him, and a second later he darted forward and went through the breach. To their surprise, they found no sign of the enemy at all. All that was there was a large elevator like you'd find on an aircraft carrier.
"We don't have time to go down there," said Silva.
"We don't need to. Bring up that nuke!"
One of the marines strode in with a large steel box on the back of his Reitech suit.
"Right there," said Taylor, pointing to the centre of the elevator.
Two others came up beside him and unclipped the device from his suit and lowered it carefully to the deck.
"Arm it, five minute timer."
"Five minutes?" asked Silva. He sounded shocked, "Cutting it a little fine, don't you think?"
"Do it," he said and opened a comms channel.
"Rains, get your ass down here. I want pickup at our primary extractions in two minutes!"
"You got it, Colonel," Rains answered calmly.
They set up the timer on the nuke and waited for Taylor to activate it. He stepped up and quickly punched in the eight-digit code onto the keypad without any hesitation at all. He looked over to Jafar and nodded for him to activate the huge elevator as they all stepped off. It jolted into action at a slow pace but began to accelerate quickly. Taylor leaned out of the exposed edge to see it drop about thirty metres below the surface and finally come to a halt. He took a step back, targeted a control box and cabling on the far side, and opened fire.
"Rip it apart!" he yelled.
A dozen of the marines around him fired, and Jafar blew out the control module he had used to lower the elevator down.
"Right, let's get the hell out of here!"
He rushed to the smashed doorway and waited for the last of them to go before stepping back out into the light himself.
"It’s done?" King asked.
Taylor didn't break stride as he rushed past the Captain.
"Yeah, we've got four minutes till she blows.
"Four minutes? Are you fucking kidding me?"
"You better believe it," added Silva as he ran past him.
"Let's go, go, go!" yelled King to his Company.
The two Companies rushed back over the ground they had fought hard to secure and could see the copters coming in to land nearby.
"Could have given us a little more leeway, Colonel!" Silva shouted breathlessly.
"Just keep moving!"
They jumped aboard the copters and were in the air with just two minutes to spare.
"We've got incoming!" Rains shouted.
Taylor rushed to the cockpit and could see enemy craft approaching on the scanners.
"Can you make it to the Diderot?"
"Probably, but it's gonna be awfully tight."
"The craft soared towards the French Heavy Cruiser that was engaging several of the enemy ships a few kilometres out and couldn't have been more than a couple of thousand feet above the surface.
Then the docking bays were in sight, and Rains barely seemed to slow down as they came crashing into land. The undercarriage hit hard, and they felt part of it buckle as they listed over and ground to a halt. Sparks flew up around them and caused the copter to make a one hundred and eighty degree turn. Its tail struck one of the other copters that had landed moments before. As the loading bay ramps began to close, they could see enemy craft on the horizon.
Taylor looked down to his watch and could see the countdown was on just five seconds. He hit the comms channel and yelled, "All aboard, go!"
The engines were already spooled up and ready to go. They caught a glimpse of light as the nuke went off, and they vanished into the self-generated space gateway a split second later. Nobody said a word for a moment until Rains started to laugh. It was incongruous, but so many of the others couldn't help but join in.
Chapter 2
Only a few hours had passed since their assault on a military installation on Earth, and Taylor was once again descending to the surface of Onekaka, or as it was now affectionately known as 'Ony'.
"Bet Rains will be coddling that copter for hours, trying to iron out all the damage," said Silva humorously, but