Home in the Stars Box Set

by Mason, Jolie

  Bravo Team spread out for cover to make a wider target because mechs don’t miss. Kent put his head up. One driver, no visible gunner and one big ass cannon a piece. That would do it, if you didn’t want anyone getting into your pirate base, he thought. No wonder the mercs up to now had been shit.

  Kent told Jace to keep his head down. The kid looked like he went off into a trance again, but he did what he was told. Kent turned his attention to grabbing shots when the mechs weren’t looking his way. The minute they targeted your position it was only a matter of time.

  Erickson moved low and fast down the hill toward the mechs’ position behind a landing platform. He tossed three charges over the barrier and ran back for the hill and cover. The closest mech opened fire on his position. Kent never saw if Erickson made it to cover before the line of pulsar shots reached him. The cluster bombs popped loudly just as one of the mechs listed to the left. He’d hit a leg. It could still fire though, damn it. The other mech stomped loudly toward the team, proving the bombs hadn’t been all that effective.

  The mech slowed considerably as it cleared the landing platform, each step like walking through water. Kent raised his scope to get a better look. The mechs were malfunctioning. They stopped firing on Bravo Team altogether.

  What just happened, Kent thought. He looked back to check on the kid and realization dawned. His eyes had the unfocused look they had had when he was back in the defense system. The kid must have hacked the mechs. Slowly, Jace’s eyes cleared.

  “What did you do?”

  The kid took his time, shook his head and finally answered. “Mechs are very vulnerable to hacking. Get into one system and you can tamper with them all. I messed with the code in all their mechs. They will come online again, but it’s going to be a while.”

  Across the comms, one of the men reported, “No sign of hostiles. Erickson, do you read?”

  “Package is safe. We’re close to Erickson’s position. Headed there now. Anyone got any charges to down these mechs before they wake up?”

  Sauren answered in the affirmative, and Kent saw her slim form leave cover to slap charges on the leg joints to blow them into a few hundred pieces.

  He signaled to Jace to move. They kept cover between them and the now open cargo bay, just in case. The mechs had made a mess in this area. He navigated the fallen boxes and broken beams carefully as he searched for the commander. Debris fell from a position low in the mountain of heavy equipment scattered all over what had once been carefully crated and packed goods.

  He saw a hand pushing at a large computer component. “We have Erickson. He may need a medic.”

  The computer trash didn’t look like it held any of the other debris off the commander, so Kent and Jace went to work moving the thing off the man’s body. Erickson took a great breath as soon as his torso was free, then a wracking cough. Two more of Bravo sped around the debris pile, one, obviously, the team’s medic.

  He told the commander to stay still, but the old man wouldn’t listen. Kent could have told the medic to save his breath. Erickson was a do or die type. Kent never did get along with those types. He was more of a just do it, kind of guy, He liked to leave the dying to the enemy.

  Erickson grimaced as he got a hand up off the ground. “It’s broken ribs. I’ve had it before. Let’s get moving.” He eyeballed Jace as he held his torso. “Package appears to be in good shape.”

  Kent laughed. “Your package just saved your asses. Could be he’s carrying you.”

  The men of Bravo Team gaped at Jace who merely stared back. The charges on the mechs exploded, echoing through the morning air.

  “All right,” Erickson growled. “Let’s move.” More quietly, he finished, “I really hate mechs.”

  The men converged on the large door carefully in a spread out formation. Erickson hated mechs, but Kent hated doorways. Behind every door he’d ever busted, there was a world of unknowns. He hated unknowns. Give him an open field fire fight any day.

  More boxes were stacked along the left wall almost to the high ceiling. Trucks and one shuttle remained parked in the center, the shuttle closest to the open door to allow it to fly quickly off base, he imagined. A long, gradual ramp led up to a console room on the right side. They double timed up the ramp to the target, while a few men did a perimeter sweep to clear the warehouse and loading zones.

