Eon Gate (The Eon Pentalogy Book 1) Read online

  “Peel,” Rappa said. He ran down the tunnel and took up a position on the left.

  They continued to shoot toward the enemy position, steadily retreating and keeping up the rate of fire. A few stray shots zipped past them, but the sheer amount of firepower the bodyguard team put out forced most of the Eon troops to cower behind cover. Even with their fanaticism, no one wanted to die needlessly.

  Five hundred yards. Four hundred. Three hundred.

  Kei ran through the tunnel again and reloaded his plasma rifle's charge pack. Bit by bit the enemy were becoming bolder, and they still had the numbers to swamp his group if they pressed their attack.

  “Hex, what's your status?” Soko asked.

  “We're at the shuttle right now, Soko.”

  “Bradley, where are you and Gilroy?”

  “Heading back to the shuttle now.”

  “Fall back immediately,” Nina said. “Fall back to the shuttle as quickly as possible. Don't bother to fire back.”

  “Copy that, Hex.”

  Kei followed orders with the rest of the squad, but the instructions worried him. They still had two hundred yards to cover, and once the enemy realized the security team wasn't shooting back they'd swarm them.

  He had to run as fast as possible. Kei pushed the pace, breathing deeply and forcing every ounce of effort out of his legs. More and more plasma bolts zipped by them, some landing dangerously close, but somehow he made it through the next hundred yards unscathed.

  Kei felt a rush of wind tug at his uniform and glanced up for a moment. A single aircraft zipped overhead, then another. Both deployed their engine nacelles downward and hovered above them. A moment later the sound of rapid-fire plasma cannons filled the air.

  “Get to the shuttle while the drones have them pinned down,” Soko ordered.

  The team closed the rest of the distance and sprinted up the shuttle ramp. As soon as the doors closed the ship lifted off.

  Kei glanced out one of the windows. The drones remained hovering, ripping through the enemy unit with just their cannons, and it didn't look like the Eon troops had anything capable of stopping them. They probably thought they were strong-arming a few scientists and archeologists, not fighting against a heavily-armed unit.

  “IVIN, call back the drones and send a message to Caleth Security appraising them of the situation,” Nina said.

  “Understood,” the AI replied.

  “What about everyone else?” Lauren demanded.

  “If they made it to the safe room then they'll be fine until security troops arrive. But we're not sticking around here until them. There's no telling what kind of resources might have brought along with them.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, but Nina cut her off again.

  “You're wounded by the way. And you need to get that treated. Mr. Maeda, if you would be so kind. She was hit in the shoulder while we were escaping.”

  Kei glanced at her injury. It didn't look like anything more than a minor scratch, but Nina's tone indicated that she didn't want to discuss anything further, and this was the perfect excuse to move Lauren elsewhere.

  He grabbed is medical kit and headed toward the front of the shuttle. “Follow me please.”

  ONCE THE DOOR closed Nina let out a sigh of relief.

  “You're the one that brought her along,” Soko said.

  “I didn't have much of a choice, other than leaving her there to die. And she had one of the artifacts. We need something to show for this.”

  Any of the surviving attackers would probably grab the rest of the valuables before fleeing, and her forces didn't have enough troops to deal with them at the moment without causing bigger problems. Technically, operating military drones in Caleth's atmosphere was illegal. She could probably get away with it now, but if she lingered too long…

  “What are we planning on doing now?” Griz asked.

  Nina shook her head. “I don't know. First I'm going to have to report the situation to headquarters once we get back to the Starlight. Then we're going to have to clean up any bureaucratic messes this might have caused. Once we're through with that we'll go from there.”

  “Running into Eon Path this close to the core worlds isn't a good sign,” Salim said. “They must want something, and they want it badly enough to commit a terrorist act.”

  “There's no hiding this with all the bodies we left behind,” Soko agreed.

  Nina didn't respond.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “You seem different than the rest.”

  Kei didn't even bother to look up. “Oh? And what would make you say that?”

  “You seem a lot younger than the rest of them.”

  He tried not to sigh. That remained a bit of a sore point with him. Kei was still a relative novice in the bodyguard cadre, only in his fifth month with them. He had served for almost six years in the Tyran Navy, but that still made him one of the least experienced members of the team. Most of them were in their late twenties or thirties with over a decade of experience.

  And while he was starting to fit in a little more, he remained a bit of an outsider. His integration process into the team didn't help matters. Most went through an indoctrination period with the company, but Kei had been immediately plucked from the selection process and assigned to the team, on orders from Nina Skare herself.

  It was because of his time spent in Interstellar Rescue. His training and service had provided him with a wide variety of skills. He could infiltrate and operate alongside special forces units without any difficulty, but his forte was the ever-dangerous rescue missions both planet-side and in the void of space. Kei had dragged wounded sailors out of the remnants of their shattered ships while battles raged around them, dropped onto enemy planets to recover downed pilots, and acted as a combat medic for special forces teams.

  And yet, even with all that experience he still felt like the runt of the pack. Everyone else had more experience than him, certainly more experience working together as a team. None of them had rejected him or treated him badly, but Kei still felt like he had a long way to go before he was properly integrated. He had only just begun to connect with them over the past two months or so.

