Resurgence (Redleg In Space Book 2) Page 14

  He had done plenty of hard-knock operations in his career in the military, but this one would be the first where he didn’t have a team of great guys with him. As he adjusted his pouches and slings, he silently hoped his skill and high-tech armor would be enough for him to save Sam. His anger slowly morphed into anxiety as he waited for Ann to announce they were closing on the objective.

  “Two minutes out. I have a visual and both streets are blocked. We will have to use the tertiary option. Opening the bay for a quick exit.”

  At her announcement, he quickly engaged the mag locks on his boots to keep him anchored to the ship as the wind began buffeting him. He could see the building in the distance and after a could identify the shorter grey one that he would be assaulting. The buildings were approaching fast as he made his way to the edge of the platform.

  Ann wasn’t joking when she announced the quick exit. As the ship moved over the roof of the building, she broke their momentum for just a moment to allow him to step off. An outside observer wouldn’t have even noticed the ship stopping. With him deposited safely, she took up an orbit, close enough to engage threats, but far enough out to protect herself from return fire.

  He pushed the memories of his time in Afghanistan to the back of his mind as he sprinted for the roof access. The buildings surrounding him were all taller than the one he was standing on and provided vantages where he could be fired upon. Without cover near him, he didn’t want to present himself as an easy target. One round from his rail rifle saw the locking mechanism on the door destroyed.

  The roof access opened into a completely black stairwell. The vision augmentations in his visor flared to life, allowing him to make his way safely towards Sam. Roy didn’t seem to think the upper floors of the building would be occupied, but Zade wanted to check for himself. A few floors down, he quietly opened the access to the floor and looked around.

  The floor matched the rough map that Ann had uploaded to his visor. When she was approaching the target, she was able to scan the building to get a general layout. Since she was constantly moving during the scan, the map wasn’t the greatest, so he had to take it for what it was: incomplete data.

  He crept forward to find that the upper floor had a relatively simple layout. Two hallways ran the length of the building connecting the two stairwells. Two perpendicular hallways connected the long ones. Along the outer edge of the building were billets and the center held common areas. Based on the layer of dust that blanketed everything like a fresh coat of paint, he assumed the floor hadn’t been used in quite some time.

  Satisfied with his exploration, he headed further into the bowels of the building. He didn’t notice any signs of life until he got to the second floor. Unlike the ones above, this floor had power. He retreated to the nearest darkened floor and took time to assess his situation. Time was of the essence, so part of him wanted to rush to the lower levels where Sam was being held. Part of him knew that he should never leave an enemy at his back.

  A bone-rattling boom shook him from his thoughts.

  “Ann, what the hell was that?”

  “It appears that we were seen during the approach. I have been monitoring communication, and it appears the Brax Corporation are the puppet masters for this one. One of their staff just launched some kind of explosive toward the floor they thought you were on,” Ann said, nonchalantly.

  The building shuddered as if to punctuate her assessment.

  “Do whatever it takes to stop them from bringing this building down on top of us.”

  “Very well. I will draw their attention away from you.”

  As with every operation, it appeared that the enemy got a say in how events played out. With the integrity of the building potentially compromised, his decision was made for him. As much as he wanted to clear the floors he would be leaving behind, he decided to take the whole shot and head for Sam.

  He scanned the empty stairwell. Just because he couldn’t neutralize the threat didn’t mean that he couldn’t slow them. He couldn’t find anything to use to manually jam the entrances to the stairs, so he unsheathed his axe and swung at the control panel for them. He was lucky that the floor he had explored had been left unsecured. All he had to do was push the button on the pad and the door slid open. As his strike landed, he saw both the control pad and the door itself go dark.

  He realized that he could just as easily be trapping himself as he was providing an obstacle for the enemy, but it was the best he could do. With his current floor taken care of, he proceeded to move down, disabling every hatch he came to.

  Destroy, move, destroy, move. He worked his way to the bottom, making sure there was no way for someone to get in behind him easily. He came to a flat landing and the door placement suddenly changed. He had made it to the bottom. He clamped his axe on his back, took up his rifle, and mentally prepared himself to assault the lobby he expected to see on the other side of the door. To his surprise, when he threw open the hatch and moved through, he was greeted by the large underground parking area of the building.

  The men guarding the door from the other side were equally surprised. He quickly wheeled around and fired his weapon twice at each. It was a clumsy movement, and although all four rounds landed, he was only rewarded with the energy from one. His shots on the second guard had collapsed a lung and tore through his shoulder. Zade was confident that the man would perish soon enough. He took a second to look around. The garage was nearly empty except for a limo parked in front of a large set of elevator doors on the far side.

  Upon closer inspection, he found that there was no way he would be able to force his way inside. Unlike the floors above, the control panel for the lift required a handprint. Realizing he was stuck, he marched back over to the guard to have a chat before he expired.

  “How do I get to the sub-levels and what is waiting for me down there?”

  “Fuck off,” the man wheezed. He struggled to take a deep breath and spit in Zade’s face. “I don’t know who the fuck you think you are, but I ain’t telling you shit.”

