Dreadnought (Lost Colonies Trilogy Book 2) (28 page)

-44-

“Morris!” I boomed. “Where’s Lorn?”

“I thought you had him, sir.”

“So I did,” I said after a difficult moment of self-recrimination. “I’ve got one of yours out of action over here, he’s stable.”

Morris trotted to my position, and he checked the fallen marine. “Peterson. He’ll live. He’s damned close to unkillable. You did the right thing, sir, helping him out.”

He clapped me on the shoulder. Together, we carried Peterson to the base of the bunker and laid him out flat. Morris watched me closely.

“Is this mission still a go, sir?”

“Yes,” I said. “We’re going to find that weasel, Lorn, and we’re going to get the code-key.”

“Have you considered that this code-key might not exist, sir?” Morris asked gently.

“Of course I have. But as far as I can tell, there’s no other way out of this system. We can’t outrun that dreadnought forever, so if Lorn evades us here, we’ll return to the extraction point and nuke this base until it glows. Lorn knows that. He can’t escape any more than we can.”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to escape. Maybe he came down here to lure you into some kind of deathtrap. That’s what the Stroj do when there’s no way out, you know. They kill themselves and take as many of their enemies with them as they can. Maybe this fellow is just a hair smarter than the average Stroj.”

I got up and dusted myself off. Heading around the foot of the pillbox toward the interior of the base, I saw the other guns were still blazing up at
Defiant
.

“Let’s go,” I said, “before they move against us.”

Morris grabbed my shoulder.

“Are you sure, Captain? In my opinion, this is a trap, sir. We should bug out right now. In fact, we should never have come.”

Shrugging him off, I started trotting toward the inner domes. “If you want out, Morris, the edge of the crater is behind us.”

Cursing, Morris followed me, as did his men. They weren’t happy, but they hadn’t lost heart yet.

Looking down, I soon saw what I was looking for—a series of widely-spaced footprints in the dust. According to Yamada’s analysis, this moon had a constant drifting fall of ash over most of its surface and footprints didn’t stay for decades or years. They were usually covered up in a matter of days. For that reason, I knew they were Lorn’s.

“This way,” I called. “I’m on his trail.”

We crossed an open region with our teeth clenched. If any of the pillboxes rotated around and saw us—

“Incoming!” roared Morris.

I was the first to reach the domes. I slammed into an airlock, but realized it was sealed shut. There wasn’t time to figure out the code to open it, so I drew my blade.

One of the advantages of a power sword was the lack of need for an atmosphere to operate it. Swords also never ran out of ammo. As long as the tiny fusion-cell that powered it wasn’t depleted the weapon would still work.

Drawing it now, I slashed the side of the dome. Behind me, I could tell there were puffs of dust and debris rising, but I didn’t have time to glance back. Two strokes opened up an “X” in the side of the dome, and I punched my way inside.

A gush of escaping pressure tried to force me back, but it soon subsided. With one leg inside the building, I saw two Stroj on the ground, writhing and grabbing their throats. The pressure inside their bodies was causing their blood to boil in their veins.

A third Stroj had an emergency mask over his face. He ran toward me with what appeared to be a repair torch.

My blade met his charge, and the low gravity caused his body to settle gently to the floor.

Morris was shoving me aside a moment later. With their breath puffing over their microphones, my last handful of survivors entered the dome behind us.

We gaped at our surroundings. I’d expected equipment, sheer walls and life support systems. Instead, I saw the floor was made of—resin.

That wasn’t the strange part, however. What made us all stare in shock were the faces in that resin. They were buried—or purposefully entombed. There were motionless Stroj all around us.

Peering down into the floor below my boots, I saw layers and layers of them, stacked like bricks and locked in poses. Their eyes were shut, but their hands were up as if they’d met their fate willingly, but without pleasure.

“The deck… these are suspended troops. Hundreds of them.”

“Yes, Captain,” Morris agreed. “The Stroj must be storing them for later. I guess they don’t eat as much when used as a building material.”

“Such a strange people…”

“Captain,” he puffed, “we’re never going to get out of here alive. The pillboxes have all spun around. They know we’re in here.”

Before I could say anything else, the Stroj made a fateful decision. They unleashed their guns on the dome we were standing within.

Throwing ourselves down and crawling toward an open stairway that was built with bodies in resin blocks, I fell over the edge and down into the lower levels of the station. The bricks packed with suspended Stroj all around us began to crack and chip as more impacts were scored everywhere. The thinner dome over the shelter was shredded.

Morris and the rest of the team pressed deeper, seeking any refuge from the hail of gunfire above. It was strange, taking cover among what appeared to be a thousand sleeping Stroj.

The guns tore the building apart above us. As the structure hadn’t been all that substantial to begin with, we could now see directly into space.

The planet this moon orbited filled the sky like a glaring red eye. The heat of it could be felt right through my suit, we were so close to the central star. All around us, the resin blocks began to warp and crackle.

“Movement over that way, sir,” Morris said.

I ran after him, gulping for a breath. Everything had gone wrong. A clandestine mission had turned into an open fight, then transformed into a struggle to merely stay alive. Our attack had not yet failed—but it might as well have. We had no idea where the code-key was, or if it even existed.

“Stop,” I said, grabbing Morris and swinging him around.

“But that could be Lorn, Captain!”

I nodded. “Yes, it probably is. But if so, he’s just leading us further into these resin bricks. He’ll lead the rest of us to our deaths. I’m going to have to talk to him instead of chasing him.”

Morris looked at me like I was crazy, and I couldn’t blame him for that. His men took up firing positions at the exits, and I set my helmet to broadcast in the clear.

