Saren had done his best to make sure that opportunity had presented itself. He knew Edan had spies in every level of government across Camala, and particularly at the spaceports. All he’d done was make sure the Council’s request for an unscheduled Alliance landing in the desert was logged in the official government records.
The unusual request was sure to attract someone’s attention. Inevitably it would be reported up through the chain of underlings and lackeys to Edan himself, and Saren was confident the batarian was smart enough to figure out who the Alliance was coming to pick up.
The only flaw in the plan was that it was almost too obvious. If Edan suspected it was a trap, he wouldn’t send anyone in response to the message.
Still watching the Alliance-driven APC through his long-range binoculars, Saren saw the vehicle swerve and nearly spin out as the driver began taking evasive action. Scanning the nearby dunes he picked up the dust trails of four other vehicles closing in; small, quick rovers with mounted guns converging on the slower APC from all sides.
Edan had taken the bait.
“Goddamn!” one of the marines in the back shouted as a shell launched from one of the pursuing rovers exploded close enough to rock the APC’s suspension.
The driver was doing his frantic best to avoid the shells being lobbed at them by the enemy, sending the APC careening haphazardly over dunes and into small valleys to keep the other vehicles from getting a lock on their position. True to its name, the APC was heavily armored. Still, it was only a transport vehicle; it wasn’t intended for combat. They had no mounted guns, and the thick plating on the body and undercarriage was intended to protect the occupants from sniper fire and land mines. Against antitank weapons like those mounted on the pursuing rovers, the only purpose the armor served was to slow them down.
In the back, one of the marines was shouting into the radio, trying to warn the incoming Alliance frigate of their situation.
“Mayday! Mayday! We are taking fire. The landing zone is hot! I repeat, the landing zone is hot!”
“We got at least four of these bastards on our tail!” the driver shouted back to him as the vehicle lurched and bounced over an outcropping of small rocks and boulders.
“Four enemy rovers on site!” the radioman shouted. “Iwo Jima, are you reading?”
“This is the Iwo Jima,” a voice crackled back. “We read you, ground team. We’re still fourteen minutes out. Hold on!”
The radio operator slammed his fist against the heavily armored side of the vehicle in frustration. “We’ll never last that long!”
“You gotta outrun them!” another one of the men yelled up to the front.
“What the hell do you think I’m doing!?” the driver snapped back at him.
They flew over the top of another dune as a shell exploded just behind them, propelling the vehicle through the air for a full ten meters before it crashed heavily back down to the ground. The high-impact shock absorbers took most of the blow, but even though Kahlee was securely belted in, the force of the landing still caused her to whack her head on the ceiling. The impact drove her teeth into her tongue hard enough to make her taste blood.
The men in the back fared much worse. Crammed into the vehicle, none of them were wearing safety belts. They were thrown from their seats, smashed against the roof, then hurled back down to the floor in a jumble of colliding elbows, knees, and skulls. Cries of surprise and grunts of pain were followed by a string of curse words directed at the driver.
He ignored them, instead muttering, “They’re too fast. We’ll never outrun them,” though Kahlee wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or himself. His eyes were wide and wild, and she wondered how much longer he could keep it together.
“You’re doing great,” Kahlee reassured him. “Just keep us alive for a few more minutes. You can do it!”
The driver didn’t respond but only hunched forward, bringing himself closer to the wheel. Without warning he pulled a hard 180-degree turn, hoping to surprise the enemy with the desperate and erratic maneuver. The momentum of the APC spun them out of control, nearly causing them to roll. For a split second the vehicle teetered precariously, balancing over the wheels along one side before slamming back down with another hard jolt.
With all six wheels back on the ground, the driver slammed his foot onto the accelerator and they took off again, spewing a plume of pebbles, dust, and sand out behind them. From her seat in the front Kahlee could now see the enemy clearly. Two of their vehicles were spread wide, trying to outrace the APC and cut them off. The other two had originally fallen in behind them, firing at them with their mounted cannons as they steadily gained on their prey. With the sudden change of direction, however, the Alliance soldiers were now heading directly toward their former pursuers.
