Ghosts of Empire (Book 4 of The Empire of Bones Saga)

by Terry Mixon

  Sean couldn’t believe he was even trying this. He had a ring of marines around the council building, entrenched with heavy weapons. At his command, they’d storm the building after pinnaces took out the defensive positions. Inside five minutes, they’d have most areas under their control.

  So, instead of going with that relatively safe plan, he was sneaking through the sewers with his rag-tag team of marines and the coordinator’s closest confederates. Their plan? To find a spot where they could breach an unused sub-basement with a shaped plasma charge. Then they’d infiltrate the more traveled corridors and try to rescue the coordinator.

  What could possibly go wrong?

  The coordinator’s tech wizard had a scanner of some kind and was probing the walls of the wretched tunnel. The incredible stench didn’t faze the woman in the slightest.

  “I think about here.” She tapped the moldy, stained plascrete beside her. “This should be about three meters thick and heavily reinforced. You’ll want to keep from going overboard with the blast. If you take out the wall on the other side of the room, you might bring down the level above it. That one has machinery that will be noted if it goes offline. And it might collapse this whole section of the building”

  “Lovely. Everyone, spread out. If this building is so shielded, how do you know where to place the charges?”

  “Power conduits,” the woman said as she made her way past him, wisely retreating down the sewer. “I can see the ones feeding the area around the council building and they give me distances.”

  “So, you’re guessing.”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t have to be insulting. This is much more refined than a guess.”

  He raised his hands in surrender. “Have it your way.”

  The marine armorer carefully placed a plasma charge on the wall. They could tailor the output by regulating how much plasma it generated. That theoretically allowed them to use only the force necessary. They’d know in just a minute how good the tech lady was.

  “We’re ready, sir,” the man said. “We need to pull back about fifty meters. I can remotely detonate it at that point.”

  Once they were in place, he made sure the marines were ready to charge and gave the order to go.

  The explosion was more significant than he’d expected, but still low key. The plasma flash was blinding, but they’d shielded their eyes. Once it was done, they rushed in. The hole through the wall was large enough for them to use, but still bubbled with heat.

  One look through told him that the blast had trashed the room, but it hadn’t done more than blacken the far wall. The tech had called it almost precisely. Dinner was on him if they made it through this alive.

  The marines tossed heat resistant material over the shattered remnants of the wall and scrambled into the council building. They divided into teams to hit the critical areas as quickly as possible. He led his people up three levels to near where the coordinator’s office was and waited for the word that everyone was in place.

  One by one, the teams checked in. When the last one was ready, he gave the order. “Go. Go. Go.”

  * * * * *

  Kelsey watched the gas giant through Persephone’s passive scanners as they entered orbit. It was beautiful, in a cold, ethereal way. All pale colors in sharp bands. A darker blue storm that was probably bigger than Avalon churned along the equator.

  She and the marines were strapped into their slots on the two pinnaces the Marine Recon ship boasted. They’d had to leave Invincible’s pinnaces back at Boxer Station. They weren’t stealthy enough.

  They slipped past the protective station without it seeing them. Based on the way the missiles and beam emplacements were laid out, it wouldn’t be able to shoot at them now. That was one less thing to worry about. She didn’t know if there were other stations hidden in the planet’s depths, but that was a problem for another day.

  The station hosting the battlecruisers wasn’t scanning, but they’d be hard to miss if anyone was looking at the area visually. Their only chance for success was to slip up completely unseen.

  Persephone would stay in the clouds above the battlecruisers. The stealthed pinnaces would drop down as quickly as possible and try and land on the station before anyone saw them.

  “Talbot, is everyone ready?” she asked.

  The marine nodded. “Ready, Princess. Say the word and we drop down on these bastards and ruin their day.”

  They’d crammed almost two hundred marines into the two pinnaces. A third more than they were rated for. Yet that was a ridiculously small number of people to storm a space station and four battlecruisers. Less than forty on each team.

  The only saving grace was that the enemy had to have even less people. Not counting any automated weapons platforms, of course. If those were active, they’d all die.

  “Kelsey, we’re in position,” Jared said over the encrypted combat link. “They’re not showing any sign they know we’re up here. Once you cut free and start dropping, you’ll be at the station in less than sixty seconds. Are you ready?”

  “As ready as we’ll ever be. Everyone, stand by for drop.”

  “Good luck.”

  The pinnaces cut loose and fell like stones into the pale clouds.

  * * * * *

  Abigail happened to be pouring a drink when she felt something shake the building. Just a little. The ripples in the expensive alcohol told her she hadn’t imagined it.

  “Well, I think we might have some visitors,” she purred at Olivia. “If so, I’d best be on my way. I wouldn’t want to linger and get caught up in the blast. Do say hello to everyone for me. And pass along my heartfelt wishes for them to roast in Hell.”

  She sent the activation command to the warhead and the timer went live. Fifteen minutes. Now it was unstoppable.

  Olivia couldn’t respond. After a while of listening to the woman rave, Abigail had gagged her. That was unexpectedly satisfying.

