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  Biyu hissed, her eyes taking in Erik’s drones. “That would explain why we’re not seeing a bunch of vehicles. If they’re terrorists who have infiltrated the workers, they might have come here with the help of a drone or driven right in with the codes.”

  Erik grunted. “Damn it. At least this means there are probably only a few of them. If they’re smart, they’ve kept the auditor alive as leverage. I’m going to take squads one through three in. O’Malley, you watch our backs with your squad, just in case the rats are hiding somewhere other than the mine.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Erik nodded toward the doors. “Let’s move.”

  The officers split up to return to their squads, everyone switching back to general broadcast frequencies and delivering the orders. Soon, squads one through three were gathered at the tunnel doors, spread out in an inverted wedge, their rifles at the ready. There was no reason to crack out the heavy weapons yet.

  Erik neared the access panel to the door and lifted the dust shield. The screen came alive with a message in English and Mandarin.

  Xingguang Mining Molino Site A. No trespassing. All violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of UTC law.

  Erik snorted.

  Get a lot of trespassers out here, huh? Terrorists don’t care about signs.

  Erik entered the emergency override code in short stabs, twelve digits in quick succession.

  They’d trained several times for potential Zitark incursions into the mine. He figured the aliens would always just blow the colony and mine away from orbit, but it wasn’t like anyone on Earth had direct experience with Zitark invasion tactics.

  For all they knew, the reptiles would demand to settle it over a game of chess.

  With a groan, the behemoth doors began to slide apart. The soldiers waited, their breath held and their guns pointed at the doors. Anything from angry reptilian aliens to terrorists might pour out of the tunnel.

  The doors continued separating. Ceiling lights kicked on in sequence, pushing the darkness into the distance and revealing nothing but a long, empty tunnel.

  They heard nothing, but Erik’s mind wanted to add a click as each light turned on.

  Sonofabitch. Erik hit the comm. “Base, this is Knight One. Confirm the absence of other personnel at the main mine.” Erik glanced at the readout of every person on his team. His eyes flickered through the menu systems, making sure of the overall status in case something went…

  Wrong.

  “Confirmed, Knight One. Xingguang says no one other than the auditor was scheduled to be at the mine today.”

  Erik frowned. It wasn’t like they had a bunch of internal sensors set up. “Squads one through three, on me.” He tapped on his wrist to bring up the layout of the mine. “It looks like it branches off in three directions. Let’s go check it out. Drop transmission boosters at the intersections just to be sure. I don’t want anyone getting cut off down here, and I don’t trust the mine’s internal comm network right now.”

  “Yes, sir,” replied his squad leaders in unison.

  Quick steps brought the soldiers to the intersections. They continued on their way, the squads consisting of twelve soldiers each, except for Erik with fourteen. All that firepower proved unnecessary, given the emptiness of the mine tunnel.

  A few squat four-armed inactive black loading and maintenance drones were against the walls on occasion. Every once in a while, a door led into a small room, but it was obvious the facility had been designed with the idea that humans would be minimally directly involved with its day-to-day operations.

  “Squad two, anything?” Erik asked.

  “No, sir,” Biyu replied over the comm. “Drones, mostly. There are also a few inactive ore haulers loaded up, but nothing besides dust and quiet. No blood, no body, just nothing.”

  Erik furrowed his brow, eyes darting to his left as the squad progressed. “Squad three?”

  “Quiet and boring, sir,” Ahuja replied.

  “Continue. The man sent off an SOS. Even if he used the mine’s comm to boost his signal, he’s in here, and I doubt he went very deep.”

  A few more minutes passed, with Erik’s gaze darting back and forth. The small icons on the side of his HUD identified the active status of the squads. All green circles. Everyone was fine.

  Between their exoskeletons and the anti-ballistic nature of their snug tactical suits, even if a terrorist surprised them, the soldiers would win. If the terrorists didn’t surprise them, and the Knights deployed their shields, there was no way they could lose.

