“You think that’s where they kept the hostages?” Lonestar asked.
“Does it matter now?” Sumo said bitterly.
“Assholes,” Gorenado said, his large fists clenching into shaking fists. “I’ll stomp every goddamn one of them aboard that godforsaken piece of shit.”
Bull merely nodded, his fingers drumming on the side of his rifle.
There was no avoiding the debris as Coren guided the craft into the wound in the ship’s side. Bent shards of the hull and severed snakes of wire clunked against the shuttle. A body in an EVA suit drifted past, a splash of blood obscuring the dead person’s features. Tag’s fingers tightened around the straps on his crash couch. The crew fell silent.
Was that Hannah?
The shuttle glided to a stop. A single red emergency light flashed across the interior of the Forge, painting the scene in bloody light.
“That’s as close as we can get,” Coren said.
Tag nodded, undoing his restraints. “Bull, take lead on this. Priorities are—” He had to pause and think for a moment. As much as he wanted to rescue the hostages first, their mission was vital to the survival of the whole human race. “Priorities are gathering intel from the ship’s systems, capturing Hannah and any collaborators alive, and rescuing the abductees.”
“In that order, sir?” Bull asked.
“In that order.”
Something flashed across the marine’s face. His lips twitched as if he wanted to question the order.
“Is there a problem?”
“No, sir,” Bull said. “Understood, sir.”
The shuttle bay doors opened, welcoming them into the eerie silence of the vacuum. Static fizzled over the comms as they slipped out, one by one. A few slight adjustments with his propulsion jets led Tag into the debris field. He couldn’t help searching for the people the collaborators had kidnapped. He prayed he wouldn’t see their broken stasis chambers leaking fluid or the bodies already destroyed by depressurization.
Through the flotsam he went, following Sumo. She shoved aside a piece of bent scaffolding, and as the debris shifted, the body of one of the collaborators floated by listlessly. His face shield was cracked, revealing a pulpy mass of unrecognizable tissue.
The marines constantly swept their rifles back and forth, searching for contacts, but the only movement was the gentle drift of weightless debris.
“Keep an eye out for a working terminal,” Tag said. A flurry of affirmatives reached his ears, but the state of the cargo hold didn’t give him hope. The only terminals he saw had cracked screens and protruding wires like broken blood vessels.
Sumo floated toward an intact airlock. “Want to see if anyone’s home?”
“Coren, get us in there,” Tag said. “If you can’t override the system, you’ll need to cut us a door.”
Coren glided up to meet the airlock. He paused next to the terminal controls, but they too were nothing more than shredded wire and shards of polyglass. The Mechanic’s fingers, even in his EVA suit, deftly twisted the wires. Maybe he would be able to short the airlock and force it to open.
“No power to the door,” Coren said.
Maybe not.
“Clear the hatch,” Sumo said. Her fingers rested on the emergency airlock release. She pulled on it, flinching as she did, waiting for the door to explode outward. It didn’t move. “Your turn again, Coren.”
The Mechanic drifted back into place. Blue plasma jetted from one of his wrist-mounted weapons. It bit into the alloy of the airlock hatch. The artificial atmosphere hissed out, freezing into snowflakes. At last, the hatch tore off its hinges. Beyond it was another door, the inner airlock, but this one was attached to a functional terminal.
Coren inserted a data probe into the terminal. “Local access only from this port,” he reported. “Stand by for forced entry.”
The interior door rocked outward, hemorrhaging more pressurized air. That wasn’t the only thing streaming out. Orange streaks of pulsefire lanced toward them. The collaborators had been waiting for them. Through the hail of bolts, Tag saw that the defenders had secured themselves to stanchions to hold their positions against the pull of depressurization. Tag took shelter behind a twisted piece of structural support. Coren recoiled, pressed tightly against the bulkhead, not daring to move. The Mechanic had no cover, nowhere to hide.
“Return fire!” Bull roared.
The defenders were relentless and desperate, spraying the hatch with pulsefire, but the marines had to choose their shots carefully to avoid hitting Coren in their crossfire. One of Coren’s wrist-mounted weapons flickered on. The twin barrels of the weapon glowed blue, bright as a grav impeller.
