“Hold!” Victor called. He was jogging down the hall, his armor bouncing with every step. “I’m coming up!”
Lopez let the barrel of his weapon drop. “What’s the status?”
Victor waved a hand. “We’re still taking the facility, but Rob and the others are secure and working on taking control of the orbitals.”
“Outstanding,” Lopez replied.
Cross picked up the Coalition officer and held him in his scope. In a split second, the autofocus framed him perfectly. Both hands were clear, his fusion rifle stowed on his back. Even his sidearm was clipped into the holster. It took Cross a hard second to drop the bead off of him. Cross didn’t trust him, not at all. But for now, all he had was a hunch.
Lopez stood up and kept half his body behind the hatch. “How much longer?”
A loud hiss sounded. The hatch of the submersible swung open.
Cross snapped his head back toward the submersible and spun his sniper rifle.
Lopez followed suit and raised his weapon up as well.
The pilot emerged with an assault rifle in his arms and opened fire. The rounds thudded out in a heavy chuk-chuk-chuk. They slammed into the stairs and pummeled into the concrete walls.
Bits of stone exploded around Cross. He didn’t need to aim. Not that he had the time. Instead, he fired by instinct and professional skill.
The sniper rifle blasted out a single round. It caught the sub pilot just below the right shoulder, and the force of the blast spun him where he stood.
“Get Victor!” Cross yelled.
Lopez spun but was too late. Victor passed through the threshold of the door and fired his pistol, point blank, at Captain Lopez. The spec ops officer fell back to the floor with a wound in his throat.
Victor spun the pistol toward Cross.
Cross fired again. The round missed. He had time for one more. The rifle boomed out another round.
This time it connected with Victor’s arm. Victor’s pistol spun away into the air and landed twenty meters away.
Victor cried out and charged right at Cross.
The sniper rifle fired once more, the shot connecting with Victor’s shoulder. The round glanced off the armor and shot straight up into the concrete.
Victor dove down onto Cross.
Cross tried to rise, but Victor was on him. Instead, Cross slammed his sniper rifle between himself and Victor.
The weight of Victor’s suit was too much for Cross. It crushed his arms down flat, and the Coalition soldier pummeled him with his armored fists.
Cross tried to pivot one way, jam his elbow, and use the rifle as leverage. Nothing. The first blow glanced him, but the second connected right on his forehead. Stars exploded in his vision. One more hit like that, and he’d be out.
Victor pulled his arm back for another heavy blow.
This time, Cross waited until Victor launched his punch, shoulder into it, and then slid to the side and pulled the rifle at the same time.
Victor’s punch went wide, and the extra leverage from the sniper rifle toppled him off. Cross was on him, one arm pinned behind, and wrenched it as tight as he could manage. The armor itself resisted, and he felt the arm move with almost impossible strength.
“You can’t beat me! I’m more than you’ll ever be!” Victor yelled. Slowly his arm pulled away as his muscles flexed. He laughed out with arrogance. “I’m no mortal man. I’m going to be a god!”
Cross grunted, spun Victor’s wrist, and felt as he hit that perfect spot. Now the muscle was at its weakest, augmented or not, and he was just about at the edge of the joint capsule.
Victor cried out, the arrogance gone.
“Go to hell,” Cross said. He slammed his body forward.
Victor’s shoulder tore free from the joint with an audible pop. He screamed out in pain. Cross couldn’t keep him down.
Victor thrashed himself to his feet and lunged for Cross with one arm hanging at an odd angle. His fingers clawed at Cross, gripping and squeezing.
This time, Cross simply pulled the arm, spun the force, and pushed Victor over the guardrail. The suit seemed to hang for a second.
Victor tried to catch himself and halt the fall.
The suit hit the surface and then was gone. A cloud of bubbles announced that Victor truly was dead.
Cross took a breath. It was only then he noticed the bullet hole in his arm. He stumbled over to Lopez’s corpse and pulled out a personal med kit. He wrapped it tight and felt a cool tingle as the patch adhered to the wound.
