The workout and the meal left me feeling pleasantly sated, but with almost two hours to go until landing, I knew it wouldn’t last. Ying and Aoife had brought Cira up to the mess hall. Cira’s leg was healing, but she wouldn’t be storming the command center with us, something she deeply resented.
I shot Ying a sympathetic look then beat a hasty retreat. Her narrowed eyes promised revenge, but there was no way I was getting in the middle of an argument between her and her bodyguard.
Even I wasn’t that stupid.
I headed to the flight deck alone. Alex had disappeared, and I missed his comforting presence. In the short time I’d known him, I’d gotten used to having him around.
People tended to float in and out of my life without leaving much of an impression, but I would miss Alex when he was gone. When all of this was over, I would pester Bianca to give him my contact info, to see if he was interested in more. I would open myself up to an older sister inquisition, but it would be worth it.
I was daydreaming of what a date with Alex might look like when Chaos chimed an alarm. A drone had just appeared at the edge of sensor range, but it was on an intercept course. Chaos was already correcting to avoid contact, so I watched to see if the drone would also alter course.
It did.
Damn.
I clipped in, then hit the intercom. “Prepare for potential evasive action. We’ve got a drone on our ass.”
There were two options at this point: attempt to run and hide or blow it out of the sky before it got close. Both had drawbacks. Downing the drone would let everyone know that we’d survived the landing and they had enemies on the ground. But Chaos was stealthed, which meant the drone was tracking us by some external system. They already knew we were here.
Alex entered the flight deck and slid into the second console as if he belonged there. My heart twisted. It was exactly what I had envisioned when I’d left that console in Chaos’s design.
“They’re tracking us somehow,” I said, getting him up to speed. “We altered course and so did they. We need to down it before it gets close enough for a visual.”
“I’m on it.” His hands flew over the console, targeting the drone and making minute corrections to the generated coordinates. “Ready to fire on your mark.”
“Fire.”
Chaos trembled as the large blast cannon engaged. That would light us up on a bunch of ground sensors, so I edged us a little higher and faster. A second later, the drone fell off the sensor grid.
“Direct hit,” Alex confirmed.
Now it was a race to see if I could get clear of the area before they scrambled a squadron of fighters after us. Chaos could take on a couple of small fighters, but I’d still rather avoid it if I could. And more than one or two would prove dicey.
“How are they tracking us?” Alex asked.
“I don’t know. The ship is stealthed and only the passive scans are up. Chaos caught the drone because it was transmitting. We should be invisible.”
“Can your com be tracked?”
“No. It has a tracker, but I disabled it before I left. Can yours or Aoife’s?” He shook his head, so I hit the intercom button. “Ying, Cira, if either of your coms have trackers in them, disable them now. We’re being tracked externally.”
I heard cursing from down the hall. Ying poked her head in the flight deck. “Sorry, Cat. I didn’t even think about it.” Her expression tightened. “The tracker is tied directly to House Yamado, encrypted with our strongest encryption. It should be untraceable by anyone other than my family or our director of security. Someone must be looking for me, and now they know I’m on-planet.”
“Any chance your House would’ve sent a friendly drone after you?”
Her mouth tightened. “Not without trying to contact me first.”
So if it was Ying’s com the attackers were tracking, then they had someone inside House Yamado. My thoughts returned to the looped surveillance video we’d gotten from the Yamado quarter when Ferdinand had disappeared. Had House Yamado not taken care of the traitor then? Or was something else on the ship leaking our location? Neither option was ideal.
“Do you have anything else that can be tracked?”
“No. My backup coms are powered down.”
The speed boost had shaved half an hour off our flight time, but we still had eighty minutes left if we didn’t run into anything else. That was a big if.
I stayed clipped in and kept an eye on the sensors, watching for the tiniest blip, but despite my hypervigilance, nothing else appeared on the scan. That made me jumpier than if a squadron had attacked.
Someone knew Ying was on-planet. And based on the drone, that person wasn’t friendly. All High House members were briefed on the location of the backup command center. If the traitor was high enough in House Yamado’s security division, then they likely had been given the information, too, and it would be obvious where we were heading.
Twenty minutes out, I dropped our speed and altitude. We’d headed east, so the local time was well into evening, but it wasn’t quite dark enough yet to provide complete visual cover.
