“How? When?” was all Zero could get it together enough to ask.
“An hour ago.” The Warborne leader’s face was not a happy one. “Somehow they managed to disable the internal alarms and launch without anyone being any the wiser. They took two of the combat power suits from the locker and went dark just after launch.”
“So we can’t track them?”
T’Raal leaned on the edge of the holo-table and looked up at him, long hair framing his face. “Track the combat shuttle? Our combat shuttle?”
Yeah… he knew better than that. The combat shuttle was designed from the nuts and bolts up for stealth insertion. Great. They were completely dark.
Then it hit him. She’d left him. While he’d been wrapped up in happily ever afters in his own head about the morning, Eris had had other plans. He’d told her she wasn’t on the team to rescue her brother and she’d taken matters into her own hands.
And why shouldn’t she? She was a soldier like him.
“You won’t allow it? Tell me, when did what I do become your decision?”
He groaned as the truth hit him like a sledgehammer. He’d cast himself in the role of white knight rescuing the damsel in distress, but she hadn’t needed or wanted that. She’d needed a comrade in arms, not a rescuer.
“Shit.” He blew out a breath and looked at T’Raal. “Okay, when are we leaving to go after them?”
15
The moon that housed Eric’s Lab was so small it didn’t even warrant a name, just an identification code.
MD-892-A.
“Charming place, huh?” Sparky asked, his voice loud in her ear as they exited the shuttle airlock. She winced and nudged the volume down with the rocker button near her jaw. The suits they wore… “borrowed” from the Sprite just like the shuttle… might have been designed by and for an alien species, but they were so intuitive to use, she might as well have been in her Scorperio unit. Well, apart from the lack of bloody big guns.
“Scientists. They don’t care much for views. Or anything apart from their work,” she commented, her rifle held loosely as they jogged lightly over the surface of the moon toward the lab. The gravity was a fraction of Earth normal, but just enough they could use a loping run.
Designed for low-gravity it would ensure they stuck to the surface and didn’t need to use their suit thrusters to stay down. The trick was to glide their feet over the surface, not push. Slamming a foot down would just spin them off into space, which, when they were trying to stay unnoticed, would not be a good thing.
They’d opted to land a couple of clicks away from the lab, concealing the shuttle in a deep valley before covering the rest of the distance on foot in extravehicular activity-suits for two reasons. Trying to land on a top-secret base no one was supposed to know about without clearance? Never a good idea. Trying to land on a top-secret base no one was supposed to know about in an alien combat shuttle? That was an even worse idea.
So they’d dropped in while the base was on the dark side of the moon and its sensors were out of commission. That way, even if they did get spotted, no one could send a message out. Even so, they’d sat for long minutes, monitoring all the comm ranges, just in case.
Not a peep.
No one had seen them. No alarms had been raised. They reached the last rise, crouching in cover to get a look at the lab.
It was nestled in a shallow valley, a sprawling mass of domes and corridors. The larger domes had to be the labs, the largest probably hydroponics to support the environmental systems, and the smaller ones residential. A landing pad with extendable docking arms was just visible on the other side of the domes.
“All quiet on the lunar front,” Sparky murmured, his gaze intent on the lab. “Doesn’t look like they have any perimeter patrols set.”
“It’s a lab,” she replied, using her helmet’s display to zoom in on the nearest section. There was a service airlock not far from them. “What would they be guarding… Lab equipment and reports? Did you see the shit Eric sent? I couldn’t read more than one word in three. Made no fucking sense to me whatsoever.”
Sparky’s lips compressed as he motioned for them to move. “Yeah, a lab that’s researching weaponized genetics. Anything that involves weapons usually has way more guards and guns than this. It feels… odd.”
“That’ll be your suit, pick a smaller size next time.” She told him as they ran toward the buildings.
At any moment she expected the nearest dome to sprout point defense canons and cut them down before they could get anywhere near. By the time they reached the relative safety of the nearest building, hidden from view by the curve of the wall, sweat trickled uncomfortably down the hollow of her spine.
“Not my fault these things are cramped in the ol’ jewels department,” he groused. “Had to go up a size so I didn’t squash anything… important.”
“I’ll squash something important if you don’t shut the fuck up,” she murmured, slinging her rifle and sliding to her knees by the airlock door. Levering the panel loose with her combat knife, she slid it under her knee to stop it floating off and peered inside.
“Standard mag-seven unit,” she said, reaching in. “I can have this open in a few.”
“Well, aren’t you a dark horse?” Sparky whistled softly as she worked. “Goody two-shoes Chief Archer breaking a mag-seven… I’m impressed.”
She chuckled. “Who said I was a goody two-shoes? Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
The locks on the airlock clunked and switched from red to green. She quickly replaced the panel and slid her knife away just as the door opened to let them in. It was a close fit with the two of them.
“We need to move fast. This is one of the maintenance locks, so it will
