The Ghost Pact: A Sci-Fi Horror Thriller (Tech Ghost Book 2)
Page 21
He could see almost everything. His X-ray vision wouldn’t function from so far away, but he’d seen plenty all the same.
But seeing the present wasn’t nearly as good as seeing the past.
Admiral Sever, his new commanding officer, had asked Commander Falstaff about the ship’s surveillance. Apparently, the tech crew available to the Avarice couldn’t break through.
That didn’t mean Vesh couldn’t.
He abandoned his perch and found the nearest control panel. He knew what he was supposed to do when he got there, but he couldn’t remember how he knew… or how he could even do what he was about to do. How was that possible?
He looked down at his hands. Thick veins and arteries under his violet skin pumped enhanced blood throughout his hungry body. He could see them most clearly on the backs of his hands, where his skin was thinner and the veins were closer to the surface. But his veins weren’t what he was looking for.
He flipped his hands over, palms up, and inspected his fingertips. Fine metal lines, golden in color, flowed beneath the skin of his fingers.
Upon closer inspection, he realized they weren’t just metal lines—they were circuits. Circuitry of some sort ran from his fingertips down into his palms, and it gradually faded to nothing in the center of his hands.
Had they implanted circuits into his hands? What did that mean?
His training reminded him what it meant.
It meant he could perform the tasks he needed to perform.
Vesh pressed his hand against the screen, and warmth from his hand flooded the console. His fingertips emanated soft golden light as his mind engaged with the ship’s network.
He raced down wires and through memory blocks and into various operating systems until he found his target: ship security’s surveillance records. The security subnetwork tried to keep him out, but Vesh tore through its shields in seconds.
Before long, he was scrolling through hundreds of hours of video from various cameras around the city and the rest of the ship.
Vesh stopped his search on a series of videos from a select sequence of source cameras. He strung their feeds together and played them at double speed.
Several docking bay cameras captured the science vessel, the Persimmon, docking aboard the Nidus. Those same cameras captured the ship’s crew as they exited their vessel and headed toward the docking bay doors atop a hover transport.
The view followed them, still jumping from camera to camera, all the way until one of the crew ventured back into the docking bay, escorted by a Farcoast soldier driving a hovercraft.
But as soon as she entered, the camera feeds from within the docking bay shut off. Vesh found that odd. Perhaps someone had tampered with the cameras or deleted the footage.
In any case, when she returned, she was holding a sack of some sort. From what Commander Falstaff had told him about the object they were seeking, Vesh supposed it could’ve fit in there… though he’d expected it to be larger.
In any case, these people were his target. If he could find them, he could find the prize, one way or another.
He watched them through the ship’s various cameras around the city as they boarded a hovertaxi of sorts and cruised into an affluent section of the city with big stone houses and wider streets. They stopped at a specific house surrounded by a bronze fence and went inside.
Vesh scrolled through several more hours of footage in a matter of minutes, confirming that the woman with the sack had left once, gone to breakfast at a restaurant downtown with a man with a prosthetic arm, and eventually returned to the house. She hadn’t left since, and the sack she’d had with her hadn’t left the house, either.
That was enough for him. He knew where he was heading, so he extracted his mind from the network and pulled his hand away from the screen.
He’d found them. And in a few minutes, he would reach them.
The slow, tingling burn behind his eyes started up again, and again, he blinked it away.
Then he turned toward the city and stormed forward with his pulse cannon in hand.
By the time the first soldier approached the gate in front of the house, everyone inside was already gone except for Justin.
They’d used an escape tunnel in the basement to get out the back and disappear into the city. As it turned out, there had been a secret wall in the basement after all, and that’s what it had been hiding.
The thought of just picking off these soldiers with the house’s security system both appealed to Justin and sickened him. With Keontae at the helm, it would be so easy—too easy.
Justin hadn’t actually killed anyone before he’d shot down the soldier with the grenade back in the docking bay. Sure, he’d shot his fair share of androids and mutations back at ACM-1134, but that was totally different. And technically, even though it had been his arm that did the deed, he hadn’t been the one to kill Carl Andridge, so he didn’t count that as his first kill.
He wished he hadn’t needed to shoot the ACM soldier with the grenade, but he’d done what he had to do to survive. The thought of unceremoniously carving through more soldiers did nothing for him personally, but he knew that by killing them off, he’d give his escaping friends more time to get away.
So he and Keontae set to work.
The first soldier to reach the gate reached out and tried to pull it open. A jolt of 10,000 volts of electricity sent him seizing to the ground, and his fellow soldiers gathered around him.
To Justin’s surprise, another idiot tried the gate as well and suffered the same fate. It didn’t happen a third time, though. One of the soldiers pulled a grenade from his pocket, lobbed it at the base of the gate, and fell back.
BOOM. The explosion rattled Justin’s teeth, even down in the basement. When he looked up, he saw the remnants of the gate lying in a twisted heap off to one side as ACM soldiers poured onto the property.
The soldiers who chose to walk on the grass encountered small explosive charges buried there. Whenever the bombs went off, men usually lost a foot and the lower half of a shin. But on the whole, the ACM soldiers still advanced.
