The Lazarus Particle (44 page)

Fenton was just starting to pick himself up off the deck when a familiar voice shouted for him to stay down.

“Torrey?”

“We're here, Major, we've got you. You hit?” Three quick shots rang out as Torrey inspected him for wounds. Craning his head back, Fenton saw Breed covering them in a low crouch. “I need to know if you caught any of those rounds, sir. You feel anything? Where does it hurt?”

“My hip,” he groaned, “but I think it’s just from the fall. Left side.”

Torrey probed Fenton’s hip tentatively. “How bad is it? Can you walk?”

“Think so,” he said as pain flared beneath Torrey’s touch. It wasn’t unbearable, though. The last thing he wanted was to be a burden in a full-blown, close-quarters firefight. “Yeah. Yeah, I can manage.”

“Good.” Torrey helped haul him to his feet.

“They were coming for me,” he said dazedly, steadying himself against the bulkhead.

“What?” Torrey snapped his fingers before Fenton’s face when he failed to respond. “You’re sure they were coming for you?”

Fenton looked at the dead leader. “He said ‘It’s him. Hold your fire.’ Then you shot the prick. Thanks for that, by the way. Owe you one.”

“Like hell, you do.” Pulling his sidearm, he reached for Fenton’s hand and clapped it into his palm. “Know how to use one of these?”

“Point and click?” He thumbed off the safety.

“Close enough. Now, c’mon, we need to lock you down before these assholes get too much of a foothold.”

“What about them?” he said, nodding to Banks and Hennah. As if he had to ask.

“Dead.”

“And Roon—”

“No idea. I promise you, as soon as we get you somewhere safe I will go and find her myself if I have to.”

Fenton nearly leapt out of his boots as Breed loosed another burst of fire down the corridor. “Right, right. Okay, let’s go.”

“That’s the spirit.” Clapping Fenton on the shoulder, he turned and called, “Breed! Moving out!”

“Got you covered!”

No sooner did he say so than a trio of boarders popped around the corner, spraying the corridor with fire. Torrey managed to pull Fenton into a shallow alcove just in time, even as Breed caught a ricocheting round that knocked him off his feet. Without thinking Fenton leaned out, sending several shots back the way the first had come. Torrey used the covering fire to grab the canvas loop on the back of Breed’s vest and haul him into the safety of the alcove with them. “Where’d it catch you?”

“Right leg,” Breed growled. “Below the knee.”

Torrey started to treat his partner when Fenton intervened. “I got it,” he said, stripping off his belt. He may not have been a medical doctor, but he knew enough to improvise a makeshift tourniquet. While he wrapped and notched the belt tight around Breed’s lower thigh, Torrey traded fire with the boarders.

“One down,” he said, catching one of the boarders in the throat while he tried to cover the other two. With no one to lay down fire behind them, the others proved easy pickings for Torrey and even Fenton, who emptied the remainder of his clip into the third man just to be sure. “And two more makes three.”

“Fuck yeah, Major. Nice shooting.” Breed gestured for the pistol, dropping the spent clip and snapping in another before handing it back. “We might just make a soldier out of you yet.”

“I think I’ll go ahead and leave that to the experts.”

They were a motley group by the time they finally got moving, if you could even call it that. Fenton did his best to help Breed while Torrey took point, but between his cranky hip and Breed’s wounded leg they were about the worst three-legged relay team imaginable. They needed to get to ground quickly or the next group of boarders they ran into would almost certainly be their last.

Torrey held up a hand as they came to a blind intersection. Scattered reports of gunfire chased each other up and down the corridors, making it impossible to determine which direction it was originating from. Snatching a small mirror from his breast pocket, Torrey affixed it to the end of his combat knife, using it to get a look into the intersecting corridor without exposing himself. Nothing from the right. He switched grips to check left and was just about to come to the same conclusion when a group of friendlies rounded the corner, pausing to pop off a few shots behind them before taking flight again.

Torrey quickly dismantled the mirror knife, sheathing the blade and replacing the mirror in his pocket. He nodded to Fenton and Breed, gesturing for them to ready themselves. Fenton nodded back. Breed just set his jaw, clearly ready to exact some revenge for his wounded leg.

