That meant he needed to get the hell out of there right now.
He planted his feet on the air feed and shoved. The gentle push made him soar right over to a personnel shuttle.
Logan deftly caught the bar beside its airlock. It was closed and pressurized, so he had to wait a seeming eternity for it to go to vacuum and the outer door to open.
Once inside, he started it to cycling and tried to keep himself from gasping as air filled the lock. It only took a few seconds to get up to breathable pressure, and he allowed himself to suck in delicious air.
The inner lock came open, and he shoved off toward the pilot’s couch. Engineers weren’t normally trained to fly, but his sister had insisted he learn. He’d have to buy her a gift when this was all done.
The shuttle came to life at his touch. No time for a preflight check, so he simply strapped in and edged it toward the open hatch with the thrusters.
Moments later, he was outside the freighter. He didn’t even need to use the scanners to see the MinSha shuttles. They were right there ahead of him.
Sanity therefore dictated he move around the freighter and head in the opposite direction. If they wanted no witnesses alive to question their actions, he needed to stay very quiet.
So of course they spotted him right away and turned toward him, accelerating rapidly.
He used the freighter as cover while he opened a channel to the ambush ships. “Dresden vessels, this is Logan. I’m in the personnel shuttle running for cover. Could I get a little help, please?”
“Copy that,” a voice promptly responded. “Got you covered.”
The assault shuttles were just coming into view when several lasers swatted them from the sky.
“Looks like you’re clear, Logan. Why don’t you head for Chicago?”
That was the cruiser in charge of the ambush mission as well as his sister’s flagship. “I’m on the way. You might want to pull back. I’m worried they have something set up on the ship. Let’s not have it blow up in our faces.”
He was almost to the retreating cruiser when the side of the freighter blew out, scattering debris and atmosphere everywhere.
What the hell had the special cargo been?
* * *
Gina’s hopes to put off a confrontation were dashed when one of the mercenary cruisers escorting them launched two combat shuttles twenty minutes before the freighter reached orbit.
Travel time would get them to Times Square perhaps five minutes before the ship was ready to kick off the grand finale of Operation Shell Game. They needed to run out the clock.
All the mercenaries were in their drop ships except for the section of Dresden’s Dragoons she’d tasked with final guard duty. They were getting the civilian crew to safety, and now they’d make sure the unwelcome visitors didn’t get word back out of the trap.
“Doug,” she said over her section’s com frequency. “Secure the crew on your drop ship and prepare to execute phase two.”
“I have everyone except the pilot and the actor. They didn’t show.”
She cursed under her breath. “Copy that. Carry on, and I’ll extract them with me. Good luck, Bro.”
“You too, Sis. Give ‘em hell.”
Gina ended the call and deployed her group near the shuttle bay, not to stop the enemy from getting in, but to keep them from retreating once they rushed into the ship.
The freighter was heavily shielded to prevent portable coms from getting out. The shuttle bay was rigged to actively jam signals on command, to keep the people left behind on shuttles from punching a signal out.
The plan was to keep the escort ships from realizing anything was wrong for as long as possible. Once she kicked things off, it wouldn’t matter what any boarders did.
While her people were getting into their hiding places, she raced to the bridge. As expected, she found Lestorra and the pilot there.
The actor turned to her. “The good news is that we should reach orbit shortly after they board us. As a coincidental piece of good fortune, the base is well positioned for your drop at that time, as is the protective fleet above it.”
“Why are you still here?” she demanded, ignoring his pleasant banter. “You had a ride to catch.”
The Pendal shrugged. “I may not be a pilot, but the moment overcame me. When your pilot indicated he would remain for final insertion, I chose to stay at his side. Isn’t that what a captain does?”
“My man is a mercenary,” she said, her lips pressed flat. “He’s got a slot in one of my drop ships. One going right into the thick of things. The crew is supposed to be landing far from the fighting. That’s you, in case you missed it.”
The actor smiled. “Well, I don’t suppose I can negotiate a combat bonus?”
Gina didn’t even try to stop her eye roll. “Only if you shoot someone.”
She turned to the pilot. “Status?”
“We’re close enough to lock the helm in now. I had to make a few last-minute maneuvers to assure the best positioning for the drop. We can go now. Lestorra might even make it to his drop ship before the boarding party gets into the ship proper.”
The com crackled to life. “Freighter, this is inspection team one. You will open your shuttle bay or we will blow it open. Do not believe your supposed com failure will stop this from happening. You have thirty seconds to comply.”
Gina shrugged. “Let’s be neighborly. Open the hatch in twenty-five seconds. Open it at half speed, too. Anything that buys us time is worth it.”
The pilot manipulated his controls. “Done. I’ve just locked all control systems. The only way they’re stopping the ship from entering orbit now is shooting it down.”
“Don’t think they won’t,” she warned the Pendal mercenary. “If they decide we’re a threat, they’ll sacrifice the boarding party in a second. Let’s go.”
They made it to her assigned hiding spot just as Doug called. “They’re inside the ship, Gina. You’re not going to be able to make it to your drop ship before they come to you. They look a little weirded out that no one is there to meet them.”
