Con-Red: Recourse (73 page)

“Nidi…” she heard the crying sound of Cassy behind her, “is he dead?”

“It’s not her Cassy, it’s not her,” the boy kept saying while holding the child protectively in his arms
and slowly began to pull the girl towards the exit.

The word ‘ARMED’ appeared once more in front of her eyes just as a squad of heavily armed Marines rushed into the storage bunker.  She turned in time to see them finish forming a line of solid men and women with their weapons pointed towards her.  One of the Marines, a female, ran forward to scoop up both of the children in order to get them out of arms way.

Her mind raced.  She could see one of the men yelled at her, but could not hear his words.  Expressionless Nidia moved slowly back to the first warhead.  She saw a flash from the direction of the Marines and her vision blurred as a stun round slammed into her chest.  It was supposed to take down a person much larger than her, but seemed to have little effect of slowing her.  Without a moments delay her hands reached out once again to play with the glowing keypad on the side of the warhead body.

This time more round
s slammed into her body, but somehow felt different from the first, causing her knees to buckle.  Nidia felt herself fall to the hard floor with what seemed like a thick puddle of fluid forming under her.  Through her quickly decreasing vision she could see camouflaged feet running towards her.  Even so one of her hands reach out and tapped the finally command.

It was at this second that her dream turned into a full nightmare.  Without warning the warhead’s end-stage booster ignited, propelling it forward
at tremendous velocity.  A few of the security detail managed to jump away, but others were killed instantly when it slammed through them.  The warhead proceeded to plow through the freighter cargo hold, destroying every container in its path.  Its reinforced alloy nose section helped the warhead plow its way out of the freighter and pierce through the opposite wall of the station.  The internal walls gave way under the stress as the projectile continued further into the station. 

Fifty meters in it struck a thick bulkhead support beam
which impeded its progress.  The bad news was that the bulkhead happened to be beside a missile storage hold.  With tears streaming down her face Nidia’s mind finally came back to her just in time to realize there had never been any dream.  Before the warhead went off her last thoughts were of the child growing inside her and the others on this station.  In less than a second it was all over.  Everyone within a kilometer of the internal blast was vaporized almost immediately.  The others fared much worse when NS Yakovski fractured and ripped apart from the inside.  In a few short moments almost thirty thousand souls and a dozen ships of war perished in what happened to be the next phase of the enemy invasion. 

The illusion that Tesagia was one of the safest planets within the Federation instantly faded with this single tragic act.