by Jay Allan
He turned back to Ellie. “We’re going east, a long way from the city, from all that violence and insanity.” His voice was soft, gentle. “Will you come with us?”
She stood silently, looking at the ground for a few seconds before she returned his gaze. “I’ll come,” she said meekly, her eyes darting nervously toward Buck and the others for an instant.
“Come,” Axe said. “No one will hurt you. You have my word.” He smiled and turned toward the shattered remnants of the road. “Now let’s all get the hell out of here.”
Li An sat in her office, reviewing her preparations with the thoroughness that had made her one of the most effective intelligence operatives on Earth. Long before she’d risen to command C1, she’d been a field agent with an unmatched record of success. She’d been willing to do anything to get the job done. Murder, bribery, blackmail, sex – with men or women – whatever it took. Now, she felt as if those days had returned, and she was once again prepared to do whatever was necessary. The stakes were higher than ever, perhaps even life or death, not just for her this time, but for the entire CAC. For the world itself.
She had her agents in place. Everything was prepared, waiting for her to give the word. She’d put the operation off for as long as she could, but now she realized there was no choice. She’d made her judgment on Ryan Warren. He seemed reasonable, far preferable to Gavin Stark. She didn’t trust him, certainly. Li An didn’t trust anyone. But Ryan seemed to understand as she did that there was no chance for victory in this war, only survival or death. She thought she could work with him, and if they controlled the CAC and the Alliance, they just may be able to pull mankind back from the brink.
She went over the status of her various teams in her head, reviewing each aspect of the operation one last time. In her younger days, she hadn’t been terribly bothered by how much blood got spilled as long as the objective was accomplished. The older Li An still put success first, but in recent years she had tried to keep the brutality down to the minimum required. She didn’t know if she was just too tired for so much blood or if her own impending mortality had affected her in some way.
There was no room for restraint now. She had one chance, and only one, to eliminate all potential resistance. Anyone who might oppose her grab for power had to die in the initial onslaught, along with all of their guards and retainers. When she gave the final word to go, thousands of people would be killed, the entire head of the CAC lopped off in one clean stroke. There would be no one left to strike back. No one to challenge her total power.
She leaned back and closed her eyes for a few seconds. She was tired, more fatigued than she had ever been. Was it possible, she wondered, to live too long?
She’d dueled with Jack Dutton for decades. Stark’s mentor had been one of her main adversaries for most of her life. She’d gotten the better of him sometimes, as he had of her. They’d even worked together a long time back, when the CAC and the Alliance had found themselves with common cause for a brief period. The two made a good, if short-lived team, and they’d taken the opportunity to have a torrid affair as well, one she still recalled with a degree of fondness, despite the fact that they’d been enemies for three-quarters of a century afterward. But Dutton was dead now. He’d had the good sense to let go of life before the world fell completely apart around him. She’d shed a rare tear when she’d been told of his death, and she drank to his memory – and wondered if he’d still had the scar from those bite marks she’d given him 75 years before.
“Were you the smart one, Jack?” She spoke silently to herself, as she sat in the dark, featureless office. “Are you better off dead, out of the game? Or am I, to still be here, with one chance to keep everything from falling apart?” She turned for the thousandth time, but the view still wasn’t there. Her office in Wan Chai had a breathtaking vista of the Hong Kong skyline, but now she was in the Combine’s command bunker, deep beneath the South China Sea.
Well, she thought to herself. There is no point in sitting here and wishing for different times. Li An had always been a woman of action, not one prone to sitting and hoping for things to get better on their own. She punched a few keys, bringing up a login screen. She entered her password, 12 keystrokes followed by a second 8-digit code. She was about to give the command word when her screen went dark.
She reached over and tapped the edge of her monitor. Nothing. She leaned down and checked the connections. Everything looked fine. What the hell, she thought, as the door slid open, and her assistant stepped in.
“Daiyu, my workstation is malfunctioning.”
