by Terry Mixon
“Probably,” the man said as he started affixing a larger charge to the rock near the hatch. “This wasn’t built as a stand-up armored facility. The tunnelling looks at least a few years old, so this is probably a converted chamber. There, it’s armed. One flick of a switch and boom! It won’t be enough to cause the tanks to rupture. I hope.”
“You’re filling me with confidence. Let’s get as far back as we can and wait for the Major.”
He was about to say more when the metal hatch beside them started opening. The people inside had decided they were going to come out and play. Perfect.
Rather than draw his weapons, Brad grabbed the charge Chavez had just affixed to the wall and tossed it through the hatch, between the feet of the first armed man coming out.
“Blow it,” Brad ordered, throwing himself back and shielding his head.
The concussive wave slammed him into the rock wall and stunned him. The world seemed to be moving in slow motion and sounds were oddly muted as his ears rang. Someone was shouting over the com, but he couldn’t make out the words or meanings.
He staggered to his feet, swaying badly before he caught himself, and hefted his rifle. The three Marines seemed to be in much better shape. Their armor must’ve been better at keeping their brains from being scrambled in the concussion.
Rather than trying to give orders he wasn’t even sure they’d understand, he headed through the open hatch and into chaos and devastation.
The control room wasn’t all that big, and the blast had ruptured several control consoles and the people that had been operating them. That said, the devastation was far more contained than he’d have expected. The charge must’ve been shaped and expended most of its force down a certain line of attack.
Which meant that the rest of the room was in better shape, and so were the men climbing to their feet and pulling weapons from their belts.
Brad wasted no time trying to count them but took cover behind a shattered and smoking console, opening fire on the cluster of pirates in front of him while the three Marines dropped down beside him. He really hoped they’d called for backup.
Unlike the fighters in the rest of the base, the people here weren’t in armor, except for the half-dozen that the bomb had taken out at the hatch. Worse for them, they were only armed with pistols. This was going to be a very short and brutal fight for them.
One of the pirates broke cover and dashed for a console along the far wall. Figuring that allowing him to get there could be bad in any number of ways, Brad shot him in the back three times, killing him well short of the controls.
Two other pirates leapt up and headed for the same console as soon as the first man went down. Brad emptied his rifle into the two runners and dropped them just before the magazine emptied.
“Cover me,” Brad shouted, hoping his companion’s ears worked better than his, dropped his rifle, drew his pistol and mono-blade, and raced for the console himself.
His timing was good, and he took the head off another pirate as she rose to make the dash herself. The spray of blood from her neck blinded the man who’d been following her, making him easy prey for Brad’s backhand slash.
There wasn’t much cover near the target console, so Brad just crouched low and used his pistol to shoot at anyone that seemed to be thinking about making a run for him.
His new position had the survivors caught in a crossfire and one of them threw down his weapon. That just prompted the man beside him to shoot him in the head, earning a pair of shots from Brad.
The remaining three threw down their weapons together and raised their hands.
Brad scanned the rest of the room but didn’t see any more active fighters. He rose slowly to his feet, keeping the prisoners under a watchful eye while the Marines secured them.
“Two of you keep an eye on the hatch,” he said. “Chavez, make sure the rest of these bastards are either dead or secured.”
That done, he looked over the console that everyone had been excited about. As he’d expected, it looked like it had a self-destruct timer on it. Thankfully, no one had managed to activate it.
It also had an undamaged and unlocked computer interface. That might prove to be helpful, too. He rarely got his hands on Cadre data before they’d manage to purge it. If he could hold this room, he might get everything he needed.
A loud explosion outside the room sent dust back into the air and reminded him that he needed to hope Major Papadakis beat the attackers back or he’d be playing defender all too soon.
His hearing improved enough over the next few minutes to get a report from Papadakis and an ass-chewing for getting into a fight without her. She mentioned something about tying him up and shipping him back into space, but he thought she was joking. Probably.
She sent those least able to fight back to help defend the control room while she did her work, which presented Brad an opportunity to take advantage of the OWA controllers leaving the console logged in. He could have done it himself in theory, but he knew he needed to keep his eyes on the big picture right now—and even commanding a mercenary company had left his computer skills rusty, let alone running a fleet.
He didn’t have the combat hackers he’d hired for his Vikings, but two of the crewmen had extensive experience in computer systems, and he quickly had them digging for the information he needed as well as anything else they could find.
A lot of the data was still going to be encrypted, but there was a good chance his people back on the Fleet vessels could crack that. They couldn’t get data out of an erased drive.
While his people worked, Brad looked over the surviving consoles. He found one that captured his interest when he saw the rotating video feeds from other locations inside the base. This must be the security controls.
He sat down and started running through everything, trying to get an appreciation of how the fighting was going. Unsurprisingly, it seemed his people were slowly gaining the upper hand. Papadakis was pushing the group that had attacked her and the control room area back and had already cleared the area immediately outside the control room.
