Marathon: The Complete Series (Books 1-9) (Complete Series Box Sets), page 14
part #1 of Marathon Series
Eckhart charged the stairs only to stagger to a stop when he saw dozens of shadows darkening the landing. Bing bumped into him, fumbling for Halfanite primers as he did.
“You gotta be kidding me,” Bing said.
The stairs, their only way back out of the chamber, were full of armed Sone mercenaries.
28
“I ain’t going out like this,” Alice screamed as her rifle came to life, peppering the oncoming rush of bodies.
The mercenary aliens, in turn, started shooting even before they reached the floor.
Eckhart shouldered his rifle. Bing launched his Halfanite primers up the stairs and sent a dozen fighters flying, but it barely seemed to slow them down.
“I’m out!” screamed Alice, her rifle clicking uselessly.
Dallas stepped forward to position himself between the crew and the enemy, but Eckhart already saw that it was no good.
The stairs were a natural chokepoint, but there was no telling how many men were up there. They simply didn’t have the ammunition to sit here and pick them all off. Even Dallas was surely very low on Datrium. The plasma billowed from the gun ports on his arms would soon waver and stop.
He grabbed Dallas’ elbow. “The Oksite! Detonate the crystal! It’s the only way.”
Eckhart didn’t truly know exactly what would happen if Dallas fired on the crystal with his plasma guns. It might take a few concentrated shots, but if Rixby was right, it should be enough energy to destabilize the crystal.
Without whatever weaponization was planned for it, it shouldn’t be the catastrophic planet killer explosion they feared.
But it would still be one hell of a blast, Eckhart was sure of that. It would almost certainly implode the chamber and kill the whole crew in the bargain. It might even take half the surrounding village with it, too.
But Eckhart couldn’t see any other option.
Dallas stiffened and eyed the Sone mercenaries pouring in. Dozens more shoved to get down the stairs while the frontrunners fired into the chamber. Clifton fired back with one arm, and Bing lobbed more Halfanite blocks to hold the enemy off, but it couldn’t last.
“Do it, Dallas!” Eckart ordered. “Destroy it—now!”
Dallas cocked back his wrist on the hand holding the crystal so that it would place the crystal in the line of fire of his gun port. Eckhart unloaded the last of his ammo and heard that telltale click from his rifle. He had no more firepower left to hold the Sone at bay while Dallas held the crystal aloft.
Dallas shifted his weight and fully extended his arm to fire when, without warning, another crushing blast ripped the chamber apart—but it didn’t come from the side walls or the Ioscesten towers.
It came from behind the onrushing mercenaries, and the concussion leveled the attackers fighting to reach the Marathon crew. The next second, another deafening crash rocked the chamber and took out at least fifty of the enemy.
Dallas and Eckhart stared in stunned disbelief as strike after strike obliterated the stairs and took out another thirty Sone trying to get into the chamber. Eckhart didn’t want to believe, but his own eyesight didn’t lie.
Clifton didn’t have the same problem. He whirled around and dragged Alice over to Eckhart. “Get back! Over there! We can get out over there.”
Clifton ran past Eckhart and Dallas, with Bing hot on his heels. They plunged into the chaos, making for the destroyed back wall. Bing pitched Halfanite charges over his shoulder toward the Sone, but without the stairs, the surviving attackers couldn’t get into the chamber. It was little more than a jumble of twisted metal and twisted bodies now.
Clifton had to slow down when he reached the rubble field that was the chamber’s rear wall. Dallas grabbed him, scooping up Clifton and Alice in one arm. He jumped over the rubble and landed outside.
Eckhart and Clifton immediately started coughing in the caustic gas outside. As soon as the friends showed their faces above ground, the Sone mercenaries spotted them.
The enemy wheeled and charged. Gunfire stuttered in the gloom, and Eckhart shouldered his weapon before he remembered he had no ammo left. Tears sprang to his eyes so he couldn’t aim, anyways.
At least Clifton seemed to still have some firepower left, but he was as troubled by the fog as Eckhart and all he could do was fire blindly. At that moment, another brutal concussion shook the ground beneath his feet.
