by Kal Spriggs
Lauren adjusted her weapons. Mason regretted telling her earlier that day to leave behind the majority of her arsenal. She only had a pair of pistols, the hand stunner, and an assortment of knives. “That doesn't help us in the long run,” she said. “Is there only the one entrance?”
Mason shook his head, “I don't think so. That one seems to be newer, a direct access point to the command center. This shows several secondary access points for air shafts, spots that they had to dig down to open those up... and yeah, the original mine off to the south. That seems to be where they bring the heavy equipment in, might be our best bet to escape.” He had already checked his comm unit and they didn't have any signal this deep underground.
He showed her the long tunnel that led out into the valley. It would be far less dangerous than trying to slip out through a guarded elevator, plus that site would have transportation of some kind that they could access.
“What's the plan?” Lauren asked.
“Head that way as quickly as we can, acquire uniforms or alternate clothing, take a vehicle and get back to the ship,” he said. Kandergain still hadn't returned from whatever mission had called her away. That meant he would probably have to rely on Admiral Collae, since Frank Pierce's War Dogs had left.
“Right,” Lauren said and she looked again at the schematics. He could see her concentrate as she tried to memorize the path. “Let's do this.”
***
Mason had finally found someone his size and switched over to a far less obtrusive outfit when the alarm sounded. “Attention, there has been a security breach. Report all unauthorized access immediately. All personnel are to report to their supervisors and check in.”
Mason grimaced as he tugged on the work book. The worker Lauren had stunned snored peacefully, but they were in a more crowded part of the base. They didn't have a better spot to hide him than this small closet. Mason had tucked him away as best as he could, but it wouldn't be long before someone found him.
To make matters worse, the outfit wasn't the best disguise. Workmen didn't carry around weapons. While Lauren had traded up for a Marine's uniform, body armor, and weapons, Mason would still draw too much attention, he knew. He glanced at his leather boots that he had thrown on top of his clothing, yet he just shook his head. He had liked those boots quite a bit, it seemed a shame to throw them away for a disguise that wouldn't hold up to even minor scrutiny.
He stepped into the corridor and Lauren tossed him a pair of handcuffs, “New plan, pass me your weapons.”
Mason grimaced, but he did as he was told. A prisoner being escorted would draw less attention than a worker wondering around with a Marine.
They hurried along and a moment later Mason heard Lauren's stolen radio squawk, “Ferranti, report in.”
Lauren grimaced, “Yes, sir, all clear.”
“Ferranti, you are supposed to be in the blue sector, but I'm showing you all the way over near orange, what's going on?” The voice held suspicion aplenty, Mason could tell.
“Sorry, sir, I got turned around, I'm headed there now,”
“Ferranti: Oscar Bravo Tango Five.”
“Say again, sir?” Lauren asked.
There was silence for a long moment. “All security elements, go to secondary channel,” the voice said, “primary is compromised.”
Mason shook his head. They knew where they were now.
Lauren and Mason moved to the side of the corridor as a maintenance cart trundled past, pushed by a pair of workers. Lauren unclipped the stolen and now trackable comm unit and slipped it into a slot on the side of the cart.
Mason pulled her with him as they hurried to a jog. Orange Sector was the area where the vehicles accessed the facility, so they didn't have far to go... but it was almost certain that Admiral Mannetti's people would realize that as well.
They rounded a corner and Mason saw a half dozen guards at the far end of the corridor. Before the other group could react, he had shed the handcuffs and he and Lauren opened fire. Three of the men went down instantly as Mason instinctively worked the left side while Lauren started on the right. Only the man in the middle even had time to bring his weapon up before Mason's fourth shot struck him in the head as Lauren's third shot caught him in the chest.
At that moment, though, alarms began to go off. “Intruders in the orange sector, shots fired!” Mason heard shouted over the intercom.
“Security camera,” Mason said and pointed at a spot above the checkpoint.
