Nash poked at his chest armor, but it didn’t budge. He grabbed each side of the helmet and pulled it off.
He lurched backward in shock. Instead of a face, he found a clock staring back at him. It activated began to count down.
10… 9… 8…
Cassidy!
Nash hurried toward the airlock and burst out onto the hangar deck, throwing his hands in the air. “Move! Everyone out!”
He ran ahead of his soldiers to the door and a bright light flashed behind him. A powerful shockwave threw him to the bulkhead of the outer corridor.
With a thump, his body numbed with searing pain as shrapnel rained down on him.
The lights flickered out, and his eyelids closed.
I told you, you couldn’t kill him!
Forty-One
Transport Pod Maybelle
“Latching on, now!”
Tyler gently maneuvered the Maybelle and connected the small pod to the outer hull of the weapon ship, while Marquez stood behind him, watching his handiwork.
“The scanners have detected a reverberation,” he said, checking the monitor. “Looks like the bomb went off as planned.”
Jason prodded at the terminal by the airlock. It flashed green and he opened it, revealing the obsidian black hull of the weapon ship. “Let’s get cutting,” he said to Althaus and Higgs.
The pair stepped up with their laser cutters and burned into the hull. Jason bit his bottom lip, hoping Nash wasn’t on the hangar deck when the bomb exploded. It was part of the plan that most rankled him. But if they were any chance of getting aboard without being noticed, they’d had no other choice.
Jason assumed the Seekers would detect them on their scanners so decided to use the hijacked transport as a diversion. With Aly’s help, they fashioned an airtight walkway between the transport and the Maybelle’s dorsal maintenance hatch so it was able to ride beneath the larger alien vessel undetected. To the Seeker’s scanners, it would’ve looked like only one ship.
He evacuated through the walkway then decoupled the two vessels, just before the weapon ship’s tractor field took effect. The Maybelle used its momentum to move past the field unchecked so it could latch on to their target undetected. All the while it ensured the Seekers had their attention on their own transport before creating a nice little explosion on their hangar deck.
Jason turned to the clang of lasered hull plating falling into the corridor of the weapon ship. “All right, let’s go.”
He placed on his helmet along with everyone else, and led the way with alarm klaxons blaring around them. As per the plan, Jason, Tyler, Althaus, and Corporal Higgs were the first ones up when they reached the central elevator.
Marquez offered Jason a hand. “Good luck.”
“See you soon.”
Seeker Weapon Ship
The elevator came to a halt and Jason stepped out with Tyler by his side and Althaus and Higgs in tow. A team of four Seeker soldiers hurried toward them with their weapons at the ready.
“Just stay cool,” Jason whispered, motioning the others to the side of the corridor. They brushed by them as if they weren’t even there. Their disguises had worked.
“They must be heading down to the hangar deck,” Tyler assumed. “They may not know we’re aboard—”
“Yet,” Althaus said, finishing his nephew’s sentence.
“Right, let’s keep going.” Jason did his best to remember his way back to the brig. He stepped around one final corner to the door he’d escaped from. But instead of the one guard who’d been there earlier, there were now four. “He must’ve beefed up security since I left.”
“Any ideas?” Tyler asked.
“I’ve got a shock grenade.” Higgs revealed the handheld spherical explosive. “We roll one of these babies down there, it’ll take the four of them out easily.”
“I was hoping to do this quietly. We set that off and we’ll be found out.” Jason glanced down at his weapon. “How good of a shot do you think you can be with these things?” he asked the others.
“They’re tricky at first, but they don’t kick like our rifles do,” Higgs said of his experience down on Psi-Aion. “Just give me a target, and I’ll hit it.”
“I haven’t even fired one yet.” Althaus gripped the weapon tightly. “But I’d be a damn sight better at it than you.”
“That’s what I’m counting on.” Jason let the insult fly and pointed behind them. “Tyler, I want you to cover this corridor. Althaus, take this end, and Higgs, take the other. You’ll both need to eliminate the two soldiers facing the door.”
“What about the other two?” Althaus asked.
“I’ll deal with them.”
“This sounds like an idiotic plan.”
“Yep, pretty much. We ready?”
After Higgs rounded back to the other end of the adjoining corridor, they were all in place. Jason walked toward the brig and the guards instantly noticed him, but as before his disguise appeared to be working.
He stood in front of the guards at the door, but they wouldn’t budge. “Sorry, guys, I don’t remember what the secret password is?”
The perplexed soldiers stared at each other. Behind Jason, the other two guards fell from the bursts of a pair of well-placed shots from Althaus and Higgs.
Nice work, guys.
Before the two Seekers in front of him could react, Jason unholstered his sidearm and shot one at point-blank range. The other was quicker to take aim with his own weapon, but Jason knocked the gun from his hands.
The guard barreled into Jason, knocking him to the deck with a thump. A fist pounded into his head, cracking his black visor open like an egg. Preparing for another clobber, Jason looked away, just in time to see a bolt of energy from Althaus’s gun send the Seeker sailing into the wall.
“Jesus, kid, I thought I packed a punch.” Althaus ran toward him and heaved him up from the deck.
With Tyler and Higgs joining them, Jason peered through the damaged helmet at the door terminal and waved his hand over it. It opened with ease, and he led the others inside. He then dropped his shoulders at his discovery.
“Hell!”
Tyler came up beside him and glanced at all the