The prisoners they’d been evacuating in the bay were loading their second wave and would be gone in less than five minutes. The other Marine forces were still going head to head with a large force deeper into the mines. Resistance was fierce, but the OWA troops had nowhere to go.
Or did they?
The bastards always seemed to have a rathole to slip out from and escape, at least the ones in charge. If they went true to form, the leadership was down there and had a way to get off this asteroid.
Getting past the fleet guarding it wasn’t going to be easy, but Brad wouldn’t say it was impossible, if the stars lined up just right. The best place to stop them was down here.
Video feeds were scarce down in the mines, but he finally found one that showed a number of men and women rushing toward the far side of the asteroid.
Two things immediately stood out about them. First, they were pushing crates on grav repulsors. Those were like the panels that generated gravity, but these were made to aid in moving heavy cargo. Even so, the task was probably causing a lot of cursing. The people doing the moving were obviously not used to maneuvering anything that bulky.
Secondly, the man in the lead was someone Brad recognized and deeply wanted to have a long conversation with: Jamal Youden, the OWA representative who had almost certainly been behind the mass murder of the majority of the Jovian system’s political leadership.
That made stopping them that much more important. No matter how much this was going to piss off Major Papadakis, he was going to have to capture the man and his secret cargo before he slipped away, and that meant he’d be operating solo. Relatively speaking.
He snorted in amusement when he realized she might just truss him up and send him off to his flagship after all.
“Get a move on, people,” he ordered. “We’ve got some bad guys to catch.”
Saying that proved a lot easier than making it hap
pen, as it turned out. His maps of the facility were nonexistent, so he was forced to have one of the computer people divert to finding them for him. That ate up five minutes but allowed him to share the layout of the base with all the people under his command, including the Marines doing the fighting elsewhere.
Once he had the complete map, he quickly figured out where the OWA leadership was going. There were a few isolated domes on the far side of the asteroid, and one of them was the likely goal. It was labeled as storage, but that had to be crap. There was a ship hidden in there.
The heroic thing to do would be to rush down some of the alternate passages and block them from escape at the last minute.
Brad chose the less adventurous but far more effective path of calling on one of Commodore Bailey’s ships to put a lot of mass-driver slugs into the dome in question while he moved his forces to cut off the group’s options to retreat.
The mass of the asteroid was too high to feel the individual impacts, but he imagined he felt a vibration anyway.
His force had two missions: to trap the escapees and to attack the rear of the holdouts the original Marine force had pinned down in the mines. If they could do both those things, the fighting there would be over.
Keeping in mind how upset Papadakis was going to be, he stayed back from the leading edge of the group and simply directed their movements. Two-thirds of his forces went to attack the OWA holdouts fighting the Marines, while the smaller group focused on trapping the high-value targets.
As things turned out, the trapping part was the easiest. He and his forces plugged them into a single tunnel segment with him on one end and the destroyed dome on the other. Based on the reports from the corvette that had done the firing, the ship in the dome was in just as bad a shape as the structure. The OWA leadership had nowhere to go.
Based on the lack of real shooting, they didn’t have much in the way of armaments, either. He bet they were regretting leaving all their commandos behind.
That didn’t mean they were unarmed, of course. No, they had some pistols and a few rifles. Nothing that could hold off a determined push on his part. He only needed to make them see that clearly.
“You’re trapped,” he yelled around the corner toward the enemy. The two Marines acting as his guards made sure they were between him and the corner, like they didn’t trust him not to race around it and start swinging his mono-blade.
“You’ll never take us alive,” Youden shouted back. Brad couldn’t tell if the man recognized his voice or not. Honestly, it didn’t matter.
“That remains to be seen. We know you were behind the attack on Io, Youden. Perhaps some of your compatriots were as well. If so, I can’t help them. If anyone wasn’t involved in that attack though, I will promise them that Fleet will keep possession of them and not allow for lethal punishment for their crimes. This is a one-time offer and expires in ten seconds.”
A loud, undignified squawk sounded less than two seconds later, and the noise of a scuffle made its way to Brad’s ears. Someone wasn’t allowing the grass to grow under their feet.
“We’ve got him down,” a different male voice said. “We accept your deal and surrender.”
Brad gestured for the Marines and some of the Fleet personnel to go secure their new prisoners. In just a minute, the all clear was given and Brad came around the corner to look them over.
Youden’s eyes widened at the sight of him and he snarled. “You!”
“Me,” Brad confirmed. “I have to say that I’m looking forward to chatting with you, Mr. Youden. It’ll be interesting to see what you have to tell me.”
“You’ll get nothing from me!”
“We’ll see,” Brad said, feeling content. “No matter how this plays out, I wager that I’ll enjoy the outcome more than you will.”
Youden grinned savagely. “We’ll see if you still feel the same way when your brother comes along and chops your head off.”
