Legacy Fleet: Avenger (Kindle Worlds) (The First Swarm War Book 2)

by Chris Pourteau

  All eyes turned to Avery.

  “Barstow’s right,” she said. “I want to capture this sonofabitch, not kill him. Yet. If we take the marines in with us, there’s a much greater chance a trigger gets pulled. Or he’ll hole up somewhere, some nook in main Engineering, and we’ll have to dig him out like a tick. The Swarm is coming, and we don’t have time for that. If this doesn’t work? We can always send in the marines then.”

  “Ma’am, that is a seriously FUBAR idea,” said Macon, the marine platoon leader.

  “Maybe,” acknowledged Avery. “But it’s what we’re doing. Seal the door behind us, Lieutenant Macon. But stay close on comms. Understood?”

  After a moment, “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Farrell, Barstow—let’s go. Before he can do any more damage.”

  The bulkhead doors opened, and Avery and the two security officers entered. When the doors didn’t close immediately, Avery glanced back to find a hesitant Macon, his hand hovering over the controls.

  “Follow my orders, Lieutenant,” she said.

  Nodding, he touched the panel and the doors slid shut with a metallic click.

  Barstow touched the controls on their side, and the word Locked glowed red on the wall display. “Just to make sure he doesn’t get past us,” he said.

  “You kidding?” said Farrell. “Past us into the loving arms of a dozen tender marines? Unlock it, Lieutenant.”

  “No, he’s right,” Avery said. “We need Brent contained. And Macon has the override code.”

  She turned to assess the room. The last time she’d been in here, bodies had littered Engineering. Blood was everywhere, shiny and slick across the sterile, gray deck plates. And the air had smelled like vaporized copper.

  “Brent?” she called. “We know you’re in here. Come out and all this can be over.”

  Her ears strained to hear a response. A defiant curse or maybe the sound of a nervous foot on a latticed gangway. Anything. But what bubbled forth was the tittering laughter of an impetuous child.

  Or a raving lunatic, she thought.

  An intense feeling of déjà vu washed over Sam. Flashbacks to another incident in an engine room, when a different officer had gone off the rails and murdered the last survivors of the Russian scout ship Tarantula. She’d been a first-class midshipman in the Academy then, she and Halsey together, and at the time they had no idea what caused Bryson to lose it. Just like she had no idea now what had driven Brent crazy. Bryson had died, along with half a dozen Russians, and she’d barely escaped the ship’s destruction with her remaining away team. But now, as the cold collection of decades-old puzzle pieces clicked into place, Avery wondered if humanity’s first brush with the Swarm hadn’t come long before anyone knew enough to name them.

  “Brent … Malcolm—this doesn’t have to end in your death. Something’s wrong with you. Something’s snapped. Let us help you put it right,” she said.

  The giggling returned. “You don’t know,” came Brent’s voice, low and sweaty. “You don’t know how wonderful it is, where I am.”

  Her ear traced the hollow whisper to the second-floor gangway over her shoulder. He was burrowed back in one of the access tubes that ran between the decks, she guessed. Where the two-man team supposedly creeping toward him from the far end was, she had no idea. But the close-quarters, ringing metal of the access tube made his hoarse voice echo eerily in the silence of the powered-down engine room.

  They really would have to dig him out like a tick.

  “Farrell, you and Barstow—”

  A short report, a single shot, cut her off. She turned sharply to see a piece of Farrell’s skull bouncing off the engineering panel. In slow motion, it seemed, the bullet drove blood and brain out of his head. The commander was staring right at her, eyes wide in complete surprise, before he slumped to the left and his leaking skull careened off the cold metal of the console. He fell wet and heavy to the deck, then was still.

  Stunned, Avery followed the bullet’s trajectory back to its source—straight to the end of Barstow’s barrel. She was dumbstruck, speechless. She couldn’t take her eyes off his gun hand, now rounding on her.

  Just like on the Russian ship.

  “I liked him,” said Barstow. Then he shrugged, as if some things couldn’t be helped.

  “Barstow … what the hell—”

  “It’s Codeine, actually,” he said, waving the barrel as he spoke. Her eyes followed it, unable to see anything else. “And this isn’t personal. Just business.”

