by Jay Allan
His Marines wouldn’t surrender, he was sure enough of that. And, though he hated himself for the cold rationality of the thought, the local troops were of limited value. His Marines could last longer without the drain on their resources. He wouldn’t abandon the local forces—he didn’t have that level of brutality in him—but if they disobeyed, if they pulled back to the cities in a hopeless attempt to defend their families instead of moving to the bases in the wilderness, he wasn’t going to stop them.
Blanth turned back toward Holcott. “We’re out of time, Luther. I need your help...we’ve got to…” He didn’t get any farther. Another shell exploded, this one less than fifteen meters from where the two men stood. Blanth lost some time, a few seconds, a few minutes…he wasn’t sure. But he wasn’t where he’d been. He was lying on the ground, on his back, looking up at the sky.
It was a beautiful day. He hadn’t noticed that before, but now he watched as a few stringy, light clouds stretched across the sky above him. He could see pillars of smoke rising, just beginning to block out the soft and pleasant sunlight streaming down in places. To the east? North? He didn’t know. He’d lost all sense of time, and for a few minutes he clung to consciousness, trying to turn his head, to see what was happening around him.
He felt himself losing his struggle. He was tired, exhausted. He had nothing left…and he let himself slip into the darkness.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Outer Ring, Western District
Troyus City, Planet Megara, Olyus III
Year 317 AC
Andi stood still, frozen in place, silent…waiting.
She’d been on the run, but now that was over. She had lost all track of time, of normal schedules. She’d become both hunter and hunted, and beyond those roles, she was utterly detached from everything and everyone.
She held her breath, her eyes focused on the street just outside the building. The man had been following her, pursuing her through the almost deserted streets of the capital’s outer districts, an industrial area, now mostly deserted. It was a weekend, she realized.
She listened, waiting for any sound, any sign that her pursuer was approaching. She knew he was, as much by gut as anything material, but she’d relied on her instincts many times, and they hadn’t failed her yet. The agent was good. She’d tried to lose him, but she hadn’t managed to shake the pursuit. She didn’t have any more time to waste…and she wasn’t going to let Lille get away.
That left her one choice.
She gripped the gun tightly. It wasn’t her own, trusty pistol, the sidearm that had served her on the frontier and across the Badlands for years. She hadn’t been able to get any weapons down to the surface, so she’d been compelled to make do with the best her nearly limitless funds could buy on Megara’s shadowy black market.
The weapon was good, military surplus most likely, and, by objective standards, better than her own old and worn pistol. Still, she’d have preferred her familiar weapons. Whatever their limitations, they had kept her alive for a long time, in many places and facing dangerous people.
But she’d never been matched against anyone as dangerous as Ricard Lille. Her immediate concern was the agent on her tail, one of Lille’s people sent out to find her, hunt her down. She wondered if she should be offended…by all accounts, Lille preferred to kill his own targets. Did he consider her unworthy of his time and effort?
Or, she dared to wonder…could he be scared? Andi wasn’t one to let her ego affect her actions, but she drew some solace from the thought that she’d shaken the Union’s famous assassin, and she chose to let herself believe it. She had come a second from killing the miserable piece of shit, and she knew Lille wasn’t used to anyone getting that close.
There was nothing down there, no movement, no shadows. She wondered if she’d lost her pursuer after all. She felt the temptation to take a few steps forward, to look around the corner and see if it was clear.
No…
Her instincts were screaming at her.
He is there…he’s waiting for you to show yourself…
It was a test of wills, and Andi Lafarge had never met her match for pure stubbornness. She stood in place, a stone statue, her eyes fixed on the masonry corner of the building. Her pursuer—her quarry as well—was just behind there. Probably wondering if I’m here, the same thoughts going through his head as mine.
She was resolute. They couldn’t both win. One of them would lose.
One of them would die. And that bastard out there stood between her and her vengeance. Between her and Ricard Lille’s head.
Another few minutes passed, silent, frustrating…and then her opponent made a mistake. He crept forward, slowly, and the glimpse Andi caught of his shadow was the confirmation that she was right, that there was someone out there, stalking her.
Time for the hunter to be hunted…
She wished she had a rifle, a sniper’s weapon like the one she had stashed on Pegasus. But she’d been in a hurry, and she’d had to take what she could. There had been the prospect of obtaining higher grade weapons, but each transaction carried risk with it, and if she’d ended up in a Troyus City prison, at the very least, Lille would escape.
At worst, he was involved in whatever was happening on Megara. It would be almost embarrassingly easy to have her killed in prison.
She remained still, her arm aching from being stretched out for so long. She fought the urge to move, even to allow her hand to shake. She knew where her enemy would appear, and she was just as aware that she’d have one shot, and no more. That wasn’t Ricard Lille down there, but it was a good bet she was facing a hardcore Sector Nine agent, a pro…and if he was one of Lille’s people, probably an expert killer.
She waited, each second dragging out with excruciating slowness, the burn in her arm growing stronger. She could feel the sweat forming on her forehead, sliding down from her hair to her neck, but she ignored it.