“If Jack comes calling, I’d be more worried about my own head, if I were you. In any case, I’ll take my chances. You and your mistakes here have given us a fighting chance.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The fighting took hours more to wrap up, not counting the time spent searching the mines for OWA fighters who had gotten away, but the end result was never in question. Major Papadakis finally caught up with him but managed to stop herself from ripping his head off for his shenanigans, for which he was grateful.
The computer experts had managed to copy the data off the base computers while he’d taken care of the OWA leadership, but as he’d expected, the majority of it was encrypted. The prisoners were likely to be helpful in this, if they could be properly motivated.
The crates were interesting. They held the prototypes the OWA had stolen from Blackhawk Station that allowed for the refining of fuel from ice. They’d copied them, of course, and there were larger examples of them in use here at the refueling facility, but Youden had expected his people to destroy those. These were meant to seed another facility somewhere.
Brad made arrangements for the crates to be sent to his flagship, but they were little more than a curiosity at this point. No, the more interesting haul was in senior prisoners. Captain Nah arranged to have them all put together, and Kate Falcone observed them for a few hours while Brad coordinated things from his flag bridge.
Once they had the facility fully locked down, he made his way down to join her before holding a videoconference with his flag officers.
“What can you tell me?” he asked when he stepped into the compartment she was using as an observation room.
She pointed out five of the prisoners. “The others treat these five with subconscious deference. They’ve obviously been told not to, but their body language gives them away. I’d stake my life that those are Youden’s lieutenants.”
“Are any of them in the Agency databases?”
She shook her head. “I’m still waiting for word, but I’m sure they’re Cadre. It makes me sad that you promised them their lives, but Mercury still sucks. They’ll wish they were dead in a few years. If, of course, we win this war.”
He nodded. “Do you think you can induce them to give us the codes to unlock the encrypted data?”
She grinned. “I’ll get what we need. Especially if I can get a few positive IDs on them. What are our plans going forward? Do we return to Io or do we clean out the trailing Trojans?”
“I want to clean them out of here. We’ll have time before the OWA forces arrive, and I don’t want to leave this kind of scum at our backs. It’s not going to be pretty, but the Marines can dig them out.”
“You know that they won’t die easily,” she said a bit sadly. “They’ll use the civilians as human shields and other atrocities.”
“I know,” he said, leaning back against the wall. “I don’t get how so many people can be monsters.”
“Did you ever hear that old saw about everyone being the hero of their own story?” she asked. “It’s bull. Some people are nothing but wolves and see everyone else as sheep. They’ll do whatever they can to see themselves in a better place, no matter how much misery they leave in their wake.
“Are some people going to die when you clear the Trojans? Yes. Here’s a truth. The Cadre or OWA, whichever you prefer, would kill them anyway. You can’t save everyone, Brad. Make a statement in how you try to save as many as you can.”
“I’m not sure that’s going to help me sleep at night, but thanks. I’ll go settle on a plan with the Commodores while you find someone to tell us what we need to know. They either know the force mix Mader is going to lead here, or they know the encryption key, or both. I’m counting on you to get everything you can.”
“I’ll make it happen,” she assured him. “Better yet, I’ll even do it without spacing anyone.”
“I’m not convinced that makes me feel any better, but I did make a promise. Do the best you can.”
“What about Youden?” she asked. “He has no immunity. Can I lean on him
?”
He smiled coldly. “Do whatever you need to in regards with him but keep him alive. I’ll be needing him soon, if I don’t miss my guess.”
Brad turned toward the door but paused. “Thanks, Kate.”
“It’s what partners are for,” she said, already turning back to face the observation screen.
He left the room still mulling over how he was going to clear the Trojans. Like she’d said, it was going to be bloody, heartbreaking work, but he needed to make it happen as fast as he could, no matter the blood and pain that it was going to cause.
Brad made his way to the wardroom and found everyone already gathered. Commodores Bailey and Nuremburg were on one side of the table, Commodore Jahoda and Captain Nah were on the other, and Major Papadakis sat at the far end of the table from his seat. All rose as he entered.
“As you were,” he said, shocked at how easily that response had rolled off his tongue and how accepting he’d become of the gesture of respect.
Once everyone was seated, he joined them, taking a moment to look at each. “Let’s start with Major Papadakis. Is the refueling facility secure?”
“Yes, Admiral,” she said. “I have a casualty list for your perusal, but all things considered, it’s lighter than I’d have guessed going into the fight. It came down to the triarii in the end, but the OWA goons paid the heavier price.
“The facility was rigged to blow, but we short-circuited that plan when we captured the control room. Rather, you did. I should file a protest at your reckless actions, but I doubt it will change your nature any, so I’ll save myself for a better opportunity.”
Brad chuckled. “No, I don’t suppose I’ll change much at this late date—I’m still more comfortable with a blade in my hand than my feet on a flag deck.
“What about the space around the refueling base?”
“All clear,” Bailey said. “We took out every ship that was in the area and captured the civilian ships as well. We’re still looking at the crews, but I’m going to bet they’re Cadre or in the pay of them. We have pickets out to catch anyone else in the area that comes looking.”
