Wings of Pegasus Page 25

  Not until he’d bought enough time for Andi to escape. His comrade and captain was his friend too, and he knew she thought of him as a brother. But he’d never told her of his own thoughts, of the feelings he’d kept hidden for so long.

  Gregor loved Andi, like he’d never loved anyone. He knew as he knelt in that corridor that he could never be with her, that she would never even know what he’d been too timid to tell her. Gregor was a warrior, a monster, a fighter, who’d faced all kinds of fearsome enemies in battle without the slightest hesitation. But he’d been too afraid to tell Andi the truth, to profess his love to her.

  Now he was in his last fight. He knew that. And never in his life had he battled for something more important to him. He had to hold the corridor, for just a bit longer. He couldn’t let the enemy get past, to reach the others before they got through the airlock.

  He heard a loud clang, the autocannon dropping to the floor as his arms finally gave out, and his strength waned. He looked down the corridor, and his face twisted into a fearsome growl. He reached to his side, trying to ignore the pain of his wounds, and he pulled his pistol and his blade from his belt.

  He gritted his teeth, grinding them so powerfully, it felt as though he’d crush them to powder, and he forced himself back up to his feet.

  The pain was everywhere, agony, intense, relentless. But his mind was focused on one thing, on Andi Lafarge. On his shipmates carrying her to safety. He pushed forward, stumbling into the enemy fire, even as another round took him in the side.

  He could see the enemy, watch the surprised looks on their faces. The fire slackened for a few seconds, as the Foudre Rouge looked on in stunned shock. Gregor continued down the corridor, closing on the Union soldiers. He extended his arm and fired his pistol, but the shot went well wide of any targets.

  The enemy recovered from their shock, and they opened fire again. Round after round slammed into Gregor’s body, but still, he pushed forward. He was on his knees by then, crawling, pulling himself toward the enemy with inhuman endurance.

  The corridor was soaked with his blood, and he dropped his pistol and his knife. But still, he pressed on, until another wave of shots finally took him down. He lay on the floor, his strength gone, the last of his lifeblood draining away, and yet, there was one last bit of strength he could expend for Andi.

  He heard the Foudre Rouge coming forward, and he could see his knife on the ground about ten centimeters away. He waited, spitting gouts of blood from his mouth with one coughing spasm after another.

  But he waited.

  Then, he saw the shadow, one of the enemy standing just in front of him.

  He reached down inside him, gathered all that remained of his strength, of his life. He lunged forward, his hand stretching out, grabbing the knife, even as the enemy reacted to his move.

  He could hear the fire, feel the rounds ripping into him, but still he lunged forward one last time, and he screamed, “Andi,” as he plunged his blade upward, into the thigh of one of the Foudre Rouge.

  Then he fell to the ground and lay motionless, his body riddled with bullets.

  Gregor, the giant of Pegasus, and of Nightrunner before, Andi Lafarge’s trusted friend, and the scourge of a dozen District taverns, was dead.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Unidentified Imperial Ruin

  Somewhere Under the Endless Sea

  Planet Aquellus, Olystra III

  Year 302 AC

  “She’s all set. Now get in your suit, too, and take her out.” Vig Merrick stood next to Andi’s still motionless form, but he was looking back the way they had come. The sounds of fighting had died down, and now he could hear someone approaching. He gripped his rifle and he repeated, “Get your damned suit on, and get Andi out of here!”

  “Vig…he’s not coming. He’s gone.” The pain in Anna’s words cut like the sharpest blade. Vig knew she was right, but he couldn’t accept that. How could they leave Gregor behind?

  Anna was climbing in her suit. “I can’t handle her alone. You have to come. Gregor sacrificed himself to save us…to save Andi. Don’t make his death meaningless.”

  Vig hesitated just a few seconds more, but the sounds coming from down the corridor were clearly from more than one set of boots. It was difficult to accept the loss of his shipmate—Pegasus’s second fatality on the mission—especially without seeing Gregor’s body for himself. But he knew it was true.

