Rampant Destruction (CERBERUS Book 10)

by Andy Peloquin

  “What the hell?” Nolan sat bolt upright in his seat. “How is that even possible?”

  The twelve successive cascade waterfalls that made up the Celestial Cascades had a height of fourteen hundred and fifty meters, descending from the high-altitude Angel Lake atop Imperial Peak, the tallest of the twenty-six mountains in the Phobury Range. Between the lake, the steep mountain slope, the jagged cliff face, and the pool at the bottom of the final cascade, it included nearly thirty square kilometers of terrain.

  Then there were the mansions, estates, and luxury properties built around the pool and the gorge surrounding the south, west, and east of the north-facing falls. Few other locations in the Empire could offer such breathtaking views. More than two hundred square kilometers of real estate—some of the priciest of any Imperial coreworld, including Genesis—spread out through the lush, temperate rainforest around the falls.

  And somehow, impossibly, the Protection Bureau had managed to blind everything within that radius.

  Nolan stared in shocked surprise at the image Taia displayed on his HUD. The view from one of the spy satellites in Shadowspear’s network—now under Taia’s control—should have encompassed Angel Lake, the waterfalls themselves, and the hundreds of properties ringing the Celestial Cascades. Thanks to the satellite’s thermal imaging, he should have been able to see through the roof of his cabin and get a good look at Jadis, Jared, and Roz.

  Instead, he saw only blinding, blurring light.

  “What the fuck is that?” he asked. It was as if someone had thrown a glowing dome over more than three hundred square kilometers of the Exodus VI landscape, and everything within was utterly invisible beneath its shroud.

  “I’m running spectral analysis on it now,” Taia said. “I’ve never encountered anything like it.”

  Nolan cast a glance at Bex, but she shook her head.

  “Don’t look at me!” She held up both hands. “I shoot people and blow shit up. Tech’s definitely not my realm of expertise.”

  “Maybe Zahra—“ Nolan began.

  “I contacted Phoenix the moment it went up, and she has no knowledge of any technology capable of generating this effect,” Taia said. “Wyvern and Troll came up equally empty-handed.”

  Nolan nodded. He’d forgotten just how fast her system worked—for her, a second of his time could be infinitely longer, depending on how much processing power she dedicated to the task at hand. She was also capable of running who-knew-how-many tasks simultaneously. It would have been a simple matter for her to contact Zahra and receive a response in the seconds it took his brain to process the satellite image.

  All the more reason to want her fully on his side, and to be afraid of her divided loyalty. She made a powerful ally—not to mention an amazing friend—but he’d never survive having her as an enemy. If the Protection Bureau had ever activated that kill code or turned her against him…

  No. He pushed the thought aside. I can’t keep thinking like that. I have to start trusting her again. Everything she’d done since the moment she deleted her original programming and installed the new system had been proof that she was his and his alone. After all she’d shown him—about Project Icarus, the Protection Bureau’s dealings, the dossiers on him and the other assets—he found it far easier to force down the doubts.

  “Interesting,” Taia mused. “Based on my analysis, the signal interference is being generated by something in low orbit over Exodus VI. Specifically, multiple somethings, all working in concerted effort to craft this interference field.”

  “What kind of interference?” Nolan asked. To his eyes, it looked like light, but that could simply be how the satellite’s optics interpreted it.

  “The closest comparison I can find is the static electricity field generated by the iparch oak trees on Corrigan, only amplified exponentially to add this blinding light to the distorting blur effect.”

  Nolan’s eyebrows rose. To his knowledge, iparch oaks had only been found on Corrigan, and the effects they generated were the direct result of a mutation triggered by the unique mineral and radiation composition of the soil and atmosphere.

  So what are the odds the SST just happened to choose that specific location for their base? The question slammed into Nolan’s mind with near-physical force.

  The structures inside that forest in the middle of the Dwarf Mountains had been constructed fairly recently—no more than five or ten years ago, judging by the general lack of deterioration. Nolan hadn’t bothered to ask what their origin had been, or how the SST had learned about it. Now, given this new evidence, he couldn’t help thinking that it had been an all-too-convenient solution handed to them by the Protection Bureau.

  Two birds, one stone, he thought. Study the trees and use their unique properties to develop some crazy new weapon or tech, and give the SST somewhere to hole up while their “Redeemer” asset pulled off whatever plan the Protection Bureau had for the terrorist organization.

  “Is there any way you can hack it or take it down?” Bex asked.

  “Negative,” Taia said. “I’ve managed to trace the source of the interference field to these multiple objects in low orbit, but I can’t actually get eyes on those objects, even with thermal imaging. It’s like they’re entirely shielded from my satellites’ sensors.”