The friendlies pounded past the intersection. Moments later, the boarders followed, stopping every few feet to aim and fire after them. “Now!” Torrey shouted, swinging into the intersection and spitting lead at the Morgenthau-Hale Marines. Fenton and Breed followed suit. There was nothing honorable or glorious about shooting their enemy in the back, though few things about war actually were, Fenton reflected as he pulled the trigger again and again. To a man, the boarders flailed and dropped.

The friendlies were an even more motley assortment. A few soldiers, an engineering officer, a flight mechanic, and a comm tech. The soldiers jogged up to Torrey and Breed while the others executed the surviving boarders and stripped them of their weapons and remaining ammo. Fenton might have found the whole thing shocking, even barbaric, if he hadn’t just seen Banks and Hennah murdered before his very eyes. He didn’t even hesitate when one of the boarders reached for the cuff of his pants. He’d just shot the man in the back, after all. Was it really so much more dishonorable to put him out of his misery, even if that meant shooting him in the face?

Fenton pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He was about to pull again when Breed snatched at his wrist. He shook his head slowly. A moment later, the boarder coughed and gagged, drowning in his own blood from an internal injury. He was dead in a matter of seconds.

“No turning back once you go down that road, sir. You’re better than that.”

Fenton nodded, not even really hearing the words.

“Alright, listen up,” Torrey barked, taking command of the situation. “All indications are the armory, engineering, and flight decks are holding out. That leaves the command module. I don’t need to tell you what happens if these motherfuckers get there in force before we do, so let’s move out, on the double!”

Before moving out, Fenton made sure to grab the dead boarder’s sidearm.

Fenton and Company arrived to find the command module already locked down. Torrey assured them this was a good thing, although not altogether convincingly, as he approached and banged upon the heavily reinforced doors.

“Identify yourselves,” came an unfamiliar voice from the panel set next to the door.

“Corporals Torrance and Breed,” he answered. “We have survivors and munitions. We’ve come to help reinforce the command module.”

Several seconds passed with no response.

“Hey!” He smacked the blast doors again. “Open these doors! We’re sitting ducks out here!”

Still no response.

Reluctantly, Torrey readied himself, gesturing for the others to do the same. Fenton and the others followed suit, fanning out to cover the whole expanse of the corridor.

The doors began to retract. Fenton flinched, waiting for that first burst of fire that never came.

“Hurry,” a voice from inside ordered as the nearly two-foot-thick doors parted just enough to allow them single-file entry.

Fenton was barely through the doors before he was wrapped in a fierce bear hug. His first thought was that he was being restrained, that after everything they had stumbled into a trap. He started to thrash, to resist, until he felt her fingers on his cheek. “Roon?!”

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” Roon whispered as the blast doors closed behind them. “I’ve been so worried.”

“How?” he wondered dumbly, gaping at her. “How did you get here?”

Roon smiled and gestured over her shoulder with a little flick of her head. “You can thank my guardian angel.”

It was only then that Fenton took note of Xenecia’s presence in the command module. She sat at one of the unmanned stations, drawing a whetstone across a nasty looking blade as long as her forearm. “What can I say?” she asked, showing her teeth in a feral smile. “For some ridiculous reason I have taken a liking to you two.”

Not knowing what else to say or do, he took Roon’s advice and simply mouthed, “Thank you.”

She nodded just so. Then she returned her attention to the blade, the stone, and the battle to come.

“What is happening out there?” Soroya asked, the concern for her crew evident in her voice. “We initiated lockdown protocols as soon as the breaches were detected. Since then we have been largely in the dark.”

Torrey shook his head. “We weren’t able to do much of a head count, ma’am, but apparently we’re hanging in there. When did the bombardment stop?”

“Twenty minutes, give or take.”

“They must think they still have a chance.”

Marshal Harm furrowed his brows. “A chance at what? You know what they’re after?”

Torrey looked to Fenton pointedly.

“Me,” Fenton said. He explained how he, Banks, and Hennah were ambushed and the latter two killed, how he’d nearly been abducted at the direction of the boarding party’s leader before Torrey and Breed came to his timely rescue. Roon remained stitched to his side all the while, squeezing harder and harder with every ugly detail he let slip forth.

