Morrow looked incredulous. “A bunch of soldiers? That’s the largest and best-equipped fighting force in the galaxy you’re talking about. They’ll freeze our assets. All that money you had? Gone.”
“They can’t freeze what they don’t know about,” Vess said. “You may think I’m a silly old man but age has made me wise. I’ve taken precautions for every eventuality. I have more money hidden away than the Imperium will ever know about. And I’m paying you handsomely for this mission, Eric, so we continue as normal, understood?”
Morrow let out an exasperated sigh and shrugged. “Sure, I guess so.”
“After we’ve rescued Georgia and the others, then we can decide what to do next,” Vess said.
“Agreed,” Baltimore said, nodding. “We’ll reach Savarea tomorrow so we might as well carry out our original mission.”
“That’s decided then,” I said. “Let’s try to get some sleep before we reach Savarea. We have no idea what we’ll find there so we need to be rested and alert.” I left the bridge and went back to my quarters. Once inside, I took the neglected glass of rum into the kitchen and poured its contents down the sink.
Then I went to bed and watched the stars through the window until I fell asleep.
CHAPTER 13
“CAPTAIN, you have incoming communication from the bridge.”
At first, I thought the female voice was coming to me in a dream but then I sat up in bed and realized it was coming from the speakers in my bedroom. Someone was calling me but when I hadn’t answered, the ship’s computer had decided to wake me.
“Blake,” I said groggily.
“We’re approaching Savarea, Captain,” Vess said. There was a note of extra excitement in his voice that I found annoying in my half-awake state. “Would you like to put together your landing team?”
I slid out of bed and rubbed my forehead with the heel of my hand, trying to dispel the grogginess I felt. “Get Hart to assemble a handful of his best men. As well as them, I’ll take Shibari and Baltimore. That should be more than enough for our first recon.”
“I’ll do that,” Vess said. “I’ll assemble everyone in Conference Room One”. He signed off.
I took a quick shower and dressed hastily before making my way to the conference room, where I found everyone I wanted on the landing team as well as Vess, who looked at me wide-eyed and expectant when I walked into the room. He looked wired but I guessed he was just overwhelmed by the fact that he might see his daughter today. I thought that unlikely because we had a big area to search for the survivors but I couldn’t blame Vess for being excited.
There was a buzz of nervous energy in the room. Hart had chosen three men and two women from his force. All five of them wore jungle camouflage and carried blaster rifles. And they followed Hart’s lead and stood at attention before me, as if I were carrying out an inspection.
Shibari wore her black and brown leather outfit and had armed herself with a crossbow that was slung over her shoulder and a katana sheathed at her hip. Also fastened to her belt was a leather bag that I assumed contained healing substances. The onna-bugeisha were known for their herbalism as well as their fighting prowess.
Baltimore had donned her Legion outfit. It was a form-fitting catsuit of dark blue flexi-armor with an insignia of crossed gladius—ancient Roman swords—beneath a spiked helmet on the left arm. She wore her blaster pistol at her hip and had a blaster rifle slung across her back. She also wore a sheathed gladius, which I’d heard was deadly in the hands of a legionnaire.
“This is a good team,” I said to Vess. “We’ll bring your daughter and the other survivors back.”
He beamed. “Excellent.”
“Listen up, everyone,” I said, addressing the landing team. “We don’t know what lies ahead of us today but we are skilled fighters. Whatever is thrown at us, we will deal with it. Those survivors are counting on us and we will not let them down. Everyone meet in the landing bay in thirty minutes. Dismissed.”
They left the room and headed for the transporters. Baltimore, Vess, and I went up to the bridge. Morrow had positioned himself at the flight yoke and was piloting the Finch through Savarea’s cloud layer.
“I thought we were going to take the shuttle to the surface?” I said to Vess.
“That was the plan, but Eric thought that if he can get the Finch closer to the planet’s surface, we can get a map of the area. The signal jammer on the planet prevents computer scans but the Finch can map the area visually using her hull cameras. The ship’s computer will put it all together into a map. It could prove useful.”
I nodded. “Good idea.” Looking at Morrow, I said, “Are you going to land on the planet’s surface?”
“No, I’m only going to get close enough to do some mapping. You can take the shuttle down to the surface.”
Baltimore handed me an earpiece. “Wear this. It will keep us in contact with the ship.”
I put the small of piece of plastic into my ear. Its size adjusted automatically to fit snugly.
“And put this on your uniform,” she said, handing me a small black button. “It’s a video camera. Morrow and Vess will be able to see what we see from here on the bridge.”
The button, which I could see was a tiny vidcam when I inspected it closely, had a pin attachment in its rear. I fastened it to the shoulder of my uniform. Morrow hit a switch and a screen on the wall displayed a view of the bridge from my cam. The word “Blake” was showing on the top right of the image. A second screen showed the bridge from a slightly different perspective with the word “Baltimore” in the corner.
“Looks like we’re good to go,” I said.
Baltimore nodded and turned to Morrow. “We’ll test the earpieces when we’re in the landing bay.”
Morrow gave her a thumbs-up.