“You bastards ever play chicken!?” the driver screamed, never taking his foot off the gas as he steered the slower but much heavier APC head-on into one of the lightly armored rovers.
Strapped securely into her seat, Kahlee had no chance to stop what was about to happen. The distance between the vehicles was gobbled up in an instant, and all she could do was brace for impact. At the last second the smaller rover tried to veer off, but it was too late and the collision was unavoidable. The blunted nose of the APC slammed into the front left side of the oncoming rover as it tried to peel away from the crash, a glancing blow instead of a direct hit. But at a combined speed of nearly 200 km/h, a glancing blow was more than enough.
The enemy rover practically disintegrated. The force of the impact blew the frame apart. The axles snapped and the tires flew off. The doors sheared loose. Unidentifiable chunks of metal rent asunder and went flying and skipping across the sand. The fuel tank ruptured, sparked, and exploded, engulfing what was left of the rover’s body in flames, reducing it to a molten slagheap. The driver, who had died in the first millisecond of the collision, was consumed by the great ball of tumbling fire that finally rolled to a stop hundreds of meters later.
The other occupants had all been thrown free on impact, their bodies sent whirling and skipping across the ground at over 100 km/h. Limbs cracked and shattered, necks and spines snapped, skulls were caved in. Huge chunks of flesh were ripped from the bones of the corpses as they skidded across the sharp pebbles and abrasive sand.
The sturdier APC held together on impact, though the entire front crumpled in like an accordion. Deflecting off the enemy rover, it flipped and rolled half a dozen times before coming to rest upside down. Kahlee was barely conscious. Stunned by the impact and disoriented by the blood rushing to her head, she felt someone fumbling at her seat belt. Instinctively she tried to fight them off, then heard a human voice shouting at her to calm down.
She tried to concentrate. The vehicle wasn’t moving anymore, but her world continued to spin. The driver was still belted in beside her. The steering wheel had snapped off and the jagged end of the steering column had been driven back into his chest, impaling him. His dead eyes were open wide; the glassy pupils fixed in a frozen stare that seemed directed accusingly at her.
She realized she must have blacked out for a few seconds. One of the marines from the back was outside the vehicle now, reaching in through the shattered window to try and unbuckle her seat belt. She stopped fighting against him and instead reached out with her hands, pressing them firmly against the inverted roof so she wouldn’t fall and hit her head the instant she was loose.
A second later the buckle detached. She managed to keep her head from slamming to the ground, though she did bang one of her knees painfully on the mangled dashboard as she fell. Strong hands seized her arms and pulled her to freedom through the gaping hole that had once been filled with tempered glass.
Now that she was upright, the excess of blood rushed away from Kahlee’s head, allowing her world to slowly come back into focus. Miraculously, the marines in the back of the APC had all survived. The five of them and Kahlee were now huddled in the shadow of their overturned vehicle, temporarily using it
for cover.
She could hear the sound of gunfire. It wasn’t the heavy thunk-thunk-thunk of antitank weapons, but rather the sharp rat-tat-tat she recognized as bursts from an assault rifle. She could hear the metal pings as bullets ricocheted off the armor-plated rover that hid them from enemy sight.
Kahlee didn’t even have a pistol on her, but the marines had recovered their weapons from the crash. Unfortunately, they were pinned down by a steady stream of enemy rounds, unable to use them. Given the constant barrage of enemy bullets, even a split second of exposure to try and return fire was too great a risk.
“Why aren’t they using their cannons?” Kahlee shouted, her voice almost drowned out by the sounds of the battle.
“They must want to take us alive!” one of the marines replied, giving her a look that made it clear they all knew the enemy was only concerned with the survival of one specific person.
