The Sunfire (27 page)

The guards who had been stationed around the room, stunned
by the suddenness and intensity of the attack, finally leapt forward to protect
their master. Two tried to prise the Commander’s hand away from Sejanus’
throat, but even their combined strength could not break his grip. Finally, in
desperation, one of the guards reversed his pistol and hit Jon around the side
of the head with the butt of the weapon.

Jon was stunned by the vicious blow, his grip weakened ever
so slightly. The second blow left him reeling, only able to see stars as he
fell to the floor.

His hand let go of Sejanus’ throat.

“That was a stupid thing to do Commander,” Sejanus rasped,
his throat still sore from the sudden attack. “Like everything else about this
foolish crusade of yours, it was doomed to fail.”

Meanwhile Jon could only spit onto the bright red carpet,
his mouth full of blood where he had bitten his lip. Lying on the floor, Jon
opened the fist that moments before had been resting in his pocket. He observed
the empty palm of his hand where shortly before he had held the small tracking
device from Jason and smiled to himself.

Praetorians, so predictable. So quick to assume that they
had already won, just because they always had done so in the past.

“Take him away and kill him!” Sejanus ordered. “I have more
pleasurable things to be doing with my time.” Lifting Jon’s head by his hair,
Sejanus looked down at him angrily. “In the last few minutes of your life, you
might want to think about all the perverse things I will be doing to your
beautiful Captain. Exactly the same as I enjoyed inflicting on the Princess,
who you seem to care about so much. Unfortunately you won’t live long enough
for me to tell you who I enjoyed taking the most. Goodbye Commander.” With that
he released Jon’s head, letting it once again fall to the floor. “Take his sword.
I told Harkov I wanted his head on a platter, but it looks like you will get to
deliver it today,” Sejanus instructed one of the guards.

Good. I’ll want that back very soon,
Jon thought to
himself, as he found himself being grabbed by both arms and hauled to his feet.
“Sejanus,” Jon called after the retreating figure, before he could step through
the door. Sejanus turned to stare at him with narrow eyes. “Don’t go too far,
I’ll be coming for you shortly.”

Sejanus just gave him a mocking salute, before once again
turning his back and disappearing through the door. The guards dragged Jon
after him, Sejanus turning right, the guards dragging him left.

Planet Tartarus, Sigma Draconis System

“It’s almost time Sarge,” Jonas whispered quietly, for all
intents and purposes still focussing firmly on the cards laid out in front of
him.

“Take it easy son,” Gunny replied in an equally quiet voice.
“There is still time. The
Sunfire
will not arrive in the system for
another thirty minutes yet. Is it still just the one guard?”

Jonas’ eyes flicked up from the cards momentarily, glancing
over Gunny’s shoulder at the solitary guard standing with his back to the wall
facing the room. “Still only one Sarge, but the last time they rotated I
counted two more on the other side of the door.”

“Every half hour right?”

“Has been for the past few guard rotations, so we have
another twenty minute window before the next rotation.”

“Then I guess that now is as good a time as any,” Gunny
replied, observing the other marines in the room. To any casual observer it
would seem the marines were taking a relaxing break. A number of them, Gunny
included, had broken open a pack of cards; others were lounging around the
room, some reading, a few listening to music. Only Jason, in the corner tapping
away intently at his datapad, seemed the slightest bit motivated. However, if
an observer looked a little more closely he might have noticed the marine
reading had not turned a page in over half an hour and nobody had won at the game
of cards in a similar period of time. Everybody in the room knew the time for
action was fast approaching and were preparing themselves accordingly.

“You want me to take care of him Sarge?” Jonas inquired
disinterestedly.

“I’ll take care of it. You and Jackson get ready to
intercept the other two, okay?”

“Sure Sarge.”

“Ready Gunny,” came the reply from the other two marines
seated at the table.

“I fold,” Gunny declared in a loud voice that could be heard
all over the room, as he reached back and stretched his tired muscles. He had
been seated at the table, playing cards, for a few hours now and wanted to
fully restore his circulation before making his next move.

“I’m hungry. How about some chow boys?” There were some
general affirmative grunts from around the room. Standing up and working out
the kinks in his legs, Gunny approached the solitary guard in the room. As soon
as Gunny approached the guard, the man tensed and reached for the pistol at his
waist.

“What do you want?” The guard asked suspiciously, his hand
hovering just over the pistol at his side.

“Easy friend,” Gunny smiled disarmingly. “Me and the boys
here were just wondering when it was chow time? Many of us have not eaten since
last night.” Gunny waved his arm out wide to encompass the team, who had all
turned, eagerly waiting for the answer.

The guard made the mistake of taking his eyes off Gunny, just
for a fraction of a second, as they darted around the room to observe the other
occupants.