  And he knew Anna was right. Any more of them who died only took away from what he’d done, lessened the impact of his final act.

  He reached out and grabbed the suit, climbing into the cumbersome thing. Anna was already zipped up, and a few seconds later, he was too. There was fire coming down the corridor, even as they dragged Andi into the airlock, and he slammed his gloved hand against the controls, bringing down the armored door. He could see the water bubbling all around, filling up the small room, and he could feel his suit pressed against him, its billowy nature disappearing as the pressure in the airlock equalized with that outside. A few seconds later, the doors opened, and he could see the ocean beyond, and the tunnel leading back to Pegasus.

  And three Foudre Rouge standing less than ten meters away, prone and firing out at something.

  At Pegasus!

  He felt a wave of fury take him, an uncontrollable tsunami of hatred. In that moment, he despised the Union soldiers with a passion he knew he’d never be able to describe to anyone. He didn’t care if he escaped or if he died in those few seconds…as long as he got to kill his enemy.

  He reached around for the underwater assault rifle, bringing it to bear and opening fire as he ran forward. He was screaming, a great, primal howl that only he could hear in the confines of the suit, and he felt the pure satisfaction of a predator as one of the Foudre Rouge lurched back and then floated motionless in front of him.

  His shot had breached the soldier’s suit, and the pressure had crushed the man in an instant. Vig was elated by the kill, but his mind was already on the Foudre Rouge just to the right of his first victim.

  He fired again and again, and the second trooper suffered a fate much like the first. But the third was bringing his weapon around just as Vig reached him. Their bodies slammed into each other, and they tumbled out from the tunnel onto the rocky ledge.

  Vig let the rifle go, and he grabbed the heavy knife strapped to his suit. It was cumbersome in the heavy gloves, and he almost dropped it. But somehow, he kept his grip. He struggled to bring it around, to slice into his enemy’s suit, even as the Foudre Rouge tried desperately to bring his rifle to a firing position.

  The two battled for seconds, for a minute. Then two.

  Vig could see Anna moving behind, somehow pulling Andi with her as she did. The Foudre Rouge would kill them both if he lost the fight. That realization gave him renewed strength, and he brought the blade closer to his enemy, the point pressed up against the soldier’s suit. He pushed, as hard as he could, but the suit’s material was thick and tough, and it resisted.

  He bit his lip as he struggled to put every bit of his strength into the effort, but to no avail. He couldn’t push it through. His enemy was bringing his rifle around, getting the barrel closer. Vig had one final chance, one last grasp for victory.

  He pulled the blade across his enemy’s suit as quickly as he could, slicing rather than trying to drive the point in. He saw the knife moving along, ineffectually…and then it struck one of the seams along the top of the right leg. He wasn’t sure at first that it had cut through, but then he saw his enemy convulse and drop his rifle, as the water forced its way into the tiny gash Vig had cut into his suit. The pressure rushed in, expanding the hole and finishing the job.

  The Foudre Rouge floated away, motionless.

  Vig turned, gasping for oxygen, even as he clawed his way toward Pegasus. Anna and Andi were already in, and the attackers were all down. There were more coming, but he knew it would take them some time to get into their suits and come through the airlock. He wasn�
�t sure how long he had, but he suspected it wasn’t long.

  He pushed himself, marshaling his strength, struggling toward Pegasus’s airlock…toward escape.

  Escape at least, from the sea, from the doomed planet…and to the deadly fight that awaited them in space.

  * * *

  “Faster! We’ve got to get that ship!” Caron was losing control, and it showed. Most of the Foudre Rouge were down, including the lieutenant, killed in the fight with that gargantuan monster in the corridor. He’d watched with horror and frustration as the giant of a man had simply refused to die. He’d held them back, allowed his comrades to make good their escape.

  Cost Caron and his people time they didn’t have.

  And if Caron and his survivors couldn’t get out there in time to take that ship, he’d killed them all.

