Citation Series 1: Naero's War: The Annexation War (23 page)

Aunt Sleak and Zalvano
might already be under attack on their bridge.

She snapped her head at Tarim. “Get
Leftenant Hayden and his Marines to help protect the transports, the leadership, and the decks in the vicinity. Let’s proceed directly to the bridge.”

She and her people raced back into the flagship, making calls on their wristcoms
.

Several large explosions suddenly rocked the flagship. Power a
nd life support flickered. Then backups brought them back online.

Naero continued feeding Klyne what her secret sources of Intel had uncovered
.

Then she called Aunt Sleak
.

That
there was no reply filled her with concern.

She called Zalvano
.

“Naero. Haisha, they came right through
the hull. Hevangian assassins, the bloody sons of bitches!”

She heard the staccato sounds of blasters and other weapons blazing, grenades going off
.

“Are you and Aunt Sleak all right
?”

“Could be better. We’re fighting on the bridge. Sleak got stunned after she shot a couple of them. Help’s on the way. Get up here if you can
.”

“On my way,” Naero said. She checked all of her weapons again
.

These were the same murderous assholes that had attacked her mom’s ship
years before, killed many of their Clan, and ruined her brother Danner’s life.

And that indirectly led to her parents’ deaths
.

They had also attacked Naero and her fleet, killing their people
.

Time for a little payback
.

31

The
gravity on Aunt Sleak’s flagship still worked when Naero and her small security team reached the shattered bridge blast doors.

A Spacer body lay just inside the entrance,
crew shot dead as she had tried to charge in.

Blood
trailed down the floor, out of the bridge.

They heard intense weapon fire, shouting, screaming, and explosions within
.

The fight
with the assassins continued to rage.

Naero moved her people back, sensing an ambush
just within.

From cover and concealment, she sent in a few fixers first
to spy things out.

That included two
of the precious new Intel prototypes that could use stealth mode, and cloak themselves.

Most of the regular fixers got popped, showing brief views of a
fire team of Hevangian sharpshooters blasting them.

The foe also covered the entrance with a pair of portable, crew-served chain guns.
For good measure, the enemy also sent out a wave of float grenades and seeker mines against whoever sent the fixers in.

Explosions and stun blasts rocked the deck and pock-marked the corridor all around the bridge entrance
.

Inside, the enemy waited for anyone foolish enough to charge the entrance. Several more dead Spacers and Spacer
Marines inside attested to the enemy’s lethal battle skill.

These were elite, professional assassins
.

All of the Spacer bodies had been stripped of weapons and explosives
.

Sounds of battle still rocked the flagship on other decks
.

By all reports, suicide squads of Hevangians spread throughout the
flagship, keeping others away from the bridge, while the main assault unit pursued its objectives.

The admirals, and her
self, most likely. Shalaen wasn’t with them currently.

The smaller
enemy teams were just distractions and decoys to buy the main units time. Yet they would still cause a great deal of damage, as they sold their lives dearly.

If the
foe could reach the power cores, Naero had no doubt that the enemy would attempt to sabotage, cripple, or destroy the flagship–if they were able.

But
by now they were being swarmed on by Spacers and Spacer Marines.

Those foes would not last
very long.

Naero, Tarim, and the rest of Naero’s team took precious seconds to evaluate the battle data the remaining
stealth fixers fed them.

Eight
heavily armed attackers guarded the entrance.

Sixteen more, including one who appeared to be a leader
, directed the assault on a secondary blast screen that had slammed down in front of the main bridge.

Within, seven Spacer bridge crew and one remaining
Marine guard fired weapons and sent out smart explosives of their own to hold the enemy off.

The defenders
appeared to be led by Fleet Captain Zalvano, and Admiral Sandusky. About twenty other crew and Marines lay stunned or wounded within the barrier, including Aunt Sleak, still clutching a smoking blaster rifle.

A dozen dead Hevangians lay scattered within also
.

Every one of the
assassins had been shot in the head or face to make certain of them.

Zalvano had the defenders set up back
-to-back in a tight ring. Half of his people kept their weapons trained on the walls, constantly scanning and covering every angle.

Even the outside hull of the ship
.

Naero spoke in a low voice. “The enemy must have used that phazing tek
we’ve heard about. I bet some of them came right through the hull and the walls.”

Tarim nodded. “The pattern of the fighting supports that. You can see where some of our people were caught by surprise and gunned down or knifed at their stations.
Just like we saw before. My guess is, the enemy will use phaze tek again to get in there quick.”

“I think that’s a good guess,” Naero said. “But they’ll do so sparingly. That tek kills them a little more and a little faster each second they use it. Now follow me. I know of a secret escape passage that Aunt Sleak and Zalvano had put in
, when the life pods were doubled. We can get at the goons guarding the entrance through that.”

Tarim smiled and readied his plasma machine pistols
.

“Sounds good. Everyone, keep a full spread of micro grenades ready
.”

They slipped down the hall and coded entrance into a small meeting room. From there they gained access to two other chambers adjacent to the bridge and some of the additional escape pods
.

Naero coded the hidden panel to the escape passage
.

“Activate gravwings. We’ll open a panel slightly above and behind them. They might spot us, but there’s nothing for it. We swoop in fast and take them out. Full on attack
, with everything we have.”

Leftenant
Hayden cut in on their secured link.

“We’ve put down any attackers we could locate. Proceeding to the bridge. Other forces converging
.”