Then he found his sniper rifle, checked the action and the scope, and set out into the halls.
####
After the barrage began, Jack ignored the display above and focused on his program. Lines of code grew. The tangled web of multiple commands blossomed into errors. Language difficulties arose. He struggled to remember what the linguists normally did. Time. Time.
Then he sneaked a glance up, and it took his breath away.
The Qin fleet was attempting to break orbit. The heavier Qin ships were locked into the TU fleet, so close in some cases they could almost board. Farther up, the lighter Qin ships attempted to punch a hole through the TU light cruisers and destroyers.
Again and again the orbitals fired. Every time the display updated, more ships died.
Why?
“I don’t care, do it now!” Rob shouted angrily. He hunched over the second-tier consoles and moved from one to the next.
Jack tried to remember what was on the second tier. The first was low-level commands, the top was overall planetary command, the second…what was it? Then it hit him.
Starship command.
A pit grew in Jack’s stomach, and he knew. In a quick moment, he deleted dozens of lines of code and tapped so fast he missed letters and numbers. His breath was quick. The moment was on him.
The code grew. He added another set of variables, and this one was broad. Anything. A wild card besides what was on the field. If Rob was at the starship command consoles, it meant one thing—he was going to launch his own starship.
The bastard is going to escape. This is his damn cover.
“Switch targeting to Terran Union now,” Rob yelled.
Jack ignored him. He had to make the code more flexible. Flexible meant difficult. And difficulty needed time. He didn’t have time.
“Do it. Now, dammit!”
Jack turned his head but didn’t take his eyes off the screen. “I have an error, I need a second.”
Rob tore off his headset and ran up the steps. He raised the pistol. “Three, two, one.”
The pistol fired, and the slug slammed into Jack’s leg.
Jack screamed out and fell out of the chair. He clutched the leg and felt the burning pain throb with every heartbeat.
“Now! Do it now!” Rob bellowed.
Every part of Jack wanted to tell him Rob to go to hell. But if he could just switch it up for a minute, it was all he needed. He started to struggle to his feet, and then Rob grabbed him by the shoulders and heaved him up.
“I’m counting to thirty in my head. Then I’ll shoot something else.”
“Fine, fine!” Jack said. He kept typing in his program. He added another layer of variables and, just when he heard Rob raise the pistol, he engaged the program.
His heart sank when he watched the icons switch and suddenly the TU was in the crosshairs.
“Get ready to switch everything onto both fleets. I’ll only ask once, and then I shoot. Got it?” Rob said. He walked back to the second tier without waiting for an answer.
Jack gritted his teeth, squeezed the wound with one hand, and typed as fast as he could with the other. All he needed was a few more minutes. Then he’d get that bastard when he fled.
####
Gavin had to walk more slowly. Every so often, an electric pain shot through his chest. He found a slow jog, not quite fast enough to make good progress, but enough to keep Claire from glaring at him. The space was oddly quiet.
“Sl
ow up,” Claire said.
He didn’t need any encouraging.
“Give me your pistol.”
Gavin held it out but didn’t release when she grasped it. He remembered Rob handing him the pistol, and it not firing.
Her eyes locked with his. “If I wanted you dead, I’d have left you.”
He released the pistol. Claire popped off the rear of the weapon and pulled out a strip of electronics. Then she clasped the back on and gave it to Gavin.
“It’ll work now?” he asked.
Claire drew her own pistol and started walking. “Safety device, keyed to Coalition officers.”
“But it’ll work, right?” Gavin didn’t follow her. Not yet.
Claire stopped. “You wouldn’t be much use to me if you couldn’t shoot. Now come on! We don’t have time for this.”
They jogged down the length of a long hall. It opened up at the end into a domed room. All throughout the room were dead Qin. Some had weapons, most did not. Whoever came through had made sure to put a bullet hole into each skull.
Claire stopped and held her hand to her mouth. “Oh my God.”
