His heart pounded in his ears, and his vision narrowed until all he saw were the sights on his pulse pistol and whichever collaborator was closest. There was no cover in the center of the corridor, and all he could do was fire, doing his best to suppress the enemy. Voices cried out in pain and fright, anger and animalistic fury. Lonestar pounded a collaborator, breaking the man’s face shield. There was a splash of black singe marks across the marine’s shoulders. She paid no heed to her injuries, thrashing about like a machine with a single directive: kill the enemy.
Somewhere amid the bodies and flashes of pulsefire, Tag lost sight of Beth and Hannah. A grinding metallic sound pierced the din, and Tag’s gaze shot to one of the escape pods firing off. Another hatch slammed shut; another escape pod launched.
“Alpha,” Tag yelled, firing as he pressed himself against the bulkhead. “Get the grav tether on those pods. Don’t let them escape!”
“I’m sorry, Captain, but they are out of effective tether range,” came her maddeningly calm reply.
“Gods damn it,” Tag bellowed. The hostages loaded on those escape pods were already gone, whether they had transitioned into hyperspace yet or not. But there were still others he could rescue. Others he could help. Hannah was dragging Beth into a pod, dragging the doctor away from her patients, her husband, and her life on Orthod.
He fired at one of the collaborators as Sumo charged to lend their support. Tag heard the click of another escape pod hatch closing. As the doors spiraled shut, he saw Hannah’s eyes flash, catching his.
You do not get to win.
Tag leapt toward the terminal for Hannah’s pod. He slammed his fist on the glaring red hatch override. The door opened before Hannah could pull the lever to launch it, and Tag leveled the gun at her heart. His eyes remained locked with hers. The world had narrowed to just the two of them.
“Let her go, or I shoot.”
“No,” Hannah said. She pressed the barrel of her pistol hard into Beth’s temple. The dragon tattoo flashed on her wrist.
Tag adjusted his aim, square into Hannah’s face. He couldn’t miss. “You can’t do this.”
“No,” Hannah said. “You can’t. I can.”
There was a blast of gunfire, a spray of red. A millisecond later, a second blast. Hot pain lanced through his arm, and his fingers snapped open. His pulse pistol clattered to the floor, and a body fell forward into him.
It didn’t fall; it was pushed. Hannah had shoved Beth at him, knocking him off balance.
Fresh pain scorched through his leg as another orange blast of pulsefire burned through his flesh and muscle. He collapsed onto the deck just as the pod’s hatch slammed shut. Then Hannah was gone.
Tag pushed past the agony burning through him. He had been hit, but he was alive. Bleeding, yes. But it wasn’t fatal.
The same couldn’t be said for Beth.
Her eye, the one that remained, was glassy and unseeing.
Tag held the dead doctor in his arms. Nothing could bring her back now.
The smell of burned plastic and the coppery scent of blood hung heavy in the air. Tag gently laid Beth on the deck. His pistol was long gone, dropped in Hannah’s escape pod. Fitting. He turned to see what help he could offer his marines, but with only one good arm and pain thundering through his thigh when he tried to stand, he was nearly useless.
Bull fired a final shot into a collaborator, and the man fell backward against a bulkhead. Sumo’s chest heaved as she helped Lonestar. The marine had all manner of scrapes and burns visible through the tears in her singed suit. Tag dragged himself to her. He tore an autoheal gel pack from his suit and smothered it over the marine’s pulsefire wounds.
“No prisoners?” Tag managed to ask. The pain swooping through his body made him light-headed for a second. Coren tried to help him, but he waved the Mechanic off. “Three hells, didn’t we get at least one of the bastards alive?”
They’d lost. Hannah had escaped, the rest of the collaborators were dead, and the hostages were long gone.
“Captain,” Alpha said, “I intercepted a transmission from one of the escape pods. I believe it is a command to initiate the self-destruction of the Forge of Blood. I calculate you have less than a minute to escape.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
“Gorenado, please tell me the shuttle is ready!” Tag said over the comms.