Eckhart stiffened for another attack, but the shot landed in the center of the Sone mob. It took out at least half of the enemy force in one blast.
Explosions pounded the Sone fighters again and again. Eckhart ran his sleeve across his eyes and peered into the dark, trying to see where the shots were coming from.
He thought for the second time he must be imagining it when he finally made out Alice’s giant pounder parked right outside the village.
A lone figure sat in the seat. The gunner slammed the weapon from side to side, unleashing rockets on the Sone, but the shooter wasn’t Alice.
It was DeWalt.
A blinding light cracked the gloom when the Marathon’s ramp swiveled open. Glorious welcoming brightness called the crew to race across the village and clamber on board.
The Sone regrouped and made another assault on the retreating friends, but DeWalt stayed where he was. He grimaced in mad fury, hammering them with rockets even when the Marathon’s engines erupted to full power.
Eckhart leaned over the ramp and stretched out his hand. “Come on, DeWalt! Leave it!”
DeWalt didn’t respond. He shrieked in ferocious determination and unloaded another round of rockets on the enemy. Eckhart couldn’t even see any fighters anymore. DeWalt had slaughtered them all without mercy.
“Come on, DeWalt!” Eckhart called. “We don’t leave our crewmates behind!”
DeWalt stopped shooting and glanced over his shoulder. His eyes met Eckhart’s, and DeWalt’s expression changed. He clenched his jaw, sprang off the pounder, and bolted for the ship.
Eckhart grabbed him and dragged him into the hold. He slammed the ramp shut, and the Marathon leaped into the sky.
EPILOGUE
Eckhart scoured the tactical web. He’d been doing it relentlessly for the last ten minutes – ever since the Marathon had blasted out of the gas clouds, broken orbit, and left Drao behind.
“You’re sure we’re still clear? Absolutely clear?”
“All clear,” Rixby chirped from on top of her workstation. “Local space is dead quiet.”
Only Dallas and Rixby were at their stations. Bing was down in the infirmary tending to Alice. DeWalt and Clifton were also down there. They’d sucked it up and accepted Bing’s help to heal from the effects of their extended exposure to the planet’s toxic gas.
Eckhart had done the same, but he’d refused to stay long. Now he felt his energy ebb. He coughed.
“You might could use a little more of Bing’s attention,” Dallas said, as if his old friend could read his thoughts.
“In a bit.” Eckhart slumped over his seat and propped his hands on the back to support himself to catch his breath. His legs trembled and his knees turned to water, now that he didn’t have to worry about someone trying to kill him—yet.
For another full minute, no one spoke as the Marathon continued to slice through space.
“What do we do now?” Dallas asked at last. “Every bounty hunter in seven galaxies will be searching for us.”
“They aren’t looking for us,” Rixby corrected. “They’re looking for DeWalt and the crystal. We need to find a way to get rid of one or both.”
Eckhart sighed heavily, then coughed again. Dallas was right. He needed to return to the infirmary. “For the moment, we need somewhere safe to hide and regroup. Then we can figure out what to do next.”
Dallas and Rixby exchanged a look.
“And where might that be?” Dallas asked.
Eckhart glanced around. He was almost glad that Alice wasn’t here. She wouldn’t like this one bit. “There’s one place I can think of. Or rather, one person I can think of. He owes me. And I suppose I owe him.”
“Who?” Rixby asked.
He gave a knowing look in Dallas’ direction. “You should know just who I mean.”
It was always impossible to read him through his helmet, but the double-take he gave was unmistakable. “Him? Really?”
“Who?” Rixby asked again.
In answer, Eckhart said, “Set a course for Zuic. I need to visit an old … friend. That’s enough light-years away that we’ll all have some time to rest.”
Rixby froze on her console. “Zuic? As in, the Zuic?”
“There’s only one.”
“Are you sure?” Dallas asked. “If we’re going to attract every trigger finger who wants to make a buck, do we really want to go where every single one of them is?”
Eckhart stood and headed for the bridge door. “The only one who matters is there. If we aren’t safe there, we aren’t safe anywhere.”
