Chapter 1
Captain Seth Mills, ReCon Unit 3, Sector 437, Hive Controlled Freighter
* * *
Smoke clouded the air as my team swarmed the tight hallways of the small freighter, setting explosive charges. The Hive had maintained control of the vessel for the last eighteen hours. Too long by Coalition standards, which meant I had to get my team in, save the Prillon warriors pinned down in the engine room, and blow this fucking ship into so many pieces the Hive had no hope of ever putting her back together.
“Seems like a waste, sir.” The man next to me, Jack Watts, was a former SEAL with a southern accent that only confirmed he was from Atlanta. Other than the fact that we were both from Earth, we had nothing in common. I was Army, six-four, two-twenty, and had no tolerance for bullshit. Which was one of the reasons Commander Karter had given me command of this unit. Jack, on the other hand, was Navy, five years younger, and still had the bright shine of excitement in his eyes when we were on a mission.
But then, he hadn’t lost two brothers out here to these Hive fuckers either.
“Shut up and set the charges, Watts,” I all but growled. “You know the rules.”
He placed an explosive on the wall next to us and pushed the button, activating it. “I know, but it seems a waste to blow up all these ships just because the Hive squatted here for a few hours. It’s our damn ship.”
“Not anymore.” Three hours was the ReCon deadline. Eliminate all Hive on board within three hours or the ship was considered contaminated. Too dangerous to resume service in the Coalition Fleet. We moved on, farther down the hazy corridor with two of the unit on point, scouting ahead, and the rest following behind, checking the charges and watching our six.
“You humans stop chatting and get your asses down here. We’ve got a situation.” The rough voice of a Prillon warrior I knew well came through the Coalition channel in our helmets. Along with the sounds of warriors yelling, ion blaster fire, and shouts to hold the 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 voic
e 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.