“Be careful out there,” Vess said. “If I were fifty years younger, I’d be coming with you but these old bones mean I’m going to have to put my trust in you to bring my daughter back safely.”
“We’ll do our best,” Baltimore said.
We left the bridge and entered the transporter. Baltimore hit the button to take us to the landing bay. “You nervous?” I asked her when the door closed behind us.
“A little,” she admitted. “We don’t know what we’ll encounter down there. Anyone who isn’t nervous is a fool. Besides, nerves heighten the senses and that is useful in battle.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” I said.
The transporter doors slid open and we stepped out into the landing bay. Hart and his team stood by the shuttle in an orderly line, standing to attention as usual. Sumiko was kneeling on top of the tarp-covered tank, her eyes closed and head slightly bowed as she meditated. She was wearing a blue silk kimono decorated with embroidered gold flowers over her leather battle outfit. I noticed that the tank had Japanese characters painted in white along its side.
Sumiko must have detected my gaze upon her because she opened her eyes and leaped down from the tank, smiling as she walked over to the shuttle.
“Did you write that on the tank?” I asked her.
She nodded. “Yes, I did. I thought it deserved a name and so I gave it one.”
“Oh?” I asked, wondering if Vess knew his tank had been given a new lick of paint, “What does it say?”
“It says Doragon. It means dragon.”
“Very fitting,” I said.
She grinned and walked up the ramp into the shuttle. This wasn’t the luxury shuttle we’d arrived on; it was a military-grade personnel carrier with a rear loading bay. Instead of side hatches, it had a ramp at the rear that descended to allow equipment to be loaded or a large number of soldiers to exit the shuttle at the same time.
I followed Sumiko on board and went up front to the cockpit where Baltimore was playing with the controls, prepping us for flight.
I got into the seat next to her and strapped myself in. Vess’s voice came into my ear. “Captain, can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear,” I said. “Are you receiving me?”
“Yes, there’s a microphone built into the video camera. I’m receiving you clearly.”
“Great,” I said.
Baltimore made the same check with her earpiece and then hit a switch that raised the rear ramp. It whirred up into position and locked with a metallic clunk.
I looked out of the windshield, through the open bay doors to the blue sky beyond. To the naked eyes, it looked as if the landing bay were open to the elements but I knew that two invisible walls of energy stood between us and the opening, acting as an airlock.
As the shuttle approached the first wall, the energy field would drop and then rise immediately behind us. At that point, the outer wall would drop and let us fly out of the landing bay. It worked in reverse for craft entering the bay.
Even in space, the bay doors could be left open and personnel inside the bay were perfectly safe, protected by the invisible air lock. The lock was controlled by the ship’s computer and could be pressurized instantly.
We lifted off from the floor and moved slowly forward. Baltimore increased our speed and we flew out of the bay and into bright sunlight. The windshield dimmed automatically.
“You know where we’re going?” I asked Baltimore.
“According to the calculations, this part of the planet is where the life raft most likely landed. The shuttle’s underbelly cameras should relay a bird’s eye view to us anytime now. Then we can figure out where to land.”
The screen she’d indicated flickered to life and showed an aerial view of the topography below us. It looked like mostly jungle down there with a mountain range and river system.
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing at what looked like a small city in the middle of the jungle.
“Looks like buildings,” Baltimore said. “It’ll be as good a place to land as any.” She pushed a button that let her communicate with the people in the rear section of the shuttle. “Brace yourselves. We’re going in for a landing and it could be rough.”
“There should be rooftops or roads down there,” I told her. “The landing shouldn’t be that rough.”
She shook her head and began our descent. “Take a closer look at the screen. There’s nothing much down there other than rubble. The entire city’s been destroyed.”
CHAPTER 14
DESPITE HER WARNING regarding the landing, Baltimore managed to set the shuttle down as light as a feather on a road just outside of the city. The road had been ripped up and was now nothing more than a line of rubble leading through the trees to the ruined city. All of the buildings had been razed to the ground. It was impossible to know exactly when the destruction had occurred but it was obvious that nobody had lived here for a long time. The jungle was beginning to reclaim the ruins. Vines had spread over the rubble like green veins and a tall orange-colored grass was growing in places between the fallen buildings.
“Looks eerie,” I said to Baltimore.
She nodded. “Let’s go and take a closer look.”
We unstrapped our safety belts and went into the rear section of the shuttle. The ramp was already descending. Hart and his team were positioned by the opening, crouched in firing stances, blaster rifles braced against their shoulders. The ramps descended to the rubble, revealing dense jungle on either side of the road but nothing more.
We exited the shuttle and Baltimore pressed a button on a remote to raise the ramp and secure the craft. She put the remote in her pocket and said, “Vess, Morrow, are you receiving?”
Vess’s voice came into my ear through a hiss of static but I could still make out his words. “We’re receiving you just fine and we have clear video feed from your cameras.”
Baltimore looked at me. “Where do you suggest we search first, Captain? The jungle or the city?”
“Let’s try the city,” I said. “It seems the most obvious place for survivors to make a shelter.”