  “I'm sorry. I didn't mean-”

  “It's fine,” he shrugged, cleaning out the surface wound and then binding it up with a bandage. “You've already had a rough start to the day.”

  “Yeah...”

  Kei wasn't sure what else to say. Was there any point? He didn't know the professor, didn't know her, and he had seen too many people die in front of him during the war for it to impact him much. He never liked seeing others die, but he was a soldier and a medic. Plenty of his patients had been too badly wounded for him to save, and Kei had killed plenty of others in the heat of battle.

  “Do you know where we're headed?”

  “I don't.”

  “Not even a hint or a guess?”

  Kei shook his head. “I'm going wherever my employer tells me to go, and that's that.”

  “I HEARD you ran into some issues on the ground,” Cheryl commented as Mirko Sokoloff entered the bridge.

  Mirko shrugged and took a seat in the Starlight's copilot chair. “You could call it that, yes.”

  “You very well could. Getting yourselves stuck in a situation where I had to save you from inevitable death.”

  “Yes IVIN, and we're very grateful for that,” Mirko said. “That doesn't mean you have to rub it in.”

  “How else will I get you all to not take me for granted?”

  “I don't know, do you really have to worry about that if you keep reminding us every five seconds?”

  “Letting him get under your skin, huh? I thought you were a little bit more controlled than that,” Cheryl said.

  “We just spent about thirty minutes or so running from our lives from a horde of cultists, so excuse me if I'm a little testy right now.”

  “You wouldn't have been able to run very far without my help,” IVIN said, his voice completely mono
tone.

  “You do like to rub these things in, don't you?”

  “Of course. Where else would I get my amusement from?”

  Cheryl spoke up. “Do we have orders yet?”

  “Not yet. Miss Skare headed to her quarters and is contacting HQ right now. I think she wants to get an outside opinion before she makes her move, especially because Eon Path was willing to use a ton of force to get their way.”

  “This might be nothing, you know. Maybe some commander decided to go rogue, or use a little more force than he should have. These terrorist organizations aren't always known for their coordination.”

  “But they had a lot of troops at their disposal, even if they weren't well-trained, and they were willing to use them. That tells me that something bigger might be going on.”

  “From the data gathered from your audio logs, it appears that they were after the Ulic artifacts,” IVIN said.

  “Same as usual.”

  “But they usually steal them or buy them on the black market. How many times have you heard of them using an entire company of troops for that purpose? Not to mention that they just shot a fairly notable academic without a second thought. That's going to be all over the news within a few hours.”

  “In that case I'd guess we're skipping the system,” Cheryl said.

  “After we take care of all the formalities associated with the incident,” IVIN said. “I have already transmitted a full report to the Caleth security forces, answered all questions and received a dispensation to leave when we wish.”

  The question would be where their destination would be. Mirko was torn. If he were in charge he'd head back to the core worlds, to Goethe Prime to drop off their cargo. Coming back with one thing was better than coming back with nothing. But on the other hand Eon Path couldn't just keep their spoils on Caleth, not with the security forces looking for them. They had to have a plan to get their treasures away from the planet, and if Skare Interstellar wanted them back…

  “I hope we don't decide to fight a war,” he said. “Even with all the resources at our disposal, Eon Path is one of the groups I wouldn't want to cross.”

  “In a fight between a corporation and a glorified cult, I think the one with all the manufacturing capability and the private military company wins,” Cheryl said.

  “Maybe, but Eon Path is something else. They're still human, but they're fanatics. Even after we killed a bunch of them they kept coming. Heck, I thought they'd back off after Katia blew two of them in half with the railgun.”

  “Fanatics are nothing without something to rally behind,” IVIN said. “They follow a creed, a purpose, and that gives them strength, determination. Or so I'm told.”

  “Don't worry, you're not the only one that doesn't understand it at all,” Mirko shrugged.

  “Emotional responses make you humans so irrational and unpredictable. It's enough to drive one insane.”

  “That puts you in the same position as us, since you're fitted with a cognition chip,” Cheryl pointed out.

  “I never claimed otherwise.”

  Mirko looked out the front windows into the black void. Their next course of action lay in the hands of Nina Skare, and who knew what she was thinking at this point? He knew from experience that there was no point trying to fathom what went on in her mind. Mirko and the rest just needed to be ready to follow her orders.

  AS SOON AS Nina arrived on the Starlight she had gone straight to her quarters and opened up a communications link with Skare Interstellar on Goethe Prime, hoping to reach her father, the chairman of the company.

  What she didn't expect was to see her older brothers as well. Erik and Edwin had joined her father for some reason, and Nina had little choice but to reveal her predicament to them as well.

  “We were able to recover one artifact from the Caleth dig site,” Nina said. “Unfortunately, Professor Hallas was killed in a raid by troops believed to be working for Eon Path.”

  “And what leads you to believe that they would do such a thing?” Erik asked.