“Careful,” Tag said, seeing what the Mechanic planned to do.
“Technical advice from a human?” Coren chided. Tag could practically see the subtle tremor at the corner of the alien’s mouth, the almost-human smile the Mechanic had adopted since becoming a member of the Argo’s crew. “Hold your fire!”
The marines ceased shooting. Coren risked moving to aim down the corridor. The overcharged plasma weapons let out a blinding flash of azure lightning that made Tag wince. The light held steady for what seemed like an eternity, though it had only been a few seconds. It was nonlethal, but the blast should have knocked out a few of the defenders and temporarily blinded the rest like an old-fashioned flash-bang grenade.
Bull didn’t hesitate. “Go, go, go!”
The marines stormed through the airlock. Tag’s vision narrowed as he shot forward, desperate for cover. Flashes of gunfire erupted all around him, and a cold jet of adrenaline surged through his vessels. The corridor was a jumble of fallen latticework and peeled bulkheads. Defenders were hidden around corners and bent hatches. Shots glanced off alloy, singeing anything they touched. This would quickly turn into a battle of attrition, and Tag feared how much time they might waste entrenched here.
Coren paused by the hatch and pulled down a lever. The airlock behind them slammed shut, and air hissed as the ship repressurized. A rumbling shook the bulkheads, followed by the whine of emergency generators. Lights flickered on, then off. A constant strobe accompanied the flashes and barks of gunfire. Alarms shrieked, and a robotic voice announced a litany of complaints about the paralyzed ship:
Fusion reactors offline.
Hull breach detected.
Life support systems critical.
Emergency evacuation procedure initiated.
Tag’s heart rate spiked at that last announcement. The ship must be equipped with escape pods. That was where Hannah would be heading.
“We’ve got to move!” Tag yelled, squeezing off rapid shots with his pulse pistol. A defender retreated into a nearby hatch and then promptly sent back a wave of blind fire.
The clatter of metal against metal sounded. He barely heard it over the cacophony of voices and alarms and gunfire, but Tag’s stomach twisted as he recognized the sound. It took him a fraction of a second to spot its source. Something had landed only half a meter in front of him. A weak blue light blinked atop it.
“Grenade!” he bellowed.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Instinct overrode everything else. There was no time for thought. There was nowhere to hide. No chance to weigh his options or calculate the odds.
Tag picked up the live grenade.
A voice called at the back of his head, It could blow any moment. It could blow now. It will blow now.
An image of his body turning into a fine red mist flashed through him. His muscles tightened and twitched. He expended every bit of energy he could muster to throw the damn thing as far from him and his crew as possible. The blue light blinked as it rolled off Tag’s fingertips. It somersaulted through the air, twisting end over end. Arcing over Coren, then the marines. Back to the bastard brazen enough to risk depressurizing this whole corridor permanently.
The grenade never completed its return journey. It erupted into a flash of bloody red and burning orange. Tongues of fire licked the already-s
carred bulkhead. The concussion threw Tag backward. Pain rocked through his skull, and the air was expelled from his lungs. Gorenado’s bulky body slammed into the bulkhead. He landed in a mess of limbs.
“Gorenado!” Tag yelled. He scrambled toward the marine. Pulsefire flew overhead. He ducked under it, heart hammering, scanning Gorenado for injuries. A finger-sized shard of metal had pierced his abdomen. That was bad enough. But the worst damage might yet be invisible. Internal bleeding. A concussion or traumatic brain injury. Even now, the marine might be paralyzed.
Gorenado’s head lolled, and then his eyes fixed on Tag. The big man’s face contorted into something that might have been a grin or a grimace.
“Gods be damned,” he growled, waving Tag off. “I’m good, Cap. I’m good.” The man stood then collapsed again. Tag heard the marine’s labored breathing over the comms. His lungs rattled, indicating a possible collapse or fluid buildup. Not a good sign.
Tag helped heave Gorenado to his feet, his back braced against the bulkhead. “Take it easy,” he cautioned.
The marine laughed then winced. “No can do, Cap. Got a mission to complete.”