We scrambled over the rubble that had once been a road and made our way into the city, or what was left of it. There were some walls still standing but other than that, the entire area was nothing more than a heap of broken rocks.
“Hart, do you have the scanner?” I asked Hart who was scouting ahead.
“Yes, Captain.” He took it from his belt pack and held it in front of him, pointing it left and then swinging it to the right. The box emitted a steady tone. “No life forms detected,” Hart said.
“Okay, let’s move on and check it again in a few minutes.” I clambered over a pile of rocks that had once been a building, my eyes searching the ruins ahead for some sign of life, even though the scanner had said there was none. Maybe the survivors had avoided the city and made their shelter in the jungle. If so, there would be thousands of miles to cover, and we could never hope to do that on foot.
“Captain, I see something,” Sumiko said, pointing at a building that was partially standing. “A soldier.”
I raised my weapon along with everyone else. Sumiko advanced toward the building, crossbow in hand, moving as swiftly and silently as a cat. When she reached the doorway of the building, she stepped through it and disappeared for a moment. Then she reappeared and said, “They are Imperium soldiers. They are dead.”
I went over there and glanced inside the building. The two Imperium soldiers were wearing their battle suits—metal exoskeletons with an internal power generator that served as armor and increased the soldier’s mobility and strength— but had removed their helmets. Both men had clearly been dead a long time, their skin stretched tight over their skulls, their eyes gone.
One soldier had the name Higgs stenciled on his breastplate. Beneath the name, the armor had been destroyed by a blaster rifle, judging by the scorched hole that went through the steel and into the man’s body.
The other’s armor said his name was Davis. His suit was unmarked but when I looked closer at his body, I could see how he’d died. I looked at the others and said, “He slit his own wrists with his combat knife.” The knife lay on the ground a couple of inches from his hand. Both wrists had been cut open from the middle of the forearm to the base of the thumb. Davis had made sure he was going to bleed out quickly.
I crouched down and asked one of Hart’s men to help me roll the body onto its side so the breastplate pointed at the wall. The battle armor was heavy but we managed to pull and push the body into position after a couple of minutes of effort.
I opened a panel on the side of the torso and pressed the button that would play back the suit’s autolog. In the same way a ship recorded information to a log, the battle suits recorded audio and video automatically.
As well as being stored in the suit’s own memory, the data was constantly streamed over a secure network to higher-ranked officers in the chain of command. It enabled the Imperium to know exactly how a battle had been won or lost, how soldiers had died, and what mistakes were made. It was also useful when a soldier went AWOL or was captured, as it meant he could be found by tracing his stream.
I flicked the switch that would project the playback from a tiny lens that was built into the breastplate.
On the wall, an image appeared, showing the room in which we were standing. A voice said, “I’d rather die than become one of them.” I rewound the data a little and the image showed fighting in the ruined streets. The camera swung around violently and the noise of blaster shots filled the air. Then Davis shouted, “Higgs!” and moved forward to his companion, who was lying on the ground with a hole blasted in his breastplate. “Hang in there, buddy,” Davis said, grabbing Higgs beneath his arms and dragging him into the building we were in now.
The image shifted slightly as Davis sat down on the ground. Higgs was lying in the position he was in now, clearly dead. Davis’s voice sounded weak and frightened when he said, “This battle doesn’t make any sense. We’re fighting each other when we should be fighting the common enemy. Some of our men have been brainwashed or something, I don’t know. They went to explore the area to the east o
f the city and now they’re fighting on the side of the Horde. This shouldn’t be happening. We’re supposed to be on the same side.”
He paused and then said, “My best friend Sam Higgs is dead. He was shot by one of our own. At least he died fighting for the human race. At least he didn’t become one of the Horde.” He fumbled with something on his belt and held up the knife. “I can’t let what happened to the others happen to me. I’d rather die than become one of them.” Then he began cutting his wrists.
I turned off the log.
“He sacrificed himself rather than fight for the Horde,” Sumiko said softly. “He died a hero.”
“He did,” I said.
“He mentioned that the soldiers who became part of the Horde went to explore an area east of the city,” Baltimore said. “Morrow, did you manage to get a map of the area?”
In my ear, Morrow said, “Yeah, I got a rough map. I’m sending it down to your nav device now.”
Baltimore took a small tablet from her belt and turned it on. It showed an aerial map of the jungle, the city, the mountains, and the rivers. She moved her finger east from the city then stopped. “What’s this square building in the clearing to the east?”
“Hold on,” Morrow said, “I’ll try to intensify the image on our screen. Looks like it could be a temple or some kind of place of worship. It’s a tall building roughly pyramid-shaped and I can see a wide set of steps on one side.”
“Let’s check it out,” I said.
We moved east through the jungle and an hour later we left the ruined city behind and were approaching the area that the map showed as a clearing with a temple. Noises came to us through the trees; sounds of men talking and a chorus of angry hissing that must have come from snakes or lizard-like creatures.
We remained at the edge of the jungle and stayed low, hidden by dense ferns and thick vines as we gazed at the scene in front of us.
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