As the group of troopers stepped forward, they peered through the gaps in the barricade at the faces of those on the other side.
“He was on my ship,” one trooper said, “a new gunner, I think. He just came up from one of the belt settlements.”
“That’s Beck,” another trooper said, looking at a young woman. Her head was tilted to one side, a bone sticking out of her shoulder. “She was captain of the Iron Fire.”
Boyd couldn’t help but stare. These people had all been captured by the Skarak only a short time ago, and now here they were, dropped back to the surface. Discarded? Maybe. If they had been discarded, then what were the Skarak looking for? Or maybe they had been captured and programmed somehow to attack their former comrades. But if they were converted by the Skarak, why drop them and break their bodies?
None of it made any sense.
Boyd stepped back. The sight was too bizarre. The troopers were pressing up against the barricades looking for those they knew. But already familiarity and friendliness had failed, and the troopers mocked and jeered the mindless bodies before them. One trooper fired up his electron bayonet and slid it into the chest of one of the bodies. It slid in and was pulled back out without effect. Then the trooper flicked his bayonet and sliced the head clean off. It toppled to the side, falling between the others. The eyes and mouth continued to move as if in life.
Boyd looked down at Thresh. She was occupied with her field generator without a thought or care for the strange mass of bodies. Then he slipped away. Boyd had other concerns.
Kitzov was here.
The control room was crammed with the survivors. Boyd walked in and avoided anyone from the Fist. He had a call to make. The entire reason for his being here was Kitzov. He was in the same room as the hated Faction Leader. He had succeeded where so many other Union operatives had failed.
As much as he wanted to kill the terrorist himself, Boyd was still a Marine, and a Blue Star Marine at that. He had been trained for this sort of high-risk mission. He had infiltrated the Faction and located the leader. Now he needed to inform his commanding officer.
If it was too dangerous for the Union to come and arrest Kitzov with the Skarak running around, then Boyd would happily take the duty as executioner and put a pulse round in the back of Kitzov’s head. Making sure to record every moment on his wrist-mounted holo-stage, uploading it live to the Union, so everyone across the Scorpio System could see that Kitzov was dead.
It would be the last duty Boyd ever performed. But a happy one. He was here not just for duty, but for personnel revenge. Kitzov had killed his brother. He knew he might not make it through this mission alive, but it would be worth it if he killed Kitzov.
Boyd had remained calm for weeks and months, blending in, hiding amongst the pirates of the Faction, but hate was building inside him. Every moment he spent in the same room as Kitzov, the hate grew. He felt it would burst out of him in a torrent. He could rig a bomb and destroy every one of these Faction scum in one blast.
He’d be a hero.
But before he took that grave honor, he needed to follow protocol and make the call.
The control room was only the first stop in the complex that spread underneath the moon’s surface like an ant colony, twisting corridors and chambers for every human function—eating and sleeping, work and recreation. Boyd could surely find a quiet corner and make the call.
He slipped through a door as the trooper set to guard it was distracted by Kitzov. They were mesmerized by him. He stood in the center of the room, people around him gazing up at him, as he was tall. He was broad and he was handsome, Boyd had to concede. No wonder so many of the Faction followed him.
He was talking in a calm and pleasant voice, assuring all that they would be safe as long as they worked together.
It was a comforting lie, and they believed it. Maybe they wanted to believe purely because it came from the lips of Kitzov.
It was like a cult. He was their liberator, their messiah.
Boyd slipped through the doorway and into a dark, quiet corridor. He drew his pulse pistol and activated its flashlight, lighting up the corridor, and revealing a side door. Behind the door was a small room with food and drink dispensers.
Boyd slipped inside and activated his covert device.
Major Featherstone sat casually in the command chair on the deck of the Resolute, a Union frigate fitted for Blue Star operation. She was fast and powerful, designed for special ops, and currently engaged in the most important mission ever in the history of the Scorpio System: to find and capture Kitzov. One man had infiltrated the Faction. The rest of the Blue Star team was standing by.
