by Terry Mixon
He chuckled in spite of her insubordination. “I never plan on going hand to hand. That’s just my usual luck. You were hit on Io, weren’t you? How are you feeling?”
She waved his concern away and pulled off her helmet. Her face had a bandage that covered her right cheekbone.
“It’s a damned scratch. Only took six stiches and doesn’t impede my combat effectiveness. I’m good. Besides, I hear the ladies like a Marine with scars.” The last was said with a grin.
“It looks like your ragtag group of Fleet brawlers are ready to move out,” she continued. “The prisoners are isolated in the mines. Two separate areas so they can keep the workers separated from the hostages.
“The Marines struck hard and fast, separating them from the OWA troops meant to slaughter them. Sadly, that isn’t to say that the few guards actually in with them didn’t try. There are some casualties, but Senior Lieutenant Gockel said they only lost a few dozen out of roughly fifteen hundred people, counting the new arrivals on the freighters that they’d just processed.
“Monique is a damned good Marine. She and her people took some casualties of their own getting into a blocking position, but the prisoners turned the trick. They killed most of the guards with their bare hands as soon as the Marines attacked.”
Brad never liked hearing about losses, but as a mercenary commander, he understood that there were no bloodless victories. Light casualties were a lot better than heavy, and in these circumstances, he’d been ready for a serious butcher’s bill.
“We need to hit the guard force rather than trying to swap places with Lieutenant Gockel,” he said decisively. “The fastest way to get her freed up to help the rest of the Marines is to break the guards’ will. Do you have a map?”
A gesture from her brought one of the Marines a step forward with a slate already out. It showed part of the facility. A green dot was the standard indicator of his current location.
There were a fair number of other tunnels shown, but hardly enough to be the entire base. This must be all that his people had seen with their own eyes. Even as he watched, another tunnel appeared as the map updated.
There were three yellow areas, two of them close together. He pointed at them. “These are the prisoners?”
“Yes, sir,” she confirmed. “The larger group is the hostages. The red splotch off to the side of them is our best guess at the central location of the guard forces. As you can see, they have Gockel blocked from getting reinforcements.”
“Then let’s go fix that,” he said as he fitted his helmet on. It was time to kill pirates.
The next half hour was sadly lacking in killing pirates for him. The Marines refused his order to move forward and assist in breaking into the guard post. It looked as if the Major hadn’t been kidding about being willing to take a court-martial. Not that he’d push it.
Most of that time was spent working around the unexplored area to get into position to hit the guards from an unexpected direction. The lack of accurate and complete maps was a pain and could potentially hurt them if they missed a heavily occupied area.
They’d just have to make do and adjust if needed.
Some of the Fleet damage control specialists came up with a way to get them where they needed to go by using maintenance tubes to slip into the area behind the guard post. There were undoubtedly easier ways to get there, if one knew the base layout, but he’d take it.
Once he had everyone into the storage areas behind the guards, he sent scouting parties out to find what was around them. As he knew roughly the direction where the guards were, he sent the majority of his forces right behind that set of scouts.
It was a good thing, too. The scouts in that direction took only took a few minutes to find the rear of the guard force, and even though they’d been careful, the pirates spotted them and turned some of their number around to attack.
“Hit them hard,” Brad ordered. “Break them now while they’re facing the wrong direction. Signal Lieutenant Gockel to attack with everything she has.”
From the sound of the explosions that almost instantly started going off, the Marine officer had been waiting for just that order. They had the guards between a rock and a hard place, so he sent his people forward as fast as they could move. Falcone and her people went with them.
Which was exactly when his other scouts started screaming about incoming troops from the unexplored areas just behind Brad. Screaming that was almost immediately followed by a lack of response that told him he was now the one in the pincer.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Brad barely had time to get his forces turned before the first of the OWA commandos barreled around the corner behind them, rifles already firing. Their speed indicated that they were trying to overrun and break the forces attacking their comrades as quickly as possible.
Unfortunately for them, they weren’t facing the Fleet personnel they’d already crushed. At least, not completely. Major Papadakis and her heavily armed Marines were the rock that their wave broke upon.
The Marines formed the core of the makeshift defensive formation and used their heavy weapons to blow large holes through both the attackers and their lines. Even so, that didn’t stop the bastards. Say what you would about their morals, the commandos had courage.
They continued forward, a seemingly unending flood of killers out for blood. In seconds, they were among the defenders, attacking with rifles, pistols, assorted metal swords, and mono-blades.
Brad had already emptied his rifle into the charging pirates, managed to reload it, and got off half of another magazine before a mono-blade that wasn’t even aimed for him took off the barrel of his weapon, missing the fingers of his left hand by just a hairsbreadth.
With the ease of many hours of practice, he managed to get both his pistol and mono-blade in hand. Using each as required by circumstances took all the hard-won experience he’d acquired as a mercenary in far too many life-and-death fights.