Unlike the main command center, the backup location didn’t look like a military installation at all. It was hidden underground in the middle of what had once been an ancient, sprawling city. I’d visited a few times. The buildings were long gone, mostly reduced to rubble, but a few stone and metal skeletons remained, hinting at walls.
Because the rubble made it difficult to land and no one wanted to draw attention to the location, the nearest landing point was two and a half kilometers from the base. It was also under surveillance by the command center itself, as was everything close, so we would need to find another spot.
I pulled up the satellite image of the site. The base itself was in a crumbled stone oval that had once been the heart of the city. To the west, a river snaked through the city’s ruins. With no remaining bridges, crossing would be tricky.
The main landing point was south, so we needed to stay north or east. I found a small clearing to the east that would work, but it was nearly five kilometers out.
I kept searching.
There was another option to the northeast, just a kilometer and a half from the base. The open area was small, just big enough for Chaos. I couldn’t tell how uneven it was from the satellite view, but I didn’t notice any large shadows that would indicate big piles of rubble. The site was closer than the main landing site, which meant someone must have decided that it wasn’t acceptable for general-purpose ships.
If Chaos could land there, then it would save us a lot of time on the ground. But it was close to the main base, almost dangerously so, and it might be under surveillance.
Decisions, decisions.
I turned to Alex. “We have two options. The first is a location five kilometers out that probably won’t be under surveillance. The second is one point five kilometers out, but it might be a honeypot, designed to lure in the unwary. Which do you choose?”
“How is the terrain?”
“Old city rubble. Rocky, uneven, and overgrown, but relatively flat.”
Alex leaned back and stared at the ceiling. “What kind of defenses do they have?”
“Automated turrets and drones. My com has a beacon that will get us through, unless the rebels have taken the base and revoked my clearance, but it will also broadcast our location, so it’s a trade-off. Normally, there is a platoon assigned, but once again, it depends on whether the rebels found the base.”
“Wouldn’t someone have already brought the gates back up if the RCDF still held the base?”
“Not necessarily. Without the proper authorization, they wouldn’t be able to override the main base.”
“Do you have the authorization?”
“I have Ferdinand’s codes, yes. I wouldn’t have come to Earth if I didn’t think there was a good chance I could fix the gates.”
Alex turned his head toward me. His posture remained relaxed, but his eyes were sharp. “I’m just thinking through the possibilities.”
He went back to staring at the ceiling.
I altered course for the closer landing point. If we came in very low and very slow, we might avoid detection. Most sensors were pointed upward, looking for threats from high and fast. We’d come in just over the treetops, set down in that tiny clearing, and run like hell for the base.
I was in the middle of mentally running worst-case scenarios when Alex’s voice pulled me from my thoughts. “If it were up to me, I’d pick the closer location.”
“I agree. I already changed our course, but I would’ve let you persuade me the other way if you felt strongly.”
He flashed me a grin. “I almost wish I’d picked the other option because I can be very persuasive.”
I didn’t doubt it for a second.
He sobered. “We should be ready to go when we hit dirt. We need to strike quickly and quietly.”
“No combat armor?”
He shook his head. “Not for this, I don’t think. The darkness will help cover us, and we need to move lightly. But we’ll take all of the weapons and explosives we can each comfortably carry.” He stood. “I’m going to go get the others ready. Call me if we run into trouble, otherwise, I’ll meet you in the cargo bay.”
I nodded my agreement and turned back to my console. I had to get us on the ground in one piece.
OUR APPROACH AND LANDING HAD BEEN EERILY UNEVENTFUL. The backup command center hadn’t tried to raise me on coms, but that could be because they hadn’t detected us. Or they had, but they were staying quiet to prevent the Syndicate ships from finding them. Or it was the Syndicate troops, and they were waiting for us to walk into a trap. It was impossible to tell.
I again wished I could get my siblings’ advice. Their love may have felt smothering at times, but it had also been a source of security and comfort. Now that I had to make all of the decisions—and live with all of the consequences—I was afraid I was going to screw it up.
Doubts tried to rise, but I ruthlessly suppressed them. No. I might not be as good as my older brothers and sisters, but I was still a von Hasenberg. I was smart and capable and strong as hell. I could do this.