  Luck, as many a wise man had said, was where opportunity met preparation, and the Knights Errant were well prepared both in equipment and training.

  Squad one turned at another intersection and Erik narrowed his eyes. Splattered blood covered the walls.

  “Potential contact,” Erik called, sweeping his weapon back and forth. His soldiers took formation and aimed. “We have blood. Proceeding forward. All squads, continue with caution. Squad four, you still good?”

  “Yes, sir,” O’Malley replied.

  Erik crept forward, squad one on his flanks. The blood formed a trail around the corner.

  “Three, two, one,” Erik counted.

  The soldiers spun around the corner. No enemy awaited them, just a bullet-riddled body in an excursion suit on its back. A few spent shell casings lay on the ground next to the body.

  Erik locked his gun onto his exoskeleton’s storage rack before crouching. Blood had painted much of the white excursion suit red. The helmet was cracked open. Even if the man hadn’t suffered from a lethal reaction to excessive lead, he wouldn’t have survived.

  His eyes remained open in a death stare.

  “Looks like we found our auditor. Death by enemy action,” Erik muttered. “Base, we have located the UTC auditor. He’s dead. Multiple bullet wounds. No sign of assailants.”

  “Copy that, Knight One.”

  Erik stood and shook his head.

  His gaze lifted to a thick door a few yards behind the body. “That isn’t…normal. “

  The door was heavily reinforced compared to most of the doors he’d seen.

  “Sir?”

  “Wait one. We’re going to see if anyone is behind door number one,” he answered

  Erik walked over to the access panel and tapped in the emergency code override. Nothing happened. He attempted to interface with the door using his military credentials directly sent from his PNIU.

  ACCESS DENIED.

  “Now we have moved from not-normal to weird,” Erik mumbled.

  “What, sir?” asked one of his squad members, Sergeant Pena.

  “This door is too secure,” Erik responded. “Way too secure for some random door in an automated mine on the ultimate frontier world. Why is it here?”

  Pena grinned. “We’ve got torches and explosives, sir. Maybe we should crack it open and see.”

  “We’ve got no reason to blow through this.” Erik grunted. “If we can’t get through, the terrorists couldn’t get through, and I don’t need the UTC brass crawling up my ass for unnecessary facility damage.” He glanced at the body again. “But where the hell are the killers? This guy didn’t shoot himself.”

  “Deeper in the mine, sir?” Pena shrugged. “If not here, then one of the other passages.”

  “Maybe.” Erik frowned. He didn’t like mysteries.

  “All squads, meet up at the entrance. I’m not going to poke around a deep mine with a single platoon. We’ll have the company seal the mine, and then we’ll send some drones to explore in case the terrorists are still down here hiding. For now, we’re retreating. We’re leaving the body here. The locals might want to investigate this with their own resources.” Erik gritted his teeth. “We signed up to be soldiers, not cops.” He took one more look at the locked door.

  “For now, let’s get out of here.”

  Chapter Three

  The three squads exploring the mine met up at the first intersection and started to make
their way back to the main entrance.

  “Knight Four, have you seen anything?” Erik transmitted.

  “Nothing, Knight One,” O’Malley responded. “Just dust and rocks and the big planet in the sky. Wait. The drones are acting weird.” There was a second pause. “O’Merral, did you expand their search radius?”

  “Weird, how?” Erik brought up the drone status on his AR display.

  According to his information, the drones were still executing their previously programmed flight path.

  His stomach tightened.

  What’s going on, Lady Luck? You finally get angry with me? I push you too hard all these years by flirting with Death?

  Erik’s HUD glitched the barest amount. What the hell? He started running, waving to all of his people to follow. “All squads back to the entrance, full speed, weapons hot,” Erik bellowed.

  The loud clank of metal on metal echoed in the tunnel as the soldiers sprinted, their exoskeletons helping them barrel forward. They might not be able to outrun a flitter in an exoskeleton, but terrorists on foot would have no chance of escaping.