“No, Minister Li, it is not.” Daiyu stood just inside the doorway, wearing a form fitting silk dress. She was beautiful, even by the standards of Li’s young protégés. There was a gun in her hand. “I have disconnected you from the net.”
“You did what?” There was a rush of anger in Li’s voice, and she pulled her head up from under the desk, freezing when she saw the gun.
“Please, Minister Li, put your hands on the desk. I believe I have removed most of your hidden weapons, but I do not wish to take the chance that there is one of which I am not aware.” Her tone was silky smooth, just a touch of self-satisfaction slipping through her otherwise firm control.
“Why, Daiyu? Why betray me? And your country?” There was resignation in Li’s voice. She’d escaped from 100 close calls in her long career, but she knew this time she was cornered. For the first time in her long life, she felt herself surrendering, giving in to failure.
“It is nothing personal, Minister Li. And as for my country, I came from the gutters of Shanghai. My mother was a maid for a mid-level government official. She cleaned his home, and when he wished, he used her like a whore. When he got tired of her, he cast her out, and we lived on the streets until she died. I joined C1 because it was a chance to improve my life, not out of any patriotic foolishness. I couldn’t care less who wins this war. I am in this for my own gain.
“Who was it? Did Ryan Warren get to you?” Could she have been that wrong about Warren?
“No, Minister Li, not Ryan Warren.”
Li’s cloudy eyes brightened with realization. “Gavin Stark?
“Very good, Minister. If one is going to make a bold move, it is best advised to choose the most capable ally, wouldn’t you agree?”
So Stark was alive after all. He’d played them all for fools, and she didn’t have a doubt that everything that had happened was his work. He had defeated her in the end, completely and utterly. Only now, as she faced her own death, did she truly recognize the genius of the man she had struggled against for so many years.
Her plans were in ruins. Indeed, she had even aided Stark. When Ryan Warren didn’t hear from her, he would assume she had betrayed him somehow. Instead of pulling the Powers back from the brink, her actions would push them closer to the abyss. She felt despair and she looked back at the utter futility of her life. She wanted only death now, to join Dutton and leave the world to its destruction.
“He has promised me a position in his new empire.” Daiyu stared at her former boss, gloating with satisfaction. “Preventing you and Ryan Warren from interfering with his plans will earn me great rewards, and a high place in the new order.
Li An stared back with pity in her eyes. “You poor stupid girl. You know nothing about Gavin Stark.”
“That will be enough. I am sorry, Minister Li, but I have my instructions, and time is limited. She aimed the pistol at Li An’s head and fired.
The ancient leader of C1 was slammed back hard, her chair tilting over and dropping her body to the ground with a soft thud. Daiyu stepped around the desk, looking down at the legendary head of C1. Li An was dead, that was obvious, but she emptied the pistol into her just to be sure.
She pulled a small data chip from her pocket, placing it on Li An’s desk. It was evidence that would lead to Ryan Warren. When the Alliance was blamed for assassinating the head of C1 in the middle of the CAC’s secure wartime facility, all restraint would b
e fall away. The stage would be set for Armageddon.
She turned and left the room, pausing to take hold of the doorframe. She was suddenly lightheaded. She took a breath and walked back toward her desk, making it about halfway before she fell to the ground, gasping for her last breath.
Gavin Stark did not leave loose ends.
Chapter 23
Control Center
MCS Sand Devil
120,000 kilometers from Asteroid 175405
Sol System
Jennings stared at the main display, watching the enemy fleet approaching, a cluster of 36 small icons moving directly toward his small ship. They had altered their vector to intercept Sand Devil, so there was no doubt his ship had been detected. Jennings knew he was staring at his death approaching. The damaged Torch couldn’t fight off one vessel in its current condition, much less a whole fleet.