  That brought Sam back to herself. On reflex, she brought up her weapon.

  Codeine fired, knocking the pistol out of her hand. “And don’t think about comming Master Sergeant Muscles out there,” he said as she fell back against the engineering board, nursing her stinging hand. “You’ll be dead before you say a word.”

  Avery dashed her eyes to where his thumb jabbed, and they lit on the bright red Locked status of the bulkhead doors.

  “Oh, I hacked the security codes the day I arrived. The key to success? Good prep work. He won’t be coming through there without a blowtorch,” said Codeine. “And you won’t be alive long enough for that.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Someone contracted to do a job. That’s all.”

  “Someone hired you to kill me? Why?”

  The bulkhead doors buzzed. Macon was trying to get through.

  “I’d love to stand here and play twenty questions,” said Codeine, “but we need to finish up our business.”

  “You’ll never get out of here alive. Those marines will shred you when they come through that door.”

  “No, they won’t,” he said. “One psychopath is all I need for an alibi. Brent jumped us, and you heroically saved me but died doing it. Has a certain irony to it, eh? Goodbye, Captain Avery. Whatever pain you’ve felt in your life, I’m glad to help end it.” Codeine aimed his pistol squarely at her forehead.

  A scream echoed off the silver walls of Engineering. Avery mistook it for the assassin firing his weapon, but she couldn’t understand how she could be dead and yet see Codeine tackled to the floor, born down under the weight of Brent’s madness. Then she felt the sting of Codeine’s bullet in her left arm, the heated metal burning through muscle and sinew and bone.

  Brent jabbered incoherently, his hands wrapped fast around Codeine’s neck. The men rolled around in a heap, but the assassin recovered, bringing his weapon around. Brent ducked and threw his shoulder up, knocking Codeine’s pistol away. Avery dived to the floor as the shot went wild.

  “You have to die! You have to die!” yelled Brent.

  Codeine tried a different tack, arcing the pistol up from below, and fired twice. Brent grunted with the impact but didn’t falter. He held Codeine to the floor with one hand and grabbed the gunman’s wrist with the other, and the two of them stayed locked there, struggling for dominance. Codeine’s eyes bulged in their sockets from Brent’s one-handed manic strength.

  Sam stretched across Farrell’s body, reaching for the dead man’s sidearm.

  “What the hell?”

  She heard a voice and feet on the landing above. Two marines were emerging from the accessway Brent had launched himself from.

  “Shoot Barstow!” ordered Avery.

  But the marines stood, unsure, their rifles raised and watching the lunatic they’d been running to ground wrestling with a ship’s security officer.

  Codeine gasped, using his free hand to claw at Brent’s deathgrip. But his strength was failing with lack of oxygen, and the other hand, the one with the pistol—it was pointing at his own chest now, forced their by Brent’s preternatural strength. With a final scream, Brent bore down and the pistol’s barrel met Codeine’s chest. Three muffled pop-pop-pops sounded. Codeine’s back arched once, a disbelieving expression becoming pain on his face, before death slowly rattled the last of his life from his lungs.

  “Did it for you, Captain!” Brent rose, his voice frenzied as he rounded on Avery. His six-foot-two frame
loomed as he stood. “Kicked them out finally! Did my duty!”

  Two infrared targets the size of a fingertip centered on his chest.

  Brent moved forward, blood from being gutshot soaking through his tunic.

  “What do we do, sir?” asked a young voice from the gangway above.

  “Marine, shoot that motherfucker!”

  “No, wait!—” cried Avery.

  There were two short bursts of automatic weapons fire, and Brent wrenched backward, then resumed his advance on Avery. One of the tiny red dots moved to his forehead, and a third burp of gunfire obliterated his skull. The force snapped the headless corpse backward, flat to the deck beside the dead assassin.

  As her hand wrapped too late around Farrell’s pistol, the echo of gunfire rang in Sam’s ears. She could hear marine boots clattering on the metalwork stairs above, now approaching from both sides of Engineering. And the incessant click-click-click of Macon’s attempts to get through the hacked computer lockout of the bulkhead doors.

