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Breanna Parks, ReCon Team 3, Hive Integration Ship, Sector 437
“What the hell was that?”I shoved a new ion charge into the Coalition Fleet’s version of a grenade launcher—instead of an explosion of shrapnel, this baby would generate an electromagnetic pulse designed to take out the Hive’s bio-synthetic control systems—and hoisted the weapon against my shoulder. Armed and ready, I risked a peek around the sharp, metal corner. Thick, green smoke filled the corridor ahead. The unnatural fog hid us from the Hive we hunted. Whatever electromagnetic particles the Coalition’s alien science nerds put in the artificial haze kept the Hive sensors from getting a read on us. How? I had no idea. I didn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
“Something big.” My fellow ReCon team member, Henry, crouched on my left, an ion blaster in each hand. He was new to the team, been out in space less than a year. Some girl back on Earth broke his heart and he did what a lot of guys did, hevolunteered for the Coalition Fleet to get as far away from her as possible, like across the galaxy, far.
Seemed we were all running from something out here. I learned early not to ask too many questions, especially when I wasn’t willing to give any answers myself.
I took another peek around the corner before flattening my shoulders to the wall. “Three. Two big guards on the right. I’ll take down the sadist on the left.”
Henry nodded. He knew better than to argue. If there was an Integration Unit—who I referred to as the ‘sadists’ because they couldn’t do what they did to other living beings without being sick, sadistic bastards—I took them out. My predilection for eliminating them had started as a coincidence. Multiple missions in a row, I happened to be in the right place at the right time to destroy the Hive’s twisted idea of a doctor. After those first few kills, the ReCon missions weren’t just about rescuing Coalition fighters, not for me. I’d helped drag too many bloody, broken warriors off these Hive ships. Prillon. Atlan. Viken. Human. Didn’t matter the species or the size. The Hive were nothing if not equal opportunity torturers.
The Integration Units were the ones who experimented on our fighters, broke their minds, operated on them, injected them with nanotech and drugs alike. Killing them gave me a special kind of satisfaction my Baptist grandmother would frown upon. Funny thing was, I wasn’t afraid of going to hell. Not anymore.
Yep. Been there, don’t that, bought the T-shirt. I gave hell one star, would not recommend.
I met Henry’s gaze and held up three fingers. He nodded and I started the visual countdown.
3…2…1…
I swung my blaster around the corner and fired the EMP as Henry rolled into the corridor. My charge disoriented ourtargets, but didn’t take them down. Coming up on one knee, Henry opened fire with both blasters.
Damn. This had been happening more and more often. Were they adapting to the EMP tech? Two years ago, a blast like that would have knocked them all out for half a minute. Had the Hive modified their armor?
I swung the grenade launcher back over my shoulder to dangle across my back so I could pull my ion blaster from my thigh holster. Henry’s shots hit the first Hive Soldiers before I had my weapon free. One huge Hive Soldier—an integrated Prillon Warrior by the looks of his copper-colored skin—fell to his knees but didn’t topple. The second fired his weapon. Deadly accurate, as most of them were. My armor saved my life as a painful flash of heat spread across my chest.
The Hive weren’t the only ones upgrading their tech. Two years ago, a blast like that would have taken me down. I would have woken up in a ReGen pod, if I made it back at all. Sometimes entire units didn’t come back. We all knew the score. Accepted the risks. Someone had to keep these fuckers from wiping out every civilization they encountered, including Earth.
Henry kept firing. I joined him, taking my time, aiming for the chest where I knew their armors’ main control functions were located. If I could disrupt their energy fields, our shots would get through and knock them out. We didn’t want the Prillons dead. We tried to save as many as we could. Non-lethal attack put us at a disadvantage, but something about killing old friends, family, and fellow fighters didn’t sit right with anyone on ReCon. We were out here to get the Coalition’s fighters back, to rescue as many as possible.
