MERCS: Crimson Worlds Successors (26 page)

Darius had suggested Garret come along because the old admiral had been one of his father’s closest friends.  It was a matter of respect…and if he was being truly honest with himself, he also did it to piss off his brother.  Elias had suggested Garret remain behind on Mars where it was safe.  That had rubbed Darius the wrong way.  Augustus Garret was old and becoming increasingly infirm, but he was still one of the greatest warriors in human history.  If Garret wanted to go into a battle, Darius Cain would carry him if need be.

“I have a few suggestions on how to deal with these missiles.”

“Please, Admiral.”  Cain stared at the old officer.  Whatever age was doing to Garret’s body, it had left his magnificent mind untouched.  Darius had realized that the moment he’d seen the admiral on Mars.  “In fact, would you be willing to take command of the fleet?  It would be a great honor.  Not to mention, we all have a better chance of getting through this with you at the helm.”

Garret nodded, at least as much as the crushing g forces allowed.  “Yes, General Cain.  I believe I can help get us through this.”  He paused for a second.  “Thank you, General.”

“The fleet is yours, Admiral.”  Cain forced a tiny smile.  He knew whoever built the base his people were facing had clearly prepared it to face intruders. 
But did you plan to deal with history’s greatest admiral?

*        *        *        *        *

Axe lay on the small bunk, struggling to breathe as the g forces pressed down hard on him.  Unlike the others onboard, he was not an experienced spacer.  The short trip to Mars had been his first venture outside Earth’s atmosphere, and now he was on his second.  He was far stronger than he had been, his gunshot wounds completely healed and the cancer that had been eating away at him reduced to a vague tenderness in his chest.  But the overwhelming feeling of eight times his body weight pressing against him was almost unbearable.  He couldn’t imagine how Cain and his crews could actually function under such conditions.

Things had been bad enough before the missile attack.  But the wild maneuvers the ship had made to avoid the nuclear explosions had almost turned him inside out.  He’d vomited at least ten times.  The ship’s maintenance robots had cleaned most of it up, but he knew he stank from head to toe—and he felt like his insides had been ripped out and stuffed back down his throat.

He’d heard the alarm bells and felt the ship shake several times—damage from nearby detonations, he suspected.  But everything appeared to be functioning normally, and the lights hadn’t so much as blinked, so he figured they had gotten through with minimal damage.

None of it mattered, though.  Axe knew he had to be here, no matter what danger or discomfort he faced.  Vance had tried to convince him to stay behind.  And Sarah Cain—and Elias.  They had all told him he had no place on the mission, that if his people could be saved, the Black Eagles would see it done.

Only Darius had refrained from arguing with him. Axe had realized immediately.  The commander of the Black Eagles understood him like no one else could.

Everything had been stolen from him—everyone he cared for had been kidnapped and taken to Eris.  Axe suspected that nothing in Occupied Space—or beyond to the core of the galaxy—could have made Darius Cain stay behind if he’d been in Axe’s shoes, and the mercenary commander hadn’t even argued.  Instead, he’d offered Axe a berth on Eagle One.  Axe realized Darius knew there were things worth fighting for, worth dying for—and he had not denied that right to his new acquaintance.  He was grateful, and he began to understand why Cain had so many loyal followers.

Axe wondered about Ellie, about the others.  And Jack.  Of all of the captives from Jericho, Jack Lompoc had gone willingly, at enormous risk to himself.  Indeed, they would know nothing at all about the base without Lompoc’s efforts.  The ex-Alliance Intelligence enforcer had redeemed himself, atoned for his old sins.  Now it was time to rescue him, and the others.

Or was it all too late?  Axe had to admit, even to himself, that the response of his new allies had been more than he’d dared hope for.  When he’d first set eyes on the slavers’ camp, he hadn’t imagined it possible to assemble so much force to deal with the enemy. His initial thoughts about following the slavers and rescuing his people had been pipe dreams, fantasies with no chance of success.  But now there was a real prospect of defeating the enemy and saving everyone.  Saving Ellie.

But it’s been almost a month now.  They could all be dead
.
No
, he thought. 
No one would go to the trouble and expense of transporting them to the fringe of the solar system just to kill them.  But are they still here?  Or are they gone, shipped off somewhere else in the depths of space where I can never find them?  Will we be able to get to them?  Or will the enemy massacre them all as soon as Cain’s people attack?

