No signs of anything identifiable, just bits and pieces of charred and molten metal. Synthetic limbs with scraps of skin clinging to them; hands and feet that could belong to anyone—including Aurora, or Rama’s spec ops stand-in.
I hunt around, walking fast, my eyes on the blackened, debris-strewn floor.
“What are you looking for?” Rama demands. “We need to get out of here!”
I get lucky and find half of a molten head that bears a recognizable chunk of Nadine’s face. “This!” I pick it up and shake it at Rama. “She’s not dead!”
“Or she died a long time ago and she’s been a bot ever since,” Rama replies. “Forget permadeath. It’s too risky. Just take your ship and go! I’ll take the Seraph.”
“You go! Give us air support and let me know when we’ve got incoming. I have to do something first.”
“What?” Rama demands.
“Nadine has some friends of mine locked up in here. I have to find them before we go.”
Rama blows out an irritated breath. “Why didn’t you say so? Come on!”
She waves for me to follow and runs for the stairs at the far end of the living room. Rather than head for the staircase winding up to the second floor, she aims for the matching one that leads down to the lower levels.
I mentally order eight of my bots to protect her, and they go clanking down the stairs with me bringing up the rear.
Chapter 57
We reach the basement landing. I’m standing in front of an alcove with a bank of glass elevators overlooking the cliff and the razor forests below. A heartbeat after I arrive, Bravo One declares,
“Clear!” Then the A-MAW looks to me for orders.
“Next level down,” Rama indicates, sparing a hand from her rifle to point to the end of a long, door-lined corridor in front of us.
Bravo One clanks ahead with three bots on its heels. The other four hang back with us.
“Wait!” Rama says.
Doors open up, and enemy soldiers open fire on the A-MAWs, ambushing them from both sides with EMP rifles.
“Take cover!” I cry, and plaster myself into the elevator alcove.
My bots pivot on the spot to return fire, but they’re already succumbing to automatic rifles firing armor-piercing rounds from all sides.
There are sixteen red blips on my sensors now that the doors are all open. All of them are bots. The fact that we didn’t see them sooner means those rooms are shielded against conventional sensors. This is some kind of barracks. Not for long.
I pull a plasma grenade from my belt, flick open the switch cover, and activate it. Leaning out, I toss it around the corner and then duck back.
A booming report shakes the walls and floor violently, and a super-heated wall of fire comes roaring back toward us, scalding the exposed skin on my face and neck even through my shield.
Half of the blips are gone, and a few of the others are fading fast. The rest obviously ducked back into cover before they could get taken out by the blast.
I pull a seeking drone from my bandoleer, activate it, and send it floating down the hallway. I connect to its camera to see what it sees. Enemy bots pop their weapons around the charred remains of open door frames and fire on the drone, knocking it out instantly.
“That’s not going to work,” Rama says.
She’s right, and this is taking too long.
“You have any better ideas?”
“We have even numbers. We storm them.”
“It’s sloppy.”
“It’s fast,” she replies, shouldering her rifle and drawing both EMP pistols.
I nod my agreement. “The bots take point.”
“Of course.”
“Move out Bravos! Clear the corridor.”
The remaining four A-MAWs rush out of cover and we follow them. Enemy bots pop their rifles out, staying safely behind cover as they open fire.
The A-MAWs act like a shield, going ahead of us, drawing fire, shooting clumsily back through the thick stone walls. Rama and I duck through the open doors, and face the enemy threat head on, her with her pistols, and me with the EMP cannon clipped to my right arm.
Our shields block the few armor-piercing rounds that manage to find us, and we clear the corridor unscathed.
But that’s more than I can say for my A-MAWs. All four of them lie twitching on the floor with their armor riddled full of holes.
I have twelve more upstairs busy clearing the second floor and holding the perimeter, but we can’t wait for them.
“Come on,” Rama says, gesturing to the stairs at the end of the blackened debris-strewn corridor where we stand. “We’re almost there!”
We reach the top of the stairs together and race down to the bottom. I’m checking my sensors for enemy blips as we go. So far, we’re clear.
As soon as we hit the bottom landing, I can see that we’re in trouble. There’s an armored door barring our way.
“You have another grenade?” Rama asks.
I hand it to her. She activates it and we run back up the stairs to take cover. A fireball roars past us. As soon as it’s gone, we run back down. The explosion shattered the door and part of the wall beside it, leaving a gaping hole into what looks like a hangar bay built in the side of the cliff. Gleaming air cars sit in there, along with armored hovertrucks and a few interceptors.
I’m surprised none of them were scrambled earlier, but maybe this is Nadine’s private hangar.
Rama leads the way through the shattered door into a dark stone corridor. There are no windows. It’s a dungeon, borrowing heavily from the stark, medieval aesthetic that the designer used to build this fortress.
Old-fashioned cell doors line both sides of the corridor. I hear someone yelling.
“Hey! Hello? What’s going on?”
“Shut up!” someone else says.
A general groan of agreement echoes from the other cells.
But that first voice was Omar’s. No doubt about it. Thank Deus.
“Omar!” I call.
“Who is that?” he replies.