“Gorenado, you still with us?” Bull called over the comms. “Stay back and secure the shuttle. We might still need it.”
“You got it, Sarge,” Gorenado said. He fired off a salvo of rounds at the defenders, seeming satisfied to have an order despite his injuries.
Bull lived up to his name, charging into the fray. Lonestar came next, blasting at the collaborators that tried to flank Bull. Tag and Coren followed with Sumo guarding their rear. They barely had time to pick targets, instead relying on spraying and praying to keep the bastards down. Onward they pushed in a blur of exchanged gunfire and yells. Rounds glanced off the marines’ armor, some pinging against their personal shields but others burning through and leaving singe marks. One of Coren’s wrist-mounted weapons turned into a sad blob of slag after a direct hit.
The scent of melted plastic permeated through Tag’s suit. Harsh, jarring sounds of battle rattled against his eardrums, interspersed with the ship’s calm announcements about all its failing systems and emergency procedures.
Evacuation pods readied for ejection.
A defender curled out of a door, ready to unload a fresh spray of pulsefire. Fueled by adrenaline and fury, Tag fired first. The collaborator fell forward, his suit marred by pulsefire.
And then there was no more gunfire. No more screams of pain or desperate cries to end a desperate battle. A flood of cool relief washed through Tag. There, at the end of the passage, was a hatch emblazoned with a single word: Bridge. They’d made it to the heart of the Forge of Blood.
“We’re there,” Tag said. “Let’s go!”
Coren cut through the hatch. Once it gave way, the marines stormed in and secured the area. Their rifles scanned the banks of terminals and holoscreens, the crash couches and blinking lights.
It was deserted.
“Coren,” Tag said, “get their destination coordinates now. Upload all data logs to Alpha and shut down their evacuation procedure. Prevent any pods from ejecting. She’s not getting away.”
Coren was already working furiously at a terminal station before Tag could finish the order. Bull and the marines fanned out, guarding the various passages leading to the bridge. Tag strained to hear voices or footsteps. But the clatter of Coren’s fingers against the terminal and the groaning and creaking of shifting structural supports was all that he heard.
“Captain,” Alpha’s voice broke over the comms, “we are receiving your data upload.”
“Thank you, Alpha.”
Somewhere deep inside the Forge of Blood came the biting sounds of metal grinding against metal.
“Evacuation operations ceased,” Coren said. “One evacuation pod was released. Looks like it already transitioned into hyperspace just like one of your courier drones. The others are stalled.” He paused for a moment. “Someone is trying to override the computer systems from down there. They’re shutting off intranet access.”
“Then I guess we’ll have to stop them the old-fashioned way,” Tag said, raising his pistol. “Do you know how to get to the evacuation pods?”
“Yes,” Coren said. “I discovered a map.”
“Then we move. Now!”
They charged down the corridor with Coren leading the way.
“Gorenado, you holding up back there?” Bull asked as they ran.
“I’m still here,” was all Gorenado said.
“Get that shuttle ready,” Tag said. “If the collaborators are all evacuating, we may need it very soon.”
“Count on me, Captain,” Gorenado replied.
Tag heard the forced bravado in the words. He imagined the pain in the man’s chest. Gorenado needed a regen chamber or at least rudimentary medical care. There were so many lives at stake. The hostages. The people of Orthod—colonists, marines, and Imoogi alike. His crew. The rest of the goddamned SRE. The pressure built up in him like a swelling storm front.
“We’re almost there... look out!” Coren yelled. He dove for cover, and the marines followed suit.
Then Tag heard a familiar voice.
“Don’t take another step.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Hannah stood in the corridor with a pistol in her hand. Several of the Forge crewmembers were working on the manual emergency releases of the escape pods. They carried on as if they hadn’t been interrupted, shoving stasis chambers into the small craft. One of the collaborators was bent over a terminal. He seemed to be the one that had been disconnecting the pods from the computer system.
Hannah’s gun wasn’t pointed at Tag. Instead, she pointed it at the naked, scared woman still wet with stasis fluid standing next to her. The woman’s limbs trembled, her face blue with cold. Tag knew her. Beth Foster.