Mini pep talk over, I activated Chaos’s ground defense. A ship using a ground defense system usually projected a visible red ring to indicate the area under protection. Since I didn’t want to give away our position with a bright red light, I set it to dark mode, which didn’t emit any light. If someone wandered into the protected zone, they wouldn’t know until they got the audible warning.
If they ignored the warning, Chaos would fire on them.
In the cargo bay, Alex, Aoife, and Ying wore lightweight ballistic armor and bristled with weapons. Cira hobbled around with a makeshift crutch, checking Ying’s gear and admonishing her to be careful.
I quickly strapped on my own armor, a blaster, a stun pistol, and a combat knife. I slung a blast rifle strap across my body so the rifle hung at my left side. I wore my shielding cuff, now recharged, but I would keep it inactive until I needed it. It was the latest von Hasenberg model that recharged faster and lasted longer, but I had a feeling I’d need every ounce of power before we were done.
“Do you know the entrances and do you have a beacon to get past the defenses?” I asked Ying. When she nodded, I continued, “What about the House Yamado override codes?”
She grimaced. “No.”
I looked at her for a long moment. “Can I trust you with Ferdinand’s code?” Ying was my best friend, but she was also the daughter of a rival House. I completely trusted her to look out for me, but my family was more of a gray area.
She tilted her head while she considered it. “Yes, but have him change it once everything is back to normal.” She grinned. “I don’t need the temptation.”
I drew her aside and quietly repeated the sixteen-digit alphanumeric code until she had committed it to memory. It took a surprisingly short amount of time, but Ying had always had excellent recall.
When we joined the others, I said, “We should split up and hit two different entrances. If we both get in, then we’ll meet in the control room. If not, whoever makes it should bring the gates up.”
“I’ll go with Ying,” Aoife said. “We’ll take whichever entrance you think will be more lightly guarded.”
“North,” Ying and I said at the same time. The northern entrance was in a crumbling, leaking tunnel. It was used more as an emergency exit than a true entrance, but it had a chip reader on the outside to allow entry.
I handed everyone, including Cira, a beacon for the ship’s ground defense and also a tiny earpiece and mic set to the same encrypted channel. Someone at the base might realize we were transmitting, but they shouldn’t be able to eavesdrop on what was said.
“Alex and I will take the west entrance. It’s a bit farther than the east entrance, but if they caught our landing, they might not expect it. Speed and stealth are paramount. And don’t forget, this base could be held by loyal RCDF forces. Try not to kill anyone until we figure out who’s in charge.”
Everyone nodded.
“Chaos, make Cira Zapata a tactical officer,” I requested. A chime indicated success. “Cira, you have access to the ship’s weapons. Don’t leave without a beacon. And keep my ship in one piece.”
“I’ll do my best.” She slanted a sharp glance at Aoife. “Keep Lady Ying safe.”
Aoife inclined her head. “Will do.”
I looked at the outside temperature and added a hooded cloak over my armor. The dark color would blend into the night and the temperature regulator would provide heat. The others followed suit and then we left the safety of Chaos for the unknown.
I could see perfectly well in the dark, but I wore my smart glasses anyway. Not wearing them would’ve been odd, and I’d spent a lot of time and effort avoiding anything that made me seem odd. The display also showed me the best route to the western entrance, so they were useful for more than night vision.
The tiny clearing where I’d landed Chaos was surprisingly flat and level. The rest of our route was not. We split from Aoife and Ying and swept westward. Piles of stones and fragile, rusted metal spikes slowed our progress. Everything was overgrown with plants that had gone dormant for the winter, leaving bare branches and vines to snag our clothes.
A north wind teased the edge of my cloak and whistled through the rubble, making it impossible to hear if anyone followed us. An occasional low stone wall still stood, millennia later. Whoever had built this city had built it to endure.
Beside me, Alex froze in place. I did the same, scanning with my eyes to find what had caught his attention.
A tiny red light blinked on top of the next pile of rubble. “Turret,” I murmured. Since it wasn’t shooting at us, my security beacon appeared to be working. But we needed to move before that was no longer the case.
Ying’s voice whispered across the com. “We’re at the door. Entering.”
We were still at least two minutes from our door, so we needed to pick up the pace. I wound through the rubble, picking the easiest path I could find and jogging when the ground was level enough to allow it without risking my ankles.
