by Richard Fox
“You son of a bitch, this is the weapon you took from me on Koen,” King said.
“Too light, bad for accuracy.” Medvedev shrugged.
“I’ve got it!” echoed down the hallway.
“Let’s go.” Masha picked up a glow stick and jogged away, toward the voice.
Hoffman tried to catch up to her in the narrow passage, but Medvedev elbowed him back. As the Marines hustled after the Ibarrans, Hoffman slowed until he was beside Steuben.
“The female,” Steuben said, “the one with her face hidden by the mask and cross, her scent clings to Gor’al.”
“How? Did you scent her from the city? Maybe she was around Gor’al—the Ibarrans have sleeper agents,” Hoffman said.
“I know it from Nimrod, before we ever arrived here,” Steuben said.
“Then she could be a crewman from the Scipio. Doesn’t matter. We need to deal with the Beast first, then be ready for when the Ibarrans try and screw us.”
“As you wish.” Steuben pulled his lips back, revealing rows of needle-sharp teeth.
Chapter 18
Hoffman smelled the dead Pathfinders before he saw them. The alien script changed to red and pulsated as they went farther down the passageway. Hoffman recognized the place from the recording he saw when he first arrived.
Dried blood and viscera arced against a wall and he said a silent prayer for the corpse he had to step over. He was the last to enter a long room containing oval-shaped platforms hovering a few feet above the ground. Three dead bodies lay around an empty one, while his Marines stood on another.
Masha and Lilith stood behind a control panel made up of floating crystal. Medvedev was half-in, half-out of a passage farther behind them, the satchel of Qa’Resh tech over his shoulder.
The female legionnaire jumped onto the bare platform, a hunk of matte-black crystal tucked under one arm.
“Duncan didn’t make it,” she said.
“Is that…” Hoffman pointed at the crystal.
“Part of the Beast, yes.” Masha waved him toward the other platform with his Marines. “You need to get on there. Mass has to be almost equal before they’ll activate.”
Hoffman put one foot on the platform when he got a glimpse of Lilith. The woman’s eyes were wide and moist with tears. Masha stood close to her, one hand near the small of Lilith’s back.
“King, weapon,” Hoffman said, taking the gauss rifle from his sergeant and stepping back from the platform.
“Behind you!” Lilith cried.
Hoffman slapped the battery into the weapon and spun around, going to one knee.
The Beast gripped the sides of an opening high up on the near wall. Sparks spat out from its joints as half its head snapped from side to side like a bird.
“Come on, you bastard!” the legionnaire shouted and raised the hunk of crystal over her head. “This is what you want. Not him!”
A metallic hiss sounded from the Beast and it crept down the wall.
“Hit it when it’s on the platform,” Masha said. “But you need to get up there with the rest of them, fool!”
Lilith shook her head ever so slightly.
“Sir?” Duke hefted his sniper rifle.
Hoffman slid a quadrium shell into the breach, but the hum of the weapon in his hands told him he had several more seconds before it would be fully charged.
“Half a face and no balls!” The legionnaire stomped her foot on the platform. The Beast angled toward her and froze.
“Get ready, sir.” The legionnaire crouched slightly, holding the crystal by her fingertips.
“Almost,” Hoffman said.
The Beast’s tails swished back and forth and Hoffman felt the battery’s heat shoot up. The Beast leaped at the legionnaire, claws stretched out. She dropped the crystal and rolled to one side. The Beast landed over her, talons scraping against the platform.
Hoffman fired, unsure if the Q-shell was ready or not. The round struck the Beast in the flank…and nothing happened. The Beast gripped the missing piece of itself and red light shone from the cracks in the exoskeleton. The Beast raised a claw to shred the legionnaire.
Electricity snapped out of the Q-shell and crawled down the Beast’s flank like lightning along the bottom of a storm cloud. A bolt struck the legionnaire in the leg and she screamed. Hoffman dropped the rifle and ran to the platform, grabbing her by the arm and hauling her off.
The Beast contorted as the quadrium shell ravaged its body. Static crackled around the Beast and it froze, claws gripped tight as if it were in pain.
