Mesmerized

  The helo flew fast and low, Kenner at the controls. The breeze blew through Andrei’s hair as he kept watch.

  As he’d told Piper, the helo was silent when it landed.

  There was only one.

  Instead of two extra teams, it was just Kenner, Vincenz and Fen. Fen was a newer member of the teams. A munitions specialist.

  “There was a problem with the other helo. We just have the one.” Vincenz came to join them.

  Kenner and Piper embraced, and when she broke away, she put her hands on her hips and they stood still to watch.

  “Kenner Roundtree, what do you think you’re doing?”

  Kenner barked a laugh. “I’m serving my government, Piper. Just like you. Just like Andrei and the others.”

  “They have people for that. You’re risking your life.”

  “I am people for that. This is war, don’t you get that? There are troops all over the place. Attacks. Roman has ordered retaliatory attacks, and we’ve been seeing vid coverage of it all. They’re stretched to get things done, and they needed me. What kind of man would I be if I just turned my back on them now? On us all?”

  She heaved a sigh and whacked him upside his head. “Don’t you dare get killed.”

  “I’ll do my best. You, too.”

  The threat of bloodshed between siblings now over, Vincenz turned his attention back to Andrei. “What’s the plan then?”

  “I don’t like the lack of the second helo. I don’t like being out the contingency.”

  “I don’t like it either, but that’s reality.” He lowered his voice. “Look, I know you’re angry, and I don’t blame you. But he’s a damned good pilot. Smart, instinctive.”

  “And yet not bulletproof.” Andrei shook it off. “All right, moving on. We need to blow the fucking building. We can’t take the risk of leaving it operational for them at a later date. But that doesn’t mean we won’t take every last bit of the mineral and processed product we can find.”

  “We have a decent stock from the last shipment we stopped. But taking what they have will enable us to compare. Our own devices are nearly done, but we haven’t tested them. A sample of what they have will help.”

  “We’ll approach from the west and land on the roof. Once we’ve swept the area, we need to tap in the comm system to get the building plans. You hit the labs. Grab as much tech as you can. Fen will need to get those detonator packs in place. This needs to be surgical. We can’t take prisoners.”

  They planned the approach as they went over the video they’d taken earlier. There was a nearly deserted looking helo-platform at the very top of the building. They’d land there and find a comm station to hack into for the building schematics and go from there.

  “Let’s move. Fen, you’re on the pulse guns.” Andrei tossed his and Piper’s packs up into the helo. He didn’t want to tell Piper she couldn’t fly the helo, but as Kenner had flown it to them, he’d be better suited to it, and they needed every edge they could get.

  “I know.” She got into the back after whacking her brother on the back of the head again.

  He took the other side with the plas-rockets.

  “Move.”

  Kenner took off smoothly, pointing the helo toward the plant. Andrei went over and over the plan, working out contingencies and contingencies on top of those. They couldn’t afford any mistakes now; too much was in the balance.

  “Target in sight.” Kenner was totally calm, made for this sort of thing. Andrei wouldn’t say so to Piper just yet, knowing she was still angry Kenner was along at all, but he had more talent than Andrei had given him credit for.

  Breathing out, Andrei cleared his mind and let his body do the work. Aiming and shooting, he and Fen cleared the platform in one clean sweep. Five Imperial soldiers down and the platform clear for landing.

  They landed and Andrei got out, grabbing two empty packs for the samples and his pack with all his tools. Piper grabbed her own and another empty. He grinned at her momentarily.

  “Kenner, you stay here and kill anything not us. Keep the engines online in case we come running out of there.” Andrei had wanted Piper to stay as well, but there weren’t enough people if that had been the case.

  “Be careful.”

  Kenner nodded, giving two thumbs up.

  Piper fell in beside him as they ran into the building.

  Vincenz spoke over the comm. “No closed-circuit vid cameras on this level.”

  Which made things easier. At least for now. “We need to find an internal comm setup here so we can access the plans for the building.” He led them down a hall, peeking into offices until they located what they needed.

  “I’ve got it.” She moved past him, making quick work of the keyboard and accessing the system.

  “Vincenz, heads up for the building plans.”

  Andrei viewed the schematics, locating the foundation posts and the processing floor.

  “All right, Vincenz, labs appear to be up one level. Fen, hit the four corners, and that will be more than enough. We’re headed down.”

  They split up, Andrei and Piper heading down the interior stairwell. She checked the map on her comm, guiding them toward the first stop.

  The building wasn’t overly large. But there were more than those five soldiers they’d taken out on the flight platform. So where were the rest?

  “Piper, I want you to extract the memory chips from every single comm we come across.”

  He noted movement, a shadow on a far wall, just around the corner, and held a hand up to stay her. She crouched as he’d showed her, her weapon at the ready.

  Andrei crept forward, listening to all the cues telling him how many there were. Two. Taking a smoke break and totally focused on their talking, neither noticed until the first one had slumped to the ground with a broken neck.

  The second one moved just a little too slowly and joined his friend in moments. Andrei dragged the bodies to a nearby office, dumped them in a closet and lifted their personal comms.

  “I’ll monitor their internal communication,” Piper said as she zipped her pack up again.

