Excelsior (50 page)

For his part, Alexander’s goals were much less ambitious. The only thing he wanted was to rescue his wife and then leave the navy so that he could get down to the business of living the allied dream that navy recruiters had sold him more than a decade ago. If he was lucky, maybe McAdams would still be available. If not… he was immortal now, so eventually he’d find someone to start a life with.

Alexander sighed and then covered a yawn with one hand. Suddenly the news program playing on the holoscreen at the foot of his bed caught his attention. The headline read, Breaking News Admiral Wilson’s Shocking Confession.

Alexander frowned, wondering what Wilson had done now. The man was dead, and he was still making headlines. Wilson’s face appeared next, with his trademark white hair. Alexander saw his lips moving, but his words were too soft to hear. Alexander was about to gesture at the screen to raise the volume when his comm band trilled with an incoming call.

Frowning, he lifted the band to his lips to accept the call. It was from Captain Tristan of the Hancock.

“Admiral!” Tristan breathed, sounding out of breath.

Excitement stirred butterflies to life in Alexander’s gut, and suddenly he forgot all about whatever the late Admiral Wilson had to say.

“What is it, Captain?” Alexander asked.

“The colonists. We’ve found them. We have a platoon of automechs securing their location now. We’re about to send the quadcopters to bring them in.”

“I’ll be right there,” Alexander said, already flying out of bed. “Tell them to save a seat for me. I want to be there when they’re rescued.”

“Sir, I strongly advise against—”

“I wasn’t asking for permission, Captain. I’m going.”

“Yes, sir.”

 

Chapter 50

Alexander reached the flight deck already dressed in a full two hundred pounds of powered combat armor. A dozen quadcopters were on the deck, their rotors spinning with a thunderous thump-thump-thumping. Navy SEALs rushed every which way in matching gray combat armor. Drones hovered up and away like a swarm of locusts.

Thanks to his powered armor, Alexander felt his steps light and too fast. It was like stepping off a treadmill after running for an hour—the world went by in a blur. Ambassador Carter ran beside him, huffing and puffing to keep up.

“Admiral, you can’t risk yourself like this. You are far too valuable to the Alliance.”

“I’m going, Carter. You can’t stop me. This was the president’s end of the deal, remember?”

“What are you going to accomplish by going with them?” Carter yelled at him to be heard above the noise of rotors and the amplified voices of platoon leaders snapping orders at their troops. “You’re not a SEAL! You’re a starship captain!”

“This discussion is over,” Alexander replied, his voice magnified by the external speakers in his helmet.

“You think the enemy is going to pass up the chance to kill Alexander, the Lion of Liberty?”

Alexander rounded on the ambassador and planted an armored palm against the other man’s chest. Carter bounced away violently and shot him an angry look. “Watch it! You could have broken my ribs!”

“Then maybe you should get back below decks before you get hurt. You think I don’t know how to handle myself on the ground just because I’ve been sitting in an acceleration couch for the past ten years?”

“You’re not trained for this,” Carter insisted. “You’re—” Carter’s comm band trilled with an incoming call and he answered it. “Hello? Mr. President, it’s a pleasure to… I see. Yes… I understand. I’ll be there as soon as I can. No, one of the jets can take me. It’ll be faster. Alexander? I’m here with him now. Yes, I’ll tell him.”

“What was that about?” Alexander asked, his curiosity piqued.

“You have to come with me. We have a situation developing, and the president needs you to join him immediately.”

Alexander snorted and shook his head. “Whatever it is, it can wait.”

“It can’t.”

“Yes, it can. Rescuing my wife was my condition for joining your devil’s advocacy program, and if you don’t live up to it, I sure as hell won’t live up to my end of things. I’ll see you when I get back.” Alexander turned on his heel and jogged away.

“Admiral!” Carter screamed after him. “You’ll be court-martialed for this!”

“Good!” Alexander roared back. “Saves me the trouble of deserting!”

*

The quadcopters set down in the middle of a paddy field full of Confederate farmers wearing conical rice hats. Alliance corsair-class automechs stood all around the perimeter of the field, their cannons tracking land and sky.

Inside Alexander’s quadcopter, buckles clattered and clacked as the SEALs stepped out of their docking stations. The team commander called out, “Let’s go! Let’s go! Double time!”

Alexander rushed out the back of his quadcopter amidst the thump-thump-thumping of giant rotors. Data streamed into his helmet via comms and colorful heads-up displays. Friendly soldiers were highlighted green, names and ranks floating up above their helmets as they ran out the back of the quadcopter and splashed through the paddy fields. Their armor shimmered, adaptive camouflage changing from gunmetal gray to jungle greens.

“Admiral, please stick close to me,” Commander Vargas said over comms. “Your safety and that of the missing colonists is my top priority.”

Alexander nodded and commed back, “Roger.”

He armed his suit’s integrated weapons and set his shoulder-mounted cannons to auto-fire on incoming drones, grenades, and AP rockets. The automechs already had a good perimeter secured, but there was always a chance that something might slip through. Carter might be a pain in the ass, but he was right about one thing—the chance to kill Alexander, the Lion of Liberty was too tempting to pass up.

Here’s hoping they don’t know I’m here, he thought, watching as a dozen platoons rushed out into the paddy field amidst confused and shell-shocked rice farmers.

Alexander ran behind Commander Vargas to the edge of the field where four jungle-green corsair-class automechs stood waiting to escort them through a tunnel of shattered trees and trampled ground cover. Alexander watched their armor shimmer and appear to liquefy, affording them a wraith-like invisibility.

