Recon Marines II: Marine's Heiress, The (25 page)

No sooner did the admiral step out of
the door and another big guard stepped in. Vin fired the stunner,
hitting the man center mass. The man fell backward like a tree cut
off at its base, and someone one closed the door. Vin ran to the
door but they’d jammed it.

“
This way!” Vannie started
for the door where they’d entered only moments before. He tripped
over one of the dead men or the volley slamming into the door frame
would have killed him. He cursed and rolled away from the
opening.

Vin sprinted over and crouched
alongside Vannie. Another spray of shots pinged off metal. Vin
reached his left arm around the door and fired back. He calculated
the curving walls into the patterns of ricochet as he shot. Grunts
and screams answered his return fire. He dove into the hallway and
rolled to his feet. Sprinting toward the direction of the shots,
Vin found one dead and two severely wounded men. He jumped over
them and ran down the hallway.

Two hundred yards later he found the
door the admiral had escaped through. A hallway across from it led
to one of the main spokes branching out from the center of the
facility. Vin cursed as he tore down the spoke, knowing it would
lead to a bay. He should have set Vannie to finding the admiral’s
ship.

No more ambushes waited between him and
the hanger. Neither did the ship. It was gone and Emma with
it.

Vin wasted no time with regret but
retreated back the way he’d come. Vannie turned and started to run
as soon as he saw Vin. Vin slowed so Vannie could keep up. Vannie
wheezed and limped but kept up his steady pace all the way to the
cruiser.

Vannie dropped into his seat as Vin
took off. They found the trail easy enough as only one ship had
left the station. But it wasn’t the simple cruiser Vin had followed
before. The admiral had had something else waiting.

The ship they pursued was a tenth
generation space racer, much larger than Vin’s agile little cruiser
and capable of warp bend. They flew along its trail until they
entered a cloud of gaseous vapors left behind by a warp
initiation.

There was no way to follow. Even if
Vin’s ship had warp bend, there was no way to know where the
admiral’s ship had gone.

Vin expanded his ship’s sensors to
their maximum range. Which way should he search? He’d failed Emma.
Why couldn’t he keep the women he loved safe?

Chapter Fifteen

Emma’s head spun but she pushed herself
up to sitting. “Vin?”

She’d heard his voice but that couldn’t
be correct. Her stepfather had captured her and drugged her. The
lush sofa beneath her sat against the wall of a colorless lounging
room. A thick blanket covered her bare legs. Someone had taken away
her old boots and replaced them with thin slippers. She snorted,
the sound loud in the soulless room.

Though bigger, this room appeared much
the same as her previous prison. Her muscles obeyed her despite
their rubbery feeling as she swung her legs over the edge of the
sofa. After getting to her feet she swayed for a few moments before
daring to walk using the wall as a brace. Three wide stairs
bisected the wall across from the sofa. She paused at the bottom
and heard faint voices. Possible a larger passenger area or the
bridge? She retreated to the other side of the room, her legs
gaining strength with each step.

One door provided her only other
option. Her eyes ached as she concentrated on her mission of
putting one foot in front of the other. The door led her to a small
hallway lined with more doors. She slid her hand along the wall to
the first one, finding a convenient sign beside it. Captain. The
next belonged to the First Mate and the one after to the Navigator.
No one investigated her absence from the other room or exited any
of the rooms to challenge her exploration. She suspected that meant
she had no place to escape to.

She had only fragments of memory from
the time Dr. First injected her but she recalled being carried to a
ship. And she surely was on a ship so maybe her other memories held
some truth. Maybe Vin had been there. And Vannie?

The next door sign read Staff Lounge.
The sound of a door opening behind her sent Emma ducking into the
room. She closed the door quietly behind her, luckily, since Dr.
First snored in a cushioned chair only a few steps away.

Footsteps moved down the hall and past
the lounge. Looking around her hiding place, Emma saw food storage
and cooking areas. Against one wall sat a row of simple computers,
probably meant for the crew to stay in touch with
family.

Skirting the sleeping doctor as well as
she could, Emma went to the computers. She touched one and it
powered up, asking for a destination for her communication. Who or
where should she send it? Vin was the only capable of helping her
on short notice. Her muddled thoughts strained for clarity, feeling
like an obvious answer lay right out of reach.

Then she remembered Vin’s AI device. If
he really was trying to come after her, he would have it with him.
Emma put her head in her hands, pulling an image of the device’s
welcome screen up from her foggy thoughts. Recon Two. She entered
her name and a dialogue box came up. What could she tell him? She
had no idea where in space she was or what kind of ship carried
her.

“
What the hell?” First
cursed behind her.

Emma typed one word and sent it. The
doctor grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the chair. She crashed
to the floor while First shouted for assistance. He slapped at the
computer screen and wiped it clean. Had the message gone
out?

* * * *

Vin flew toward the nearest Hadrason
Mining operation. He didn’t know what else to do. He’d searched the
operation three months ago in his hunt for the admiral’s hiding
place.

Vannie had less knowledge of Emma’s
stepfather than Vin did. An hour earlier, Vannie set his seat back
in the sleep position. But his breathing patterns indicated he
didn’t sleep or even rest.

The AI unit, connected to the star
cruiser’s dashboard, lit with an incoming message. It identified no
sender but was directed to Recon Two. Not many people would know to
contact him with that moniker.

Vannie sat up when he heard the message
alert. He looked at Vin.

Vin’s heart dove and then soared. She
lived. Emma had managed to send a message so she had some of her
wits about her. But the brevity of the message also meant she
remained in imminent danger.

“
Is that from our girl?”
Vannie asked, half rising from his seat.

