Rubicon: Aurora Resonant Book Two (Aurora Rhapsody 8) Read online

  She moved around the desk to check the panels herself. One showed security cam footage of the docking hangar, where intruders in military gear moved around and three foreign ships had docked. Human ships.

  Was the Human diati wielder with them? She closed her eyes; given the amount of power he now controlled, she should be able to detect his presence. But she sensed nothing.

  She reopened her eyes in time to note at least one Anaden with them, however, and a Naraida. Anarchs…including a certain Idoni who was showing up on cam footage with increasing regularity.

  He did get around. Considering how little time had passed since the incident at Plousia, his presence here confirmed that the anarchs possessed a robust regenesis lab.

  Following the confrontation at Plousia, she’d tracked down the woman he’d spent the night with. Falan asi-Idoni was a performer of some renown at the Taras Cathedral on Megali III. The woman had claimed to not know anything about the anarch, including that he was an anarch. A couple of hours in a restraining field with the judicious application of an alithe intraneural had yielded a first name and far more details about the anarch’s sexual proclivities than Nyx needed to hear, but no actionable intel. Another dead end.

  “Can you follow their progress on the cams?”

  Logiel blinked; he was visibly shaken. Coward. “S-somewhat. They’ve disabled most of our security systems, but the cams are still working. We’re not equipped for this level of attack. We don’t have the security forces to defeat an army.”

  It was a reasonable-sized infiltration force, but it was hardly an army. She ignored his flailing to watch the cams for another moment.

  The forces split into four groups. One remained in the hangar, and the other three spread out through the facility. What were they doing? Surely they hadn’t come for the Kat prisoners—and if they had, they would find themselves sorely disappointed.

  One of the groups reached the first cell on a row housing lab subjects. Her brow furrowed as she watched them free the subject from confinement and…escort it to the docking hangar. By then the other two groups had reached other cells and begun to do the same.

  This was a rescue mission? Were they mad?

  “What are they—they can’t have my test subjects!”

  “I suggest you proceed down there and inform them of your objection in the sternest terms, Administrator.”

  His eyes widened yet farther.

  Her mind raced. Her first instinct was to blow the entire facility. She hadn’t brought significant explosives, so it would likely necessitate using the power grid. This would serve to kill the intruders and the prisoners in one efficient move.

  Alternatively, she could take out the intruders directly. Split into smaller groups as they were, killing them would be, if not quite trivial, a simple enough task.

  Still, she didn’t allow Logiel’s escalating hysterics to dissuade her from taking the time to think the situation through analytically.

  Humans and anarchs were demonstrably working together, using Human ships and anarch intel to rescue and smuggle out specimens of multiple alien species. What did this fact tell her?

  Ideally, she’d want to keep a few of the intruders alive long enough to interrogate them, but the firepower they were wielding meant that outcome was unlikely. Also, during the recent Vigil dragnet the anarchs had shown a surprising willingness to suicide rather than give up their secrets. Eren asi-Idoni hadn’t hesitated to null out at Plousia the instant his companions had escaped.

  So interrogation wasn’t a viable option.

  If the intruders were successful in their rescue mission, those ships in the hangar would be returning to one of two places following the mission: the Human fleet or an anarch base. Either outcome, if she were able to track them to their destination, would be a windfall. She personally preferred the Human fleet, but logistically an anarch base represented a more stable and definitive target.

  No matter. Either would do.

  She pivoted to Logiel, who now trod in erratic circles while clutching wildly at his pale hair. “Ensure sufficient security measures are sent against them so they perceive a reasonable defense, but don’t defeat them.” As he’d said, the security likely wasn’t robust enough to stop the infiltrators in any event, but one never knew. His stress response might be to get ambitious.

  “You want me to let them have the station and the test subjects?”

  “Yes. Good luck, Administrator.” She turned and, in a whirl of diati, vanished.