*        *        *        *        *

“All batteries, cease fire.”  Cain stared at the screen, watching as the ship’s AI reviewed the scanning data and updated the damage reports.  His ships had been bombarding the surface for over an hour, targeting anything that looked remotely like a weapon.  Eris was a planet about the size of Pluto, with no appreciable atmosphere—and that made surface targets highly vulnerable to lasers fired from orbit.  The Eagle ships, built from the ground up to carry and support ground forces, had extensive surface bombardment batteries, and those had been put to good use.

The four Eagle ships had come through the enemy attack in far better shape than Darius had dared to hope.  Eagle One had suffered minor damage from the missile barrage, and Eagle Four had taken one particularly bad hit, but overall, Garret’s innovative combination of defensive fire and evasive maneuvers had brought the Eagle fleet through the missile attack with all ships fully functional.  Casualties had been light—2 killed and four wounded—but Cain still felt each one.

“All batteries silent, General.”

Cain had been worried the base would have orbital laser platforms and other close-in defenses, but that hadn’t proven to be the case—the missiles had been its primary armament. 
Whoever built it didn’t imagine any ships of today could survive that kind of barrage.  But they didn’t plan for the Eagles…and certainly not for Augustus Garret.

“Damage assessment?”

“Data coming in now, sir.”  A brief pause.  “All identified weapons systems have been destroyed, General Cain.”

“Very well.  Bring the fleet to lower orbit, and prepare to commence the landing.”  Cain flipped the com switch on his chair.  “Colonel Kuragina, is the White Regiment ready to launch?”

“Yes, General.”  Her voice was crisp and clear.  “We are ready.”

“Very well, start your final diagnostics, and prepare to begin landing operations in twenty minutes.”

“Yes, sir!”

“And Cyn…”

“Yes, General?”

“Save a slot on the first wave.  I’m going down with your people.” 
If that doesn’t prove they have my confidence, I don’t know what will.

Chapter 21

Jackson Devane stood alongside one of the large structural supports, looking out over the bustling concourse.  The large chamber was full of Martian civilians, going about the dreary tasks of their subterranean existence.  The concourse was one of several in the underground vastness of the Ares Metroplex.  It served a dual function, as a gathering place and also as a shopping pavilion.  It wasn’t an ideal location for his purposes, but he’d been stalking his prey for almost a week, and this was the most exposed he had been.

Devane moved slowly, cautiously, keeping his eyes fixed on his target as he worked his way closer.  He needed a clean shot.  There were Martian Security personnel everywhere.  He’d only get off a couple rounds before they took him out.

He knew he was on a suicide mission, but he didn’t care.  It was an odd feeling.  There were strange bursts of concern, tiny panic attacks, his psyche rebelling against the prospect of imminent death.  But his conditioning countered those almost immediately.  He had a purpose, and that was all that mattered.  He was here to serve the Plan.  And nothing else was a consideration.

Devane followed his program perfectly.  He acted almost robotically, without emotion.  Emotions were a waste of mental resources.  He had felt them once, he knew, long ago, but the past was no longer part of him.  He had memories other than his training, that was true, but they were fractured, without clear meaning.  There were images too, strange scenes of other people—and of destruction, recollections of hardship, of hunger and pain.  He was grateful to those who had saved him from whatever nightmare those images represented.  They had rescued him from Hell, made him a part of something, and his loyalty was unshakable.  He lived now only for the Plan, and dying in its service made him one with it.  The small attacks of fear, they were vestiges of that terrible past, and he knew he must not allow them to deter him from his purpose.

He glanced over toward the nearest security detail.  There were two of them.  They were close, too close.  But that was the best vantage point.  He looked around the room, trying not to raise any suspicions.  Mars had tight security everywhere.  Indeed, he’d had a difficult time even gaining access to the colony.

No, there was nowhere else.  At least he’d have surprise on his side.  The small pistol wasn’t an ideal assassination weapon, but it was all he had.  And every meter closer he could get would improve his accuracy.  He’d get a couple shots off before the guards reacted, maybe three or four at most.  Then they’d take him down.  The Martian Security personnel weren’t just guards, they weren’t police.  They were military units, and well-trained ones at that.  The Confederation’s army had assumed all civilian security duties after the Fall, he remembered from the mission dossier, and they had never relinquished that responsibility.