  The former coordinator of Harrison’s World glared at her replacement as Abigail made her way through the secret door behind the bar and into the small lift hidden there. It took her quickly down to an abandoned grav train station.

  The massive concourse must’ve once served a large section of the city, but now it sat forgotten. Not empty, though. A shiny new grav train waited to whisk the coordinator away to safety in case of a dire emergency.

  And it would fulfill that function. The title was hers. And the best part? Abigail could blame the explosion on her enemy. Nothing could stop her now.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Sean led the men and women under his command toward the coordinator’s office. They had stunners out as their primary weapons because they’d rather not injure any more people than absolutely necessary.

  He’d visited the Imperial Senate building back on Avalon as a kid, and then later as a serving officer called to give testimony on Fleet affairs. This place one-upped that august building in snoot factor. Seriously, who put marble busts of all the former councilors in little alcoves? After five hundred years, they were everywhere.

  Everything around them spoke of large amounts of money spent for the sole purpose of showing off wealth and power. As corrupt as some of the senators at home were—and he knew one such man very well from his association with Captain Breckenridge—they weren’t in the same league as this.

  Thankfully, most of the defenders were elsewhere. Probably guarding the most likely exterior approaches. All he saw at first were civilians, who wisely fled.

  That changed when they arrived at the executive wing. Armed and uniformed security commanded them to halt and then opened fire with flechette pistols. His people outnumbered them, though, and their stunners carried the day. One of the coordinator’s people was badly wounded in the firefight, so he detailed a few people to guard their backs and watch over her.

  Sean expected the coordinator’s office to be under heavy guard, but the outer office was deserted. The marines flowed into the main room and cleared it
quickly. Coordinator West sat tied to a chair and gagged.

  He pulled the cloth from her mouth. “Are you okay?”

  “No. She has a nuclear device in the building. It’s activated and on a short timer. We need to initiate an evacuation right now. We only have ten minutes.”

  Sean used his knife to cut her free. “Most of the people won’t get clear in time. Where is it?”

  The coordinator’s tech woman ran behind the desk. “The computer is wiped, but the basic system controls are still intact. I think I can—”

  A loud alarm began wailing outside the door. The tech looked smug. “Fire alarm. It won’t get them far, but it’s better than nothing.”

  Coordinator West rubbed her wrists and stood as soon as she was free. “Abigail used the secret escape route in this office. I know where it lets out. I need some people to get me there fast in whatever grav vehicle we can find. We might be able to get the code from her.”

  Sean pulled out his Fleet com. “I need a pinnace on the roof right now with two squads of marines. Eliminate the defensive positions and pick up Coordinator West. Take her wherever she wants to go. And fall back ASAP. There’s an armed nuke in the building on a short timer. Ten minutes.”

  They reversed course and made their way back toward the rotunda. Muted explosions outside told him the marines were carrying out his orders.

  The tech came up beside him. “I think I know where the bomb is. If we can get to it, I might be able to disarm it.”

  “What are you?” he asked. “Some kind of vid hero? How can you do all this stuff?”

  “Years of hacking everything that can be hacked. And some things that supposedly can’t. No matter how well shielded this thing is, there’ll be radiation. If they wanted to keep that under wraps, the only place that makes sense is the vault.”

  “Vault? Like in a bank vault?”

  She nodded. “Pretty much. It’s under the rotunda.”

  Olivia smiled grimly. “That would be just like her.” She ducked into an office and wrote something on an important looking piece of paper. “Here’s the door code.”

  Sean grabbed the marine armorer. “We might be able to get to the nuke. Can they be disarmed?”

  The marine nodded. “If it’s not too complex or booby-trapped. It’s possible.”

  “Come with me. Everyone else, go with the coordinator.”

  * * * * *

  The pinnaces dropped out of the clouds right on top of the station. Kelsey could clearly see it on the visual scanners as they fell toward it. She waited for it to open fire, or for one of the battlecruisers to blast them, but nothing happened.

  Right before they hit the station, the pilots savagely decelerated and clamped onto the hull. The ramp went down and a marine tossed out a magnetic breaching charge. Once the ramp was back up, they remotely detonated it.

  The shock wave shook the pinnace badly, but didn’t dislodge them. The marines lowered the ramp again and poured out of the pinnace. They made it into the station without any problems and bypassed the closest emergency containment doors.

  She expected an alarm to be sounding, but it was quiet inside. There was computer access, but it rejected her attempts to interface.

  “Talbot, take your men and block access to battlecruisers one and two,” she ordered. “Lieutenant Evans, you have three and four. I’ll find the station command center.”

  “On it,” Talbot said. “Keep your head down, Princess. We have unfinished business.”

  She grinned and led her team deeper into the station. There were no markings to indicate where anything was. She’d just have to assume that the control center was somewhere in the central shaft.

  They took to the stairs to make sure no one ambushed them in the lifts. Somewhere in the distance, she heard the sound of flechette rifles firing.

  “This is team three,” a voice said. “We’re encountering hostile fire from the docking port to battlecruiser three. Men without combat armor. We’re going in.”