And then it was done, in an instant she could barely remember after it passed.
She’d pulled the trigger, the action sparked by some instinct as much as any real conscious decision. The agent had stepped forward, cautiously, peering around the corner.
It had been enough. Her shot rang out, and the projectile hit the man’s face, impacting on the two or three centimeters he’d shown. He lurched backward as the bullet tore a trench along the side of his cheek, and he stumbled…and when he did, he slipped out behind his cover, giving Andi a wide open second shot.
Crack.
One more bullet…and it was over. Her second bullet had taken the top half of the agent’s head off clean. The body stayed where it was, on its knees, for another instant, hideously grotesque and certainly dead. Then it fell to the ground with a lifeless thud.
Andi was already on guard, looking for any signs of another pursuer. But there were none. She’d won this exchange, taken out the hunter who’d been stalking her.
Now it was time for the real duel, the final struggle.
She stood up and let her arm drop, slipping the pistol into the waist of her pants and massaging her aching triceps with the other hand. She took a deep breath, and held it for a few seconds before exhaling.
Then she turned and walked back around the building.
It was time to find Ricard Lille.
She wouldn’t miss, not again.
* * *
Gary Holsten ran forward, across the street and toward the building up ahead. Peterson had urged him to stay back, but the former head of Confederation Intelligence had sent enough people to do his bidding. Peterson and his handful of Marines were assaulting a building defended by an unknown number of enemy agents and guards, and they were doing it to rescue his friend. He didn’t have it in him to sit back and wait in relative safety.
He didn’t have any body armor, but neither did the Marines. That was an unavoidable downside of laying low to avoid unwanted attention. Peterson’s people hadn’t been able to bring much of their gear to Megara with them, and now
they were armed with a miscellaneous complement of guns left over from the raids that had freed Holsten and Tyler Barron. Those weapons had mostly been obtained through shady means, paid for by Andi Lafarge, but hopefully they would be sufficient. Holsten had no idea how many defenders were inside the building, but he’d watched at least a dozen pour out and scatter into the streets, so his guess was there were only a few left.
He’d almost sent Peterson’s Marines after the agents Lille had sent out, but he’d hesitated, and it had only been a moment later that he’d realized the agents rushing out into the street would be after Andi Lafarge. He no longer doubted that she was the one who’d some so close to killing Lille, and beyond his friendship for her, he felt a wave of guilt for recruiting her to go to Dannith in the first place. He’d been careless, practically handed her to Ricard Lille, and now he began to realize that she must have suffered more than he’d imagined during her captivity.
He raced across the street as sporadic fire came from the building. He heard a bullet zip past him, far too close for comfort, and a few seconds later, one of the Marines stumbled forward and fell to the ground. He tried to get a glimpse at the man as he raced by, but he couldn’t get a good look. And there was no time to waste. They had to get inside and take out Lille’s people.
Then they could rescue Van Striker, assuming Holsten was right, and his friend was in the building.
And then you have to find Andi…before Ricard Lille does.
One of the Marines tossed a grenade toward the door, the resulting explosion blasting it to twisted shards, and then those in the lead began to slip inside, firing as they did.
Holsten reached the entrance a few second later, right behind Jon Peterson. The two men ran right through the opening, each of them swinging around to avoid the sharp metal protrusions remaining where the door had once been. Holsten caught a glimpse of movement off to his right. He felt a burst of adrenaline, a wave of fear, as he brought his rifle around clumsily. But before he’d managed to take any aim at all, he heard a series of cracks…and the figure he’d seen doubled over and fell back down the staircase behind him.
He turned and saw Jon Peterson, his rifle extended…along with two of the other Marines. He hadn’t been able to tell if the man he’d seen had been armed, but he had an unpleasant feeling in his gut he’d have been dead if the Marines hadn’t reacted as quickly as they had.
He shook off the creepy feeling, and pushed back on the fear. There were at least three of Peterson’s people down, and maybe more. They’d risked their lives, perhaps lost them…they’d come with him because he believed Van Striker was in the building. It was time to see if he’d been right, or if they’d risked so much for nothing.
“Watch out, Jon…Ricard Lille was in here. He’s dangerous.” The words seemed foolish to him, even as he heard them over the din of battle. They were in the middle of a firefight, everything was dangerous.
But Ricard Lille was dangerous.
“Got it.” The colonel’s voice sounded stunningly calm, and not for the first time, Holsten was amazed at the professionalism and skill of the Confederation’s Marines.
He lurched forward, following Peterson toward the stairs. If Striker was in the building, they had to get to him before one of Lille’s people—or Lille himself—decided they were overrun and put a bullet in the admiral’s head.
Four or five of the Marines had moved to the upper levels already, but the sounds of fighting had died down from that direction.
