“Quasar, any luck with the elevators?”

  “Still working on it. You don’t sound like you’re in too much trouble yet.”

  “Not yet, but I wouldn’t mind some backup down here. Or my boots, at least. Did you recover Meg?”

  “We did. Leo’s bringing her back to Head Case now. He was in tears when he saw her unconscious like that.”

  “Poor guy. I’m leaving Usari’s office now. Be careful when you get down here, the glass Matt shot out is letting a lot of water crash into the hallway. You need to time it so you don’t get smashed against a wall.”

  “Got it. We’ll take care when we get there.”

  “Gia, how far am I from the stairwell?”

  “You’re about halfway, Ben,” she replied. “Go to the end of the hallway and make a left. Then a right. Enter the third door on your left. Go straight to the end. Make a left, then a right. The stairs are behind the door at the end of the passageway.”

  I glanced at Shaq on my shoulder. “Did you get all that, bud?”

  “Me?” he replied. “What about you?”

  “Why else did I bring you along? You can’t even kill the bad guys for me.”

  He stuck his tongue out at me, laughing. “Left, right, third door, left, right, end.”

  “I knew you could do it.”

  “Because I’m smarter than you.”

  “That you are,” I agreed.

  I followed Gia’s directions, pausing at the junctions to look around the corner before continuing on toward the stairwell. If I was lucky, the four additional Aleal I had taken out were the bulk of the reinforcements and I would only find maybe one or two more guards keeping an eye on Hiro down below. While I wasn’t normally that fortunate, I tried to stay positive as I reached the corridor that held the third door on the left part of the directions. Leaning my head out slightly, I saw the hallway remained clear, the door in question hanging open. It was a good sign.

  I came fully around the corner, leading the way with my rifle. A growing sense of unease gnawed at me as I advanced toward the door. I couldn’t pinpoint it, but something about the scene felt off.

  I didn’t notice the Aleal stretched out against the ceiling until it moved, dropping on top of me before I could react. The weight knocked me to the floor, its opacity blocking out the light and my air. Spiked protrusions pressed into my coat, and a cry tore from my throat as they stabbed through my pants, puncturing my legs. I pushed the Aleal, throwing it off me and back down the corridor. I tried to stand, the damage to my calves dropping me to my knees.

  “Behind you!” Shaq warned. I looked back to see that my opponent had retaken its humanoid shape. I pushed it backward before it could run me through with its lance-shaped arm.

  “Zar,” I gritted out, still on my knees, the pain excruciating. “I’m in trouble now.”

  “You just said you were fine two minutes ago,” she replied.

  “What are you doing, taking a cigarette break or something?”

  The Aleal found his feet and came at me again. I swung my arm up— barely able to pull the trigger, never mind aim—and loosed a stream of plasma bolts. I wasted the first few rounds, hitting the wall and ceiling before striking the target with the last few, all with little effect. I pushed again, creating some separation between. As I prepared to push him, a second Aleal came through the open stairwell door. Spinning on my knee, I faced him as he turned his rifle in my direction.

  I didn’t expect to get lucky, but this was ridiculous.

  “Zar, I need some backup…like right now,” I complained.

  “Working on it,” she replied. “Hang in there.”

  “Easy for you to say,” I grumbled, activating absorb just in time. The Aleal's plasma bolts hit my shield only centimeters from my face. The flare so bright nearly blinded me. He continued shooting, keeping me engaged while the other one recovered and came at me from my flank.

  I dropped my rifle and enhanced my strength, squinting to block the glare of the absorbed bolts. Timing was everything.

  I caught sight of the flanker's approach in my peripheral vision as his barbed tentacles lashed out. Shaq hopped out of the way just before he struck me in both shoulders, my coat saving me from injury. I looked forward again. Before it took my head off, a sweep of my hand dispersed the energy of another plasma bolt coming straight for me. The heat of it seared my ear on the way past me, leaving it burning with pain.

