Fighting For Their Mate. Grace Goodwin
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door.
I picked up my pace. “Dorian. It’s Mills. What’s going on down there?”
“Hive blew the door. We’re holding, but they hit half of us already. We won’t last long.”
“How many?” I started to run, my team falling in line at the urgency we could all hear in the pilot’s voice. Dorian Kanakor was a big, golden son-of-a-bitch and one of the best pilots in our sector. He had a cousin and a brother in Battlegroup Karter as well, all three of them like giant lions when they entered a room. Golden hair, golden skin and yellow eyes, and the eldest, Dorian’s brother Xanthe, with a permanent scowl on his face.
“At least twelve. Probably more. Double that transported in, but we took out at least six and the rest went to the control deck.” Where they could alter the ship’s course and upload Hive contaminated programming into the ship’s systems.
“Fuck.” That was Jack, and I didn’t have the heart to chastise him because I felt the exact same way.
“Soldiers or Scouts?” I asked.
“Soldiers and...” The long pause made me nervous and I blinked the sting of sweat out of my eyes.
“And?”
“They have an Atlan. Well, what’s left of one.”
That just wasn’t fucking possible. My entire team froze in place for a heartbeat, two. We were all dead if what he said was true. “Is he in beast mode?”
“Not yet.”
“Roger that.” I didn’t know if the Earth slang would translate well or not, nor did I care as I turned to my team. “Set the charges now. Ten minutes.”
No one argued. We either got through to the Prillon crew or we didn’t. But either way, a captured Atlan beast turned Hive? He had to die. This ship, and everyone on it, must be destroyed.
I met and held the gaze of every man and the one woman on my team. Counted them off one by one, waited for their nod. When I hit my own detonator—the only remote one that would set off the entire interconnected set—the clock would start ticking.
Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath, opened them and used my gaze to select the proper command in my visor display. A tap on my wrist activated the countdown, the numbers popping up in red in the corner of everyone’s display. A countdown.
“Check your weapons. Everything on max. I don’t care if we blow a hole in the side of this fucking ship. The Hive aren’t getting off.” I yelled the orders and moved at a run once again, racing to confront our enemies, feeding my unit the plan as we hustled. “I’m going in low, on the left, with Jack. Two men on the right. I’ll throw the DPG and then we open fire, pull back. The rest of you hold back until we draw them down to the first turn in the corridor. We’ll lure them away from the Prillon crew and pick them off in the smaller side corridor.”
Beside me, Jack’s face was grim. “And if he goes beast?”
Jack knew the answer to his own question, but our entire unit needed to hear it. “We keep the integrated Atlan busy until the charges blow. Whatever happens, no one gets past us. Are we clear?” The experimental DPG, Disruption Prototype Grenade, was so new, we would be the first to use it. The Coalition Intelligence Core had gotten their hands on some new Hive tech, tech my friend Meghan had taken from the skull of a blue freak in a cave during the battle on Latiri 4. I didn’t know much, and she couldn’t tell me more, but I was willing to try anything to get my soldiers off this ship alive.
“Crystal.” That smoky, sultry voice belonged to Trinity, the only woman on my team, a hardworking, hard-playing Brit from somewhere around London. She’d been with me for two months and I didn’t know her story. I didn’t bother to learn their stories anymore. I’d lost so many soldiers to the fucking Hive, learning the details just made it hurt more when they died. Near as I could figure, I lost about a third of the team every few months.
The odds of going home were pretty much zero, and we all knew it. How I’d survived for so long, I would never understand. The other ReCon teams had started calling me Nine, as in nine lives, like a cat. I knew the truth. I’d been lucky. When the Hive took me the first time, my sister, Sarah, and her beast had come for me and dragged me out of hell. After that, I’d been more cautious, more meticulous in my planning. But nothing I did saved everyone. They all thought I was a lucky charm. Everyone wanted to be on ReCon 3.
“You’re out of time, Mills.” Captain Dorian’s voice was harsh and a roar reverberated through the corridor with such force that the vibrations passed through my chest like a clap of thunder.
“Holy shit.” That was Trinity, and she spoke for all of us. The Atlan had gone beast. A cyborg enhanced, Hive controlled, beast.
“Keep your shit together, people. Ion blasters will take him down. We’ll take them all down.”
“Not without dying, we won’t,” Trinity said.
“We’re all going to fucking die anyway, Trin. So shut the fuck up and do your job.” That was Jack, my second-in-command, and that hardcore order was the reason. “Unless you want that beast getting back to the Karter and taking out the whole goddamned world.”
Battlegroup Karter was a collection of ten military and civilian ships holding this sector of space from Hive advancement. More than five thousand warriors plus civilian support staff, mates and children lived under Commander Karter’s protection. And we served Karter. “These bastards aren’t getting anywhere near the Karter.” We spoke specifically of the main battleship where we were stationed, but the nickname covered the entire group. My voice was a snarl but it calmed everyone down just in time.
Another roar.
One more turn. Thirty steps. Maybe less.
I motioned the bulk of my team to stay back and ran forward with Jack and two others on my right. DPG in my left hand, blaster rifle in my right.
“Low.” I yelled as I slid down onto one knee and threw the DPG. “Fire in the hole!”
The Prillon warriors were close enough that I heard them shout and take cover. The Hive…I had no idea what the Hive did because my men and I were crouched on the other side of the turn, ears covered. Waiting for a blast that never came.
“One-one-thousand. Two-one-thousand. Three-one-thousand.” Jack counted out as we waited.
Nothing.
“Well, we can officially tell the IC that was a bloody dud,” Trinity’s clipped British accent was icing on the cake.
Swinging around with my rifle, I took a look. The Hive were doubled over in silent screams, hands covering their ears. Two vomited, several stumbled into one another. They were disoriented and scrambling, confused. The DPG was working…on the Hive.
Except the beast wasn’t affected. He stood, hands in fists at his sides, staring me straight in the eye. Shaking. He was shaking, but not reacting as the other Hive were. I couldn’t explain the way the DPG worked and I didn’t want to take the time now to figure it out. But, it was obvious it was set up to fuck with those fully integrated and the beast’s response proved there was still some Atlan left.
Jack peeked around behind me and yelled for the others. “Take them all out. Now. Shoot to kill. Open fire.”
The rest of the unit raced up the corridor behind us and it was like shooting fish in a barrel. The beast took a hit to his shoulder. His leg. His hip. The rest of the Hive Soldiers, mostly Prillon warriors converted by their evil Integration Units into Hive servants, were going down easy. But not the beast. Killing an Atlan in beast mode was difficult, but I’d never seen one take so many direct hits and stay on his feet. Hell, he acted like we were shooting paint balls at him.
I didn’t want to kill the beast, but I had no doubt, if he were in his right mind, he’d prefer death to the condition he was in now. I’d been a Hive prisoner, faced the possibility of being turned into a mindless drone. The reality