Page 34 of Stalker
As the gangers were captured, additional cyborgs manning the two transporters would bring them to their old holding center to lock them up.
The teams left on foot because they could move stealthily through the neighborhoods. Stalker led his team of five plus Neely to Vradin Blackwood’s home.
Chapter Eighteen
As Stalker and his team approached Blackwood’s building, they found two armed guards walking the perimeter around it. Stalker was disturbed to discover that they were carrying the Mesaarkan equivalent to their ion rifles.
He was sorely tempted to shoot them on sight because possessing such weapons meant they were traitors to the Federation. Only, they didn’t deserve a quick death. Sending them to a lawless prison planet was what they deserved.
Stalker sent two of the protectors to neutralize them with shock sticks.
As soon as the first one fell, an ear-piercing high-pitched alarm sounded unexpectedly. Leaving one of the cyborgs with Neely and another to guard the perimeter, Stalker took the other two into the house.
Blackwood was waiting for them with a Mesaarkan rifle and fired off a couple shots before Stalker stun blasted him. Next, he located the source of the alarm and hacked the AI to silence it—more Mesaarkan tech.
Once the alarm was silenced, a woman screamed, “Help! Somebody help me!”
“I’ll go,” said Protector Bradix Strong.
Meanwhile, Protector Gunner Max secured Blackwood, zip cuffing his hands behind his back.
“Bradix report.”
“Sir, he has a woman tied naked to the bed. She is mine, and she is not here by choice. He’s been holding her here and using her. I am cutting her loose now.”
“Bring her down when she is ready. We’ll transport her back to the base as soon as a hovercraft arrives,”said Stalker.
“Sir, we’ve got incoming flyers,”Zevin Linx warned.
Flyers? Stalker wondered for a stunning moment. Neely! He ran to the front doorway, firing off a dozen bolts before he was hit. The aircraft bolt slammed him backward against an inner wall with enough force to knock him out. However, it didn’t pierce his armor.
Sustaining heavy damage, the craft pulled up, clipping the rooftop and crashing behind the house.
Two more flyers came out of the ruins. Neely and the two protectors, Hawk and Slater, shot at them. One crashed into the second story plunging through and crashing behind near the one Stalker shot down. The other veered off to the side before it crashed.
Next, a dozen males came out of the rubble, shooting more Mesaarkan rifles. Neely and the two cyborg protectors fired their ion rifles in repeater mode, fanning across the line of shooters advancing on them. They stood out in the open because there was no place to hide.
One of the cyborgs took a hit that knocked him down, but he got right back up. Bolts whizzed by Neely, but she kept firing until the enemies were all down. They were not wearing armor like Neely and the cyborgs.
As the shooting stopped, Neely called for Stalker on her helmet com but got no answer. She turned and ran into Blackwood’s home and found him on his back, his head propped against the wall. She knew cold terror as she hunkered down beside him, unable to tell whether he was dead or alive…
Then, he groaned and opened his eyes. He blinked twice and smiled as he met Neely’s concerned gaze. “Now, that hurt, but I’m okay,” he assured her. “I was afraid for you, out there in the open.”
“We took down a defense team armed with some high-tech rifles.”
Stalker sat up. “Probably Mesaarkan. Those flyers are. Blackwood must have sold a lot of humans to the Mesaarkans. Fucking traitors,” he said, getting up from the floor.
“Bringing in the protectors was a great plan. Without the extra help, we could only take them out a few at a time. Now, I wonder if that eastern overlord Devlin White had connections with Blackwood’s gangers.”
“Are you thinking that those rifles I was smuggling could have been Mesaarkan rather than Federation?”
“Possibly. Although with the Overlords’ Federation connections, they could well have been ours. But the amount of human trafficking seemed pretty rampant for the number of sex workers in any given location. With the starport in Farringay, that would be the area with the most demand for sex workers. The overlords up and down the eastern seaboard were acquiring them for their own use.”
“You think they were shipping the rest out of here to trade with the Mesaarkans.”
“Exactly. It may have been happening even before the war ended. Mesaarkans numbers were dwindling as much as ours in the war. Maybe they were acquiring them for breeding purposes.”
“Can they even produce offspring with humans?”