A pale light appeared around the Beast and it froze in place. Hoffman looked back to his Marines, and they too were frozen, Garrison reaching toward them, mouth agape. Steuben held his scimitar back, ready to hurl at Masha. Opal’s eyes were locked on Medvedev.
“Almost perfect.” Masha stepped away from Lilith, a pistol levelled at Hoffman’s face. “Almost. Just needed you to shoot from the platform and then I’d have this whole thing tied up with a bow.”
“Let them go,” Hoffman said.
“Now, now, let’s stop being naïve,” Masha said.
“The ship won’t wait much longer,” Medvedev said. “We need to get out of here!”
The legionnaire groaned, crawling forward with her arms. “Captain…I can’t feel my legs…help,” she said, ripping her face mask off and tossing it to one side. Red hair spilled out and she looked up at Hoffman.
“Adams?” Hoffman reached for her out of instinct, remembering her as one of his Marines, not as a legionnaire.
Masha fired and the bullet struck the floor between them.
“No,” Masha said. “She’s not yours anymore, Hoffman. She’s Ibarran. She always was. Always will be.”
“Liar!” Rage grew inside Hoffman. He wanted to both strangle the spy and help Adams at the same time. “You’ve done something to her. She’s a Strike Marine. Always faithful to the Corps. She—”
“Tell him.” Masha wagged her barrel at Hoffman. “Tell him the truth. I want to see his face when he hears it.”
Adams pulled herself up, leaning on one leg against the platform holding the Beast. She wiped a line of blood away from the corner of her mouth and shook her hair back.
“I am Ibarran,” she said. “I fight for the Lady. For the Nation. It was always like this…I just didn’t know until they freed me.”
“Freed you? This is wrong, Adams. You served next to me,” Hoffman said, jabbing a hand at the team trapped in stasis, “beside them, for years. You were never Ibarran!”
“Let’s drive this point home,” Masha said. “Legionnaire Adams, draw your sidearm and kill him.”
“Are you insane!?” Medvedev shouted.
“You have your doubts too.” Masha cocked her pistol up toward the ceiling. “Let’s know for sure.”
Adams drew a gun from a thigh holster and racked a round into the chamber.
“Adams…what have they done to you?” Hoffman asked.
Adams raised her weapon, hand trembling. “Lady Ibarra loves us,” she said. “She always will. We cannot fail her.”
“Belay that order,” Medvedev said. “I am your commander and you will not kill him. Obey!” His last word carried an odd inflection.
Adams shook her head and lowered her weapon.
“Lieutenant, I never wanted to hurt you or the team. I’m not one of Valdar’s Hammers anymore,” she said.
“I’ll do it myself!” Masha snapped her pistol toward Hoffman and there was a crack.
Hoffman flinched, then saw Masha in a column of pale light. Smoke flared from the weapon and a bullet held firm an inch from the muzzle. The spy’s face was set with malice.
“We had a deal,” Lilith said from the control panel. “I help you get away and I stay behind, stop the bomb from going off. You’ve got the artifacts, just leave!”
Medvedev drew a pistol but kept it pointed to the ground. He went to Adams and picked her up. As he carried her back to the other tunnel, he kept his eyes locked
on Hoffman.
“Let Masha go,” he said.
“I can turn it on,” Lilith said with a frown. “Turning the right ones off…not so sure. I could end up releasing the Beast, or the Marines, or all three. You want to come another couple of steps forward? I can almost get you with the last stasis emitter.”
Medvedev cursed. He looked to the tunnel then back at Masha.
“Damn you, Hoffman. We’re not done, you understand?” Medvedev backed into the tunnel. “This isn’t over!”
He turned and disappeared into the darkness.
“Wait! Adams!” Hoffman started after them, but Lilith grabbed him by the sleeve and stopped him.
“No, just let them go,” she pleaded. “I have less than an hour to save my husband, your commander. We need to get word back to the city. If you go after him, they will kill you.”
“What did he get away with—the artifacts?” Hoffman asked. “Maybe we can stop them before they get through the Crucible.”
“Doesn’t matter to me.” Lilith balled her fists. “We need to save my husband!”
“What about my Marines?”
