Never Surrender (The Empire's Corps Book 10)

by Christopher Nuttall

  Scooping up the weapons and ID cards, he ran through the rear door and across to the mansion. The plasma cannons were still firing, bolts of brilliant white fire burning through the darkness, although he wasn't sure what they thought they were engaging. He’d only launched nineteen aircars, after all, and by his count they’d all been destroyed. Their computers wouldn't have been able to handle the evasive manoeuvres required to keep them intact long enough to slam into the mansion.

  Not that it would have worked in any case, he thought, as he reached the rear door. The entire building is laced with hullmetal. A nuke couldn't have done more than wreck the centre of the city.

  He tapped on the door once, hoping someone would be fool enough to open it. It clicked open seconds later, revealing a young girl in a classical maid’s outfit. Behind her, there were a handful of others, male and female, all wearing extremely revealing clothes. Carl concealed his amusement with an effort, then nodded to them and walked into the mansion itself. The lower floors didn't look particularly luxurious, but that wasn't too much of a surprise. It was quite possible the Governor and his guests never ventured into the servants quarters.

  Can't waste good money on keeping servants in luxury, he thought, as he raced up the stairwell and through a door into a long corridor. They’d never appreciate the effort.

  “Attention,” a voice said, from overhead. “This is a security alert. All guests are advised to remain inside, well away from the windows. I say again, all guests are advised to remain inside, well away from the windows.”

  Carl smirked - they must not have found the bodies yet - and then ran onwards. There was no point in trying to deduce how long it would take them to realise that one of the guardposts wasn't answering. A Marine CO would have called them all at once, then dispatched the QRF to investigate if there was no reply from one or more of the guards. But who knew how Wolfbane would deal with an intruder? They might have drilled endlessly, like the Marines, or they might have allowed themselves to go slack. There was no way to know until it was far too late.

  “I say, old chap,” a voice called. Carl slowed, then turned to see a middle-aged man carrying a bottle of blood-coloured liquid in one hand. “Do you know where the emergency shelters are?”

  “Out the door and on the lawn,” Carl said. He had no particular dislike for the man - and he had no idea who he was - but he could serve as a diversion. Maybe he’d wind up being shot by his own people. “Go now.”

  He ran on, leaving the man spluttering behind him. A large pair of doors loomed in front of him, leading - if the diagrams he’d seen were accurate - to the master ballroom. He pulled a HE grenade from his belt, then opened the doors. Inside, a number of men and women clustered together, drinking fancy wine and chatting about nothing in particular. None of them seemed to care that a security alert had been sounded, although he did have to admit they would have been safe in the inner room, if he hadn't been running through the corridors.

  Unhooking the pin from the grenade, he hurled it into the room and slammed the doors closed, counting to three under his breath. The doors shook violently, but held; he pulled them open again to reveal a scene from hell. Dead and wounded bodies lay everywhere, some clearly well beyond salvation, others who might survive, if they got medical treatment before it was too late. Carl felt an odd flicker of guilt - the men and women he’d killed had been defenceless, even though their mere existence was a threat to the Commonwealth - which he ruthlessly pushed aside. There was no sign of the Governor.

  “Security alert,” his stolen radio proclaimed. “Intruder alert; I say again, intruder alert!”

  Carl nodded, then ran into the next room and hastily removed the guard’s uniform. They must have found the bodies by now and it wouldn’t be hard to deduce what he’d done, not when one of them had been left in his underwear. He briefly considered using the radio to try to sow confusion, then dismissed the thought and dropped the radio on the floor, crushing it below his boot heel. Given time, the security forces could have used it to trace him.

  He glanced around, then hastened up the next set of stairs towards the business floors. If the Governor’s security team were on the ball, they would have taken him to a panic room ... and the best place to find it would be near his office. Carl would have preferred to get his principal, the person he was trying to protect, out of the building completely, but the aircars would discourage anyone leaving until the entire district was secure. Given how much chaos Carl had tried to sow, it would be hours before anyone felt confident of anything. He reached into his pocket and produced a detonator, then held it in his hand as he reached the top of the stairs. The two guards standing in front of the Governor’s office glared at him, nastily.

  “You can't hide here,” one sneered. He wore a different uniform to the outer set of guards, probably indicating that he worked directly for the Governor. “This place isn't safe.”

  “Indeed,” the other said. They both held their guns at the ready, but the way they held them told Carl that they weren't taking him seriously. “Go downstairs to the shelters and ...”

  Carl drew the pistol from his pocket and shot the first one through the head, then ducked to the side as the second one returned fire. He felt a moment later as Carl shot him in the throat. They hadn't expected him to be dangerous ... he sighed, then clicked the detonator. A second later, the building shook violently as the explosives he’d left in the stolen car detonated. Whatever the enemy commander thought about the situation - probably that it was getting back under control - he wouldn't be thinking for much longer. Carl smirked - it was so much easier when one had given up all hope of getting out alive - then took one of the uniforms and quickly pulled it over his head. The helmet was a poor fit - it was just short of battlesuit-class - but it would suffice. He pulled the visor down, checked to make sure there was no visible sign of blood, then stepped through the door and into the Governor’s office.

