Saxon's War by Richard Tongue

Author:Richard Tongue [Tongue, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-11-08T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

Saxon raced into the tunnels, following a flickering flashlight that led him to Singh, waiting for him at a crossroads, pistol in hand. She jammed a communications cord into the outlet of his suit, then turned, gesturing for him to follow.

“Have a nice chat with the Professor?” she asked.

“He offered us a way out, to cover all of this up,” he replied.

“Did you believe him?”

“Did I believe he was sincere? Yes, actually, I did. Did I believe that he could follow through on his promises, override the rest of the Council? No.”

She nodded, then said, “I think you’re probably right about that. He’s not like the rest of them, that much is true.” Gesturing down a side passage, she added, “This leads deeper into the caves. The others took a different route, one that runs into this path about a hundred meters further on. We should be able to lose them down here. Dietrich still thinks there might be a way out.”

“If this goes wrong, he might get a chance to find out.” Waving a hand back towards the entrance, he added, “We’ve got company less than three minutes behind me. They’re going to land right outside. This is perfect.”

“I think I get the basic idea,” she said. “Take out the bad guys, ride their shuttle up into orbit with Benedetti using every trick she knows to provide us with cover, then take the cutter by force when the shuttle docks.”

“There’s a little more nuance to it than that, but yes, that’s the plan.”

“And you really think we can pull it off?”

“I think so,” he said, a smile on his face, as the two of them advanced down the corridor. “We’ve got a few advantages. Notably that I’ve done this before, and unless I miss my mark, they haven’t.”

“When have you…”

“Venezuela, a long, long time ago, in a cave not that unlike this.” He looked down at his arms, and added, “Though I admit, I wasn’t stuck wearing a spacesuit at the time, but the basic principle is just the same.”

“Except that if that suit is punctured, we die.”

“Generally, if you get hit by a bullet, that’s the most likely outcome no matter what you happen to be wearing at the time.” He gestured at a rocky outcrop, jutting out from the wall, then said, “I’ll take that one. You find the next hiding spot down the corridor. When I have to fall back, you can give me covering fire, and we’ll trade off until we run out of cave. Hopefully we’ll run out of bad guys first.”

A beam of light flashed down the cave, and Saxon crouched tighter behind his cover, waiting for the enemy to arrive. He looked at his pistol, then smiled, shaking his head in disbelief. Back before he’d been displaced in time, there had always been talk about the potential for ground combats in space, even a few tests of zero-gravity sidearms on the Moon, but it had always been assumed that such warfare

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