Then the call came in.
“It’s Sergeant Boyd,” Yanic Knole said from the communication console.
“Put it on the main holo-stage,” Featherstone said as he leaned forward in his chair.
Boyd appeared, head and shoulders shrouded in dark.
“Sergeant Boyd. You have a report?” Featherstone said.
Boyd’s face was pressed close. He spoke in hushed tones.
“I have located Kitzov.”
A cheer went up across the command deck. Featherstone stood up.
“Well done, Sergeant. Where is he now?”
“He’s in the next room, literally a few meters from me right now. We are holed up in an abandoned Union bunker network on the moon, Kalis.”
“Excellent work.” Featherstone stepped down from the plinth that his command chair sat on and walked toward the main holo-stage. “Hang tight, Sergeant. We’ll have you out of there before we come and capture him.”
“Hold that, sir,” Boyd said. “We are currently under attack. It’s the Skarak.”
“Skarak?” Featherstone said. “No one has seen any Skarak ships since we beat them out of the system.”
“They are back, and in large numbers. I counted a dozen Skarak warships. They deployed fighter craft and hundreds of soldiers. I’ve engaged them at close quarters.”
“Okay, sit tight. I need to get to the colonel and request fleet support before we deploy.”
“There’s something else,” Boyd began, but he hesitated. “The Skarak, they were capturing people, and then dropping them from their warships. Those they captured appeared… They appeared to be dead, but they still began attacking after they were dropped. The Skarak are using our own numbers against us.”
Featherstone climbed back up into his command chair. “Send me any details you can and I’ll pass them on. We will be ready for whatever the Skarak throw at us. But your priority remains to stay close to Kitzov. Do not let him out of your sight.”
“Sir,” Boyd began, “we can end this right here. If you order me, I can execute the terrorist Kitzov right here, right now. I’ll keep the channel open so you have a full live report.”
Featherstone shook his head. “Negative, Sergeant. We need to bring Kitzov before Union law. Justice will be served by the courts. It is not enough that justice be done, it must be seen to be done. Do you read me, Sergeant?”
“Loud and clear,” Boyd said. He knew his job was to bring Kitzov in, and no matter how much he wanted to avenge his brother’s death, he knew he should put duty first—just as his brother had done.
A noise outside drew his attention. Footsteps toward the door he was behind.
“Someone’s coming. Boyd out.” The feed from the covert device ended, the holo-stage blinking out.
Featherstone considered the information Boyd had given him. The terrorist Kitzov. The Skarak. The dead.
“Get me the colonel right now.”
Boyd deactivated the device just as the door burst open.
“What you doing hiding in here?” Thresh said.
“Nothing. Just grabbing a drink. You want one?” Boyd tried a drink machine. It was unpowered, like the rest of the complex.
“It’s a big place here,” Thresh said. She stood in the doorway and held it open. “But really well hidden. Looks like the Union only just left. How did you find it?�
�
Boyd had his story all worked out. He was just about to explain the lucky find, the gravimetric anomaly that suggested a subterranean structure, but he was cut short when a shout went up from the defenders at the barricade.
The bodies of their former comrades were pushing through, and the barricade was about to fail.
11
Running through the control room with Thresh right behind him, Boyd drew his pulse pistol. He ran out into the corridor and came to the barricade.
The stability field was holding but it was too strong, and the ramshackle arrangement of equipment was collapsing under the weight of it. A dead-eyed Faction trooper, his scruffy uniform caked in blood, was crawling through a gap. Boyd fired a single round into the dead trooper, who slumped and added his now twice-dead body to the barricade.
The line of troopers defending the barricade was only a dozen across, limited by the width of the corridor. The piles of items crumpled again, collapsing under the field.
“Not too strong,” Boyd called out. “Reduce the strength of the field or you’ll crush this pile of crap flat.”
“It’s about as weak as I can make it,” Thresh said. “This kit was designed for a starship’s hull, to protect against high-energy impacts. A pile of office furniture is too weak. The field will collapse it utterly in time.”