“
Yes.” Vin punched in the
command to identify the sending ship. The interstellar ID came up
along with the current location of the ship. It traveled on a
course nearly parallel to theirs though nearly an hour ahead of
them. He programmed in an intercept course. Now that he had
identified the ship, they couldn’t escape. Had they caught Emma in
the act? Worry eroded the thrill of locating her.

“
Can we find
her?”

Vin pulled up the ship’s track and
their own. He pointed. “We already found her. It’s just a matter of
catching up.”

“
Will we be able to catch
up?”

“
Their ship is faster, but
we’ll know where they stop. We’re about fifty-seven minutes
behind.”

“
Go faster.”

Vin had the cruiser running at overload
levels already. “We’ll get there as quick as we can.”

The next four hours passed in tense
anticipation as the ship carrying Emma drew further away. It
finally slowed as it neared a giant, gaseous planet. The only human
habitation huddled on a moon orbiting the planet.

Vin had never visited the solar system
they entered over an hour behind Lester’s ship. The cruiser’s data
base only gave a numerical identification for the system, meaning
no governing planet nor the military, had thought it worth
claiming. The moon fit the parameters of common pirate bases, a
barely livable space no one cared about. He circled around and
approached the moon from the opposite side of where the other ship
had landed.

Keeping the cruiser close to the barren
surface, Vin found a good place to park that would keep them off
the enemy scanners. Rocky ledges had pushed their way to the
surface and would provide some cover.

Vin loaded what he needed on the hover.
Wishing he had armor for Vannie, Vin gave his … friend more weapons
this time. Sensory shock grenades and a spread stunner that could
knock down a roomful of men all at one time.

The hover was stealthy mostly in that
it was small and could fly low, hugging the arid, rocky terrain.
They spotted some lizard-like wildlife including a few that could
fly. Vin slowed to the speed of the flying creatures, hoping to
further mask their approach.

Half an hour into their flight a
military installation came into sight. Dark walls rose nearly one
hundred feet into the air with only a few lights giving away
occupation. Night had fallen on the little moon but starlight lit
the landscape to what might pass as dusk on most
planets.

Vin settled the hover near a cluster of
rocks about two hundred yards from one side of the square
structure. He checked Vannie’s weaponry before they moved out. The
gravity felt lighter than some planets and the air thin. Vannie
panted heavily before they’d traveled half the distance. Vin slowed
down though it added a precious minute to their destination. Six
doors were spaced along the facility’s side facing them.

The first door was locked with no
external means to open it. Vin put his shoulder to it but he
couldn’t force it. The next two doors were the same but the fourth
door had a handle and a lock. Vin cut out the lock with his laser
pistol and the door swung inward. Putting away his pistol, Vin
unslung his rifle from his shoulder. Low level red lighting led
them down a narrow hallway and to another door, this one
unlocked.

Vin cracked the door open and then
entered cautiously. The admiral’s luxury ship filled up more than
half of a four story parking bay. A spiraling staircase climbed
each corner of the massive room. An elevator flanked the nearest
set of steps. Vin listened to Vannie’s breathing for a moment
before making a plan.

“
I’ll go up the steps and
if it’s clear, I’ll send the elevator down for you.” Vin ran up the
steps, taking them two at a time to the fourth level. Unlocked. He
burst through, using surprise to gain advantage over numbers but
only an empty room greeted him. He sent the elevator for Vannie.
“We have to climb from here, Vannie.”

Six more stories waited over their
heads. The next two floors proved empty also, not even furniture or
walls in the wide open spaces. But Vin heard voices before he
opened the door to the seventh floor.

Crouching by the door, Vin gave Vannie
a signal for silence. He edged the door open the width of a bullet
and could hear the voices clearly.

* * * *

Emma jangled the metal bracelet holding
her wrists locked to the arms of the steel chair. Ben and Dr. First
spoke in low voices in the corner of the room. They’d knocked her
out with more drugs after the doctor had caught her trying to send
a message.

First had tackled her to the floor so
she hadn’t been able to check and see if her message had been
received. And maybe it was the additional drugs, but her doubts had
grown about seeing Vin and Vannie. Her desperate imagination had
conjured the saviors.

The nondescript room gave no clue to
her whereabouts but it didn’t seem like her stepfather’s type of
place. Too drab and Spartan. Four of the stern guards stood around
the room, at ease. A door opened behind her. Four more men came
into view, three military types and a civilian. One of the soldiers
was the massive man who had dragged her out of her surgery on
Merris Five. He looked bigger in the confines of the room. Tall,
nearly seven feet, with thick slabs of muscle across his shoulders
and chest. His thighs looked bigger than her waist. He glanced at
Emma with reptilian eyes, cold and devoid of feeling.

Visceral fear tightened Emma’s stomach.
For the first time since her abduction terror overwhelmed the anger
that had protected her like a shield. She looked away from his
animalistic gaze.

The civilian joined her stepfather and
the doctor, pulling out papers. Paper! Few people used it anymore
but legal documents often needed signed papers to formalize them on
the outlying planets. The man had to be an attorney, a crooked one
if he worked for Ben.

The monstrous man spoke to the other
guards around the room and they straightened to more alert
postures. Then he took up station out of her sight. If he attempted
to intimidate her with his presence over her shoulder, it worked.
Shivers of dread wracked her body so she could feel her knees
knocking together.

The thought of the drugs had worried
her, but she’d known her stepfather needed her alive. The killer at
her back brought home the realization that her time of usefulness
had nearly expired. Once she set her signature on the documents Ben
would think he didn’t need her anymore. She concentrated on the
conversation in the corner to take her mind off her perilous
situation.