  The marines were on the ground floor before Avery could move again. They approached, rifles firm against their shoulders, all infrareds targeting the downed Codeine.

  “Ma’am, you all right?” one of them asked, dropping his rifle as he approached her. “We need to get you to Sickbay!”

  Avery nodded, trying to rise while favoring her injured arm. The marines formed a perimeter around the dead men.

  “See if you can override that door,” she said to the trooper helping her to her feet. “Macon’s probably already suffered an aneurysm.”

  God, her arm hurt.

  “Ma’am,” he nodded, moving off.

  Avery approached Codeine’s body, the three marines making way for her with their weapons but staying alert. She eyed the dead man warily, but his eyes stared vacantly at the brightly lit ceiling. Sam knelt down and pressed two fingers against the side of his neck, then began searching him with her one good hand. She found a PADD that wasn’t standard IDF issue.

  She thumbed its power button, but the device only displayed the warning unauthorized access. Glancing down with some distaste, she reached for the assassin’s hand and pressed her own thumb atop his over the PADD’s button. The screen came to life.

  Avery called up the message menu and found only two items there. One looked like the confirmation for a bank transfer. The other…

  Kill IDF Captain Samantha Avery. Shoot the messenger.

  The intent of that last bit seemed obvious. But who the hell would want to kill her enough to hire an assassin?

  She thumbed up the second message. It indicated the successful transfer of five hundred thousand credits, with a promissory note of five hundred thousand more once the job was completed. Now, who the hell would spend a million credits to kill her? And again—why?

  Sam pulled up the first message again. It displayed clearly, then fritzed out. A third phrase winked into life.

  End line.

  What the hell did that mean?

  Errant computer code, she thought. Or legacy content, half deleted.

  The new text faded again, leaving only the assassin’s deadly, two-sentence contract visible. Across Engineering, she heard the bulkhead doors open, followed by the tromp of a dozen sets of heavy marine boots.

  “Captain Avery! You all right?” called Macon. His platoon dispersed to secure the room with mechanical efficiency.

  “Mostly, Lieutenant,” Sam replied absently. “Except for this bullet hole in my arm.” She couldn’t take her mind off the discovery she’d just made. Who the hell would want to kill her so badly they’d pay the price of a small freighter to do it?

  Chapter 25

  Britannia Sector

  Churchill Station, Upper Orbit, Britannia

  The Crow’s Nest (IDF Officers Club)

  “So, was it a mistake?”

  Laz played with the plastic sword spearing the cherry in his Old Fashioned. Addie watched sidelong, not daring to look straight at him. She didn’t want him to feel pressured to answer the way she hoped he would. But his lack of response as the ice clinked against the side of his glass seemed to be his answer.

  The wrong one.

  “No, of course not,” he said finally, and she breathed again. “It’s just….”

  Now she did look directly at him. “Just what? Why’d I have to come looking for you after the court-martial? I know you’re busy reorganizing the Indy’s fighter groups, but … Laz, talk to me.”

  Clink-clink.

  “I’ve lived two decades regretting what happened between us at the Academy,” he said. Addie’s ears perked up. It was the first time he’d ever spoken of the personal cost their breakup had caused him. Of his public shaming and her very public disavowal of him. “Then the other night, you came to me drunk, and it was like something I’d dreamt of for so long was actually happening.”

  She raised an eyebrow as he made eye contact. “Not the drunk part, I hope.”

  Laz looked away, realizing what he’d said. “No, of course not.”

  The clinking got louder.

  “I was kidding, Laz,” she said. “Trust me—I knew exactly what I was doing. I’ve missed you, too. Hard as that was to admit to myself when you first boarded Invincible. And not knowing what would happen when we faced the Swarm again.… I’m in my forties now. And the older I get, the more I realize time is the most precious commodity there is.”

  “Carpe diem?”

  “Something like that.”

  He nodded. “Me, too.” Laz lifted the plastic sword, yanked the cherry off it between his teeth, and followed it down with a swig of Old Fashioned. She watched him do it, memorizing the image for no good reason she could think of other than the fact that it was Laz being Laz, enjoying the simple pleasure of a drink with her in a bar. A familiar, yet newly recovered sensation that felt decades old in how it warmed her from the inside.

