Shattered Earth (Shamans & Shifters Space Opera Book 3) Read online

  “Clear.” Hami monitored the readouts from the shuttle’s sensors. “No ordinance, electronic or bio signatures detected between here and the mouth of the mine.”

  Sean would stay silent unless he detected an emergency and the incursion team had to act.

  “Go!”

  Their space combat suits would protect them from Earth’s radioactive atmosphere. Returning to the Stealth, the entire shuttle as well as the suits would have to wait through decontamination procedures. The suits enabled their wearers to survive comfortably for seventy two hours, and uncomfortably for double that time. Kohia hoped that the decontamination process would be done in a day. For now, what mattered was ensuring they returned.

  As they hit the snow-covered ground, their suits flashed warnings of the irradiated environment. Kohia acknowledged the warning absently. Her blaster remained ready as Hami took point and Aaron trailed her.

  The remaining three crew members spread out, one monitoring the trampship and the other two guarding the team’s retreat to the shuttle. Their suits’ goggles would enable them to see in the darkness of the mine.

  “Rail tracks,” Hami reported. All of their suits were linked. If one detected bio-signatures for life, they’d all know about it. The same went for any indication of weapons or electronics. So Hami reported what the suit wouldn’t. “Do we follow them?”

  “Yes. We hit fast and hard. Aaron, fall back. Belinda, you’re up.”

  Belinda Milne was Clarke’s back-up in engineering. She carried the tech and the knowledge to take out the mine’s surveillance system. There had to be one, didn’t there? How else would the guards monitor their prisoners?

  But the rail track ran deeper and deeper without the suits registering any electronic equipment—until they did.

  Belinda activated the signal blocker to ensure that if their presence had been detected, a warning couldn’t be shared. Then she directed her blaster at the exposed wiring to a surveillance box and fried it; as a bonus, taking out the mine’s electrical system.

  In front, Hami had her suit’s audio-sensors on their highest setting. They picked up a distant, “Not again!”. Apparently, the mine’s electronics weren’t reliable. They ought to be. Electronics survived deep space, after all. But if the mine had been outfitted on the cheap…

  All the better for us, Kohia thought.

  The man’s muttered comment also gave them a sense of where he was located, especially as he kept swearing to himself as he tried to raise someone on his communication system, and couldn’t.

  “Visual lock acquired,” Hami said. “One guard at the entrance to a side tunnel. He’s entering it now. Safe to approach.”

  The team joined her.

  An ore wagon, half-filled, waited by the entrance to the side tunnel. The rail tracks continued on past, going deeper. Starships weren’t built to be spacious, so Kohia had a decade of experience in living, working and fighting in confined spaces. Yet the narrow sides and low roof of the tunnel oppressed her. Perhaps it was the knowledge of how much dirt and rock lay over them. Fire a missile at the entrance and everyone inside the mine would be buried alive.

  Shaking off the morbid thought, Kohia refocused. “Acquire the guard.”

  Hami gestured to Phillip Song. The two worked well together. Phillip was a tough weasel-shifter who excelled at close-quarters fighting. They ducked into the side tunnel.

  Aaron kept his attention directed ahead, deeper into the tunnel.

  Kohia approved. On a mission, personal feelings couldn’t be allowed to interfere with its objectives, most especially, that of the team’s safety. “Belinda, scout ahead. Aaron, cover her.”

  “Don’t shoot! Don’t tear the suit. The radiation here will kill me. I surrender.” The strange male voice was high and panicked, and echoed along the side tunnel to Kohia’s suit’s sensors. “I surrender.”

  “You dirty bastard.” Phil’s voice surprised her. The man was usually so quiet that his nickname was the Phantom. For him to break silence with a personal comment on a mission was unprecedented. “You deserve to share their fate.”

  Forty three bio-markers were reported from Phil and Hami’s suits. Whatever had caused the delay in transmitting the information, possibly some quirk of being in the tunnel, Kohia could guess the reason for Phil’s outburst. He and Hami had found some of the prisoners.