  The wave of dispersed energy tore into both Aleal. I had a little good fortune on my side because it ripped into the vital mass of the one behind me, eliminating it. The one in front of me stumbled. I pushed off with my hand, slamming my weight into it. We tumbled down together, rolling into the bottom step of the stairwell landing. From behind me, Shaq charged onto the landing, leaping onto the surviving Aleal’s face, clawing at its eyes to keep it from mutating into its golem form.

  I pressed my hand against its chest and activated separate, wincing in disgust as fissures opened up in the alien’s chest and then spread until it lost its see-through opacity, allowing me to see the vital sack. With enhanced strength, I pushed my hand into it, grabbed the dark mass, and squeezed, the Aleal's dying scream abruptly cut short.

  A third armed Aleal, a golem, ran down the steps toward me. Before it could fire at me, a barrage of plasma bolts poured into it from above. The Aleal cried out and dropped dead at my feet.

  Emerald poked her head over the stairwell banister, and like a ghost this time, shouted, “Boo!”

  With my desperate fight for life over, I started laughing.

  CHAPTER 41

  “Glad you could make it,” I said, shifting to a sitting position on the steps while I waited for the wounds in my legs to heal. Emerald plopped down beside me, putting her head on my shoulder.

  “Glad you’re not perished,” she replied before noticing the dead Aleal. “Ewww. Disgusting blob. I’ve never seen an alien like that before.”

  “I told you about Alter and her kind. This is one of them, in its natural state.”

  “Oh. I didn’t mean Alter was disgusting. Just this one because it tried to kill you. I saw another one back by the elevator that looked like it had been pressed like a grape. I thought maybe I was right about there being wine in the storage area. I guess not.”

  “Ben,” Quasar said, coming down the steps, Ixitat right behind her, the pair joining us after checking the other two Aleal to make sure they were dead. “Sorry we’re late.”

  “Actually, you're right on time,” I replied as she handed me my boots. “Thanks.” I used excite to dry my socks before pulling them on.

  “Bensss." Ixy squeezed around Zar, tousling my hair with her forelimbs. "Wasss worried. Legsss.” She pointed at the holes in my pants.

  “I can feel restore healing them,” I said. “I’ll be fine in a minute or two.”

  Emerald stood up, shouldering her rifle. “I’ll keep an eye on things at the bottom of the steps.”

  “Me too,” Shaq said, crossing to her shoulder. Zar took Emerald’s place beside me, and Ixy squeezed over Quasar to guard the top of the steps.

  “I didn’t want Matt to hear me say it,” Zar said, keeping her voice low, "but Head Case is in rough shape. Shields are practically gone. We lost a sensor array and one of the cannons, and Grizz said another cannon is pretty much fried. Any shot could be its last.”

  “But you made it,” I pointed out. “And saved my life. Twice now.”

  “That’s what friends are for,” she replied. “Matt pulled off some pretty fancy flying. It’s like he downloaded your brain. Honestly, we’re lucky to be alive at all. That’s why I didn’t want him to hear me. My point is, there’s no way Head Case can go anywhere near a fight in the shape she’s in. If we do find Hiro down here, after you get him back to Atlas, we can’t follow.”

  “I wasn’t counting on Matt coming right behind me, but I was expecting him to come,” I said. “Dryka should be at Atlas with Keep. I won’t be stranded planetside. How long to affect repairs?”

  “Grizz said we don’t have the stock to fix the amount of damage to the shield nodes. We need to stop off somewhere. That’s going to cost us time.”

  “How much time?”

  “I don’t know. I’m hoping Meg and Leo might be able to patch something together, but we won’t know that until she wakes up. Otherwise, the nearest place we can procure supplies is a few days from Atlas. The only good news is that it’s also where we left the Avenger.”

  “That would be good news if Druck were still around to pilot it,” I said. “At this point, maybe we can sell it for the stuff we do need.”

  “After what happened here, I think we should have kept the Sanguine gunship instead of gifting it to Dryka. Maybe we should trade the Avenger for a replacement.”

  “It’s worth considering,” I agreed.

  Emerald came back up the steps. “Are you healed yet? Standing around like this is boring.”

