by L. E. Thomas
A sizzling ignited outside the hatch followed by a grunt. A commotion ensued. A cluster of items fell to the deck and shuffled.
Ryker swallowed. Rampa was here, and he was bringing his team.
Backing away from the hatch, she stood at attention on the opposite side of her quarters. Straightening her off-duty red training suit, she placed her hands at her sides and prepared to salute.
A hatch down the corridor slammed shut.
What was that?
A soft knock touched the hatch to her quarters. Why would Rampa—or any Zahlian officer—knock before barging into her quarters as they had countless times before?
Hesitating, she took a step toward the hatch.
The hatch locks shot open with a blast of air, and the metal frame inched away from its closed position to reveal an empty corridor. Ryker blinked. The light flickered over the frame as the hatch closed back into place. She swallowed, backing against the wall. Her hands trembled. What was happening?
A man materialized in her quarters, appearing at first like light shining through water before clearing. Ryker shrieked, jolting back against the wall and sliding down into a fetal position.
“Please, no!” she yelled, burying her hands into her face.
“Lieutenant,” the man whispered, taking two steps toward her. “Ryker?”
She froze, her hands ceasing to tremble. Wiping at her eyes, she looked at the man standing in the center of her quarters. Carrying both a laser rifle and a pistol, he wore black battle fatigues layered with subtle silver lines. Holstering the gun and slinging the rifle over his shoulder, the man held up his hand.
“I’m Captain Towers,” he whispered, “and I’m here to get you out.”
Ryker’s jaw dropped. Even with the black goggles and helmet, the man’s chiseled face appeared familiar. Images flashed in her mind, blurry and disorganized.
Karda.
Rescue.
Top secret.
Serpent.
With her eyes widening, she stood and stared at Towers. “I know your face. Did we … did we serve together?”
He offered a sharp bow. “We did.”
Unable to look away from him, she stared in silence. Was this another hallucination? Perhaps another of Rampa’s tests to gauge her loyalty?
“I am going to approach you now,” Towers said, his hand still raised.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “You have to leave.”
“Not without you.”
“I can’t,” she snapped. “I belong to them.”
“No, you don’t. You have to come home. Austin is waiting.”
A tear rolled down her cheek. “Lies. You’re not really here.”
“I’m approaching you now.”
Towers took a long stride forward.
“No!” she shrieked, slapping him across the face. He grabbed her shoulder and pressed her firmly to the wall.
She inhaled.
A flood of emotion gushed through her body when he stepped near. The persistent nausea and constant dull pain vanished. Consciousness—true awareness of her surroundings—ignited her mind like fuel on a flame. Chills rippled across her skin, and she launched into violent spasms as if her body felt the air for the first time. Looking around her quarters, it felt as if her eyes had never seen so clear. Gasping for breath, she collapsed her forehead to Towers’ shoulder.
“What—what d-did you do to me?”
Towers squeezed her shoulders and let go. “Little present from our engineers.”
Pulling back, she looked into Towers’ goggles. “What?”
“I’m wearing a device that jams the signal of your implant. Should work long enough to get you home.” He tightened his grip on her shoulder. “But we need to leave. Now.”
Ryker nodded. “Austin’s really back there?”
“He sent me, yes.”
“Why did you do this?”
Towers looked down for a moment. “Because I owed him. And he’s a good man.”
She took a breath. “The best.”
Drawing the pistol from its holster, he held it toward her. “Can you fire this?”
Clenching her teeth, she grabbed the gun. “If it means getting out of here, I’ll fire anything you want.”
“Well said, Lieutenant.” He turned around and stood at the hatch. “You remember how to get to the hangar from here?”
Ryker swallowed. The images from her time under the influence of the implant seemed fuzzy. “I think I do.”
“I won’t let you out of my sight.”
“How are we getting out of here?”
“The way we came in. It’s a freighter.” He raised the laser rifle toward the hatch. “Only use the weapon if you have to. I might have to use the shroud, but I will let you know if I do. You should be fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“We don’t have time to be sure about anything,” he said with a tight smile. “Let’s go.”
Towers moved through the corridor, his boots not making a sound as they touched the deck. Red emergency lights twirled at the corners of the bulkheads as they passed. He paused at their first turn, his neck craning around the corner.
Spinning around, Towers held up two fingers and pointed at his eyes. He slapped his chest and disappeared.
A wave of pain ripped through Ryker’s body, and she lost control. Biting down, she tasted blood as her teeth plunged into her lip. Convulsing, she leaned against the wall and suppressed a scream.
Two Marines, one of them Sergeant Dak, marched around the corner and paused, raising their rifles.
“What are you doing here?” Dak asked.
“I am going to the hangar,” she managed to say through her clenched teeth. Sweat burned into her eyes, and her body trembled as fierce nausea returned.
“What’s wrong with you?” the other Marine asked.
Dak snorted. “She’s been acting crazy since we—”
The pulse of a paralyzer shot ignited the air, and Dak fell twitching to the floor. The other Marine spun around, but a second bolt struck him in the neck.
Towers materialized in the corridor, taking a step toward her with his hand reaching out. “What happened?”
