Supremacy's Bounty, page 25
part #2 of Dueling Planets Series
“Excellent.” Shaw extended a hand. “May I have that back now?”
Mackenzie stomped forward. “No.” There was no telling what Shaw had planned, but she wasn’t going to make it that easy. “Keep the console.”
Jinx yanked the console inside Faux, then backed up her suit using its hand grips. Jinx didn’t trust Shaw either, but the man had to have anticipated this sudden but inevitable betrayal. Chase watched them all with narrowed eyes.
Shaw smiled at Mackenzie. “What did you and Clayton decide?”
“I’m taking command,” Mackenzie decided, “because we don’t have time to deal with you and Clayton’s interpersonal bullshit. You hired me to lead this posse, right?”
“I did,” Shaw said, “which is precisely why I handed the command console to your partner. I leave myself and my soldiers in your capable hands.”
“Right.” Shaw was probably lying, but she didn’t even care right now. “So job one is stopping that Vindicator kill squad, or at least delaying them long enough to get our people on the shuttles.”
“You don’t think the robots will prove sufficient?” Shaw asked. “They acquitted themselves well earlier.”
“They were gunning down unarmed scientists in open hallways,” Mackenzie said, “not fighting veteran soldiers in powered armor.” No, Jinx’s killer robots would need a lot of help. “I guarantee the soldiers the Supremacy chose to guard their secret murder base are one hundred percent more deadly than any killer robot.”
“So how do we stop them?” Shaw asked.
Mackenzie thought back to their trek to the black site and had a genuinely good idea. “Where’s Renata?”
“Hasn’t returned yet,” Shaw said. “She said she would call in once she located Angelo.”
Angelo must be Renata’s brother. Mackenzie hoped Renata found him. “We actually don’t need her,” she said. “What we do need, however, is her rover. Can you drive it?”
Shaw stood. “Of course.”
“Find it. Drive it back the way we came, to the little hill Renata did that joyriding jump off of. I’ll have Clayton land the shuttle there. Get the rover on board.”
“You plan to use the rover’s suppression dome to protect the shuttle from enemy fire,” Shaw said. “And then use the shuttle to scout the base, from the air, for our opponents. Clever.”
Mackenzie had certainly thought it was, so it annoyed her that Shaw figured it out so easily. She zoomed in on Commander Asato and dropped a targeting rectangle on his head. With only a tinge of guilt, she pulled her trigger.
Chase blinked at the gunshot, at the spatter all over the wall. Shaw’s brow furrowed. Mackenzie had no idea how Jinx reacted, and she didn’t dare look.
“Nothing infected goes back,” Mackenzie told everyone. “Just like you planned, this was a one time test.”
Shaw shrugged. “If you think that’s wise.”
That smug bastard probably had all the data he needed on the virus stored in Chase’s medical pad. Didn’t matter. Once they were all back in space, Mackenzie would just take it from him. No one was unleashing this monstrosity on Phorcys. She pulled her gaze from Asato’s corpse.
“Follow me,” Mackenzie ordered everyone. “Shaw, does that console work outside the C and C?”
“That’s how they’re designed,” Shaw said. “It should have a range equal to the base.”
“Order Renata and Hall to defend the shuttle bay.” Mackenzie stomped for the door. “Chase, go help load people. We’ll hold those Vindicators back as long as we can, but if they get past us, take off with everyone you can save. Don’t wait for us.”
“I knew you’d guide us through this,” Shaw said, sandwiched between Freyja and Faux as they left Asato’s office. “You are a natural leader, Freyja, and a warrior I am very grateful to have on my side.”
“Fuck you very much,” Mackenzie said. “Now shut up and try not to kidnap anyone.”
“THIS IS A REALLY BAD IDEA,” CLAYTON SAID, over comms, as their shuttle rumbled over the top of a tall black dome. “We’re not armored. If they hit us, there’s no way we can go back into space, and if they hit us a lot, we explode.”
“ANOTHER DOWN,” Jinx typed, from where Faux was locked to the cargo rail on the shuttle’s far side. That left six of the original eight, with all the robots Jinx sent at them destroyed. Mackenzie had hoped for more kills, but these enemy pilots were apparently really fucking good.