  After wiping the blood-laced spittle off of his visor, Zade proceeded to take the dead man’s belt off and tie it snugly above his living comrade’s right elbow. He held the man’s hand down with his foot and unclamped his axe from his back.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, the obstinance gone from his voice.

  Zade just ignored the man and began tracing a line across his forearm with the blade of his axe. It wasn’t enough to hurt the man, but enough to unnerve him. He made sure to give the man’s imagination enough time to figure out what was going to happen next.

  “I need a hand to get into that lift,” Zade said curtly. “Nothing says it must be attached to a person. Now, what should I expect when I get to the lower floors?”

  The man stayed silent, his sense of duty warring with his sense of self-preservation. Taking the quiet as further noncompliance, Zade reared back and prepared for the blow.

  “There are six other guards hired by Brax,” the man stammered quietly. “I think the big wigs left already. At least, they were gone when I came up here twenty minutes ago. Please, don’t hurt me.”

  Without a word, Zade re-clamped his axe to his back and began dragging the man towards the scanner. His wounds left a red smear across the garage floor and the pain ripped a scream from his throat. After hoisting the man up to trigger the elevator, he dumped him back to the ground.

  As they waited for the lift, he drew his sidearm and lined up the man’s head.

  “You guys could have done anything and it wouldn’t have been as bad as taking one of my crew members as a hostage. I will do whatever it takes to keep my men safe. That includes leaving the message that we are not to be fucked with,” Zade said, using all of his self-control to prevent his anger from entering his voice.

  The whole diatribe was delivered in the calm voice of a man who’d known he was already damned.

  “Wait,” the man ordered meekly, tears beginning to well up in his eyes.
“Wait. We were only following orders. We didn’t know it would come to this.”

  “Wrong answer. Decisions were made, and now the reaper has come calling.”

  He let the hammer fall.

  As he tried in vain to clean the brain spatter off his armor, the elevator chimed and the doors began to slide open. He quickly grabbed his rifle and awaited reinforcements. The lift was mercifully empty. He stepped aboard and hit the button for the bottom floor.

  Jesus Christ! What is going on with me? he thought. That was dark, even for me.

  “The longer you wear the Groz armor the more connected you will become with it. Although I have never encountered your species, it appears that your mind is taking on the aggressive traits of the Groz,” Ann said through comms.

  “How?” he started, unsure how to continue. “I didn’t ask that out loud. How are you answering a question you shouldn’t have been able to hear?”

  “As I said, the longer you wear the armor, the more connected you will become with the technology. As much as I would benefit from you harvesting energy with no reservations, you must learn to control the aggression. It will destroy your psyche if you don’t and we will no longer be an effective team.”

  Ann’s explanation raised a hundred more questions. He wanted to ask them all, but it wasn’t the time nor the place. He felt the elevator stop and he readied himself for the battle to come. Once she had brought the issue to mind, he noticed that he wasn’t feeling any pre-mission jitters, unlike every other time he had been on a mission. All he wanted to do was fight.

  The luck he’d been having during the mission ran out when the doors to the elevator opened. All six men had been waiting for him and opened fire as soon as they caught sight of him. His shields flared to life as both solid projectiles and energy beams began to pelt him. As he watched a bullet mushroom on the shield millimeters from his face, the world slowed down. The energy indicator began flashing an angry red, prompting him to take cover by the elevator controls next to the open doors.

  One of the men guarding Sam must have had a repeating energy weapon because Zade watched a continuous beam perforate the back wall of the lift. The men seemed to have a limitless supply of ammunition and were well disciplined. As one weapon stopped to reload, he could hear the rate of fire increase from another.

  “Ann, can you tell where Sam is down here? I have a grenade but I don’t want her to get caught in the blast.”

  “Explosives are not a good idea. Her signal is too close. Let me review the images from your visor to try and calculate a plan.”

  Seconds and dozens of rounds later, Ann had a plan.

  “It appears that the men are wearing communication headsets and I have access to their operational channel. Stand by for a diversion.”

  A mind-numbing screech, loud enough to be heard through his helmet twenty feet away, began to emanate from their earbuds. Caught unprepared, the men instinctively dropped their weapons and clutched their heads. He took the opportunity to leave his cover. The pain was so great, the men didn’t even notice that their prey had reappeared.

  He sighted down his rifle and methodically dispatched the unsuspecting guards. The pain they were experiencing was so great that even as their comrades fell around them, they never moved to reengage. The last man fell and their collective energy flowed into his visor, refilling the stores they had drained during the ambush.

  He quickly stepped over the men, firing insurance into each of the six heads, as he moved to find Sam. In all of the chaos, he didn’t even notice that there was a bit of an entryway at the entrance to the elevator before the room opened up. When he turned the corner, he spied Sam. Her hands had been tied behind her back and there was a chain leading from her cuffs to an eyelet in the wall above her head. The chain had been pulled tight.

  The restraints had her bent at the waist with her arms pulled mercilessly up, nearly dislocating her shoulders. She made no move to see who was approaching her. This, coupled with her lolling head, signaled that she had been rendered unconscious. Even though the armor wouldn’t allow penetrating wounds, blunt force could still rattle the wearer.