Running past Rama, I head for the sound of his voice, and stop in front of the last cell on the left.
He’s in there with his family. Looking bloodied and beaten, but otherwise fine. His wife has a split lip, too, but his daughter doesn’t seem to have been harmed.
“Who are you?” he asks.
The last face of mine he saw was Roman Aristov’s. “A friend,” I say, and then I pull the plasma blade from my belt and slice open the lock to their cell.
They’ve been beaten and are no doubt exhausted from stress and hunger, but they still come running, spurred on by adrenaline. Omar hoists his daughter up onto his hip and grabs his wife’s hand.
And then we’re flying back the way we came, with Omar’s family close behind us, and the other prisoners rattling the bars of their cages, begging for us to free them too.
I can’t risk it. There is no telling who these people are, or what they did. But my conscience won’t let me off that easy. I look to Omar. “Are any of them worth it?”
He shakes his head.
I nod back.
By the time we reach the stairs and the door that we blew open, I think to check in with my bots.
All of them are offline.
“Shit. We’ve got incoming!”
“Through here!” Rama says, indicating the hole we blasted into that hangar. She helps Omar’s wife and daughter through first.
I pull two of the remaining seeker drones off my belt and send them up the stairs one after another. This time I see a wall of enemies rushing down the corridor, none of them bothering to take cover. The drones tag them, and I let loose with my tracking rifle, emptying the clip. Four explosive tracking rounds go zipping up the stairs at reduced speed, turn at the top, and home in on their targets.
Those explosions are attended by human cries. Looks like Nadine’s reinforcements are here. I eject the empty mag and pull a fresh one from my vest to slot into the ri
fle.
“Cade!” Rama calls, just as I’m snapping off another two shots.
I twist around to see her stooped down on the other side of the hole in the stairs, waving for me to join her. Omar and his family are all already through.
Pulling the trigger twice more for good measure, I crawl through the hole in the wall, and Rama leads the way to the nearest vessel that will carry a group our size.
It’s a Baron-class fighter, the same as the one Aurora and I tracked to Aquaria.
Suspicion floods my veins with a fresh burst of adrenaline.
But Rama flicks a grin over her shoulder and shakes her head.
“I was working for Nadine, remember? Of course, I wasn’t going to leave my ship on Aquaria.”
I nod woodenly back. It’s a nice surprise. I just hope it stays that way.
The explanation makes sense, but I can’t help wondering why Rama didn’t mention it earlier. I told her that I was planning to get my ship back, but she wasn’t planning to do the same?
Chapter 58
We emerge from the airlock and sprint down a short corridor to the cockpit.
Rama drops into the pilot’s seat, and this time I take the co-pilot’s station. Her hands are a blur at the controls, booting up systems, priming shields and weapons.
So far so good. No signs of betrayal from my daughter.
Omar and his family strap into the two seats behind ours, with him strapping his daughter in over his lap. She’s sucking her thumb, her eyes wide with fear.
“Hang on,” Rama says. “This could get a little rough.”
I see what she means. The air outside is buzzing with Alliance interceptors. Forget her own reinforcements, Nadine called the authorities on us. They might even have destroyers up in orbit, just waiting for us to poke our nose out of this hangar so they can burn it off with heavy laser cannons.
We’re going to have to leave both the Seraph and the Hammer behind. It’s too dangerous to risk going for them now.
“Ready?” Rama asks.
“Go!” Omar replies.
Rama reaches for the throttle, but my hand flashes out to stop her. The muffled sound of automatic rifles roaring and armor-piercing rounds plinking off the fighter’s armor fills my ears as Nadine’s actual goons come crawling through the hole that we blew in the side of the hangar.
“I can’t leave without my ship! And Brighten. She’s still on the Seraph.”
“You’re fucking joking, right? That furball is going to get us killed!”
“Forget about the xeno, having two birds in the air is better than one. We’re not going to make it with just this fighter. We need to cover each other to the jump point.”
“I’ll see if I can find a way to land out there, but no promises.”
“Those interceptors will take you out if you try. Just go. Get into orbit. If I go down, take these three to Earth so they can apply for asylum. If I make it out, I’ll meet you there.”
Rama is looking at me like I’ve lost my mind. Maybe I have. But my ship is worth at least two million credits. And that gives me all the excuse I need to jump out that airlock, guns blazing.
Six men fall in quick succession with guided rounds finding them and triggering explosions of flesh and bone. I reload before climbing back into the stairwell. Rama’s fighter roars out of the hangar, staggering me with a blast of heat from its thrusters.
Then I’m crawling through the hole to the stairs and sending my last seeker drone ahead of me. I kill three more mob enforcers on the barracks level, and then take out two bots in the living room with blasts from my EMP cannon and subsequent shots from the tracking rifle.
Then I reload my last clip and race down the char-blackened corridor to the shattered entryway. Local law enforcement is outside with flashing lights atop their hover cars and armored trucks, just starting to get boots on the ground.
But the Seraph is sitting between me and them, blocking us from each other’s line of fire. Good timing, I think, as I rush up the landing ramp and through the open airlock, shutting and locking it behind me.