“Shuttle’s coming in now near the escape pod hatches,” Gorenado responded, his voice sounding weak and raspy. “Me and the shuttle are both a bit banged up. I’m not much of a driver to begin with, so there might be a couple of new scuffs on the shuttle.”
“Scuffs are better than an explosion,” Tag said. Pain still surged through his muscles with every movement. He willed the barrier between his professionalism as a doctor and a captain to segregate the mourning and regret. Quell them before they overwhelmed him. There would be time for those emotions later. For now, there were other lives depending on him.
He examined the hatches again. “There’s no way for the shuttle to lock with these.” Normally that wouldn’t be an issue. They could afford a spacewalk. But Lonestar’s suit was shredded from battle. “Anyone see an extra EVA suit for Lonestar?”
Coren opened the storage containers near one of the escape pod control terminals. “Looks like there were supposed to be some here, but they’re gone now.”
The marines rifled through the other drawers. “Nothing, Cap,” Sumo said. “I can run back—”
“No time,” Tag said. He looked at Lonestar. Her attention was on Tag. She seemed to understand exactly what Tag had in mind, no doubt recalling her SRE basic training for space missions. “Got to make sure you exhale everything. Got it?”
“Got it,” Lonestar replied with none of her usual gusto. Her bottom lip trembled slightly. Tag recalled the same horror stories they had all heard about ship engineers detaching from tethers and losing suit pressure, about pilots who had been hit by enemy fire only to be ejected into space, their suits compromised and their bodies exposed to the unforgiving void. About mutineers launching their victims out of airlocks. Bodies swollen like canteens and blood vessels bursting.
But hard-vacuum exposure was survivable. It just wasn’t fun. It took twelve to fifteen seconds to lose consciousness. Two minutes, maybe more if you were lucky, of gas expanding in their tissues and liquids within their cells vaporizing. You could be brought back from that—if you didn’t try to hold your breath, making your lungs pop like overinflated balloons.
“Lonestar,” Tag said, holding the woman’s shoulders, “I need you to push every ounce of air from your lungs.”
“Captain, by my estimates, you have less than thirty seconds remaining,” Alpha said.
“Gods be damned,” Tag muttered. “Gorenado, you out there?”
“Ready now, Captain,” Gorenado responded. “Cabin door open.”
Tag wrapped his arms around Lonestar. “Hold onto me. You’re going to lose consciousness out there, but I will not let you go.”
Lonestar nodded meekly, wincing through her injuries.
“Coren, let us out,” Tag said.
The Mechanic nodded, then tapped on the terminal, forcing the emergency hatches open. The alarms went silent, the flashing lights all left behind. Tag tumbled through space. Lonestar’s eyes pinched together as if in pain, her lips pursed. She was holding her goddamned breath. Even as they somersaulted away from the Forge, careening toward the shuttle, Tag maneuvered his fist over Lonestar’s diaphragm. He did his best to perform a Heimlich maneuver. All the air escaped Lonestar’s mouth in a mist of ice shards.
Panic overtook Lonestar. The best training couldn’t adequately prepare someone for suffocating in vacuum. She writhed in Tag’s arms, and Tag did everything in his power to hold on, ever conscious of the imminent explosion on the Forge. Not a comfortable place to be, Tag knew, but he wished the marine would at least quit flailing to make the trip a little easier.
He struggled to maintain his grip on the marine, and each
kick or flail reignited the flames of agony deep in Tag’s muscles. Cold crept through the punctures in his suit, but the autosealing mechanisms fought back enough to keep the holes to a pinprick. Still, he shivered uncontrollably.
Finally the marine went limp, losing consciousness. Twelve seconds in the void. Fifteen more to detonation.
They swooped through the open door of the shuttle’s hold. The other marines and Coren were close behind. Bull came in last and pulled the switch to shut the doors. Warm air pumped in. The temperature and oxygen readings on Tag’s HUD returned to safe levels, but while Tag had quit shivering, the surgeon had not. He grabbed an emergency blanket from their first aid supplies. Bull helped him to throw Lonestar into restraints. Before Tag had even buckled his own latch, Gorenado accelerated at a rocketing burn away from the Forge.