Afterward, the command module was silent, thick with tension. Marshal Harm nodded slowly, digesting everything he’d just been told, then looked up. “Well it’s just a real damn shame for whatever tin pot shit out there that we happen to be pretty damn fond of Major Wilkes, isn’t it, people?”

“Fuck right, it is,” Breed was the first to say.

Perhaps most surprisingly, Xenecia was the next to speak up. “Let the fools come,” she said, smiling as she ran the flat of her thumb across her blade. It actually sang out in response, a mournful wail that sent a shiver down Fenton’s spine. “Twice they have tried to take him from me and twice they have failed. I like those odds.”

Fenton couldn’t help smiling a little. “For once, I actually do, too.”

The rest of the command module agreed. No way they were giving him up without a fight. So they passed out what little spare arms they had while Torrey briefed them on what to expect. “We’ve actually got some pretty good angles here, plus we have enough people to cover both sets of doors.” He set up sharpshooters, including Breed, at the far corners to cross-cover the entire module, then assigned teams to the blast doors on each side. Xenecia was practically salivating, standing over one of the prone soldiers who were ready to start taking angled shots into the corridor the moment any targets presented themselves on the far side.

When it finally happened, they were ready.

As soon as they began to force the port side doors open, Breed pulled the trigger and clipped the crown off the head of one of the boarders. He took aim and snapped off another round, catching the next man in the neck.

A flashbang grenade rolled through the starboard doors. One of the few unarmed personnel on the deck dove out, snatched the grenade, and winged it back just as the boarders started to swarm in. The grenade exploded just in front of the boarders, staggering many of them in spite of their protective gear. At Torrey’s signal, he, Fenton, and Xenecia popped up, peppering the incapacitated incoming force from head to toe until all their clips ran dry.

Across the module, the port-side breaching party was having more success. A handful of personnel were already down before her as Soroya staggered back, squeezing off round after round until her sidearm ran dry. When at last her pistol failed to respond, she bared her teeth and reached for her blade a second too late.

Or rather, a second too late if Xenecia had not leapt shrieking to her sister’s aid. Her razor-honed edge took the boarder’s head clean off with a single swing. A fountain of blood geysered up as what was left of the body fell awkwardly to its knees, then flat forward. Xenecia landed in a three-point crouch, immediately whirling low and slashing across the legs of the men who followed. As the last of them fell, she ended each of them with a violent, plunging strike to the gut.
 

By the time the smoke cleared, the air was thick—even
slick
—with the scent of spilled blood and viscera.

Behind them, a tortured wail shook the command module as they took stock of casualties. Torrey was kneeling before Breed, cradling his partner’s head in his hands. A single weeping crimson dot below Breed’s left eye told all the story anyone needed to know. “No, no, no, no, no,” Torrey intoned again and again, as if it might make some difference. It didn’t.

Breed was gone.

… And then, just as quickly as the battle ended, the bombardment resumed anew.

“Damnit!” Harm voiced as that first detonation rocked the deck, nearly throwing him off his feet. “We can’t take much more of this!”

Soroya sneered. “They must know their boarding teams have been neutralized.”

“Ma’am,” one of the helmsman said as he slid back behind his console, “the Tyroshi fleet is advancing!”

“They are looking to finish us,” she said flatly. “They cannot have Major Wilkes or the nanites, so no one will.”

“No,” Fenton said. He finally knew what he had to do. He understood why he had been spared. He had all the power, so much more than they knew. “Which one? Which one can’t we hold out against?”

No hesitation. “Tyroshi,” Harm said. “Those plasma cutters will slice us to ribbons if they get close enough. Now, it’s your turn: What the hell are you planning?”

“Whatever it takes to save us.” He looked to Xenecia. “I need an escort to the flight deck.”

She smiled and pumped a fresh round into her carbine. “Oh, how the wyrm has turned.”

“Please don’t go,” Roon begged, clinging to him. “Please. Not now, not after so much.”

“I have to. If I don’t, we all die and none of this matters for anything. It has to, though. It has to matter for something.”

She closed her eyes tight, fighting back tears and nodding solemnly. “Okay. I understand. I love you, Fenton.”