Starship: Rogue

Chapter Twenty-Six

 The Horizon drew into Acantha's airspace after a day's flight. The hadn't been able to risk going to Aether with hardly enough fuel to get to Acantha and back, so the flight had taken long enough for everyone to have time to work themselves into a panic.

News had come in from Ripple's team a few minutes earlier; they had captured one of the original Red Night members, and he was more than willing to tell them what they wanted to know. So, now, they knew what they were up against.

While Acantha's cities were glowing, glass creations that looked more like spun sugar than buildings, its wilderness was swamps and water. Water was everywhere. From a distance, the whole planet, even the parts beneath the cities, were swirls of blue and green.

The Red Night facility was located mostly underground, but part of it jutted up out of the Earth in a part of the planet that was uninhabited swampland that had yet to be built upon, like Acantha's cities had been built over water.

It was beautiful and wild to see, and Carter felt a strange jolt of fear at the sight of it. They waited just out of radar distance until night fell, and then Stark and Captain Falk maneuvered the ship so that it was directly above the compound, told everyone to strap themselves in, then dropped down on the building–literally, dropped, plummeting like a stone until they were within firing range.

"Gunners at the ready!" Captain Falk ordered. "Fire!"

The starship's guns shuddered out their shots, the recoil bouncing the ship about a bit, and, below them, the night glowed golden as part of the building disintegrated.

Carter and the others who were going in under Stark's command hurried to prepare themselves, then ran for the excursion room. For tonight's mission, they all wore full exosuits, and Carter let hers attach to Indigo's for the jump down into the base. The combination of two suits into exoskeletons would cushion the impact of their landing, as well as give them added power; it was the way they were designed to work best, combined in a pair or more.

"Jumpers, ready!" Stark called, then the excursion door swung open. Levi and Stark were the first pair out, followed by Carter and Indigo, then by the rest of the team. As they fell through the night, getting closer and closer to their objective, Carter couldn't help letting out a whoop. It was actually kind of fun.

They streaked through the air, landing hard on the roof of the compound, then taking the three story jump into the building through the hole they'd blown open. Guards ran everywhere, dragging noncombatants out of the way or rushing to try to figure out what the hell was going on. The whole compound looked like an anthill that had been kicked.

Stark led their team of a hundred fighters down the halls, taking out anyone who got in their way with the stun guns Gerrit and Carter had designed. All around them, Red Night members dropped like flies, and the Rangers fell into a rhythm.

Take out men in the way, clear every room off the hallway, then move on to the next corridor. They repeated the same thing over and over, under Stark ordered them to split up into two teams. Each team would clear a floor, then regroup in the stairwell, then repeat.

Stark and Levi's team, which included Carter, got the first underground floor, which was home to a bunch of meeting rooms and dormitories, all of which were nearly empty. Then, while the other team took the second and fourth underground floors, they took the third.

This one was more interesting. Guards lurked around every bend, and the rooms they passed were labs and research rooms, at first. They cleared each one, then came to a warren of halls, a veritable stone labyrinth, where the doors were different.

Stark tried kicking in the first, but it remained firmly shut, so he pulled out one of the explosives designed for taking out reinforced doors, then stepped back. The door swung open, and Stark let out a muttered, "Fuck me!"