Verason had tried to get ship identification data on the fleet, or at least basic mass estimates, but the scanners were too damaged for anything like that. His barely functioning sensor suite told him 36 ships were approaching, but that was all. Not that it mattered. The Martian fleet was still out at Saturn, and he couldn’t imagine Admiral Campbell could have made it back this far so quickly. Even if he could have, he had no reason to come this way. The Alliance forces under Admiral Garret were at Columbia supporting the Marine invasion there. The rest of the Superpowers’ fleets were fighting each other out in the colonies, or they were in open revolt. He couldn’t think of a scenario where these inbound ships were friendlies.
Jennings sighed softly. Eliminate all other possibilities, he thought, and you must be left with the truth. Those ships had to be Stark’s, and that meant Sand Devil would be destroyed the instant they came into firing range. Then the armada would move to Stark’s base, and Cain’s people would die too. If they weren’t already dead. And the chance to eliminate Stark before he achieved his final victory would be lost.
The Martian captain had faced death before and escaped, but he couldn’t come up with a way to get his people out of this. Surrender was unthinkable, even if the enemy would accept it, and his ship was too battered to flee. He and his crew would fight, but he knew that was almost laughable. He doubted they would even damage an enemy vessel before they were blown to atoms.
“Resend the communication to Mars.” They’d already transmitted, but Jennings wanted to be sure it got through. Roderick Vance had to know about Stark’s base, especially if Sand Devil was destroyed and Cain’s Marines overwhelmed. If they got the word to Mars, at least his people wouldn’t die in vain. Perhaps Vance would find some way to strike at Stark.
“Resending, Captain.” Verason sounded as resigned to his fate as Jennings. But there was no panic, no loss of focus. If he had to die, he was resolved to die well. “Message successfully transmitted, sir.”
“Very well, Lieutenant.” He was proud of his people, and he felt fortunate to command such dedicated warriors. He stared ahead as the wave of small ovals moving steadily across the display. “Now, please bring us to battlestations.” Laughable or not, he was resolved his ship was not going down without a fight.
Cain spun around the corner, firing half a dozen bursts into the open air. The enemy had pulled back, leaving the corridor undefended. Two bodies were lying on the ground, victims of Cain’s deadly shooting during the firefight, but no live enemy soldiers remained.
The Marines had fought three different enemy groups since entering the base, and they’d used one of their portable mines on the third, killing half a dozen enemy soldiers and blowing apart another section of Gavin Stark’s base. The explosives had come in handy, but they only had one left, and Cain had it marked for the door of the control center.
Their navigation had been all guess work to this point, and Cain was following pure instinct now. If he was right, they were near the control center, and that seemed as likely a place to find Stark as any. He was anxious, and the closeness of his goal was like a weight around his neck. He reminded himself Stark had control of the base’s surveillance systems. The Marines had destroyed every camera they found, but he doubted they’d gotten them all. Even if they had, the trail of destroyed surveillance systems pinpointed their location nearly as well as any camera. Stark wouldn’t be waiting quietly to serve himself up to Cain’s Marines; he would be ready. Cain wasn’t sure what his adversary would do, but he was sure it would be something unexpected. Don’t underestimate Stark, he reminded himself.
Breyer pulled up behind Cain, his rifle at the ready. There were hatches all along the corridor, and enemy soldiers could come out of any of them. “I’m running low on ammo, Erik. I’ve got this cartridge and two more.”
“Me too.” Halligan was right behind Breyer.
Cain knew they were all low on ammo. He was worse off than any of them, down to his last cartridge. But that meant nothing to him. When he was out of bullets, he’d use his blade. Or his armored fist. Or he’d jump out of his armor naked as the day he was born and rip the bastards apart with his bare hands. But Gavin Stark was not going to escape him.
“Let’s make them count, boys.” Cain ejected his empty magazine, slamming the final cartridge in place. “That looks like it might be the command center.” He pointed down the corridor, to a set of double doors. He cranked up his magnification until he could read the small letters just above the access plate. Control Center. Well, Cain thought, that’s an amusing breach of security for Stark, labeling the control room for us.
