Ok… ay. So much for concealing their presence and not starting an interstellar war then. Zero joined the rest as they all stepped forward, helmets folding down.
“Oh shit, they’re those aliens… the Lathar….”
Sparky chuckled. “Some of them are. I’m just the bastard about to fuck up your day because I can.”
“We’re worse than Lathar.” T’Raal grinned. It wasn’t a nice expression. It was the kind of expression that prefaced a threat to wipe out your entire family line or cause so much hurt and suffering your ancestors would feel the backlash.
“We’re Warborne.”
“Drop your weapons, now,” Eris ordered, her voice losing any little hint of humor it held before. It was a tiny difference, but stark. The woman had finally lost her patience. She wouldn’t be throwing words next time. She would be throwing bullets.
One by one, the SO13 squad dropped their weapons.
Zero gave a small grunt. Not all humans were stupid then… he had begun to wonder.
“Eric,” she said, her voice a little softer. “Walk toward us.”
The doctor’s eyes shifted sideways, as though he were trying to look through his own skull to see what Mills would do. A bead of sweat broke away and rolled down the side of his face. Then he took a step. His feet moved first, the forward momentum rolling up his body, through his knees, his hips and then finally he pulled from Mills’ hold.
Zero snapped his rifle up, aiming for the center of Mills’ forehead as Eric ran, stumbling toward them.
He scrambled behind Eris, still shaking as he hid in cover. Then he seemed to recall himself, standing up and smoothing his lab coat down, his gaze darting between all the men around him. They all ignored him, allowing him the moment of weakness as they focused on the human soldiers. He had none of Eris’s steel or grit. Zero was surprised he wasn’t a blubbering wreck.
“The woman. The alien,” Eris carried on. “Where is she?”
Most of the soldiers looked blank, shaking their heads and looking at each other in confusion. They didn’t know anything. Like mushrooms, grunts were kept in the dark and fed on shit.
But Mills’ eyes sparkled with something he quickly suppressed. Shrugging his shoulders, he bent to place his gun on the ground, hands spread as he stood again.
“No idea what you’re on about.”
The comms sparked and Red’s voice filled their ears. “Boss… those shuttles just took off. Want me to follow? I should warn you. Scans are picking up hotspots around the facility.”
Sparky sucked in a breath, straightening up in Zero’s peripheral vision. “They’ll have the place rigged to blow,” he said. “We need to get out of here. Fast.”
17
“Move, move, move!” T’Raal bellowed. “Red, bring that ship down to the landing pad. Now!”
Aware they were against the clock, the team didn’t argue, just split and hauled ass. She ushered Eric ahead of her, casting Zero a grateful look as he grabbed her brother, a hard hand around his upper arm, making sure Eric kept up.
“What about them?” Sparky yelled, jerking a finger back over his shoulder at the SO13 soldiers.
“Leave ‘em,” she yelled. “They’re like fucking rats. They’ll find their own way off this bloody moon.”
“Escape pods. They can use the escape pods,” Eric panted, out of breath from being dragged along at break-neck speed. They really were going to have to do something about his fitness levels. The skin between her shoulder blades crawled. They hadn’t even had time to get him into a power suit. If they didn’t make it before the timers blew, he had no chance.
“What about the alien woman?” Beauty yelled.
“Already gone,” Eric gasped. “They shipped her out first.”
The Warborne’s exit from the station was fast and against the clock. Without any idea of what timers had been set, they ran at top speed, heading right for the landing pads on the other side of the labs.
Eris’s heart thundered in her ears as she ran, cycling back around the group to pick up any stragglers if she had to. The threat of the whole place going boom seemed to be sufficient enough incentive. They hit the corridor near the landing pad in time to see the Sprite drop into place, all rail guns and PDCs armed and active in case SO13 came back for a last flyby.
They raced toward the extending boarding tunnel as the Sprite settled on the pad. She spotted the issue at the same moment as Zero did. There was no way her suit would fit. The boarding tunnel was just too small.
“Make sure he gets on board,” she yelled to Zero and turned, breaking away to sprint back the way they’d come.
“Eris!” her brother shouted, trying to shake Zero’s hold off and follow her. But the big cyborg quickly controlled her less-than-athletic brother and hauled him off toward the boarding tunnel.
She sprinted for the nearest cargo airlock, the heavy clunk-clunk-clunk of her suit’s feet loud even to her ears. Scanning locally, she uplinked to the airlock controls and activated it remotely. By the time she reached it, the door was open. Swinging herself around and in, she slapped her other hand over the quick release plate on the control panel.
The airlock was used for cargo, so there weren’t any of the same warning protocols for organics as the door slammed down behind her. If she’d been standing in the way, it would have sheared her in two. Its opposite number rose as soon as it was closed, expelling all the air in a whoosh that would have torn her free and sent her tumbling into space if not for the sheer weight of her armor.
Pushing off the back wall, she used the lighter gravity of the moon and her suit thrusters to race across the rocky surface and around the other side of the ship.
“Tank… best get your ass in here now,” Red’s voice warned in her earpiece.