As the bridge doors closed, he heard Dallas murmur to Rixby, “We definitely aren’t safe anywhere.”
HIDDEN WORLD
PART 1
SNAKE PIT
1
“Fifteen bogeys coming in fast from fourteen degrees descendant, forty-five degrees latitude, seventy degrees longitude,” Alice announced from her station.
“How’s the Celdian holding up?” The ship fought against Eckhart’s efforts to stabilize its trajectory. The Marathon wobbled dangerously to starboard.
“The Celdian is fine. It’s just the—” Another volley of smashes cut Alice off. “It’s the damn plasma we have to worry about.”
Eckhart tightened his grip on the regulators and gritted his teeth. He tried to block the enemy shots out of his mind. In fact, he tried to block the enemy out of his mind completely.
DeWalt made that impossible, though. The rich Earthling banker leaned too close to Eckhart’s seat and called into Eckhart’s ear over the noise of plasma shots sizzling along the Celdian defense shield. “Why don’t you shoot back? Defend yourself before they kill us all!”
Eckhart compressed his lips and focused on flying. The ship dipped into the murky atmosphere swirling around Zuic, but before he could descend into the thick clouds, three enemy ships surrounded the Marathon. They swiveled in front of the ship’s nose and plastered the bow.
Plasma explosions forced the nose up. Eckhart ripped the regulators back and punched the throttle. The Marathon vaulted over the enemy vessels and cleared them.
He slammed the regulators hard forward and tilted the ship into a death plunge. He dove through the atmosphere with the whole enemy contingent hot on his tail.
“Whoa!” Clifton threw his arms in front of his face to protect himself from seeing the mayhem playing out on the front screen. “What are you doing? Fight back, damn it!”
“Shut up and let me fly my own ship!” Eckhart thundered as the enemy vessels raced him toward the ground. Clouds whipped aside to reveal a vast carpet of billions of lights spread out on the planet’s surface.
“They aren’t slowing down,” Alice warned.
Eckhart clenched his teeth and fought to breathe against the vertigo. “Just a little longer...”
The wind shrieked against the hull. The ship quaked more from the atmospheric pressure and the speed of its dive than from the ongoing bombardment.
“They aren’t breaking off!” DeWalt screamed. “You’re going to crash!”
“I said shut up!” Eckhart strained his arms against the force and hauled the ship upright just in time. The Marathon rocketed parallel to the surface and thousands of buildings whizzed by.
“They’re matching you,” Alice told him.
“Good.” Eckhart dared not glance down at his controls to see how much Celdian the Marathon had left.
“Good?!” Clifton repeated. “How can getting destroyed by a bunch of murderous criminals be good?”
“We aren’t dead yet.” Eckhart pushed the regulators all the way forward. “Any sign of them yet?”
“They’re all over the place!” DeWalt flailed his hand at the screen, where the enemy corkscrewed around the Marathon in a dense, brutal swarm.
Countless plasma bursts pelted the shield, but Eckhart didn’t slow down. He wasn’t even sure he could relax his arms if he tried.
“Here they come!” Rixby chirped from her perch on top of her workstation. “They’re signaling all ships to stand down.”
“Perfect,” Eckhart pounded the engines to the breaking point.
“Who are you talking about?” Clifton asked.
“They aren’t breaking off,” Alice reported. “They’re doubling down.”
“Divert Datrium to the stabilizers.”
Alice and Rixby both stopped what they were doing to stare at him. “That will—”
Too late. Eckhart smashed the regulators hard to port, and the Marathon howled in agony as he peeled the ship in a hard 180-degree skid. The ship spun backward and he pounded the regulators to the wall again.
The engines shrieked, and Eckhart’s cheeks dragged back into his headrest as the ship erupted forward at full speed. The maneuver upended Clifton and DeWalt, but Dallas and Bing caught them.
Eckhart hurtled straight into the thickest cluster of enemy fighters and took their shots directly on the Marathon’s forward shields.
“Celdian dropping fast!” Alice called. “Break through as fast as you can.”
