She tried to concentrate. The vehicle wasn’t moving anymore, but her world continued to spin. The driver was still belted in beside her. The steering wheel had snapped off and the jagged end of the steering column had been driven back into his chest, impaling him. His dead eyes were open wide; the glassy pupils fixed in a frozen stare that seemed directed accusingly at her.
She realized she must have blacked out for a few seconds. One of the marines from the back was outside the vehicle now, reaching in through the shattered window to try and unbuckle her seat belt. She stopped fighting against him and instead reached out with her hands, pressing them firmly against the inverted roof so she wouldn’t fall and hit her head the instant she was loose.
A second later the buckle detached. She managed to keep her head from slamming to the ground, though she did bang one of her knees painfully on the mangled dashboard as she fell. Strong hands seized her arms and pulled her to freedom through the gaping hole that had once been filled with tempered glass.
Now that she was upright, the excess of blood rushed away from Kahlee’s head, allowing her world to slowly come back into focus. Miraculously, the marines in the back of the APC had all survived. The five of them and Kahlee were now huddled in the shadow of their overturned vehicle, temporarily using it for cover.
She could hear the sound of gunfire. It wasn’t the heavy thunk-thunk-thunk of antitank weapons, but rather the sharp rat-tat-tat she recognized as bursts from an assault rifle. She could hear the metal pings as bullets ricocheted off the armor-plated rover that hid them from enemy sight.
Kahlee didn’t even have a pistol on her, but the marines had recovered their weapons from the crash. Unfortunately, they were pinned down by a steady stream of enemy rounds, unable to use them. Given the constant barrage of enemy bullets, even a split second of exposure to try and return fire was too great a risk.
“Why aren’t they using their cannons?” Kahlee shouted, her voice almost drowned out by the sounds of the battle.
“They must want to take us alive!” one of the marines replied, giving her a look that made it clear they
all knew the enemy was only concerned with the survival of one specific person. “They’re trying to flank us!” another marine shouted, pointing off at the horizon.
One of the rovers had sped off in the distance, so far away it was barely visible. It was circling around behind them in a wide, looping arc, well beyond the range of the marines’ automatic weapons.
Kahlee’s attention was pulled away from the rover by a deafening roar from above; the unmistakable sound of a space vessel’s drive-core engines burning in the atmosphere. Turning her attention upward, she saw a small ship swooping down from the sky.
“It’s the Iwo Jima!” one of the marines cried out.
The ship was moving fast, diving straight for the lone rover trying to flank them. Less than fifty meters from the ground it pulled up sharply and opened fire. A single, well-targeted blast from the ship’s GARDIAN defense lasers turned the rover into scrap metal.
The Iwo Jima banked and changed direction, its trajectory bringing it straight toward the two surviving rovers as the marines let loose with spontaneous, exultant cheers. The cavalry had arrived!
Skarr had seen the frigate approaching long before it fired the lethal volley that took out the first of the
Blue Sun rovers. Its arrival was an inconvenient, but not unanticipated, event.
Moving with a quick but calm sense of purpose, he leaped out of his own rover and started shouting orders. Following his commands, the mercs quickly unloaded and assembled the portable mass accelerator cannon they’d stashed in the back of the vehicle.
While the Alliance frigate fired its lasers on the defenseless rovers, Skarr was arming the weapon; loading an ammo packet filled with hundreds of small explosive rounds. As the frigate banked toward them in a long, sweeping arc, he adjusted the aim and locked in on his target. And when he heard the cheers from the marines hiding behind the overturned APC, he fired.
The GARDIAN laser systems of the Iwo Jima, programmed to target and destroy incoming missiles, were overwhelmed by the sheer number of hypervelocity rounds fired at point-blank range. Normally the deadly projectiles would have deflected harmlessly off the ship’s kinetic barriers. But in order for a space-faring vessel to touch down on a planet’s surface and pick up a shore party, the barriers had to be shut down. As Skarr had suspected, the Iwo Jima hadn’t had time to reactivate them yet.
Hundreds of tiny explosive shells impacted the ship’s exterior, shearing fist-sized holes in the hull as they detonated. The personnel on board were shredded by the sudden storm of burning shrapnel
ricocheting around the interior of the vessel. The Iwo Jima veered out of control and crushed into the ground, disintegrating in a fiery explosion. Huge chunks of shrapnel rained down all around them, sending the mercs scampering and diving for cover. Skarr ignored the melted chunks of metal falling from the sky, instead slinging his assault rifle over one shoulder and marching out toward the overturned APC.
He headed straight at it, knowing the Alliance soldiers on the other side wouldn’t be able to see him coming. The vehicle providing them with cover was also obscuring their view of what was directly in front of them.
As he approached the APC, the mercs behind him split out to the sides, triangulating their positions so they could keep firing around him. They kept a steady stream of deadly high-velocity rounds trained on the vehicle, keeping the marines pinned down behind it.
Ignoring the constant gunfire, the krogan stopped less than ten meters away from the APC. Every muscle in his body tensed as he began to focus his biotic abilities. The reaction triggered an automatic biofeedback response in the amplification modules surgically implanted throughout his nervous system. He began to gather dark energy, drawing it in and trapping it the way a black hole traps light. It took almost ten full seconds for the power to build to maximum capacity. Then Skarr thrust forward with a fist, hurling it toward his target.
The overturned APC launched into the air, flying over the heads of the stunned Alliance marines to land a dozen meters behind them. They were caught off guard, completely surprised and totally exposed by the unexpected maneuver. Nothing in their training had prepared them for this. Uncertain how to react, they simply froze: a small group huddled together, crouching in the sand.
They would have been gunned down right then were it not for the fact that their enemy was just as surprised as they. The mercs had stopped shooting, watching in utter amazement as the krogan biotic had simply hurled the four-ton APC out of the way.
“Throw down your weapons!” Skarr growled.
The marines complied, knowing the battle was lost. They slowly stood up and raised their hands above their head, letting their assault rifles fall to the ground. Knowing she had no other choice, Kahlee did the same.
The krogan stepped forward and seized her by the upper arm, squeezing so hard she let out a cry of pain. One of the marines made half a move to help her, then pulled himself back. She was glad — he couldn’t help her; no sense getting himself killed.
While the mercs kept their weapons trained on their prisoners, Skarr half dragged, half carried Kahlee over to one of the vehicles. He threw her into the back, then climbed in beside her.
“Kill them,” he said to his men, nodding in the direction of the Alliance marines. The sharp retorts of gunfire drowned out Kahlee’s screams.
Saren watched the entire scene unfold through his binoculars, never moving from his carefully chosen position. He was surprised when Skarr didn’t kill Sanders, instead taking her prisoner. Obviously her connection to all this was more than he’d first realized. But it didn’t really change anything.