  I pulled myself to my feet, bouncing on the step a couple of times to make sure my repaired muscles would support the weight. “Good to go,” I announced. “Ixy, we’re moving.”

  She came back down the steps as Quasar and I trailed Emerald to the bottom. I thought I had landed at the halfway point of the stairwell, but it turned out the bottom level was another thirty feet below Usari’s office. A thick, secured blast door prevented us from advancing any further.

  “I get the feeling they don’t want us to steal their peanuts,” Emerald said.

  “Or anything else,” I added. “Gia, can you get us past this door?”

  “Standby,” she replied.

  We waited at the bottom of the steps for nearly a minute before I ran out of patience. “What’s taking so long?”

  “This door has tighter security than any of the others. I’ll get it, but it’ll take a little more time. They’re not going to out-process me.”

  “That’s the spirit!” Emerald cheered.

  “Ben,” Matt said, his tight voice revealing his bad news before he spilled it. “We’ve got a problem. A Royal Sentry just dropped out of hyperspace.”

  “How the hell did they get here so fast?” I replied.

  “They had to be nearby,” Quasar said. “Waiting for a signal.”

  “Of course Blorb had backup for his backup,” I said.

  “They’re already launching fighters,” Matt continued. “And what looks like dropships. You need to get back to Head Case. We have to get out of here. We can’t take on a Sentry and its assets, especially in Head Case’s condition.”

  “Maybe if we had a zouchem crystal and the Star of Caprum,” I said softly, cursing the tides of fate for shifting away from us again. Raising my voice, I fought to keep it steady. “Matt, you need to get to safety. Now.”

  “What? I’m not leaving you here.”

  “You have to. Like you said, you’re in no condition to fight back. And we wouldn’t be able to get back to you in time even if we wanted to, which we don’t.”

  “We don’t?” Emerald asked.

  “No. I’d bet my life Prince Hiro is somewhere behind that door. We’re not leaving until we either rescue him or we can be completely sure he isn’t there.”

  “We’re not?”

  “No. Matt, go. I can transit the rest of us back to Atlas. Get Head Case out of there. Take the ship for repairs and wait to hear from me."”

  “Ben, what if you don’t have the strength left to transit? What if you need another way out?”

  “I can’t retreat to Head Case if Head Case is destroyed by the Royal Guard, can I?”

  Matt growled into the comms. “Damn it, Ben. Why do we keep getting separated like this?”

  “Because the universe can’t handle so much awesome in one place,” I replied.

  His frustration turned to laughter. “I’m going to convince myself that’s really why. Okay, man. I’m lifting off now. I think I can make it past the Sentry if I copy the maneuver Alter used on Kasper.”

  “Okay. Good luck. Try to comm back right before you go hyper.”

  “I will. Good hunting, Ben. I hope you find Hiro. I’ll see you again soon. I promise.”

  “I promise too.”

  “That’s an iffy promise to make,” Emerald said.

  “I’ll do whatever it takes to keep it,” I replied.

  “Open sesame,” Gia said. A thunk echoed from the blast door’s locking mechanism, and it slowly swung open.

  CHAPTER 42

  The blast door led into a short corridor followed immediately by a second thick metal door. Only that one was already open. The cavernous room beyond it, which was vaguely outlined by dim, equidistant lights along the edges of the floor, appeared to be a power generation room filled with machinery. Pipes and conduits connected each machine with the one next to it, except where a wide passageway ran down the center of the room. Whatever lay beyond was obscured in darkness.

  Since they didn’t need eyes to navigate in their natural forms, I was certain the Aleal had intentionally turned off any overhead lights. They were probably hoping they could put us at a disadvantage.

  “Can Gia turn on the lights in there?” I asked Quasar.

  She didn’t have a chance to respond before large overhead lights flashed on, revealing the mess of machinery, pipes, and wires in more detail. The enemy had hidden well enough the light didn’t make a difference.

  “Ben,” Matt said through our comms. “Dropships are nearing the surface. They’ll be at the facility in a few minutes.”

  “Copy that, Matt."

