Lee comm'd Chen. “Corporal, lead them to the extraction zone. I’ll be along shortly.”
“Will do, Lieutenant.”
He watched them leave. All the while the man just stood and stared.
“Get a good look,” Lee said. “I’m going to be the last thing you ever see.”
The man smiled. “I am Ryler Kane.”
“I don’t really care who you are.” Lee said.
“I thought you should know the name of the man who is going to kill you. Your friend Avery won’t get far. He’s a weak one. But you, I don’t think you’d break as easily or as quickly as he did.”
Lee and the man circled each other.
“Your feeble taunts won’t stir me to stupidity, but I am going to hurt you for what you’ve done.”
The man smiled. Lee didn’t blink and yet he almost missed it.
Kane rolled and pounced with a forward kick towards Lee’s groin. Lee managed to slip a foot in the way barely, but the strike knocked him onto his back foot.
Before Lee could shift his weight and recover, the man swept his legs out from under him. He was staring at the sky. His vision blurred. A strike to his face dazed him but also infuriated him. He lashed out with his bionic arm at the man’s head.
The man dodged and rolled away.
Kane pulled a slim two-foot object from his back. He waved it both ways, and it extended into a staff. Lee sighed.
At least it’s not sword.
The man moved in swinging. Lee blocked one strike near his face, another at his stomach, and wham! His face went numb. Another strike knocked him over again.
Kane grinned and circled slowly. Lee braced on one knee and spit blood.
“First the enclave you call the Terran Union will burn,” he said, as he brought the staff down toward Lee’s head.
Lee rolled sideways.
Kane swung again, Lee blocked it with his arm. He kicked at the man’s legs as he’d overreached, but the man skirted over his kick and backed away.
“Then we’ll deploy another wormhole device at another location and strike. Your fleets can’t be everywhere.”
Lee charged. The man side-stepped and struck Lee’s back. Lee charged again, swinging and kicking, the man pivoted and weaved, dodging each strike.
Lee breathed hard.
Just one lash with his favorite arm . . . but this goon moved too fast. Must be some kind of enhancement drug. The same kind banned by the United Systems.
Lee tried again.
This time while dodging, Kane flicked the staff around behind him while ducking beneath a strike from Lee’s arm, and cracked Lee in the right side of his head.
Lee went down.
The man pounced on top. Before Lee could react, the man slapped his bionic arm with a scrambler. It fell useless to the ground.
One of Kane’s knees pinned Lee’s flesh and blood arm, and his other knee crushed Lee’s throat.
Kane bared his teeth, leaning in close. “What’s that? Can’t quite hear you.”
The pressure increased. The man was going to crush his neck.
His chest felt like it would explode. Lee squirmed his flesh arm under the weight of the man who seemed content to ignore it. Lee choked—he vision started to go black.
“We’ll open a wormhole to Earth, or Rigel.”
Lee stirred.
Kane carried on with his Sunday morning sermon. “We’re not interested in terms. Your generation has ended. I don’t know how the others feel about letting you scurry into uncharted space on what ships you have . . . just as you did my ancestors. Maybe we could have a great hunt.”
The man was a good fighter. Best he’d ever seen. Lee hadn’t landed a blow. And Kane loved to talk, it seemed. He must have been a preacher in another life.
But Lee’s flesh hand reached what he’d been squirming for. He gurgled trying to speak again. The pressure on his neck eased slightly.
“Any last words, my United Fleet friend?”
“I told you . . . I’d be the last thing . . . you ever saw.”
The grappler spear discharged and impaled Kane through the chest. He dropped the staff, and stumbled back, mouth gaping.
Lee crawled to his feet and ripped the scrambler off his bionic arm. Kane had a mortal wound but still had life in him. He swiped for Lee, much slower now. Lee struck the man’s arm with his bionic arm, shattering the bones.
Kane yowled.
Lee grabbed the man’s other hand and crushed the bones in it. He slammed his boot in the man’s chest and he fell flat on his back.
Lee bent and smashed a fist into the man’s other arm in the area of the elbow. Lee leaned right into Kane’s face gripped his neck and slammed his forehead into the man’s nose. A satisfying bone crunch. “You should’ve opened your wormhole somewhere else, asshole.”
Lee chucked him at a fatal velocity into the near base wall.
He retrieved his grappler and sprinted off.
Chapter 29 – The Race is not For the Swift
“Yuri, bring our people home” – Aaron Rayne
Phoenix
Aaron wanted to kick himself.
Perhaps the fancy capabilities of Phoenix made him complacent with tactics. The ORA captain anticipated he’d try that maneuver again and dropped some mines in his wake. While veering off from the last attack run, they maneuvered close to one of them.
Fortunately, Aaron had retracted the railguns into the hull to protect them as they passed close to the dreadnought, so those were intact. However, the point defense batteries in the forward section were obliterated, and the forward armor plating had a hole the size of a small fighter craft.
The forward sections sealed and prevented the rest of the ship from blasting apart from the stress forces.
They seemed to be jabbing the dreadnought, while the dreadnought had delivered an uppercut, now Phoenix wobbled.
Environmental systems extinguished plasma fires in the forward sections. The others were vented to prevent the spread. Emergency bulkheads slammed in place and force fields sealed tiny micro-breaches from other impacts from high-speed debris.
Aaron hadn’t been idle. The scans pinpointed the most likely caches of missile ordnance. The caches had to be close to the superstructure of the vessel to allow for easy reloading of the missile batteries, not buried deep in the ship—where they’d have to be carried—or moved on some elaborate conveyance. Missiles weren’t small.
He reacquired the firing solution on the missile caches the computer located.
If he could eliminate those, and keep his distance, they might just be able to hang in there until the others signaled. If there was no objective on the planet, he’d have disengaged long ago. Space combat wasn’t an honor duel, sticking around to the death. If you found yourself outmatched, before you took a disabling blow, you lit your engines and headed for the hills.
Or whatever counted for hills in space.
“Ensign, maintain our distance. Firing solution is laid in. We’re going to use the remaining havocs and defang that thing.”
“Aye, Commander. I’ll make adjustments as needed on the attack run, while trying not to compromise your shot. I’ll of course abort if necessary.”
Phoenix once again lined up for a pass.
The comm flashed. It was the insertion team.
“Phoenix, Commander, respond.”
“I hear you, Lee, barely,” Aaron said. “Things are rough up here. Lots of interference.” In more ways than one.