  “Stay quiet and we’ll get you out of here.” Hami’s voice was strong and commanding. “Stay where you are, while we interrogate the guard. We’ll come back for you.”

  “Too late for us.” A whisper so ragged it wheezed was transmitted via Hami and Phil’s suits. “Don’t trust what he says. There are four guards. All useless. It’s not weapons, but despair that keeps us under control. They have the food and water, but even they can’t leave Earth. Trapped with us. But not sick like us. You want to help us? Strip him of his suit.”

  “Nooo!”

  “No,” Kohia said sharply, in case Hami or Phil were tempted. “Tell them you’ll return with food and water, clothing, whatever they need, and that we’ll get them off planet.”

  She heard Hami relay the message, and conclude. “First, we have to take the mine.”

  The whisperer sounded exhausted, but determined. “End of the rail tracks, side tunnel leads to nuclear bunker. It has its own tunnel—elevator shaft—to a trampship on the surface that supplies the mine’s power. The guards like to stay in it.”

  A second whisperer took over as the first subsided into racking coughs. “Between the guards’ bunker and the rail track, our quarters. Forty seven asleep. One guard on duty. Two shifts. Two guards in their bunker or on-ship.”

  “So there are four guards in total?” Hami asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Any weapons beyond the blasters they carry?”

  “Not that they’ve shown us.” A cautious man, that whisperer.

  Kohia approved. “Thank them and get back here. Bring the captured guard.” Leaving him with his former prisoners would be inviting trouble.

  “Any information you want to add?” Phil growled, presumably at the guard. “Remembering that we’re your ticket out of here. If this mission goes wrong, you die.”

  “Sound carries in the tunnels. When you get to the bottom of the main one, Rhys is on duty. He won’t see you. He’ll be in the corner. There’s a chair there. If he doesn’t hear you, you can shoot him before he gets his blaster up. Our suits are old. Good enough to keep out the radiation, but not sustained blaster fire.”

  Nice guy, Kohia thought wryly. He was more than willing to rat out his buddy.

  “Rhys is a psycho. He gets off on the prisoners’ sickness. I reckon if it was possible, he’d be screwing their corpses.”

  Hami, Phil and their prisoner emerged from the side tunnel in time for Kohia to see the man sharing that particular gem of information. The shabby spacesuit hid much of his face and form, but he shuffled along no taller than petite Hami.

  “Knock him out,” Kohia ordered.

  Blaster set to stun, Phil quickly obliged.

  “Belinda, what do you see?” Kohia continued.

  “We’re at the bottom of the tunnel.” Her low-voiced response would be contained by her suit. The guards and prisoners wouldn’t hear her. “The guard’s information seems possible.” Kohia had broadcast the abbreviated interview. “There’s a side tunnel. My suit’s sensors can’t get a clear numeric reading, but indicate multiple bio-signatures grouped inside it.”

  “Wait for us to join you.”

  They left the guard lying against the ore wagon. If any of the former prisoners disobeyed orders and ventured this way, they’d find him. Kohia could live with it if they exacted rough-and-ready justice.

  The incursion team joined up at the base of the tunnel. Kohia kept Phil back and let Hami enter with Belinda. Even with her audio sensors tuned for it, Kohia barely heard them.

  A faint crackle like fallen leaves crunching underfoot came through the audio.

  “Gua
rd down. Stunned. Prisoners waking up.”

  “Aaron, Phil, guard the entrance to the side tunnel. I don’t want us trapped.” Kohia gestured the others in. “Hami, on your judgement, take out the guards in the bunker.”

  “The door’s locked. Voice-scan required,” Hami reported evenly. “Do you want me to blast it open?”

  Kohia ran along the tunnel, ignoring the prisoners staring at her from narrow bunks. “Belinda?”

  “I’ve got it.” The woman sounded amused. Hami liked to blow her way through things. Belinda, on the other hand, was a mountain lion. She preferred sneakiness, and from her lessons with Sean, she could hack most things. She attached a gizmo to the scanner, spun it, and a second later, the door to the bunker opened.

  Kohia went through with Hami falling in behind. “Belinda, mind the prisoners. I don’t want anyone getting ideas and messing things up.” The mission was going smoothly.