The Hive Integration unit, on the other hand? I wanted his head on a silver platter, preferably smeared into pulp under my boot. Violent? Maybe. So, I wasn’t Betty fucking Crocker. Sue me. Sometimes extermination was the only answer.
“Take out that IGU!” Henry shouted at me, and I focused all my attention on the Integration Unit, this trio’s leader. Hive always came in threes. Take out one of them, and the other two were a little slower, weaker. When the leader was a true telepath, as all the natural born Hive species were, the remaining two—in this case two massive, integrated, Prillon warriors guarding the sadistic doctor—would be disoriented for a minute or two. Long enough to knock them out.
Body half shielded by the corner, I knelt and swapped out my ion blaster pistol for a short rifle with a modified scope. The entire rig connected to a targeting system in my armor. “Head shot.” My whispered command registered, and the suit nudged me in the direction I needed to go. The scope’s crosshairs were on the IGU’s head, but my suit’s system corrected for wind—there wasn’t any—distance, recoil, and any particular strengths, bad habits, and tendencies that were mine and mine alone. The suit knew me, knew how I held the rifle, how I aimed, exactly what would happen as I pulled the trigger. The new rifle-to-armor integration system was the ultimate cheat code, game mod, and built in auto-targeting hack.
I’d been an excellent shot before. When I had time to use the tech, I never missed.
“You waiting for an invitation?” Henry fired multiple shots, his suit lighting up with warning lights as he took return fire. With every shot from the integrated Prillon guards, his armor’s defenses depleted. The warnings on his armor weren’t flashing yet. I had time.
“Don’t want to miss.” My voice was calm. Soft. I knew Henry would hear me just fine through our comms.
A loud roar filled the corridor, followed by loud banging. The echo made my ears hurt despite the fact the source of the sound was nowhere to be seen. The thunderous noise distracted theIntegration Unit. He turned to look behind him, held still a half second too long. His mistake.
I knocked him out with a headshot as Henry fired at the Hive Soldier standing behind the copper-top he’d already hit multiple times. Despite his injuries, the copper-skinned Prillon managed to lift his weapon from where he knelt on both knees. He was almost finished, his body swayed as he fought for balance. I added a barrage of lower energy shots—didn’t want to kill him—to his chest as Henry focused his attention on the Prillon still standing.
Boom!Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Was that an explosion? An alien jackhammer? I would swear I felt the reverberation through my boots.
“Fuck. There weren’t supposed to be any Warlords on this ship.” Henry’s calm tone on comms contradicted the chaos of blaster fire erupting from the guns he held. Neither of us stopped shooting until both Hive Soldiers finally crumpled to the cold, metal floor.
Atlan Warlords were the biggest, meanest fighters the Coalition had in the Fleet. In battle, or when claiming their mate, their bodies literally morphed into something I could only compare to theIncredible Hulk.Atlans were massive to begin with, almost seven feet tall with hands the size of dinner plates. But when they changed into their beast forms, they were even bigger. Stronger. Faster.Meaner.Tough as hell and nearly impossible to kill. Their beast mentality took over their bodies as well, made their speech sound primitive, even though the thinking male was still in there somehow. I wasn’t sure how it worked, I just knew every fighter on Battleship Karter breathed a little easier if they knew a group of Warlords would be on the battlefield with them. They literally turned the tide on the ground, made sure more of the other fighters made it back alive. They were the ultimate Special Operations teams.
The Hive rarely took Atlans for their Integration Units because they were so difficult to command. The beasts literally fought to the death to resist the Hive’s mental manipulation. Most beasts died before the Hive could break them. Only the strongest of them survived the process, and those were the most terrifying Soldiers the Hive had under their command.
Even on Atlan, the Warlords were held in high esteem. They were the ultimate warrior class on their home planet. I’d heard that if a Warlord survived their service, the leaders of their planet literally made them super-rich when they returned home. Gave them tons of money, property and land. They were treated like gods.