  An alert popped up on the side of his AR display.

  DRONE ALPHA SIGNAL LOST. DRONE BETA SIGNAL LOST. DRONE GAMMA SIGNAL LOST. DRONE DELTA SIGNAL LOST. DRONE EPSILON SIGNAL LOST.

  “What’s going on up there, Knight Four?” Erik shouted.

  “The drones all just slammed themselves into the ground at high speed, sir,” the lieutenant called back. “They just pointed themselves straight down and accelerated.”

  “Anything else?” Erik continued rushing ahead of the rest of his squad. “I think our terrorists are trying to cover their escape. Base, this is Knight One. Prep additional drones and get the Dragon ready to fly. I don’t want these guys getting away because they outran us.”

  “Knight…repeat…ference,” came the static-filled response.

  The terrorists hacked a Corps drone, and now they’re messing with our signals? Who are these people?

  The major, along with the other soldiers, arrived at the entry to the mine, where Squad Four stood, spread out, rifles ready, along with a few rocket- and grenade-launchers ready on their shoulders. Squads one through three fanned out, everyone looking back and forth.

  Erik switched to his loudspeaker. “Everyone shift to direct audio. The terrorists are jamming signals.”

  Without the drones or comm, we don’t have decent coverage. He looked around. We have no idea where they went.

  Something rumbled in the distance. Loud thumps and clangs echoed from within the mine.

  What the…

  “Everyone to the side of the mine,” Erik ordered. “Full speed, and jump if you have to. Shields out.” He darted to the side, running a few yards before leaping into the air and pressing a button to cancel his grav field. With the lower natural gravity of the moon now tugging at him far less than Earth standard, he flew through the air.

  Erik twisted to point his gun at the tunnel entrance. With a clack, his defensive shield expanded from his left arm, the clear alloy barrier providing decent coverage without blocking his line of sight.

  Most of the soldiers cleared the front of the tunnel. An overlapping cacophony of heavy booms sounded, and a barrage of bullets slammed into two lagging soldiers.

  Bullets sparked as they bounced off the exoskeletons. Several rounds made it deeper, ripping through tactical suits.

  One man went down with a groan. The other fell forward. Despite the beating, the exoskeleton and suit might save them if they could recover them quickly.

  “Prepare for recovery,” Erik shouted.

  A howling roar sounded from the tunnel. Several rockets emerged a moment later, slamming into the downed soldiers. The booming explosion consumed both men, and Erik screamed a curse.

  Bullets continued to emerge from the tunnel.

  Something flashed from the top of a nearby warehouse.

  “Light them up at 1 o’clock high,” Erik roared, his heart racing. It’d been a long time since one of his soldiers had been seriously wounded, let alone killed, and now some terrorists bastards had taken out two.

  The soldiers unleashed streams of bullets. Two fired rockets. Three launched grenades. Their rounds struck the top of the warehouse in a massive explosion, sending two of their previously hidden enemies careening off the edge—men in black exoskeletons with their own shields.

  The Knights’ swarm of high-velocity rounds finished them off before they hit the ground.

  “What the hell?” Biyu yelled. “Those are military-grade exoskeletons.”

  O’Malley hissed, “Why would terrorists have that kind of gear? How the hell did they smuggle it here?”

  The stream of bullets from the tunnel had diminished, but occasional bursts erupted. He had no idea how many enemies might be in there, or where they had come from if not from behind the locked door.

  The tunnel fell silent.

  Erik looked at the charred warehouse. The lack of oxygen had already smothered the fire caused by his team’s attack. “We’re too exposed here. All Knights, defensive formation gamma. Move quickly but deliberately toward the warehouse.”

  The squads formed up in an instant, every angle of fire now covered as they made their way toward the warehouse.

  Several distortions bent light in the distance, near the entrance of the tunnel. Erik might not have understood what he was looking at, but he knew what he had to do.