“Engage stealth mode and step lightly,” Commander Vargas said over the comms.

Alexander toggled stealth and he felt his steps slow as his powered armor adapted to keep him from making too much noise. There was no hiding the corsairs’ ground-shaking footsteps, but at least that would draw attention away from the ground troops following behind.

Alexander had to resist the urge to run for it. It was torture to think of his wife in enemy territory, not knowing if she was okay or whether she’d been mistreated. But he had to remind himself that she wasn’t his anymore.

In the distance Alexander heard shouting in a foreign language, followed by the sound of gunfire. A swarm of Allied drones went racing over the treetops. Then came the thud-thud-thud of cannon fire and the golden flicker of tracer rounds slashing down.

Comms crackled in Alexander’s helmet—Commander Vargas ordering them to get ready for action, followed by an order to adopt a new formation. Wraith-like shadows swarmed around him in a protective circle.

The shouting stopped and they came into a smoke-clouded clearing. The jungle was shredded, and burning here and there in smoking clumps of blackened vegetation. In the distance Alexander saw a concrete structure with a rusty steel door. Then Alexander noticed all of the bodies. Asian skin tones mixed with bloody reds. There was a scattering of severed limbs, and a few charred rice hats. None of them appeared to be wearing Confederate uniforms, and Alexander didn’t see any weapons lying around the bodies.

“What happened here?” he asked over comms. “These people weren’t armed.”

“You don’t know that,” Vargas replied. “They were in the engagement area. If they had good intentions they would have run.”

Alexander looked away and tried to keep his eyes on the door, now marked on his HUD as their objective. A pair of SEALs ran out and began cutting the door open with high-powered lasers. Commander Vargas came on the comms snapping orders, all the while Alexander heard the booming footsteps of the Corsairs and the whirring of Allied drones racing overhead.

In the distance cannon fire sounded counterpoint to that of smaller handheld weapons. There was fighting going on not far from their location.

The SEALs finished cutting open the door and then kicked it in. Alexander saw a dark tunnel and a staircase leading down below ground. This was some kind of fallout shelter.

What are allied prisoners doing here? Alexander wondered as he reached the door. Vargas and four other SEALs preceded him down the stairs, while the remainder of the team followed. Dust swirled in the yellow beams of ancient lights. The metal rungs echoed and groaned as they marched down the stairway. At the bottom they encountered another metal door and again they were forced to cut through.

Alexander frowned, wondering how they knew the prisoners were here if they hadn’t even opened the bunker yet. He got on the comms to Vargas asking exactly that.

The commander replied, “We have a short-ranged tracker implanted in the captain of the shuttle that went missing. His beacon is broadcasting from here.”

Alexander grimaced, realizing that meant they didn’t know anything about who else might be with him, or even if the captain himself was still alive. Catalina might not even be here.

High-powered lasers crackled and hissed. Alexander watched the SEALs trace a molten orange line across the door, and his visor auto-polarized to protect his eyes from the glare. The line became a closed circle and then the SEALs kicked in the door. The piece they’d cut fell inward with a bang, and the SEALs rushed through the gap.

Vargas called out in an amplified voice, ordering everyone in the bunker to raise their hands and remain calm.

Alexander felt himself carried inside by the press of soldiers behind him. A huddled, bedraggled mass of civilians with dirty faces and tear-streaked cheeks appeared all around the room, all of them highlighted yellow on his HUD to indicate that their friend/foe status was unknown. Then facial recognition took over and began painting them green one by one until all of them were identified as Alliance citizens.

They’d found the colonists, and apart from how dirty they were, they all appeared to be fine. Alexander saw the soldiers around him relax their guard somewhat. Vargas walked up to one of the civilians, and Alexander saw from the HUD overlay that his name was Captain Fuentes. Scanning the crowd anxiously, Alexander read names in a hurry, trying to find one that read Catalina de Leon. She couldn’t have changed her name already… unless she’d filed for a divorce in absentia and remarried.

Then he saw her. He didn’t even need to read her name to know it was Caty. Blond hair, blue eyes, high cheeks, small nose, full lips—and the baby boy sitting in her lap was added confirmation. Alexander ran toward her, his heart pounding and his veins buzzing with adrenaline. He toggled his external speakers and called out to her. “Caty!”

She looked up suddenly, her eyes wide with shock. She saw him coming at her in full body armor and her surprise turned to fear. She curled protectively around her son. Then he mentally retracted his visor, allowing her to see his face. The smell of sewage and rotting food hit him like a punch in the gut, but he managed to smile for her sake.

“Alex!” she screamed, stumbling to her feet. “Is that you?” Her face scrunched up and she began to cry.

He stopped within arms’ reach of her. “Are you okay?” he asked, studying her from head to toe and looking for injuries. He reached out with an armored hand, as if to stroke her cheek, but stopped himself, and looked around suddenly. “Where’s… the father?”

She shook her head and bit her lip, her tears coming steadily now. “David didn’t go with us. It’s a long story.”

The boy in her arms began to cry, too, and Alexander regarded him with a sympathetic look. “Come on, we need to get you out of here,” he said. “We have air transports waiting.”

Catalina nodded, and then Commander Vargas reiterated that, saying, “Let’s go everyone! If any of you is in need of assistance, check in with Corpsman Torres over there—” Alexander noticed Vargas pointing to where a huddled group of medics were already busy conducting first aid for injured colonists.