He turned slowly, taking one last glance at the two guards. 
One of them will kill me
, he thought in passing.  Then his gaze settled on a table outside a restaurant—and at the man sitting there alone. 
It is time
. 

*        *        *        *        *

Elias Cain sat quietly at a small table, watching the crowds go about their business.  What a depressing place, he thought sadly as his eyes panned over the mostly gray walls of the large room.  He was in a small café, sitting at what passed as an outdoor table, though “outside” was a relative term when you were over a kilometer underground.

It was hard for Cain to imagine people living this way, spending their entire lives scurrying through drab, colorless tunnels—no sky, no sun.  He’d lived on Atlantia his entire life, a planet of magnificent coastlines, perfect blue skies, and temperatures so ideal they almost seemed artificial.  But Atlantia had been spared the ravages of the Fall, most of them at least, and Mars had not.

The Red Planet wasn’t a hospitable place, but before the final battles against Gavin Stark’s Shadow Legions, its people had lived on the surface, under massive and beautiful domes built of pure hyper-polycarbonate.  They didn’t have Atlantia’s windswept shorelines, but they did have the sun—and the stars.  But now those domes were cracked, the perfectly-ordered little cities below now dust-covered and abandoned.

He knew the answer, at least the one Roderick Vance had given him.  Rebuilding the domes and rehabilitating the cities was an enormously expensive proposition—and the Martians had another priority.  Since almost the day men had set foot on its red sands, their eyes had been focused on a single goal.  Terraforming.  One day, they had sworn, almost as one, men would walk on the planet’s surface without special suits.  Plants would grow and waves would crash onto rocky shores.  And since the first colonies had planted themselves, the Martians had been united in this goal.

Cain hadn’t believed it at first, at least not that the common people had made that choice.  The wealthy, the leaders—even underground they lived in considerable luxury.  Perhaps they had chosen their legacy over improved living conditions for the masses, but surely the people themselves seethed under the enforced penury.  He’d imagined considerable efforts were required to suppress dissent and to keep the people in line.  But then Vance had told him the Martian Council had held a plebiscite less than a year after the Fall.  Eighty-four percent of the population voted to keep the terraforming program as the top priority, even at the cost of abandoning the surface cities.

Elias had never imagined that a whole population could be so farsighted…so selfless.  They had sacrificed their own comforts, not for any future they would live to see, but for their grandchildren, for the generations of Martians to come.

Vance had tried to explain, telling him the quest to make Mars a habitable planet stretched back to very first colonists.  Earth’s close neighbor had been the only place with even the potential to become a hospitable planet.  No one had doubted men would live underground and beneath domes on the other bodies of the solar system, but Mars was the true second chance, the place a forward-thinking group of people could imagine another home for mankind, a real alternative to the stifling and poverty-stricken world of Earth’s Superpowers.

That had been before the warp gates were discovered, of course, before men found an entire universe full of habitable planets, but to the Martians, the dream remained, as ingrained as ever in their collective psyche.  One day, their descendants would walk on the surface, feel the warmth of the sun as they breathed deeply of the oxygen-rich atmosphere.  And they had remained true to that goal, through a century and a half of turmoil no one could have imagined.

Cain glanced across the room, his mind distracted from his thoughts.  There was a man standing against a column.  Elias wasn’t sure, but he thought he’d seen him before…and now he had the feeling the man was watching him—and worse, perhaps, trying to look like he wasn’t. 
You’re just being paranoid.  Mars is one of the safest planets in space
.  But still, there was something strange…

He saw the movement, even as the man made it.  A wave of adrenalin surged through his body, and he pushed off with his legs, trying to dive to the side. 
Fool…he’s too close.  You were too busy daydreaming to pay attention.
  He pushed the table over, just as he saw the gun in the assailant’s hand.

He twisted hard, doing what he could to move, to pull his body away from the attacker’s targeting.  He heard a crack, and he felt the bullet whiz by.  Too close!  But now he was in the air, his body moving toward the floor, unable to change direction.  He felt the first impact in his leg, hard.  Then another in the chest.  And another.

He hit the ground hard, and his body came alive with pain.  He was covered in blood and gasping for breath, his lungs struggling for air.  He saw his attacker fall, shot multiple times by the guards.  It was a hazy image, distant, dark.  And then everything went black.

