“The new Hive armor absorbs the power from an ion blast. Cormac’s weapons will be useless against them.” Enzo had both palms flat against the energy barrier that separated us. I had to look way,wayup to look him in the eye.
“How do you know that?”
“How do you think we got here? We were deployed Latiri 7 for a ground assault, and a unit of Hive ambushed us with their new armor. We ripped them to pieces, but there were just too many of them.”
“A fucking swarm.” Stryck spoke between hits. “I will kill them all.”
Oh my god. What was I supposed to do now? Ruk had refused to take a weapon. Cormac had two rifles and a blaster, but what good would that do him against twelve of these Hive things if they all had special armor? Cormac was big and scary. So was Ruk. But they were two guys fighting a dozen. Shit. Shit. Shit.
“Free us, Abby.”
I took a deep breath as I considered my options. An eerie silence enveloped me, and I looked around, realizing every single one of the Atlan prisoners was on his feet at the very edge of the energy fields that trapped them inside their cells…watching me.
Staring, really. Creepy. Intimidating. I had no idea what to do.
“How many of you are there?” I tried to see into the darkened corridor beyond this first section and found I could not.
“There are nine Warlords here. They had others, as well, in the other sections of this place. I do not know how many. But they broke quickly. The Hive took them away, and they did not return.”
“But you guys didn’t give in?”
“We are Warlords.” Enzo spoke those three words as if they would explain everything I needed to know. Luckily for him, I knew Tane and the others on Earth. I knew what a Warlord would do to protect his mate and his people.
“Cormac? Are you there?” I had to give him one more chance. Maybe he had turned his comms back on.
Silence was my only answer.
“Every moment you wait is another you give the Hive to kill your mate.”
“Outer space sucks.” Cormac was going to yell at me, but I was going with my ninety-five percent gut instinct that told me Enzo and the rest of these Atlans were good guys. I did not want him to die up there with Ruk. “Okay. But I have one condition.”
“As do I, if we are to risk our lives in this battle.”
We discussed. We made our bargain.
I lifted my hand to the controls next to Enzo’s cell.
13
Cormac
Bright blood coated the exterior of my armored suit with a layer of sludge. I glanced at Ruk as the remaining Hive Soldiers backed away from us, their footsteps in unison.
That was not right. Not fucking right.
“What are they doing?” Ruk asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I thought you had faced this enemy.”
“I have. Never seen them do this.” The Hive Soldiers moved backward in an arc formation but remained facing us. Like me, they had given up on using their ion blasters. Every hit made Ruk more enraged, and the shots glanced off or were absorbed by my armor. Which I suspected was nearly identical to the armor the Hive wore.
This was Styx legion armor. We’d developed it in secret. Kept it quiet.
Someone had sold us out. Worse, they’d sold the new tech to the Hive.
Probably the same fuckers who were rounding up Hyperion natives like Ruk and selling them to the Hive. For what, the gods only knew.