  “Here’s the thing,” he said. “I don’t know how this is going to turn out. Every time the Swarm attacks and I survive—you survive—I feel like another thousand grains of sand have run through the hourglass of luck we seem to have. Eventually, there won’t be any more sand. Or luck.”

  Addison waited for him to continue. She could hear the earnestness in his words, the caution in them, as if by speaking he were tiptoeing through a minefield. When he looked at her again, she thought her heart might melt through her eyes.

  “I’m afraid of losing you again,” he croaked. “I couldn’t take that. I threw you away last time. And now the Swarm might take you away. I couldn’t live with that. Not now.”

  She reached out and touched his arm, and Laz’s hand lightly covered hers. “You’re not going to lose me.”

  “You don’t know that!”

  The venom in his voice made her want to pull away, but he held her hand firmly in place.

  “I’m sorry. I’m just—afraid, Addie.”

  “I know,” she said. “I know. But when all this is over….”

  He nodded, finding her eyes and holding them. “Yeah, then.”

  “Well, well, well! Look who it is!” boomed a woman’s voice behind them.

  The two jerked apart like teenagers caught necking on the front porch. Halsey turned to find Mimi Ferreira, followed by Topper and Little Dick, approaching the bar.

  “Heya, Skipper!” said Topper. “Looks like we made it in time for the big show.”

  Addison noticed Mimi’s gaze lingering on them. She’d seen their connection, their touching. You missed your chance, Addison thought. So keep your distance.

  Laz stepped off his stool and grasped Topper’s hand, then Little Dick’s. There was an uncomfortable half moment before he accepted Mimi’s offered hug. Her eyes found Halsey’s over his shoulder, but Addison couldn’t quite read them. Jealousy? Acknowledgment of an opportunity lost? And then the hug was over.

  “Didn’t expect to see you guys here,” said Halsey with a smile for the men.

  “Oh, Laz didn’t tell you?” Mimi had a leading, I-
know-something-you-don’t smarm in her voice. “We’re getting the band back together!”

  Halsey turned to see an awkward grin frozen on Laz’s face. “I’ve secured a letter of marque from the IDF. I’ll be flying Renegade again if the Swarm returns. When the Swarm returns.”

  Addison took a moment to process that. “You’re resigning as Indy’s CAG?” Her gut shot a warning to her heart. Was he bailing again on the service, like he’d done over twenty years ago when he cheated his way to expulsion? Was he leaving her again?

  “Not exactly. You know Renegade, Addie. Maneuverable and with a cloak that, let’s just say, isn’t standard Fleet issue. My job is to get behind the Swarm and provide close-up intel to help better coordinate our defenses. Noah and Admiral Kilgore know they need all the help they can get. Ballbreaker’s stepping in as Indy’s CAG, temporarily at least.”

  Nodding, Addison took it all in—the information, the flood of emotions. If the Swarm attacked again, Laz would be flying Renegade behind enemy lines like the pirate he’d once been, aided only by a handful of crew and the last grains of sand in that lucky hourglass of his.

  And Mimi.

  “Well,” she said after a moment. Then, inanely, “Sounds like a plan.”

  Mimi clapped her hard on the shoulder. “Buck up, Halsey! It’ll be like old home week to have Laz back.” She winked, and Addison had zero doubt Mimi knew exactly what kind of images for old home week were forming in her mind. “It’ll be fun!”

  Will it, now.

  “Hey, Skipper, we’re refueled and restocked. Kilgore asked us to start flying reconnaissance as soon as possible. We better get going.”

  “Right. Give me a minute, guys. I’ll meet you at the exit.”

  Topper and Little Dick shared a knowing look, then ambled off. Mimi took her time, but she went too.

  “I should’ve told you,” he said. “I just wasn’t sure how. I didn’t want you to think I was bailing on the Fleet again. On us.”

  “It makes absolute strategic sense,” said Addison, more formally than she’d intended. Then, more kindly, “Take care of yourself, Laz. Let’s pick up our discussion after we’ve blasted the Swarm back to whatever hell they came from.”