  The bunker door opened into a shambolic decontamination chamber. Abandoned gear lay about. A flashing red light was dimly visible through a smeared interior door.

  Fortunately, a manual override to the door existed. That didn’t seem like a wise feature, but it worked for Kohia and her team since they cared less about introducing radiation carried on their suits into the bunker than risking giving the two sleeping guards inside time to prepare a hostile welcome.

  She strode through the interior door and fired a stunning blast at the man who raised himself up on an elbow and began a demand for an explanation. She stunned the second man while he was still blinking himself awake. “Belinda, grab any weapons. When the room is clear, retreat.” The men could likely recover from the level of radiation they’d been exposed to if they took their anti-radiation meds. The bottle sat on a shelf by the interior door. “Hami, Landon, check out the trampship above. If you can, exit directly through it to the outside of the mine and wait for us there.”

  Her people moved.

  Kohia returned to the prisoners’ tunnel.

  Before pressing for permission to use the Stealth on this mission, Kohia had done her research. If the galactic market for irradiated gold was strong enough to warrant a mine on Earth—it wasn’t—then the investors should have brought in robotic mining equipment. People, of whatever species, couldn’t survive Earth’s levels of radiation. The fact that the mine used people in place of technology, meant that the gold was arguably the least of the mine’s money-making activities. It was the prisoners’ suffering and death that made the mine owner his or her money.

  However immoral and ugly such a business plan was, it wasn’t until Kohia studied the condition of the prisoners that she truly grasped the evil of the mine, and sympathized with Phil’s desire to kill the four guards.

  While the remaining guards were being dealt with, someone had found a battery-powered flashlight and a lantern. Kohia’s combat suit adjusted her goggles to match the new lighting level. For the prisoners, it meant that they could finally see their rescuers. As they stared, Kohia stared at them.

  Radiation sickness had marked them all. With some it was emaciation, and shivering, pale skin, with drying evidence of nausea and vomiting. But others were much worse. They had ravaged mouths, eaten away by the sickness. Sores wept blood and pus over their bodies. The wonder was that those so badly suffering still clung to life.

  Kohia sent Phil to retrieve the prisoners from the higher tunnel, while the prisoners in the bunks pointed out the location of supplies. Food interested a few of them, but all craved water, or better yet, the high energy drinks in a locked cupboard by the bunker door.

  “It’ll be irradiated,” Belinda said, returning.

  “Does it matter?” Kohia’s curt tone only barely hid her furious pity. She handed out the desired drinks, retrieving more for the prisoners who shuffled in with Phil’s escort. Even with everyone in place, there were empty bunks.

  “We’re expecting a new batch.”

  Kohia thought she recognized the harsh whisperer from the tunnel.

  The man was skeletal, lips red and swollen, his hands…

  Kohia forced herself not to turn away. Her suit’s helmet hid her expression. The suits were designed to scare the enemy with a faceless, nameless, remorseless super-soldier. Now, it hid her horrified sense of inadequacy. Then her mind processed the new information. “You’re expecting a delivery? When?”

  “Any day now.”

  Kohia swore silently. “Sean, did you hear that?”

  “Yes.”

  She relaxed fractionally. The Stealth was in orbit and her intelligence officer remained in contact with them even this far below ground. Such contact should have been guaranteed, but radiation and geology could combine to do strange things to transmissions. “This changes things. If a ship is inbound, I don’t want it receiving a warning and haring off. Chances are it would dump its prisoners in deep space.” Space hid a multitude of sins. “And if there is someone in the Galactic Police working in lock with these guys, then we can’t afford to warn them of the changed situation here by requesting a prisoner pick-up.”

  “So we wait,” Sean said.

  “Yeah.” She considered the situation. Mission plans had to be flexible, although objectives remained unchanged. “I’ll transmit photos of the prisoners. Some are barely recognizable, but others…see if you can identify them. I’ll ask for names.”

  Maybe the prisoners were too cold, sick, brutalized and starved to feel any enthusiasm, but where Kohia had thought she’d receive messages for loved ones and demands for freedom and a return to normal life, the men merely gave their names. Some just grunted. Two ignored her, shut in their own misery.