*        *        *        *        *

“How bad is it?”  Sarah Cain burst into the operating room.  Her stomach felt like it was clenched into a knot, but her mind was clear.  When they’d told her Elias had been shot, she’d wanted to act like a mother, to burst into tears and fall to pieces.  But she’d been a Marine trauma surgeon for far longer than she’d been a parent, and she reacted to this crisis as she had to all the others she’d faced.

“It’s bad, Dr. Cain.”  The Martian surgeon didn’t look up from table as he spoke.  His hands were moving quickly, and his face was twisted into a frown of concentration.  “He was hit in three times, and each shot is critical.”

Sarah moved forward, sliding past two of the medical technicians, forcing her way to the table.  She knew she had no surgical credentials on Mars, that what she was doing was technically illegal, but it was her son on that table, and anyone who tried to stop her was going to see the Marine side—up close and personal.

Her eyes looked down on his blood-covered form, lying motionless under the surgical lights.  She felt a momentary wave of panic, of inconsolable distress.  She’d seen thousands of grievously wounded men and women, but this was her son.  But she forced it back.  She wasn’t a mother now, not a woman—she was the most experienced trauma surgeon in Occupied Space, the single person most able to save Elias.  As long as she kept it together.

She realized immediately the Martian surgeon was right.  All three wounds were critical.  Indeed, there was no way to deal with them all, not in time to save Elias’ life.

“Take off the leg,” she barked after a few seconds.

“But we’re trying to…”

“Take it off,” she repeated, more forcefully.  “The femoral artery is gone, and we don’t have time to mess with it.  Amputate, and we can focus on the two bullets in the chest…before they kill him.”  Sarah had served decades in the Corps’ field hospitals, and she’d seen virtually every way a human body could be mangled.  Surgery on the front lines was a different discipline than it was in civilian hospitals, and her mind had been honed into a razor, ready to make snap decisions.  A few seconds could be the difference between life and death, and she wasn’t about to waste any now.  Especially when the leg was going to be a total loss anyway.  “We’ll just regenerate later.  But first we have to save his life.”

Save my son’s life
.

*        *        *        *        *

Elias Cain felt like a herd of Arcadian prairie cattle had stampeded over his body. 
Still, feeling anything is better than feeling nothing
, he thought grimly.  He’d been lost for the first minute or so after he awoke, woozy and distracted.  But he quickly got his bearings.  He remembered the attack in the concourse—the shooter, his own anger with himself for hesitating too long before acting, the shots impacting his body…

“I’m glad you’re finally awake.”  The medical AI had alerted Sarah that her son had regained consciousness, and she walked into the room wearing a rumpled set of scrubs.  “We put you under pretty deep.  Your body needed the time to start to recover.”

Elias looked up at his mother.  “You operated?”  He forced a smile.  “I should have known.  But aren’t you a little rusty?”

Sarah smiled.  Joking was a good sign.  But…  “Elias, we had to take your left leg.  It was the only way to save you.”  Her eyes focused on the distressed look on his face as he reached down, feeling for the leg that was no longer there.

“We can regenerate it, Elias.  It’s a routine procedure.”  A pause then:  “Your father regrew both of his legs, after all…and half his insides too.”

Cain’s face had momentarily turned into a mask of horror, but when she mentioned his father he almost laughed.  He was distressed about the leg certainly, but he was well aware he’d be as good as new, despite the reputed…discomfort…of the regen procedure.  And he’d always been amused by the story of how his parents had met.  By all accounts, there had been no more than half of Erik Cain left when he’d found his way onto her operating table.  Yet he’d walked out of that hospital and gone on to become the legendary Marine general.  And Elias remembered his father’s daily ten kilometer jogs down the beach each morning, proof enough that his regenerated legs served him well.

“What about the guy who attacked me?”

“The guards killed him, I’m afraid.”  She frowned.

Elias was well aware his mother had no pity for anyone who tried to harm her family, but he suspected she knew as well as he did that, with the assassin dead, it would be almost impossible to discover who had been behind the attempt.  And whoever wanted him dead had come close the first time—and they would almost certainly try again.

Who could it be?
  He tried to think if he had any enemies back on Atlantia, criminals or other adversaries looking to settle a score. 
No, no one with a reach that extends to Mars.  Then who?

He thought for a few minutes, and he suspected his mother’s silence suggested she was doing the same.  Finally, he moved his head, slowly, painfully, and looked up at her.  “Is it possible this is related to the other incidents?” he asked, his tone doubtful.  It didn’t make any sense, not really.  But it was all he could think of.