of it.
“Yeah… right. You keep telling yourself that.” Sparky winked. “But if I were you, I’d watch over your shoulder for the next… oh, rest of your very short fucking life.”
“Yeah, yeah…” Mills scoffed, pushing Eric ahead of him. Her twin turned and twisted, trying to keep her in sight as long as possible. But then they were gone, and it was just her, Sparky and their soon-to-be executioners.
“Well,” Sparky drawled. “Since we’re alone now… any chance you guys’ll take any last requests? Good looking lads like you, I’m sure we can find something… fun to do.”
Of all the things Eris had expected from the ex-con, it wasn’t for him to hit on the guys about to execute them.
“For fuck’s sake, Sparky, have some fucking respect. Would you?” she hissed as the two troopers just laughed and stepped behind them.
“You think I’m interested in these tossers?” he shot back, on his knees next to her. “Sheesh, you never heard of a distraction technique?”
Hands behind her head, she closed her eyes. Shutting him out.
This was it.
Rather than the panic she thought she’d feel, she had a sense of calm and peace. Of finality. She’d done everything she could, and it still hadn’t been enough. They were out of weapons and out of options, so she let it go and let peace wash over her. In a couple of seconds nothing would matter anymore anyway; there was no point for her last moments to be filled with anger and frustration.
So instead she let everything good about her life fill her mind—her military service, where she’d made a difference, the tiny connection with her brother, even forged as it was in the midst of fear and threat… Zero…
Her breath caught on a gasp, a savage ache in the center of her chest.
She would never see Zero again. Never hold him, never feel him hold her. Never see that cheeky smile of his.
Never tell him she loved him…
Fuck, when had that happened? She loved Zero. Loved the big, gruff cyborg with the name full of numbers and letters and the pain in the ass alpha hero bossiness.
Kline cocked his weapon, the sound right by her ear. She steeled herself for the shot. Would she even hear it before the bullet tore through her brain, scrambling the delicate tissues and snuffing her life out in less than a heartbeat?
A tear leaked down the side of her face as she waited for the inevitable.
If she’d believed in any god, she’d pray… her only request just one more moment with Zero….
16
The moon base on MD-892-A was utterly underwhelming.
“Is that it?”
The entire crew were crowded onto the bridge as they approached the moon listed in Eric’s information as the location of the lab. It looked like every other moon Zero had ever seen. Nothing special.
Until a flare of bright light illuminated the edge, like a sunrise that was here one moment and gone the next.
“Okay, what the hell was that?” T’Raal demanded, the main view screen focusing in on the flare. Whatever it was had been just over the horizon, so they couldn’t see anything now apart from rocks and more rocks.
“Errrr… that was our combat shuttle,” Beauty informed them as the ship rounded the side of the moon and the rocks gave way to a blasted crater with edges like broken teeth.
Zero’s heart stalled in his chest, his hands frozen on the flight controls. Eris and Sparky had been on that shuttle...
“Scanning the remains. No biological matter detected. There was no one on board.”
His heart restarted with a painful thump. Just the idea of Eris… gone like that. It shorted his onboard and biological systems in ways he’d never encountered before. It was painful and not convenient, not when it locked up his systems and didn’t allow him to think.
Bringing them parallel with the surface, he swung the ship around. The lab was laid out in front of them, a spidery network of domes and leg-like corridors connecting them. There was no armoring, no defenses… he frowned, using his uplink to the Sprite to bring the scanners to bear.
“The shot came from a ship on the other side of the base,” he recounted for the rest of the bridge crew. “Definitely combat-capable. Rail guns and point defense cannons. There’s a scientific vessel there as well, both attached to the base by boarding tubes.”
“Okay. It looks like they’re getting ready to up and leave then. Chances are they know something’s up if they took out the shuttle. We