  A few moments later, teams four and one called in. They’d gained access to battlecruisers one and four without resistance. Those ships seemed to be in standby mode. Main power was offline.

  Talbot called in last. “We’re getting fire from battlecruiser two. Nothing serious. We’re going in.”

  “This is team three. We’re in. The battlecruiser also seems to be in standby mode. Main power offline. We’re starting our sweep.”

  “Talbot here. Battlecruiser two is online. Main power active. We’re heading for engineering.”

  Kelsey keyed her com. “Teams one, three, and four, if you do not encounter resistance, detach your reserves to assist team two. Lock down your engineering spaces to keep the main systems offline.”

  A stream of acknowledgements flowed back to her. If only one of the battlecruisers was active, they might be able to win this even if it got away.

  “Persephone, this is Bandar. Three of the battlecruisers seem to be offline. We’re securing them. Be ready if the last one gets away.”

  “Copy,” Jared said. “We’re not seeing any action from the station above us, so I’m going to leave it be. If the battlecruiser breaks away, we’ll take it out. We’d have already opened fire on it, but the station raised battle screens as soon as you breached it. It’s brought targeting scanners online, too. That means it’ll lay into us as soon as we act. Do what you can to stop it from detaching.”

  “We’ll do our best. Bandar out.”

  That was about the time that the stairwell door below them opened and men poured in. They immediately opened fire on her.

  * * * * *

  Olivia raced to the roof of the council building and met the marine pinnace as it came roaring in for a landing. The far side of the roof was on fire. It looked as though something had exploded. She ran up the ramp as soon as it came down with the rest of the infiltration team at her heels.

  “I need to talk to the pilot,” she told the man with the headset. “To show him where to go.”

  “This way, ma’am.”

  He led her through a door at the front of the pinnace and to a small compartment where the two pilots sat.

  One of them, a woman, looked over her shoulder. “Sit down at the flight engineer’s console and tell me which way to go.”

  There was only one seat open, so Olivia sat and looked at the map the woman had put on display for her. “Go south. You’re looking for a warehouse near the edge of the city. I’ll find it before we get there. Make it fast. We don’t have much time.”

  “Roger that.”

  The woman turned and touched the controls. The pinnace lifted smoothly into the air and blasted forward, crushing Olivia into her seat with acceleration. Now she knew how thrilled and terrified her driver must’ve felt when he got to go fast.

  She tore her attention away from the pinnace and studied the map. Whoever had designed and installed the escape route used one of the city’s old grav train links. The line now terminated at a warehouse.

  “I have it.”

  “Excellent. Touch it on the screen.”

  Olivia touched the warehouse on the map.

  The pilot was silent a moment. “I have it. There look to be two normal ways in. A cargo loading area and a personnel door.”

  “There’s a disabled lift in the office area on the south side,” Olivia said. “Only, it’s not disabled. It leads down to a train station. My implants can open it and control the lift.”

  The pilot spoke softly, probably to the marines. Then she nodded. “Let me land the pinnace so you can approach from the street.”

  She brought the pinnace down and the marine that had brought Olivia up to the flight deck escorted her back out.

  The heavily armed marines surrounded her as she made her way into the building. The lift opened to her implant command. Half a dozen marines went in with her and pushed her behind them. That seemed fair. They had all that armor.

  She sent the lift down to the station below. The doors opened just i
n time for the train carrying Abigail to pull to a stop.

  The doors on the vehicle slid open and Abigail ran out, only to freeze when she saw all the weapons pointed at her.

  “I’ll wager this comes as a shock,” Olivia said. “Don’t you villains ever learn?”

  “But…How could you…I left you…”

  Olivia held out her hand to the nearest marine. “May I borrow your pistol?”

  The man handed her a flechette pistol that she could barely get her fingers around. It felt as though it weighed a ton.

  “I don’t have time to blather. Give me the code to disarm the nuclear device.”

  “Go screw yourself.”

  Olivia shot her in the leg. The pistol kicked harder than she’d expected. A big splotch of blood appeared on the other woman’s leg and she fell down screaming.

  “Is that enough or shall I shoot you in the other leg?”

  Abigail snarled at her. “You can go to hell. I’ve already killed millions and you’ll just shoot me anyway.”

  Olivia thought about that for a moment and nodded. “I think you’re right.” She raised the pistol and pointed it at the other woman’s head. “I should shoot you dead, but then I’d have to live with that memory in my head. I’ll just have to settle for something else.”

  She smashed the barrel of the weapon across Abigail’s face, breaking her nose. Far less satisfying, but not as cold as an on the spot execution.

  “We need to go, ma’am,” the marine said, gently taking his pistol back from her. “The LT says we only have five minutes to get clear of the area. If Commander Meyer can’t stop the bomb, we don’t want to be here when it goes off.”

  She let them hustle her and their sobbing prisoner back into the lift and prayed the commander was able to stop the looming atrocity.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Jared listened to the chatter between the teams with mixed emotions. They’d completely surprised the enemy, that was for sure. Three of the four battlecruisers were powered down and drawing needed resources from the station.