The Star Pirate's Folly

Chapter 26: Blitz

"Stop whining, Pluck," said Gruce.

"But it burns," mewled Pluck.

Pluck tried in vain to paw at the blackened meat on his left thigh through the neat hole in the armor, but couldn't reach. He'd been tagged by a laser the day before so Gruce had no choice but to carry him on his back.

The little man weighed nothing in the suit, but carrying him made Gruce even more exposed as they crept through the tunnels underneath the city—their armor had long since lost the power to maintain the taxing cloak system. Gruce had to assume since he hadn't been caught yet that the bombardment had knocked out at least some of the city's surveillance system.

Fatigue had his old body dragging. He could barely think straight after so many sleepless nights on the run. Pluck and himself were all that remained of his command—the others did their part well, allowing Gruce and his squad to slip into the city undetected. The trouble didn't start until after that.

Starhawk's armors outside the city bolted before the counterattacking Capitol City troopers could reach them, feigning retreat, and led the troopers away from the city. Then the orbital bombardment slammed the dome, caving in the southern edge. Most of the troopers and drones went down in the initial barrage, so Starhawk's armors doubled back to mop up while Gruce and his squad cloaked their way through the jagged gap in the dome.

With so much smoke, heat, and rubble infiltration was easy. After they'd successfully breached the city's walls his squad split into two teams of five with the same objective: find Jensen's suit. They had the physical location of it in the police station at the center of the city but expected it to be under heavy guard and would need to strategize before using up the advantage of stealth. Pluck had access codes to get inside.

The city swarmed guards like a busted hornet's nest. A drone patrol sniffed out Whistler's squad on the way in. They lost two men and scattered. The rest of the squad went on a frantic chase but got picked off one by one in the streets. Ever since then patrols had been scouring the city for the rest of the pirates.

Upon seeing their plan shot to pieces, Gruce opted for self-preservation. The map was a lost cause, so he grabbed Pluck and took off for the tunnels. That was where Jensen Lee spent most of his time hiding out, so Gruce figured he stood a better chance in there than out in the open. The rest of his squad panicked without him and bought it trying to flee. Gruce didn't expect to last long—even Jensen Lee ended up a corpse.

But if there was one thing Gruce knew about Lee it was his tendency to leave himself a back door. He would never have put himself in that bombardment shelter if he didn't have a plan for when they came knocking. Maybe he'd left something behind. Anything would help.

"Pluck, we're here," said Gruce. "Can you open it?"

He propped Pluck against the wall outside the empty locked shelter where Lee died. Groaning, Pluck accessed the hardlight screen on his suit, issued several commands, and stopped, hovering his gauntleted finger over the screen.

"They'll come for us, dearest," Pluck said. "They'll know."

"We're lucky to have lived this long, Pluck. If there's nothing in here we're humped anyway."

Another flurry of input to Pluck's screen and the shelter's thick door swung open. Gruce grabbed his subordinate by the arm and pulled him along behind as he went inside.

#

"We're trying our best, Harry," said Robert626. "This is where you asked us to take you. What more can we do?"

Bushy eyebrows descended in a sharp glare as Hargrove glowered at the earnest-eyed recruiter. He'd been cooped up with the chipper man for days inside the Midtown Hotel. The two men sat across from each other, each on the edge of his own bed.