“They’re trying to flank us!” another marine shouted, pointing off at the horizon.
One of the rovers had sped off in the distance, so far away it was barely visible. It was circling around behind them in a wide, looping arc, well beyond the range of the marines’ automatic weapons.
Kahlee’s attention was pulled away from the rover by a deafening roar from above; the unmistakable sound of a space vessel’s drive-core engines burning in the atmosphere. Turning her attention upward, she saw a small ship swooping down from the sky.
“It’s the Iwo Jima!” one of the marines cried out.
The ship was moving fast, diving straight for the lone rover trying to flank them. Less than fifty meters from the ground it pulled up sharply and opened fire. A single, well-targeted blast from the ship’s GARDIAN defense lasers turned the rover into scrap metal.
The Iwo Jima banked and changed direction, its trajectory bringing it straight toward the two surviving rovers as the marines let loose with spontaneous, exultant cheers. The cavalry had arrived!
Skarr had seen the frigate approaching long before it fired the lethal volley that took out the first of the Blue Sun rovers. Its arrival was an inconvenient, but not unanticipated, event.
Moving with a quick but calm sense of purpose, he leaped out of his own rover and started shouting orders. Following his commands, the mercs quickly unloaded and assembled the portable mass accelerator cannon they’d stashed in the back of the vehicle.
While the Alliance frigate fired its lasers on the defenseless rovers, Skarr was arming the weapon; loading an ammo packet filled with hundreds of small explosive rounds. As the frigate banked toward them in a long, sweeping arc, he adjusted the aim and locked in on his target. And when he heard the cheers from the marines hiding behind the overturned APC, he fired.
The GARDIAN laser systems of the Iwo Jima, programmed to target and destroy incoming missiles, were overwhelmed by the sheer number of hypervelocity rounds fired at point-blank range. Normally the deadly projectiles would have deflected harmlessly off the ship’s kinetic barriers. But in order for a space-faring vessel to touch down on a planet’s surface and pick up a shore party, the barriers had to be shut down. As Skarr had suspected, the Iwo Jima hadn’t had time to reactive them yet.
Hundreds of tiny explosive shells impacted the ship’s exterior, shearing fist-sized holes in the hull as they detonated. The personnel on board were shredded by the sudden storm of burning shrapnel ricocheting around the interior of the vessel. The Iwo Jima veered out of control and crushed into the ground, disintegrating in a fiery explosion. Huge chunks of shrapnel rained down all around them, sending the mercs scampering and diving for cover. Skarr ignored the melted chunks of metal falling from the sky, instead slinging his assault rifle over one shoulder and marching out toward the overturned APC.
He headed straight at it, knowing the Alliance soldiers on the other side wouldn’t be able to see him coming. The vehicle providing them with cover was also obscuring their view of what was directly in front of them.
As he approached the APC, the mercs behind him split out to the sides, triangulating their positions so they could keep firing around him. They kept a steady stream of deadly high-velocity rounds trained on the vehicle, keeping the marines pinned down behind it.
Ignoring the constant gunfire, the krogan stopped less than ten meters away from the APC. Every muscle in his body tensed as he began to focus his biotic abilities. The reaction triggered an automatic biofeedback response in the amplification modules surgically implanted throughout his nervous system. He began to gather dark energy, drawing it in and trapping it the way a black hole traps light. It took almost ten full seconds for the power to build to maximum capacity. Then Skarr thrust forward with a fist, hurling it toward his target.
The overturned APC launched into the air, flying over the heads of the stunned Alliance marines to land a dozen meters behind them. They were caught off guard, completely surprised and totally exposed by the unexpected maneuver. Nothing in their training had prepared them for this. Uncertain how to react, they simply froze: a small group huddled together, crouching in the sand.
They would have been gunned down right then were it not for the fact that their enemy was just as surprised as they. The mercs had stopped shooting, watching in utter amazement as the krogan biotic had simply hurled the four-ton APC out of the way.