There was no inertial dampener in the shuttle. It wasn’t built for interstellar travel, much less escaping exploding warships. Structural joints and supports creaked and groaned, bending under the forces applied by the maxed-out thrusters. Alarms flashed on the holoscreens. But Gorenado paid them no heed.
A flash of blinding white light cracked through the darkness. It slashed through the shuttle, and Tag shielded his eyes, the burn scalding his retinas. Debris slammed against the hull. Each impact made Tag cringe. One strike could punch a hole in the craft, depressurizing the cabin and killing them all. A hit to the reactor would set off a chain reaction, leaving them in no better state than the Forge.
Not today, he thought. Not after we’ve lost so much already.
Tag stared straight ahead through the cockpit, as if doing so would make the shuttle fly faster. A marker on the holomap indicated the Argo growing ever closer, and the sounds of scrap hitting the shuttle became more and more sporadic. Tag’s breathing slowed, but his fingers still tremored. Pain was returning to his wounds. He tapped a command on his wrist terminal for his suit to administer more painkillers. Not enough to dull his senses too much, but enough to let him take care of the others.
“Coren, take Gorenado’s place,” Tag said. “I need to check him over.”
Blood had pooled around the fragment of metal still protruding from Gorenado’s abdomen. It was a wonder Gorenado was even conscious, much less capable of piloting the shuttle. Tag adjusted Gorenado’s suit-dosed drugs and used several of the autoheal gel packets from the first-aid kit. He needed to get him back to the ship and into the med bay.
As Tag helped Gorenado, he tried to keep his mind focused on the tasks at hand. But his thoughts continued to stray. He saw Beth’s face, the other colonists. All lost because he hadn’t been quick enough. Because he had hesitated when he should’ve shot Hannah right away.
“Cap, you okay?” Sumo asked. “Anything I can do to help?”
“I’m fine.” Tag tried to shake the dark thoughts from his mind, but they weren’t going anywhere. “Can you apply pressure to this gel?”
He made room for Sumo to hold the autoheal gel in place on a burn across the marine’s back.
“It’s not your fault,” Sumo said in a low voice as if she didn’t want the others to hear. Bull was trying to warm Lonestar at the other end of the hold. She was still unconscious.
“We lost those people,” Tag said. “We lost Beth.”
“Next time we see Hannah and those other assholes, we will make them pay,” Sumo said.
Tag cauterized a bleeding vessel. “Damn right. And we can’t forget about the Collectors. I’m hoping whatever we uncovered is going to be enough to end Starinski and bring down the walls the collaborators have been hiding behind. It’s about time.”
They continued working together silently. Soon every wound on the marine was bandaged and wrapped. With the emergency blanket covering him again, he looked more like a soldier taking a quick nap rather than a man who had just endured gunfire and vacuum exposure.
Alpha’s voice broke over the comm. “Captain, we have a visual on the shuttle. We’re prepared for docking.”
“Thank you, Alpha,” Tag said.
Another strip of the Forge’s hull bounced off the shuttle.
“I’m ready to get off this tin can,” Lonestar said. “Bucks harder than anything at the rodeo.”
“Lonestar, how are you feeling?” Tag said.
She blinked her eyes. “Can’t see straight. My head hurts like it was stomped by a cow. But... I think I’m alive, aren’t I? This sure as the three hells ain’t heaven.”
“No, afraid you’re stuck with us,” Tag said.
“Captain, I have more good news,” Alpha said. “With the aid of the ship’s AI, I have been able to decrypt and parse much of the data from the Forge and the Lorris facility. I believe there is some information here that is pertinent to our mission directive.”
“What did you find?”
“I discovered concrete evidence Starinski is working with the Collectors, as well as evidence of abductions on Orthod and other colonies orchestrated by Starinski personnel. I have also uncovered the apparent locations of Collector facilities for experimental work along with what appears to be some military operations.”