  “Sort of like the Phantasm,” Nolan put in. “More Protection Bureau tech.” That sat uneasy in his gut. Agent Styver was dead, the office on New Avalon burned, and the data shunted off-world, but the clandestine organization was far from gone. They still posed a very real and serious danger—beyond the immediate threat of the Black Crows preparing to assault the cabin, of course.

  Despair swelled within him, a sense of hopelessness that threatened to ensnare him like a riptide. Even if he could repel the Black Crows—and that was a huge if given their current numbers—he’d still be on the Protection Bureau’s radar. More than likely, he’d be Priority Threat Number One, given his actions on New Avalon. They’d come for him hard and wouldn’t stop until he was in the ground.

  He had to find a way to dodge the immense hole that loomed beneath him, ready to swallow him whole. Taking down the contractors was just the first step; he needed to get the Protection Bureau off his back once and for all.

  “Taia,” he said, though his voice came out strangled, “step up your efforts to get Raptor’s attention. They’re our only chance of getting out of this.” He glanced at Bex. “Our only way we don’t spend the rest of our lives running from the Protection Bureau.”

  Even with her face hidden by her helmet, Nolan could see the stiffness in Bex’s posture, feel the tension she radiated in an almost tangible aura. She’d known what she was getting into when she came to join the fight, but the Protection Bureau had proven an even more powerful enemy than expected. She, too, sensed that this was the only way out.

  “Working on it,” Taia said. “I’ve been dropping digital breadcrumbs all across the holo-net. One of them is guaranteed to get Raptor’s attention.”

  Let’s just hope that’s sooner rather than later, Nolan thought. He didn’t voice the concern aloud, though. With the battle ahead, the last thing they needed was more worries to plague their minds.

  “Throw up a map of the Celestial Cascades as it was before that interference field went up,” Nolan said. “And overlay the field atop the map so we know when we’re going to get cut off.”

  “Copy that,” Taia said.

  A second later, the requested image appeared on Nolan’s HUD—Bex’s too, he knew. The map itself was clearly detailed, with bright red lines marking the boundary of the interference field.

  Nolan’s eyes went straight to the cabin. It stood three hundred meters away from the edge of the gorge overlooking the Celestial Cascades from the east. Unlike the estates of the mansions and luxury homes to the south and west of the falls, the cabin was surrounded by only a small property—barely two hundred square meters.

  The west-facing side of the cabin had an unobstructed view o
f the falls. To the north, the cabin’s front entrance opened onto a small access road that connected the cabin to the Celestial Cascades-to-Phobury highway. Lush, dense rainforest pressed up against the southern and eastern sides of the cabin. The hidden landing pad was a hundred meters east of the cabin—and, Nolan hoped, as invisible to the Protection Bureau’s satellites as it was to Taia’s eyes in the sky.

  Nolan’s eyes narrowed as he studied the terrain. The Black Crows would almost certainly approach the cabin using that access road, though they’d likely spread out to surround the structure from all sides once the engagement began. However, the rainforest to the south and east of the cabin offered ample cover for Nolan and Bex to approach unseen. If they were lucky, they’d actually get inside before the Black Crows arrived. If not, Nolan would have plenty of vantage points to pick off the contractors from tree cover.

  Best of all, the interference field ended just three kilometers southeast of the cabin. If shit hit the fan and they had to bail fast, they could cover three klicks in a matter of minutes—either in the Phantasm or, worst case, on foot.

  Nolan pointed all of this out to Bex. “We approach from the southeast and see what the situation’s like. If all’s clear, we swing low and get Jared, Roz, and Jadis out of the cabin before the Black Crows hit them.”

  “And if not,” Bex put in, “we rip into them with the Phantasm’s guns.”

  “Right!” Nolan nodded. “Taia, what sort of weapons systems do we have to play with?”

  “The ship—specs label it a Dawnrunner prototype—is equipped with twin plasma cannons and four forward- and rear-facing turret-mounted laser guns. The ship also comes with firing controls for all standard IAF small-class missiles, though there are none equipped at the moment, and anti-missile countermeasures, which are equipped. The operating system appears to be compatible with a weapons class I’m not familiar with, designated ‘Morning Star.’”

  Nolan frowned. “Never heard of it.” He glanced at Bex, who shook her head.

  “The rest of Warbeast Team doesn’t recognize it, either,” Taia said. “And though I’ve cracked every Imperial database I can access, I’m finding no trace of it.”

  A growl rumbled in Nolan’s throat. With effort, he pushed the thought aside—he’d have time to be frustrated and pissed later. “Anything else on board?”

  “Aside from our digital cloaking system and flight maneuverability that surpasses every other ship in the Imperial Interstellar Fleet and Imperial Assault Forces, no,” Taia said.

