Armored Hearts by Angela Knight Page A

never had any kind of surgery…”
    “They probably slipped it into your food.”
    She looked up at him, staring. “Why didn’t they tell you? Did the colonel suspect… ?”
    “If he had, I assure you we’d both be in cells right now. Lordsvengeance is a career paranoid who plays his cards close to the vest. Probably because all the upper echelon Godssonists are constantly trying to stab each other in the back.”
    “I’m crying for them,” Zara growled. “Now what the fuck are we going to do?”
    He lifted the rifle, checked the charge. “We’re going to give them a very warm welcome.”

Chapter Seven
     
    Zara lay on her belly, tension running through her nerves, her cheek pressed to the pulse rifle’s stock. The weapon’s muzzle was barely a centimeter from the camouflage field that disguised the entrance to the tunnel she lay in.
    Rand had run back to their sleeping chamber, returning with a signal blocker she’d tucked into a pocket of her uni. The blocker would prevent the enemy from picking up the signal from their tracker.
    Now he waited in the landing cavern’s larger tunnel, the one once used for transporting supplies into the base. They’d attack once the two transports touched down in the landing zone.
    Zara spared a futile wish for an anti-craft battery, but the G.A.E. had stripped those weapons from the Falaran base after capturing it. Presumably about the same time they’d removed the bodies and sent cleansing bots in to remove all the blood.
    I was able to divert a lot of supplies for my bolthole, but a pulse cannon would have been a little much , Rand had told her. Even the Godssonists keep a better eye on that kind of thing than that .
    The hum of repeller fields became a deep bass thrum as the two ten man transports came in for a landing, touching down next to the two seat zipper they’d arrived in.
    Assuming there really were ten men on each craft, she and Rand faced ten-to-one odds. Maybe more. Zara swallowed and licked her dry lips.
    As one transport came to a feather light rest, the other skidded and bounced on its landing gear before it finally stopped. Apparently, whoever was running the show had been able to find only one good pilot when they’d fled the mercenary attack on the base.
    As Rand had predicted, the two craft had parked with their noses toward the tunnels. There wasn’t room for both of them in any other position.
    The doors slid wide on each of the crafts. Armored men raced out, rifles at the ready, evidently expecting to encounter fire.
    They weren’t disappointed. Zara drew a bead on the first man out the door of the nearest transport. Her shot took him perfectly through the faceplate, one of the few spots of vulnerability on mechsuits. He tumbled off the ramp as she shot the mech immediately after him, though the next two survived because they tucked and rolled. They came up firing, but both missed the camouflaged tunnel.
    Zara went right on laying down fire with all the skill and speed she’d worked so hard to learn since becoming V.S.S. She put a number of the Godssonists down, but others managed to take cover at the rear of their transport.
    She was distantly aware of shouts and screams of pain as Rand tore into the men emerging from the transport he’d targeted.
    Just as they’d planned, he shot the first three, who’d fallen as he charged out to engage the rest at hand to hand. It was risky, but it also took the enemy thoroughly by surprise. Besides, Rand’s vampire strength was a lethal advantage.
    Hanging back and shooting was problematic anyway, since the Godssonists’ armor would deflect everything but a faceplate shot. And a faceplate was a relatively small target, especially when the enemy was moving fast.
    Rand’s armored fists and feet, on the other hand, could shatter mechsuit plates, driving shards of armor into the wearer’s body.
    Then there was his speed, and the vampire grace that kept drawing Zara’s attention despite the