“OK, let’s have that last mine.” Cain reached behind him grabbing the heavy sphere as Breyer handed it up to him. He punched in a series of numbers, activating the explosive and setting it for ten seconds.
He turned and looked back at his five surviving companions. “You guys all ready?” They all nodded. “We’ve come a long way to get here, gentlemen. If this is to be our final fight, I say we make it a worthy one. Gavin Stark should have died years ago, and now we five will make certain he does. Killing the bastard is our only priority. Remember that. If Stark dies, we have won, and we will have saved our friends and comrades from death and slavery.” He paused, his head panning slowly across the small group.
Cain extended his armored hand toward the Marines. “If we are marked to die here, I say for myself, I could not hope to fall in better company or alongside such brave and noble warriors.” He took a deep breath. “The Corps forever.”
“The Corps forever,” they responded in unison, extending their own hands and laying them atop Cain’s.
He turned and took another breath, pushing back the wave of emotions. He leaned around the corner, activating the explosive and sliding it down the hallway. He pulled back, waiting for the explosion. “I love you, Sarah,” he whispered softly to himself.
The corridor erupted as the mine detonated, and Cain leapt to his feet. “Now, men. Follow me.” And he ran around the corner, through the flames and billowing smoke.
“Attention unidentified vessel, this is Admiral Francisco Mondragon, Alliance navy, on the flagship Wellington. Do not make any hostile moves or attempt to flee, or you will be fired upon.” His voice was heavy with suspicion.
Jennings heard the words blaring through the com, but it took a few seconds for realization to set in. He felt excitement flooding through his body as he stared at the phalanx of approaching vessels, now identified not as enemies, but as Alliance allies.
“Please identify yourself at once.” Mondragon was impatient, demanding.
He looked over at Verason. “If you’d be so kind as to open a channel, Lieutenant.” He couldn’t hold back the smile forcing its way onto his lips. “Greetings, Admiral Mondragon. This is Captain Ben Jennings, commanding the Martian Confederation Ship Sand Devil.” He paused for an instant and added, “We are very glad to see you.”
“Please accept my greetings, Captain.” Mondragon’s voice relaxed, shifting to a much friendlier tone. “We have just come from Columbia at Admiral Garret’s orders to assemble a status report and to take
any actions we deem prudent. Can you update us on recent events?”
Jennings exhaled hard. “Admiral, we have a lot of news to pass on, and I’m afraid almost none of it is good.” He paused. “But you have come upon us in the middle of an urgent mission. We have discovered Gavin Stark’s base in the asteroid belt, and we just landed General Cain and his people there, less than 100,000 kilometers from this position.” Another pause, briefer than the last. “I’m afraid they are heavily outnumbered and probably in need of assistance, Admiral. We were about to return after transmitting a status report to Martian GHQ.” The excitement slowly slipped away from his tone. “I’m afraid the general and his men are in a desperate situation. They may even be dead already.”
“Lead us there, Captain.” There was cold determination in Mondragon’s voice. “We have a Marine contingent aboard, and I am certain they are ready to assist General Cain.”
“My pleasure, Admiral Mondragon.” He turned and motioned toward Verason. “We are transmitting coordinates to your fleet now.” He hesitated, glancing over as his officer sent the data. “We have considerable battle damage, Admiral, and we are unable to accelerate at greater than 3g. I suggest that your lead vessels proceed immediately to the base as quickly as possible. Before it’s too late.”
“We’re on the way, Captain.” Mondragon’s voice was like tempered steel. “Follow at your best speed.” The Alliance admiral cut the line, and a few seconds later, the fleet began accelerating at 7g, heading directly for Stark’s base.
“Let’s make our best speed to follow, Lieutenant.” Jennings leaned back and sighed. “We have an appointment with Gavin Stark.”
Cain leapt through the shattered wreckage of the door, his eyes scanning the room, assessing any threats. There were half a dozen officers at their posts, but no armored troops. And no Gavin Stark.