The pain transmitted from the implant vanished as Towers hurried forward. Closing her eyes, Ryker relished a moment without pain or sickness. When she opened her eyes, she touched her fingers to her chin and saw blood.
“When you … used the shroud,” she whispered, “it was like you weren’t here at all. The pain—the power of the implant returned.”
Towers glared down the corridor and yanked off the goggles. He pursed his lips, his eyes ablaze.
Ryker looked at him and knew what she had to say. “If you can’t get away without the shroud, leave me here. I’m useless without your jammer.”
Holstering his paralyzer, Towers activated his laser rifle and grinned. “I’ve got more than one way out of here, Lieutenant. Let’s do this.”
Grabbing her hand for balance, Towers eased Ryker down the corridor toward the hangar. They passed the brig. Incapacitated Marines lined the floor behind the guard desk. The Serpents had been busy. Shaking her head, she hurried on wobbly legs, the effects of the implant plaguing her muscles.
“How many of you are there?” she asked.
“Enough.”
A flurry of lethal laser bolts filled the hall, blasting past them from an invisible source. Ryker spun around. On the opposite end of the corridor, three Marines with sizzling wounds covered the deck, lifeless. She blinked and turned around.
From the wall, the light bent and warped for an instant. Another Serpent materialized as her shroud deactivated, a smoking laser rifle in her hand.
“Told you I wasn’t leaving,” the woman said to Towers. She glanced at Ryker. “Are you okay? What happened to you?”
“She bit down and split her lip, but she’ll live,” Towers said without delay. Smiling, he tilted his head toward the hangar. “Lead the way!”
“R
oger!”
Towers looked at Ryker. “This is Vickers. You follow her to the freighter. I’ll cover your back.”
“What about you?”
“Just do it!”
Ryker recoiled and sprinted to catch up with Vickers. The Serpent moved with deadly precision, kneeling and dropping four crewmen running in their direction with a burst of laser fire. Maintenance crewmen cowered behind spacecraft.
“Come on!” Vickers yelled back, waving her hand forward.
More laser fire blasted behind Ryker. Risking a glance backward, she saw Towers kneeling, his laser rifle spitting bolts down the corridor. Sparks showered the tight space, exploding from hit pilots and missed shots.
Ryker and Vickers ran past fallen Zahlian Marines—all with burning laser wounds—scattered across the hangar deck. Ryker gripped her pistol, her eyes flickering toward the Interceptors and freighters as she searched for the enemy.
Vickers tapped her earpiece and spun around. “Get down!”
Ryker hit the deck, and Vickers fired. Still prone, Ryker rolled until she saw Towers buying time for them. Marines spilled onto the deck from another entrance like a red river, firing on Towers’ position at the corridor. Two laser bolts hit him in the arm and leg. The Serpent leader shot back. Clenching her teeth, Ryker raised her pistol to cover Towers. A second later, he slapped his chest and disappeared.
Pain shot through Ryker’s body, and she convulsed on the floor. Free of the jamming bracelet, electricity from her implant seared her skin. Shrieking, she released the pistol and arched her back. The intense burning threatened to swallow her. She thought of Austin, of his face. Somehow, she knew this was the end.
Vickers loomed over her, firing from a kneeling position and screaming at Towers. She reloaded and stared at Ryker, shouting at her.
But Ryker couldn’t fight through the pain to respond. Another surge, stronger this time, exploded.
And the darkness, finally, took her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“Detonation signal sent at full power, sir,” Daren Suh said from behind the laboratory terminal. “The transmission should have terminated the subject.”
Locking his fingers, Captain Rufino Rampa pressed them to his lips. “Very well.”
After months of work and sacrifice, Ryker Zyan had been killed. The project had ended, and he would have to explain to his superiors the reason for the complete failure of his prized subject. He wouldn’t make the same mistake with the new batch of Star Runners. The program would change, and he would ensure its success in light of what he’d learned in the initial tests.
This is what experimenting is, he thought. Eventually, the program would result in better pilots in half the time it took to train new recruits in the Academy. Still, Ryker had been special.
As he thought of her beauty despite the effects of the treatment, a wave of sadness fell over him as he peered into the monitor projecting a feed from the hangar deck. The first explosion had been thought to be a mechanical failure, and the security vids from the station’s decks as well as the internal comms had been affected.
But the vids in the hangar recovered first, and he watched as the enemy tried to load his subjects on a freighter. All but two of the enemy forces had retreated toward the Powla Prize. He watched the last pair of soldiers as one fired into the station’s Marines and the other, a wounded man, lifted Ryker over his shoulder.
Useless gesture, Rampa thought as he stared at the man carrying Ryker toward the freighter. She’s already dead.
The enemy may have led his test subjects to the hangar, but he would make sure no one would escape this station.
Rampa turned toward Suh. “We need to know how they managed to jam the implant signal.”
Suh stared at his tablet. “It looks to be a magnified version of the bracelet Defector One used during her escape. We can install countermeasures in the new implants to prevent this from happening again.”
“You should have thought of that before!” he snapped. “How could you have created an implant with the possibility of being jammed?”
