But you can’t kill him!
That voice. The one that lingered within. Most of the time he was able to suppress it, but every so often, the shadow of his former self made its presence known. He pushed it farther inside him.
The tractor field pulled the transport inside the hangar deck. It slowed, descended, and landed before him. His soldiers marched out and lined each side of the hull. Nash couldn’t afford to be surprised by one of Cassidy’s tricks.
“Open the airlock!” he ordered them.
A soldier opened it with the manual override while the others stood by it with their weapons raised. Nash walked up to the airlock and peered inside. It was empty. Except for a lone figure sitting at the helm.
“Cassidy, I don’t know what you’re playing at, but it’s time to come out.”
There was no answer. Nash took one of his soldier’s guns and ambled inside. He crept toward the pilot’s chair and spun it around. It wasn’t Jason. It was one of his soldiers. Nash poked at his chest armor, but there wasn’t any movement. He grabbed each side of the helmet and pulled it off.
He lurched backward in shock. Instead of a face, he found a clock staring back at him. It activated and counted down.
10… 9… 8…
Cassidy!
Nash hurried toward the airlock and burst out onto the hangar deck, throwing his hands in the air. “Move! Everyone out!”
He ran ahead of his soldiers to the door. A bright light flashed, and a blast threw him to the bulkhead of the outer corridor.
With a thump, his body numbed, and shrapnel rained down on him. The lights flickered out, and his eyes closed.
I told you, you couldn’t kill him!
Chapter 10
Transport Pod Maybelle
“Latching on, now!”
Tyler gently maneuvered the Maybelle and connected the small pod to the outer hull of the weapon ship. Marquez stood behind him, watching his monitor.
“The scanners have detected a reverberation,” he said. “Looks like the bomb went off. It worked.”
Jason waited by the airlock. When he got the green light ensuring a seal, he opened it, revealing the obsidian black hull of the weapon ship. He turned to Althaus and Higgs. “Let’s get cutting.”
The pair stepped up with their laser cutters and burned into the hull. Jason bit his bottom lip, hoping Nash wasn’t on the hangar deck when the bomb exploded. It was part of the plan that most rankled him. But if they were any chance of getting aboard without being noticed, they’d had no other choice.
Jason assumed the Seekers would detect them on their scanners so decided to use the hijacked transport as a diversion. With Aly’s help, they fashioned an airtight walkway between the transport and the Maybelle’s dorsal maintenance hatch so it was able to ride beneath the larger alien vessel undetected. To the Seeker’s scanners, it would’ve looked like only one ship.
He evacuated through the walkway then decoupled the two vessels, just before the weapon ship’s tractor field took effect. The Maybelle used its momentum to move past the field unchecked so it could latch on to their target undetected. All the while it ensured the Seekers had their attention on their own transport before creating a nice little explosion on their hangar deck.
Jason turned to the clang of lasered hull plating falling into the corridor of the weapon ship. Everyone placed their helmets on.
“All right, let’s go.” Jason led the way with alarm klaxons blaring around them and marched to the central elevator. As per the plan, Jason, Tyler, Althaus, and Corporal Higgs were the first ones up.
Marquez offered Jason a hand. “Good luck.”
“See you soon.”
*
Seeker Weapon Ship
The elevator came to a halt and Jason stepped out with Tyler by his side and Althaus and Higgs in tow. A team of four Seeker soldiers hurried toward them with their weapons at the ready.
“Just stay cool,” Jason whispered, motioning the others to the side of the corridor. They brushed by them as if they weren’t even there.
“They must be heading down to the hangar deck,” Tyler assumed. “They may not know we’re aboard—”
“Yet,” Althaus said, finishing his nephew’s sentence.
“Right, let’s keep going.” Jason did his best to remember his way back to the brig. He stepped around one final corner to the door he’d escaped from. But instead of the one guard who’d been there earlier, there were now four.