  He nodded, and they moved down the hall again toward the next set of stairs. The processing floor was only one more down, and they were in a big hurry, so they double-timed it as she kept him covered when he took each corner.

  “There are three more down at the processing floor. One just asked when the evening meal break was. Another is laughing about how many people died here in Parron and how they’d be working a lot less hard if they just made the survivors slaves.”

  Andrei went very quiet inside as he looked through the safety glass and sighted the soldiers. The processing floor looked to be empty of human workers, instead using mechanized labor. He didn’t have to kill a machine, so he moved past them as a threat and focused on the ones he did.

  She waited for him, patiently and silently. He brought up the muzzle of his sniper blaster and aimed. Time melted away as he found the right place and moment and squeezed. The first fell, and while the other two were still shocked, he took out a second.

  The survivor moved to hit a panic button as Piper worked quickly on her comm to try to route around their internal security.

  “I don’t know if I can get through this security,” she muttered.

  He had to move and move right then. Exposing himself to fire, he stepped from the stairwell and onto the processing floor. The noise was deafening, but it helped him keep focus on the soldier.

  A bullet tore through his calf, mainly hitting muscle, but it hurt like all seven hells as he used the forward motion to hit the ground and spring up on the other leg, aiming and catching the man in the head as the sirens began to sound all around.

  “Get that turned off here at the source,” he yelled to Piper.

  “You’re injured!”

  He bent to tie it off just above the wound.

  “I’m not dead, nor do I plan to be. Shut this off. I’m going to get some samples.”

  He move
d past her, trying not to limp.

  There wasn’t a lot of the raw product left, he noted as he shoved the tubes of gel and the sheets of Liberiam into the empty packs.

  Three levels up, Vincenz found his way into the main lab offices. He had the recorder located in the bill of his cap on to go back over later. The place was nearly deserted, so he didn’t have to waste ammo. Instead he was able to snap necks, which he found far more satisfying after witnessing the destruction his father had rained down on Parron and her people.

  He still reeled from it all. From the sense of shame he had that his own blood had been responsible for such horrible acts. He felt alone. Carina was off in Ravena, but he spoke to her often enough to know she felt the weight of what their father had done as deeply as he did. But she had Daniel and he . . . well he’d been alone a long time. A man without a ’Verse. First viewed as a traitor and then slowly earning trust.

  And then this war. And then Marame. And then Julian. Gods, how unexpected his attraction to Julian had been. There was a vulnerability in him that Vincenz found compelling, found it easy to connect to.

  Whatever it was, it was slow and fragile, but deep.

  Vincenz didn’t need to question it. Just feel it.

  The main comm was in the center of the room and unlocked. Vincenz downloaded it before uploading a virus into their system, hoping the comms were connected back to Caelinus. Endless stations gleamed in the light. Most unused. But he hit every single one. Methodically searching the drawers and grabbing the chips from each station.

  He grabbed hard copy notebooks on some desks and the testing journals he found and stuffed them into his pack as he moved through to the next set of rooms in the lab complex. Quiet in here.

  The hair on the back of his neck rose. He wasn’t alone. He spun, his weapon out and ready, but saw no one.

  Moments later, a muffled sound echoed through the room, and he crouched, seeking the source until he got to the far wall.

  A one-way glass and behind it a person.

  A woman.

  Crouched in a far corner, rocking and making a keening wail. Her hair was unkempt, and he had no idea if she’d been alone in there for very long.

  He tried to harden his heart and walk away; he had no idea who she was, and that should have been enough. She was not his mission. Getting the data out and blowing this building to eternity was.

  But he couldn’t leave. Not without a little more information at least.

  The gleam of the testing journal in the rack to the left of the door caught his attention. He’d find answers in there, wouldn’t he?

  He read it, getting several pages in and skimming, turning and turning until he wanted to vomit with the knowledge. And then he wanted to break his father’s neck with his own hands.

  He unlocked the door, and she backed up into a corner, making herself very small. He decided clear and blunt would be the way to go.

  “My name is Vincenz Cuomo, and I’m here to help you. I’m a Federation military officer, and we’re about to blow this place up. Do you want to live?”

  Green eyes filled with panic and a hint of madness met his. She gripped the bed and stood on shaky legs.

  She licked her lips and tried to speak, but instead she nodded her head and took a step to him, faltering, and he moved to her, catching her against his body.

  “I have to pick you up, all right?”

  Another jerky nod, and he did, cradling her against his chest as he got the fuck out of there and headed to the roof.

  “I’m a go and on my way back,” Fen’s voice sounded over the comm.

  “We are as well,” Piper answered, yanking the pack from Andrei’s hand as she looked back at him, worried. “You’re bleeding.”

  “We’ll be blown to bits if we don’t get moving. Step to it, Piper. Believe me when I tell you I’ve been hurt far worse than this. He used a bullet. I haven’t been shot with an actual black powder bullet in years.”

  “So glad you can feel nostalgic about it.” She showed him her teeth and kept moving.

  He talked to her as they pounded up the stairwell to the landing pad on the roof. Probably keeping her mind off the fact that he’d left a trail of blood in his wake.