Naero turned to Tarim
.

“Warn Hayden and the others what they’re walking into. Tell them to hold up until we begin our attack
.”

“Will do
.”

They swarmed into the escape tube like angry hornets, single file, moving fast.
The kept their weapons trained out in front.

Naero coded open the hidden panel just inside the bridge itself
.

She and her small team shot out and wheeled to attack, scattering a spray of mic
rogrenades and bomblets below.

They fired down even as the enemy trained their weapons up at them
.

T
he element of surprise worked both ways.

First the grenades knocked the Hevangians around and took out their shields
.

The
waiting micro-fixers quickly rendered the chain-guns into non-firing scrap metal and plasteel.

Naero hit two of the enemy with glowing energy blades set to detonate
.

The blasts blew off their head and arms, even as precise small arms fire riddled their bodies
.

The six foes went down hard and fast, especially with
Leftenant Hayden and his Marines charging in to lend their support, behind a shield pod warping the air in front of them to deflect heavy fire.

Naero whirled just in time to see the main enemy strike force activate their phaze armor
, and walk through the barrier in bright flashes.

Naero pointed at the secondary blast barrier
.

“Get everyone in there. Cut the foe down.
I can snap the blast shields out of the way. Give me a sec.”

She struggled on her wristcomp to input the override code as quickly as possible
.

Vital seconds passed
.

At last
, the secondary blast shields popped back down into the floor and up into the ceiling.

She could only spot about half of the enemy strike team in a firefight with the
dwindling bridge crew.

Where had the others gone? That was a
new problem.

Even as they moved to engage, enemy agents appeared behind the defenders
, as if by magic.

Th
ey lifted their ritual, Hevangian
shokkog,
death blades steeped in lethal cocktails of poisons that dripped and ran off them, and hissed on the duranadium floor. No known antidotes.

Two Spacers and the last
Marine within died outright, screaming in agony as the assassin blades pierced their backs and throats from behind and hit them with those lethal poisons.

Naero fired four exploding needles in the face of the one trying to knife Zalvano. The head and helmet puffed
away into red mist.

Tarim knelt and fired full bursts of automatic plasma bolts into the assassin
s crouching over Aunt Sleak.

The precise plasma fire scorched gaping, charred holes through the assassin
s and flung them back against the chairs and consoles.

Tarim, Hayden, and the others kept up a steady hail of
precise fire, moving in, cutting down any Hevangian and keeping fire on them until they were obviously dead.

Off to one side, Naero trained her weapons on five remaining H
evangians, including the leader–a tall young man with vicious scars crisscrossing his face,

They all held guns and weapons trained on a disarmed and battered Admiral Sandusky
.

Sandusky
snarled defiantly. “I’m good as dead. Kill these fucks!”

Two assassins stunned the Admiral and slipped a rescue bag up around him, sealing
him in it.

Naero barely spotted the shaped cutting charges packed on the outer hull behind them. She realized what they were going to do
.

The male leader of the Hevangians sneered at her
.

“Clever little spack. Cut her down!
”

Naero shouted aloud in warning
.

“The
y’re going to blow the hull to escape!”

The enemy could
have passed through walls–but they wanted Sandusky.

She sealed her combat armor and dove behind a bridge station all at once, just as the enemy fired and the shaped charges went off
.

The hull instantly decompressed
.

The assassins let themselves get
sucked out into space.

Naero kicked off the console she hid behind and shot after them
.

Leftenant
Hayden and several of his Marines came on fast behind her.

Then the hull on the flagship
auto-sealed behind them, throwing up shields to close off the breach.

In space, the Hevangians swept toward the wide-open loading hatch of
a high-speed Alliance courier, backing up toward them.

The o
ther Hevangian agents on board the captured ship kicked and tossed the bodies of the courier’s real crew and passengers out of the cargo hatch into the black.

Naero, Hayden, and the
Marines hit their gravwings and raced after the enemy at top speed.

They swept in so f
ast, the enemy in the hold didn’t even have a chance to shoot or get out of the way.

All of them smashed into each other and tumbled back into the courier
’s cargo bay. The loading hatch closed.

They wrestled and fought together amid the chaos within, as the small ship took heavy fire from all sides
without. The Alliance fleets attempted to cut off the small armored ship and disable it.

The courier
shot away, spinning and taking expert, evasive action.

The assassins selected
their escape vehicle with great care and cunning.

Naero grappled and kicked and stabbed at not one
, but several Hevangian assassins, bouncing around in zero-G.

She shot one in the guts, both of them propelled in the opposite directi
on. Blood and entrails boiled out into the null gravity.

One of the assassins sliced at her with a dripping shokkog,
and just missed cutting deep through the arm of her combat suit.

Naero flipped end-over-
end and used the momentum to hurl a stun dagger into another foe. The shock charge went off and the assassin stiffened and floated.

A
Marine cut loose with his assault rifle and cut the stunned female assassin into two bloody pieces.

Right
before the shooter got knifed in the back from behind, by another Hevangian who just phazed in.

The
deadly shokkog point jutted out of the dying Marine corporal’s broad chest.

The
corporal blinked once at the poison blazing through him.

T
hen his face froze in death.

Naero, Hayden, and his
remaining Marines found themselves outnumbered and fighting for their very lives in that tight hold.

She lost sight of Admiral Sandusky
.

Then she felt the ship preparing to go into jump
.