War Against the White Knights Page 9

  Even while the war still raged, a division grew within the HAR between the long-civilized homeworlds and the frontier worlds that within a few short decades had transformed from long-established mining posts and military depots into fractious multi-species worlds of reservist-colonists and their descendants.

  While the Civil War raged on and the future for all worlds in the HAR remained so uncertain, the need to support and resupply the Human Legion in its bid for liberty proved just enough of a unifying force to these worlds to function in peace. But long before the war ended, under the surface of that peace, rivals jostled for position and made their preparation for the war’s aftermath.

  — CHAPTER 13 —

  Arun felt himself swallowing hard. Again and again. He could neither help the nervous tic, nor was he prepared to feel ashamed for his nervousness. Even so, he glanced at his security escort for their reaction to his worry.

  They remained implacable behind their opaque helmet visors, continuing to look behind every ladderwell and inside every bulkhead recess in the deployment tube, checking for threats as they made their way to Lance of Freedom’s ‘B’ Hangar.

  Over the years, Arun had gotten to know each and every one of the men and women of his security detachment. If any of them had noticed the commander of the Human Legion showing a little anxiety before the climactic battle of the war, he expected them to consider that a good sign, an indication that despite all they had lived through their commander was still human.

  Xin wouldn’t be so generous. Arun knew precisely how she would react if she could see his weakness. She would roll her eyes and berate him for being too ready to accept the blame for the Legion’s reverses and not willing enough to accept credit for their victories.

  At heart he felt like just one more individual in a legion of heroes, many of whom were more skilled and courageous than he was, and yet it was his strategy that had brought them here to the gates of the White Knight Imperial capital, his negotiation with the Emperor, his plan for the secret ‘Z’ Fleet that had arrived to tilt the odds in the Legion’s favor, and his decision to stand and fight 99 years ago in the Second Battle of Khallini.

  And now, having secured the lesser moons and planets of the Olympus-Ultra system, the Legion finally faced the New Empire forces besieging the Emperor on a moon named Athena. Here, where it mattered most, Legion forces were superior.

  Xin was right. He should be bursting with pride at his part in getting to this point. Instead all he could feel was that the final victory was his to lose.

  The odds may have been in their favor, but who could tell what hidden surprises lay in wait?

  He laughed. Thinking of Xin had cured his nervous swallowing. She was like that: a correcting influence on him who could be invoked just by thinking of her, not even needing to be physically present.

  His Littorane adjutant, Major Spreese, fluttered her gills. It was the slightest gesture, but Spreese was sharing her approval for her general’s good mood. She had always monitored more than just Arun’s administrative needs, and he knew how damned lucky he was to have her.

  The dashed line along the outer bulkhead changed from red to green, followed a few meters later by the new deck number: 13. They were almost there.

  Barney read his human partner’s mind and established a comm link to the boss of the hangar where they were headed.

  “Coombes here.”

  “It’s McEwan. We’ll be with you in five minutes.”

  “I know. Your chief guard dog, Pioretti, has just informed me, along with all of his concerns about how inadequate my own security arrangements will be for his gilded master.”

  Coombes growled indignantly, but it was all in good humor.

  “Sergeant Pioretti is as soft as anything,” replied Arun. “You just have to scratch him behind the ears first.”

  Coombes laughed, but Arun could hear the strain behind his tone. With all the security leaks, everyone was on maximum alert, and that meant CPO Coombes was almost a prisoner in his own domain as his hangar had been shut down to anything other than the task of ferrying Arun safely to the newly combined fleet’s flagship, Holy Retribution. Arun’s heart leaped in anticipation of setting foot for the first time in the largest vessel the Littoranes had ever built.

  “Sorry, Coombes, for being such a colossal pain in the ass.”

  There was no practical need for Arun to contact his friend at all, let alone apologize. But Arun had learned the hard way to demonstrate how much he valued his friends.

  Arun expected a playfully snide reply.

  Nothing.

  Instead he felt a sudden jolt of alarm sent directly into his nervous system by Barney.

  ‘Comm link lost.’

  Before Arun could ask Pioretti what was going on, his security squad flew into action.

  Six Marines cocooned Arun, protecting him behind their armored bodies. The majority took up defensive positions around the tube with one fire team trying to break out of whatever threat might be gripping them and re-establish contact with the rest of the ship. Spreese drew her sidearm and moved slightly to one side, locking her tail around a handhold in the bulkhead.

  He knew the drill perfectly because they had practiced it so many times.

  Was it a drill this time or for real? He wouldn’t be surprised if Indiya and Xin had dreamed up a last-minute test of the security arrangements.

  In his heart, though, he knew this was no drill.

  He looked down, and realized he had already drawn his plasma pistol.

  As his eyes scanned for hostiles, his thumb hovered over the gun’s safety.

  — CHAPTER 14 —

  Romulus floated aft along the deployment tube while he brought up an image of Janna on his wrist display. He had taken the photo when she was still convalescing after the Hardit attack on Khallini. In those days the parasite was more thinly laid over her skin, leaving her enough flexibility to give him a deep smile of contentment. She loved and was loved by him, and in that captured moment anyone could see it in her face.

