Tyrell glanced at Doc, hoping his expression sent a message to his friend. ‘Be cool, wait.’ It was all they could do.

  “Do not get up, do not move. If you disobey, you will be shot.”

  A wave of responses shot through Tyrell’s mind, smart-assed remarks, claims he had to go to the bathroom, other ideas at trickery. But he held his tongue, saying only, “Understood.”

  The two soldiers took positions on opposite sides of the table. Then, one at a time, they reached up with one hand, the other remaining on their rifles, and they pulled off their helmets.

  The man in the back of the room stood just under two meters, at least in his boots. He had close-cropped, sandy-brown hair, and dark brown eyes.

  The other soldier stood a little less than two meters, with short, sandy-colored hair and brown eyes.

  Tyrell’s head snapped back and forth twice, maybe three times before what he saw really registered.

  The two men weren’t just similar.

  They were identical.

  * * *

  Andi stood, trying to hide the fact that she was breathing deeply, struggling to maintain her calm. Her hands were clenched tightly into fists, but that was because her palms had been shaking. She was loyal to her comrades, she trusted them, as much as she was capable of trusting anyone, but she wasn’t about to let them see how unnerved she was.

  She’d been in desperate fights before, struggled with all her strength, with her life on the line. But she’d never faced anything like the imperial security robots.

  She realized, with a cold certainty, the almost random nature of the crew’s survival to that point. If they hadn’t brought the two charges, if Yarra or the captain or whoever had added them to the equipment roster hadn’t done so, they’d all likely be dead by now. That was what hit her the hardest, the utter randomness of it all. She wished she could say she’d seen the need for the two bombs, save perhaps for getting through a stubborn door. But she hadn’t. The things were clunky and heavy, hardly suited for use as weapons. If anyone had asked her, she was pretty sure she’d have said, ‘leave the damned things.’

  And, yet, they were the very weapons that had saved them. At least for the moment. They were still far from anything remotely resembling safety.

  “Everybody in one piece…more or less?” Lorillard had moved toward the middle of the room, or at least to a spot that put him in the center of the assembled crew. The left arm of his tunic was wet and red with blood, and he had cuts and scrapes visible on his face and his hands.

  They all knew, ‘one piece’ was a relative term, and despite an assortment of injuries, they sounded off almost in unison, declaring they were fine.

  “We’ve got to get going, get back to the ship.”

  The ship. Andi hadn’t forgotten, not exactly, but there was noting quite like something a meter or two away trying to kill you to take your mind off other worries.

  Nightrunner was armed, and capable of holding its own against most frontier prospecting ships. That didn’t address the apparent fact, of course, that there were two other vessels out there. Andi didn’t trust the station’s AI, but then she didn’t doubt what it had told them either. And even one on one, Nightrunner wasn’t going to beat anything out there with just Tyrell and Doc onboard.

  She was nauseous thinking about it, imagining getting back to where the ship was—where it had been—only to find it gone…or worse.

  “Cap, this stuff on these shelves is pretty incredible. High end processors and boards, like nothing I’ve ever seen.” Gregor was turned facing away from the others. He’d pulled the top off of one of the boxes on the shelves.

  Lorillard turned in response. “Gregor, we’ve got more important things to worry about than gathering loot.” The captain seemed annoyed, and as Andi listened, she too, felt a flash of anger at her giant comrade. They’d be lucky to get out alive, and even luckier to find the ship, and their two friends there, where they’d left them. How could Gregor be thinking of the haul just then?

  “It will only take a minute, Cap…and what if anybody gets hurt, or the ship is damaged? We might not get a chance to get back here, especially if we have to run for it. It’s why we came, after all. Why we risked our necks. It’s right here. Should we just leave it all?”

  Andi’s anger dissipated. She wasn’t sure how she felt, but Gregor’s words made sense to her. They didn’t sound at all like the raw greed she’d imagined when he’d first spoken. Nightrunner’s crew had some resources, of course, but if they had to deal with injuries and damage to the ship, any proceeds from scavenged electronics would certainly be a welcome addition to the mix.

  There was a darker thought as well, one Andi didn’t like to consider. If any of the crew were killed, their share from any mission profits might help out any loved ones they left behind. Prospectors weren’t generally family types, and Andi knew some of the crew were true loners, save for their comrades on Nightrunner. But some of them had ties outside the strange world they occupied at the edge of the Badlands. Sylene had a little brother, at least, one to whom Andi knew she sent money. Tyrell had parents back on whatever world he’d come from, and Jammar, too.

  The only one she had no idea at all about was the captain.

  “Alright…fill up a couple bags. Take whatever looks best, but do it quickly. You’ve got two minutes, and then we’re out of here.

  Gregor nodded, and then he turned toward the shelves, waving for Jammar and Barret to come with him. They all pulled sacks from the small packs they wore. Two of them were moderate in size, but Gregor’s was huge. The three of them began filling the bags, grabbing handfuls of sensitive-looking electronics and jamming them inside the bags. There was no time for precision, and imperial old tech was valuable enough even when it was in pieces. Andi had looked on with distaste at first, but then she found herself unable to prevent her mind from guessing at the value of the components.