“Dead Qin. Come on, you said we don’t have time. No need to mourn them.”
Claire snapped back at him, “They did more for us than the TU ever did.”
“We’d never leave a colony to the Qin,” Gavin said angrily. “You turned your back on your own kind!”
Claire glared at Gavin. “You have no idea.”
“I know! By God, I know. They took you, they took Rob, they killed Mother. They did that to thousands of families all throughout TU space. How the hell can you condone that?”
Claire looked away from Gavin and to the dead Qin. “This is a war. You don’t go into it without intending to win.”
Gavin stepped in front of her. “Including shooting officers?”
“If it was going to be a long war…our officer corps is younger. It’s a tactical advantage.” Her words were plain, simple—like she spoke of culling a herd of sheep.
Gavin didn’t know how to respond. He felt it to the core, a terrible wrongness to what she believed. How could she? “We’re your own species. How could you?”
“I already told you. You clearly can’t understand the logic. It makes you weak.”
“You don’t kill soldiers who surrender!”
Claire walked toward one of the exits. “We didn’t. We simply killed the officers.”
“Soldiers don’t do that!” Gavin yelled.
“The most brutal war is the shortest one. We’re saving both of our races years of war.”
Gavin glared at her. “And what happens when we’re done?”
Claire turned. “You fight for your nation, I fight for mine. Simple as that. And if we don’t stop Rob, then he’s going to destroy both of our fleets. Then the Qin nation will fall, and eventually mankind too.”
Gavin frowned. “We’ve held out long enough.”
“Only because the Qin blocked a whole frontier of hostiles.”
Gunfire rang from the direction of the submarine, and a second later they heard a single shot toward where they were going.
“Jack,” Gavin said. One friend in front, another behind. Did either of them survive? He had a hunch that when this was all done, he wouldn’t survive either.
He hobbled up next to Claire. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Cross scanned the junction with the scope of his sniper rifle. On his left, it was straight; on his right, a sharp curve that went down. One way was mostly silent. The other still crackled with occasional gunfire far away.
“Which way?” he mumbled to himself.
Another explosion rang out far away, and that settled it. If he knew one thing, it was to find the fight.
The route grew steeper, and seeps of water dribbled down the walls. Stone flooring gave way to metal grating with streams of seawater running into troughs. It smelled like a sewer.
He passed two more sets of airlocks and at each one found more of the dead cyborgs. After the last one, there were a dozen Qin soldiers: dead, mutilated, heaped to one side. One of Brutus’s soldiers lay at one side, with a massive wound bored through his armor.
Cross crouched down next to the soldier and checked him for anything useful. It was then he noticed the wetwork on the man’s body. Inside the wound, wires and bits of steel glittered back. He’d guessed as much; they seemed extraordinarily strong.
Finding nothing of use, he set out at a slow pace. The last time he’d heard weapons fire, it was close. A few hundred meters at most. He wondered if Gavin was there. For that matter, he wondered if he was even alive.
The hallway narrowed. A wide door was open on one side. Cross waited near it and strained his ears. Nothing but the trickling sound of water. Finally he stood and led with the barrel of his rifle.
Inside was a massive chamber. Landing pads stretched from front to back. On each was a slender Qin starship. Shuttles. Cross recognized them from combat briefings. Except these looked different. Fast. Near the first shuttle, three Qin were face down with bullet holes in their backs.
Cross scanned the area with his scope and set a few hundred meters down the hall. He went onto his knees and leaned very slowly around the corner. There, a hundred meters away, was another airlock. This one had three soldiers aiming weapons through it. The tallest one fired out a long burst from a rotary cannon. Brutus.
Then came the ritual Cross always followed. He had a moment to pick his shot. His weapon held three rounds. First, he checked the action. Second, the mounting of the scope. He paid that a bit of extra time after the fight he’d been in with Victor.
Finally, he pictured the shots. One. Two. Three. One shot. One kill. Brutus would be the slowest with that big cannon, so Cross left him for last. The other two had close-range assault weapons. They’d have to go first.