Hearing the muffled reports of rail guns firing from those interceptors in the sky, I realize there is no time to get Bry and go for my ship, so the Seraph it is.
It’s a newer model anyway.
* * *
In the cockpit I drop into the pilot’s seat, and take off amidst a hail of bullets and lasers from the police units below. None of it gets through the Seraph’s shields.
Rather than waste time vaporizing corrupt cops, I pull up and gun the throttle, pushing it into overdrive. My sensor grid shows one Baron-class fighter dodging and weaving desperately with six Alliance navy interceptors on its tail. I can actually hear the cracking supersonic reports of their rail guns firing.
The comms are alive with their orders for Rama to land immediately.
I wonder absently what the hell kind of connections Nadine Zabelle has that she can command a response from the Alliance navy. The police I get, she has them all in her pocket, but the navy? This isn’t any of their business.
It dawns on me that maybe Zabelle Enterprises never really died with its founder. They were working on FTL rift tech for the Alliance. For all I know, they still are.
I’m bringing my own guns online and targeting the first interceptor. Three of the six dart-shaped IF-17’s chasing Rama immediately peel off and come roaring back down to drop in on my six.
I set the Seraph’s dorsal and ventral laser cannons to auto-target those ships while I focus the forward-firing rail guns on the three that are still chasing my daughter up into orbit.
“I thought you’d be flying the Hammer,” Rama quips over the comms. Her words are light, but her tone is full of tension. Clouds whip past the cockpit in gauzy white streaks.
“No time,” I reply while arming missiles and targeting all three of the interceptors on her tail at the same time.
One of them scores a hit through Rama’s shields, and blows off a wing.
The fighter lists sharply to one side, but keeps on rocketing up into space. She won’t need wings up there.
Then I launch the missiles, and all three of the remaining interceptors are forced to break off and go evasive.
A quick look at my rear screens shows my laser cannons flashing down, harrying my pursuit.
The Seraph’s threat indicator screams a warning at me just before three Harrower missiles come roaring up through the scattered clouds below.
Deploying chaff and flares, I goose the throttle a little more by shunting power to engines. The Harrower missiles go chasing my flares and explode like fireworks in my wake.
Then my laser cannons converge on one of the interceptors, turning it into a fourth fireball.
Checking my sensor grid, I see that Rama is in the clear now, and her ship is a lot faster than mine so I suspect it will stay that way. I’m bringing up the rear, which makes me the easy target.
My comms chirp at me. It’s from the leader of the enemy fighter group. I play the incoming message for the hell of it.
“Seraph, you are to power down shields and weapons and ground your ship immediately.”
“You first,” I reply, and waggle my wings at them.
More missile lock warnings scream out from the threat indicator, and I’m deploying flares and chaff again. This time one of the missiles explodes too close for comfort, and my aft shields dip in to the red.
Stabbing a button to balance my shields by drawing power from the forward array, I hit the comms again. “You’re going to have to do better than that!”
Meanwhile, I’m not sure that they won’t. With five interceptors riding my tail up into orbit, I won’t last long enough to clear the FTL inhibition field and make a jump. Not even a blind jump.
I hear a door opening behind me, and a chittering, chirring frenzy comes hopping out. Bry lands in the co-pilot’s chair and tucks into a shivering ball.
“It’s okay, girl. At least we’re together. We just have to last l
ong enough for Rama to get away.”
Five more missiles streak up from below, and lasers lash my shields in a steady roar, weakening them for the inevitable impacts. I fire the last of my flares and chaff, hoping to catch them all.
But between countermeasures and point defenses, only three of the five missiles explode. The other two are still locked on, and there’s no time left to go evasive.
Maybe this is how I was meant to go out.
At least I saved a few lives for a change. It might not balance the books, but it’s something.
My threat indicator chirps out another warning, but this time it’s dead ahead. A familiar-looking fighter goes streaking past me, firing missiles and bright green lasers in a steady stream.
Green lasers. A friendly color code.
The two missiles on my six explode, followed by two of the five interceptors. And then rail guns open up, and another two explosions rumble like thunder behind me.
Checking the sensor grid, I see that the last interceptor is peeling off, and Rama’s fighter is somehow both behind me and ahead of me. Destroyers are moving into position in orbit, but they’re too far away to be a threat. Those interceptors were meant to stop us, and they failed.
“That’s it! You’re clear!” Rama cries over the comms. “Let’s bug out!”
“How did you...” I’m still trying to figure out how she managed to surprise me and the interceptors on my tail, but in hindsight that’s easy to see. There are two signatures on my grid that look just like Rama’s ship, both of them transmitting the exact same SID code, and the exact same EM signature.
“I deployed a decoy and then activated a cloaking shield,” Rama explains.
The real Baron-class fighter is actually behind me. She dropped like a rock with her cloaking shield up and the thrusters disengaged.
“Nice.”
I re-balance my shields and then shunt all power to the engines, heading at top speed for a point at the edge of the FTL inhibition field. Two Alliance destroyers are still chasing us, and more interceptors are gushing out ahead of them, but the Seraph’s combat computer has already done the math.
The Bounty Hunter (Cade Korbin Chronicles Book 1) Page 27