It was all the time needed.

With a sudden burst of speed, which seemed unlikely for a
man of his bulk, Gunny had one arm around the guard’s throat before he could
utter a single word. At the same time he grabbed the guard’s pistol hand,
wrapped it behind the man’s back and jerked it upwards until he could hear a
squeak of pain seep past the blockage around the guard’s throat.

Jonas moved quickly to remove the pistol from the guard and
dashed over to the other side of the door, on the off chance somebody took that
inopportune moment to enter. However, after a minute of no activity, Jackson
stood up from the card table and moved to the other side of the door.

At a nod from Gunny the rest of the Marines went back to
reading their books or listening to music. “I am going to release my arm from
around your throat now,” Gunny explained to the guard in a quiet voice. “When I
do, you are going to call your colleagues from outside and tell them to come in
here. You are only going to say the following words. ‘Hey guys, I need a toilet
break, watch these men for a minute, will you?’ If you say one word different
or one word extra, I will kill you. Do you understand?”

The guard only bobbed his head in agreement, as he was not
able to draw enough air into his lungs to verbally reply. Slowly releasing the
arm from around the guard’s neck, he nodded at him.

“Hey guys, I need a toilet break, watch these men for a
minute, will you?” he grated out, loudly. Obviously his throat was still sore.
The door slid open a moment later and seeing the usual round of inactivity from
the occupants, the two guards stepped into the room. Immediately Jonas and
Jackson pounced and quickly overpowered them, distributing the weapons to their
colleagues.

“OK listen up people,” Gunny called to the now ready and
alert marines. “We have the
Sunfire
arriving in-system within twenty
minutes, so we need to move quickly. Here are the objectives. Firstly, Jason
has identified that the nearest armoury is only a little more than three
hundred meters from here. Our next objective will be neutralising their main security
centre. Finally, we are to secure and hold the hangar bay until the Commander
locates and secures the boss. Any questions?” There were none. “Right let’s
move out people,” he shouted, motioning for Jonas and Jackson to go ahead as
both of them were the most heavily armed, having snatched pulse rifles from the
fallen guards. The rest of the group had distributed the three remaining
pistols amongst themselves.

Glancing out the doors to make sure the corridor was clear,
the two marines slipped out, with the others following closely behind. They
followed directions from Jason, who had worked through the night to hack into
the facilities’ secured network and download the schematics for the entire
complex.

*****

Miranda was roughly pushed through the door and sent
sprawling onto the carpet. Fortunately, like Sejanus’s office, this one was
also thick and therefore mostly absorbed the impact.

“Well at least this one is not red,” Miranda observed out
loud, looking around. The room was decorated in a modern style, with a black
carpet, large, white king sized bed, which Miranda instantly looked away from,
through to the black leather reclining sofa, coffee table and large
audio-visual entertainment system.

“Very chic, but not really my style,” Miranda commented.
Moving quickly through the room, she looked for anything she could use as a
weapon. Unfortunately the room was sparsely furnished and, after a few minutes
of fruitless searching, when the most lethal weapon she managed to find was a
desk lamp, she heard the door slide open behind her.

Taking a deep breath, she turned with a resigned expression
to face Sejanus. Once again she had to resist shuddering as he looked her over
with a heated expression, his dark eyes clouded with lust. “I don’t suppose I
could suggest dinner, a couple of glasses of wine and maybe a little dancing
first?” Miranda asked hopefully. Trying to use humour to cover the flutters of
fear once again starting to take a firm hold in the pit of her stomach.

Sejanus quickly covered the distance between them, catching
her wrist in a painfully tight grasp, pulling her towards him. Once he was
close enough, his tongue once again caressed the side of her cheek, but this
time she could not hide the wave of revulsion that swept through her body.

“No, I didn’t think so,” Miranda replied forcefully to her
own question, as her free hand lashed out, clawing at his eyes.

While Miranda wasn’t a skilled fighter like Jon or Gunny,
like many of the other crew on
Terra Nova
she had been through the
self-defence classes run by David. These were completely voluntary and offered
to all the crew, both ex-navy and civilian on the station. They were also many,
many times over-subscribed. Paul and Jon had made it clear to the military men
on the station they expected them to participate in the classes and help train
the civilians. The military tended to attract a certain type of man; tall,
rugged and broad shouldered. Combine that with many years of hard physical
labour and you could almost always guarantee a great chest, fantastic abs and
strong deltoids. With several of these fine physical specimens of manhood
present at each session, mostly dressed in light workout clothes, with close
physical contact practically a certainty, it was the closest thing to a dream
come true for many of the young, unattached women. It had become a tradition
after the session had ended for many of the women to congregate in one of their
quarters (Miranda had hosted several of these sessions) where wine was poured
freely, shattered nerves calmed and gossip exchanged.