  Kent and Jace were kept in the center of the group, so he only heard a close pop of pistol fire as the point man reached the console room’s door. Someone had been manning the room. Two bodies greeted them from the corner where they’d been dragged. He really hoped the young engineer could handle the bloody results of combat. This was no time for the kid to fall apart.

  The console room held nothing but lines of individual work spaces across both sides of a long rectangular design. An observation window ran the length of the narrow space. It was a prime target as targets go.

  Erickson ordered his men to cover the entrances and all ways of approach, but that wouldn’t make him or the kid invisible. Jace moved quickly to the main console and started overriding systems with his hands flying over the interfaces.

  “Beginning data mine, now”, the kid reported without missing a beat. His eyes unfocused again, staring into space, but his fingers never stopped moving on the interface keyboard. Something in the system must have alerted base personnel because shortly after the data download began, the enemy moved in quickly.

  Shots began to fire all over the cargo bay. Erickson had the left door, so Kent took the right one. A small security team in heavy armor entered through the open cargo bay. It was looking like the decision to keep it open as a calculated risk wasn’t going to pay off, but the alternate way out led through the base and hostile reinforcements.

  Kent fired off several rounds, actually taking out two of the hostiles on the ramp. One of bravo team got the other one. There would be more, he had no doubt. He scanned the bay through the massive open window. It was impact resistant, but he doubted it would stand up to heavy ammunition.

  The kid’s hands still flew.

  Two more security units stormed the doors, and Kent was too busy firing to worry about the plan. They were committed anyway. Once the kid got into the system, he was in there until he found his way out.

  “Jace, can you hear me?” he asked. “What’s our situation?”

  “57 percent acquired.” Jace’s voice sounded robotic, so Kent let the boy work.

  Armored security teams were being diverted to their position and were starting to swarm the door. It was then Kent began to hear sporadic firing on the troops outside which was odd seeing as all their troops were in here. Just as he started to worry about his weapon charge, the targets stopped creeping up on the ramp, and the weapons fire outside got closer.

  Caden Carnes rolled into the doorway and took cover behind a large crate. “Bravo, we have a new friendly”, Kent said into the comm. “Carnes, what are you doing?”

  “Alpha Team is away”, he replied as he ran up to the console room.

  “So, you just thought you’d stick around?”

  “You know me. I like to deviate. I’m a deviant. What’s our status?”

  Kent shook his head. “Halfway there. Heavy fire.”

  The large frame of glass had a few spiderweb cracks from stray shots, but it held so far. Jace sat still at the moment, waiting for some program to run or something, he presumed.

  Shots fired from a position directly parallel the console room. A few fighters made it through a vent shaft in the far left wall, and had found good cover on the other side of the huge bay.

  “Bravo, we have company. South wall. Three hostiles. One heavy drone.”

  “Shit”, Kent breathed. “That’s a problem. Mechs are back up.”

  Drones were small, hovering mechs. Sometimes, they called them tin cans of death. They fit through small spaces, moved faster than any man, and made big fire. This was a set back.

  The whole fire fight was visible from the console r
oom. Erickson directed his men on the drone’s location as it moved low. One of Bravo team managed to get off a perfect head shot on one of the men who had dropped through the shaft, leaving his partner and the drone.

  Heavy munitions fired twice in bright red blasts as the drone hit one of the team.

  “Drone is on main floor near the shuttle. Fortified position.”

  “Damn it. Roger.”

  Kent continued to fire down the ramp as the trooper in his thick, black-visored helmet occasionally put his head out to fire back. Kent crouched just outside the console room using the solid rail as cover. “Somebody wanna shoot back at this thing, or are we just gonna dance with it?”

  “Commander, I’m closing on its position with an incendiary.”

  Kent didn’t recognize the voice, but he heard Erickson’s affirmative. Before the other soldier could make it to the target, though, the drone clicked twice, turned to the console room window, and fired two long blasts at the package. Almost as though it had been remotely ordered to ignore the shots already fired at it, overriding its survival programming. Kent felt the blast lift him and throw him into the wall where the ramp curved upward. His head buzzed and he couldn’t hear a thing. The fuzzy ringing went on as he shook his head to clear it and, somewhat successfully, tried to get up. Another explosion rang out closer to the shuttle’s position as one of the men hit the drone with the incendiary.