Some of them went down with missing limbs, and others went down with twisted ankles from stepping into the holes carved into the lawn by the charges, but all in all, the house managed to take out several more of the soldiers that way.
Still others fell thanks to the occasional turret that would pop up from under plants in the garden or from on the roof. The house—and Keontae—was effectively turning the front yard into a war zone.
When they made it to the front door, the ACM soldiers tried to kick it down and break it open, but it refused to budge. Thanks to more turrets, they, too, perished before they could make much progress.
But despite how easily they had all fallen, some of the soldiers hadn’t moved beyond the gate. Instead, they radioed for reinforcements.
A long period of peace followed as more soldiers began to arrive. Mechs, too, with better firepower.
By then, Captain Marlowe had radioed over the comms that they’d gotten away. Justin responded in the affirmative, and he set out to begin phase two.
He pulled Keontae back into his arm to let the house deal with the additional ACM soldiers and their mechs, and then he left through the same tunnel that the others had used to flee.
He popped out of a manhole cover a few houses away and a couple of blocks over. He glanced back and saw flashing lights and explosions as the soldiers made war against the house. The air thundered with booms and gunfire, both from the house and ACM, but that wasn’t his concern anymore.
All he had to do now was—
Something slammed into him from the side, hard, and he found himself tumbling and skidding across the asphalt street until he landed in the grassy front yard of one of the houses.
Pain racked his body. Had he been hit by a hovercar or something?
But when he looked up, he didn’t see a hovercar.
Instead, he saw an impossibly large man with purplish skin st
riding toward him.
15
Upon seeing the man with the prosthetic arm, Vesh recognized him from the footage of the woman heading to breakfast. He’d been accompanying her at the time.
When the man popped out from a manhole cover a few blocks away from a surprisingly well-fortified house, alone and apathetic to his surroundings, Vesh moved to detain him. He might have valuable information about the woman’s whereabouts, or perhaps he even knew the location of the item Admiral Sever wanted recovered.
So rather than shooting the man down, Vesh closed in silently, charged ahead, and knocked him over. All told, he hadn’t put much behind the collision aside from his girth. After all, if he accidentally killed this person, Vesh couldn’t extract any information from him.
But as Vesh approached, the downed man scrambled to his feet. He swayed for a moment when he got upright, but he’d managed to get up nonetheless. That alone impressed Vesh.
Then again, Vesh had taken it easy on him. Perhaps too easy.
The burn behind Vesh’s eyes returned, and he blinked it away. It was annoying, but not debilitating, so he would endure. Once this mission was complete, he would log the sensation in his report and request an examination.
For now, though, he had to collect this man and interrogate him.
[Ho-lee shit. That’s a big motherfucker,] Keontae said.
“Understatement of the millennium,” Justin muttered.
After seeing what phichaloride gas and radiation from copalion could do to people back at ACM-1134, not much horrified Justin anymore. It was part of why he’d succeeded in making a life on the rig, despite its lousy, disgusting, cramped living conditions.
But the sight of the mammoth man, his bare tree-trunk arms, and the black-and-blue armor canvassing his broad chest and huge legs proved more than enough to set Justin on edge.
Had there only been one or two weird things about him, Justin wouldn’t have thought twice. But this guy looked like a walking science experiment gone wrong—or perhaps perfectly right.
His skin was translucent and violet, and Justin could see thick veins and arteries running up and down his bare arms. On top of that, his eyes were black voids, yet they somehow seemed to emanate some sort of arcane glow.
The combination made him look alien, but in all of mankind’s travels throughout the galaxy, they’d never discovered intelligent life. That left a possibility Justin had only heard rumors of: genetic engineering.
Maybe Justin’s flippant science-project thought was closer to the truth than he’d imagined. Was this guy some sort of super soldier, made or modified in a lab somewhere?
Even though it might’ve explained his size and his appearance, genetic engineering in humans was unquestionably outlawed. The Coalition had passed legislation against it decades ago.
Justin scoffed. Then again, when had following the law ever been one of Andridge’s priorities?
Then he noticed the pulse cannon strapped to the big guy’s back. Could he actually carry that thing and shoot it? Justin doubted it was just there for looks… and that meant the big guy was at least as strong as he looked, if not more so.
[This is some shit you don’t need, JB,] Keontae warned.
Justin found himself wishing he hadn’t given his pulse rifle to Bryant. He should’ve just held onto it in case of a situation like this. Too late now.
As the big guy drew nearer, Justin realized he was much bigger than even Dirk had been, both upward and outward. This dude might’ve weighed close to 400 pounds. Had to be 350, at least, and all of it powerful muscle and bone.
But that much heft would mean he couldn’t be fast. So instead of fighting back, Justin took Keontae’s wisdom to heart. Without so much as a word, he turned and ran deeper into the city, away from the big guy and the sounds of mayhem from the ACM soldiers nearby.
He glanced back a couple of times. The first time, he saw the big guy following him, running, albeit much slower. The second time, the big guy just wasn’t there anymore… but Justin hadn’t taken any turns or darted down any alleys… so where had the big guy gone?