  He loved her still, of course. All the terrible things that he had done had been for her. But if she knew how far he had gone, if she’d had even an inkling of what she was carrying inside her in that photograph… He shuddered to imagine her reaction.

  The alien consciousness oozed into his mind and congealed into words of command. “Proceed without delay!”

  The words were spoken in a distortion of his own voice. The growling and barking of Hardit speech was entirely absent, though he presumed a Hardit was behind the command. He couldn’t even be sure of Hardit involvement; of anything.

  The Hardits who had done something to him had also implanted a bomb inside Janna. They’d made him watch as they inserted the deadly tube and secured it to her aorta. The price he had paid for keeping Janna’s bomb inert was to make physical contact with senior Legion officers. That was all he’d been told to do.

  It seemed so innocent a betrayal.

  The first time he’d met General McEwan, on the eve of the Battle of Tallerman, he’d felt a prickling on his neck, suddenly terrified that they had planted a bomb inside him too. But nothing happened. Maybe the Hardits had listened in somehow. He had no clues, just speculation.

  Life had continued. Life with Janna had continued, even better than before since they’d accepted his request to rejoin her in the Wolves.

  Until five minutes ago, when his mind had been wrenched open and a voice inserted within. A voice that had commanded Romulus to proceed immediately to the deployment tube outside the Deck 13 hangar entrance. Or else Janna’s bomb would detonate immediately. He’d had no idea until then that they could talk to him.

  “Hurry!” urged the voice.

  As he pulled himself down the tube in an aft direction, the alien presence in his mind strengthened, the sense of an oozing invader hardened into an iron grip on his will.

  The question of what precisely the Hardits had gained from his treachery grew urgent. Meet senior pers
onnel. Repeatedly if possible. That was all he had done. It sounded so innocuous, but there would be a dark Hardit secret at its heart, and whatever it was he was sure it would soon be revealed.

  “Halt!”

  Startled, Romulus looked around but no one was there. The command had sounded different – more solid – but perhaps that was a reflection of the strengthening grip of the Hardits.

  “I said halt!”

  Romulus grabbed the ladder recessed into the bulkhead and slammed to a full stop still not understanding why the Hardits had swapped from urging him to speed up. Had he reached his destination?

  The answer became clear when a human Marine in an ACE/2 battlesuit coalesced out of the air.

  For a sweet moment, Romulus felt relieved that this was a human Marine who had de-stealthed before him. But that moment didn’t last.

  The Marine wore the insignia of a corporal in the Guards, the elite unit set up to protect Legion VIPs. There had been an exclusion zone declared in the area leading to the hangar because General McEwan had passed this way recently and you didn’t get more VIP than him. But McEwan should be off in his shuttle by now. If the guards were defending the deployment tube then something had gone badly wrong.

  “This area is restricted,” stated the corporal. “Explain your presence.”

  Romulus wanted a singularity to appear and suck him inside its event horizon. How could he explain his presence? It’s all right, Corporal, I’m here because the Hardits ordered me. Oh, hell!

  The Marine raised his carbine. The motion wasn’t so much threatening as relentless, as if to say I won’t hesitate to shoot if you don’t supply a convincing answer.

  “I’m off duty, Corporal. I came to get away, to think.”

  “Liar.” A ring of monofilament teeth flicked out from the barrel of the Guard’s carbine. He let his helmet go transparent so that Romulus could see the Marine’s gaze roaming over his body, selecting a target. “You get one more go before we find out whether that filthy parasite coating your skin will protect you against an SA-71’s teeth.”

  “I’m here to meet my girlfriend,” Romulus said hurriedly. Actually, it wasn’t a bad story, and with matters obviously coming to a head it didn’t have to hang together for very long. “We expected the exclusion zone to be lifted by now and we wanted… time alone.”

  The guard said nothing, just scowled at Romulus.

  Shit! Romulus hurled curses at himself. How could he be so stupid? The first thing the guard would do was check Janna’s location and ask her to corroborate her lover’s statement. That was the problem with being a minor celebrity: everyone knew far too much about you.

  Romulus could almost hear the deadly whine of the carbine’s teeth revolving in a blurry ring of destruction that could carve effortlessly through hide, flesh, and bone. But instead of spinning his weapon’s teeth, the guard retracted them inside the barrel.

  “Confine yourself to your quarters,” the corporal ordered. “The Master-at-Arms will be informed. You will be disciplined. Now leave this area immediately.”

  What should he do now? Romulus took in his surroundings, seeking clues. The ladders and maintenance panels looked normal. The red paint marking the charged walkway that ran along the inner bulkhead looked worn and in need of refreshing. The corporal was the only other person in sight.

  His eyes could not be trusted, though. The corporal had deliberately switched off the stealth function of his battlesuit, and was unlikely to be operating alone. How many other Guards were out there, invisible guns trained on him and awaiting his next move?

  He had to face it, the way ahead led only to a swift death. And that was a coward’s way out of the mess he was in.

  Sorry, Janna.

