Never Surrender (The Empire's Corps Book 10) (36 page)

Gritting his teeth, he took a sheet of paper and wrote out a note.  BUILDING COMPROMISED - HAVE 2 GET OUT.  It was the only way he’d been taught to try to get the occupants out, back when he’d been trying out for the Pathfinders.  Stepping back into the antechamber, he held up the note in front of the camera.  The Governor would be inside, but who else would be with him?  There was a long pause, then the hatch slowly clicked open, revealing a surprisingly comfortable bunker.  Carl rolled his eyes, inwardly, then stepped inside.  Governor Brown was already rising to his feet.

He looked harmless, nothing like the Old Council or the Grand Senators he’d met - briefly - on Earth.  Paula, the treacherous bitch, had described him as a corporate rat; Carl had to admit, reluctantly, that she’d been right.  He was no soldier or spacer, no pirate or bandit, merely a corporate rat using the resources around him to leverage himself into a position of power.  Behind him, a pair of secretaries - both clearly old enough to be Carl’s mother - looked at him, nervously.

Not a military officer
, Carl thought. 
And not a security expert either
.

Carl couldn't resist.  “Greetings from Avalon,” he said.  “Goodbye.”

He shot the Governor through the head, twice.  It was unlikely in the extreme the Governor could recover from a single headshot, but modern medicine could work miracles if given half a chance.  The two secretaries started screaming; Carl hesitated, torn between shooting them and letting them go, then turned and walked out of the panic room, leaving them behind.  It didn't really surprise him that they didn't try to close the hatch, now he was gone.  He glanced at the Governor’s terminal, then slotted a rigged datachip into the system.  If it worked as advertised, a nasty virus would destroy all the data on the terminal before the firewalls managed to keep it from spreading.

The sound of running footsteps outside told him that he’d been discovered.  One of the secretaries must have hit an alarm, he guessed, or the panic room’s opening had sounded an alert.  He shrugged, then hurried through a side door into the Governor’s bedroom, which was larger but no more elegant than the hotel room.  Carl was almost disappointed in the dead Governor; if
he’d
had access to the resources of an entire star system,
he
would have used it to ensure he had a harem and all the pleasures money could buy. 

But you’d get bored
, he thought, snidely.  He hadn't jointed the Marines because he wanted to spend all day in bed, even if it
was
surrounded by hot chicks. 
And the Colonel would be disappointed in you.

Someone crashed into the office behind him, then let off a couple of shots.  Carl had no idea what they thought they were shooting at - maybe they’d shot the secretaries - but he hurried to open the window anyway.  There was no other way out, save for breaking through the security team and he had no idea how many men he was facing.  Cold air slapped at his face as the window opened, allowing him to start scrambling out into the open air.  Compared to climbing sheer rock faces at the Slaughterhouse, climbing down the mansion’s walls would be a piece of cake.

And then a bullet slammed into his chest.  Carl stumbled, feeling a dull pain spreading through his body, and somehow managed to unhook a second grenade from his belt.  The newcomers yelled at him to stop, but it was too late; he tossed it towards them, then kept moving through the window.  He realised his mistake a second too late.  There was a brilliant flash of light, then a kick that hurled him out into the open air ... and down towards the ground, far below.

He had barely a moment to trigger the third grenade, priming it to destroy his body, before the ground came up and hit him.

And then there was nothing, nothing at all.

Chapter Thirty-Six

From the point of view of the Grand Senate, concessions - however made - would only weaken the Empire’s bargaining position.  It was simpler to round up enemy combatants and imprison them, then deal with their successors - if, indeed, there were successors. 

- Professor Leo Caesius. 
The Empire and its Prisoners of War.

Wolfbane System, Year 5 (PE)

Commander Drew Malochy scowled down at the datapad in front of him, wondering if there was ever a rank so high that he could tell the beancounters to go away or he would personally stuff their beans down their throats, one at a time.  It was bad enough that a particularly stupid commanding officer had ignored basic maintenance to the point his ship had suffered a core overload, but somehow
he
had to account for every one of his actions following the explosion.  He would have liked to see the beancounters do better if they were trapped in the command seat ...

“Commander,” Ensign Pittman called.  “The armoury!”

Drew looked up, just in time to see the first missile streaking away from the missile pods towards one of the industrial nodes.  For a moment, his mind refused to accept what he was seeing; the missiles had been locked in place, unable to be armed and fired without the correct command codes!  And yet, the missiles were already being launched at targets within the shipyard.  They would start hitting home before anyone could do anything to stop them.