“Copy that. All units, prepare to execute phase two on my order.”
Her external microphone picked up the sound of the shuttle bay hatch opening. It was only just around the bend.
She opened a wall panel that looked like every other bulkhead on the ship and followed the two unarmored Pendal inside. They’d placed a number of the secret chambers near the shuttle bay in case they had to ambush boarders.
Once they were all inside, she sealed it tight.
“Okay,” she said through her external speakers at the lowest volume. “We’ll let them pass and then move to block their exit. The hull outside the shuttle bay is heavily reinforced and there are concealed weapons in the bay that can disable even an assault shuttle.”
“If you have a hardened hull, why do you need weapons?” Lestorra asked curiously.
“Because the hull isn’t to keep them from shooting their way out,” she explained. “It’s to contain any collateral damage the weapons cause. Once the boarding teams are deep into the ship, we’ll cut them off and blow their rides.
“And before you ask, I’m not going to attack the shuttles until the last moment. It’s always possible one explodes and breaches our hull. That could completely screw up our timing and perhaps even get the warships to shooting at us.
“I don’t care if they suspect something now, as long as they don’t feel threatened enough to blow us up.”
They had seeded the ship with sensors to track intruders, so she saw them moving past her location in unpowered armor. They did seem a little spooked. She couldn’t blame them. They had to be wondering where the crew was.
Gina waited until they were moving to another deck before she opened the panel slowly. “You two stay behind me.”
Her CASPer would be armed to the teeth for the combat drop, but she had to get to her drop ship for her main weapons. All she had on her now were arm blades and a slung rifle.
If she could use her blades, that would be better, she decided.
The concealed entrance to her drop ship was two decks down and aft. With luck, no one was moving in that direction.
The thing about luck was that it occasionally ran out.
She came out on the appropriate deck just as a trio of MinSha mercenaries floated around the bend. They saw her just as she launched herself at them. High-speed flechettes bounced off her armor as she flew into their midst.
Gina triggered the jammers they’d seeded throughout the ship. That would prevent them from calling for help or alerting the ship they’d come from that they were under attack.
It would also let the warships know something was going on when they couldn’t raise their inspectors. Couldn’t be helped now.
Her CASPer was designed for more damage than these soldiers were dealing out, so she was able to cut one in half and then gut his companion on her backswing. The remaining soldier hastily backed up, his legs propelling him rapidly away in the zero gravity.
Since she couldn’t allow him to escape, she pushed off the bulkhead and charged after him. He managed to get a lot farther than she’d have expected before she caught up and ended him.
Then she heard shots behind her.
Gina turned on a handy bulkhead and saw that her charges were exchanging fire with three more MinSha that had come from the other direction. Perfect.
The civilians had advanced to where she’d killed the first two MinSha and were using their bodies as concealment. Astonishingly, both had taken up the fallen soldiers’ weapons and were keeping the enemy at bay.
She braced herself and brought her rifle up. Three long bursts past her allies and the threat was over.
It only took a moment to see that the pilot had taken a hit, but it didn’t look bad. She’d get him some nanites as soon as they were in the drop ship.
“This way,” she said as she grabbed the wounded Pendal and headed for the drop ship. “You’re a never-ending series of surprises, Lestorra. Were you actually fighting?”
“I played a mercenary on a vid series a few years ago. They trained me in how to look good. I pretended this was the same.”
“I guess you’ll get that combat bonus after all. If we live.”
They arrived at the bulkhead concealing her drop ship to find it open and covered by her mercenaries. Moments later, she was inside the ship and loading her heavy weapons.
“Status?” she asked Doug over the hardwired com.
“We’re just entering orbit. Sixty seconds to optimum deployment.”
“Strap in, everyone. This is about to get hairy.”
Gina cinched the two Pendal into handy seats and used a nanite injector on the pilot. Then she secured herself.
The panel in front of her gave her as much feed as she’d have gotten on the bridge. In fact, she could see a window-in-window view of the control room in the corner of her screen.
The MinSha were there, looking around in confusion. Time to show everyone what Operation Shell Game was all about.
“All units, executing phase two in ten seconds. Mark. Good luck.”
She watched the timer count down and pressed the button. Hull plates blew off, and hundreds of missiles raced at the escorts from point-blank range. They accelerated at a thousand gravities, limiting the enemy reaction time to just a few seconds.
It took a little longer to reach the ships defending the planet, but not much. They’d get off some defensive fire, but not nearly enough to make a difference against the number of weapons coming at them in their faces.
Moments after the missiles were clear, even more concealed panels blew off, and the drop ships screamed away from the freighter. There were a lot of them, too. Far more than the shuttle bay could’ve supported. That was why they were carried inside dedicated and hidden compartments.
The orbital picket had at least a few ships at battle stations. They launched missiles at the freighter. Since it had zero defenses, it promptly blew up. Expensive, but all part of the plan that made Operation Shell Game possible.
In return, the missiles she’d launched gutted the picket. The drop ship’s sensors were far too weak to see it all, but Gina could see they were done. Most of the ships in orbit were expanding balls of plasma. The rest were eviscerated wrecks.