“We don’t need this bucket to be spaceworthy,” Mackenzie said. Freyja was anchored to the cargo rail on the near side of the shuttle. “We just need to keep their attention. Fly evasive.”
Clayton cruised them sideways. “You and I have different understandings of the word evasive.” The first surviving Vindicator jogged into view, rifle raised. It fired in concert with Freyja and Faux.
Freyja’s smart bullet slammed into the enemy Vindicator’s chest, lodging there. Faux’s bullet pierced its faceplate dead center, emitting a puff of blood and disintegrated armor. The Vindicator dropped — five left — as Clayton cussed up a storm over comms.
“We’re venting air,” he said, and a moment later his voice returned, muffled. “Okay, all out of air now.” He must have sealed his helmet.
“Suppression dome holding steady,” Shaw said, from inside the rover in the shuttle’s belly. “Charge at sixty percent.”
Clayton was wrong. This was a great plan, and as Clayton hovered them across the dome holding the five remaining Vindicators, no more emerged. That meant they’d learned two very important things when Faux shot their buddy in the head.
First, the suppression dome generated by Renata’s rover protected this shuttle, which meant smart bullets couldn’t track it. Second, aiming manually took time, and it took enough time that Freyja and Faux could drill them with smart bullets if they tried to shoot back.
So they didn’t want to come out and play? Fine. She’d start with Plan B.
“Execute the lockdown,” Mackenzie ordered.
“DONE,” Jinx typed.
Though they couldn’t hear it, Mackenzie knew all the airseals in all four domes had just slammed down. While the Vindicators could break them down, each airseal would take time, fuel, and ammo. They only had to buy ten minutes.
Plan A had been to shoot all the Vindicators in the open while Clayton’s flying kept the ship intact, but given how groggily this shuttle maneuvered, Mackenzie had to admit that locking all the Vindicators inside might have been a better Plan A. At least until the top of a hallway exploded, and three enemy Vindicators popped out on repulsor jets.
“Fire!” Mackenzie pulled her triggers as red targeting squares danced drunkenly across her 360 display. Yet somehow, two of the three enemy Vindicators managed to evade smart bullets. Only one got hit, crashing through the dome and punching a new hole. Four left.
Fuck these assholes and their godsdamned competence! The enemy Vindicators’ full burn repulsor jump, combined with the thin atmosphere, meant even smart bullets couldn’t bank hard enough to track them. Worse, the Vindicators were firing back, manually, and apparently all of them knew how to shoot.
“Evade!” Mackenzie shouted over comms.
“What do you think I’m doing?” Clayton shouted, as metallic-sounding pops echoed in the background. “It’s a fucking meteor shower in here!”
Mackenzie led her shots. One more Vindicator took a hit — three left — but the last dropped out of sight. Worse yet, the last two rocketed up and dropped into cover as well, before Mackenzie could shoot them. So much for Plan B.
“Anyone hit?” Mackenzie shouted. “Report!”
“Fine here,” Clayton said.
“FINE,” Jinx typed.
“Not ... fine,” Shaw managed.
“Are you hit?” Mackenzie demanded.
“Quite so,” Shaw said. “I don’t believe this is survivable.”
How could he be so calm if that was true? “What’s the suppression dome at?”
“Zero,” Shaw rasped. “The charge is ... zero.”
“Well, that’s that,” Clayton said, as the shuttle shuddered slowly around the dome. “No more suppression, and more holes in this bucket than I can count.”
Really, it was a miracle Clayton hadn’t been shot. Maybe Clayton was right. Maybe this had been a shitty plan, but Mackenzie would rather have Vindicators shooting at them than at the poor people on the shuttlepad.
“How many left?” Mackenzie asked Hall, over comms. He still guarded the shuttlepad, alone.
“Two more batches,” Hall said. “We’re almost done.”
“Keep rounding the dome,” Mackenzie ordered. “We need to draw fire for a little longer.”
“That’s suicide,” Clayton said, though he kept rounding the dome. “They’ll target us and knock us out of the sky.”
“We know our suppression dome is down,” Mackenzie reminded everyone. “All they know is we’re still shooting at them.”
“YES,” Jinx typed.
“Find them,” Mackenzie ordered.