The pile settled again, a small cabinet was crushed, and the barricade collapsed on one side down to only chest height. The bodies on the other side reached over with their hands, fingers clawing at the defenders.
“It’s Seren,” one defender said, his voice breaking. “My wife.”
Boyd looked. The woman’s head was bent ninety degrees to the left, and her right arm was dislocated at the shoulder, hanging uselessly to her side and swinging as she moved. Her left arm was reaching out, clawing at the air. As she climbed up onto the barricade, her body was held in place by the field that enveloped her, but her arm made it through the field and clawed at her husband’s face.
“Let her through,” the husband said. “She needs a doctor. There must be a med-bay in here somewhere.” He reached out and took her hand, but then yelled in pain as his wife crushed his fingers in her grip.
A trooper stepped up and fired a single round into the woman. She fell still, her body now part of the barricade as bodies behind continued to claw and press forward.
“She was already gone,” Boyd said to the horrified trooper. He was cradling his broken fingers and looking in disbelief at his now certainly dead wife. “She had been taken by the Skarak.” He drew the shocked trooper aside. “They did something to them. Look at her body. Her neck was broken. She was dead already.”
“So how was she moving? She was looking for me?”
Boyd passed the trooper over to one of his comrades, who led him away. He turned and looked at the lifeless body of the woman Seren. Her broken body should never have been able to move. There was no life in those eyes. It was just like the crew of the Bonesaw that Boyd had discovered on an asteroid in the outer asteroid sphere. They had been exposed to space, their eyes black and their mouths filled with swollen tongues. They had been dead but still attacked.
Boyd looked at the hoard on the far side of the barricade. More were climbing over the top of the collapsing pile. Bodies on top of bodies. Now half the height of the barricade was corpses as the stability field crushed it down.
“If we throw enough material on the barricade,” Boyd said, “the field will eventually compact it so much that it won’t collapse anymore.”
“That’s right,” Thresh said, “but it’ll block up the corridor so completely we’ll seal ourselves in, unless there is another way out. Maybe we should start looking. We can’t stay in here forever in any case.”
Boyd stepped back from the barricade and let a trooper take his place. The troopers were firing at any attacker that came close. They called out the name of anyone they recognized before dispatching them, the bodies on the far side of the barricade piling up so the attackers climbed over the fallen and were soon towering over the barricade. Some stepped onto the barricade only to be pulled down into the cavities made by the stability field.
“I can’t make the field any weaker,” Thresh said.
A group of troopers arrived carrying more items pulled from rooms further along the corridors to add to the barricade. A tall chair, used as a perch for an operator of one of the consoles in the control room, was thrown onto the barricade. It collapsed instantly, adding a few centimeters of height to the barricade and crushing the body of an attacker beneath it.
More items were thrown on, adding a few more centimeters. A cabinet here, a chair or table there. All crushed down on top of the bodies that had climbed up. Now the barricade was a sandwich of the original barricade, the bodies of the dead, and the new material. A hand sticking out on the defenders’ side still grasped forward until the stability field crushed everything down again and the hand stopped. Blood trickled over the fingers to drip slowly to the ground.
Boyd heard his name called out by a voice he knew.
“Boyd, Thresh, where are you?”
It was Noland.
“Someone wants to meet you,” Noland said with a cheeky, knowing grin on his thin lips.
Boyd and Thresh exchanged a look of mild curiosity as they followed Noland. They walked into the packed control room. Noland led Boyd and Thresh over to where Captain Poledri was standing, talking to a tall, broad-shouldered man in a neat Faction uniform.
The man turned around, a broad smile on a friendly face.
“You must be Will Boyd,” Kitzov said. “Poledri was telling me all about you.”
He held out his hand and snatched Boyd’s, shaking it enthusiastically without being too vigorous. His grip was firm but not crushing. His enthusiasm infected Boyd, who smiled back at his brother’s killer.