“Five minutes to landing,” Doug said. “The lead elements aren’t even being fired upon. We caught them with their panties down.”
“All the better to screw them,” she said.
The fighting below would be sharp but heavily one-sided. Her forces had numbers and total surprise. This fight was in the bag.
The ships at the emergence point would come racing in as soon as the base started screaming for help. Based on the prearranged timing, her ships would arrive after they’d been in motion for about two hours.
That left the picket commander an ugly choice: run for the stargate, fight, or surrender.
Since her forces would detach fast elements to cut them off from the stargate, that left the last two as the most likely choices. Based on the numbers and classes of ships they’d observed, she bet they’d give up. If not, her ships would kill them.
They’d pulled off the mission of a lifetime. Now all she had to do was convince the enemy to give up and save their lives.
* * *
Logan was aboard Chicago when it exited hyperspace into the Kregin system ten days later. They’d expected to get there sooner, but examining the freighter had taken more time and care than he’d expected.
The MinSha had used explosives to destroy the special cargo, but not well enough to hide what it had been. Logan suspected that was because the backup power coupling the murderous Jeha engineer had installed had failed when the device they’d set up as the primary self-destruct device attempted to draw power.
The physical explosives had to have been the backup. They only served to scatter the contents of the cargo throughout the ship, which had ended up killing everyone aboard in a grisly fashion.
The special cargo had been some kind of bioweapon. Illegal under the Union’s laws of war.
Thankfully, he’d listened to the recording his translator pendant made right after he’d boarded Chicago. One MinSha mercenary had ordered the rest to their ships and mentioned that the main charge would eliminate the vessel and the deadly bioweapon.
Which, of course, it hadn’t.
That meant they’d all had to listen to the crew of the freighter scream for help as they died. The weapon had acted quickly, but their ends had not been painless. Far from it.
The sight of them desperately calling for help might never fade.
He’d left a ship behind to guard the wreck, sent another to find a Peacemaker—which might take a while—and taken the last of his ships to meet his sister.
Logan hadn’t known if he’d have to fight when he got here, no matter how confident Gina had sounded when they’d planned Operation Shell Game. As it turned out, the surviving ships in the system and the MinSha base had surrendered without a fight.
That meant the only blood spilled on this mission had belonged to the enemy. And the noncombatants.
The pilot from the now destroyed Times Square, the actor they’d hired to masquerade as the freighter’s commander, and his sister had been the only ones to actually fight the enemy with guns and blades.
He shook himself out of his funk as the ship she’d come out to meet them in launched a shuttle. Twenty minutes later, he had his sister in a hug.
“I was worried about you,” he said. “This mission sucked.”
Gina held him at arm’s length. “I never had it nearly as bad as you. You mixed with the enemy for months and then almost got killed with a damned bioweapon. What’s the story there?”
He shrugged elaborately. “No clue. I guess they decided to eliminate the miners they were blockading the easy way. A Peacemaker will eventually figure it out. I expect we’ll all be giving testimony at some point.
“How about you? You
really wrecked the defensive forces. This might be the most lopsided victory ever.”
She smiled. “We took a ridiculous gamble, and it worked. Well done, Bro. You’re going to have a lot of bonus money to spend on wine, women, and song.”
He grimaced and shook his head. “We were insane to try something this crazy. It shouldn’t have worked.”
“But it did. It probably won’t ever work again, but I can live with that. We accomplished every aspect of the contract. Even the impossible ones. The Four Horsemen won’t be looking over their shoulders for us, but I can guarantee they’ll hear our names.”
Logan laughed and slid an arm around his sister’s shoulders. “Yeah, those crazy Dresden kids. What are you going to do with all your bonus money?”
Gina smiled widely. “Make Dresden’s Dragoons a name that everyone knows. Second tier, here we come!”
# # # # #
THE LAST DRAGON by Terry Maggert
Trance bounced lightly against her restraints, her feet tapping on the unseen surface in a series of soft bumps. She opened her eyes, finally convinced the drug had worn off. Whatever she’d been hit with had turned her off like a switch. The taste of sour metal rimed her mouth, her tongue dry and still tingling faintly with the toxic aftereffects of her abduction.
It could be nothing other than a straight up grab, probably by one of the many warring clients she’d spurned over her career. Her wrists were clamped in flexsteel that moved against her skin like a living thing. There would be no escape, at least not easily, so she took a look around the room, searching for any tools or opportunities that might help her break out of wherever it was she was being held.
Again, she bounced lightly. Orbital station? Or another world? There was no way to judge how long she’d been under, so it was possible she was on any of a thousand worlds in the spiral arm. She remembered turning the corner outside Admin, contract in hand and heading for a sweetheart deal on—
Where? She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t even dredge up the name of the firm that hired her, let alone what world she’d been on. Heavier gravity than here, that much was certain, because the difference was making her vaguely sick, as if she’d been in free fall for an extended stay. She reached inward, using her training, and she stabilized, her stomach coming to an obedient stop.
The Good, the Bad, and the Merc: Even More Stories from the Four Horsemen Universe (The Revelations Cycle Book 8) Page 6