Cross took a breath and carefully pointed the weapon at the first of the Coalition soldiers. He exhaled. The crosshairs slid slightly down and to the left. Bit by bit, his finger gently squeezed the trigger.
Boom. The soldier fell, the front of his face mask blown off by the impact of the round.
The recoil snapped the rifle up. Cross was already on the next target. The soldier moved almost impossibly fast.
Just as the Coalition soldier brought his weapon to bear, Cross fired again. The round smashed right into the chest of the soldier and plowed a hole through. The soldier fell backward, his weapon clattering to the ground.
Cross adjusted, a bare movement of a centimeter, and saw Brutus large in his scope. The rotary cannon was just coming into position.
In that moment, Cross squeezed the trigger. He’d had a thousand hours on a sniper rifle, had the skill and innate grace that came with so much practice. But at the same time, Brutus swung his massive weapon with superhuman strength and coordination. Both weapons fired at once.
The rotary cannon coughed three times. The rounds smashed into the concrete around Cross.
Cross felt the recoil of his own weapon and was blasted back. Bits of concrete and stone peppered his face. Sharp pain exploded in one arm. His sniper rifle tumbled away, with a ridge running along the action. A single shell from Brutus’s rotary cannon had sheared the metal and embedded itself right into Cross’s arm.
“Shit,” Cross said. One arm was useless, bloody, painful. He stood slowly and peeked around the corner.
Brutus sat on the floor, hunched over his rotary cannon. A single round hole punched right through his shoulder.
Then something came into view through the airlock. Cross pulled back and started running the other direction.
The Qin cyborgs were already advancing.
####
Jack typed as quick as he could with one hand. With every heartbeat, his leg throbbed. He couldn’t bear to look at it. Just squeezing the wound made his stomach queasy.
The program was almost done. It was the worst hack of a system he’d ever put together. For that matter, he
wasn’t even sure it would work properly. One set of variables was set for the Qin, another for the TU, and finally he reserved a wild card. If Rob was escaping, he’d be sure that last variable would fire on anything new.
Above him, the battlescape was in chaos. The Qin fleet had halted. Now the heavier ships were lashing the TU line of light cruisers and destroyers. The TU ships were caught in between a sledgehammer of orbital fire and an anvil of Qin cruisers. Both fleets were bloody, punch-drunk, and stumbling on the edge of the atmosphere.
The pulse cannons fired up into the TU fleet. Every second or two, another indicator flared that a fresh barrage was up. Strikes registered on the largest of the TU ships. Jack didn’t know the icons, but he could guess by the size that they were either carriers or battleships. Just as he watched, one of them disappeared. The icon flashed, turned red, and was gone.
“Shit,” Jack said. This was on him.
Jack looked behind him. Rob was on his feet and typing between two consoles. He spoke rapidly into his headset. All of his focus was just before him.
“Fuck it.” Jack slapped the program, disengaged the fire from the TU, and swapped it all onto the Qin. He dove off his chair and scrambled through the consoles.
“You!” Rob shouted.
A gunshot clanged near Jack, then another. A third creased his shoulder. He crawled toward a service hatch and plunged through headfirst, falling along a line of cables and crunching onto a gantry just below. He’d only fallen a few meters; he was below the tiers among the main computer banks.
Rob ran up to the top tier. His footsteps were just above Jack, clanging and loud above him.
Jack felt the wound on his back and clenched his teeth. It ran just along his shoulder in a nasty crease.
The sound of keys came, followed by an error tone. Then another. And another. Jack held his breath and stared straight up. He could see Rob through the gap in the floor.
“Shit,” he whispered. He realized he’d forgotten to lock out his console.
Rob hammered more keys, and the errors came faster.
Jack crawled over a cable run and dropped onto the floor as quietly as he could. He winced in pain and squeezed his leg. Kill the computers? The databanks blinked. He gave a quick glance and saw that these were just routing systems. The main control was based somewhere else.
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