Lauren bit off a curse, but they were out of time. They hurried forward, just as a hatch behind them opened. Mason looked back to see a squad of Marines sweep out in a tactical formation. He turned and fired even as he shoved Lauren a doorway. His shot took down their point man and Mason dove for cover. He heard a rattle of return fire, but none of it came close.
Lauren leaned over and sawed off a burst from her carbine. The Freedom Arms M-11 carbine had a ridiculous rate of fire and Mason couldn't hear the individual shots. He pawed at the door control behind him, but the light stayed red and the door didn't open. If he remembered right, they had three hundred meters of corridors to go. They couldn't allow this group to pin them down. As he thought that, Lauren pulled a grenade out of her pouch and threw it down the corridor at their attackers. “Move!” she shouted.
He was already in motion. Behind him he could hear the enemy squad scramble for cover as he ticked off the seconds in his mind. One of their attackers, either suicidally brave or just unobservant, continued to fire at them and Mason heard Lauren grunt as a bullet struck her. Mason dove around the corner, half dragging Lauren just as the plasma grenade detonated. The sharp concussion was nothing compared to the massive wave of heat. At this distance, Mason saw the paint blister in the corridor. Closer to the detonation, flesh, plastics, and even metal would begin to burn.
Mason went to pat Lauren down, but she pushed him away. “I'm fine,” Lauren said, “the body armor caught the round. We have to move.”
Fire alarms joined the chorus of wailing. Mason and Lauren hurried through the corridors and a moment later they were surrounded by fleeing civilians. Lauren caught him and they paused before another door. Down the corridor, he saw another squad of Marines had set up a checkpoint. The crowd of civilians flowed around and through it, but there was no way that the Marines would miss him and Lauren.
“We have to split up,” Lauren said.
“What?” Mason shook his head, “don't be absurd.” Yet, he understood her meaning. They couldn't fight their way through many more checkpoints like this. The crowd gave them some concealment, but once the enemy opened fire, it would be a bloodbath.
“An armed worker and a Marine together will draw attention. A worker on his own won't,” she said. Just then, Mason saw a guard step out of a room only a meter behind Lauren. He froze as he saw them and Mason stepped forward and pistol stroked him across the face. The man dropped limply to the ground.
“What are you saying?” Mason asked as he turned back. She pulled him forward into a kiss and Mason felt his body respond. The rush of adrenaline and the danger, combined with the touch of her lips, felt like a live wire had been applied to his body. It was far more of a rush than anything he'd ever experienced.
Lauren pushed him away and, as he shook his head to clear it, he saw her activate the door. “I'll distract them, you get out of here.” She had taken his belt off him when they kissed, he realized as he pawed for his absent weapons. Just before the hatch slid shut, he saw her pick up the unconscious guard and start to throw him over her shoulder. The pad to the side darkened to show that she had locked it from the other side.
Mason stared at the closed hatch and, for just a second, it was all he could do not to scream in frustration. Every bit of him wanted to pound on the hatch. It was unlikely that Admiral Mannetti's people would try to take her prisoner. Far more likely, they would shoot her on sight. She wouldn't be able to move fast, not dragging along a decoy so it wouldn't take long for them to pin her down.
>
And then Lauren Kelly would be dead.
“Not like this, not saving me,” Mason muttered to himself, yet he understood what had to happen. If he stayed, her sacrifice would be in vain. He turned away and stumbled into the crowd, head down. The crowd became his only defense and he kept to the center of it as they passed that checkpoint and then three others. The crowd grew more and more, until they finally boiled out of a broad set of doors and into an open space.
Mason looked around and saw that the doors came out of rock, yet the area looked to have been covered by some ancient lava flow. Off to the side, a long, poorly lit tunnel led away. Clusters of trucks stood running and guards loaded up civilians in the backs of them.
“...squad One Three is combat ineffective,” Mason heard as he passed one of the Marines at the doors. “We've got them isolated in the Orange Sector pump room.”
