Honor Bound

He jabbed a finger at Valerie. “If she moves, kill her and her daughter.” He grinned, a touch of the old rueful humor she remembered coming back into his face. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that they tried something, desperate as your father must be.” He disconnected the tablet controller from the communications console and followed the female mercenary towards the back door. “Desperate people do stupid things.”

This may be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, Jason McKay thought, walking across the bottom of the lakebed.

Sure, it had made sense: there hadn’t been any dive equipment available on the Sheridan, and their HALO gear and combat armor had an onboard oxygen supply and enough insulation to keep them from getting hypothermic in the ice-cold Minnesota lake; also, their load-out weighed enough to prevent them from swimming across, so walking across the lakebed was the logical alternative. It still seemed crazy to him.

No starlight penetrated to the lake bottom and it was pitch black even with his helmet’s thermal filters engaged. Only his helmet’s GPS mapping software projected in the HUD gave him any idea where he was or where he was headed. At least the ten meters of frigid lake water should shield them from any sensors that Dominguez and his forces might have set up… and at least it was faster going than he had feared.

True, it was like… well, hell, it was walking underwater, and his quads felt like jello from the strain of trying to push himself through it, but the lake was narrow and the bottom was fairly smooth. Except for the resistance, it wasn’t that different than low gravity training at the lunar base… he winced at the thought that the lunar base wasn’t there anymore, and tried not to think of all the people he had known and worked with who had been killed there.

God knew he had enough to think about. Valerie was in that cabin… and even if it hadn’t been love six years ago back on Aphrodite, it had been more than a fling. He owed her, and the very least he could do was make sure that she and her daughter walked out of this alive. Despite what he had told Commander Villanueva, he was going to make sure that Val and Natalia made it out, even if he and the others had to die in place to accomplish the mission.

The lake bed abruptly began to slope upward as he approached the dock, going from ten meters in depth to only four, and a diffuse brightness beckoned to him from the floodlights mounted on the old, wooden posts there. McKay grunted with the strain as he pushed himself up the slope through the silt and loose rock. He had to lean forward and support himself on one hand, grabbing at the larger stones that were half-buried in the bank and pulling himself up until he was just two meters below the surface.

He couldn’t see them, but his helmet HUD showed the IFF signals from the rest of his team moving into place along the bank of the lake. Vinnie and Jock were to his right while Sean Watanabe and two other Special Ops NCOs were lined up on his left. The remaining 18 men and women in the combined force of Fleet Marines from the Sheridan and the Decatur had circled around the lake into the woods on the other side of the dirt road, and if he had timed everything right…

He could hear the gunfire even through four meters of water and he felt a rush of adrenaline urging him to charge up the bank with guns blazing, but he held himself back, waiting nearly thirty seconds. The shots grew from an initial flurry to a steady background rattle before he finally felt in his gut that the time was right.

“Now,” he radioed to the others, then pistoned his legs and surged up the bank and out of the lake.

He grunted with exertion and impact as he landed shoulder first on the loose gravel that had been dumped on the bank beside the dock, his carbine trained upward just in case the enemy had been smarter than he’d hoped. The dock was deserted, though, and he allowed himself a relieved breath before he low-crawled up the bank, peering through the high grass that grew up around the dock pilings.

There was the back porch of the cabin, unguarded… but through the clear transplas he could see three human guards inside, all hugging the front wall, trying to catch glimpses of the fighting through the windows. There was a body on the porch as well, stiffened with rigor and corpse-white from bleeding out. He assumed it was Charlie Klesko and felt a pang of sorrow: Charlie /had been a good man.

“They’re all good,” he murmured to himself, remembering something he had once told Shannon.

He pulled a flash-bang from his vest and fed it into the launcher under his carbine’s barrel. He didn’t have to ask to know that on the other side of the dock, Vinnie was doing the same. It bothered him that he couldn’t see Dominguez, but perhaps the man was staying behind cover. He just hoped Valerie had enough sense to keep her head down.

Valerie saw the mercenary guards drifting towards the front wall as the firing continued and considered for just a moment trying to make a break for it, but she knew she couldn’t move fast enough carrying Natalia. They knew it too, she realized bitterly, which was why they weren’t bothering to be more careful.

She cautiously peeked around the edge of the dividing wall between the kitchen and the living room and saw the three remaining guards trying to watch the action as best they could through the front window. None of the mercenaries wore full-face helmets, instead going with open-faced ones that gave them better peripheral vision and awareness, and that had allowed her to differentiate them in the few hours she’d been with them.

The ones who had remained in the cabin with her were a tall, bearded man with pale skin, a nervous look to his eyes and a face that reminded her of a Yorkie she’d had as a child; a shorter, Asian man with a rounded face and scar that bisected his upper lip; and a baby-faced young man with mocha skin and a complex tattoo that ran across both cheeks and the bridge of his nose.

The nervous terrier kept glancing back and forth from the back door to the front, shifting weight from one foot to the other, while the other two men crowded around the edges of the left-handed window… until a stray burst of gunfire punched through it, sending them all scattering backwards, cursing loudly and looking for cover.

Valerie ducked back down, clutching Natalia closer to her as she buried her head in her arms, which was why she was looking away when the rear windows burst inward and a pair of flash bang grenades exploded in the face of the three mercenaries. Valerie hadn’t been looking at the flash and her eyes had been closed, but it was still bright enough that she had spots in her vision. The sound and concussion had left her ears filled with a hollow whistling and her brain muddled and only semi-coherent. She couldn’t hear Natalia crying, but she could feel the little girl shaking spasmodically in her grasp and knew she was in pain as well.

She blinked her eyes and lifted her head, risking a look around just in time to see the tattooed mercenary jerk backwards as holes were punched through his chest armor by a burst of incoming rifle fire. She could see the pain and surprise in his eyes, as if he had, until that very moment, been convinced of his own immortality. He toppled backwards to join the other two guards: they’d already been shot before she’d looked up, apparently, since the blood was pooling under their bodies before the tattooed one hit the floor. Through the haze that dragged at her thoughts, she struggled to grasp at what that meant and from somewhere she felt a thrill of hope.

The back door flew inward at the kick of an armored boot and three faceless figures of dark camouflaged bulk stamped inside, moving swiftly and efficiently through the cabin, looking for opposition and finding only her and her daughter. One of them stepped over to Val and crouched beside her, a gloved hand resting lightly on her shoulder.

There was a distorted buzzing and she sensed that the armored figure was trying to say something, but her hearing was still fried from the flash-bangs and she shook her head, touching her ear demonstratively with a hand. The man worked a latch on his faceplate and swung it upward; beneath it was the very familiar and very welcome face of Jason McKay. She felt an uncontrollable relief drain all the strength and resolve she’d stored up and she sobbed as she threw an arm around his neck and hugged him.

“Are you okay?” She could finally hear what he was saying as he yelled the question in her ear.

“We’re fine!” She yelled back, and her own voice sounded distant and distorted. I knew you would come for us, she wanted to say but didn’t. “Just get us out of here!”

“Sean, come get her!” McKay called into his helmet radio loud enough for her to hear before he closed and re-latched his faceplate.

Three more armored soldiers rushed into the cabin and one offered her a hand while the others stood guard. She hesitantly took it, letting him draw her to her feet with ease despite her holding her three year old daughter.

“Mommy!” She could hear Natalia shriek. “Who are dey?”

“They’re friends, honey,” she told the terrified little girl. “They’re going to take us home.” But