“Andrews, leave one of your people with Knight,” Roslyn ordered. “Then let’s move.”
“Pavel, you heard the LC,” the Corporal ordered. “Klinger, let’s go.”
The indicated Marine saluted with an armored gauntlet and followed Knight into the offices. The other two fell in with Roslyn as she took off at a steady jog. There was a clear path that would take them to where Mooren had gone silent.
It might not be the fastest path, but the last thing she could afford now was to get lost. She could only afford the time to look for Mooren and Killough because she had sent Bolivar to the surface with her Warrant.
She hadn’t expected to ever actually need the Voice of the Mage-Queen, but there could be no delays, no arguments. Depending on how Lafrenz’s GOTH plan worked, the entire city could already be at a contamination risk—even the entire planet.
Roslyn knew, in her heart of hearts, that she might have just ordered the rest of the planet to cut Nueva Portugal off and let the city die. If that was what it took to prevent the Orpheus weapon from spreading, that was what they would do—and she would die with the city if it came to that.
“Here,” Andrews said suddenly, interrupting her thoughts. “This was where we lost contact with Mooren’s half of the squad.”
It was a sterile corridor, like every other one they’d followed. Except that there were three wrecked drones on the floor, clearly taken out by precision gunfire.
“Clean shots, simultaneous,” Andrews reported, checking the debris. “The team probably didn’t even realize the drones had gone down for a half a minute, maybe more.”
“They were headed that way,” Klinger noted, gesturing along the hall. “I don’t see any sign of battle other than the drones.”
“Agreed. On me,” Roslyn ordered. The two Marines flanked her as she followed the path.
A security checkpoint like the one her team had shot their way through was waiting around the next corner. The armored door there had been blown outward with explosives, clearly followed with fire from penetrator rifles…or so Roslyn judged by the shattered armor of the two dead Marines in the checkpoint.
“Mooren would have pushed up,” she said quietly. “I don’t hear fighting, so let’s keep moving. We need to find anyone who’s alive.”
Or give up and run for the surface. Every dead Marine reduced the reasons for her being down there.
The rest of the Marines hadn’t made it far. The space behind the security door appeared to be one of the main access points to the fusion reactor. The battle that had followed the destruction of the door had been ugly—and it did not look right to Roslyn.
Four dead Marines were scattered around the space. They’d taken down four times their number in Augments before they’d died, but at least two had been killed with magic.
“Mooren was good,” she said quietly, “but she wasn’t this good.”
Sixteen Augments with the advantage of surprise and ambush, even a half-expected ambush like this, should have massacred the half-squad Roslyn had sent with Killough. Especially given that the area had been set up as a kill zone, with prebuilt covered firing positions and everything a defender could dream of.
There’d even been automated twenty-millimeter turrets and a laser, same as at the main entrance, to back up the defenders. Those had fallen to penetrator-rifle fire, but as Roslyn stepped forward, she could see that several of the Augments had been taken down by very different attacks.
“A Mage killed these Augments,” she said slowly. “Check for survivors,” she told her people. “Stun anyone you have to.”
“Wait,” a pained voice replied. “That’s…uh, one step further than I need to deal with today.”
Roslyn turned toward the voice. It was coming from the farthest strong point. Grimacing and summoning a shield of power, she walked over and tore the damaged bunker door open with her magic.
Somehow, she wasn’t surprised to recognize the dark brown hair, neat mustache and warmly brown eyes of Connor ad Aaron waiting for her. The rogue Mage was in…awful shape. One of his legs had been torn off by weapons fire, and he was hanging on to a rough tourniquet with his left hand.
His entire right arm was a shattered wreck, and he looked up at her with a level look of despair.
“Only one Mage-Lieutenant Commander who was going to find me in this hole, was there?” he asked, looking at her insignia, then coughed. He shook his head as she stepped closer.
“Your fucker broke my ribs,” ad Aaron told her. “Your Marines got my leg, but your Mage finished me off. And my men. Thought we had you pinned.”
“I don’t have sympathy for anyone working for Orpheus,” Roslyn told him. “If I can’t get you out alive, don’t see a reason not to leave you here.”
She wasn’t sure just who “your Mage” was. There hadn’t been a Mage in Mooren’s team.
“You don’t have it in you, Chambers,” he replied, coughing up more blood. “And…I can be useful in the time I got left. Ulla activated the GOTH, didn’t she?”
“So she said,” Roslyn conceded stiffly. “What do you know?”
“Orpheus is nanite magitech, reversal of the runic structure of a Prometheus Interface on a microscopic scale,” he told her, then laughed. That brought on more bloody coughing and he leaned back against the wall.
“That’s all I really know,” he admitted. “But I know the version in the GOTH plan is self-replicating and infectious…and I know where the GOTH plan put the dispersal units.”
He shuffled a bit to sit up straighter, then stared down at the wrist-comp on his left arm hopelessly and sighed.
“Guess that’ll be a problem, won’t it?” he said with a sigh. “Comp, authentication Prydwen-twenty-six-Llandudno.”
Roslyn heard him say the words, and she wasn’t sure she could duplicate his pronunciation.
“Project file Go-To-Hell-Nueva-Portugal Sprayer Map, latest version,” he instructed. “Then format, authentication llosgi’r sothach hwn.”
“Fuck you, ad Aaron,” Roslyn snapped—but the map of Nueva Portugal was now hanging in the air between them. Six green pyramid
