Steel Beneath the Skin Read Free Page B

door. She nodded to Sims as soon as they were in position. The launcher spoke twice and two stun grenades shattered the wood over the window. A second later the interior of the building filled with bright light and smoke, and two loud bangs left the occupants wondering what was happening long enough for the breach team to enter. There was the sound of automatic weapons fire.
    Three insurgents, half dressed and carrying AK-47s burst out of one of the other buildings. They made it barely three yards before they were cut down.
    ‘Hostages secure,’ Perry’s voice announced over their field radios.
    ‘Move them out,’ Aneka said. ‘Sims, Dalton, Teague, make sure we’re not followed.’
    Everything was running smoothly so far, just the way Aneka liked it. She stood up and took point out of the enclosure as Perry and Quinn hustled their charges out of the building. Four hundred yards out and they would make sure they were in the clear, and then bring in the evac chopper. Plain sailing.
    They put the hostages in the centre of a circle and stood, weapons pointed outward. All four man were battered, bruised, and in shock, but they were safe now. The three remaining members of the extraction team moved up a couple of minutes later. Sims gave an “OK” sign as he walked toward Aneka. There had been no trouble. It was almost going too smoothly.
    ‘Sims, get the chopper on the radio,’ Aneka said as Dalton and Teague joined the circle.
    ‘I think it’s here,’ Sims replied, pointing upward. There was a light in the sky where he was pointing, pulsing red. Then the area was saturated with bright light and wind.
    ‘What the fuck’s he doing?!’ Quinn yelled.
    Aneka covered her eyes and looked up at the vehicle overhead. There was wind, but no noise from the blades. She was just about to say that she did not think it was the helicopter when something hit her in the chest. Her entire body jerked and her vision blurred. For a fraction of a second she heard yelling, and then there was nothing.
    FScV Garnet Hyde, 13.6.523 FSC.
    ‘Sounds like an electronic rifle hit,’ the man behind the window said. ‘Puts several thousand volts through you guided by a couple of laser beams. Feels like someone plugged you into the mains, then you black out.’
    ‘A ranged taser,’ Aneka said. ‘Yeah, something like that.’
    ‘Uh, Aneka, this is Leo Bashford, one of our facilitators,’ Ella said by way of introduction.
    Aneka looked out at the bald man. Probably ex-military, fairly intense, and watching her carefully. ‘I don’t remember what happened after that. There were ten of us there. Have you found anyone else?’
    Bashford shook his head. ‘We did a bit more searching where we found you. It was basically a section of the ship’s hold. We haven’t had time to go through the rest of the ship. Besides which, we need Ella for that and she’s been in here.’
    ‘Uh, yeah. Thank you for waiting for me to come around.’ She let herself sit back against the wall, though she continued hiding herself behind her legs as much as possible. ‘Thanks for, well, rescuing me, I guess.’
    ‘We were passing by,’ Bashford said. ‘You were lucky the ship detected the mass. You were a navigational hazard, and a hard one to detect. A dead ship in space is next to invisible, especially at warp velocities. Once the ship saw you it was obliged to slow down and wake one of the flight crew. They have to file a Navigation Hazard Report.’
    ‘But Drake, the captain, realised what he was looking at and woke the rest of us,’ Ella continued. ‘We’re with the University of New Earth doing archaeology, anthropology, that kind of thing.’
    ‘Wait… “New Earth”?’
    Ella’s face straightened. ‘Joval Five was renamed as New Earth in two-fifty-five by our calendar. Old Earth… well, we’re not even sure where it is now. We have a rough idea, obviously, but it’s not worth finding anyway. The Xinti… it’s a cinder. We lost so