Holsten raced down, betting Lille would have Striker in some cellar or underground location. He took two stairs at a time, bounding down almost recklessly. There was a hall at the bottom of the staircase, and he stopped as quickly as he could, looking in both directions. Peterson’s Marines had gone both ways, and Holsten flipped a coin in his head and moved down to the right, following the colonel himself. He’d gone perhaps ten meters when Peterson stopped abruptly. Holsten felt a rush of panic, a sudden feeling that they were too late, that they’d find Striker dead.
Or he’s not here at all, and all you managed to do was spook Lille enough to kill him, wherever he is.
Even as the dark thoughts grew on him, though, he could hear and see a commotion ahead…and then two Marines, helping a hunched over figure walk slowly down the corridor.
“Van!” Holsten jumped forward, showing an uncharacteristic display of emotion. Striker had become his closest friend in the eight years since he’d engineered the admiral’s promotion to the top command. And while he’d come to Megara, in part, to find his comrade, he realized that he hadn’t really believed he would succeed.
“What took you so long?” Striker was clearly exhausted, but he managed a grin for his rescuers. Then, more seriously. “What the hell is going on, Gary?”
“It’s a long story, Van…and I don’t have all the answers yet.” He paused. “It’s not good…in fact, we need to be damned careful, or the whole lot of us will get arrested.” He turned and looked back at the Marines standing behind him. “But first things first. And that’s finding Ricard Lille.”
“He’s gone, Gary.” It was Jon Peterson.
“He was here…just before we hit the place.”
“I know, but my people have searched every centimeter of the building. There’s a tunnel leading to a culvert on the next street. My guess is, that’s our rat’s escape route. I sent two of my people after him…but I think we’re too far behind.”
Holsten sighed. First, he was sure they were too late. Lille had slipped right through his fingers.
And, second, two wasn’t a big enough force to send after Ricard Lille, not even two Marines.
“All right,” Holsten said grimly. “Let’s get the hell out of here and back to someplace we can regroup. We’ve got to get to the bottom of what’s happening here on Megara.”
He looked down at the floor for a few seconds, and then he continued.
“And we have to find Ricard Lille. Whatever’s going on, there’s no question in my mind he’s neck deep in it.”
And he’s out there. He’ll be hunting Andi now.
He respected the hell out of Andi Lafarge…but, as good as she was, he didn’t think she could beat Lille. Not when the assassin knew she was coming for him.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Approaching Transit Point
Ventica System
Year 317 AC
Stockton grimaced as the pressure from his acceleration overwhelmed his fighter’s dampener systems and slammed into him with 8g of relentless force. That was better than the 30g or more his engines were actually putting out, but it was still damned uncomfortable.
But there was no choice, not anymore.
He’d almost made it out without notice, but now he had a small enemy ship on his tail, an escort of some kind.
He was burning fuel he couldn’t spare, but his fighter handled like a pig after his makeshift modifications to add to his fuel capacity. He didn’t wish the Hegemony had fighters—he couldn’t imagine a worse development than that—but he missed his days of flying his Lightning fitted out as an interceptor. He was a virtuoso in the cockpit, and that sleek, fast ship had been his instrument.
As bad as any bomber was, by comparison, his own half-assed arrangement of extra fuel tanks was a complete disaster. He doubted he could beat a rookie from the Academy in a dogfight with the cumbersome thing, but fortunately, the frigate—or whatever the enemy called their smaller vessels—on his tail wasn’t any more maneuverable.
It was, however, fast. The Hegemony ship was accelerating after him, blasting its engines at nearly 80g. It was still a good way behind, but there was no doubt it could catch him…if whoever was in command wanted it badly enough. Stockton would get to the transit point before the vessel closed to range. One question loomed, and it carried with it the prospects of his survival. Would they chase him through the point? Were they willing to blast halfway across the next system to chase down a stray fighter? He hoped they wouldn’t, but his tho
ughts were darkened by the realization that he, himself, almost certainly would if he’d been giving the orders.
He checked his scanners, his eyes focused on the range display. He’d be through in less than ten minutes…and if the enemy continued at full thrust, he’d know an hour later, maybe sooner. If the escort came through the point, there wasn’t much doubt they would pursue him as far as they had to…and that meant his chance of escape would be about as close to zero as he could comprehend. He’d try to lose them, but with the Hegemony’s advanced thrust technology, there wasn’t much chance of that. His hope for escape rested on the enemy deciding he wasn’t worth the trouble.
That was true, to a point. One battered fighter was no threat to the Hegemony fleet…but he carried information now, data that he had to get to Admiral Winters. Did the Hegemony leaders realize how crucial it was for the Confederation command to understand their logistical capability? Or was that just normal to them?
Stockton didn’t know…but he would soon.
He watched as he approached the transit point, and he held his breath as his tiny craft slipped into the strange, still-poorly understood tube that offered the only way of effectively traveling at speeds beyond that of light. He’d never been a big fan of the feeling of transiting, and his own experience at long-distance flights had made it painfully clear to him that it was a damned sight more unpleasant in a small, unshielded fighter.
But it was his only hope to escape, and he gripped the sides of his chair and gritted his teeth as he felt the strange, alternate reality of the tube sweep over him.
