“Sorry! It was either that or go straight through it.”
Gark grunted, hands adjusting on the harness as he held himself rigid, trying not to think about the repair costs he’d be up for. He breathed a sigh of relief when they emerged from the debris field and shot toward the blue surface of the planet, slowly rotating beneath them.
Water. Too much water.
Gark breathed out slowly. Of course, their job sent them to a planet covered in Lady-damned oceans. The desert would have been easier, but no, just a terrifying expanse of open water. He swallowed. What was the point? From what he’d learned, you couldn’t even drink the stuff without a lot of effort to remove the salt and contaminants. What a strange planet. He frowned, his nostrils flaring as he swiped over the tablet in front of him. The viewscreen changed from the swathe of blue to their mission brief.
His shoulders relaxed.
“Listen up. We’ve been through this already?—”
“Worse than being in the military with all his triple checks.”
Gark ignored the grumbled complaint from A’Kar, making a note to offload the irritating fool as soon as he could.
“—So you know what to do.”
He ran through the brief, seeking confirmation from each crew member about their role and what they were looking for.
“The buyer wants this specific item, not one like it. This one. So no fuck-ups.”
A chorus of confirmations sounded back to him as they approached their destination. Gark switched his screen to a wider view. The Xakul invasion force was advancing en masse across the planet. The dark, glossy hulls of their ships loomed ominously above the most populated areas. Gark did not want to be on this planet longer than necessary. Minutes could mean the difference between living and dying.
“Status of the Xakul, A’Kar,” Gark demanded.
“Their usual tactics. Soldiers are engaging ground resistance, but the human weapons are useless.” There was a sneer in his voice as if his own planet had done better. They hadn’t. Gark rolled his eyes.
“Any Xakul ships near our destination?”
There was a pause as A’Kar swiped through a series of screens. “Yes. One. A battleship.”
“Great.” Jarden, their navigator, who mainly kept silent for much of the time, groaned. Gark silently agreed. One Xakul battleship could hold enough soldiers to take out ten cities. More than enough to ruin the job and send Gark back into debt for the fuel and wages for the crew.
He scowled. And that wasn’t even taking into account the utter carnage that would undoubtedly greet them. “Civilians?”
Screams rent the air. A child cried for his mother as a Xakul soldier cut him down, the bug biting into the child’s flesh, blood running down its carapace. Gark grabs two children—one under each arm—and runs for the safety of his drop ship. Others do the same, and soon the Xakul are chasing them as they run away with the Xakul's prey…
Gark’s fingers bit into the armrest of his seat so hard they had cramped. His jaw ached from where he had ground his teeth together.
A’Kar snorted. “Lots. It’s going to be a blood bath.”
Gark’s eye twitched.
Their destination was a small, coastal city that once would have been beautiful, but—his eyes narrowed—was now partially flooded. Gark flipped through the incoming visuals. The place looked abandoned, which worked in their favor.
Their destination—their mark—was located in a tall building in what looked like the less affluent part of the city. This building wasn’t inundated with water—not yet—though the tidalcalculations running across Gark’s screen suggested it would only be a matter of weeks before the building was uninhabitable.
Too much water.
Not that that would matter to the residents. The chance that anyone was left after the Xakul had ripped through the place was small. Gark grimaced as they approached and then landed on what appeared to be an elevated road for archaic wheeled vehicles.
The Lady was too big to land in the city streets or on top of a building with questionable structural integrity, so Vox and Jarden had chosen the closest appropriate landing space near their destination. It was exposed—which Gark didn’t like—but their logic was sound. Speed was essential, and if that meant drawing a little attention, then he could live with it.
Gark unstrapped himself from his seat as their ship settled, barking orders down the comm as he strode toward the cargo bay, standing in front of the huge door as it levered open. He ran his hands over the chest harness he wore in practiced movements, adjusting the straps slightly and moving the multitude of weapons into a more accessible position that allowed a full range of motion. Gark, Vox, and Jarden were the ground team for this job; the rest of the crew were on the ship, keeping the engines cycling and ready for a quick escape, and feeding any updates on nearby Xakul.
They were on the ground in under a minute, quickly falling into formation, Gark in the lead. The Xakul had already ripped through much of this area, leaving destruction in their wake. They quickly set up ropes and rappelled to street level, boots landing in ankle-deep water with a splash that sounded far too loud. Whatever noise they’d made when they’d landed would have drawn any nearby Xakul, and Gark was thankful for the thick fog that dampened the sound and covered their conspicuous ship in gray swirling clouds.
Gark quickly unclipped his harness from the rope that led up to where the ship was parked and shouldered his weapon. The team all wore HUDs clipped over one eye, with the streets overlaid and their objective marked as a flashing dot. Jarden took point, as the heavyset navigator was used to much greater gravity, and he practically flew as he ran ahead, scanning all the places an ambush could be waiting before gesturing for Gark and Vox to move forward. Jarden led them through the streets to their destination, the trio barely breathing hard as they ran.