We came to a relatively flat piece of ground, overgrown but not filled with the remnants of old buildings. Ahead, a large pile of stone climbed higher than the surrounding rubble. Here and there, sections of stone walls with arched tops still stood, hinting at the architecture of the massive original structure.
The command center was located underground, hidden by all of the rubble.
I swept wide of the entrance, clearing an arc around it, but no one waited for us. If this was going to be an ambush, it would be inside. We hadn’t heard anything from Ying and Aoife, but while their door was closer, they had a longer trek through the tunnels before they hit the main part of the base.
The door was shielded on three sides by strategically placed stone piles. I knew that it opened to a staircase that led down to the underground level. I paused in front of the chip reader disguised as a piece of rusting metal.
Alex, who had been trailing me, stepped up beside me. “Think it’s a trap?”
My gut instincts were all over the place, but they all indicated something was weird. “Yes.”
He looked at me. “I assume we’re going in anyway?”
I grinned. “Of course. I didn’t haul these guns all the way over here to turn back now.” I sobered. “And Ying and Aoife are already inside.”
“Aoife will keep her safe.”
I swiped my chip over the reader. If the people inside didn’t already know we were here, they did now. I pulled the heavy steel door open.
Alex keyed his mic. “Entering.”
The lights in the stairwell were on, illuminating grated stairs leading down and nothing else. I took point since I’d been here before. I drew a stun pistol and eased inside, Alex at my back.
Another locked door waited at the bottom of the steps. I swiped my arm over the chip reader and it unlocked. I wondered how long it would take them to revoke my access. It would require someone high up in either the Consortium or the RCDF.
During the construction of the command center, the crews had found existing tunnels, so they’d incorporated them into the design. Then the base had been expanded several times. Now, it was a maze of hallways, small rooms, and dead ends that made for excellent cover, but the same was true for anyone defending it. We could walk past a squad and never know it because it was impossible to clear every room in the amount of time we had.
The walls were a hodgepodge of ancient stone and modern plastech. I’d brought a tiny camera on a flexible stem that could be bent around corners. The camera streamed video to my smart glasses. I eased it around the first corner, and the video showed an empty hallway.
We weren’t exactly in the heart of the base, but I’d expected to encounter a few soldiers or base technicians even out here. Where was everyone?
I keyed the mic. We’d agreed to minimize communication, but I needed to know if the others were seeing the same thing. “Is your side empty?”
“So far,” Aoife replied, her voice barely a whisper.
“Be prepared for heavy resistance at the control room,” I warned.
“We are.”
I led Alex through the maze of hallways, taking a more indirect route toward the control room. If whoever was in charge planned to ambush us, I wasn’t going to make it too easy for them.
“We’re approaching the eastern door,” Ying said. She, too, had taken a circuitous route.
“We’ll be at the south door in sixty seconds.”
“See you inside.”
I mentally crossed my fingers and prayed for good luck.
The control room was the center of the base, both literally and figuratively. It could be accessed from any side, but each of the entrances consisted of two sets of locked doors, like an airlock. The inner door would not open until the outer door was closed and locked. It was the place we were most likely to be trapped, but we’d brought some surprises for anyone who tried.
I rounded the final corner, Alex on my heels. We had yet to see a single person. Ahead, the first set of double doors waited. I swiped my arm over the chip reader and held my breath.
The doors unlocked and I pulled the right one open, but didn’t enter the small, bare chamber beyond. On the far side of the room, a smooth set of heavy sliding doors was set into a reinforced frame. There would be no prying them open and they didn’t have any vulnerable hinges. We’d have to go straight through the thick metal with either a plasma cutter or explosives if they didn’t open. A chip reader and an overhead light panel were the only other things visible.
This was definitely, definitely a trap. The question was, how bad?
I held the door open with my foot, then transferred my stun pistol to my weaker right hand and drew my blast pistol. I thought about using my rifle, but on the very slim chance that loyal troops were holding command, I needed to be able to stun rather than kill.
Static blasted through my earpiece, but I couldn’t catch a single word. The sound cut off abruptly and I tried not to think about what that meant.
“Ready?” I asked Alex.
He nodded, his expression grim. “I will enter first. Find cover fast, then assess the situation. Watch out for Ying and Aoife because they may not be where you expect them, especially Aoife.” He met my eyes for a long second. “If anything happens, I will come for you,” he vowed.