  As awful as she felt for them, she was aware of a clock ticking down to an unknown deadline. Their shuttle was too exposed by the mine entrance. Yes, Sean would give them warning when the delivery starship approached, but Kohia preferred to be away before then.

  She had her team prepare to move out.

  The prisoners lay on their bunks, very few of them even bothering to watch events. There had been extra blankets in the supplies cupboard. Why hadn’t the guards handed them out? But the answer was obvious. The blankets were for the expected new lot of prisoners.

  Phil distributed the blankets and additional rations among the bunks, while Kohia and Belinda shoved the two guards from the tunnels into the decontamination unit inside the bunker, then closed the bunker door. Belinda had gotten the electrical system back online, and the security system locked the door. The guards and their former prisoners were now separated. The prisoners had food and water and weren’t being forced to work. For now, that was the best Kohia could achieve. She wanted her team back aboard the Stealth.

  Hami and Landon waited by the shuttle. At the sight of the rest of the team, Hami opened the hatch. They boarded in silence. There was a volatile edge to it. Everyone would deal with the horror differently, but trapped in the shuttle wasn’t the time for it. The crew was professional. Mission discipline held.

  The situation was tense. The decontamination procedure for the outside of the shuttle was swift and efficient. The internal process took much longer, including as it did, their suits. Just to be safe, they then each entered and exited the personal decontamination unit at the side of the cargo hold.

  Meantime, Sean had detected the presence of a starship exiting the wormhole nearest Earth. It was later than the former prisoner, the whisperer, had indicated, but it was on a direct route to Earth. Sean’s insistence on leaving sensor drones along the path to prevent unannounced visitors now proved useful. The crew knew they had a day, arguably longer at the starship’s current rate of progress before it arrived in missile range.

  It meant that they had a few valuable hours of downtime.

  Clothes had been left for them outside the personal decontamination unit, so once dressed in their familiar uniform of sage-green utility suits, they headed for the recreation cabin and real food.

  Nairo ambushed Kohia as soon as she entered the passage. He was as dema
nding as any shifter and as dominating, crowding her back against the bulkhead.

  She wrapped her arms and legs around him, going with it. According to her tiger, he was her mate.

  “It looked bad.” His rough sympathy gave her exactly what she needed: a brief acknowledgement of the emotional cost of this mission, which wasn’t yet complete.

  “I’m still on active duty,” she warned him.

  He leaned in harder, one hand framing her face. “I know.” His dark eyes devoured her. The skin beneath his eyes had the bruised look of too little sleep and his skin stretched taut over his cheekbones.

  “Clarke reckons we’re mates, you and I.” Even if the mission was still active, she couldn’t hide from this crucial personal issue.

  Nairo raked his hands through her hair. “What do you think?”

  “I want you. My tiger likes you.” An understatement. “You’re not what I pictured as a mate.”

  The muscles around his eyes flinched. It was the only sign she’d hurt him with the quasi-rejection. “Because I’m not a shifter,” he said evenly.

  Her tiger snarled at her, furious at how Kohia’s maladroit honesty hurt their mate. She regretted it, too. Whether this man was her forever, or not, he didn’t deserve cruelty. How he held her, the fact that he’d been waiting for her, everything in him spoke that he cared for her. Even afraid for her own heart, Kohia should have been kinder than to return caring with self-protective defensiveness.

  But Nairo’s hand caressed her face, again, his long fingers gentle. “Your eyes. Blazing green. Hello, there.” He looked through Kohia to her tiger.

  And the trapped animal inside her, unable to experience the freedom of a shift, froze mid-snarl. Their mate saw her.

  “Nairo,” Kohia said in a shaken voice, nuzzling her head into the caress of his hand.

  “Why aren’t I enough for you?”

  “It’s not that you’re not a shifter. That’s not the reason.” The passage was a stupid place to have a momentous personal discussion, but her crew had cleared out and were giving them privacy. “I need a mate who can dominate me.”

  Nairo stilled.