  She didn’t have much of a benchmark, not for a haul like this. It was the biggest score she’d seen, and by a huge margin. She hated herself for it, but she couldn’t get the thought of what that much money could buy out of her mind. It was stupid, foolish—she knew they were far, far from getting anything at all back and managing to sell it—but she couldn’t keep her thoughts from it. She might have given herself a break, acknowledged that her life of grinding poverty had more to do with it than foolishness or lack of focus on the mission. But she didn’t.

  Andi didn’t give breaks, and least of all, to herself.

  She almost pulled the extra bag she had in her own pack, and joined her three comrades, but some discipline inside her stopped that cold. She was a fighter, at least she’d been trained in combat by one who had been a true warrior. She would do her best for her comrades in that capacity, not carrying one more bag of loot.

  “Alright, let’s get moving. Whatever you’ve got in there will be enough. With any luck, we’ll get a chance to come back for more.” Andi didn’t think Lorillard really believed that last part.

  At least, she didn’t. They were in big trouble. She realized that, and there wasn’t’ a doubt in her mind that the captain did, too.

  Gregor and the others responded to Lorillard’s orders at once, throwing their sacks over their shoulders, and lining up in a rough fashion.

  “Everybody, check your weapons, make sure you’re ready for whatever comes.” Lorillard didn’t elaborate, but they all knew there were very likely more than two security bots on the vast station. How many remained operational was more of a guess, but caution was definitely in order. Bots or no bots, there were two other ships in the system, and they could land at any time and board, just as Nightrunner’s crew had.

  They might have boarded already.

  Lorillard didn’t say anything else. He just nodded once, and then he went to the doorway and looked out cautiously into the corridor.

  Andi watched, suspecting the captain was wondering the same thing she was. What were they going to run into on the way back to the ship? And would their vessel still be there, intact, when they arrived?

  Lorillard looked once more in each direction, and then, he waved for the others to follow, and he stepped out, heading back the way they had come.

  Back to Nightrunner.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Free Trader Nightrunner

  Docked at Imperial Station

  Orbiting Zensoria, Osiron VI

  Year 301 AC

  “Clipper command, do you read? Clipper command, do you read?” The soldier had been sitting at the comm station for half and hour or more. Tyrell had watched, his surprise growing with every passing minute. There was no sign of anger or frustration in the man’s voice, despite the seemingly endless wall of static that had responded to his every attempt to contact his superiors.

  Tyrell knew the soldier wasn’t going to push his signal through. He’d spent an hour trying to reach the rest of Nightrunner’s crew, but he’d lost contact almost the instant they’d climbed through the airlock and out into the system. He’d blamed the problem at first, solely on the materials from which the station had been constructed. Nightrunner and its crew was no stranger to old imperial tech, and the difficulties modern scanners had in penetrating many of the materials was fairly well known.

  But there was something more at work, he knew. Clipper hadn’t had any problem contacting Nightrunner earlier, to issue its threats and command the crew to drop their power output. Something had changed. There was more at work than sophisticated ancient materials.

  The station was jamming them now.

  Tyrell wasn’t Nightrunner’s greatest tactician, but it didn’t take too much analysis to guess that the landing party had done something, triggered some kind of response from the defensive systems within. Was that good or bad? He didn’t know, but as he thought about it, he could feel ‘good’ slipping slowly away as an option. The station was by far the most intact imperial artifact he had ever seen, and the thought of any of its defensive capabilities turned against Nightrunner or the landing party left him with a cold feeling inside.

  “Clipper command, do you read? This is Epsilon-90874D, reporting in, requesting further instructions.”

  Tyrell had almost tuned the soldier out. After all, how many times could he listen to ‘Clipper command, do you read?’ But the soldier’s last statement gave him information, at least something new about his captors. They didn’t know what to do next. They’d been expecting some kind of orders, but the imperial jamming had prevented those from coming through. That had to be useful, an opportunity. But he couldn’t figure out how to exploit it.

  He’d spent the entire time since the two soldiers had taken charge of Nightrunner trying to devise some way to strike back, to regain control. He looked down at the small set of shackles that tied him to one of the ship’s structural supports. The chains were small and light, but he’d taken every chance his captors had given them to test the things with all his strength, to no avail. They were strong. He doubted even Gregor could have broken free of the things.

  Doc was also chained to one of the supports, and there was nothing within reach of either of them. Tyrell had more or less come to the conclusion that there was nothing he could do, that retaking Nightrunner would have to wait until the rest of the crew returned.

  If they returned.

  And, if they did, what would happen? His comrades were handy in a fight, but they wouldn’t be up against their like, other Badlands prospectors. The guns and armor the soldiers carried were military grade, all the way, and the view he’d gotten of the two to them had left no doubt.

  They were Foudre Rouge.

  Tyrell didn’t know much about the Union’s shock troops—save for general knowledge and legends—but he’d never really believed they were clones. At least until an hour before. The two soldiers in Nightrunner were exact copies of each other.