  44

  EXOBIOLOGY RESEARCH LAB #4

  MILKY WAY SECTOR 23

  * * *

  THE FIRST CELL THEY CAME TO HELD a tripedal…tree, of sorts. Brooklyn couldn’t afford to take the time to process the absurdity of it, but an uncertain grimace or two passed among her squad members.

  “Defensive positions, but try not to come off as too hostile. Benoit, open the cell.” She’d Veiled on entering the wing, but now she de-cloaked.

  On seeing her, the tree-like alien retreated to cower in the corner.

  Eren asi-Idoni: “I knew it. You won’t find many fighters in here.”

  HarperRF: “Can’t take your word for it.”

  She took a step forward and opened her palms in what she hoped came across as a nonthreatening motion. After a deliberate pause, she took another step, and the bark-coated skin of the alien blanched from brown to gray.

  Here goes nothing. She reached out and laid a careful hand on its arm, or limb, or whatever.

  It didn’t attack, instead cowering with greater vehemence. She gestured to the opening and hallway with the other hand, trying to urge it toward the opening. One of its three legs hesitantly moved forward, then another.

  HarperRF: Odaka and Redale, take it carefully by the appendages and guide it to the transport. Secure it inside and catch up to us.

  She pulsed Malcolm privately as they coaxed the tree out of the cell.

  Sir, this is going to take a while.

  Noted. Barring complications, we’ll reevaluate in twenty.

  She brushed off the terseness of the reply, accepted the directive and watched the tree and its escorts until they disappeared around the corner, then motioned the rest of the team ahead.

  Many of the cells were empty, for which she gave silent thanks. They found more humanoid species than anything else—more thanks. But there were also the bats that tried to bite Benoit’s hand off, and the gelatinous blob of goo that stuck itself to the ceiling and refused to budge.

  As they reached the end of the first row, she decided this was beginning to look more like an old carnival freak show than an infiltration-and-rescue mission.

  The Naraida girl, Cosime, peered inside the cell for a second then stepped away shaking her head. “I’ve seen this one’s kind before. The Idoni elasson who owns Plousia keeps one as a pet. Nasty little creature. My advice? Don’t open the cell.”

  Malcolm mimicked her actions, scrutinizing the interior of the cell long enough to get a good look at its inhabitant. He frowned at Cosime. “It’s a butterfly.”

  Her lips puckered up beneath the lines of her breathing apparatus. “It has teeth. Sharp ones.”

  He acknowledged her comment, then glanced behind him. “Do we have a container we can try to coax it into? Since it won’t understand us, it’s unlikely to follow us on its own.”

  Polowski reached into his pack and produced a small, flexible ball. He squeezed it tight, released it, and it expanded into a pliable, rounded container thirty centimeters in diameter.

  Malcolm took it from him. “Eaton, open the cell.” In the corner of his vision he saw Cosime back away down the hall several meters.

  He stepped into the cell anyway. He was here to rescue some mistreated aliens, so that was what he would do. “Close it behind me.”

  “Sir?”

  “Close it, Major.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The winged alien was about twelve centimeters tall, with a twenty-centimeter wingspan, as best
he was able to determine while it zipped from wall to wall in agitation.

  He opened the latch of the container using slow, nonthreatening movements and held it up in front of him. He kept his voice soft. “We’re here to help you. Help. Safe.” He pointed to the container.

  The alien divebombed his face. His shield kept him from being mauled in the first few seconds and his eyes from being gouged out by the tornado of tiny claws and tinier teeth, but instinct still caused him to swat at the attacker.

  His wrist caught a wing, and it spun topsy-turvy through the air—but swiftly righted itself to hover two meters away and hiss at him in defiance.

  He wiped a spot of blood off his cheek. The possibility of this being karma come to spit in his face as retribution for him being an asshole occurred to him, but he pushed away the thought. Even so, hypocrite that he was, he kind of hoped the next cell held something big and violent that he could shoot.

  He retreated toward the door, one and a half eyes on the angry alien.

  “We can’t waste any more time here. Eaton, open the cell to let me out, then close it again.”

  “Copy that, sir.”

