There was only one other exit from the room, another sealed security door off to one side.

“You think his buddy’s inside there?” Dah asked, using her assault rifle to point to the closed portal. “I doubt it,” Anderson replied. “He probably knew we’d be following the blood trail. I bet he ditched

this guy at one of those other branches farther back. Probably waited for us to go by then made a mad dash back to the exit.”

“I hope Shay and Lee are on their toes,” Dah muttered.

“They can handle him,” Anderson assured her. “I’m more interested in what’s behind this door.”

“Probably leads to the primary research lab,” O’Reilly guessed. “Maybe we’ll finally get some answers in there.”

They rolled the dead merc out of the way; there was no sense taking the chance of someone tripping over his body if there was another firefight waiting for them beyond the door. Then, on Anderson’s command, the corporal set to work overriding the security lockdown while the lieutenant and Chief Dah took position for another flash-and-clear operation.

Dah was the first one through this time, and once again there was nobody on the other side. Nobody alive, anyway.

“Sweet mother of mercy,” she gasped.

Anderson stepped into the room and felt his stomach lurch at the gruesome spectacle before him. O’Reilly had been correct; they were standing in an enormous lab dominated by a massive central server. The only way in or out was the door they had just come through, and like the rest of the base every piece of equipment in the room had been blasted beyond all hope of repair.

But none of that was what had evoked their reactions. At least thirty corpses were strewn about the room, most piled along the walls on either side of the entrance. Their uniforms marked them as Alliance personnel; the guards and researchers killed throughout the other sections of the facility. The mystery of where all the bodies had gone was solved, though Anderson still couldn’t figure out why they’d all been dragged to this single location.

“Check for survivors, sir?” Dah asked, her voice not holding out much hope.

“Wait,” Anderson said, holding up his hand to freeze his team in place. “Nobody move a muscle.” “Oh my God,” O’Reilly whispered, just now recognizing what Anderson had already seen.

The entire room was wired with explosives. Not simple proximity mines, but countless ten-kilo detonation charges placed strategically around the lab. For Lieutenant Anderson, all the pieces suddenly fell into place.

There were enough explosives here to vaporize everything inside the room, including the bodies. That was why they’d been so carefully collected here. There’d be no way to positively ID the remains, meaning whoever betrayed Sidon would be presumed dead with all the others. They could assume a new identity and live off the profits of their crime with no chance of repercussions.

A soft electronic beep made Anderson realize that finding the traitor was the least of their problems.

“Timer!” O’Reilly hissed, his voice raw with fear and nervous energy.

A second later it beeped again, and the lieutenant knew the dying merc had lured them into a trap. The detonation sequence was counting down and their fate — survival or death — would very likely be determined by the next order he gave.

In the split second between beeps his mind analyzed and evaluated the situation. The size of the blast from the explosives would be enormous, more than enough to destabilize the entire underground complex. It would probably cause a cave-in, collapsing the huge natural chamber back by the elevator. Even if they were far enough away to survive the blast, they’d run out of air long before rescue workers would ever find them.

O’Reilly was a tech expert; there was a chance he could disarm the trigger before it went off. If they had enough time to find it. And if there wasn’t a backup. And if it was a manufacturer he was familiar with. And if there weren’t any built-in fail-safes to prevent manual overrides.

Too many ifs. Disarming it wasn’t an option, which meant the only thing left for them to do was… “RUN!”

Responding to his order, all three of them wheeled around and sprinted back down the halls the way they had come.

“Shay, Lee,” Anderson shouted into his radio. “Get to the elevator. Now!” “Aye-aye, sir!” one of them shouted back.

“Wait for us as long as possible, but if I give you the order, you go without us. Is that understood?”

There was silence on the other end of the radio — the only sounds were the clomping boots and heavy breathing of the three Alliance soldiers sprinting down the hall.

“Private! Do you hear me? If I say go, you damn well go whether we’re there or not!” He was rewarded with a reluctant, “Understood, sir.”

They were racing through the halls as fast as they could run, slipping and skidding around corners in a desperate attempt to beat out the timer that could go off at any moment. There wasn’t time to check for enemy ambushes; they just had to hope they didn’t run into one.

their luck finally ran out. Gunnery Chief Dah was in the lead, her long legs allowing her to eat up extra ground with every stride, and she had pulled a few meters ahead of her two male companions. She ran full speed into the room… and right into a spray of gunfire.

The lone surviving merc, a batarian, was waiting for them. He must have stumbled into the room after Shay and Lee had pulled back to the elevator on Anderson’s command. Since then he’d been waiting patiently, just hoping for a chance to extract some form of petty revenge.

The force of the bullets picked Dah off her feet and sent her crashing to the ground in a heap. Her forward momentum caused her body to somersault across the floor until she stopped, crumpled and motionless in the corner.

Anderson was the second one into the room; he charged in with his weapon already firing. Normally, running straight at a stationary enemy with a loaded assault rifle was pure suicide, but the merc had foolishly kept his attention on Dah as she’d tumbled and fell — he wasn’t even looking in Anderson’s direction. By the time he tried to spin around and fire back at his charging foe the lieutenant was virtually on top of him; so close that even while running he was able to aim accurately enough to blow a hole in the batarian’s chest.

O’Reilly arrived a split second later, coming to a stop when he saw Dah lying in a rapidly spreading pool of blood.

“Go!” Anderson shouted at him. “Get to the elevator.”

O’Reilly gave a curt nod and took off, leaving Anderson to check on their fallen comrade.

The lieutenant dropped to one knee and rolled her over, then nearly jumped back in surprise when her eyes flickered open.

“Stupid bastard aimed too low,” she said through gritted teeth. “Took me in the leg.”

Anderson glanced down and saw that it was true. A few stray bullets had penetrated the kinetic barriers protecting her torso only to ricochet off the heavy plates of her body armor, inflicting no damage beyond small dents and discolorations. But her right leg, where the armor was thinner and the highest concentration of fire had drained the shields, had been reduced to pulp and hamburger.

“You ever have a piggyback, Chief?” Anderson asked her, tossing his weapons to the ground and rapidly stripping off his own body armor.

“I was never a piggyback kind of girl, sir,” she replied, snapping off her belt and discarding every piece of equipment that wasn’t strapped on.

“Nothing to it,” he explained, reaching down to help her into a sitting position. She still had her body armor on, but they’d already wasted too much time. “All you gotta do is hold on.”

He did his best to help her wrap her arms around his neck and shoulders, then stood up, momentarily staggering under the large woman’s weight. He reached back to help support her weight, clutching her thighs and buttocks while her arms locked around his collar in fiercely strong grip.