Part of him wanted to lunge for the Marine's weapon, but he knew how foolish that would be. Since Mannetti thought she had both of them pinned down, she would allow the civilians to evacuate. That was his ticket out. Only if he got out could he come back and save or avenge Lauren.
Please, he thought, please don't kill her. Yet he knew that Admiral Mannetti had no reason to allow her to live. Mason had nothing with which to bargain. She already had people aboard his ship. Admiral Mannetti had the position of strength for now and Mason couldn't even threaten her without giving away his position.
He felt anguish and no little bit of fear at that realization. Lauren had awoken him from his life as a drifter, awoken the predator part of him, somehow without bringing back the worst part of him. If she died, he feared that he would descend to the man he had been... or become something even worse.
He followed the crowd and ended up in the back of a cargo truck with a couple dozen others. As the truck began its drive down the long tunnel, Mason's gaze locked on the lights of the base, where the only person he had ever loved would soon die... and part of him died with her.
***
Chapter IX
Nova Roma
Chxor Empire
April 3, 2404
Jacabo Urbani gave as slick a smile as he could manage as the Chxor at the checkpoint scanned his papers. He knew the papers should hold up, since he'd taken them off a Chxor collaborator he had killed. If they didn't he had a pistol tucked under his shirt.
The Chxor cocked his head, “Trustee Martinez, you are supposed to be in Sector Three Seven Five. Why are you here?”
Jacabo's smile grew a bit strained. “My vehicle broke down, so I'm here to get it repaired.” In truth, he was here to pick up explosives and weapons from the supply cache, but he wasn't going to tell them that. He wished that their group had more time to reposition their equipment since the last drop off, but things had been difficult over the past few weeks. While Jacabo had jumped at the chance to get off of the damned prison colony, he hadn't realized just how dangerous this mission was going to be until he arrived on Nova Roma.
“Do you have a permit stamp for your vehicle repairs?” The Chxor officer asked as he looked at his data pad.
“Of course,” he said, “Page three.” Jacabo barely repressed a sneer at the bulky and clumsy looking device. The Chxor electronics were nothing compared to what someone could access even in the Colonial Republic. Jacabo knew that well enough since after a dust up with a conscription squad here on Nova Roma he had spent years in the Colonial Republic.
He hadn't missed the irony when he had eventually signed on with Admiral Mannetti. He'd left his home and everything he knew behind because he didn't want to risk his life, only to later sign on with a Nova Roma pirate in the hopes of making enough money to return home. And now he knew that he had come full circle, drafted to help liberate the planet from the Chxor by the Nova Roma Emperor himself.
Some part of that amused him, he reflected, but he had become hardened and cynical enough that he mostly didn't care who he worked for. Pirate, freedom fighter, or whatever, as long as he was well paid, he didn't care. Getting to come home was merely a perk of the job. Not that it's a pleasant homecoming, he thought.
“I will have to look your permit number up,” the Chxor said.
“Fine, fine,” Jacabo said. The work permit was the whole reason he had killed the trustee and taken his papers. Jacabo and his companions had seen far less direct support than he had expected since his arrival. At first they had found some help, but as the Chxor punished the civilians for their attacks, the general population had seemed less and less eager to provide them with even food and shelter. Jacabo could admit that some of that came from how some of the others behaved, but still, it felt ungrateful of them.
Yeah, he thought, Bentucci shouldn't have raped that girl, but it wasn't as if she weren't asking for it. It wasn't as if the girl's family had given the others any options either. After the father had stabbed Bentucci and then got himself shot, Marco had to kill the mother and daughters to shut them up. It was an unfortunate event, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been.
Jacabo knew that Marco had paid off the relatives, which should have been the end of it. Even so, it didn't seem as if that was enough, for whatever reason. Things had gone steadily downhill ever since, which was one reason that they hadn't transferred weapons to the civilians yet. Marco didn't trust that they wouldn't use them on his people.
“The work permit is not in the system,” the Chxor officer said.
