Brigade, and realized the people she’d been looking for were all around her! But in order to deliver the tissue samples, she was going to have to survive, and that was why she decided to roll across the cold slimy fl?oor. Not to get away, but to get her hands on a loose pistol, that lay only inches from a dead man’s outstretched hand.
Being no expert with small arms, Margaret had something of an aversion to semiautomatics, which always came equipped with levers and buttons, but this was an easy-tofi?re energy pistol. She scooped the weapon up, rolled to her feet, and was looking for a target when a wounded Otto Tovar came lumbering straight at her. The slave master had taken a bullet in the left arm and was clearly in pain as he sought to escape.
Margaret saw the fear on the slaver’s face as she brought the weapon up. There was no recoil as the socialite pressed the fi?ring stud and sent an energy bolt straight through Tovar’s body. Even though the slave master was effectively dead, he took three additional steps before falling facedown on the fi?lthy fl?oor. Margaret felt pleased with herself, pointed the pistol at Tovar’s back, and fi?red again. She knew Benson would approve.
Most of the slavers were down, and there was a very real danger of killing the people they had come to rescue, so Foley yelled, “Cease fi?re!” over and over again until the fi?ring fi?nally stopped. That was when specially trained teams of civilian volunteers entered to care for the wounded, take charge of orphaned children, and spray-paint carefully phrased warnings onto the walls. “The Confederacy lives. Its laws will be enforced. The Earth Liberation Brigade.”
And it was during that phase of the operation that Admiral Chien-Chu arrived to inspect his protege’s work. Which, from the billionaire’s perspective, had gone very well indeed. Not only had innocent people been rescued, but a line had been drawn, and word of what had happened to the slavers would soon begin to spread.
That’s where the industrialist was, giving Foley some orders, when a muck-smeared woman approached them. ChienChu was well acquainted with Charles Vanderveen, a man he regarded as a friend, and knew Margaret Vanderveen, too. But not so well that he’d seen her without any clothes on. “Hello, Sergi,” the socialite said calmly. “I’m Margaret Vanderveen, even if I don’t look the way I usually do, and I’ll bet you’re the man I’ve been looking for! I have reason to believe that at least some of the Ramanthians are dying from a contagious disease. Something they were exposed to here on Earth. And here are some tissue samples taken from a dead pilot.”
And with that, Margaret Vanderveen handed Sergi Chien-Chu her bra. It was, and would forever be, one of the few occasions when the Father of the Confederacy was rendered entirely speechless.
18.
So long as there is even one brave soul willing to confront tyranny then hope will live.
PLANET GAMMA-014, THE CLONE REPUBLIC
Santana couldn’t fl?y, but felt as if he could, as he looked at the video that was playing on the inside surface of his visor. What he was seeing, and to some extent vicariously experiencing, was what it was like to be Lieutenant Mitch Millar. The cyborg was skimming the surface of the small kidney-shaped lake that separated Alpha Company from the clones on the far side. It was almost dark, which meant there was some light to see by, but not enough to make the recon ball stand out as Millar crossed the opposite shoreline and entered a grove of bristly trees.
Conscious of the fact that Santana could see everything he saw, the cyborg paused to “eye” the area to the south, before fi?ring his repellers, and rising straight up. Though similar to evergreens on Earth in that they had needles—the snow-clad trees surrounding the cyborg were signifi?cantly different as well. Because the grove that surrounded Millar was actually a single organism. While each vertical trunk had its own root system, it could share nutrients with neighboring structures via a complex system of interconnecting branches. So as the legionnaire leveled off about fi?fty feet above the ground, it was necessary to negotiate a maze of crisscrossing branches in order to work his way into the area where the renegades were camped. That made navigation diffi?cult but provided good cover as well. Finally, having arrived at the southernmost edge of that particular grove’s territory, Millar came to rest on some sturdy branches. As darkness crept in over the wintry landscape, both the cyborg and his commanding offi?cer had a bird’s-eye view of the enemy encampment below. Having located Colonel Six and his hostages days earlier, Millar had given a tracking device to Kira Kelly. Which, for reasons unknown, had gone off-line hours later. But Millar was no fool and, having planted a second device on one of the half-tracks, he had been able to lead his comrades to the frozen lake where the renegades were camped. Having chosen an open area, with good fi?elds of fi?re, Colonel Six had positioned his vehicles to reinforce all four sides of the perimeter. Gaps had been fi? lled with lengths of timber cut earlier in the day, backed by hand-dug fi?ring pits. The defenses weren’t fancy, but the offi?cer fi?gured they would be effective against anything up to, and including, a company-strength attack by the Ramanthians. Four fi?res had been lit and, as Millar and Santana looked down through a curtain of gently falling snow, they could see dark shapes moving back and forth between the domeshaped tents as the clones carried out maintenance on their equipment and cooked their dinners. It was a peaceful scene familiar to any soldier.
The problem, from Santana’s perspective was how to attack the encampment, especially given the presence of hostages. He could try and take all or part of Alpha Company around the edge of the lake. But groves of interlocking trees barred the way and would prevent his cyborgs from reaching the campsite until well after dawn. Then, if the clones were still in residence, they would be able to see the enemy coming.
Santana knew that a force of bio bods might be able to arrive quickly enough to carry out a night attack, but Santana lacked a suffi?cient number of troops to go up against the Seebos and their vehicle-mounted weapons. Not even with the marines and CVAs thrown in.
So, where does that leave us? the cavalry offi?cer wondered. The lake was frozen, but the ice wasn’t thick enough to support the weight of a T-2, much less a quad. So the direct route was out. Or was it? It was dark by then, and with his visor down, no one could see the offi?cer smile. Even though it was fairly warm inside the sleeping blanket, it was too cold to take off all her clothes, so Kelly was naked from the waist down, as she pulled Six deep inside her. The clone hadn’t been much of a lover initially, but practice makes perfect, and he had improved. It felt good to make love, to participate in an ancient act of renewal, especially given all the killing that was taking place around them. But even as the long, steady strokes continued, and the pleasure began to build, Kelly felt the now-familiar pangs of guilt, knowing that by destroying the tracking device, Hospital Corpsman Sumi had been sentenced to further captivity. And, if that wasn’t bad enough, Kelly had been unable to fi?nd the strength to tell Six about the recon ball’s visit. So she had been unfaithful to him as well.
Her lover’s movements became more urgent, causing the doctor to wrap her legs around his muscular body, and dig her fi?ngers into his back. There were no thoughts beyond that point, just a desperate need for release, which came as an explosion of pleasure. But the moment was soon over, the afterglow began to fade, and reality seeped in to replace it. It was then, with Six still inside her, that Kelly began to cry. Except for the circles of