Nash had obviously beefed up security since Jason had made a run for it. Four against four. They were evenly matched.
“Any ideas?” Tyler asked.
“I’ve got a shock grenade.” Higgs revealed the handheld spherical explosive. “We roll one of these babies down there, it’ll take the four of them out easily.”
“I was hoping to do this quietly.” Jason frowned. “We set that off and we’ll be found out.”
There has to be another way. He glanced down at his weapon. “How good of a shot do you think you can be with these things?” he asked the others.
“They’re tricky at first, but they don’t kick like our rifles do,” Higgs said of his experience down on Psi-Aion. “Just give me a target, and I’ll hit it.”
“I haven’t even fired one yet.” Althaus gripped the weapon tightly. “But I’d be a damn sight better at it than you.”
Jason let the insult fly. “That’s what I’m counting on.” He pointed behind them. “Tyler, I want you to cover this corridor. Althaus, take this end, and Higgs, take the other. You’ll both need to eliminate the two soldiers facing the door.”
“What about the other two?” Althaus asked.
“I’ll deal with them.”
“This sounds like an idiotic plan.”
“Yep, pretty much. We ready?”
After Higgs rounded back to the other end of the adjoining corridor, they were all in place. Jason walked toward the brig. The guards noticed him, but his disguise appeared to be working. He stood in front of the guards at the door, but they wouldn’t budge.
“Sorry, guys, I don’t remember what the secret password is?”
The perplexed soldiers stared at each other. Behind Jason, the other two guards fell from the bursts of a pair of well-placed shots from Althaus and Higgs. Nice work, guys.
Before the two Seekers in front of him could react, Jason unholstered his sidearm and shot one at point-blank range. The other was quick to take aim, but Jason knocked the gun from his hands.
The guard barreled into Jason, knocking him to the deck with a thump. A fist pounded into his head, cracking his visor open like an egg. Preparing for another clobber, Jason looked away, just in time to see a bolt of energy from Althaus’s gun send the Seeker sailing into the wall.
“Jesus, kid, I thought I packed a punch.” Althaus ran toward him and heaved him up from the deck.
With Tyler and Higgs joining them, Jason peered through the cracked visor at the door terminal and waved his hand over it. It opened with ease, and he led the others inside.
“Hell!”
Tyler came up beside him and glanced at all the empty cells. “Where’s Kione?”
Nicolas stepped onto the catwalk first. Susan and the Marines joined him, observing the massive chamber Jason Cassidy told them about.
“Have you seen anything like it?” he said to Susan.
“It’s a sight, that’s for sure.”
Around the sphere at the heart of the massive space were the conduits leading from it and several Seekers, either standing around the workstations or doing patrols.
He spotted a ladder chute to the bottom level of the chamber near them. “Let’s go. Ling, Utkin, stay up here. If we get into any trouble, cover us.”
Nicolas led Susan down. On the lower deck, everything seemed even bigger. But nothing caught his attention more than the sphere. Though he’d already seen it on Orion V, for whatever reason it seemed much more impressive a second time.
“I shudder to think what energy runs
through these conduits,” Susan said, indicating the large tubular veins.
“I—” Nicolas stopped when a small vibration buzzed on his wrist. The commband under his suit alerted him to an incoming commlink. “It’s the others.”
Susan followed him to a quiet corner.
He pressed in the commband. “This is Marquez. Go ahead.”
“We’ve reached the brig.” It was Jason’s voice. “Kione’s not here. Have you—”
The transmission ended abruptly. Nicolas pushed in his commband again. “It’s gone dead.”
A commotion came from the direction of the sphere. Kione was dragged out of it by a pair of soldiers. His head was slumped while dozens of cables protruded from his body.
“Kione!” Susan shrieked, though luckily no one else heard her.
Nicolas grabbed her, stopping her from trying to play the hero. “Now’s not the time, Susan.” He directed her toward the ladder chute. “We have to find out what happened to the others.”