  His back met the resistance of the force field. Then it vanished, and he hurriedly stepped out.

  Just as the force field re-energized, however, the winged alien darted over his head and past the team to speed down the hall and out of his sight.

  Malcolm sighed and activated his comm. “All teams, be advised a small, airborne alien with violent tendencies is free in the facility. Threat level is low but not zero.”

  He motioned the squad forward. “Let’s keep moving.”

  As he passed Cosime, she gave him a fluid shrug. “I did warn you. Nasty teeth.”

  Several scientist types challenged Brooklyn’s squad on the next row and were incapacitated. They managed to move nine prisoners out of cells and into the transport before they met any real resistance. But when they did, it was significant.

  A towering, heavily weaponized mech entered the corridor flanked by two also heavily armed security officers.

  “Take cover!” In a stroke of luck they’d emptied the previous cell and were able to dive into it. As soon as Brooklyn landed, she was rolling and unlatching two splinter grenades from her belt—both properly checked out of inventory.

  The floor rumbled as the mech drew closer and laser fire filled the hallway outside the alcove of the cell. She leapt to her feet, flattened against the wall as close to the entrance as she dared, then flung the grenades down the hall.

  The explosions sounded appropriately destructive and the laser fire ceased, but the resulting debris cloud meant they couldn’t initially determine the state of their attackers.

  Pello had the best ocular implant, and he risked a quick peak out to capture a scan on multiple wavelengths. He scrambled inside and reviewed the visual. “The mech is disassembled into seven-to-ten pieces, immobile and not firing. I can’t confirm complete destruction of functionality. Two facility personnel are immobile and displaying no detectable life signs.”

  She nodded as the dust began to settle to the floor. “Redale, Pello, Benoit, eyes and weapons on the mech.”

  HarperRF (Beta): Alpha and Charlie squads, be advised highly weaponized mechs are on the premises and in use. She took perverse and petty pride in the fact that her advisory was so superior to the one Malcolm had issued.

  Brigadier Jenner (Alpha): Casualties?

  HarperRF (Beta): Negative on friendlies. Two hostiles down.

  On receiving the all-clear from Pello, the squad moved out into the hallway. The grenades had blown open the next two cells and sent shrapnel flying. She swore under her breath.

  HarperRF (Beta): Correction, also two prisoners.

  A noise that could only be described as a roaring growl tore through the hallway to curdle her blood. Out of the third cell down burst a creature—a beast. Easily three meters tall, its arms were as thick as its chest and ended in six-centimeter-long talons.

  But none of those attributes really compared to its mouth, which hung open mid-roar to expose three jammed-together rows of razor-sharp teeth, each one nearly as long as the talons.

  Everyone opened fire, but the beast’s thick hide absorbed most of the damage as it barreled toward them.

  She activated her Veil so it wouldn’t notice her and sprinted forward, darting a step to the left to hit the wall between cells.

  Lift.

  Her momentum carried her forward in a run as the boosters vaulted her up the wall for several steps—enough.

  She tossed a splinter grenade into the beast’s open mouth, then crouched in to avoid its wide body, dropped to the floor and rolled to her feet behind it, then kept running.

  “Get clear!”

  The extra six meters of distance she managed to cross didn’t save her from getting coated in blood and viscera when the grenade detonated. One of the beast’s teeth bounced off her shoulder and clattered to the floor.

  She wiped gore away from her eyes to discover most of the others on her squad had fared little better, except for Odaka and Redale, who were in the rear and caught incidental cover from their squadmates.

  Eren held out a long strand of formerly golden hair in front of him, now soaked in viscous, globby blood, and scowled at it. “Zeus be damned, I might as well suicide now. A new body will be easier than washing this shit out.”

  “Still better than getting disemboweled and eaten.”

  The Anaden made a face as if he wasn’t convinced, but flourished a hand in her direction. “Regardless, nice moves.”

  She scoffed and turned to check the next couple of cells. They were damaged but intact, and all but one was empty.