  “I have a . . . victim. Found her in the labs.” Vincenz’s voice crackled over the comms as they burst from the stairwell out to the landing pad.

  He stood there holding a woman close to screaming, if the look on her face was any indication of her emotional state. Bedraggled. Wild-eyed and white with fear.

  Piper’s heart ached for the woman and whatever she’d endured to give her that look.

  “We can chat later. Let’s get out of . . .”

  Andrei’s voice cut off, replaced by a sound she’d not heard for many years. It was the same sound he made when he came home to find his mother dead in their home and his brother gone, taken by the authorities.

  She looked around, expecting to see him hurt more, or to see Fen or one of the others injured. Instead, she saw Kenner.

  Slumped in the cockpit, a bloom of red where his beautiful face once sat.

  “Get down!” Andrei shoved her to the pavement at her feet, and she lay there. Screams tore from her mouth, and she couldn’t seem to remember how to stop.

  Vincenz crawled to her, the woman in his arms now quiet as she watched Piper with wide, curious eyes.

  “Shhh, honey, please.” He tried to put the woman down, but she made a sound, clutching him tighter, so Vincenz dragged Piper toward the doorway and some sort of cover.

  He wanted to help more, but the women nearly drowned him with their fear and grief.

  The woman he held, well, she was his to take care of now. Once he’d opened that door and made the choice to save her, he’d made the commitment to see this through and get her out of there safely.

  And none of that would help Piper. He held her with one arm, keeping her from rushing back to where Fen and Andrei were in the firefight.

  The stench of weapon fire, of pulse cartridges discharging, and the noise of it—the humming of the helo, the humming of the weapons recharging, the ping of cartridges hitting the ground—was all a sick nightmare of an opera, and Vincenz had no choice but to keep where he was, holding the women in place as destruction rained down all around them.

  “Die, you fucker!” Fen screamed as the last Imperialist soldier fell.

  Bits of pavement broke as the bullets hit it. A few tore into her skin, and she didn’t even feel it. Felt nothing but the yawning horror of her brother’s dead body.

  “Let’s go.” Andrei came back with Fen. “Detonator will be hitting any minute now, and I don’t want to give them the satisfaction of killing any more of us.”

  Vincenz moved past with the woman still in his arms, her face buried in his neck, trembling.

  Andrei moved to Piper and hauled her up, hustling her toward the helo. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  She came back to herself a moment, and the screaming came again. He bent and tossed her over a shoulder and then into the helo.

  Thank the Gods Fen had moved Kenner’s body, covering him up. Andrei got into the cockpit and fired up the thrusters. Vincenz was in the back with the strange woman from the labs, and Piper, who’d stopped screaming, sat there blank-faced and pale.

  Fen hit the nav seat and they lifted off as Andrei ignored the throb in his leg as he used it to control the helo and get it back toward the Portal.

  They were nearly back when Fen turned to Andrei. “No. Head three clicks southeast.” He loaded the coordinates into the nav comp.

  Then the reality of it hit as he listened to comm traffic. Imperialist soldiers had surrounded the Portal.

  “We’re flying straight to the private portal. Get me clearance and a transport. We have priority one cargo.” It would be gods damned close when they arrived. He only hoped there was a transport there and ready to go. Fen was on the comm with them, so Andrei turned his attention back to the other important task he had to take care
of.

  “Parron Governance Portal. Get. Out. Now. We have reason to believe the Imperialist soldiers have a device that will collapse the portal. Send everyone you can into the available transports and get off Parron before it’s too late.”

  “Portal ahead,” Fen said.

  “Wish I was a better pilot,” Andrei muttered and banked enough to get the helo aligned and landed with far less grace and accuracy than Piper or Kenner had shown.

  “We’re green.” Fen grabbed all the packs, and Andrei scooped Piper up and ran toward the transport. The pilot held the doors open, and Vincenz cleared them with the woman, Andrei next with Piper and then Fen with Kenner over his shoulder.

  He nodded his thanks at the other man and got out of the way, going in the direction they were pointed.

  The doors slammed. The engines hummed. The clamps groaned as they were blown off in an emergency maneuver instead of manual uncoupling. And they were moving.

  Chapter 20

  “Citizens of the Federation Universes, Family members, Ministers, I speak to you tonight of terrible things.”

  Andrei stood, watching the screen in the media room. Watching Roman Lyons address not only the Full Council but every citizen as well.

  “The Portal in Parron was collapsed earlier today by Imperialist forces who used our own portal against us. More died in the last stand at the Portal before we were able to use a device we’ve been developing for such a contingency.

  “The Portal is open again, but it will take a considerable amount of time to get back to full power.”

  The floor of the chamber went wild with noise until Roman cut off the microphones and hit the klaxon to get order again.

  “We have arrested Bas Thrater, the Stationmaster at the Waystation Portal. We also located and took Ang Thrater, his nephew, as he attempted to use a private portal to get out of Federation territory. Through the information we’ve extracted from them and from corroborating evidence from an accomplice, we have uncovered a vast network of bribes given for access through the Waystation and into our ’Verses. As well as for information they lifted from different transports moving through from one side to the other.”