nametag or unit designation, and a mirror-visored helmet, arms full with a short-barreled carbine. The trooper advanced towards them as they all marched towards the lander, Riordan shuffling uncertainly with Shannon’s hand on his arm.
“I’ll take care of the prisoners,” Shannon announced before the Intelligence trooper could reach them. “Tell the pilot to go to complete radio silence and get us in the air
“Yes, ma’am,” a female voice said over the helmet’s external speaker, and the trooper turned and trotted back up the ramp.
The whine of the turbines pitched higher as the pilot fed power to them, and dust began to bloom around the aircraft even as Shannon escorted the three men up the ramp, out of the increasingly hot desert morning and into the shaded bliss of climate control. Shannon paused as they stepped into the passenger/cargo compartment and hit the control to raise the ramp. The lander leaped into the air before the ramp was halfway shut, letting a haze of dust blow into the cargo area before it cleared the ground.
Shannon guided Antonov and the others into a set of seats mounted on the wall of the cargo area and strapped them in, then moved up a short set of steps into the lander’s cockpit. The female trooper who had met them was seated in the copilot’s position, so Shannon dropped into the command seat behind them, pulling off her helmet and holding it in her lap.
She was expressionless as she leaned over and typed a destination into the navigation console. “These coordinates. Get us there as quickly as you can.”
“There are priority communication requests for you from President O’Keefe, ma’am…” the female trooper began.
“Radio silence for now,” Shannon stated flatly. “Notify me when we’re close.”
With that, she rose from her seat and stepped back down to the passenger compartment, halting in front of Antonov’s seat. “We’re en route,” she told him.
“Excellent,” the Russian said quietly. “When we arrive, you will escort us to our vehicle, then you will re- board the lander and head for Capital City.”
Shannon blinked, but remained silent. Antonov laughed, an unpleasantly harsh and chilling sound. “You thought I would kill you. No, my dear… you’re far too valuable an asset to dispose of so quickly. I have a very big job for you,
Ari Shamir grunted as he dropped the two meters to the ground from the hovering lander, absorbing the shock with his knees as he fell into a crouch, holding his carbine out in front of him to avoid burying it in his gut. He quickly scrambled away from the shadow of the aircraft, moving out thirty meters to get away from the dust cloud the lander was generating, then going prone and scanning the area for threats as he waited for the rest of the team to disembark.
The noonday sun beat down on his back as he lay there, overtaxing the cooling systems in his Marine-pattern body armor and the polarization of his helmet visor. He was beginning to sweat by the time a hand slapped down on his shoulder and he looked back to see Roza’s eyes through the visor of her helmet. She gave him a thumbs-up and he scrambled to his feet, waving a hand for the rest of the unit to join him.
There were a dozen of them in all, a mish-mash of stray Marines he and Roza had dragged away from desk assignments in the Fleet offices in Capital City when the call had come in from Lt. Franks a few hours ago. He’d heard scattered reports of a missile attack aimed at Capital City, at evacuations to the emergency shelters, engagements in orbit… but everything was a chaotic roar with a very low signal-to-noise ratio right now and the only thing he knew for sure was that Colonel Stark was overdue and Franks thought that someone needed to check on the situation.
He tried to push down the worry he felt about what was happening out there and concentrate on what was directly in front of him: the entrance to the underground hangar of Riordan’s bunker. The giant hangar doors were closed and well-camouflaged, colored rust brown like the dirt and covered with bits of rock, but off to the side of them was the entrance to a tunnel, where a set of stairs led downward. It had been left glaringly open, as if someone had departed in a rush and not cared what evidence of that they left behind them.
Ari edged up to the opening, a ring of heavy, dark metal set in the sandstone, then used the video connection between his carbine’s optical sight and the reticle in his helmet to check inside. The shaft was empty, the steps half-covered in sand blown in during the time the entrance had been left open. He shrugged and started down the steps. It could be a trap, but they weren’t going to find out what had happened by sitting on the surface waiting for an epiphany.
The silence as he descended was deafening, making the sound of his own breathing in his helmet incredibly loud in his ears. All he could hear through the external pickups was the soft scraping of his soles on the sand- covered stone steps. The stairs ran a good fifty meters down to the main hangar, where a VTOL aircraft rested lonely on the bare concrete, with no human in sight, not on visual or thermal.
A quick scan showed only one way out into the complex from the hangar: a large set of double-doors standing open that revealed a short corridor ending in a freight elevator. Ari led the group across the large hangar with Roza bringing up the rear and the Marines maintaining a good tactical separation for all that they’d been riding desks for most of their careers. Once they reached the corridor, Roza directed them via hand signals to take positions near its opening, then she joined Ari by the elevator doors.
“Shit,” Ari grunted as he examined the control plate. “It’s a biometric scanner. Gonna take a bit.” He pulled a small computer module from a belt pouch and touched a control then stuck it to the face of the scanner plate. “Honestly, I hate the idea of using the elevator at all, but it would take hours to get in through the entrance Colonel Stark’s team used.”
“I think the element of surprise isn’t a factor anymore,
Ari started to agree when the elevator’s indicator display suddenly lit up to show that a car was ascending to the hangar bay. His head swiveled back and forth between the display and Roza for a split second before he turned to the Marine squad.
“You two,” he jerked a finger at two of the troopers who were at the end of the hallway, “watch our backs. The rest of you spread out and cover the elevator!”
The Marines trained their weapons on the broad double doors of the lift and Ari and Roza moved to the corner to give them a clear field of fire.
“Remember,” Ari said quickly, “the last report we had was that there were biomechs down there, so aim for the head.”
The words were barely out of his mouth when the door began to open with a grinding squeak of old metal and Ari quickly brought his carbine up to his shoulder and slipped his fingertip over the trigger.
“Hold your fire!” A male voice called out loudly. “We’re friendlies!”
Ari’s eyes narrowed, then widened as the doors slid all the way open. The elevator was occupied by three men in Intelligence-pattern stealth armor, one of them laid out on a gurney and being tended to by a fourth, a short, frumpy woman with a doughy face that grew paler as she stared at the rifle barrels pointed her way.
“Put your hands on your head,” Ari snapped as he cautiously approached the four of them. “Don’t move.”
“I’m Reynolds,” the closest of the men insisted as he raised his arms, his voice tinny over the helmet’s external speakers, “Fleet Intelligence Special Operations.” He motioned at the other armored man, who had a blood-stained smart bandage on his leg and was struggling to remain standing with his arms over his head. “That’s Von Paleske… we were with Colonel Stark’s raid team.”
“Get out of the elevator and on the ground,” Ari ordered, motioning with his carbine, “all three of you.”
“That’s Tom Crossman,” Roza said tightly, gesturing to the figure on the gurney. Ari let his vision, which had been scanning back and forth between the two armored figures and the civilian, focus on the man on the medical bed and he cursed softly as he recognized the unconscious man.
“Take off your helmets,” he told the two men as they began to step out of the elevator. Reynolds did immediately, pulling off the full-face helm and dropping it on the ground. Ari had never met the man, but he recognized the young NCO’s face from files he’d viewed. Von Paleske took a moment longer, having to lean against
