A Darker Magic (Starship's Mage Book 10), стр. 47
“These people are the last vestige of the worst Magekind has produced in the last two hundred years,” she continued. “We will bring them to justice. The people who died here will have justice.”
It wasn’t safe to split the squad, but sweeping the facility one corridor at a time was taking too damn long. Mooren didn’t even object, gesturing for her Marines to form up around her.
“You heard the Commander, Knight, Andrews,” she told her Corporals. “Go with her; watch her back.” The Marine turned to look at Bolivar, the suit of armor looming over the Guardia officer.
“Not too late to get out of here, Captain Bolivar,” she told him.
“I’m with Mage-Lieutenant Commander Chambers,” Bolivar replied, glancing over at Roslyn. “This is my damn planet, and the people in that morgue are my people.
“I’m not going fucking anywhere until the bastards behind this are dead or in cuffs.”
33
Six Marines and a Guardia officer followed Roslyn deeper into the laboratory. They made less noise than the entire squad, but their armored boots still rang sharply in the silence of the underground complex.
“This place feels like a fucking tomb,” Knight murmured. “But…I think the drones might have some activity ahead.”
“Activity, Corporal?” Roslyn asked.
“Movement, active equipment, possibly people,” the Marine confirmed. “Might be part of the lab that’s in use right now?”
“Sounds promising,” Roslyn said. “Everyone’s got stunguns, right? We want these people alive.”
“Can we torture them to death after?” someone asked quietly.
“I did not hear that,” Roslyn snapped. “But if I had, the answer would be no. We are Her Majesty’s people. Everything we do must be guided by Her desires and Her principles…and she’d be very, very angry with us for torturing people.
“We know it doesn’t work for info, and the Protectorate does not go in for revenge. Am I clear?”
She understood the urge. If there was ever a time she wanted to go for revenge, this was it. But…no. She’d see the people behind this lab put on transparent public trial…and then shot.
That was justice, not revenge.
“We need them alive,” she reiterated. “As many as we can get.”
“Wilco, sir,” Knight and Andrews chorused. From their body language, they did know who had spoken and there would be words the Navy officer couldn’t hear.
“Let’s move,” Roslyn ordered, unslinging the stun carbine she had hung over her back. She didn’t need the weapon, but she was far more likely to accidentally electrocute someone to death than the SmartDarts were.
“Twenty meters ahead,” Knight murmured. “Looks like a temporary security checkpoint set up to lock down a segment of the—ow.”
“Corporal?”
“Security checkpoint,” the Marine confirmed. “Three Augments, one of them saw the drone and shot it.”
“Move up and secure,” Roslyn ordered. “Stun them if you can, but do what you have to.”
Augments would be proofed against Nix, but Protectorate military-issue stunguns had SmartDart coding to deal with the cyborgs’ defenses. The SmartDarts would take longer to take an Augment down, but that Augment would need repairs before they got back up.
The Marines passed Roslyn almost before she’d finished giving the order. She couldn’t match the speed of their powered muscles, but she was still barely behind them. She heard gunfire crackle ahead and slid around a corner to take cover behind one of the exosuited Marines.
The Augments were fast and accurate, but that did them only so much good when they didn’t have penetrator rifles. Their standard battle rifles were almost useless against the Marines, but the lab’s protectors took what cover they could and threw lead downrange.
One was already twitching on the floor when Roslyn joined the fight, SmartDart pulses burning out the electrical hardware woven through their body. It was unquestionably cruel, but it was effective.
Almost as effective as Corporal Knight putting a tungsten penetrator dart through a second Augment’s skull as the ex-Republic trooper popped up to take a shot. A spray of metal, bone and gore splattered the wall of the lab as the woman went down.
“Surrender,” Roslyn barked.
“Fuck off and die!”
She shrugged and gestured. Using the man’s voice as a guide, she yanked the Augment out from behind cover, suspending him in the air in shock as three stunguns opened fire.
The last Augment hit the ground as Roslyn released him, twitching like the first one.
“Andrews, cuff them and check their vitals,” she ordered. “We’ll need medevac for them both in short order, but let’s make sure they don’t die on us until then.”
There were definite downsides to disabling integrated cyberware. The Augments should be fine…but Roslyn wasn’t going to risk potential sources of intelligence on should.
“Knight, get the security door open,” Roslyn continued, gesturing the cyberwarfare Marine forward. “Everyone else: cover her. No surprises.”
“The only drones I have left are maintaining the link with Sergeant Mooren,” Knight warned as she plugged wires from her armor into the panel next to the door. “No more warnings in advance.”
“I’m still surprised at how many of them you all had stuck in your armor,” Roslyn admitted, watching the door with her magic ready. “We’ve made it this far. We’ll make it the rest of the way.”
The drones were integral in building the map she had of the complex. It was maybe half-complete, with massive gaps, but she knew everywhere her people had been and everywhere Mooren’s team had been.
She figured they had to be near to the center and close to the section supporting the fusion reactor. There couldn’t be much more lab space left, but they were also in what had to be the most secure sections of the complex.
Nobody, even a bunch of rogue ex-Republic scientists, was going to leave the fusion reactor unprotected, after all.
Protected or not, the security door slid open under Knight’s tender ministrations. The space beyond was another sterile empty corridor. Empty.
“Marines first,” Andrews told Roslyn as their armored gauntlet appeared in front of her. “Something about this stinks.”
“Something about this whole place stinks,” she replied—but she didn’t argue.
Andrews and their Marines swept forward,