“I’m not going down without a fight, and I have a shielding cuff. You should let me go first.”
He shook his head. “If we provide separate targets, your cuff might be enough to get you to cover. In that case, I’m counting on you to rescue me.”
“I will.” I took a deep breath. “Let’s do this.” I activated my shielding cuff and it vibrated to indicate success. It was fully charged again, so it would protect me from up to eight shots, depending on the range.
Alex stepped through the doorway, and I followed. The room was small, a square roughly three meters per side. The door closed behind us and the bolt slammed home. Alex moved to the left and I swiped an arm over the chip reader on the right wall.
It took a lifetime—in reality, probably half a second—before the door hissed open. I had expected any number of things, but what I hadn’t expected was to be met with a wall of stun rounds from a line of a dozen soldiers wearing RCDF uniforms.
My cuff vibrated constantly, so I couldn’t count the number of shots it deflected, but I managed to take down two soldiers with stun rounds before the shield failed and the first round hit. My armor wasn’t designed to deflect stun rounds and lightning arced through my veins.
Fiery pain blossomed bright, but thanks to my unusual physiology, I didn’t immediately go down. I bit back the scream that wanted to escape and jerked my arm up, not quite in control. I got off two more shots: one hit, one miss.
Beside me, Alex staggered and dropped to his knees. The soldiers had concentrated their fire on him, and without a shield, he must’ve taken at least a half dozen rounds. The fact that he was still in control enough to kneel was a testament to his strength.
I dove toward the line of soldiers, a last-ditch attempt to break their line.
It didn’t work.
I got a dozen stun rounds for my trouble and the scream I’d been holding back broke free in a grating cry. I slumped to the ground, down, but not out. My muscles were currently outside my control, but I recovered far faster than the soldiers would expect.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get to find out.
Two soldiers pinned my shoulders and legs, while a third cuffed my hands behind my back. She couldn’t figure out how to remove my shielding cuff, so she added the handcuff below it, tight enough that it dug into my wrist bone. I heard Alex grunt and assumed he, too, was being cuffed, but I couldn’t quite get my neck to work long enough to check.
Someone patted me down and removed all of my weapons, my com, and my cloak. They didn’t take my smart glasses, possibly because they were styled to look like lightweight vision correction glasses. “Lockdown lima one,” I whispered slowly, forcing the words out one at a time. The code wiped away all of my personal data and locked the com in a mode that made it appear dead. The power button wouldn’t do anything.
It also turned the com into a microphone that would broadcast audio directly to my glasses as long as we were in range or on the same network, including Earth’s satellite array. I could only hope they took it with them when they met up with whoever was in charge.
I used the glasses’ eye tracking to mute the audio. It used bone conduction, so no one else should be able to hear it, but better to be safe. I might risk it if someone left with the com, but while we were in the same room, I didn’t need the audio. I could hear just fine, even if I still had trouble moving.
Two people picked me up by my arms and dragged me into the middle of the room. They dropped me and my left cheek slammed into the ground. I held back a groan as pain stabbed up into my skull. That was going to leave a mark.
Alex landed next to me with a muffled curse.
“We’ve got them,” a female voice said. She paused, then said, “Understood.”
Control slowly returned. I glanced around as much as I could without moving my head, which wasn’t much, but I didn’t see Ying or Aoife. I did, however, recognize at least two of the people standing guard. They were stationed here, not Syndicate troops wearing RCDF uniforms.
None of them looked at us.
There were also plenty of soldiers wearing plain black fatigues mixed with a few officers in green and red Syndicate uniforms. They were keeping a close eye on the RCDF troops. These weren’t trusted traitors, then, but perhaps troops pressed into service under threat.
At least I hoped that was the case.
A few minutes later, one of the inner doors hissed open. It was behind me, so I couldn’t see who entered, but Alex growled out another curse.
“Our guests have arrived at last,” a male voice said. He didn’t have any discernible accent, nothing to give away who it might be. He continued, “High Councillor Yamado will be pleased.”
“Ren Yamado is alive?” I asked, surprised.
“No, my dear. That old bastard is dead. High House Yamado now belongs to Ying Yamado. And you let her lead you straight into a trap.”