“What?” Jacabo asked. He couldn't believe that the stick in the mud he'd killed to get it had a counterfeit work permit stamp. Or maybe I just killed him before he registered it, Jacabo thought. “Well, I'm sorry, I'll just head back to–”
“We will have to detain you until this can be investigated,” the Chxor said. Jacabo saw two others start towards him.
“The hell you will,” Jacabo snarled and went for his pistol. He had it out and fired twice. The loud shots echoed in the street and both Chxor fell. Jacabo spun towards the Chxor officer, but before he could fire, the Chxor tackled him.
Jacabo's head struck the pavement and his world went white. As he shook his head to recover, he felt strong arms pinion him to the ground. He tried to fight, but his body wouldn't respond. Another pair of arms joined the first and he felt his hands wrenched painfully behind him and then cold metal as handcuffs were applied.
His blood ran cold when he heard the Chxor officer speak into his comm unit. “Sector Command, this is Officer Ghxul, I have captured a rebel. Please send a retrieval team.”
***
Port Klast System
Port Klast
April 4, 2404
“I still can't believe you did that to me,” Garret Penwaithe said as Commodore Pierce stepped into the room. “Having that bastard Stavros...”
He trailed off as several others followed the Commodore into the room. The first pair were his brother and Jessica. “My god, Garret, you're alive?” Jessica said, her face white with shock.
Garret snorted, “The Commodore here set me up, set up the whole convoy. There was a virus uploaded to our systems. The 'enemy' we fought was just a simulation and some of the Commodore's friends waylaid Mannetti's friends and then captured us when our ships powered down.” He saw that his explanation, if anything made their expressions sink still further. “What happened?” He asked.
The final man through the door answered, “Admiral Mannetti made her play. She controls Halcyon... and it'll take quite a bit of effort to oust her.”
“What about...” he trailed off, question unasked as he realized that this man seemed familiar somehow. He was tall, with brown hair and dark eyes. Though he had an expressive face, there was nothing but anger and despair in his eyes. He wore a black silk shirt and black slacks, with a pistol belt around his waist and a pistol on each hip. It was the shape of his jaw and his eyes that finally clicked and Garret blurted, “Stavros?”
“Tommy King,” the man corrected automatically.
Garret stared at him. On the surface it was an abs
urd statement. But he said it with such confidence and aplomb that Garret felt in his gut that he told the truth. The man Garret had known as Stavros Heraklion, a pirate of ill repute, was instead none other than Tommy King.
A single nod from Commodore Pierce sealed the statement.
“Why are you involved?” Garret asked.
“He's got a letter of marque,” Harris said, “from the United Colonies. He knew that we'd attacked them and says that Admiral Mannetti is their enemy.”
Garret looked at the Commodore, “Are we good to speak?”
“It's time to share everything we know,” Tommy King said. “And the only person who should be overhearing us is our host... who should be arriving shortly.”
“Host?” Garret asked.
“Thomas Kaid,” a voice said from the doorway. “You may not realize it, but you've been my guest since your arrival.”
“Prisoner seems like a better term,” Garret growled, yet he still nodded respectfully at the man. Thomas Kaid was every bit as infamous as Tommy King. The two men were polar opposites from background. Thomas Kaid had been one of the founders of the Provisional Colonial Republic Army and the driving force behind the revolt against Amalgamated Worlds, right up until the Colonial Republic signed a treaty with Amalgamated Worlds and in the process sold him out. He had fled out beyond human space, pursued by old enemies and former allies both. He was simultaneously honored as a patriot and freedom fighter and reviled as a terrorist and pirate.
Tommy King, on the other hand, was by all accounts a renegade Amalgamated Worlds officer who went pirate sometime after the fall of Earth. He had ravaged his way across much of Colonial Republic space and at one time even raided the Garris Major system, where he looted Eldorado. On multiple occasions he had marshaled entire pirate fleets in his raids. Half the famous pirates and no few number of mercenaries had run under his flag.