She continued through the next door into the kitchen, where she could hear the conversations of the soldiers who apparently had already captured Tug and his wife.
“Do you know what they will say when we bring him in? Alive no less?” the voice came from the living room.
Jessica moved across the kitchen, coming to stop against the cabinets along the living room wall just beside the door.
“We’ll all be promoted at the very least! We may even be decorated by Caius himself!”
“Sir!” another voice spoke. “One of our snipers reports that two targets have entered the ship, and they’ve lost contact with Tobin.”
“Oh no, I will not have this moment taken from me,” the squad leader cursed. “Bring him!”
Jessica peeked through the crack in the door and saw them drag Tug out the front door of the house. She pushed the door open just enough to see Ranni lying dead on the floor of the living room, with no one else in the room.
“Is anybody on comms?” Vladimir’s voice came across Jessica’s comm-set.
“Vlad, is that you?” Jessica whispered.
“Yes, Jessica, I am here. Where are you?”
“Main house, in the kitchen. Where are you?”
“In a transfer shack, to your left, just in front of the house.”
The two soldiers dragged Tug out onto the front porch, stopping just short of the front edge. Their squad leader stood directly behind Tug, holding his hand gun at the back of Tug’s head.
“You! In the ship!” the squad leader yelled. “Come out or we kill him!”
“Can you see them?” Jessica asked Vladimir.
“Yes. There are three. One of them is the squad leader, I believe. They have Tug. They are holding him in front of them, on his knees. The leader has a gun to Tug’s head.”
“Where’s Nathan?”
“He is in Tobin’s ship, with Jalea. They are standing in the cargo doorway.”
“Does he have his comm-set on?”
“Yes, surprisingly.”
“I heard that,” Nathan chimed in.
“You guys take out Tobin?” Jessica asked.
“Yeah, Jalea did the honors,” Nathan answered.
“Nice,” Jessica said. “Vlad, how good a shot are you?”
“Very good.”
“Think you can take out the guy nearest you with a head shot?”
“No problem.”
The squad leader looked around as he waited. “I said come out! Or I will kill this man here and now!”
“Nathan, how about you? Think you can take out the one on the right with a head shot?”
“My right or your right?”
“My right, your left. Can you do it?”
“Uh, I don’t know,” Nathan admitted.
“You did qualify, didn’t you?”
“Of course,” Nathan defended. “And I scored quite well, I might add. I’ve just never had to kill anyone before.”
“Well, there’s a first time for everything, skipper. You gonna step up or what?” There was no answer. “Nathan?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m in.”
“Okay. Step out slowly. And both of you keep your weapons up and your safeties off. Let’s not make this anymore difficult than we have to.”
“We’re coming out!” Jalea yelled from the ship.
The squad leader smiled, confident that his bluff would work. Jalea was the first out, her hand gun held high pointed at the soldiers. Nathan was next, his automatic close-quarters weapon held high and tight against his shoulder, aimed at his assigned target, the soldier on the left. “What’s our signal to shoot?” Nathan whispered.
“My count guys. On three, repeat, on three.”
“Much better,” the squad leader said. “Now lower your weapons?”
“One,” Jessica started calmly.
“That would be unwise on our part,” Jalea responded.
“Two.”
“Not doing so would be equally unwise,” the squad leader argued. “Lower them, or he dies now.”
“Three.”
All three shots rang out simultaneously. Jessica’s round entered the back of the squad leader’s head, passed through his brain, and came out the front, bringing most of his face with it. Vladimir’s shot entered his target in the neck, just below the jaw under his helmet line, severing his carotid artery before it exploded his cervical vertebrae spewing blood, tissue, and bone fragments all over Tug and the squad leader standing behind him. Nathan’s shot, much to his own surprise, entered dead in the center of his targets face shield, shattering the bridge of his nose as it entered his brain, passed through and exploded the back side of his helmet, which was not designed to protect against objects trying to get out. All three soldiers dropped to the porch in dead heaps, the squad leader most dramatically as his lifeless body tumbled forward over the still kneeling farmer.
The compound became eerily still, the only sounds being the idling engines of Tobin’s ship and the hum of the overhead shield. To that was soon added the sound of Deliza’s cries as she ran across the compound to be by her father’s side, despite the blood and bodies.
“Are we clear?” Jessica’s voice asked over Nathan’s comm-set. “Nathan?” she repeated. “Are we clear?” Nathan lowered his weapon as Deliza fell into Tug’s arms, weeping.
“Yeah, we’re clear,” Nathan answered. “All three targets are down. Tug’s fine.”
Jalea placed her hand on Nathan’s shoulder as she holstered her weapon. “The best of men are sometimes called upon to do the worst of things,” she told him before she walked away to join Tug and Deliza.
Nathan watched her walk to the porch, where she met Jessica and took Tug’s youngest daughter into her arms. Nathan could see the anguish in Tug’s face, and knew that his wife had not survived.
Vladimir walked past the bodies, taking note of their wounds as he passed them on his way to Nathan. “Nice shot, Nathan. To be honest, I did not think you had it in you.”
“Neither did I,” he admitted.
Suddenly, there was a loud crack that caused the ground to shake and the overhead shield to flash a blinding yellow-white. Nathan and the others instinctively ducked, as if they were expecting the very sky to come crashing down upon them. The noise came again and again, each time nearly knocking them off their feet as the blinding flashes repeated above them.
Another ship, dark gray with black trim and no markings flew over their heads less than one hundred meters above them as it continued bombarding them from above.
“They’re trying to drain the shields!” Vladimir yelled above the din.
“They cannot,” Tug assured them as he got to his feet. “They can fire a thousand times, it will not weaken.”
The enemy ship, satisfied that no one was returning fire, began to hover a hundred meters above the shield as it continued its bombardment.
“Maybe not!” Nathan said. “But as long as that ship is up there, we’re not getting out of here either!”
The ship, realizing the futility of its efforts to break the shield, instead turned its fire toward the edges of the sinkhole, pounding away at the ground. The walls of the sinkhole shook violently with each blast. Soon, large chunks began to shake free, falling onto the greenhouses below and shattering their glass roofs.
“What are they doing?” Nathan asked.
“They’re trying to collapse the walls!” Jessica cried out.
“If they collapse the right sections, they will take out some of the emitters!” Tug warned. “When enough of them are gone, the shield will lose its integrity and collapse!”
“We’ve gotta get outta here!” Nathan ordered. “Everyone into the ship!”
“That ship will blast us out of the air the minute we take off!” Jessica objected.
“On the ground we’ve got zero chance! Up there, well, it’s better than nothing!” he pleaded.
“All right, you heard the captain! Everybody on board!” Jessica barked.
“We’re entering orbit around Haven now,” Cameron reported from the helm. “How far behind us is that warship?”
“By the time we come back around Haven, she’ll have guns on us,” Ensign Mendez advised from the tactical station.