  “Enemy at two o’clock near the tunnel,” Erik called. “I don’t care if you see them. Fire.”

  A good soldier knows when to think for himself and when to shut up and follow orders, and the Knights Errant were good soldiers.

  Half the platoon wasn’t in a position to fire, so they maintained coverage of the rest of the area. Everyone else opened fire, a good chunk of their bullets bouncing off the air.

  It didn’t take many rounds before the distortions crystallized into six black exoskeletons.

  “Movable optical camouflage,” Biyu related, her voice a mix of frustration and wonder. “I heard that wouldn’t be ready for primetime for years.”

  “Can the chatter and finish them off,” Erik ordered. Several rounds bounced off his shield, adding to the extensive dents and cracks. Even an advanced anti-ballistic shield would only last so long against high-velocity advanced rifle rounds.

  The soldiers kept up their barrage. Enough rounds made it past the armor and shields of their enemies to down them. It was as Erik had said before: taking on an opponent with the same basic gear but inferior numbers could only lead to defeat.

  Be smarter than a reptile.

  The men in black exoskeletons stumbled back, only managing a few decent shots in return before a near-simultaneous volley of rockets and grenades from the Knights blew their armor and the men inside into pieces.

  Erik took several deep breaths and checked his platoon’s status display. Two red dots marred squad three’s green circle. All the gunfire had drowned out the rumble from before, but it was now much closer and more obvious.

  Did they get my request to send the Dragon after all? A little air support would be nice.

  He chanced a look before shaking his head. “We need cover,” he called. “Let’s go.”

  The Knights kept their formation as they closed before breaking apart and reforming into a squat wedge.

  Erik pointed to the warehouse and then to two nearby men. “Open it up the direct way.”

  The soldiers nodded and fired a couple rockets at the wall, blowing a jagged hole. The new fire died just as quickly as the others had.

  Erik motioned toward the new hole and tapped his wrist control again. Two flares launched into the sky and exploded overhead. Proper protocol meant the support personnel back at the base would at least be looking in the general direction, and they were only kilometers away. The Dragon support craft would even the odds with whatever invisible enemy might be out there.

  Assuming it wasn’t already on its way.

  “This is ins
ane,” O’Malley muttered as the troops hurried inside and took positions near the hole and around several massive metal cargo containers filled with ore. “How can we fight them if they’re invisible?”

  “I don’t think they can maintain that,” Erik noted. “Those guys didn’t fire when they were invisible. I think they wanted to get close. We’re two men down, but they’ve lost the element of surprise.”

  Ahuja shook his head. “There’s no way those were terrorists.” He looked up, then around before stopping when he faced Erik. “What’s going on, Major?”

  “What’s going on is that we were ambushed by whoever took out the auditor,” Erik responded. He swapped out his nearly empty magazine and slapped in a new one before selecting quad-fire mode. “As for who? Doesn’t matter. We’ll kill them, and we can let some UTC investigators figure it out later.”

  “We’ve got movement,” Biyu shouted. She squeezed off a few rounds at black forms rushing toward them, each taking huge leaps with each step. More exoskeletons.

  Rounds flew at the warehouse from the outside, pelting the thick metal outer walls of the building but bouncing off. The approaching enemies broke into three groups. They all fired quick bursts but didn’t follow up with rockets or grenades.

  Erik took his opportunity and held down the trigger. The quad barrels came to life and vomited bullets. Shell casings cascaded to the ground like a metal waterfall.

  The ammunition counter surged from full to zero as he kept firing, the advanced anti-recoil system keeping him on target. A man leaping through the air without a grav field and taking advantage of the natural low gravity of a moon wasn’t always great about keeping his shield up, including the two men Erik shredded. The gun ran dry, and he ejected the magazine and slapped in a new one.

  The enemy reversed course, bouncing backward and firing smoke charges to cover their escape.

  “Not so tough when they don’t have us in the open.” O’Malley sneered

  Erik narrowed his eyes. “Wait. Hear that?”