“Throw down your weapons!” Skarr growled.
The marines complied, knowing the battle was lost. They slowly stood up and raised their hands above their head, letting their assault rifles fall to the ground. Knowing she had no other choice, Kahlee did the same.
The krogan stepped forward and seized her by the upper arm, squeezing so hard she let out a cry of pain. One of the marines made half a move to help her, then pulled himself back. She was glad—he couldn’t help her; no sense getting himself killed.
While the mercs kept their weapons trained on their prisoners, Skarr half dragged, half carried Kahlee over to one of the vehicles. He threw her into the back, then climbed in beside her.
“Kill them,” he said to his men, nodding in the direction of the Alliance marines.
The sharp retorts of gunfire drowned out Kahlee’s screams.
Saren watched the entire scene unfold through his binoculars, never moving from his carefully chosen position. He was surprised when Skarr didn’t kill Sanders, instead taking her prisoner. Obviously her connection to all this was more than he’d first realized. But it didn’t really change anything.
The mercs climbed into their vehicles and sped off into the dusk, switching on their lights to guide them through the gloom.
Saren leaped down from his vantage point and ran over to the small scout rover he had parked nearby. The vehicle had been specially modified for stealth missions at night: the headlamps were equipped with dimming covers to disperse the illumination and angle it down toward the ground, creating a faint glow that would be enough to navigate by but was barely visible from more than a kilometer away.
In contrast, the high-powered beams of the other vehicles blazed like beacons in the darkness of the desert night. He’d easily be able to spot them from as far as ten kilometers out.
All he had to do was follow them, and they’d lead him right to wherever Edan was hiding.
NINETEEN
Anderson couldn’t help but feel nervous about this meeting. Even though the Council had officially approved the ambassador’s request, he was still haunted by the memory of his last meeting with Saren. For several long moments he’d been absolutely convinced the turian was going to leave him for dead outside the ruins of Dah’tan. When Ambassador Goyle had revealed that Saren might have a general hatred of the Alliance, he wasn’t the least bit surprised.
“Personal information on Spectres is sealed,” she told him, “but our intel dug up something interesting. Seems he lost his brother during the First Contact War.”
The lieutenant knew there were more than a few turians who were still bitter about the conflict, especially those who had lost family members. And he suspected Sare
n was the type who didn’t just carry a grudge, but fed it constantly. It may have started as a desire to avenge his brother, but after eight years it would have grown into something much darker: a twisted, festering loathing for all humanity.
As much as he wanted to catch those responsible for what had happened at Sidon, he wasn’t looking forward to working with Saren on this mission. He had a bad feeling about all this; just like the one he’d gotten when the Hastings had first responded to Sidon’s distress call. But he’d been given his orders, and he intended to follow them.
The fact that the turian was over an hour late didn’t make him feel any better. In the interests of trying to smooth things over, Anderson had let him pick the time and place of the meeting. He’d chosen midday at a small, dingy bar in a run-down neighborhood on the edges of Hatre. The kind of establishment where the customers made a point of ignoring neighboring conversations. Nobody here wanted to know what anybody else was up to.
Not that there was much chance of anyone overhearing them, anyway. The place was practically deserted this afternoon—probably the reason the turian had chosen this time of day. It made sense, but as Anderson sat alone at a table in the corner nursing his drink he couldn’t help but wonder what kind of game Saren was playing.
Why wasn’t he here? Was this some kind of setup? Or maybe a ploy to get him out of the way while the Spectre continued his investigation?
Twenty minutes later, he’d just made up his mind to leave when the door opened and the man he’d been waiting for stepped through. The bartender and the only other customer in the place besides Anderson glanced up as he entered, then looked away as Saren crossed the room with quick, angry steps.
“You’re late,” Anderson said as the turian sat down. He wasn’t expecting an apology, but he felt he was at least owed an explanation.
“I was working” was the curt reply.
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