  The one remaining prisoner on this hall was a diminutive humanoid with iridescent teal skin, a narrow face and a long, oval-shaped head. It made high-pitched squeaking noises as Brooklyn approached, but when she motioned for the alien to come out into the hall, it complied.

  Then it saw the shorn metal scattered everywhere, the rubble from several meters of wall piled on the floor, and the blood and gore coating everything. It let out a high-pitched scream, spun and ran.

  “All right, we can’t—”

  “Sure we can.” Eren jogged past her, grabbing her hand as he did. “Let’s catch up to it.”

  She’d wavered on whether to pursue it in the first place, so she didn’t yell at him for being foolish. Instead she broke into a jog herself. “Everyone else, start on the next hall. Carefully.”

  They rounded the corner in time to see a shadow disappear around the next corner. That corridor led to a longer hallway with labs on both sides and a transit tube at the end. The small alien was unexpectedly fast in its panic, and it scrambled into the tube and vanished upward just as they arrived.

  Brooklyn halted and focused a whisper to check the status of her squad. “We did what we could. We need to get back.”

  “Be my guest.” Eren strode purposefully toward the transit tube as it descended again.

  “Dammit, I said no heroics.”

  The Anaden shrugged as the tube settled to the floor and he stepped inside. “Oops.”

  She groaned and scrambled to join him, leaping onto the platform as it started rising.

  Two floors up it came to a stop at a wider, more open area. Rooms, not cells or labs, lined both sides of an atrium. In the distance, the alien ran headlong into a room at the opposite end of the atrium.

  Hopefully it was a dead end. She didn’t care for leaving uncleared rooms in her wake.

  HarperRF: “Veiling. Eren, proceed ahead with caution.”

  But the Anaden was charging forward, visible and with no apparent thought for a tactical approach.

  A yelling voice echoed out of the end room. “Get away from me, creature!”

  Confident in the protection and stealth the Veil offered, Brooklyn entered the room behind Eren. It was a well-appointed office marred by a headless alien body on the floor and a spray of blood and brain matter on
one wall.

  An Anaden man standing beside a large desk kicked the runaway alien in the stomach. The kick sent it flying through the air to crash into the left wall and collapse to the floor.

  Eren leveled his weapon at the Anaden man and shot him in the stomach. “Die slow and suffer before you get to regenesis,” he snarled before rushing over to the diminutive alien and lifting it gently into his arms.

  The alien whimpered plaintively, but it wound its arms around Eren’s neck. So it wasn’t dead at least.

  Brooklyn tossed a micro-bomb into the corner of the office before arching an eyebrow at the writhing Anaden on the floor, then at Eren.

  “Elasson Erevna. He runs this place for certain. And for that, he deserves to suffer.”

  “You…you dare….”

  Eren shot a scathing glare in the injured Anaden’s direction as he passed him, whimpering alien held snugly against his chest. “Yes, I do.”

  Major Berg (AFS Saratoga): “Multiple Machim warships detected on long-range sensors, likely inbound to the facility.”

  Brigadier Jenner (Alpha): “All squads return to the transports for immediate departure. Time to go.”

  Brooklyn’s squad members had managed to get three additional prisoners to the transport by the time she, Eren and their charge reached the hangar. A hodgepodge of terrified, confused aliens now cowered in the main cabin of her transport, and she assumed the other transports as well.

  She directed the squad to keep them under guard. Innocent or not, their presence in the enclosed walls of a spaceship in the middle of space was a disaster waiting to happen. One panicked movement could kick off a riot, or worse, and the near vacuum outside provided no escape.

  As the airlock closed and they lifted off, she sent another pulse to Malcolm.

  Everyone come back okay on your side?

  A few minor injuries, but yes. Forty-one prisoners rescued…it feels like such a tiny number.

  She gazed behind her, into the cabin. The prisoner they’d chased refused to leave Eren’s arms once they were on the ship. He’d shifted it to a more comfortable position on his hip and was carrying it around without complaint.