Clayton kept the shuttle moving, passing over one dome and then another, but they didn’t find anything to shoot. Had Mackenzie been down there, being hunted, she’d listen for the very loud shuttle’s engines and stay the hell away from it.
“Anything?” Mackenzie asked hopefully.
“ALL FEEDS DOWN,” Jinx typed. “CANT SEE ANYTHING” She’d jury-rigged the command console to send messages, but apparently it lacked punctuation marks.
“Hey, Hall,” Mackenzie warned. “You may have incoming. Get ready.” She flipped to Jinx’s channel. “Check every sensor in that base. Find them.”
“YES MAAM,” Jinx typed, and in her mind, Mackenzie heard Jinx’s lovely voice again.
They drifted, waited, and fumed. “Still nothing on the ground,” Clayton said, quite unnecessarily, since Mackenzie could fucking see that. “Shaw?”
Shaw didn’t answer, and Mackenzie knew smart bullets would tear through a body and out the other side. As much as she despised Shaw, this wasn’t how Mackenzie had wanted their argument to end. He should have faced a court-martial.
“Taking fire!” Hall shouted, as multiple reports sounded in the background. “They’re at the barricade!”
“Pad, now!” Mackenzie shouted.
As Clayton pushed the shuttle’s thrusters to full burn, it trembled violently. They cruised over a long hallway and over the last dome. Below, dozens of white-jumpsuited people wandered toward the Supremacy escape shuttles. The shuttles looked like elongated sailing yachts designed for giants.
“I’m hit!” Hall shouted.
“Blow the harnesses,” Mackenzie ordered Jinx.
With tiny explosions, Freyja and Faux blew their shuttle harnesses and dropped. Dozens would die if the two of them didn’t stop those Vindicators. As much as Mackenzie hated putting Jinx in danger again, she was all too aware that Jinx reacted without delay and skillfully guided her armor with microjumps.
Counting the kills made by her robots, Jinx had dropped double the bodies Freyja had today, and though Jinx probably hated that, Mackenzie felt unreasonably proud. Her scrappy little armor mechanic had grown into a serious badass. They could still save everyone, together.
“OK Corral!” Mackenzie guided herself toward the south side of the dome. “Go, go!”
Just before Mackenzie landed, she saw Faux drop out of sight on the other side of the dome. They would come in on either side of the barricade and catch the enemy Vindicators from the rear. Blood pumping in her ears, Mackenzie tore off the flimsy airlock door and jogged inside to get herself shot.
JINX STUMBLED AS FAUX LANDED, but she didn’t go down. Faux’s automated landing system handled the touchdown well. Sweat tickled her neck, back, and cheeks, and dread coiled inside her chest, but she was ready. Well, she wasn’t, but dozens of people on that pad were even less ready, so here she was.
The airlock on the north side stood open. The Vindicators must have entered through here. Rather than stomping inside, Jinx used the command console to bring up multiple cameras from inside the dome. All feeds came up blank.
The Vindicators must be shooting any cameras they saw, but Jinx wouldn’t let that stop her. She opened a top down schematic of the dome, halls, and shuttle bay. No secret prison would rely on just visual sensors to track its captives.
She mentally mapped the bay and overlaid the base’s sound sensors. Expanding rings appeared in the hall leading to the shuttle bay — gunshots. Jinx grinned and sealed all airseals between that hallway and the shuttle bay.
“Shutters closed!” Hall shouted, over comms. “That you?”
A very large ring expanded in the hall, and Jinx didn’t have to hear the rumble to know a Vindicator had just fired something explosive at the airseal. So they had freaking rocket launchers, too? Jinx realized then that the only reason the shuttle wasn’t debris was because the suppression dome probably prevented missile locks. It chilled her to know she’d come so close to getting herself shot down a second time.
“Shutters are open again!” Hall added. “Dammit, I’m empty! Get here now!”
Several reports sounded behind where the Vindicators were shooting. Mack had found them. Mack would handle them.
Movement caught Jinx’s eye. Two red target locks flashed into being as an enemy Vindicator limped around the corner ahead. One arm hung uselessly, spewing sparks. The other raised its smart rifle.
Two gunshots sounded before the Vindicator dropped, two smoking holes punched in its chestplate. It took Jinx a moment to realize she had fired those shots. She didn’t remember shooting that Vindicator and killing whoever was inside.
