Major Morley was in her early thirties with pale skin and blond hair. She had a petite, slender build. She was clearly the senior officer of the three, both in age and rank, and the other two deferred to her without a second thought. She looked around with raised eyebrows but didn’t comment on the obvious opulence.
Lieutenant Osborne was in his mid-twenties, with dark hair and light brown skin. He was an average height and build, but the hard look in his eye told me that he’d already seen more than his fair share of war and death.
Captain Howe rounded out the trio. He was in his late twenties. He had tan skin and black hair, cut short. He towered over the rest of the group—except for Luka—and looked like he could run straight through a wall and keep going.
After the introductions were over, Valentin sent everyone a blueprint and spec sheet. “This is the default layout of the type of ship Adams is on. There may be minor differences, but it should be similar enough to Implacable for planning. The ship has a standard complement of 150 soldiers and officers.”
I did not ask him where he got the information, but I was desperately curious if he’d asked Copley Heavy Industries for a favor.
We all studied it for a few minutes, aware that we’d be outnumbered by at least two to one. Major Morley turned to me. “You are aiming to take the bridge?” When I nodded, she continued, “How many soldiers will you need?”
“At least two squads. The bridge usually isn’t heavily guarded, but it will be the first place extra soldiers are deployed. If we don’t get there first, then we’ll need the extra firepower.”
“A full platoon should go with Queen Rani,” Ari said. A platoon would give me three squads rather than two. She continued, “Once the bridge is secure, we might be able to send teams elsewhere, but the bridge is our highest priority target.”
Morley nodded. “I agree. Captain Howe, you are with Queen Rani and her people. Lieutenant Osborne and I will secure the emergency shuttles. We’ll be in the open, so we’re counting on you to take the bridge and put the ship in lockdown.”
I looked at the ship’s map. Valentin had highlighted the closest exterior hatch to the bridge, but it wasn’t exactly close. “How many doors will we have to clear if Adams locks down the ship before we get to the bridge?”
“Three,” Valentin said. “Maybe four if we have to take the longer route. Plus the bridge door itself.”
“Adams won’t lock the ship down unless he has no other option,” Ari said. “We’re entering in the same zone as the emergency shuttles, which is one of the most reinforced sections of the ship. If he locks it down, he won’t have an escape path, and his soldiers won’t be able to reach us.”
“Can he depressurize that section?” I asked.
Morely shook her head. “It’s not easy on a military vessel. Destroyers are designed to withstand hull breaches with the smallest possible internal damage. We will anchor just in case, and our suits have a limited supply of oxygen, but it’s far more likely that he’ll send soldiers after us since we’ll already be outnumbered.”
“Okay. I want my team carrying enough explosives to clear ten doors,” I said. “Adams absolutely will try to fuck us over, and he won’t care who he hurts to do it. We do not want to be stuck on the ship when the stardrive recharges because I don’t think he will take us to a nice tropical beach. And I don’t want to sit in an emergency shuttle for a month while we hop back to populated space.”
“How long until the drive is ready?” Morley asked.
“Probably around two hours.”
She sucked in a breath. “Then we need to move. I’ll requisition more explosives. The extra armor is in the boxes you brought in. You should put it on to ensure everything fits.”
“Give us a second,” Ari said.
Morley nodded and she and the other two stepped away to the other side of the cargo bay.
“Who should wear the Kos combat armor?” Ari asked.
Valentin responded before I could. “Samara, Imogen, Stella, and me.” Valentin cut me off before I could utter a word. “I’m going with you. Eddie will fly the ship to safety after he opens the airlock.”
Not one person in the group looked surprised, and I realized why the trip from our temporary quarters had been so quiet—Valentin had been busy plotting behind my back.
“What about Luka and Ari?” I asked as Ari started stripping off her armor without complaint.
“He and Ari will wear the armor Morley brought. The standard Kos armor doesn’t fit Luka well, and it’s better to keep Stella hidden since she’ll be the one patching us up. Ari and Stella will stay with the two platoons near the emergency shuttles. Imogen, Luka, and I will accompany you to the bridge.”
Ari’s mouth pinched into an unhappy line, but she didn’t contradict him.
They’d decided without me. Pain stabbed deep, but I boxed it up for later. I buried everything under a layer of emotionless determination. “Let’s get ready, then.”
Valentin frowned and drew me aside as the others moved to don their armor. “Are you okay?”
I ruthlessly smothered the panic that tried to rise at the thought of him on Adams’s ship. “Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“I already shared my concerns, but I also agreed that if you came up with a better plan, we’d do it. You apparently did.” I couldn’t quite keep the bitterness out of my voice.
“Samara…”
“No,” I said, slashing a hand through the air. “I need to be utterly focused, and dealing with this right now isn’t that. We’ll go, kick Adams’s ass, and then come back and celebrate our victory.” Assuming we both survived. Panic slithered through me again, and I took a deep breath. “Let’s get ready.”
Valentin looked like he wanted to say more, but finally he swallowed and nodded without speaking.
I silently donned my armor and loaded up on weapons and gear. I disliked combat armor, but I understood how important it was to my survival, so I dealt with it.
But I would leave my visor up until the last possible moment.
My standard gear consisted of a compact rifle, a pair of pistols, a combat knife, and a few grenades, both explosive and smoke. I also carried a trio of shaped explosive charges used to breach doors. Imogen had an additional two. If we were separated from Captain Howe’s soldiers, we wouldn’t be entirely trapped. The others had different gear, including a few of the active camouflage pucks that Adams had used when he’d attacked Arx.
Imogen, Luka, Ari, Stella, Valentin, and I retreated to the bridge while Sawya’s soldiers loaded into the cargo bay. Eddie stayed near the airlock because he would have to work fast once we attached to Adams’s ship.
Once everyone was loaded, I sent a message to Sawya. We are ready when you are.
While I waited for the response, I mentally went through every plan and contingency. I firmed my resolve. Adams would die and my people would live—no matter what I had to do to make that happen.
Sawya’s response, when it came, was a single word. Go.
Chapter Eighteen
The combat armor was too bulky to let me comfortably sit in the captain’s chair, but I didn’t need to manually fly Ardia. I was directly linked to the ship and could fly it from anywhere, though it was safest and easiest from the bridge. If I didn’t need to focus on killing Adams, I could even fly the ship to safety after we’d disembarked—at least until it got out of range.
I spun up the engines and dropped us into stealth as Valentin whispered directions across a private link. I hadn’t gotten a chance to test the Kos tech yet, but I hoped it was as good as he thought, or this was going to be a very short, very explosive trip.
When all of the stealth checks came back clear, I disengaged the docking port and it retracted. Then I released the berthing clamps, and Ardia floated free of the station. I eased us away from the dock. According to Valentin, I would have to be very, very careful about the ships around us because neither their sensors nor visual scans would pick u
s up.
Luckily, traffic was basically zero thanks to the Quint armada hovering in the distance.
I kept our speed relatively low. The less we had to use the engines, the harder we would be to detect. Even so, Implacable loomed in front of us in less than five minutes. We hadn’t been fired upon yet, so either this was an elaborate double-cross on Sawya’s part or the plan was actually working.
I eased Ardia up and around the bow of the destroyer, aiming for the forward hatch in the starboard side. We slid past the main guns, close enough that a direct shot would punch straight through all of our hull shielding and come out the other side.
The guns remained silent and still.
I drew a quiet breath. One obstacle down. We’re coming up on the hatch, I sent across the main group link. It included my team, the three platoon commanders, and Sawya. I got back a chorus of acknowledgments.
On Ardia’s exterior cameras, the fleet from CP57 rose from the camouflage of the station’s many hidden flight paths. Our distraction had arrived.
With no help from the systems on Implacable, Ardia’s autopilot would only kick in once we were within a few meters of the hatch. I kept an eye on every sensor and camera as I slowly maneuvered us closer and closer. When the docking sensor turned green, I handed off control to the ship, but I held my breath until a gentle thunk and a green light from the airlock signaled the connection was successful.
We are docked, I told the group. Eddie, go.
On it, he said.
I led my group from the bridge to the cargo bay. Rows of soldiers were packed in, but a narrow path from the stairs to the airlock remained clear. I headed to the door, where Eddie worked on Implacable’s hatch.
If I could keep all of the people I loved here in safety, I would, in a heartbeat. But they had made their own decisions, and I would respect them, even if I hated it.
I just hoped they would respect mine.
The hatch swung open and two soldiers wedged a thick metal bar against it to prevent it from closing again. Eddie moved on to work on the inner airlock door. We were on the clock because there would be all kinds of alarms going off on the bridge.
It felt like forever, but it was probably less than a minute later when the inner door opened. Once again, a pair of soldiers wedged the door open. We’d cleared the second obstacle.
Eddie moved back into Ardia, and Captain Howe’s platoon moved forward to secure the hallway.
After everyone had transferred to Implacable, Eddie would remove the first brace and close the hatch between the airlock and Ardia. Then the final two soldiers in the airlock would remove the inner door brace and use it to wedge the airlock closed, ensuring that Adams couldn’t send us all jettisoning into space.
I snapped down my helmet’s visor and shimmered out of view of the cargo bay camera. Good to know the active camouflage still worked. Imogen, Valentin, and Stella showed up on the visor’s screen with a faint green outline. None of the rest of the soldiers had an outline, but I could see them overlaid with the faint red blobs of the thermal image.
Alpha Team is go, Morley said.
That was all I needed to hear. I bolted into the airlock tunnel. Ari cursed, but the others followed me with only a moment’s hesitation.
Bravo Team is go, Morley said.
Behind us, the rest of the troops began streaming out of Ardia as Morley and Osborne issued orders. I let go of the cameras I’d been watching with the exception of the cargo bay camera.
Howe’s soldiers had spread out on both sides of the airlock tunnel, wedging themselves into the sparse cover the hallway provided. Implacable was eerily quiet. It had been less than five minutes since we’d docked, but that should’ve been enough time for Adams to rally some defense.
Where was everyone?
I turned right, following the map I’d memorized. Imogen, Luka, and Valentin were directly behind me, and the Alpha Team soldiers fell in behind them. The soldiers had thermal imaging overlays turned on, but they couldn’t tag Valentin, Imogen, or me as friendlies. We would have to stick close or risk getting accidentally shot if more soldiers in Kos armor showed up.
We moved quickly through corridors that were suspiciously empty. Adams was planning something, I just hadn’t figured out what.
In the video from Ardia, the last soldiers left the cargo bay. Eddie removed the brace and slammed Implacable’s hatch closed, then closed the airlock on Ardia. He waved at the camera and then disappeared toward the bridge.
The Quint armada likely wouldn’t attack Ardia while it was attached to Implacable, but as soon as Eddie moved away, he would become a target. I hoped the Kos stealth tech held up or he was about to have a very stressful few minutes.
I sped up. We needed to distract Adams to keep him off of Eddie. I rounded the next corner just as Valentin shouted over our team group link, Wait!
The others stopped, but Imogen and I were already in the open.
A dozen Quint soldiers with pistols waited in front of the first lockdown door. They were arrayed in two lines stretching across the corridor, and none of them wore combat armor. These soldiers were sacrifices sent to slow us down long enough for the others to get ready, and I didn’t have any nonlethal weapons.
Fuck.
I snapped my rifle up, but the soldiers didn’t shoot. They remained focused on the corner.
The soldiers couldn’t see us because Imogen and I were hidden by our armor’s active camouflage. Adams had tossed their lives away for nothing. I might be able to edge around them without killing them, but Howe’s soldiers couldn’t.
My stomach twisted. We had to go through them. It would be a slaughter.
Before I could pull the trigger, an alarm blared and the heavy door behind them began to close. I moved on instinct, plowing past the Quint soldiers and knocking a few down. The rest spun to shoot at me, but without being able to see me, their shots went wide.
The hallway devolved into chaos as Howe’s soldiers rounded the corner. Don’t shoot Samara and Imogen! Valentin shouted over the link.
The door was more than half closed when I dashed through. Luka would keep Valentin safe and Howe’s soldiers could take care of themselves. I kept running.
Samara! Valentin shouted over a private link.
Be careful and catch up when you can, I said.
Done, he said, his tone wry.
I stopped and whirled around. My visor screen showed a green outline around the red blob of a camouflaged soldier. I scanned the rest of the hallway, but no one else was visible and the door was fully closed. Valentin?
Surprise, he said, and his outline waved at me.
I wished I could see his face. I wished he was on the other side of the door, or better yet, safe on CP57. Where is Luka? I demanded.
He’s shouting at me over a private link, Valentin said.
I knew exactly what he meant because Imogen was doing the same to me. Why did you follow me? How?
Valentin closed the distance between us. Imogen got held up by the soldiers. I was the only one close enough to slide through the door before it closed.
I clenched my jaw against the urge to shout. Did it ever occur to you, I said coldly, that I left you behind for a reason?
And I followed you for the same reason, he said, his tone gentle but firm.
I raised my hand to rub my face, only to be stopped by the armor. Valentin had made his choice, and I didn’t have time to wait for the others to blast through the door, not if I wanted to catch Adams off guard.
Are you eavesdropping on the local neural links? I asked.
Yes, but everyone is staying very quiet. Either Adams suspects I’m here or there aren’t many soldiers in this part of the ship.
Let me know if anything changes. Shoot anything that moves and don’t fall behind.
I will follow your lead, he promised.
Cut off from our backup, our strategy became speed and stealth. We narrowly avoided the next group of soldiers because Valentin heard them just be
fore we saw them. We flattened ourselves to the wall, guns ready, but the group came around the corner and passed us by without stopping.
Adams’s soldiers still weren’t in combat armor. Destroyers were nigh impregnable at a distance and weren’t meant to deploy ground troops, but they should still have some combat armor aboard. If I had to guess, Adams had surrounded himself with armored troops and left the rest to fend for themselves.
Maybe we could use that against him and persuade some soldiers to give up the fight. Can you tap into the ship’s intercom system? I asked Valentin.
No.
I sighed. So much for that idea.
Eddie linked me. Boss, the Quints really didn’t appreciate our little stunt. I’m tunneling to Koan. Stay safe.
You, too. I’ll see you soon.
The link cut off and so did my connection to the cargo bay camera. Eddie tunneled, I told the main group. We’d agreed to keep communication to a minimum once we were on the ship, but they needed to know that Eddie hadn’t been blown up.
Morley acknowledged the message and let us know that soldiers had started attacking her position at the emergency shuttles as expected. Hopefully, with Adams’s people divided, we’d run into fewer on the way to the bridge.
A distant explosion rang through the corridor. Captain Howe’s troops had blown the first door. We needed to move if we were going to stay ahead of them.
I sent Imogen a warning about the soldiers between us and then sprinted for the next door. Adams seemed to be locking down the ship as little as possible, but with the first door breached, he’d lock this section soon.
Valentin kept pace a step behind me. I relied on him to tell me if we were running face first into a trap, but he remained quiet.
I could see the second door when the alarms started. The door was unguarded, but it had begun closing already. Was the timing a coincidence or a trap?
With no time to hesitate, I sprinted faster, pushing myself and the armor to the limit. I slid through with centimeters to spare. I heard armor scrape against metal and spun around, my heart in my throat. If Valentin had missed the timing, the door would crush him.
The Queen’s Triumph (Rogue Queen) Page 14