“I lost the commlink.”
Jason prodded at his commband while everyone else did the same. He walked out into the corridor and looked to his right and then to his left. Footsteps echoed around him.
From the corner of the corridor, a dozen soldiers appeared. A small path formed between them, and Nash emerged, hobbling past them. He’s alive!
His friend’s face had gashes and bruises all over it, and his armored suit was cracked and burned.
“I’ve blocked your comms, Cassidy.” The calm, collected nature of Nash’s voice was gone. There was now a bitterness there. “In all these years, you haven’t changed, have you?”
“I’ll take that as a compliment, considering some of my recent history,” Jason yelled back at him.
“You never quit.”
“You always knew me well.”
“I know you reckoned yourself as something of a messiah, but even messiahs eventually die.”
There were more footsteps approaching from the opposite direction. Another group of soldiers converged at the other end of the corridor.
“Any grand plans to get out of this one?” Althaus asked appearing behind Jason with Tyler at his side.
Jason didn’t have any but thought he might be able to stretch out the inevitable. “Higgs, you still got that shock grenade on you?” he whispered.
“Yes.”
“Pass it here.”
Higgs handed it to Jason inconspicuously behind his back.
“When I say go, I want you three to jump into the brig,” Jason instructed them.
“What are—” Tyler began.
“Just do it.”
Tyler’s silence was the response Jason was looking for. “Nash, what would you do to us if we were to surrender?”
His old friend chuckled. “We are long past that, Cassidy.”
“So, you wouldn’t turn me into one of these monstrosities? You’ve got to tell me how the Seekers do it? How do they turn them? How did they turn you?”
“Enough!”
“Could you at least spare them? My brother. Hell, even my uncle. Kill me and let them go on their way.”
Silence was his only answer.
“Well, I guess you’ve made your mind up then?”
Nash directed his soldiers, and their weapons took aim. “Goodbye, Cassidy.”
Chapter 11
“Now!”
Jason lobbed the grenade down the opposite corridor and dived with Tyler, Althaus, and Higgs into the brig. The explosion reverberated under the deck plating while Jason landed with a thud on Althaus’s back. Smoke billowed from the blast outside the door.
They all picked themselves up and ran down the small passageway between a row of cells to find cover. Jason hoped he’d taken out the soldiers at one end of the corridor but realized Nash and the other squad would be on their way shortly. While the odds were still in the Seekers’ favor, they could now at least defend themselves from a stronger position.
Jason sidled up beside Tyler. “You okay?”
Tyler nodded to the affirmative, though Jason could tell his brother’s heart was racing.
The smoke cleared from the door, and on cue, the Seekers came blazing through. The green energy bolts from their weapons cut a swath through the air, clearing a path for them to enter the brig.
Jason aimed and fired, taking a pair of the soldiers out. The others got their shots in, too, but there were too many rushing toward them to make significant gains.
Tyler discharged a volley of blasts around the corner but was quickly pinned down. “Any other ideas?”
Althaus and Higgs also struggled to get a shot away from their position. Their assailants continued to stream through. Jason fired, knocking another one down.
“My box of tricks might finally be empty.”
He motioned everyone else backward behind an alternative passageway while generating covering fire alongside Higgs. Behind was nothing but an enclosed bulkhead. They were hemmed in with no escape.
Jason raised his weapon, awaiting the final assault. “Sorry, guys.” He rubbed the sweat from his hand and waited.
The seconds passed. Then a few more.
Jason eyed his brother and then Althaus. Where are they? But they never came.
Jason poked his head around the corner. The Seekers had turned. They were firing in the opposite direction, back toward the entrance. Marquez!
“Let’s go!” He stood and raised his weapon.
Tyler, Althaus, and Higgs joined him, blazing away at the Seekers now on the run.
A grenade exploded outside the door and the bulkhead collapsed inward, pushing the remaining soldiers into retreat. Through the smoke, Marquez and the others pressed toward them.
