Lerras wasn’t quite the fool that Reutan took him for. He might have been a sadist, but the Security Directorate was no place for idiots, and Lerras was gifted with both cunning and a well-developed survival instinct. It was why he had remained close to Reutan, although Reutan was a nasty piece of work, even by the low standards of the Securitats. Reutan’s survival instincts were almost as finely honed as Lerras’s own.
Before Lerras tried to get to Yallee, he took a detour to the sterilization units and pulled out a handful of respirators. He put one over his own face and tossed another to Selec, who was already on his knees. He scattered the rest in the direction of the guards who were still conscious, but his priority was to get through the door and beat that sweet-faced little Yallee into oblivion. There would be time for questions later, or maybe not.
Lerras told Selec to blast the door, and that was exactly what Selec did.
• • •
Alis had learned a lot during her brief time with Meia. Meia had already been near legendary among the handful of surviving Mechs, even before her experiences on Earth, and she had proven willing to share her knowledge and experience with the younger model.
She had also shared some of her upgrades.
There was a loud bang, and the door was blown across the coms room, demolishing the hub of screens. Selec stood framed in the empty doorway, his pulser raised, Lerras to his right. Neither of them had made any effort to protect themselves from fire from within, because Yallee had been unarmed when she entered the facility, and had been given no opportunity to seize a weapon since then.
Thus it was a surprise to Selec when he experienced a painful blow to his chest, but the surprise only lasted for the seconds that it took him to die. Lerras heard the shot and ducked out of the doorway, but not before taking a hit to his left shoulder that spun him round and sent him sprawling to the floor. He raised his pulser to fire but the coms room was dark, and he could see no signs of movement. He sent a series of random pulses into the room, causing sparks to fly from what remained of the hub, but was just a fraction too slow in reacting to the flare of light that came in response. He felt a searing pain in his right elbow, and when he looked for the source he saw a smoking stump where the rest of his arm used to be. Beyond it lay his forearm and hand, one finger still gripping the trigger of the pulser.
Lerras’s agony was so great that he didn’t even see the remaining guards fall under Alis’s withering fire, or notice that the doors to the holding cells had opened. Neither did he see Alis toss respirators to the human prisoners, battered but upright, who then made their way back to their ship while Alis restored the oxygen supply. Alarms sounded above his head, and a voice warned that all cell doors in Blocks 1 to 3 had been disarmed, but he barely registered what he was hearing. He reached for his severed arm, and with his left hand tried to work his own fingers from their grip on the pulser. He had almost freed the weapon when a shadow appeared above him, and a boot stamped painfully on his remaining fingers.
Yallee picked up his pulser and weighed it in her left hand. A hollow tube had erupted from between the second and third knuckles of her right hand. It was aimed at Lerras’s head.
“You kicked my friend unconscious,” said Alis.
“Who are you?” Lerras asked, his words muffled by the mask on his face.
“It doesn’t matter who I am. What matters is who you are, and what you’ve done. I accessed your records, Lerras. You like kicking prisoners. My friend can consider herself lucky that you didn’t kill her, because you’ve killed a lot of others in the past.”
Alis looked up at the screens on the tower. She watched the liberated inmates battling to take control of their blocks. Some of the prisoners had been hit by pulser fire from guards who, like Lerras, had had the foresight to don respirators, but the sheer weight of human numbers was already overwhelming their captors. To her right, Steven and Rizzo reappeared. They were now armed with pulse rifles. On the screens, a handful of surviving guards were falling behind to the central core down two of the connecting arteries. The third, leading from Block 1, was empty, and Alis saw that the prisoners appeared to be entirely in control of it. Steven and Rizzo took up positions at the mouth of the other two tunnels, and started firing on the retreating Securitats.
Alis returned her attention to Lerras, who now understood the nature of his opponent.
“You’re a Mech,” he said. “You’re a damned Mech.”
“And you’re nothing,” Alis replied. “When you’re gone, no one will even remember your name.”
“Do it,” said Lerras. His face was contorted in pain. “If you’re going to kill me, just get it over with.”
“I’m not going to kill you,” said Alis.
She stepped to one side so that Lerras could see the screens behind her, and the prisoners who were now streaming down the tunnels.
“They are.”
The guards in the arteries tried to hold off the prisoners while responding to the pulse fire from the core, but it was an impossible task. The tunnels were straight, and empty of any cover, and Steven and Rizzo picked the Securitats off with ease. Eventually, the guards tossed aside their weapons and raised their hands in surrender, but they were immediately lost beneath the swarm of escaping prisoners. Rizzo and Steven went back to rejoin Alis, and protect her. She might have been a Mech, and on the side of good guys, but she looked like an Illyri, and the Krasis prisoners didn’t appear to be in the mood to make distinctions. Alis, for her part, was under fire from some guards at the top of the tower who had regained consciousness, and who were now fighting for their lives. Steven turned his pulser on them and fired a series of blasts that reduced the upper reaches of the tower to twisted metal and broken glass, and put an end to the shooting.
Alis patched Steven into the coms system, and his voice sounded throughout the facility as the first prisoners poured into the core.
“My name is Brigade Pilot Steven Kerr,” he said. “We have seized Krasis on behalf of the Brigades and the Military. Would the officers in command please identify themselves?”
The rush of prisoners slowed, but Steven could see some of them staring suspiciously at Alis. He heard muttered threats, and knew that their bloodlust was up. He didn’t want to have to shoot anyone, even with only a stun blast. There were easily two hundred men before him. If they turned on their rescuers, it would be a bloodbath.
“Everybody stay where you are!”
Even without amplification the voice rang clearly around the core, honed by years of shouting at recruits on parade grounds and obstacle courses. From the crowd of prisoners emerged the leaner, yet still massive, figure of Master Sergeant Hague. He approached the tower, pausing only to glance at the wounded Lerras.
“I always knew you’d come to a bad end,” Hague told him, then continued on to where Steven and the others were waiting. He stopped before them, clicked his heels together, and smartly saluted.
“Sir!” he said, addressing Steven.
“I don’t outrank you, Sergeant,” Steven said. “I’m not an officer.”
Despite all that had happened, he was still technically a probationary pilot, with only a private’s rank. If the mission on Torma had gone according to plan, he’d have received his commission as pilot officer immediately after. But of course, Torma hadn’t gone to plan, which was how he’d ended up here, leading a raid on a prison moon. Maybe he should have been keeping a record of his flying hours, just in case. By now he’d have been a pilot officer ten times over.
Hague leaned forward and whispered confidentially.
“Well, I won’t tell anyone if you won’t,” he said.
He straightened again, and stared at a fixed point somewhere over Steven’s left shoulder.
“Orders, sir?”
Steven looked at Alis, who shrugged.
“It appears that you’re in charge,” she said.
Steven looked around him at the sea of dirty, drawn, expectant faces, so many of them still teenagers, because the Illyri had conscripted only the young and strong. Still, he was more youthful than most of them, but Alis was right: it appeared that he was in charge.
He stretched himself to his full height, ignoring the aches where he’d so recently taken a beating, and gave his first instruction.
“Secure the rest of the facility,” he said. “Then let’s find you some decent food.”