Eckhart didn’t unlock his jaws to tell her was already driving the ship as fast as he possibly could. The Marathon streaked into the enemy throng, and Eckhart had to practically dislocate both his shoulders, weaving in and out of the enemy ships.
He dodged one and the Celdian glanced off two others, earning more screams from Clifton and DeWalt. Eckhart heard Dallas yelling at them to be quiet, but none of this noise distracted Eckhart from what he had to do.
“Celdian down to 10%!” Alice hollered.
It didn’t matter anymore. The Marathon zoomed out the other side of the enemy grouping. It vaulted into clear, open space lit up with billions of glowing pinpricks. At the same moment, forty fighter craft materialized out of nowhere.
DeWalt shrieked again. He and Clifton huddled so low they’d practically collapsed to their knees, but the incoming ships only whizzed around the Marathon. Eckhart sprinted past them and the newcomers opened fire on the enemy.
He relaxed his grip and eased back on the engines. Only then did he realize his hands were shaking from fatigue. His heart pounded, and the sweat went cold on his neck and forehead.
Alice collapsed back in her seat, and Rixby straightened up to stare at the front screen. “We did it!” she murmured. “We’re in.”
“What... the... hell... do... you... think... you’re... doing?” DeWalt rasped. “You could have killed us all with that stunt.”
A harsh voice cut him off from Eckhart’s control panel. He pulled it toward him and gazed down at an alien face. Tentacles swirled around the creature’s mouth and a milky, sticky ooze covered its eye slits. “All clear to land, Marathon. The hostiles have been dispersed.”
“Thank you,” he replied. “We’re grateful for your help.”
The screen shut off, and Eckhart turned his attention to the chart of the planet that Rixby put up on his controls. “Where do you want to land?” Alice asked.
He pointed to a skyscraper in the thickest center of the dense urban setting. “The Forsaken Pyramid is as good a place as any.” He took the regulators and steered in that direction much more gingerly this time. He eased over the planet’s surface, checking every detail of the chart.
“What kind of a name is the Forsaken Pyramid?” Clifton asked. “It doesn’t sound like a safe place.”
“There are no safe places here,” Alice snarled through her gas mask. “No one comes to Zuic unless they’re illegal. That’s the whole point of this planet.”
“You still haven’t answered my question,” DeWalt cut in. “Why didn’t you fire on those ships? You didn’t even try to defend us. What’s the matter with you?”
Eckhart started to swivel his chair around to face the man and immediately changed his mind. “You want to learn to shut your mouth when the situation calls for it, especially where we’re going. People around here don’t take too kindly to Earthlings shooting their mouths off at the wrong time.”
DeWalt opened his mouth and then stopped himself from saying anything.
“The Aegeans have a strict no fighting policy—in the skies, at least,” Dallas explained. “You can do what you want on the ground, but the penalty for fighting in the atmosphere is death.”
“The who?” DeWalt stammered.
“The Aegeans,” Dallas told him. “They’re the ruling class on this planet. If any ships get caught fighting, the Aegeans dispatch their own peacekeepers to destroy the combatants.”
DeWalt turned around to stare at the back of Eckhart’s head. “So you knew? Is that why you didn’t fight back—to get the peacekeepers to drive those ships off?”
Eckhart allowed himself to spin his chair around, and he swung to his feet. “Like I said, you want to learn to keep your mouth shut around people who know a hell of a lot more about the situation than you do. We’re all putting our lives at risk keeping you around, and you’re liable to get us all killed if you say the wrong thing to the wrong person. Remember that. Put us down on the Pyramid, Rixby, and then meet us downstairs.”
He marched out of the cockpit and down to the cargo hold. He went to the weapons locker and started checking and loading his sidearms.
Alice, Bing, and Dallas turned up a second later. They joined him in loading their own weapons, while Clifton and DeWalt stood off to one side.
Dallas pointed his wrist at an aperture on the wall. An extendable port locked into the aperture, and the indicator lights on his prosthetic arm showed Datrium plasma pumping into his internal storage capacity chambers.
“What do you want us to do?” Clifton asked. “We don’t want to get underfoot.”