Unfortunately these skills did not stretch as far as to take
on a fully trained Praetorian Guard and with a laugh Sejanus snatched her hand
out of the air, pulling it away from his face. With both arms now tightly
constrained, Miranda was running out of options and desperately tried to knee
him in the groin. Unfortunately he was expecting this obvious ploy and easily
blocked it with his knee. Pushing her sharply against the wall, Sejanus covered
her lips with his own, desperately seeking entrance to her mouth.

Not going to happen!
Miranda thought to herself, as
she could feel the panic starting to bubble up from her chest and fought to
remain in control. For she knew if she gave in to the panic then she would be
lost. However, Sejanus abruptly biting her lip distracted her and, without
thinking, she opened her mouth to shout in pain, allowing Sejanus to stick his
tongue into her mouth. Almost blind with panic Miranda did the first thing that
she could think of, she bit down on it.

Hard.

With the taste of coppery blood in her mouth, she heard a
cry of pain from Sejanus. He pushed her away and touched his tongue delicately.
Miranda only had a moment of self-congratulation before out of nowhere came the
back of his hand. The force of the impact snapped her head back, knocking her
to the ground. All Miranda could see were stars and she desperately shook her
head to restore her vision. However, by then, it was too late, as Sejanus was
already on top of her, tearing at her clothes and trying to rip the flight suit
off her body.

Miranda screamed.

*****

As he was frogmarched down the corridor, it was obvious
Sejanus had given the guards suitable warning about his unarmed combat skills,
because while two of the guards manhandled him down the corridor, the remaining
guards walked several feet behind, their hands constantly on their pistols
waiting for him to make the slightest move.

Finally they arrived at their destination. With a shout of
“Lights,” from one of the guards, they painfully dragged him into the middle of
the now illuminated room. Jon could only assume it was some sort of unused
cargo hold or store room, as the room was fairly large, at least twenty or
thirty meters square. Also it looked as if it hadn’t been used for some while,
as it was mostly empty. The floor was covered in the yellow dust that seemed to
be present almost everywhere else throughout the complex. Jon quickly cast his
eye around the room, but could not see anything within reach he could use for a
weapon.

Once Jon was in the middle of the room the guards
unceremoniously dumped him on the floor, before hurriedly taking several steps
back. The four guards now formed a smaller box within the room, with Jon in the
centre. They stood a couple of meters away, too far for him to reach them with
his hands or feet, but close enough the pistol each guard held in his hand,
pointed at Jon, couldn’t miss.

Looking up from the floor, Jon noticed a pair of black boots
come to an abrupt halt only a few feet in front of him. Craning his head back,
Jon was just able to make out the face of the largest guard, his sword in hand,
sneering down at him.

“So this is the great Praetorian Commander the boss warned
us about?” He said, walking around Jon’s prostrate body. A sharp kick to the
ribs caused Jon to collapse with blood mixed with spittle dripping onto the
floor.

“Yeah, well you should see me on one of my better days,” Jon
wheezed out, his ribs tender from where the boot had hit him. “Otherwise I
would have kicked all of your asses by now.”

The other guards just laughed, as the lead guard once again
kicked him in the ribs, but on his other side this time. Unable to support his
own weight, Jon went crashing to the floor once again, whilst breathing rapidly
and painfully.

“So any last words?” The guard enquired, coming to a stop
once again, just in front of Jon’s face.

Struggling once again to his hands and knees, Jon quickly
cast his gaze around the room, taking note of the exact position of each of the
guards surrounding him. “Yeah,” Jon coughed. “Two words actually.”

“Oh?” The lead guard asked, lifting the sword in his hand,
preparing to decapitate him.

“Yeah,” Jon said, eying the position of his sword, fixing it
into the mental map he had built of the room and the position of all the
guards.

“Lights off!” he called out loudly and the room suddenly
plunged into darkness.

Jon’s unexpected action caught the guards unprepared and
gave him enough time to act. As he knew exactly where the sword was positioned,
it was easy for him to pitch forward in the darkness and grab the blade of his
sword in one hand.

His sword had been calling out to him ever since he had been
separated from it the day before. It was like a beacon in a storm, always
calling out the correct course to him. Catching the blade, reversing its
direction, with the point facing back towards the lead guard, Jon used his
other hand to push the hilt of the sword forward. Jon didn’t even wait for the
scream of pain from the guard to know that he had hit his target. Instead with
the position of all four guards fixed in his head, he rolled to the right and
with a broad sweep of his sword he felt it bite into flesh, another scream.
Next Jon rolled to the left, sweeping his sword backwards in the opposite
direction, resulting in another cry of pain. Finally Jon slid backwards,
reversing the blade, thrusting it behind him.