“Signal an alert,” he snapped, knowing it would be already far too late.  More missiles were spewing free of the pods now, aimed at everything from the industrial nodes to the automated weapons platforms.  They weren't prepped to deal with threats originating
inside
the shipyard!  No one had ever considered the possibility.  “Get everyone back into suits and ...”

The first missile slammed into its target.  Drew winced, expecting an explosion, but instead the missile punched through the thin layer of material separating the industrial production node from outer space.  Atmosphere started to flow out of the gash - he refused to focus his sensors enough to tell if the wriggling shapes were actually
people
- as the missile smashed through several billion credits worth of equipment before finally being wrecked itself by a final impact.  The warhead hadn't been armed, part of his mind noted; the rest of him couldn't help focusing on the end of his career ...

“Order everyone into suits and then into space,” he ordered, as other missiles sought out their targets.  Defensive countermeasures were already deploying, but the missiles didn't seem inclined to be distracted from their targets.  Their seeker heads were inactive too, he realised numbly; they were merely flying ballistic trajectories that merely happened to intersect their targets.  “And order the weapons platforms to take out the armoury!”

Pittman looked up at him.  “Sir?”

“Order the weapons platforms to take out the armoury,” Drew ordered.  His career was definitely at an end, so he might as well go out with a bang.  Besides, whoever had launched those missiles had to be on the armoury itself.  “Now!”

***

“The missiles are away,” Jasmine snapped.  The first missiles had already begun to strike their targets.  “We need to move.”

She rose to her feet, then ran through the corridor towards where the worker bees were waiting.  Most of her team had moved as soon as the missiles had started to fire, knowing it wouldn't be long before the Wolves targeted the armoury directly.  Stewart followed her through the network, one hand tapping his radio to recall the remaining teams.  They plunged into the worker bees and hastily disengaged from the armoury, just as the final set of countermeasures began to go active.  Anyone trying to use active sensors in the midst of the shipyard was in for a very unpleasant experience.

“Shit,” Stewart said.  The worker bee rocked violently as the pilot struggled to avoid chunks of debris.  “They just struck the armoury!”

“That was quick,” Jasmine muttered, as she strapped herself in.  “And our drones?”

“Gary has them,” Stewart said.  “God help us.”

Jasmine nodded, then turned her attention to the radio net.  Judging from the increasingly frantic pleading, her missiles had done a great deal of damage.  The Wolves would take months, if not years, to repair their facilities ... she caught sight of an explosion blossoming into life on one of the large shipbuilding slips and smiled in cold amusement as a half-built cruiser was enveloped in fire.  Something big must have exploded ... she puzzled over it for a long moment, then pushed the thought aside.  It hardly mattered, not now.  There would be time for an after-action review when - if - they survived.

All that mattered was getting out before it was too late.

***

Gary had plenty of experience in multitasking, from the games he’d played on Earth, but that had been five
years
ago.  There were just under a hundred worker bees under his direct control and handling them all at the same time was just impossible.  All he could do was take brief control of each worker bee, direct it into a place where it could serve as a weapon and then move to the next one before it ran into something and exploded.  Worker bees were fast little craft, but they sure as hell weren't armed or armoured.

Cold hatred burned through him as he directed one worker bee to slam straight into an emergency shuttle, than another one into a thin-skinned habitation module.  The Wolves had taken Kailee from him, turned him into a collaborator and then forced him to hide in the spaceport, fearing death as a collaborator.  Earth had been bad enough, but the Wolves could have been something different, something better.  Everything Paula had told him about their system had convinced him that, in many ways, they were
worse
than Earth. 

They were dying.  Gary watched, through a sensor, as an emergency bubble was ripped open, casting dozens of people into the icy cold vacuum of space.  He felt nothing, not when they were exposed to his drones or when they died, even though part of him knew it was no computer game.  They had all been part of a system that had oppressed him, oppressed Kailee, oppressed Meridian ... a planet he might never have liked, but he could have come to love, in time.  He didn't want to think about how many people had suffered because of the Wolves, from people like Paula and her General to Jasmine and her men.  Watching the Wolves suffer and die -
making
the Wolves suffer and die - felt noble and right.  Even the ones who hadn't hurt him directly had enabled the ones who had. 

A worker bee popped out of existence.  Gary barely noticed, shifting his attention to several other worker bees.  Five of them were burning towards weapons platforms, which were rapidly trying to reorientate themselves so they could fire into the shipyard.  It struck Gary as a curious oversight, but he had to admit that Jasmine had proved that someone could fire missiles within the shipyard, even without the arming codes.  He watched two platforms die as the bees slammed home, then sighed bitterly as three died before they got any closer to their targets.  A sixth died seconds later as it flew too close to an armed shuttle.  He wondered, nastily, just how many legitimate worker bees, crewed by live personal, were about to die.  The Wolves seemed to be shooting at everything and everyone.