“Goddamn,” Tag said. A smile struggled to form over his lips. “That is good news, Alpha. Good work.”
“I could not have accomplished it without your efforts,” Alpha said.
“The droid’s trying to be modest,” Sumo said. “Kind of cute.”
“I do not believe I fit the aesthetic of cuteness,” Alpha responded. “I might suggest you are suffering from some kind of psychological trauma if you would assign such an adjective to me.”
“Hey,” Gorenado managed, his face still a touch gray. “Sumo’s into some weird stuff. No need to try and diagnose it.”
Sumo grinned. “Don’t knock it ‘til you try it.”
“What you all do in your free time is up to you,” Tag said.
There was a lull in the conversation, and then Bull said, “I guess this means we’ll be leaving Orthod soon.”
“That make you sad, Sarge?” Sumo asked.
“A little bit.” Bull mimed wiping a tear from his eye. “Gutfire is great, but I’m going to miss the brew at the local pub.”
Tag tried to laugh along with his crew, but his heart was heavy. This was only a small victory, a skirmish in the war. Tag realized he hadn’t even kept track of the lives he and the marines had taken today.
Their success here had come at a tremendous cost. Tag shuddered, feeling the cold grasp of countless ghosts reaching into his chest. If this was an indication of the war to come, he feared the price humanity would pay to resist the Collectors. Images of the people trapped in the stasis chambers and memories of the Drone-Mechs flashed through his mind. He imagined a future in which the Collectors won, with the SRE in ruins and humanity in chains. Freedom was worth any price. Tag looked out the cockpit, seeing the Argo glimmer among a diamond-studded backdrop.
Their future was in the stars, and Tag would do everything in his power to ensure that the Collectors didn’t steal it from them.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
It had taken several long days in space to ensure the Argo could limp toward Orthod’s surface and survive atmospheric entry. Tag had spent the time scouring the data they had recovered. He was on his way to explain their findings to Governor Burton and Lieutenant Cho, from the malfunctions in the planetary defense systems to the abduction of the colonists. He had held off from sharing too much information over lightbeam, preferring to do it in person.
Tag entered the building.
“Brewer,” Cho said, standing.
Burton smiled. “Glad to see you made it out alive.”
“Me too,” Tag said. Burton motioned for him to take a seat. Tag wrapped his hand around the back of it, but he couldn’t sit before addressing the burden he’d been carrying on his conscience. “Lieutenant, I want to express my sympathy for the men and women lost in the attack against the Forge of Blood. Governor Burton, I am deeply sorry for the lives of the colonists that were lost in
our attempted rescue.”
“Apologies be damned,” Cho said. He tilted his head, thumbing his chin as if in thought. “Why shouldn’t I request the SRE fusion-bomb the shit out of those fish? We lost three marines defending the Principality against the Imoogi.”
Tag turned to Burton, fully expecting her to unload on him next.
“We lost five colonists,” Burton said heavily, “not including the ones kidnapped prior to the attack.”
“Again, my condolences,” Tag said. “But our enemy isn’t even on this planet. It’s not the Imoogi. Those addicts we warned you about—they were manipulated just like everyone else involved in this mess.”
Tag hadn’t gotten a response yet from his courier drone to the Montenegro. Three hells, he didn’t even know if the Montenegro had survived the aftermath of the attempted mutiny against Admiral Doran. Without orders from the SRE to guide this conversation, Tag decided to start at the beginning. People were going to find out soon enough that the Collectors were out there gunning for humanity, and he might as well plant the seeds of truth now rather than trying to help the SRE cover it up.
At least, he thought, Hannah had been right about that. The SRE was too cautious. Too slow to react. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.
From the Drone-Mech attack on the Argo to the encounter with the space station that had been the UNS Hope post-human, Tag left no detail out. His story was met with various degrees of doubt, from Cho cursing him out and calling him a madman to Burton claiming this was another horror story to convince the colony to give up its independence. Tag had been prepared for that. He brought as much video, audio, and data evidence as he could muster. Eventually it was enough to push past Burton and Cho’s disbelief.
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