  It was empty. Carl took a moment to admire the window that made up one of the walls, then glanced around, looking for the panic room. It took him several seconds to find the entrance, hidden behind a giant painting of a dark-skinned woman wearing old-style robes. Carl pulled it open, then stopped. Inside, there was a second armoured door and a camera, watching his every move.

  He cursed inwardly, then stepped back into the office and hunted for paper. A panic room couldn't be opened from the outside, not when it would defeat the whole objective of the exercise. And, unless he missed his guess, nothing short of a nuke would burn through the hullmetal shielding the occupants from the outside world. The only way to get in would be to make them open the door, somehow. It wouldn't be easy. They’d have an entire life support system to make sure they stayed alive, no matter what happened outside, until help came.

  Gritting his teeth, he took a sheet of paper and wrote out a note. BUILDING COMPROMISED - HAVE 2 GET OUT. It was the only way he’d been taught to try to get the occupants out, back when he’d been trying out for the Pathfinders. Stepping back into the antechamber, he held up the note in front of the camera. The Governor would be inside, but who else would be with him? There was a long pause, then the hatch slowly clicked open, revealing a surprisingly comfortable bunker. Carl rolled his eyes, inwardly, then stepped inside. Governor Brown was already rising to his feet.

  He looked harmless, nothing like the Old Council or the Grand Senators he’d met - briefly - on Earth. Paula, the treacherous bitch, had described him as a corporate rat; Carl had to admit, reluctantly, that she’d been right. He was no soldier or spacer, no pirate or bandit, merely a corporate rat using the resources around him to leverage himself into a position of power. Behind him, a pair of secretaries - both clearly old enough to be Carl’s mother - looked at him, nervously.

  Not a military officer, Carl thought. And not a security expert either.

  Carl couldn't resist. “Greetings from Avalon,” he said. “Goodbye.”

  He shot the Governor through the head, twice. It was unlikely
in the extreme the Governor could recover from a single headshot, but modern medicine could work miracles if given half a chance. The two secretaries started screaming; Carl hesitated, torn between shooting them and letting them go, then turned and walked out of the panic room, leaving them behind. It didn't really surprise him that they didn't try to close the hatch, now he was gone. He glanced at the Governor’s terminal, then slotted a rigged datachip into the system. If it worked as advertised, a nasty virus would destroy all the data on the terminal before the firewalls managed to keep it from spreading.

  The sound of running footsteps outside told him that he’d been discovered. One of the secretaries must have hit an alarm, he guessed, or the panic room’s opening had sounded an alert. He shrugged, then hurried through a side door into the Governor’s bedroom, which was larger but no more elegant than the hotel room. Carl was almost disappointed in the dead Governor; if he’d had access to the resources of an entire star system, he would have used it to ensure he had a harem and all the pleasures money could buy.

  But you’d get bored, he thought, snidely. He hadn't jointed the Marines because he wanted to spend all day in bed, even if it was surrounded by hot chicks. And the Colonel would be disappointed in you.

  Someone crashed into the office behind him, then let off a couple of shots. Carl had no idea what they thought they were shooting at - maybe they’d shot the secretaries - but he hurried to open the window anyway. There was no other way out, save for breaking through the security team and he had no idea how many men he was facing. Cold air slapped at his face as the window opened, allowing him to start scrambling out into the open air. Compared to climbing sheer rock faces at the Slaughterhouse, climbing down the mansion’s walls would be a piece of cake.

  And then a bullet slammed into his chest. Carl stumbled, feeling a dull pain spreading through his body, and somehow managed to unhook a second grenade from his belt. The newcomers yelled at him to stop, but it was too late; he tossed it towards them, then kept moving through the window. He realised his mistake a second too late. There was a brilliant flash of light, then a kick that hurled him out into the open air ... and down towards the ground, far below.

  He had barely a moment to trigger the third grenade, priming it to destroy his body, before the ground came up and hit him.

  And then there was nothing, nothing at all.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  From the point of view of the Grand Senate, concessions - however made - would only weaken the Empire’s bargaining position. It was simpler to round up enemy combatants and imprison them, then deal with their successors - if, indeed, there were successors.

  - Professor Leo Caesius. The Empire and its Prisoners of War.

  Wolfbane System, Year 5 (PE)

  Commander Drew Malochy scowled down at the datapad in front of him, wondering if there was ever a rank so high that he could tell the beancounters to go away or he would personally stuff their beans down their throats, one at a time. It was bad enough that a particularly stupid commanding officer had ignored basic maintenance to the point his ship had suffered a core overload, but somehow he had to account for every one of his actions following the explosion. He would have liked to see the beancounters do better if they were trapped in the command seat ...

  “Commander,” Ensign Pittman called. “The armoury!”