“They’re…just fine. Probably. I wasn’t kidding about not being a hundred percent sure how to work the controls,” she said.
Hoffman touched a pouch containing a radio and a separate battery. “I need…I need to get to the surface,” Hoffman said. “You stay here and figure out which buttons to push.”
“The Pathfinders cut a hole a few rooms that way.” Lilith pointed to another tunnel. “I forgot to mention that to Masha. Bitch.”
The Ibarran spy was still a statue in light.
“Don’t release her until I’m back,” Hoffman said.
****
Masha’s gun recoiled, stopping next to her cheek. She smiled, looking for the corpse of a problematic Strike Marine. Her smile vanished, replaced by a look of confusion. Hoffman wasn’t dead; he was gone.
“The hell?” She glanced at her pistol in time to see a mottled hand slap the weapon away.
Opal clasped a meaty paw against her neck and lifted her off the ground. His lips twitched as he brought her nearly nose to nose with his Neanderthal features.
“Happy…little trees,” Masha gasped as she kicked meekly at the doughboy.
“Don’t like you.” Opal tightened his grip and Masha croaked.
“No!” Garrison shouted. “Bad, Opal! Bad! You drop that thing right now!”
Masha landed badly and went face-first into the ground when Garrison slammed a boot between her shoulder blades. Masha felt her wrists press together as someone wrapped them with cloth. She blinked hard and tried to call for Medvedev.
Garrison went prone, eye to eye with the spy.
“Well, hello there, little miss.” He smiled. “Welcome back to Strike Marine custody. I’ve been waiting a long time for this, especially since you kicked me square in the twig and berries!”
“Funny, I didn’t think I hit anything,” Masha managed as her ankles were hog tied to her ankles.
“Prisoner needs to lose her speaking privileges, right, Gunney?” Garrison tapped the floor.
“Sounds about right,” King said.
Garrison produced a rolled-up sock, one moist with the swamp and sweat.
“Wait!” Masha shook her head like a recalcitrant baby refusing mashed peas as Garrison tried to jam the gag into her mouth. “Wait, we can work something out!”
“You want this the easy way or do I get Opal to help?” Garrison asked.
Masha’s nostrils flared and she opened her mouth. Garrison jammed the sock between her teeth and threw an empty satchel over her head.
“Oorah!” Garrison popped to his feet and mimicked firing twin pistols over the hog-tied Masha. “I take back everything bad I ever said about Eridu. This place officially rocks.”
“You are overcompensating for past failures,” Steuben said. “You were the first to obey her command to jump on the stasis platform.”
“OK, we all fell for that, except for the lieutenant, which is why he’s paid the big bucks,” Garrison said.
“That was legitimate,” Lilith said from where she sat next to the control panel as Booker examined her with a medi-gauntlet and touched bruises with a flesh knitter. “I did need a mass approximation to power up the stasis field.”
“And just so you know, Mr. Karigole,” Garrison said, pointing at the spy, “this one is dangerous and tricky. Don’t let her bat those baby-blue eyes at you and think she’s anything but an Ibarran thief and assassin. You hear that, Masha? The Terran Union’s got you dead to rights.”
Masha extended both her middle fingers.
“OK, that hood isn’t getting the job done.” Garrison shook his head.
“Marines,” Hoffman said as he bounded down the ramp, “extraction’s coming. Everyone to the surface.”
“My husband? The bomb?” Lilith stood up.
“They evacced headquarters before it could go off,” Hoffman said. “It’s been neutralized.”
“We going after Medvedev?” Max hefted his assault rifle. “I owe him.”
“Scipio’s watching for their ship, but there’s a lot of sky to cover,” Hoffman said. “Get the prisoner to the surface and keep a perimeter up. The Ibarrans might come back for this one.”
“Hope they do.” Max slid a fused gauss rifle beneath Masha’s bonds and lifted her up.
“Let’s convince her Steuben will cook her for dinner,” Garrison said. “Karigole do that, right?”
“Is there a wedding?” Steuben asked as they went up the ramp.
Hoffman signaled for King to fall back then waited until there was space between them and the rest of the team.