Porter stood beside her, with another man and two women that Tag guessed were the other missing marines Cho had reported. They leveled their weapons. Tag and his crew had the advantage of cover, otherwise he probably already would have gone down in a blaze of pulsefire.
“Not another step,” Hannah repeated. “Not another shot, or this woman dies. Her blood will be on your hands.”
She turned to look at the collaborator working on the terminal. “How much longer?”
“Almost done,” he said.
“Turn around and leave, Tag,” Hannah said. “Take your precious ship and get the three hells out of SRE space if you don’t want to join our future. It’s that or die here.”
Tag heard Bull, talking on a private comm channel to Gorenado, whisper something behind him. But Tag’s attention was on Hannah and Beth. “W-where,” Beth stammered. She shivered, her arms folded over her chest in a feeble attempt to warm herself. “Where’s Sam? Help...”
She trailed off, her eyes sweeping the stasis chambers in search of her husband.
Tag watched Hannah’s eyes. She wouldn’t take an innocent life. She was an idealist at heart, even if her cause was misguided. “You can’t do it,” he said. “You’ll have no excuse this time, Hannah. No one else to blame but yourself. If you do this, you’ll be a murderer, a monster.”
Beth continued to shake. “Oh gods, what’s happening?”
“You’re wrong, Tag,” Hannah said. “I’m already a monster.”
Then Tag saw something in her eye. A glimmer. The budding of a tear. It frightened him more than anything he had seen so far from her. He knew what it meant. What it foreshadowed.
“No, Hannah,” Tag said, aiming his pistol at her. He saw the marines in his periphery aim their rifles. “Don’t do this.”
He tried to do the math in his head. How long would it take to disable Hannah and the handful of technicians and henchmen with her? There would be no way he, Bull, Sumo, and Lonestar could take them all out in a single volley. It would take seconds, maybe just a fraction of a second, to stop all the armed bastards, assuming their aim was true and their trigger fingers fast. But that moment would be more th
an enough time for the collaborators to take him and his crew out.
Backing away now wouldn’t mean Beth or any of the hostages in their stasis chambers fared any better, though. The collaborators were taking them to the Collectors, and Tag saw what became of those people. They would be prisoners trapped in their own bodies, destined to serve as experimental specimens and nothing more.
All those thoughts pressed against Tag’s skull. Sweat trickled across his forehead, stinging his eyes.
“You’re a damn marine, Porter,” Bull said, then looked at the others Cho had reported missing. “All of you. You took an oath to protect the SRE, and you think this is how you do it? End this.”
Hannah gave Porter a sideways glance. She seemed uncertain when Porter shifted. But the man’s aim never strayed.
“I am protecting the SRE,” Porter said. “I’m helping secure our future. And you’re stopping us. Do what the doctor-lady says.” He stepped forward, jabbing his rifle toward where Lonestar had taken cover. “Drop your damn rifles and go.”
Tag noticed the collaborators’ fingers tightening on their triggers. There was heat radiating off of them. “You’d really just let us go?” he asked, staring hard at Hannah. “It’s that easy, huh? Turn around and walk away, and we can just forget all this ever happened?”
Hannah nodded, twisting the pulse pistol against Beth’s temple. Hannah was a good liar, but her skills would only go so far. Neither she nor the collaborators had any intention of letting them get off this ship. “You could come with us. Embrace our future.”
So that was it. Either Tag died on this ship or he became one of the Collectors’ test subjects. No thanks. He steeled himself, all his muscles tensing. Bull kept his rifle on Porter.
“The answer is and always will be no,” Tag said.
Porter reacted before Hannah could say anything. Pulsefire blazed against the bulkhead as Lonestar ducked. In response, she exploded upward and fired back. Porter dodged under fire. Another collaborator charged Lonestar and ripped her rifle from her grip. He wrapped an arm around her neck, and she yelled, pushing the man’s arm backward until it snapped. She seemed fueled by some unholy rage. Other collaborators descended on her, and Tag squeezed his trigger, firing at the one closest to him. The scene devolved beyond anything Tag had predicted.
Rebel World (The Eternal Frontier Book 4) Page 23