He shot one of the attackers in the face and then used his glowing blue blade to take off the arm of the man attacking Major Papadakis. She shot the wounded man in the head before he could stagger away. The two of them ended up back to back, fighting the sea of bad guys around them.
“Those blades are interesting,” she said over the command channel as she continued to shoot at the OWA fighters surging around them. “I wonder why the Marines never picked up using them. They look handy.”
He pushed them both back to avoid a regular sword that whistled through the air in front of him, and then bisected the attacker from shoulder to hip in a bloody strike. He fired the last two shots in his pistol, taking down a woman that seemed to be an officer or senior noncom, and holstered it so he could reload it later.
“They’re hard to defend against,” he agreed. “But they take a lot of practice to master. You can’t just pick one up and expect to survive a fight with a skilled user.”
He exchanged several swings with a snarling pirate before he cut the man’s hand and mono-blade in two. A well-practiced backswing took the man’s head off, spraying him and Papadakis with arterial blood.
“Push forward,” he ordered over the general com frequency. “Take the offensive and make them retreat.”
That was easier said than done. Even back on their heels, the commandos were far better trained than most of Brad’s people. Now that almost no one had a loaded firearm, the fight was close and bloody.
He started to wonder if his people could actually force them back at all. If not, they were in deep trouble.
A commando with a blood-red sash that was actually spattered with real blood waved his arm and pointed back toward Brad and his people. Yep. Here they came again.
Then something bright flashed over Brad’s shoulder and impacted the pirate squarely in the chest, blowing him into gobbets of flesh and blood. Just as suddenly, new fighters in Marine armor flowed into Brad’s formation and brought their heavy weapons to bear on the pirates.
Lieutenant Gockel and
her people had arrived.
His trained shock troops broke the attackers’ wills and drove them back, but the Marines didn’t pursue them far. Brad approved. It was far too easy to run into an ambush that way.
Once the field was cleared of active enemies, Brad ordered his people to make sure all the living got what medical care they could. Many would still die, both pirate and Fleet, but he’d try.
“Admiral, Major,” a tall figure in Marine armor said. “Thanks for the assist. We’ve broken the guards behind us, and the prisoners are secure. I recommend we bring these tunnels down to keep those bastards from making another rush at us as we pull out.”
“Get it rigged,” Papadakis said, not even pretending to wait for Brad to have an opinion. “We’ll withdraw to the prisoners and follow you out of the mines. That’ll get us to the shuttles with you still supporting us most of the way. You can break off to support Bravo Force then.”
“Copy that,” Gockel said. “Pull back with the wounded while we rig the charges.”
Brad put the arm of one of the walking wounded over his shoulder and helped the man toward the prison area of the mines. He shot Papadakis a look.
“I wouldn’t keep pushing the whole ignoring-my-rank too much further,” he cautioned her over the command channel. “I’m not a pampered civilian. I know what I can and what I can’t do.”
“Then you know that you have to make it out of here alive,” she responded promptly, unabashed at the dressing-down. Compared to the best chewing-out the Marines could manage, he was probably a piker.
“The Jovians won’t work with Fleet unless you’re in change,” she continued. “You’re the one indispensable person on this mission. If I don’t get you back to the fleet alive, the OWA is going to crush the Jovian system.
“So, knowing that, you’re not going to bitch to me about making sure you make it and save the goddamn Commonwealth, are you?”
He snorted, amused at her audacity and more than a bit nonplussed at her blunt response. “I suppose not.”
“Then let’s get the Everlit out of here, sir, before they manage to flank us again.”
Honestly, she was right, no matter how much being shepherded along annoyed him. He had bigger fish to fry, so he needed to get what information he could there and then make certain that the OWA fleet had no refueling options once they finally showed up. That meant he needed to get a move on.
As they headed back to their appropriated loading bay, Brad listened in to the combat channels. Even with the reinforcements they’d freed up, the Marines were still meeting stiff resistance. The OWA had a lot more combatants on this rock than anyone had expected.
He had the people under his command briefly quiz each of the prisoners, and they were able to confirm there were a high number of trained troops there, as well as a lot of tankage for fuel. Tanks that were built and mostly full.
The loss of this facility was going to hurt his rat bastard of a brother, and Brad was damned pleased about that. He still needed prisoners to know what he was going to be hit with, though.
They started loading the prisoners into the shuttles as soon as they made it to the bay. It was going to take multiple trips to get them away from the fighting completely, but the bay was defensible enough.
He found Papadakis directing the hardening of the bay. It looked as if she had her people digging in for a sharp and protracted fight. Good.
“How mad are you going to be if I don’t head back to my ship right now?” he casually asked.
“Pretty mad,” she said, shooting him a narrow-eyed look. “Are you yanking my chain? If so, this isn’t the time, sir.”
“I’m actually serious. The Marines are hitting a lot more resistance than I like, and I want to throw our people into the fight to change the odds.”