“Sir?”
“One of the legionnaires…it was Adams,” Hoffman said and King missed a step. “Saw with my own eyes. No mistake it was her. It all makes sense now. The sudden transfer, why the intelligence officers were so interested in her…the Ibarrans must have brought her to Eridu since she was embedded in the Terran Union for so long.”
“By the Saint…how? How was a traitor under our nose the whole time?” King asked.
“Hell if I know,” Hoffman said. “Chalk it up to another failure on my part. I lost Masha not once but twice, and she murdered people on Mars when Adams and other traitors broke out of prison. Then the Breitenfeld gets captured while we were her onboard contingent.”
“We weren’t onboard when that happened,” King said.
“We should’ve been there to protect our ship. Save Admiral Valdar. Now the Ibarrans will probably get away with whatever Medvedev had in that pack…and with Adams. Screwed it all up again, didn’t I?”
“Stop.” King grabbed the lieutenant by the shoulder and pointed back to the chamber with the Beast. “You stopped that damn thing. The colony will get evacced now, hundreds of lives saved because you were on the ball. We’ve got Masha. Alive. And when the intelligence types get ahold of her, she’ll give up everything she knows about what the Ibarrans are up to in the Union. Today is a win, sir. Not total victory, but we—you—made it happen. As for Adams…the Strike Marines never forget their own. We’ll track her down. I never thought I’d see Masha again, but the Lord works in mysterious ways.”
“We are not transferring custody of that spy to anyone on this planet,” Hoffman said. “Not making that mistake again.”
“Roger that.” King nodded. “We’ve got that score settled. Now we need to find Valdar and the Breitenfeld, bring them home.”
Hoffman touched his earbud. “Mule’s almost here. Double time.”
Chapter 19
Hoffman and King charged up the ramp of an idling Mule transport. The craft lifted off before they made it into the cargo bay. Crewmen directed them toward Colonel Fallon and Yarrow at the forward end of the bay, where the latter embraced his wife and the two spoke rapid-fire in a language that Hoffman assumed was Akkadian.
Dr. Masako sat at the far end of the benches, a duffle bag on either side of her.
&
nbsp; “I got the skinny.” Fallon glanced at Masha, pinned to the deck by Opal’s foot.
“Beast is neutralized,” Hoffman said. “I don’t know if it’s even possible to destroy it.”
“Construction teams will bury the lab at first light, then the planet will be evacced completely,” Fallon said. “The Ibarran said the Kesaht were days away?”
“She said that.” Hoffman shrugged. “Doesn’t necessarily mean we should believe her.”
“No chances; fleet’s already mobilizing transports.” Fallon breathed a sigh of relief. “Wish I could offer you and your Marines more than an ‘attaboy’ right now. We’ve been reassigned back to 14th Fleet. The attack on the Kesaht’s home world is still a go and they need every hand on deck for this one. Biggest assault the Union’s put together since the Ember War.”
“Sir,” Hoffman’s mind spun between disbelief and outrage, “what about Valdar and his ship? The crew? Masha must know where the Ibarrans have—”
“Ibarrans aren’t invading our colonies. Kesaht are. High Command wants to end the war with the aliens with one swift stroke. Then we’ve got a host of other problems before we can get to the Ibarrans,” Fallon said. “It’s bad, Lieutenant. Last time I remember it being worse was when the Midway came back and we realized just how unprepared we were for the Xaros siege. Need you and your Marines to find your iron.”
Hoffman quelled his doubts. This wasn’t the time to crack—not when his team would follow his every mood. If he stayed strong, they would stay stronger.
“Aye aye,” Hoffman said.
“We’re dropping the Yarrows, then we’re making straight for the Scipio, then the 14th Fleet anchorage,” Fallon said. “I’m going to have a word with the prisoner.”
“I’ll keep our Marines’ heads on straight,” King said. “Get the REMFs back in the city to have our power armor waiting for us.”
“Good.” Hoffman went over to an open space on the bench next to Masako, his mind in a haze. He sat hard and rubbed away a growing headache.
“You look like a can of smashed assholes,” Masako said. “But you did pretty good…for a crunchy.”