  “They wore the emblem on their uniforms,” she said. “Either they're complete idiots, or they want us to know that they're willing to use force to claim these artifacts.”

  “Not completely out of the question,” Edwin mused. “Caleth is politically isolated from much of the rest of the galaxy. The different confederations might be willing to ignore it, so long as it doesn't spill over into their borders.”

  “But you said you were only able to recover one artifact. Shouldn't there be more from a dig site of that size? Or was this just a wild shot in the dark?” Erik asked pointedly.

  Nina bit back an angry response. “There were several finds, but the arrival of Eon Path threw a wrench into our plans. We had to spend most of our time falling back to the shuttle, fighting a pitched battle.”

  “Not good for our company image,” Edwin said.

  “Perhaps for someone who only dallies around in the core worlds, but out here the reality is very different. People take notice of force and those who are able to wield it.”

  Edwin opened his mouth to respond, but her father waved a hand and cut him off.

  “What of the other artifacts?” Leon Skare asked.

  “As far as I can tell, Eon Path was able to flee with the rest of them. How they're going to get them off of Caleth I don't know, but I think that its a safe bet that they'll try.”

  “And you said that you have one of the professor's assistants with you?”

  “I do. We were able to withdraw with her.”

  “Find out what she knows about the Ulic artifacts. I would like you to recover the others as well, but we cannot afford to have a pitched battle over a civilized planet. See what you can think of in the meantime.”

  “Understood,” Nina said. The communication cut out a second later.

  She sat down at her desk, thinking.

  “INCOMING COMMUNICATION FROM MISS SKARE,” IVIN said.

  “Patch her through.”

  Mirko straightened up a little.

  “You still up there, Cheryl?”

  “Of course. Where else would I be?”

  “You could afford to let IVIN run the ship while we're in orbit. Or rather, you could have. We're moving now.”

  “Alright then. Where to?”

  “Set a course for the Caleth-Obrisky jumpgate.”

  “Heading home?”

  “For now.”

  “Communication ended,” IVIN said.

  Mirko looked over at her. “Well, that's interesting. I would have thought she'd be more interested in going after Eon Path, especially after they got their hands on the artifacts. But who knows what she's thinking.”

  “Who knows indeed.”

  “Ship-wide broadcast incoming,” IVIN said.

  “Listen up everyone,” Nina's voice cut in over the intercom, “remain on alert and be ready to go to battle stations at a moment's notice. That is all.”

  The pair looked at each other.

  “Well, that's a bit unsettling,” Cheryl said.

  Mirko nodded. Who knew what she was planning at this point?

  “EXPECTING TROUBLE,” Rappa said. “That's never good.”

  “We're always expecting trouble Victor. That's why we're in a bodyguard unit,” Griz said.

  “Not with Eon Path, though.”

  Kei looked down at his hand and tried not to sigh. A two and a seven, off-suit. The flop didn't look promising either.

  “I wonder what they want, though,” Bradley said. She dropped a few chips into the pot.

  Rappa called. “Who knows with them? They're all cultists. Fanatics. Thinking that they can get some secret knowledge or enlightenment from studying alien artifacts.”

  “That's not one of the craziest things I've heard. That's why we go through all the trouble of finding and collecting them. They're a good source of knowledge if they can be decoded.”

  “Yeah, but they're different,” Salim said. He threw in a bet as well. “There'
s a difference between seeing the scientific value of something and treating it like a holy relic.”

  Kei folded as the bet came around to him.

  “Whatever it was, they were willing to spend a lot of resources to get their hands on them. I'm still wondering how they managed to get an entire company of troops onto Caleth without anyone noticing.”

  “Calling them troops is being pretty charitable,” Elsner said. He folded as well. “It doesn't take much to shove a rifle into someone's hands and call them a soldier. Doesn't mean that they're any good at it. A real unit probably could have crushed us.”

  Kei spoke up. “I did notice that. They were willing to charge us at the beginning, then they started to hesitate when they weren't making any headway. And then they started to move again toward the end.”

  “But they weren't consistent. That's what I'm saying. Trained troops would have pressed the attack because they knew they had numbers and could overwhelm us with them.”

  True enough. Experienced soldiers knew that pressing their attack could lead to better results, especially if they had a clear numerical advantage over the enemy. They would end up taking less casualties attacking aggressively than hunkering down like they had, because there would be too many targets for the security detail to deal with at once.

  But they had hunkered down after their initial wave had failed, and that indicated they were amateurs. Still, coming up with that many troops meant Eon Path had real reach this close to the core worlds.

  “What happened to your charge?” Bradley asked him.

  “Hm? Oh, her. She wanted to take a nap in her cabin, or at least that's what she told me.”

  “Can't say I blame her, having one of her colleagues killed in front of her like that,” Griz said. He dealt out the turn card. “But I guess that they meant business.”

  “Not a good way to go about business,” Elsner said. “If you just pointed guns at people every time they didn't give you what you want you wouldn't be any better than the cartels.”

  “Works for them.”

  “That's because they don't care about law enforcement and the courts coming down on them. A corporation has a lot more problems with that. You know, like the one that pays us.”