He held up his hand before she could argue. “This is happening, so spend your time figuring out the best way to make it work. There are a lot of OWA fighters. How can we best screw up their defense and take this facility?”
With a not-so-muffled curse, she retrieved a slate and started looking over the maps. She flipped through the pages as if she was looking for something in specific. After a minute, she stopped flipping and zoomed in on something.
“We don’t have complete maps of the facility, but the tanks are somewhat isolated,” she said. “The control area has to be somewhere near them. It wouldn’t make sense to have it separated by very much. None of our people found a way to get in, though. The fighting is taking up a lot of our attention, but someone should’ve spotted it. If we take the control center, we can do some serious distracting.”
Brad thought back to how the Cadre had hidden the tunnels servicing the fuel tanks in the base they’d planned to use for the attack on Ceres. “I might be able to figure that one out. Do we know where the closest approach to the tanks will be?”
The major nodded. “I can get us there, but it won’t be without some risk. The fighting is in an adjacent section of the base.”
“Let’s get the first tranche of civilians on the way to our ships. We’ll leave half our people to guard the bay, including most of your Marines.”
He could almost hear the sound of her teeth grinding at the last part.
“They’re supposed to be guarding you, sir,” she managed to get out without screaming, which seemed almost miraculous.
“Take one squad,” he offered. “Our best chance of making this work is by avoiding drawing attention to ourselves anyway.”
“Yes, sir,” she said with a sigh. She then started yelling at her people and sorting out the defense of the bay.
He watched her work with sympathy. It was always a mess when your boss was intent on sticking his head into a rock grinder. Still, that was the only way he saw to capture this base intact enough to get the answers he desperately needed. He’d have to take the risk and hope for the best.
Twenty minutes later, they were slipping through what was obviously a hastily abandoned section of the underground tunnels. Brad could hear the sound of fighting somewhere nearby, but the strange echoes made determining the direction they came from impossible.
Major Papadakis stopped and gestured around them. The chamber they were in looked like any one of the ones they’d just passed through.
“We’re about as close as we can get to the tanks,” she said. “Now what?”
“Stand clear and have someone with a heavy gun shoot the walls closest to the tanks,” he said. “If this is like the last time, we’ll find a hidden tunnel.”
“And so might the slugs we fire,” she countered. “How thick are the doors, do you think?”
“Not that thick,” he admitted. “What’s plan B?”
She motioned for one of the Marines to step up. “This is Sergeant Chavez. He’s my go-to guy with charges. Can you crack that wall without endangering the tanks, mi amigo?”
“Sure, Major. Give me a minute.”
The man set about placing a number of small charges along the indicated wall and then the Marines cleared the general area. As soon as they were away, Chavez set off the charges with a muffled thump that threw dust up into the air. In the low gravity, it would be there a while.
One look at the wall showed Brad that the gambit had been successful. The hidden door was down and the tunnel beyond showed only minor damage.
“Well done,” he said. “Now we need to clear the tunnel and look for the control room.”
Without responding directly, Papadakis sent her people into the tunnel, conspicuously standing between Brad and the opening. He took the hint and stayed where he was.
Two minutes later, a call came back over the general channel. “The tunnel is clear, but we have an armored hatch down here, as well as a number of monitoring points for the tanks.”
“Do we have a way of looking past the hatch?” Brad asked. “You know, like tapping into the video in the control room or something?”
“I’m sure that’s possible,” Papadakis said in response, “bu
t not with the people and equipment we have here.”
“Then let’s go get ready to breach it.”
The two of them joined her men down the tunnel and he examined the hatch. It was thick and seemed well mounted. Any charge capable of blowing it open was going to take out the rock around them and expose the entire area to space.
Worse, it might set off one of the tanks, which would set off the rest. That wouldn’t be survivable. He was in the position of having a hammer and needing a scalpel.
Well, he supposed he’d have to come back to it later. They’d go relieve the Marines and deal with the control area last, hoping they’d manage to get the data they needed.
“We have incoming,” one of the Marines near the rear said. “Hostiles entering the tunnel.”
The sound of rifles firing made him duck, but there was no cover. They were trapped.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
If the attackers expected their sporadic fire to pin his Marines down, they were sadly mistaken. Papadakis had her people on their feet and charging almost as soon as the shooting started.
“Push them back and secure the entrance,” she snapped. “Chavez, put a charge on the wall and prepare to breach it. We’ll bypass the armored hatch and hope for the best.”
She fixed Brad with a hard stare through her armored visor. “You stay here, Admiral. I don’t have the spare time to keep an eye on you.”
With that, she was off, and the fighting up the tunnel intensified. Brad was left with Sergeant Chavez and a pair of Marines no doubt tasked to keep him from doing anything hasty.
Rather than focus on the fighting, Brad kept his attention on the demolitions expert. “Do you think the wall will be vulnerable?”