“Pleased to meet you, sir.” The words fell out of Boyd’s mouth, almost taking him by surprise. But what was more surprising was that Boyd truly meant it. After a few seconds in Kitzov’s company, Boyd felt at ease, uplifted, and in no small part honored to be talking to the leader of the Faction.
Kitzov was at ease and put others at ease. He was confident and gave others confidence. He was cheerful without being overly jovial. He was serious without being stern.
Boyd realized Kitzov was not as tall as he first thought, but somehow the man appeared to tower over everyone in the room.
“And who do we have here?” Kitzov said, dropping Boyd’s hand and turning to Thresh. “Little Enke. Is that you?”
Boyd looked at Thresh. She was glowing and grinning as Kitzov embraced her. He couldn’t help feeling a little jealous now that Kitzov was giving her attention.
“Yes, sir,” Thresh said. She embraced Kitzov and then stood next to him, holding his hand and looking elated. She smiled at Boyd, showing how pleased she was to be with Kitzov. Boyd realized how pretty her smile was, and the blush on her cheeks and the tear of joy in the corner of one eye made her so attractive…for a Faction pirate.
“I heard you were with Poledri,” Kitzov said. “I’m so glad you have got a chance to say hi.” Kitzov turned to Poledri. “You have one hell of a pilot here. She got me through some jams back in the day. Never saw a youngster so at home at the flight controls.”
“I’m no pilot,” Thresh said, turning away from Kitzov in embarrassment. “My dad, now he was a pilot. He could fly anything. I can keep a heading and make a turn or two, but I’m no pilot.”
“Not a pilot,” Kitzov said. “So what are you doing on the Fist? Poledri isn’t one for taking on passengers.”
“Engineer and flight deck weapons operator.”
Kitzov smiled. “Look out any Union captain that runs into you!”
“Boyd’s the pilot, sir,” Thresh said. “And he’s damn good too.”
“You like him,” Kitzov said with a smile.
“I always had a thing for pilots,” Thresh said with a blush. She gazed up at Kitzov with a dreamy l
ook in her eye.
Boyd noticed everyone around him was drawn to Kitzov. People hung on his every word. They laughed at his jokes and took every serious comment on board instantly. He made people feel relaxed and empowered.
“Boyd was in the group that found the Skarak ship impacted on an asteroid,” Poledri said. “He encountered the crew of the Bonesaw with Captain Mitri, apparently dead from exposure to the vacuum of space, yet they still attacked.”
Kitzov nodded. “Very strange. I have to admit I could hardly believe the evidence when I saw it,” he said to Boyd. “The recordings you made were sent to Faction command by your captain. What do you think it all means?”
Boyd remembered stepping inside the Skarak ship. He remembered the voice in his head. He remembered his desire to turn on his shipmates and kill them. Only his duty as a Marine had prevented him from attacking. He’d feared that if he attacked, he would blow his cover and reveal himself as a Union infiltrator. His mission to get close to Kitzov would fail. So, he had fought the voice in his head. The rest of the crew had not been so strong-willed and had turned on each other.
“I don’t know, but I guess the Skarak try and take control of our minds somehow. To turn us against each other, against ourselves.”
Kitzov was listening intently. He gave Boyd the feeling that what he was saying, no matter how strange it sounded, had value, and that Kitzov was taking all information to help him form a rounded opinion.
“Do you think that’s what happened to our people out there today?”
Boyd felt more important than he had in a long time, giving Kitzov information and opinion. Never before had Boyd felt so useful. He felt himself drawn to this man and silently admonished himself for being drawn into the cult of Kitzov. He tried to clear his head and remind himself of the truth. The only thing he wanted to give this man, the leader of the terrorist and criminal group threatening the stability of the Scorpio System, was a pulse round to the head.
“I saw our Faction brothers and sisters—” Boyd could hardly believe he was using their language, and even starting to believe it. “—lifted to the Skarak warships. They must have taken control of their minds before sending them back down to fight us.”
Blue Star Marine Boxed Set Page 21