Suh swallowed. “I must have overlooked it during—”
“Quiet!” Turning back toward the images of the hangar deck, he said, “Have the Marines form a perimeter around the freighter and close the hangar bay doors. Once that is done, gas the entire vessel and storm—”
An explosion knocked Rampa to the deck. The station listed to the side, the lights flickering and going dark. Sparks shot from his terminals. Small fires crackled around him, and the station tilted. Tablets and equipment slid off the terminals, crashing to the floors.
“Suh!” he screamed in the darkness. “What happened?”
“A second explosion, sir!”
Rampa punched the deck. “I can see that, you idiot! What’s the status of the station?”
“All power is out, sir. It’ll take time to reboot.”
Managing to stand on the shifting floor, Rampa moved to his transmitter and heard nothing. “The internal comms are still out, and I hear nothing on the gamma wave.”
Three more secondary explosions rumbled through the station. He listened for a moment. The concussions seemed to have come from below and toward the rear of the station. He swallowed as another explosion rattled the station.
The station’s reactor.
“Report!” he yelled.
Suh grunted, typing in his terminal. “Backup systems are slowly coming online, sir. It doesn’t look good. Main power is out. Scattered reports coming in of fires on all decks. Artificial gravity systems have been affected.”
“And the hangar?”
“Only one feed coming, sir.”
Rampa stood straight and faced the main projector. “Put it on the main viewer.”
“Yes, sir.”
The projection filled with a gritty, black and white image. Static filled the screen, but he could see the damage and debris littering the hangar. Fighters and transports had slid to one end of the deck, colliding to form one massive pile of metal like a junk heap. Bodies of slain maintenance crew and Marines intermingled with the equipment.
But the freighter carrying his subjects had disappeared.
“I need comms,” he said, barely opening his mouth. Seething, he glared at the disaster that was once his hangar deck. His entire project, all his work, was fleeing on that freighter.
“But, sir—”
“Now!”
Suh slammed his fist on the wall. “I’m trying to tell you, sir. A message just came through. We’re facing a reactor meltdown! We need to abandon the station!”
Rampa pursed his lips. “Give the order on gamma wave. Forget the internal comms. Signal all crew to abandon the station.”
As if to support his order, two more explosions rumbled through the structure. Spinning on his heel, Rampa hurried toward the exit as Suh’s announcement echoed through the darkened corridors lit only by tiny emergency lights.
“Where are you going, sir?” Suh asked.
“Lifeboats,” he said, grabbing a flashlight from the emergency box near the door.
“I’ll come with you.”
Pausing, Rampa yanked his pistol from its holster and turned around. “Don’t bother. I despise failures.”
With his eyes wide, Suh raised his hands in front of him. “Sir, I only—”
Rampa fired twice and left the room before Suh’s body hit the deck.
He ran through the corridors, spinning past wounded crew limping toward the lifeboats. Debris from fallen support beams littered the floor. He saw the red hatch illuminated at the end of the corridor and entered. Twelve cylindrical openings lined the room.
Without hesitating, Rampa jumped into the nearest twelve-person lifeboat and yanked down on the lever. The computerized voice began the countdown, filling the small pod with air as the atmosphere stabilized. He heard fists pounding on the opposite side of the hatch mixed with muffled screams.
The lifeboat shot into space and away from the station. H
e leaned back into the seat and stretched his legs onto the far side. Dim lighting buzzed overhead, and he sighed.
The enemy force storming the Nesteel Station had to be the legendary Serpents. Despite the odds of mounting an operation this far from the Legion, these Serpents had somehow destroyed his entire operation and taken his project back to the planning stages, stealing the new batch of pilots he planned to use. But how had they done it?
He thought about the escaping Star Runners and their freighter’s destination. The Powla Pride would have escaped using the Lutimite Drive, so they would have difficulties leaving Zahlian Space undetected. There had to be a drop-off point somewhere …
The hairs on the back of his neck tingled the way they always did when he felt close to solving an elusive equation.
He thought back to his calculations about the spying Trident. After narrowing down the various curve points, he knew the spy had curved in from the Naroovian Salvage Yard. Could that be the drop-off point for his prisoners?
Perhaps his project wasn’t over yet.
The lifeboat didn’t have engines, only maneuvering thrusters. Moving toward the panel, he activated the controls. The sensors showed him at a safe distance from the dying Nesteel Station. Scattered craft filled the space around the station. Far from the station and lingering over the planet, soared the Enforcer. At least they had been able to leave the station—
That’s it.
Firing up the lifeboat’s minimal gamma wave transmitter, he pressed the microphone to his lips.
“Enforcer, this is Captain Rampa,” he said, typing into the transmitter. “I am sending my authorization codes to verify my identity.”
He waited several moments, swaying on the seat and cursing at the ineptness of the communications officer on the other end.
“This the Enforcer,” the gamma wave hissed. “Go ahead, Captain.”
Finally. “Tell your ship’s Captain to prep the Enforcer’s Lutimite Drive immediately for the Naroovian Salvage Yard.”
The officer paused. “But, sir, we have lifeboats to rescue at—”
“Do it now!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR