Mako (The Mako Saga: Book 1)

by Ian J. Malone

  ****

  “What took you so long?” she asked in a near-whisper once the kiss was broken.

  Surprised by the question, and a little intimidated that maybe he’d jumped the proverbial gun in the heat of the moment, Lee fumbled for a response.

  “Oh, um… well, ah… we woulda gotten here sooner but we got—”

  “That’s so not where I was going with that, Lee,” she smiled, weaving her fingers through his matted brown hair.

  Instantly, every nerve in his body relaxed.

  “Uh, huh hum,” Danny coughed from the door. “Listen, I don’t mean to break up this tender little moment you two are finally having, but can we please get the hell outta here?”

  “Oh, I can so get on board with that idea,” Mac agreed.

  Sprinting into the corridor outside, the trio heard a chorus of angry shouts pound through the entrance down the hall, which Danny had managed to barricade with furniture from a nearby office.

  “Okay, that way ain’t happenin’ kids,” Lee blurted, and Mac scrambled back to the computer terminal inside the cellblock.

  “What are you doin’?” Lee asked, rushing after her while Danny kept watch at the door.

  “Locking down the rest of this level and trying to find us another way out of this hellhole!” she explained, fingers racing across the keyboard. “Alright, it’s done. I’ve locked out all of their access codes. That oughta buy us seven, maybe eight minutes till they find a way around my override, but I’m wide open to suggestions after that.”

  Lee recalled the service lift from earlier. “We passed an elevator on the way in that might be an option,” he noted, “It lets out just down the hall from here, but our keycard doesn’t have access. Think you can get us in?”

  “On it!” she fired back, pulling up a digital map of the level and remembering something she’d meant to ask him. “Hey, you heard anything about some kind of major operation that’s supposed to be going down today?”

  Lee’s eyebrows knit. “You might say that,” he answered. “They found an invasion plan for Dulaston on one of the Phantoms that attacked us. Katahl was gearin’ up the fleet for it when we left, and it’s supposed to be goin’ down later today. What do you know about it?”

  Mac tilted her head. “I know the Alystierians know they’re coming. I heard the commandant talking to Hourne and—”

  “Whoa, Masterson was here?”

  “Who do you think pawned me off to Captain Canoe over there?” she glowered. “Nice shot, by the way.”

  “Thanks,” said Lee. “Scared the hell outta me to take it.”

  “Scared the hell outta me to watch you do it,” Mac admitted. “Anyway, the two of them were talking outside my interrogation room, and just before I blacked out, I heard them say something about an ambush. Whatever it is, they’re planning heavy, like 40 ships heavy.”

  Lee snapped up straight. “The intel was a plant,” he cursed, the ramifications now clear in his mind. “The whole thing was a setup to lure what’s left of the Auran fleet into one single location.”

  “Looks that way,” she agreed, and Lee shot a frustrated look to the ceiling.

  “Geez, Mac, they’ll be outgunned two to one out there.”

  “I hear what you’re saying Lee, and it sucks,” she said, turning to face him. “But frankly, we can’t worry about that right now. We’ve gotta keep our eye on the ball, and with any luck, maybe we can get back in time to warn them about what’s coming.”

  He nodded in glum agreement.

  “How’s it coming on that lift?” Danny called out, while the pounding clamor down the hall grew audibly louder. “My rogue office supplies aren’t gonna hold these guys much longer!”

  No sooner had he said this than Mac gave her final stroke of the keyboard. “We’re out!” she declared.

  Swiping an enemy radio off one of the dead guards for monitoring, Danny tucked it into his vest pocket and chased his friends to the lift.

  “Guys, I hate to be the quintessential pessimist here,” he said to Lee once they were inside, “but that ground floor is gonna be crawling with Alystierian security. We got any thoughts on that? And please, don’t gimme the ‘any way we have to’ line again.”

  Lee thought hard for a moment. Then recalling the canisters in his bag, he spied a hatch in the ceiling overhead and extended his rifle to Mac.

  “You okay with usin’ one of these?”

  Snatching the weapon from his hand, she gave it a quick press check and shot him a glare. “Hit the damn button and stop asking stupid questions.”

  ****

  Maintaining his position in the hillside, Link peered through his scope in search of Hamish, who had yet to check back in. A little worried, he tapped his earpiece.

  “Wulver, you got a copy?”

  No response.

  “Wulver, come back.”

  Definitely worried now, Link called once more. “Stop screwing around and pick up the damn comm, Hamish!”

  “Keep yar tighty whities on, already!” the Scot replied. “I had to get indoors, away from the guards, before I could talk.”

  “Triple squelch, Wulver. Triple squelch!”

  “Oh yeah, sorry about that. Though in ma defense, I have been a wee bit busy lately.”

  Admiring the dense black pillar of oil smoke billowing into the western sky, Link had to hand it to his friend… he had a point there.

  “Whatever,” Link resigned. “I’ve covered this place high and low and I can’t see you anywhere. What’s your 20?”

  “I’m in some sort of supply house,” said Lunley, “four, maybe five hundred yards from the command post. Zone three, I think.”

  “Gimme a flash check.”

  Moving from building to building through his scope, Link eventually spotted the flicker of Hamish’s flashlight in the northwest corner of zone three.

  “Has there been any word from Lee and Danny?” Hamish asked.

  “Not since our last check-in, no.”

  “I do hope they’re okay, Lincoln.”

  “Yeah, me too, but for the time being, let’s just focus on getting you outta there, alright?”

  Link stroked his thick black whiskers and weighed the options. Hamish was alone—for now, anyway—but that could change at the drop of a hat depending on the whims of security. Then there was Lee, Danny, and hopefully Mac who, per last check, were held up in the command post. As of five minutes ago, they now had a t20-man roadblock to look forward to in the cul-de-sac—plus the dozen armed soldiers at the rear exit—and that was all assuming, of course, that they even made it that far without being captured, or worse. Then there was him, tucked away in a solo nest up here in the treeline.

  If there was any hope of getting everyone out in one piece, Link knew he had to get them to one, single location before he could act… but how to do that?

  Then, with a curmudgeonly grunt, he keyed his comm. “Alright, Big Dog, listen up. I hope you packed your running shoes, because I’ve got a plan.”

  Hamish groaned on the other end. “Why do I sense that I’ll need a fresh pair of trousers too when this is all over?”

  “Hey, I didn’t say it was a good plan,” Link admitted. “In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s the stupidest thing to ever come out of my brain, which is saying a lot. But from where I sit, it’s all we got. Just get ready to move your Highlander ass when I tell you; copy?”

  ****

  Divvying up the last of their ammo while Danny opened the hatch above, Lee pulled the pair of gas masks from his bag and handed one to Mac.

  “Okay, y’all ready to do this?” he asked, unsheathing the shotgun from his back and racking in a load.

  They nodded, visibly nervous, and Lee reached to disengage the emergency stop button.

  “Daredevil, this is Wulver. You copy?”

  Lee snatched back his hand. “Yeah, Wulver, go ahead.”

  “Where are ya, lad?”

  “In an elevator, probably about to die… and you?”<
br />
  “I’m just outside,” said Lunley. “They’ve got a small army of guys waiting out here, so whatever ya’re about to do… don’t.”

  Lee heard Danny mutter a curse behind him.

  “But Link’s got a plan to get everyone out,” the Scot rushed to add.

  Lee traded looks with Mac. “Okaaaaayyyy?” he hesitated. “You’ve got my attention. What’s the plan?”

  “We want ya to surrender.”

  “What?” they exclaimed in unison.

  “Just listen. The entire building is on lockdown, which means they’re gonna bring the three of ya out front while they get the mass pandemonium ya’ve caused sorted out. Excellent work on that, by the way.”

  “Flattery later, Hamish,” Mac frowned. “What happens when we’re outside?”

  “Hello there, love,” Hamish beamed. “I can’t tell ya what a delight it is to hear your beautiful voice again.”

  Crazy circumstances or not, she couldn’t help but blush. “You too, sweetie. Thanks so much for coming.”

  “Oh, don’t thank me, this was all Lee’s doing. Ryan and Admiral Katahl thought he’d lost his mind, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He’s got stones befitting a bull, that one.”

  Lee rolled his eyes and cut in. “Appreciate the complement, Hamish, but apparently we’ve got a whole lotta guns waitin’ for us on the other side of this door, so if we could get down to it?”

  “Oh, right… sorry,” Hamish readjusted. “As I was saying…”

  Chapter 30: Rain of Fire

  The lift doors opened to the sight of 10 raised rifles pointed squarely at their faces, and Lee, Danny, and Mac offered no resistance as they relinquished their weapons. Interlacing his fingers behind his head, Lee took his cue to move and followed the armed escort down the hall, through the exit, and into the otherwise tranquil sunrise outside. Taking a few steps forward as ordered—the gravelly surface crunching beneath his boots—Lee watched a final canvas-topped truck skid to a dusty halt ahead, joining four others like it, plus a trio of jeeps, along a makeshift barricade at the mouth of the cul-de-sac.

  “Man, I hope those two idiots know what they’re doing,” Danny muttered, inspecting the tightly clustered pattern of red dots adorning his chest.

  “Wait for the signal and break for the warehouse on your right,” Lee thought, recalling Hamish’s instructions while eyeing the two-story metal building in question. It was only 20 or so yards away—well within sprinting distance—but that wasn’t the problem. The 40-plus rifles on the other side of the roadblock were.

  “Where is Captain Hourne?” a helmeted soldier called from the front of the line, and Lee figured him to be the man in charge.

  “Not rightly sure who you’re talkin’ about,” Lee offered. “We’re kinda not from around here.”

  “Then what brings you here?” the soldier pressed.

  “C’mon Hamish, where are you?” Lee thought, darting his eyes from building to building before responding. “Here on business, sir. We’re supposed to meet up with a client of ours—a fella named Hefner,” he added with a sarcastic stare back into the hillside, hopeful that his man was still there to hear it. “I guess we must’ve veered a little off course somewhere, because we ended up here. Sorry about all the fuss, but I can assure you it was an honest mistake.”

  The soldier’s expression turned sardonic. “Just out of curiosity, stranger, do all smugglers come armed with standard issue Auran hardware where you’re from?”

  “Ya know, that stuff ain’t even ours?” Lee laughed off the question. “We salvaged it a while back from a derelict ASC supply shuttle we happened across in the Raylon system. One can never be too careful in our line of work, and we figured it might come in handy in a dust-up some time.”

  “Commander Vaughn!” the soldier’s radio crackled. “This is Miller on two.”

  “Go ahead, Corporal.”

  “We just found Captain Hourne’s body up here in the brig. He’s dead, sir, along with nine of our guys.”

  Vaughn’s right hand jerked from the radio mic back to the grip of his rifle. “Ready!”

  The loud clacking of armed weapons rang out like a thousand roulette wheels spinning to black, and Lee’s stomach jumped into his throat.

  “Aim!”

  “Greetings, fishes!” a voice boomed from on high, and Lee looked up to see Hamish standing tall atop the warehouse’s balcony—the sun at his back, the Harbinger gleaming in his hands—sporting a pearly-white, ear-to-ear grin that now held the undivided attention of the two platoons below. “Welcome to ma wee little barrel!”

  Every truck, vehicle, and hard surface on the ground ignited in sparks as the massive weapon spun to life, raining a relentless spray of railgunned hellfire down on its screaming prey below, who scrambled feverishly for any semblance of cover they could find.

  Seizing on the opening, Lee threw a hard elbow into the nose of the distracted guard behind him, dropping him to the ground while Mac made short work of the one holding her. Launching into an all-out sprint for the warehouse, Lee watched from the corner of his eye as, in a single, fluid blur, Danny disabled the pair of guards on his right, whirled a foot to the head of a third on his left, and whipped around to head-butt a fourth before leaping into a sprint of his own.

  Bolting through the entrance just ahead of Mac, who ducked for cover—Hamish still thundering away from on high—Lee spun on his heels to see Danny, now in full stride through the fiery chaos of the courtyard, wince hard in agony before face-planting into the gravel.

  “Danny!” Mac shrieked.

  “Hamish!” Lee screamed. “Cover fire! Five o’clock, low! NOW!”

  Racing back into the open, amid the panicked shouts of orders and the dancing spikes of dirt from whizzing bullets around him, Lee grabbed Danny by the arm and dragged him to safety inside.

  “Block the entrance and get up against the wall!” Hamish yelled, dashing down the catwalk through the rat-tat-tapping of ricochets, while Mac slammed the door shut with the butt of her gun.

  “Oh my god, Danny!” she yelped again, seeing him stagger to his feet, his right shoulder stained in red.

  “It’s alright, I’ll be fine,” he offered. “I’m no medic, but I’m pretty sure it went straight through.”

  “Where’s Link?” Lee shouted, tipping a stack of crates into the door as a fresh volley of gunfire pelted the building’s exterior, showering them in a jagged mist of window glass and debris.

  “So do we actually have an exit strategy here or what?” Mac snarled under the shield of her arm.

  The ferocious roar of an all-too-familiar engine revved through screams and weaponsfire in the distance, and recalling Lunley’s advice to back up, Lee dove for the corner as the mighty Sand Tiger careened through the building’s rear wall and skidded to a halt before him.

  “Move your ass, Miss Daisy, I don’t have all day!” Link called from the driver’s side.

  Sliding into the passenger seat beside him, Lee pulled up a digital map of their location on the dashboard computer console, while Mac helped Danny into the back, ripping up an extra shirt and pressing it to his shoulder to stop the bleeding.

  “Go, Lincoln!” Hamish yelled from the back seat, setting the self-destruct sequence on the Harbinger’s control assembly before throwing it to the ground and closing the side hatch to seal them in.

  “Everybody hang on,” Link warned, grabbing hold of the shifter. “This is gonna be a little bumpy.”

  Spinning the tires into a howling frenzy before releasing the clutch, Link’s knuckles went white on the wheel as the Tiger slammed through the front wall of the warehouse, sending dozens of soldiers dodging to safety amid a shrapnel-like cloud of rocky dust and gravel.

  “Hamish, we’ve got company!” Link alerted, seeing a trio of armored trucks escape the warehouse blast to fall in line behind them. “You’re on the 50!”

  “It’s not a 50, it’s—”

  “THE BIG-ASS GUN ON TOP OF THE TRUCK, HAMISH! THE
ONE THAT GOES BIG, LOUD BOOM WHEN YOU PULL THE TRIGGER! Get your giant, bald-headed ass up to it and SHOOT IT AT THE BAD GUYS!!”

  Pulling back the overhead hatch, Hamish slid his upper body up through the Sand Tiger’s roof to assume control of the weapons turret at the back of the vehicle. Then, yanking back on its massive iron slide, he chambered his first barrage of return fire and took aim.

  “Based on this, the fastest way outta here is to take this road directly through the compound, past the airfield, and back into the jungle,” Lee observed, hanging on for dear life as the Tiger blazed through a hairpin turn into an adjacent alleyway. “From there, it’s a straight shot due north back to the ship. Hamish, just hang on and keep them off us,” he said through the comm. “We’re about a minute out from the fence!”

  “Aye, but tell Link to take it a little easier on the corners!” Hamish called back, filling Lee’s ear with the whipping wind and gunfire outside. “He nearly threw me into a sodding wall back there!”

  Just then, the radio in Danny’s vest began to chatter. “Myrick-Alpha, this is the Alystierian Destroyer Sylus,” a voice identified. “Do you read? We are currently in orbit, requesting permission to land. Please advise.”

  “Damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it!” Link erupted, giving a hard jerk of his wheel to send a flanking truck head-on into a bunker.

  “Stand by, Sylus, we have a situation down here,” another voice responded. “An ASC strike team has infiltrated the base and is currently at large. Be on the lookout for a Newbern class cargo ship breaking atmo at any time. The use of lethal force is authorized.”

  “What kind of firepower do we have on the ship you guys came in on?” Mac asked, ripping off a fresh strip of cloth for Danny’s blood-soaked shoulder.

  Feeling her clamp down on the wound, he grimaced.

  “A rock and a frickin’ slingshot, that’s what we got!” Link wailed back. Then, spotting a lone footsoldier ahead—his rifle already raised—Link gave a snarling hard right of the wheel and stood on the gas as an abrupt ka-funk rumbled beneath the tires. “TAKE YOUR POTSHOT AT ME NOW, JERK-OFF!”