a grim resolve. “We can’t pull back anymore. We’ll have to hold this line.”
“Just so you know, Captain,” Sebastiàn declared, “it’s been a pleasure serving with you.”
Kincaid gave him a sour look. “You don’t get out much, do you?”
A new volley of shots as Ruger’s men pressed in closer. Drake didn’t hear the Commander bellowing
anymore, but he didn’t think the man had lain down and died yet. Vernon Ruger was simply too damned mean.
“We might not get out of here,” Drake said, between shots. “So there’s still one thing I want to know.”
“Yes, Captain?”
“What in God’s name did you do to Ruger to get stuck in my unit?”
Sebastiàn rubbed the back of his neck, embarrassed. “Well, it’s like this. I, ah, kind of slept with his daughter.”
“You really slept with his daughter?” Drake was amazed. If there was one thing that Ruger was incredibly protective about, it was his family.
Sebastiàn cleared his throat. “Well, yes...and both of his sons, too.”
Kincaid tried desperately to hold on to his bored and cynical face, but he lost it completely. For the first time since Drake had known him, Kincaid let out a hearty laugh. “You scored Ruger’s own triplets? I have to hand it to you, kid. When you screw something up, you go all the way.”
With an ear-splitting battle cry, Ruger’s troopers converged on them. The massed fire kicked up dust and debris that swirled around both groups. Drake picked out the officer’s insignia through the cloud of dust. He drew a bead on it, hoping it was Ruger, and fired. The dust cleared and he saw Mackall go down in a boneless heap.
“Look out!” Drake cried, as Ruger’s men swarmed over Sebastiàn’s section of the barricade, knocking Kincaid aside. Drake dodged the incoming fire as he charged over to help him.
Tally pivoted to watch her front alone. She snapped off shots at knife-fighting range. Three men lay on the ground before her, holes in their helmet faceplates. Another shadow loomed over her. She brought her weapon to bear, but the trigger clicked and did nothing. Only then did she realize that her blaster had run out of charge.
“My lucky day,” came Ruger’s voice, as he emerged from the dust, his right arm streaming blood. He raised his blaster in the opposite hand.
Tally saw movement to the man’s side. In a flash, Lieutenant Ferra moved in. She knocked Ruger down with a roundhouse punch to his jaw. The Fleet Commander’s gun skittered away across the floor. Ruger snarled and tried to rise. He was brought up short as Ferra drew her gun and pressed its barrel to the bridge of his nose.
“What are you waiting for?” he said, his voice dead. “Shoot!”
“Why should I?” Ferra said calmly. “You’re our ticket out of here.”
“Hold your fire!” Tally shouted over the din, “We’ve got Commander Ruger!”
It took a few seconds, but Drake heard another woman’s voice calling out the same order.
“Cease fire!” Captain Sindal yelled. “I said, cease fire!”
Ferra didn’t move her gun until Drake had tied Ruger’s arms behind his back. Then, and only then, did they move aside to let Kincaid do his work.
“Get him so that he can walk,” Drake ordered.
Kincaid focused on the ragged hole that shrapnel had torn in Ruger’s bicep.
“I can’t do anything with that with his jacket on.” He tugged at the zipper tabs in front, but blood had crusted them shut.
Tally pulled the knife from her belt. Ruger paled as she did so.
“You’re lucky that Benjamin wants you alive for now,” she said, making a menacing motion aimed below the man’s waist. With a quick pair of slashes, she cut the jacket down the length of Ruger’s front and pulled the piece of clothing free.
Drake and the rest of the group kept watch to make sure Sindal played no tricks. Kincaid cleaned out the wound, injected Ruger with painkillers and synthetic adrenaline, and then used his trauma kit to staple the gash shut. Ruger began to regain his equilibrium. He sat up, glaring about menacingly.
“Drake,” he growled, “I’ll make you pay for this!”
Drake replied in a tone which would have made his crewmen back up a step.
“Get on your feet, you sonofabitch. Nobody is going to get hold of that engine. And now that I have a choice in the matter, I don’t plan to die here either.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Drake was buffeted by the wind as the Ranger settled to a soft landing a few yards away. He stood behind Ruger, holding the man firmly to keep him on his feet, eyes on his ship as she extended the landing ramp. Her engines kept running as Drake’s party slowly backed towards their ship.
Sebastiàn stayed to the side, his sidearm out and jammed into Ruger’s gut. Kincaid and Ferra flanked them, blast guns out and trained on Ruger’s people. Sindal’s face was cold and blank, but she and the rest of the troopers stayed a respectful distance back.
Tally climbed out of the subterranean chamber last. She got to her feet, brushed the dust off her jeans, and joined Drake’s party. She held Ferra’s detonator in one hand.
“Are you sure about this, Benjamin?” she asked, though her voice sounded tired, hollow.
“I’m sure. It started out as your find, it should end the same way.”