  Too late, Kent thought, slowly realizing that both his best friend and the kid were in the path of the drone’s final blast. He ran back up the ramp and started pushing debris out of his way. He found Caden first, unconscious but breathing. “We need a medic”, he shouted, but his voice sounded very far away. It wasn’t the first time he’d had concussive deafness, however, he wondered if this time might be the last time. He should be hearing more.

  He left Caden and searched the mess for Jace. It didn’t take long, and the kid was a bloody mess. He was just a mass of wounds. “Package is damaged. I repeat. Medic, now!”

  Outside, Morgan’s fighters began firing on the troops left between them and the shuttle. Erickson was nowhere to be found yet, so Kent started bellowing orders. “We need a truck. Someone get one of these fuckers moving.”

  In moments an engine fired up, and the two team medics were loading Jace in the back of the very heavily armed, very expensive equipment.

  Kent turned to see a young merc from Bravo help a limping Caden to the truck. He did a head count as the men converged on the vehicle. He thought there were some losses, but he’d find out in a moment. Medics loaded up two more bodies, as he reported back to the Bell that they were coming out in a stolen truck, and with a dead commander.

  “Inform the fighters", he said in clipped, angry tones. When the little things started to go to shit, you might as well scrub the whole damn day. Happened every damn time. Kent jumped up on the gun and banged hard on the roof of the cab. “Drive on."

  *****#*****

  Ari listened to the reports till she thought she might go mad. The shuttle was en route to the Bell with casualties. She ran for the bay doors where the medic teams were waiting for hold compression.

  She stayed back, as much as she wanted to pound forward and get there, because her medical was the best. Alpha team arrived on the Merriweather in excellent time. They’d gotten in and out with the miners, and allocated their team to the med bay on the Merriweather. She’d already heard from her brother who was being quickly given medical care and debriefed.

  But she didn’t know what she would find in that cargo hold when the doors opened. Jace. Caden. All they knew was there were casualties. Her stomach flipped again and again as the damn ship seemed to take forever to turn one little console light green. She stared at that light mounted beside the doors, willing it to change.

  Finally, the wide doors hissed open and medical teams rushed in to see to the wounded with Ari right behind them. She saw Jace’s hair first, mussed and bloody on the stretcher. His face was white as paste. One of her ship’s nurses waved a small light at Jace’s eyes, then he shouted orders. “Medbay Now!” Two of the staff pushed Jace out and into the bowels of the Carry Bell as she stood there, paralyzed.

  Her eyes cut back to the shuttle as Caden limped out leaning on a man she’d seen somewhere before with golden hair and skin tanned like he lived on a beach. Caden was clearly in pain, but he didn’t look horribly injured, not like Jace had. He watched her with heavy eyes, as she processed that Jace was likely dying in her medbay. Imperceptibly, he lifted his left arm and motioned for her with one hand, even as the other held onto his friend’s shoulders.

  She broke and ran for him. His balance was weak, and she nearly took them both down, but she burrowed into his arms and cried. His friend must have kept them upright. She heard Caden’s weary, soothing words, but she didn’t entirely understand any of them.

  “Captain, let’s get him to the medbay. Captain?”

  Somehow, she ended up under his other arm as he limped between her and his friend, Abernathy, someone called him. All Ari was aware of was time moving too slowly, while the man she had to finally admit to herself she still loved bled all the way to medbay.

  *****#*****

  Caden drifted on pain blockers as a medic put his now knitting bone in a brace. Equipment made varying sounds throughout the packed medbay as staff worked feverishly on multiple wounded. Anyone with med training was in there to free up the real doctors to handle the severely wounded. The number of wounded was higher than expected. Abernathy sat on a stool in the corner as the young ship’s pilot bandaged the gash on his head, and told him to keep his hands to himself archly.

