Chapter 5

Christine madeit clear she wasn’t going with him.

She stood there on the yellow soil and told the old bastard that she’d rather die than go with the murderer of her own, loyal troops.

When he said he’d already killed off the rescue ship, she informed him of her rank and serial number, then told “The Sword” Moore that she’d rather rot on Io than climb aboard his ship.

She called him a murderer; the worst possible insult to any soldier.

The angrier he grew, the less she cared. Her thoughts drifted to Parello. They were going to die here. Perhaps they were going to die now. It was a pity, a real pity. Before her stood the traitor to the human race, behind her squatted the best man she’d ever known, and there wasn’t a chance in hell for them. In Hell. There was the joke. Of the whole solar system, Io was about the closest there was. Fire and brimstone, literally.

Fine.

This is where she and Parello would make their final stand, in Hell.

“No, you are not my father, Generalissimo Traitor Moore. I will fight you until my last breath. I will fight you until this soldier can no longer stand. You will not fly this space without the danger of meeting me as I hunt you down and kill you like the rabid dog you’ve become.”

Peripherally, she was aware of the two guards by the airlock galvanized into action, swinging their rifles up and in her direction.

Her father’s eyes widened as four rounds flew close by, two to either side of her helmet—close enough that her visor’s audible threat warning system screamed, even though the shots came from behind her.

Parello’s rounds punched out the visors of the two guards before they could react.

Even as the guards crumpled, she swung up her SCAR.

Her father grabbed for his sword, thought better of it, and reached for his own SCAR.

She beat him to the trigger. She didn’t realize that she’d flipped it on full auto until she was emptying the whole load into him.

Still she had the trigger down and the muzzle tracking “The Sword” as he drifted slowly to the ground long after the magazine ran dry.

When Parello came up and gently took the weapon from her hands, she finally came to. Shook her head. Her mind kept trying to think, feel, wonder, be ashamed, be afraid… She shook her head again.

“Tactical?” Some thin thread of her training held her together and asked the key question. It gave her a rope to climb back from where she’d just gone, what she’d just done. Back into the present away from the volcanic anger of the past. Back to the present where she and Parello stood side-by-side on the Ionian plain of the Shakuru Patera.

“Just the three of them. No additional pilot.”

“Did I martyr him?” Would the body of “The Sword” become a rallying icon across the system?

“No.” Parello sounded so sure. “No, I will make sure it is known far and wide that you defeated him. That his daughter defeated him as he prepared to murder her.”

“Known far and wide?”

He moved to stand in front of her, finally breaking her gaze from the lifeless body crumpled before her. The body of a man she no longer knew. Instead, she looked up into those wonderful dark eyes of Parello.

“You can do that?”

“I can.” There was no questioning his confidence.

She nodded once, twice, tapped their helmets together for a moment in thanks, then buckled down and did what had to be done. Though she let Parello load “The Sword’s” body into the cargo hold on his own. They flew back to the crash site in the captured ship and retrieved the other bodies. Then took off from Hell to spread the word of victory.

The snake wasn’t dead yet, but they had certainly cut off its head.