“Lorn, this is Captain Sparhawk,” I said in a voice I hoped conveyed confidence and control. “Answer me please, I have an offer for you.”

There was no response. I waited a few seconds before speaking again.

“Lorn, I understand your fear and plight. You’ve been terrified by our attack. Let me assure you, we don’t intend harm when—”

“What’s this?” demanded Lorn angrily. “
You
are the ones who are terrified! You’re surrounded by Stroj and cut off inside our base. Fools—you’re dead fools!”

Morris grinned at me, his face sweating visibly inside his helmet. “You got his goat, sir,” he said. “He can’t have the other Stroj thinking he’s some kind of coward.”

Nodding, I put up a hand to stop Morris from speaking further.

“Lorn,” I said, “glad you can hear me. Listen, I have a proposal:
Defiant
will let you live if you return to us and complete your bargain. If you don’t—you’re dead. Every Stroj on this rock will be dead as well.”

“Nonsense,” Lorn said. “I know your cowardly kind. You’ll do anything to live.”

“Really? Where do you think that instinct for self-sacrifice comes from, my rebel colonist friend? What are you, other than a reflection of some magnified element of my kind? We’re the Basics, remember. By definition, we’re capable of making any choice that you are.”

“Nonsense. You won’t blow yourselves up. I know cowards when I see them.”

Sucking in a deep breath, I added
Defiant
to my open channel.

“First Officer Durris,” I said, “can you hear me?”

“Yes, Captain. We can see the fireworks going on down there, but we can’t extract for at least half an hour. We took out two of the pillboxes, in addition to the one you destroyed. But there are still three, and they’d shred the pinnace.”

“I’m not calling for a rescue, Durris. I’m giving you an order. If I don’t countermand this order over the following twenty minutes, you’re to carry it out. Are we clear?”

“Clear, sir.”

Morris was staring at me now. His eyes were big, and his mouth was open. I think he, of all of them, suspected where I was going with this—and he didn’t like it.

“You’re to bombard this base, and this entire moon, with nuclear weaponry. Once everything registers as dead on Yamada’s scanners, pull out of orbit and retreat from the dreadnought. At that point, you’ll be in command. Are there any questions?”

Durris was quiet for a moment. “Are you sure about this, sir?”

“I am.”

“You know that I’ll have no choice other than to carry out your orders. Once we go past zero-twenty minutes, I’m going to unleash hell right on top of you.”

“I know you will,” I said. “That’s precisely why I wanted you to be my first officer.”

“Orders acknowledged, Captain. The timer is ticking.”

“Excellent. In the meantime, you should—”

Someone tapped me on my shoulder at that point. Annoyed, I waved Morris off.

The tapping came again, and I turned in irritation. My eyes widened in surprise.

The man tapping on my shoulder was none other than Captain Lorn.

His spacesuit was dirty, scratched up and scorched. Inside his helmet, his eyes blazed at me with an intense hatred. It warmed my heart to see this.

I smiled in greeting. “Good to see you’ve rejoined us, Lorn.”

“Shove your good cheer up your ass, Sparhawk. Call down that extraction.”

“And why should I do that?”

“Because I’ve got the code-key!”

He lifted a small white-metal object. It was oddly designed with a diamond-shaped tip that reminded me of an arrowhead.

“How do I know it works?” I asked.

Lorn jerked his thumb back toward the passageway through which he’d entered the room. I saw a great deal of movement down there.

“Better call now, Sparhawk,” he said.

“Enemy troops incoming, sir,” Morris said.

“Hold them.”

My last five marines circled our end of the passage. Two knelt, one lay prone, while two stood tall. They fired together, knocking a Stroj attacker off his feet and onto his back. He tried to crawl away, but more fire tore him apart until he stopped.

“They’re coming for us,” Lorn said. “They’re not happy I stole the key.”

“Where’d you get it?” I demanded, still unconvinced.

He lifted up something he’d been dragging behind him. I hadn’t noticed it in the excitement. Pulling, he lifted  up a head and torso by the hair. The lower half of the body had been sheared away by some calamity.

“See this man’s chest-plate? He commanded this base. When I heard your terms, I cut him down and brought him—along with the key he had around his neck.”

Morris nodded to me. “He’s telling the truth about that, sir. I don’t know if that key does anything, but he did kill his own man and race up here while you were talking to Durris. We almost cut him down, but he put up his hands and dangled that key—and that corpse.”

Glancing from the corpse to the key, then to Lorn’s bloody face, I nodded.

“All right. Durris, send down the pinnace to the extraction point.”

“Am I to consider your previous order countermanded, sir?”

“No,” I said. “Not until I’m standing beside you on the command deck.”

“That’ll be cutting it pretty close, sir,” Morris said.

“Then we’d better get moving.”

The marines fired their weapons, knocking down two more Stroj as they charged toward us.

“Lorn,” croaked one from the floor on an open channel. “Your treachery will be known. You’ll die a thousand times with your pain receptors sewn into different bodies.”

Lorn gritted his teeth and looked at me. “Are you still a man of your word, Sparhawk?”

“I am—within reason.”

“Then get me off this rock with you. After that—don’t countermand your order to your ship. Pulverize this moon.”

I nodded slowly. I could see no loss for me in his proposal.

As we exited the rubble down a shallow culvert toward the crater’s edge, I noted that Lorn was still dragging the badly damaged corpse of the base commander with him.

“You can drop him now,” I said.

“Him? Never! He’s my trophy. I counted six bodies melded into his. Some of them are impressive kills. I intend to subsume them. I’ll be admired by every female on Earth.”

Shrugging, I decided not to tell him he was operating under a misconception concerning women on Earth. Everyone needed a goal to goad them into doing their best work, after all.