  He climbed into the suit, as quickly as he could, checking the countdown timer. Twenty-four minutes. He turned and looked out at his people. There were six of them left, and four were suited up and ready to go. He waved his arm for them to follow him, and he stumbled into the airlock. He turned and fumbled clumsily at the controls, finally bringing down the door…just as the room shook hard.

  He rushed to the other end, pressing his mask up against the tiny window on the airlock door. The outside was a swirling mass of bubbling water and roiling steam. He tried to fight off the realization, but it was stark and cold and inarguable.

  The enemy ship had taken off. They were gone.

  His people were trapped.

  He turned, pressing the controls again, rushing back inside and clawing at his suit, pulling it off as quickly as he could.

  “We’re trapped here. We’ve got to get to the bomb, disarm it before…”

  “It can’t be disarmed, Commander. It will detonate if any attempt is made. Those were your orders.”

  “I know that, you damned fool, but it’s our only chance.” His voice was shrill, his panic taking control, turning him into a hysterical wreck.

  He ran down the hallway, shrieking wildly as he surrendered his mind to madness.

  * * *

  Andi looked up, still for just a few seconds before she leapt off the cot. She turned and stumbled through the doorway from the tiny infirmary, and out onto the lower deck, before the realization took hold. Pegasus was moving, shaking all around. It wasn’t the strange rolling sensation of maneuver in the water.

  We’re out of the sea. In the atmosphere.

  “Andi…”

  “Doc, what the hell is…” She stopped suddenly. She remembered. Enemy troops, fire. She reached down, feeling a bandage where she remembered pain.

  “I got you patched up, but you’re going to rip it all open if you…”

  “Forget that now, Doc…I have to get to the bridge.” She staggered across the deck, grabbing the ladder and hauling herself up painfully, amid a series of deep grunts. She pulled herself up just outside the bridge, and then she stepped through the access door.

  “Andi!” It was Vig, in her chair.

  Piloting the ship. The only problem was, Vig wasn’t a pilot.

  “What the hell…how?”

  “I’ve watched you before, Andi. I figured I could manage. And there wasn’t much choice. We need Barret on the guns.”

  “He’s a natural, Andi…he got us this far.” Pegasus’s gunner looked across the bridge.

  Vig slid out of the chair, making way for Andi. She slipped into her place, and she reached out, grabbing the controls, as Vig moved over to the third station.

  “Okay, we’re moving into the upper atmosphere.” Andi turned toward Barret. “How did you guys do on the repairs?” She could see that the scanners were operational, but she hadn’t put them through their paces yet. “I want those guns ready, Barret. We don’t know where that enemy ship is, but if it’s anywhere close, we’re going to have to fight our way out.”

  “All ready, Andi. The scanners are close to one hundred percent, and we’ve got full power to the guns.”

  “Good.” She angled the thrust vector, adjusting the course slightly. She turned toward Barret, but before she could speak, the scanners went crazy. A few seconds later, Pegasus was hit by…something. The ship careened out of control, Andi leaning forward, her hands gripped tightly on the controls. For an instant, she thought they’d been attacked, that the enemy ship had somehow snuck up on them. But then, she realized.

  The explosive…

  She pulled the throttle back, steepening the angle as she fought to regain some kind of control. The energy levels on her scanners were beyond categorization. Beyond imagination. Every monitor was maxed out.

  The temperature outside was rising dramatically, and Pegasus was engulfed in massive clouds of steam, as trillions of gallons of seawater vaporized almost instantly. It wasn’t the bomb the Union forces had planted, of course. It was the antimatter.

  Those tanks had contained an unknown quantity of the almost priceless fuel…and in a fraction of a second, it had all annihilated.

  She stared down at her screen, and then she looked up at the main display. Pegasus rocked hard despite her best efforts to control the ascent, but she managed to keep the ship pushing toward orbit. The atmospheric pressure outside the hull was twice what it should be, and she rechecked her altitude readings.