  He made his way to her as quickly as he could and supported her body as he used his sidearm to blow the anchor to pieces. With the tension relieved, her arms fell to a more natural position and he caught her full weight, stopping her from crashing to the ground. He gently laid her on the ground and moved to take off her helmet to examine the extent of the damage. As soon as his hand touched the clasp at her neck, the helmet seemed to disappear, and her vitals were displayed in his field of view.

  “This is one of the perks of having a commander helmet. You can see the status of your crew without removing their armor and endangering them,” Ann said, answering his unasked question.

  He wasn’t a medic, but her vitals seemed to be normal. As he looked her over, her bloody nose and a score of red bruises signified how badly the men had roughed her up. Nothing looked bad enough to require immediate treatment.

  “Find us a way out of here so she can rest. This is over. Nobody does this to one of my crew. I will be by the entrance to the underground parking.”

  As gently as he could, he scooped up the limp body of his pilot and made his way towards the elevator. The guards’ aim was true, and he didn’t see any damage to the upper parts of the car. Just before entering the lift, the ground shook violently, almost knocking him off his feet.

  “What the hell was that?” he asked.

  “You will see when you come aboard. Just make it quick. From street level, I can’t see if anybody is trying to make an entry on the far side of the building.”

  He rode the lift up to the garage, carrying Samix. As Ann had promised, he could see the side of his ship sitting at the entrance when the doors opened. He moved at a trot, trying to be quick without jarring the woman he carried. It took a second for his eyes to adjust to the brightness of the two stars after leaving the darkness of the interior of the building. He moved toward the ship quickly, trusting Ann to provide cover for himself and Samix.

  Ann began to climb, affording him the view of the carnage she had wrought while he was inside. The streets were choked with the burning hulls of armored vehicles and the dismembered bodies of their occupants. He only had a moment to appreciate her work before the cargo bay closed. Once inside, he carried Sam to her quarters and laid her on her bed.

  In an attempt to make her comfortable, he began taking off the rigid components of her armor, thinking the soft under suit would be better to sleep in. As he got to her helmet, Ann stopped him.

  “If she has any head trauma, it would be better for her to sleep in that.”

  Knowing a little about first aid and next to nothing about the Groz tech, he left the helmet on and covered Sam with a blanket. With her back safely aboard Ann, his adrenaline and rage began to fade, leaving him tired to the bones. He took one last look at his friend before quietly slipping out of her room.

  “Get us the fuck off this rock before I change my mind and kill all of the living inhabitants. Turn anything that follows us out of this atmosphere into dust,” he said as the door slid shut behind him. “Keep us in the system though. If we need medical equipment for Sam, I want to be close.”

  After taking off his helmet and turning towards the armory, he was attacked from behind. Lightly furred, tan arms wrapped around his neck and a corresponding pair of legs wrapped around his waist.

  “Thank goodness you guys are safe. I was so worried,” a voice purred from right next to his ear.

  “Fuck, you scared me,” he said, releasing the sharp breath had inhaled suddenly. “You almost got yourself slammed into a bulkhead.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mara said meekly, looking down at the ground. “I am glad you are back safely.”

  He had completely forgotten about Mara after the attack on the ship. It was strange to not only hear her but to feel the woman’s words. He turned her around so he could speak to her face to face.

  “
It’s good to be back,” he said as he embraced the woman who still clung to him.

  “You would have been proud of me. I helped.”

  She then proceeded to explain that after she had disposed of the team that assaulted the ship, she found herself locked in her room. Wanting to help, she first tried to get Ann to let her out. When that failed, she used her abilities as an engineer to manually override the locking mechanism on the door. She had made her way to the bridge just as Ann had dropped him off.

  As men began pouring out of the surrounding buildings, she watched as the ship deftly maneuvered and engaged to prevent them access. Not wanting to be dead weight, she finally got Ann to tell her which of the workstations was for the gunner. One of the station’s monitors lit, and she took her seat, and after a quick boot sequence, she found herself in control of the rear point defense weaponry.

  “At first everything was surreal. It was like playing a game. I would see a person, place the firing reticle over them, squeeze the trigger, and then there was no more person. Even though Ann said she had piped the comms channel to the bridge, I couldn’t hear anything,” she said so quickly she had forgotten to breathe. She paused to take a breath before continuing. “Then someone shot something into the building, and I heard your voice. I remember watching you fight to save me, and when the man said there would be six others waiting for you, I was scared. Not for you but for them.”

  As he listened to the tale of her exploits, he took off his helmet. The thing had become so comfortable that he sometimes forgot he was wearing it.

  “I appreciate the vote of confidence, but I made mistakes along the way. They almost got me when I got down to where they were holding Sam.”

  “I heard that too. I don’t know how you could think. Everything was so loud. Everything went quiet for a long time, then I heard you ask for an exfil.”

  “No one has ever accused me of being a thinker. In those situations, all I do is react. It was nothing. Anyone else would have done the same given the circumstances,” he said in a self-deprecating tone as he continued his walk towards the armory.