  Ari stood nearby leaning on a squared column staring toward the sterile surgery room in the back where Jace was probably fighting for his life. That thought penetrated the haze of his pain meds with profound regret. He’d promised her he’d keep the boy safe, and he thought he might have failed. He’d been in and out in the shuttle.

  Caden raised a hand, thinking she must be closer than she appeared. He reached for her. His hand brushed down her spine, making her turn. Her brown eyes tracked quiet tears as she stood stoically expecting the worst. “Ari”, he mumbled with a fuzzy tongue and fuzzier mind.

  She came to him slowly, almost reluctantly.

  He was, at that moment, mostly a creature of instinct, since his higher brain functions were seriously impaired from medicine and concussion. His right hand wrapped around her shoulder and twined around her neck pulling her face to his. He could feel the salty tears on his own skin. He wiped her tears with his left hand. “Valah, don’t cry.”

  “I’m not crying.”

  “Shh. I’ll fix it. What’s wrong?”

  “You don’t know?”

  He shook his head, and, instantly regretted it. The room spun as dots appeared from every corner. “Jace”, she whispered. “They don’t know...”

  A crackling hiss sounded nearby. “Captain?”

  Ari turned away from his arms leaving him cold, alone and slightly confused. He watched as she wiped the tears from her face. The medic from Bravo team looked at her sympathetically. “Dr. Zann will be out in a moment. There are some developments, but Jace is alive.”

  She breathed in deeply and let it out on a small giddy laugh. “Alive.” She repeated the word in amazement. The door to the sterile room cracked one more time, and Caden pushed back up on his bed. It hurt, causing him to swear. A man wearing blue medical gear approached with a dignified gait as he barely looked up from his handset. He finally did look at them when he was almost on top of them.

  “Captain, I’ve sent for your brother. We have some decisions to make. Your son’s file is somewhat sketchy. He needs a tissue match, and as I look over your DNA profiles I doubt your brother will be a sufficient match. I have some concerns about yourself. There is a technique that could be utilized.”

  All the words echoed for Caden as he listened. Ari’s son. Ari had a son. His brain worked really hard to wrap the phrase and it�
�s implications around into some sense, but it kept coming back to Ari having a son who was apparently Jace. That made no sense.

  The doctor droned on a little more, while Caden looked at Ari for clarification because he wasn’t getting any clearer on his own. Ari stood stiff and pale, paler than he’d ever seen her.

  “Dr. Zann, what is it you need for him?”

  “In running a routine search of the Imperial Medical Database, Mr. Carnes registered as a paternal match with your son’s DNA. We hoped we could get his consent for a tissue transplant. We think he is the most viable candidate for transplant.” Ari bowed her head, then she looked at him. Her big, beautiful eyes filled with emotions he couldn’t read.

  “Dr. Zann, I’ll need to talk to Mr. Carnes. He’ll need an explanation of events, and then

  I’m sure he’ll have an answer for you.” Her voice felt flat, cold for the warm woman he knew.

  The older man looked them both over in surprise, suddenly aware that he’d stumbled into something for which he’d never prepared in medical training. A major family secret.

  The secret whispered itself through Caden’s scattered brain. Jace was his, his son, his and Ari’s. He looked at her in shock. His eighteen year old son. His and Ari’s.

  “Ari?”, he asked a million questions in that name.

  Zann retreated to a safer corner with his data and his shocked eyes.

  “Ari, how do I have a child?”

  She turned to him with eyes flashing fire. “The usual way, Caden, or had you forgotten?”

  No, he thought. He’d never forgotten that.

  “So...”

  “You left for school, and I had a baby.”

  She leaned tiredly against the medbay wall wrapping her arms around herself, as though she wanted to protect herself from him.

  “You had a baby”, he repeated, not quite processing the words. She’d been seventeen.

  “Yes,” she said waspishly. “I had a baby, and Brinn raised my baby! Brinn and my brother kept him safe. We pretended he was their child for years to protect him from your father.”