  Then she realized the immensity of the explosion, the almost incalculable force that had been released. The imperial facility was gone, she knew, reduced to little but pure energy and hard radiation, as was much of the planet’s surface for a thousand kilometers in every direction. And the wave driving Pegasus, almost ripping her ship from her control, was a vast section of the planet’s atmosphere being torn away, blasted out into space.

  She slowly regained control as Pegasus moved around toward the other side of the planet, away from the worst effects of the explosion. She adjusted her course and steepened the ascent angle again, hoping to reach orbit before she came back around into the affected zone.

  The wave of tension and fear that had gripped her receded, just a bit, as the forces battering Pegasus subsided slightly. The Union ship still lay ahead, or at least a desperate race to escape from its grasp, but Andi had learned to appreciate every step toward success. Toward survival.

  “Is everybody okay?” Barret and Vig both nodded. “We’re ready, Andi.” There was a somberness in Vig’s tone, one that seemed out of place for the normally cocky and aggressive youngest crew member of her crew.

  “How about down below? All good?” She was speaking into the comm unit.

  “We’re okay, Andi.” Anna replied, and the sadness in her voice was unmistakable.

  “Okay,” Andi said, both to her companions on the bridge, and into the comm, “let’s stay focused. As soon as we get a read on the Union ship, we can decide what to do. Lex, I want you in engineering. You know what to do down there. Barret…” She turned toward the gunner. “…I want you working on targeting the instant we get a look at that ship.”

  “I’m on it, Andi.”

  She leaned toward the comm. “Gregor, I need you on the patching gun. We don’t know how battered the hull is, and we…” She could feel Barret’s and Vig’s eyes burning into her, and the silence from the others was almost deafening. “What?” She looked toward Barret and Vig, but the two said nothing. Then she heard something on the comm, soft, distant sobs. Anna.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “Andi…” Vig spoke first. He stood up, walked the meter and a half to Andi’s chair. “It’s Gregor…he didn’t make it.”

  The words hit Andi like an avalanche. She remembered going down in the corridor, pain from the wound, and then her head hitting hard. Then darkness. Gregor had been wounded…but still on his feet, driven on by his incredible constitution.

  You never even thought to check if everyone was back. You just assumed…

  Guilt gripped her hard, and grief, and she could feel tears welling up in her eyes, streaming down her cheeks. “Gregor?” She struggled to
hold back the emotion, but it broke free of her control. Her face was a mask of tears, and images of Pegasus’s giant, of her friend as well as her shipmate, floated in her mind. She couldn’t even count how many times Gregor had saved her life, how many times he’d stood by her, resolute, unbreakable…and she had left him behind.

  “How?” She barely managed to croak out the word.

  “In the battle at the intersection. He saved us all, Andi. None of us would have made it without him.”

  Andi sat still, brokenhearted, inconsolable as the tears poured off her cheeks. She was drifting, lost, her concentration broken.

  And then she heard Barret’s voice.

  “Andi…we’ve got the Union ship on the scans. She’s in orbit, just coming around into our field.”

  The words grabbed her, pulling her back. The meaning was only too clear, though she struggled with it for a few seconds before understanding solidified. The enemy ship was close, far too close. Any chance of running was gone.

  If Pegasus was to survive, if the rest of her people were going to make it out of the cursed system, they would have to fight their way out.

  She struggled to drive away the grief. That had seemed impossible just seconds before, but now something new rose up inside her, something as strong as her sadness and guilt. Stronger.

  Rage.

  Fiery hot anger. An unquenchable thirst for vengeance. Andi wanted her friends back, she wanted to undo so what had happened. But all of that was impossible.

  All that remained was to make the enemy pay. The Foudre Rouge and Sector Nine agents she’d left behind were already dead, far too quickly and mercifully in her estimation, but at least they were dead. The only Union personnel remaining in the system were in that ship.

  She stared at the screen, her eyes frozen manifestations of death. The white hot fury slipped away, replaced by something far darker and more terrible. A frozen void, unstoppable, utterly without fear. She was going to kill everyone on that Union ship, whatever it took, whatever it cost…and in that moment, she realized that even if running had been an option, she would have stayed.