  Romulus pushed down on the ladder and began his retreat. He formed words in his mind, hoping whatever the Hardits had done to him meant he could transmit as well as receive.

  I tried. Just leave Janna alone, okay? I’ll work around and come from the other direction.

  Suddenly, strong hands yanked him off the ladder and pinned his arms painfully behind him.

  “Hey! I’m going,” he protested, but the grip only tightened until he feared his bones would pop from their sockets. Another hand pinned his neck. “Will you stop that?”

  The answer came as an explosion of energy bursts behind him.

  Romulus tried to twist around, to see what was happening, but he was caught in the hold of powered exoskeleton. He had as much chance of shifting free as lifting a battlecruiser in one hand.

  Then whoever had grabbed him twisted Romulus around so that he faced the consequences of his treachery head on.

  What he saw made him feel sick in the pit of his stomach.

  There had been four Marine Guards. Now all were dead.

  Twenty soldiers winked into visibility. Like the dead Marines, they wore powered armor with helmet visors as black as the void. But there was no mistaking the elongated snout of the helmets, the short stature or the armored tails.

  These were Hardit special forces.

  Had they brought him here to be a decoy, to distract the guards?

  He tensed, expecting his usefulness to have extinguished after his last, pitiful act of betrayal.

  But instead of killing him, they shoved him down the center of the deployment tube. Without the ladder to grab onto, he fell aft, feet first, completely at the mercy of these Hardit commandoes.

  Weapons opened up a short distance ahead, and the tube flared with the heat and light from powerful explosions.

  Romulus fell toward the sound of guns.

  — CHAPTER 15 —

  Nearby, weapons fire toward the nose of the ship shook the deployment tube.

  Arun readied his pistol, knowing it was little more than a gesture. His guard had readied portable field generators to cover the deployment tube in both directions. Anyone who could get through the shields wasn’t going to be slowed by his pistol. He’d faced a shield once before at the Hardit mining base on Antilles. Two squads of cadets had thrown everything they had and hadn’t even scratched it.

  But this time Arun was inside the shield. He was safe.

  The guns fell silent.

  “Contact lost with forward perimeter, sir.”

  Pioretti’s words sent a chill through Arun. Ruiz, Larson, Castellanos, and Bella were four of the most experienced Marines in the Legion, and they’d lasted only seconds. What the hell were they facing?

  As if in answer, a barrage of spheres flew at the shield. Each was the size of his thumb and had no obvious form of propulsion. They looked like toys – until they slammed into the invisible force shield and unleashed their payload.

  There was no explosion, at least not one visible to Arun, but the force shield took on a faint ruddy glow, like a distant fire reflecting off a tunnel wall.

  So far, so good. But then another barrage of the spheres hit, strengthening the red coloration of the shield enough that its convex shape was plain to see.

  Missiles were bobbing down the deployment tube in a constant stream now, bumping into the force shield and brightening it from red to orange to a rich blue. The attack was apologetically quiet, but for the shield to be so overloaded that it glowed blue meant that colossal amounts of energy were being unleashed just meters away from his face.

  Arun’s gun hand twitched but the shield prevented anyone from shooting out as much as the enemy from firing in.

  The shield quickly jumped from blue to a searingly bright violet.

  In the last moments, when the destruction of the shield seemed imminent, Arun glanced behind, checking whether this light show was a distraction from the real axis of attack. Perhaps it was, but he could see nothing behind except the outer perimeter guard of four Marines.

  But the force shield did not fail. The missile assault ceased.

  Had a relief force arrived to chase away the attackers?

  No.

  The enemy had come to gloat.

  Or so Arun assumed.
<
br />   But only a single figure appeared, being obviously pushed down the tube against his will by someone behind who remained invisible. The visible figure was Romulus.

  “Can you see who has Romulus?” he asked Pioretti.

  “Negative.”

  The sergeant’s reply was only to be expected. To have gotten this far, past so many layers of sensors, their unidentified enemy had clearly developed an innovation in stealth technology that would be beyond the comparatively modest capability of a Marine battlesuit’s sensors.

  The enemy de-stealthed.

  They looked similar to the Marines protecting Arun, except their build was slighter, with an elongated snout to their helmets, and with armor protecting their tails.

  Hardits!

  How the hell did they get here?

  Arun’s throat went dry as the three Hardits raised their weapons. In the process they released Romulus, who drifted gently toward Arun in the pseudo-microgravity, waving his arms wildly but to no avail. From his position in the middle of the tube, Romulus was unable to grab anything with which to alter his vector.

  The Hardit who had released Romulus flicked its tail in a gesture of command that Arun remembered from deeply buried memories of his time as an Aux slave to the Hardits.

  Arun’s attention focused on the other two invaders, expecting them to act, but instead the force shield popped and went out.

  The Hardits opened fire, Arun’s Marine guard and Major Spreese returning fire simultaneously.

  Instantly, Romulus changed from helpless scenery to an active participant. From his boot, he whipped out a Wolf-issue combat blade made of monofilament-edged composites that could cut through armor. He proceeded to demonstrate this capability by stabbing the nearest Hardit through the neck, and then ripping the blade out to leave her half-decapitated.