Supremacy's Outlaw: A Space Opera Thriller Series (Insurgency Saga Book 3) by T.E. Bakutis (top 100 books of all time checklist .TXT) 📗

soldiers. “Briggs! Kali! Tac! With us! Marson, you’ve got the nest. Radio if you hear anything that you shouldn’t.” She turned back to Rafe. “Stay here.” She strode off.

“Supremacy infiltrators?” Kast’s partner asked as she, her partner, and three soldiers descended the stairs to the ground level.

“Could be,” Kast said. “Could be nothing. Hate to disappoint the commander.”

Rafe tuned out the rest of their chatter and focused on the soldiers who were left. The man Kast had left in charge was named Marson. Rafe didn’t know Marson. He stepped forward to say hello, only to have Marson raise his rifle.

“Hey!” Rafe raised his hands. “What’s the deal, mate?”

“Nobody approaches the nest,” Marson said.

“Oh.” Rafe nodded as if that was perfectly reasonable. “But, uh ... shouldn’t we finish securing the funnel?”

“The what?”

“The big metal funnel on top of the building.” Rafe pointed at it. “You don’t want it falling on us, right?”

Marson’s weapon lowered incrementally. “Why would it—”

Marson’s head snapped around, 180 degrees, of its own accord. He was still falling when the soldier beside him snapped in half. The others had just enough time to gawk before they, too, had their necks snapped violently, a chorus of quiet, rapid pops. They fell like a chain of dominos.

Rafe felt faint, but he reminded himself he had a responsibility and kept standing. He’d never seen five people violently snap their own necks before. Of course, the invisible, unstoppable, Advanced commando he’d led up here had actually killed them. Rafe wasn’t sure what to feel guilty about.

“That should buy us the time we need,” Bharat said, his voice just a ghost on the wind. “Now, find the Commander.”

“What?” Rafe squeaked. “I was supposed to lead you here.”

“And you did,” Bharat’s disembodied voice said. “And that’s done. Now, I need you to find the Commander. He’s by the north tunnel last I saw, checking over his security arrangements.”

“But ... why do you want me to find the Commander?”

“So you can tell him Jan Sabato just seized his mini-nuke.”

This was making less sense by the moment. “Now?”

“Unless you want a thousand innocent people to die.”

Rafe pivoted away and hurried down the flight of stairs. He had to make up for at least a little of what he’d done. He’d barely walked ten steps from the stairs when Kast and her soldiers rushed around the corner, jogging with guns raised.

Rafe raised his hands. “Whoa! Careful!”

“Who’s on the platform?” Kast shouted, gun pointed right at Rafe’s face. “What did you do up there?”

Rafe realized then the True Sons must all be networked, monitoring each other’s life signs. The moment Bharat had killed those soldiers up by the nuke, Kast and her crew had been notified. How could he cover this up? “Um, I didn’t—”

The shriek of metal tearing was followed by a rumble that made Rafe instinctively dive forward. Behind him, he heard a sound like dozens of hammers falling, headfirst, on a pile of shattered glass. A cloud of dust overtook him.

He scrambled away, rolled onto his back, and opened his eyes. A pile of twisted stair rubble rested where two flights of stairs had once stood. He also saw Kast and her soldiers, all standing over him, all with guns pointed at his head.

“What did you do, Rafe?” Kast shouted.

Rafe kept his hands as high as he could. “Um ... Jan Sabato just seized your mini-nuke?”

Two of Kast’s soldiers violently pulled Rafe to his feet, and Rafe cried out as they twisted his arms behind his back. “Ow! All right, mate! Just show me where you need me to go!”

“Problem at the nest,” Kast said, probably into her radio. “Unidentified infiltrators just collapsed the stairs, with help from Rafael Garcia.” Kast paused, baring her teeth at him. “What are your orders, sir?”

Rafe waited in breathless anticipation. Kast nodded, then turned to Rafe and the soldiers holding him.

“Grappling hooks are five minutes out,” she said, not to Rafe. “Keep your eyes open and shoot any movement you see, even shadows. We will retake that platform.”

“What about you, Sarge?” a soldier holding Rafe asked.

“I’m taking our infiltrator to see the Commander.” Kast bared her teeth and slung her rifle over her shoulder, then stomped forward and grabbed Rafe’s arms. “Move, you little shit!” She forced him forward, and Rafe yelped and obeyed.

“Hey, so ... you know that’s a mini-nuke up there?” Rafe asked, as Kast forced him to walk at a rapid pace. “We can’t just nuke Star’s Landing. You get that, right?”

“Shut up,” Kast growled.

“Those are people up there. There’s kids up there!”

“I said shut up!” Something hard clocked Rafe on the back of the head. “You keep that traitorous hole shut, and maybe, just maybe, I won’t break your arms.”

“Sure, okay, fair.” Rafe winced at the new ringing in his ears. So Kast knew what they were doing, too. She was totally all right with it. How had he gotten everything so wrong?

Rafe weaved and ducked to avoid bonking his head on pipes as Kast drove him forward. Yes, he’d betrayed the True Sons of Ceto, but did Kast have to be so mean about it? She marched him into an open rectangle beyond the maze of pipes and machinery.

Crates filled with guns and ammunition remained stacked neatly beside glowing work lamps. The True Sons had laid down a row of waist-high biocrete barricades between this staging area and the large tunnel behind, where water currently flowed. More soldiers worked at those barricades, securing heavy machine guns on mounts overlooking the north tunnel. Ammunition belts snaked into each gun from brown crates.

The Commander stood