Chapter 281"Filled with what, captain?" a second voice rasped from further down the Trench, its tinny static cutting through the whistling wind like a rusty saw blade. "More high-explosive ordnance? We've already blown three miles of secondary drainage lines to ash. At this rate, the whole perimeter is going to slide right down into the ravine before Vance even gets his tactical display hooked up to the primary satellite relay." "Let it slide," the first voice snapped back, the heavy, mechanical whir of hydraulic servo-motors growing fainter as the Coalition patrol began to march away from the access tube. "The General doesn't care about the structural integrity of a fifty-year-old concrete ditch. He cares about the anomaly. If that frequency tracer hits the main console again, you won't need to worry about a ravine. You'll be vaporized before you can blink." The heavy thud of boots faded into the howling background roar of the north

Chapter 283"You're not fine, Noah," Elias muttered, his hand shooting out to grab the younger man by the shoulder before he could slide completely down the curved steel wall of the drainage tube. "If you bleed out through your nose before we reach the command deck, your fancy acoustic tricks aren't going to do us a damn bit of good against a firing squad." Noah winced, shrugging Elias's grip off with a sharp jerk of his upper body. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, smearing the dark, metallic-smelling blood across his cheek. "I told you, I'm tracking the node architecture, not bleeding for my health. The signal is bouncing off the primary conduits directly above us. If we don't move right now, Vance's engineering squads are going to bridge the gap and lock us out of the main terminal before we even see the elevators." "Let them try," Elias said, his eyes narrowing as he checked the magazine of his sidearm by the faint,

Chapter 285"A fraction of a hertz is the difference between breathing and being vaporized," Elias snapped, his fingers tightening around the rough fabric of Noah’s collar until the younger man choked back a cough. "So don't miss. Because if your little acoustic parlor tricks blow up in our faces down here in the dark, Marcus won't even have to waste a round of ammunition cleaning up the mess." Noah batted Elias’s hand away with a weak, irritated swipe of his forearm, his breathing ragged and shallow in the confined space of the drainage tube. "I haven't missed yet, have I? Or did you forget who cracked the perimeter seal back in the sub-level trench while you were busy trying to play hero with a rusted sidearm?" "You cracked the seal and nearly drowned us both in electromagnetic fallout," Elias countered, his voice dropping to a harsh, controlled hiss as a distant metallic clank echoed from the main junction up ahead. "Ke

Chapter 287"They're on us," Elias whispered, the words barely escaping his teeth as the synchronized crunch of heavy combat boots stopped dead outside the junction. Noah didn't blink. The blood dripping from his nose had smeared across his upper lip, staining the collar of his stolen technician jumpsuit, but his eyes were wide, fixed on the absolute darkness of the pipe ahead. "They aren't sweeping. They're sealing the bulkheads." A heavy, pneumatic hiss echoed through the metal corridor, followed by the definitive, bone-chilling clack of a magnetic blast door locking into place fifty feet behind them. Elias cursed under his breath, his knuckles whitening around the grip of his sidearm. "We're boxed in. If they drop the gas or purge this sector, we won't even have room to choke." "Then we don't wait for them to open it," Noah rasped, his voice dropping an octave into a strange, resonant frequ

Chapter 289"Hold your fire!" Elias bellowed, his voice cracking as he shoved Noah behind his shoulder, the barrel of his sidearm tracking the billowing plume of gray smoke that erupted from the shattered bulkhead. Through the haze of burning insulation and superheated air, three massive silhouettes materialized, clad in the matte-black tactical plating of Coalition elite shock troopers. Their faceplates glowed with an aggressive, predatory amber light, pulse-rifles already snapping up to shoulder level. "Target acquired!" the lead trooper roared through an integrated vocoder, the mechanical distortion turning his words into a jagged snarl. "Light them up!" Elias didn't hesitate. He jerked the trigger three times, the deafening cracks of his sidearm deafening in the confined corridor. The lead trooper’s shoulder plate erupted in a shower of white-hot sparks under the kinetic impact, spinning the soldier half