She’d just murdered someone, again, and as much as she expected to feel horrible, she didn’t. She didn’t feel like a monster and she should, shouldn’t she? Counting the work of her robots, she’d killed at least six people today.
Yet those people were trying to murder her and all the fleeing prisoners. They worked for evil Advanced who had murdered four hundred innocent people and burned them to ash. Asking them to stop wouldn’t save anyone.
Jinx refused to feel bad right now. She would help Mack stop these evil Vindicators and then get the heck off this moon. She’d have plenty of time to decide if she was actually a sociopath later, when everyone was safe.
“Everyone’s on board!” Edge shouted over comms. “Get out here!”
Jinx allowed herself a smile. She had slaved the second shuttle to the first, allowing Edge to fly them both.
“Oh shit.” Edge paused. “Oh shit!”
“What shit?” Mack shouted.
“We’ve got incoming!” Edge shouted back. “Long-range sensors now reading a bulwark class cruiser on intercept!”
Jinx numbly remembered what that meant. Bulwark class cruisers were big Advanced spaceships with guns and armor. Now one of those big destroyers was headed here, to Medusa, to eradicate them.
Only three bulwarks operated between Phorcys and Ceto, that Jinx knew of. Each destroyer carried a crew of over two-hundred and enough railguns to wreck a dozen Ceto shuttles. While the Advanced claimed the cruisers were intended to stop piracy, they were also the reason Ceto’s government couldn’t face the Advanced in space.
“Arrival estimate?” Clayton asked.
“Thirty-two minutes out,” Edge said.
That’s not so bad, Jinx thought.
“Take off!” Clayton shouted, which meant it was bad. “Take off now!”
“But you’re not on board.”
“I’ll get us out on the rustbucket! Lift now, or you’ll never outrun that bulwark!”
“Do as he says, Edge,” Mack added. “We’ll be fine.”
Mack’s confirmation didn’t surprise Jinx. Mack had always had a soft spot for innocent people. She just hid it well.
“Lift now,” Mack ordered.
“Lifting,” Edge said. The rumble of massive engines shook the ground beneath Jinx’s feet. “And ... thank you. We’ll get these people home.”
Jinx accepted the win. The survivors of these horrific experiments would escape this house of horrors. She was okay with not making it off this moon so long as those poor people did. Mack would be okay too.
Nothing moved inside the dome. Jinx stomped inside. All the enemy Vindicators had to be dead, right?
She turned a corner and found the last two enemy Vindicators blown full of holes. Ahead of them, another Vindicator bearing a green IFF tag slumped against the wall. Chewing her lip, Jinx made Faux jog toward it. There was an expanding pool of blood beneath Hall’s powered armor. Hall was very dead now.
Jinx blinked back wet and stomped past his body. Sergeant Hall had held that barricade and blocked bullets with his armor to protect people he didn’t know. He died saving lives, because maybe he was a better person than the man who helped Mister Hurt cut her foot in the back of Artifice’s truck.
She stumbled into the main part of the bay to find Freyja standing tall, one arm crushed. No prisoners remained. Jinx typed violently enough to hurt her fingertips. “HURT YES NO” That was the only way she knew to frame interrogatives without punctuation keys.
“I’m fine,” Mack said. “Freyja’s arm is broken, but mine isn’t. One of those assholes punched me.”
Jinx spotted Clayton’s shuttle in the distance, on the pad beneath the stars. All the shooting had opened plenty of new holes in the walls, so there was no breathing in the shuttle bay.
“CHASE OUT YES NO” Jinx typed. “RENATA OUT YES NO”
“Chase got the last of the people on the shuttles,” Mack said. “Hall, well ... you saw. I haven’t heard from Renata, so maybe she got on the shuttle too.”
“I didn’t,” Renata said over comms, her voice raw and harsh. “Angelo didn’t either.”
Jinx brought up a feed from inside the C and C. Renata sat in Commander Asato’s former seat, staring at his desk. Jinx bounced the camera feed to Freyja, so Mack could see it too.
Renata held her lipstick comm close. “They used him,” she whispered, voice breaking. “They used my baby brother for their fucking science experiments, and then tossed him in a pit of flames.”