He grabbed control of three more and pointed them towards a habitation node.  Emergency craft were already deploying, but it looked like they wouldn't be in time.  Gary felt his lips pull back into a sneer, then pushed the worker bees forward.  The impact would wipe out hundreds of the bastards ...

***

Joshua Abram had been sitting in his cabin, cursing the customs crew under his breath, when the alarms started to sound for the second time.  He’d been woken up barely an hour before he was supposed to get up, which meant there hadn't been any real hope of getting back to sleep before he had to get out of bed for good.  The CO would have been pissed if he’d been late and docked his pay ... and when he was the only one in the family earning a living wage, he couldn't afford to lose anything.  His parents were engaged in make-work, while his sister was too young to do anything beyond schooling.  He couldn't risk a reduced pay packet ...

The alarms sounded, again.  Joshua rolled his eyes, then reached for his helmet and placed it on his lap.  There was no point in actually putting it on until there was a real emergency, not when he hadn't had a chance to verify his shipsuit’s inbuilt oxygen supply.  In hindsight, putting that off until he had a weekend to spare had been foolish.  If the CO found out, he would have torn Joshua a new asshole - not out of concern, but out of the prospect of having to do the paperwork if Joshua died on his watch.  Joshua sighed, then smiled in honest relief as he realised the alarms actually helped him.  The CO could bitch about anything, as long as it was his subordinates’ fault.  He wasn't allowed to dock their pay if they were late because of an emergency alert. 

He’d probably try
, Joshua thought, darkly.  Complaining was dangerous, even on the shipyard.  A complainer could be given shit duty for weeks ... or simply kicked out and sent back to Wolfbane with a black mark on his record. 
I think ...

Another alarm sounded, a second before a dull
thud
echoed through the habitation node.  Joshua hastily donned his helmet, then took a deep breath, praying the life support system was in good condition.  The air tasted faintly stale, but it was breathable; he sucked in his breath with relief, then shuddered as a
third
alarm, harsh and uncompromising, echoed through the air. 
Hull breach
. 

Joshua hurried forward and through the hatch as dull quivers started to shudder through the entire complex.  He’d never felt anything like them before, not in real life, but he knew what they portended.  The complex had been badly damaged, air was leaking out of one or more gashes in the hull ... and the shockwaves were on the verge of ripping the entire structure apart.  Outside, the quivering was louder; he could hear metal screaming in agony as it was bent and broken by forces beyond his ability to grasp.  And he could hear, in the distance, the faint hiss of air escaping from the hull.

He stumbled forward as the gravity flickered, then stopped in front of a hatch leading into another cabin.  Someone was banging on the hatch, her muffled voice screaming for help; Joshua hit the switch, but the hatch remained firmly closed.  The entire hull was being warped, he realised, as he hunted for something - anything - that could be used to open the jammed door.  There was nothing in view ....

A great tearing sound echoed through the compartment.  Joshua heard something splintering, in the distance, then he was yanked off his feet by a sudden outrush of air.  He tried to grab hold of a piece of bulkhead, only to have it come loose in his hand.  Helplessly, he plummeted through the ever-widening gash in the hull and out into space.  The shipsuit warmed automatically, protecting him from hard vacuum, as he tumbled helplessly away from the structure.  He saw a piece of debris, larger than his entire compartment, spinning past him and out into the void.  In the distance, he could see flashes of light ... was the entire shipyard under attack?

His suit should be signalling automatically, he knew, screaming for help.  Normally, there was always a worker bee or a shuttle in easy range, ready to pick up someone who had found themselves dumped into space unexpectedly.  But now ... even if his transmitter was working, and if someone picked it up, he had no idea when he would be recovered.  If he ever was recovered ...

Something twinkled with light, in the distance.  Joshua sighed, then took a breath and forced himself to relax.  There was nothing else he could do, but wait. 

***

“The worker bees have gone mad,” Lieutenant N’Banga reported.  “They’re killing people!”

“They’ve been
hacked
,” Drew said.  There were so many problems, one after the other, that his attempts to deal with one issue only made the next one worse.  “They’re designed for remote control and someone has managed to hijack the link.”

He gritted his teeth.  Hundreds of people were dying and they
needed
the worker bees, but he couldn't take the risk of leaving the hijacked ones to fly around at will. 

“General signal to all worker bees,” he ordered.  “They are to cut all drives and come to a complete halt, relatively speaking.  Any bee that refuses to do so is to be taken out.”

N’Banga stared.  “Sir?”