Whatever. Justin had gotten away, at least for now. Now he had to get to the—
A huge object dropped in front of Justin’s path with a thunderous impact. It hit so hard that chunks of asphalt erupted from the street and pelted nearby buildings and houses, leaving scars and gashes in their façades.
[Look out!] Keontae shouted.
Justin skidded to a halt as concrete dust and gravel stung his face and his good hand, which he used to shield himself from the cloud hissing over him. Had ACM dropped a bomb in the middle of the street?
When the dust cleared, a long, muscle-coated arm lashed toward Justin and grabbed his shirt collar. Justin noticed the arm’s dark veins first, then he noticed its violet color.
[…the hell? How’d he do that?]
Justin already knew. The big guy had gotten a running start and then jumped. How else could he have done it? He’d been genetically engineered to be stronger, not faster.
And with that enhanced strength came one hell of a grip.
Justin tried to pull away, but all he succeeded in doing was popping the top button off his shirt. It skittered across the pavement and disappeared, and Justin’s shirt hung half off his shoulder, exposing his undershirt.
[Run, JB!] Keontae shouted at him.
“Trying!” Justin fired back. He yanked on his shirt with both hands, but the big guy held on and began to reel Justin in closer. Then he reached with his other hand, too.
Justin’s right hand pushed forward, palm open, and he stunned the big guy square in his chest. It should’ve knocked the big guy out, or at the very least made him let go, but all it did was give him a sharp jolt.
When the big guy looked down with those vacant black eyes, Justin sensed anger where he hadn’t before. The big guy was fuming now.
[Aw, shit… you pissed ’im off.]
Justin yanked on his shirt again and let it stretch out, then he squeezed his right hand into a fist. His energy sword blazed to life with orange light, and he sliced through the shirt fabric and staggered back, now free.
The big guy dropped the piece of fabric to the street and kept striding forward. He wasn’t fast, but he wasn’t slow, either.
Justin started to back up.
[Why the hell ain’t you runnin’?] Keontae asked.
“He’ll just jump again and catch me. I can take him.”
[The hell you can! Look at this dude! He’s gonna eat your dumb ass for breakfast!]
“Not if I cut him down to size.” Justin held up his sword.
The big guy reached for him again, either oblivious to Justin’s sword or ambivalent toward it. That gave Justin pause, especially after clashing blades with Quan in the Asian District, but it was too late. Justin was already swinging.
His sword clashed against the big guy’s arm, and it sparked and crackled as it deflected harmlessly off his skin, which rippled with some sort of yellow shield.
“Shit!”
Justin ducked under the big guy’s grasp, but his follow-up grab caught hold of Justin’s left wrist—his human wrist. The big guy yanked him back and grabbed hold of Justin’s collar with his other hand again.
One squeeze would reduce Justin’s wrist to jelly.
“Stop resisting,” the big guy said in a deep, haunting voice.
“No chance,” Justin replied. He balled his metal hand into a fist, and with all his prosthetic’s enhanced strength, he slammed it squarely into the big guy’s freaky face.
Another jolt, and nothing more. He hadn’t even scratched the surface.
But that familiar anger returned to the big guy’s face and his soulless black eyes.
[Oh, shit,] Keontae said.
Then the big guy yanked Justin forward and bashed the crown of his head into Justin’s forehead.
A flash of white light leaped across Justin’s vision, and then everything went dark.
Justin didn’t
know how long had passed when he finally came to, but he quickly acclimated to his familiar surroundings. He lay on the docking bay floor, staring up at the countless lights and repair machines hanging from the high ceiling.
[Careful, JB. Move slow,] Keontae said. [They got you. Don’t give ’em a reason to shoot you.]
“Great,” Justin mumbled as he pushed himself up to a sitting position, clutching his forehead with his left hand. There was definitely a lump there now, and it hurt to touch it. It also hurt not to touch it.
Around him, dozens of ACM ships sat throughout the docking bay. He craned his aching head and saw the telltale gray color of the rig in the distance, too, but there was no sign of the Persimmon. It was just… gone.
Even more surprising, apart from some bloodstains on the floor and some damage to the walls and floor, there was no indication that a battle had even taken place there. All the bodies were gone, Farcoast and ACM alike.
Had they dropped them out one of the entry fields and left them to the void of space? Or had they done something else with them? Justin didn’t want to think about it.
[Heads up, JB. You got company.]
Good. It would help take his mind off the question of where the dead had gone.
As Justin rose to his feet, he noticed a group of several other people walking toward him, escorted by ACM soldiers. Some of the people had dirty faces and wore workers’ clothes, while others in fine attire looked as if they’d just come from some sort of fancy evening event.
None of them wore shackles or cuffs, and neither did Justin. But he supposed there were more than enough soldiers around to prevent anyone from doing anything stupid. With so much manpower, they didn’t need to shackle their prisoners.
On Justin’s other side stood the big guy who’d brought him in. Justin scowled up at him.
“You know,” he said, “the least you could do is bring me some ice for my head.”
With those freaky black eyes, it was hard to tell if the big guy was looking at Justin or beyond him. Either way, the big guy didn’t move.