In all the carnage, Nash was still alive. His eyes met Jason’s. He was about to lose and knew it. While another soldier went down in the crossfire, Jason took aim at the final holdout beside Nash. He hit him in the leg and then finished him off with a shot through the chest.
Nash stood firm. Marquez and his team held their fire while Jason walked toward him.
“It’s over, Nash,” Jason said to him.
“Over? We haven’t even begun.” Nash’s arrogance reappeared. “What do you think you’re going to achieve here? This vessel is still standing.” His burned face produced a sadistic grin. “If I were you, I’d be more worried about your ship.”
A flurry of emotions swirled inside Jason. He didn’t know which one to react to first. He let his fist do the talking, hurling a right hook at Nash’s jaw. His old friend fell to the deck on his ass. Everyone else stood in shock.
Jason hurried toward the door. “Come on, let’s finish what we came here to do.”
*
Cargo Ship Argo
An alert sounded at the operations station. Aly watched a blip appear on the scanners from the far side of Psi-Aion’s moon.
“We’ve got a bogey,” she said to her dad. “It matches the configuration of the Seeker mother ship from Orion V.”
Jason and the others had pissed the Seekers off, but without a direct commlink, they wouldn’t know whether their plan was succeeding or not.
“What’s their ETA?” he asked her.
“Eight minutes.” Aly shook her head in disbelief. “It’s unbelievable how that thing moves.” Her clammy hands ran over the operations console. “How are we supposed to go up against that?”
“Don’t worry, we’ve got Professor Petit down in our cargo bay. If there’s anyone who’ll help us defeat them, it’ll be him.”
She didn’t know whether her father believed that or not, but regardless, it was reassuring. “I guess even David beat Goliath.”
“Stand by.” Kevin pressed in a series of commands on the helm. “I’m getting out of here. That should buy us a little more time.”
He kicked the Argo’s thrusters to maximum and proceeded toward the opposite side of Psi-Aion. While they’d have a head start, at the speed the Seekers moved at sublight, it wouldn’t be long before the
small cargo ship was run down.
*
Seeker Weapon Ship
There was something both wondrous and frightening about the sphere sitting on its pedestal. Jason contemplated the energy the Seekers were hoping to generate and what they’d do with it once it was harnessed.
While he’d second-guessed his plan several times since leaving the Argo, seeing Kione being led from the ancient relic in that near-death state he was in, was all the proof he needed that the Seekers couldn’t be trusted using the sphere for their own means.
He peered up at the catwalk. The trio of Marines and Althaus had fanned out, appearing as inconspicuous as possible, while around on the lower level, Tai, Marquez, and Tyler had gone to all the doors, sealing them shut away from the keen eyes of the soldiers doing their patrols.
Out of the corner of his eye past the technicians, the pair of guards near Kione stepped away from him and back toward the sphere. While it wasn’t part of the plan, Jason strolled up to him to check his condition. “We’re going to get you out soon, buddy.”
The alien was unresponsive, standing like a zombie, with his head slumped and his eyes shut.
Tyler approached him. “The doors are sealed. Everyone has taken their positions.”
“Good. We should do the same.” Jason took one last look at Kione, remembering the promise he’d given him earlier, and walked into position.
With the exits blocked from the inside, they only had so many soldiers to contend with. The technicians weren’t armed and likely would pose little threat.
Jason peered up at the catwalk once more. The eyes in the sky were ready. He raised his hand and gave the signal.
All hell broke loose. Weapon fire rained down from above and the soldiers near Kione fell first.
The other Seekers were swift in response, ducking for cover behind the workstations. They launched an attack toward Althaus and the Marines. Tyler and Jason blazed away, knocking four of them out in quick succession.
Dark Side of the Moon: A Gritty Space Opera Adventure (Frontier's Reach Book 3) Page 5