  Drew looked up, just in time to see the first missile streaking away from the missile pods towards one of the industrial nodes. For a moment, his mind refused to accept what he was seeing; the missiles had been locked in place, unable to be armed and fired without the correct command codes! And yet, the missiles were already being launched at targets within the shipyard. They would start hitting home before anyone could do anything to stop them.

  “Signal an alert,” he snapped, knowing it would be already far too late. More missiles were spewing free of the pods now, aimed at everything from the industrial nodes to the automated weapons platforms. They weren't prepped to deal with threats originating inside the shipyard! No one had ever considered the possibility. “Get everyone back into suits and ...”

  The first missile slammed into its target. Drew winced, expecting an explosion, but instead the missile punched through the thin layer of material separating the industrial production node from outer space. Atmosphere started to flow out of the gash - he refused to focus his sensors enough to tell if the wriggling shapes were actually people - as the missile smashed through several billion credits worth of equipment before finally being wrecked itself by a final impact. The warhead hadn't been armed, part of his mind noted; the rest of him couldn't help focusing on the end of his career ...

  “Order everyone into suits and then into space,” he ordered, as other missiles sought out their targets. Defensive countermeasures were already deploying, but the missiles didn't seem inclined to be distracted from their targets. Their seeker heads were inactive too, he realised numbly; they were merely flying ballistic trajectories that merely happened to intersect their targets. “And order the weapons platforms to take out the armoury!”

  Pittman looked up at him. “Sir?”

  “Order the weapons platforms to take out the armoury,” Drew ordered. His career was definitely at an end, so he might as well go out with a bang. Besides, whoever had launched those missiles had to be on the armoury itself. “Now!”

  ***

  “The missiles are away,” Jasmine snapped. The first missiles had already begun to strike their targets. “We need to move.”

  She rose to her feet, then ran through the corridor towards where the worker bees were waiting. Most of her team had moved as soon as the missiles had started to fire, knowing it wouldn't be long before the Wolves targeted the armoury directly. Stewart followed her through the network, one hand tapping his radio to recall the remaining teams. They plunged into the worker bees and hastily disengaged from the armoury, just as the final set of countermeasures began to go active. Anyone trying to use active sensors in the midst of the shipyard was in for a very unpleasant experience.

  “Shit,” Stewart said. The worker bee rocked violently as the pilot struggled to avoid chunks of debris. “They just struck the armoury!”

  “That was quick,” Jasmine muttered, as she strapped herself in. “And our drones?”

  “Gary has them,” Stewart said. “God help us.”

  Jasmine nodded, then turned her attention to the radio net. Judging from the increasingly frantic pleading, her missiles had done a great deal of damage. The Wolves would take months, if not years, to repair their facilities ... she caught sight of an explosion blossoming into life on one of the large shipbuilding slips and smiled in cold amusement as a half-built cruiser was enveloped in fire. Something big must have exploded ... she puzzled over it for a long moment, then pushed the thought aside. It hardly mattered, not now. There would be time for an after-action review when - if - they survived.

  All that mattered was getting out before it was too late.

  ***

  Gary had plenty of experience in multitasking, from the games he’d played on Earth, but that had been five years ago. There were just under a hundred worker bees under his direct control and handling them all at the same time was just impossible. All he could do was take brief control of each worker bee, direct it into a place where it could serve as a weapon and then move to the next one before it ran into something and exploded. Worker bees were fast little craft, but they sure as hell weren't armed or armoured.

  Cold hatred burned through him as he directed one worker bee to slam straight into an emergency shuttle, than another one into a thin-skinned habitation module. The Wolves had taken Kailee from him, turned him into a collaborator and then forced him to hide in the spaceport, fearing death as a collaborator. Earth had been bad enough, but the Wolves could have been something different, something better. Everything Paula had told him about their system had convinced him that, in many ways, they were worse than Earth.

  They were dying. Gary watche
d, through a sensor, as an emergency bubble was ripped open, casting dozens of people into the icy cold vacuum of space. He felt nothing, not when they were exposed to his drones or when they died, even though part of him knew it was no computer game. They had all been part of a system that had oppressed him, oppressed Kailee, oppressed Meridian ... a planet he might never have liked, but he could have come to love, in time. He didn't want to think about how many people had suffered because of the Wolves, from people like Paula and her General to Jasmine and her men. Watching the Wolves suffer and die - making the Wolves suffer and die - felt noble and right. Even the ones who hadn't hurt him directly had enabled the ones who had.

  A worker bee popped out of existence. Gary barely noticed, shifting his attention to several other worker bees. Five of them were burning towards weapons platforms, which were rapidly trying to reorientate themselves so they could fire into the shipyard. It struck Gary as a curious oversight, but he had to admit that Jasmine had proved that someone could fire missiles within the shipyard, even without the arming codes. He watched two platforms die as the bees slammed home, then sighed bitterly as three died before they got any closer to their targets. A sixth died seconds later as it flew too close to an armed shuttle. He wondered, nastily, just how many legitimate worker bees, crewed by live personal, were about to die. The Wolves seemed to be shooting at everything and everyone.