  From behind me, I felt the weight of Quasar's hand on my shoulder. "If we don’t take out the Aleal in a hurry," she said, "we’ll be sandwiched between them and the Royal Marines.

  “Only if they have orders to go in,” I said. “Why would Blorb want them to storm Usari’s property? If they see Hiro here, and he tells them the truth, it’s game over.”

  “Not if he anticipated that happening,” Emerald said. “Maybe he already told them Hiro is here, and that we’re here because we’re the ones who had him kidnapped. Maybe Hiro doesn’t know what the people who took him look like. Maybe it could be us. Or you. I wasn’t there, unfortunately.”

  “You’re saying this whole thing is a trap?”

  “Not in the sense that he intended for us to make it here. But he seems to have accounted for the possibility that we might.”

  “Always a step ahead,” I mumbled before raising my voice. “Matt, are you free and clear?”

  “Not completely, but it’s looking go—oh shit!”

  “Matt?” I said, sharing his surprise. “Matt!”

  “I’m here. The Sentry just started firing on us, and the fighters are redirecting our way. It’s going to be a little dicier than I thought.”

  “You promised,” I reminded him.

  “So did you. I’ll make it out.”

  I gritted my teeth, lamenting once again the loss of my phone on Bushara. At least with it, I would be able to see what was happening. All I could do now was wait and worry.

  “We need to keep pushing ahead,” Quasar said. “We don’t want to get caught between a rock and a hard place.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed.

  “Ixy, Shaq, scout ahead, but be careful.”

  “Yesss,” Ixy agreed as she scurried toward the power generation room.

  Shaq hopped off my shoulder and followed behind her, the two of them breaking from the main passage to either side of the room to look for the enemy. Quasar and Emerald shouldered their rifles. I kept my hand up and my construct active, ready to react. But I had to be extra careful with my use of it, now that transiting was the only way we were going to make it off Cicana both alive and not in handcuffs.

  “Ben…we're cl…r,” Matt said over the comms, his voice choppy and mixed with static as he moved away from Starbright’s relay. “Leo’s prep…the hyp… drive now. We…”

  The transmission went to full static at the same time a dull rumble passed through the facility's bedrock. I knew right away the incoming Royal Marines had just blown Starbright to smithereens, ruining our comms link with Head Case. A cold chill washed over me. Now, I wouldn’t know for sometime if he made it out alive or not.

  I had to believe he would.

  “Bensss,” Ixy whispered softly through the comms. “Sees threess.”

  “Three targets?”

  “Yesss.”

  And she was only on one side of the huge room. Shaq couldn’t radio back, but he was also more stealthy than Ixy. He came running out of the room and leaped onto my shoulder.

  “How many, bud?”

  “Two,” he buzzed back. “Well hidden. Maybe more.”

  “I’m going with more, just in case.” I turned to Quasar and Emerald. "You need to destroy their internal control cluster. Alter always called it a vital sack. They can’t live without it. But it can be anywhere inside their bodies.”

  “So you can cut off their head and they’ll keep going?” Emerald asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, that’s annoying.”

  “Sure is. We’d do better killing them with conventional rifles.”

  “Maybe," Quasar said, "but we’d have a higher likelihood of puncturing something in there that could turn deadly.”

  “We need a plan of attack,” Emerald added. “Something smart.”

  “Do you have an idea?”

  She tapped on her chin as Ixy emerged from the room and returned to our position near the door. Obviously, the Aleal had no desire to come at us in the open. Why should they? If we wanted Hiro, we needed to get through that room where they had the advantage. And with the Royal Marines on their way, we couldn’t dally here for long.

  “Clock’s ticking,” Quasar said. “No pressure.”

  “Why is this on me?” Emerald complained.

  “Because you belonged to that super genius think tank,” Quasar explained. “So put aside the crazy for a minute and give us something.”

  “Or you’ll never get to see your son again,” I added, hoping that would motivate her more.

  Her face lit up right after I said it. She dropped into a cross-legged sitting position on the floor, placed her rifle across her lap, pulled a multitool from her pocket and started taking the weapon apart.