“You’re both idiots!” Ruger raged. Sebastiàn prodded him warningly with his blast gun. “Don’t you realize what you’re throwing away?”
“More than I wished I knew, Ruger.”
“It won’t do you any good to bring me on board your ship,” he threatened. “My crew will spread the alert all over Terran space. You’ll be wanted for treason, mutiny, and kidnapping one of Terra’s top military commanders. You’ll be hunted for the rest of your lives!”
“Can I just kill him now, sir?” Sebastiàn asked, his face deadly serious.
“That wouldn’t be polite, Lieutenant,” Drake said, shaking his head, “Considering that Ruger’s mangy hide is the only thing preventing his crew from opening fire on us.”
They reached the base of the ramp. Ferra and Kincaid stepped on board, keeping their weapons in view. Drake spoke up, raising his voice enough to be heard over the wind.
“Listen up!” he shouted. “We’ve placed timed charges on the Sargasso engine. There is no way you can disarm what we’ve put down there. We’re taking Commander Ruger with us on board my ship. If you follow us, his life is forfeit.”
Ruger let out a dry laugh. “You’re as good as dead, Drake. You just don’t know it yet. They’ll destroy you, no matter where you hide.”
“They’ll have to find me first, Ruger,” Drake retorted. He spoke to Tally as gently as he could, for her face was twisted in remorse. “All right. Hit it.”
“No!” Ruger cried, as Tally thumbed the arming trigger.
Deep inside the chamber, strapped to the engine’s core, the timer began the three minute countdown. Ruger’s head came around. He butted Sebastiàn squarely in the chest, tearing open the staples that Kincaid had put into his arm. The Lieutenant’s blast gun went off straight up into the air. Ruger planted his elbow into Drake’s stomach, and the captain’s grip loosened just enough for him to twist free.
Tally saw Ruger’s mad dash for freedom as she triggered the detonator. She dove for the ramp as Sindal and her troops went for their guns. She heard Sebastiàn curse and fire at Ruger’s retreating form. His shot carved a groove along the top of Ruger’s meaty shoulder in a spray of red, but it didn’t stop the man. Drake pulled Sebastiàn on board, shouting orders as the landing ramp retracted.
The blast gun fire from Sindal and her men punched a hole in Kincaid’s calf. He fell to the floor with a yelp as the ramp slammed shut. The smell of burned skin hung thick in the air as Ferra hoisted him up with one muscular arm.
“I’ll live,” Kincaid coughed. “Leave me alone and get us the hell out of here!”
“Sebastiàn, Tally, let’s go!” Drake said, and they raced to the bridge. From outside they heard the cough as the engines on Ruger’s shuttle came to life.
Drake swung into his bridge chair and punched up the viewscreen as Sebastiàn flung himself onto the navigation console. The Lieutenant didn’t even set a course; he simply wiped his hand across the vertical thrust controls, and the Ranger leaped skywards.
Ruger made it to the shuttle’s low-slung cockpit, where he gr
abbed the weapon controls. Only one of his hands worked, but it was enough to pull a trigger. Outside, the shuttle’s gun mounts spit out a tongue of flame just as the Ranger took off. The shells missed the ascending patrol ship, cutting a forty foot swath of destruction through the trees behind the target.
“Take us up!” Ruger howled.
Sindal slipped into the empty pilot seat. She punched in the thrust vectors, taking the shuttle straight up and to the right. She swung the shuttle around, spotting the Ranger as she sped down the length of the canyon. Without hesitation, she cracked open the shuttle’s afterburner.
The Ranger was slammed atop her hull as if by a giant hand as she ascended. Sebastiàn swore and brought her back into level flight, engaging her atmospheric wings.
“It’s the slipstream above the canyon,” he said. “I can’t get us above it! And Ruger’s shuttle is blocking our way through our only exit window.”
“We can’t go head to head,” Drake shouted, as Tally made it up to the bridge. “Our torpedoes won’t work properly in the atmosphere!”
“Well, Ruger’s guns will work just fine,” Tally pointed out. “We’ve got to fly down the length of the canyon to get out from under the slipstream.”
Drake looked at the sheer walls of rock rising on either side of the ship and felt his gut contract in fear. “Sebastiàn, if there’s any chance…”
“Don’t have much choice, Captain.” Sebastiàn worked the controls feverishly, banking them away from the first wall as it rushed up at them. “There’s no room to maneuver! Ruger’s shuttle is going to be all over us.”
On cue, the shuttle’s guns belched a steady stream of fire, lancing the air behind the Ranger as she closed in. Blood streamed from Ruger’s pair of wounds, but he paid them no attention. His vision was filled with one thing only: the fleeting shape of the Ranger. He mashed the trigger again, seeking to smother Drake’s ship in a blanket of explosive shells.
“You can’t escape!” he shouted, exultant. “Don’t you know you’re up against my destiny?”
Treasure of the Silver Star Page 16