  They had to be Union soldiers. And that meant he—and the rest of his comrades—weren’t up against their normal rivals, other prospecting teams.

  They were facing Sector Nine out there…and the more he realized that, the more he was certain he had to find a way to break out.

  Because, otherwise, none of them had a chance in hell of getting home.

  * * *

  Andi hurriedly scrambled to a halt at the captain’s command, wobbling a bit before she righted herself. She was behind Gregor, which meant she couldn’t see anything but the vast expanse of his back.

  She didn’t know what was going on. Lorillard was at the head of the line. He’d been about to climb through the hatch, back out into the first corridor they’d traversed. She’d almost let herself become hopeful they would make it back without incident.

  Almost.

  Then the captain had ducked back, and snapped off a sharp, “Halt!”

  Andi peered around Gregor’s bulk, trying to get a glimpse of something, anything to tell her what was going on. She saw Lorillard pulling the hypervelocity assault rifle off his back.

  That told her a lot of what she needed to know, and she followed suit, bringing her own—admittedly less powerful—weapon to bear.

  “Who the hell are they, Cap?” It was Anna’s voice. She had been second in line, and Andi caught a glimpse of her peering around into corridor.

  And instant later, she heard gunfire. Not the loud crack of weapons like her own, but the higher-pitched whine of guns like the captain’s. That was a surprise. She’d never seen another civilian with a weapon like that before. They were not only difficult to find, they were massively illegal and incredibly expensive, especially on the black market.

  Who the hell would have one of those?

  Her palms grew moist, clammy. They were up against an enemy with front line military gear. What the hell was going on?

  Then she heard Lorillard, finally answering Anna’s question.

  “Those are Foudre Rouge,” he said. The words hit Andi hard, but even more jarring was the sound of fear in the captain’s voice.

  “Back, all of you. Now!” Lorillard had turned himself, and he was waving almost frantically, gesturing for them all to head back down the corridor. “Get into the side compartments, and get ready. Get ready to fight!”

  Andi had never heard Lorillard as shaken as he sounded just then. She was scared to death, but she was also alert, focused. She could almost feel the adrenalin flooding her bloodstream, and memories of all the training, the practice—the times she’d killed—flowed into her brain. She was ready to face any enemy.

  Andi Lafarge didn’t back down from a fight.

  But Foudre Rouge…

  She didn’t know much about the Union’s clone soldiers, at least not from personal experience. But the Marine had told her about the Foudre Rouge, and that moment had been the only time she’d seen real fear on his face. Her mentor had shared many things with her, spoken of his adventures, his comrades back in the day, the worlds he’d seen.

  But he’d only talked about the Union’s elite soldiers once in the three years she’d known him, and only then when he’d been in the middle of a particularly bad Blast trip.

  Much of what he’d said had been difficult to follow, yells and screams as she’d watched him reliving some past battle. But then he’d calmed some, became more coherent. He’d told her of the deadly warriors, the times he and his Marines had faced them. The Foudre Rouge were clones, he’d said. Everyone had heard that, of course, though she wondered how many truly believed it. She wasn’t sure she had until the Marine told her.

  They were created from over a hundred different cell lines, each one developed for a specific purpose—command, scouting, combat. They were raised from birth in quarantined crèches, conditioned for loyalty to the state, to ignore fear, to follow orders with suicidal disregard for any dangers.

  They were trained from childhood. The completed rigid physical development routines, ate fixed diets, learned the use of a dozen different weapons and styles of combat.

  Facing them would be nothing like a battle with other frontier adventurers. Their training, physical capabilities, equipment, were all far superior to anything Nightrunner’s crew had faced.

  But Andi shoved those concerns aside. You didn’t always get to choose your battles. There was no way out. The fight was on them. The Foudre Rouge lay between them and escape. They had to kill the enemy, or the enemy would kill them.

  That was an easy choice for Andi, if one that left her feeling a bit nauseous.

  She turned and raced back the corridor. She’d seen an open compartment not too far back. The hatch was big, large enough for at least two of them to take position. She knew enough from the Marine’s training that the positional advantage, at least, lay with them. They’d have time—she hoped—to get into place. Then, the Foudre Rouge would have to advance down the corridor, a tight, confined space, exposed to fire the entire time.

  She ducked back into the room, reaching out, grabbing the back of Gregor’s tunic and pulling the giant in after her. She didn’t want any of her comrades to get caught out in the hallway, but Gregor was the slowest of them all, and he would have been almost impossible for the enemy to miss.

  All his great bulk and muscular physique would be just so much raw meat against hypervelocity rounds.

  She leaned against the side of the doorway, bringing her rifle to bear, doing all she could to keep as much cover as she could. Her eyes were focused on the end of the corridor. All the others had passed by. She took a quick look behind, just to confirm they’d all gotten into one room or another. She could see the captain, just behind her position, and on the other side of the hall. His rifle was out. It was their best weapon by far, but she wondered how much ammunition he had left. The depleted uranium projectiles weren’t that much easier to get than the gun itself. Nor much cheaper.