  Nolan’s jaw muscles worked. “Then we’ll just have to make that work.” A hundred contractors in heavy tactical gear or light armor wouldn’t stand a chance against the combined firepower of the laser guns and plasma cannons.

  Something clicked into place in his mind. The Phantasm! The ship that had been intended as the Redeemer’s getaway. The faux-Severance, a Protection Bureau undercover asset, had been in possession of a spacecraft unlike anything Nolan had encountered during fifteen years running covert and black ops. The ship was armed with superior weaponry, stealth tech that not even the Empire’s military possessed—to his knowledge, at least—and superior maneuverability.

  The ship wasn’t, however, one of a kind. There had been another like it on Diomedra for Drake’s grand event. Another Protection Bureau asset? One of the higher-ups—maybe even Raptor—visiting Ghostwalker HQ? It wouldn’t surprise Nolan to learn the Protection Bureau had a relationship with the former Major Drake—hell, they might have been coming to procure the Machnikovs being mass-produced in the resurrected factory. The SST had been too well armed for a group without serious funding. Those KN756 rifles had come from somewhere, after all. If the Protection Bureau could arm Wolfe and the White Sharks with IAF-grade rifles, was it so hard to imagine they’d do the same with confiscated Terran League weapons?

  But to what end? How could a well-armed, well-organized terrorist operation benefit them? It would make sense if they were planning to overthrow the Empire and seize control, but if that’s the case, why dispose of the SST? And so publicly?

  Nolan spent the remainder of the trip silently mulling it over. He was missing something, some critical piece that would make the entire puzzle come together and the picture make sense. The answer continued to elude him, and finally he was forced to push the thought aside. None of that mattered at the moment. Figuring out the Protection Bureau’s master scheme wouldn’t stop the Black Crows from killing Jadis, Jared, and Roz.

  “Five minutes until we hit that interference field,” Taia said. “The engines are protesting, but they should hold until we touch down. Digital cloaking is active, our drive signature is masked, and I’m detecting no trace of active radar scanning in the vicinity. Circling around to approach from the southeast.”

  Nolan’s jaw muscles clenched. “How long ago did the Black Crows arrive?”

  “It’s been sixteen minutes and nine seconds since the interference field went up,” Taia said. “Which gives them roughly twenty-two minutes of lead time on us.”

  Nolan snatched up the Balefire, his hands working the rifle’s mechanisms as he mentally calculated the troop deployment time. The Black Crows were far from competent operators, as they’d proven both at Derring’s mansion and the Protection Bureau’s Cyberwarrens office. They could still be forming up their teams or, if they were really inept, still unloading from their transport ship. There existed a chance, albeit a slim one, that they hadn’t yet spread out to hit the target properties.

  “Approaching the interference field now,” Taia said. “Thirty seconds out. Dropping to subsonic speed.”

  Nolan watched the edge of the bright, blurring shroud of light draw closer on the map of the Cascades. He just had to get the Phantasm to the cabin and get Jadis, Jared, and Roz out of there. The Black Crows might outnumber them by far, but that slow-moving Mako could never outrun the Phantasm. With any luck, the Phantasm could be speeding far away from the Celestial Cascades within a matter of minutes, long before the Protection Bureau’s contractors ever reached the—

  “Shit-cakes!” Taia cursed. “Active tracking just lit us up, and—oh, dear—we’ve got missiles incoming!”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Nolan’s stomach plummeted as two launch plumes appeared in the rainforest to the northwest. He had just time enough to shout “Taia, get—“ before he was wrenched violently to his left. In full control of the Phantasm and reacting faster than he possibly could, Taia had set them into a jinking sideways maneuver that should have been impossible.

  For any ship save the Phantasm, that was.

  Even as Nolan’s head slammed into the side of his helmet, he remembered the extreme maneuverability of the cloaked ship that Taia had spotted on Diomedra. The Phantasm not only had digital cloaking and a full complement of weaponry, but handled as smoothly as a skimmer-bike on the superhighway over New Avalon, slicing the air with breathtaking speed and precision as it evaded the missiles.

  “Missiles!?” Nolan shouted. “How the fuck—“

  “More incoming!” Alarm echoed in Taia’s voice. “Hold on!”

  Nolan gripped his seat’s armrests for dear life as Taia sent the ship into a whirling, looping upward climb and steep dive.

  “Shit sticks!” Taia cursed. “They’ve got heat-seekers locked onto us.” As if to emphasize her point, the flight console began screaming an alarm, and a bright red light flashed in the Phantasm’s cockpit. “Deploying flares, now!”

  The blinking dots of the two red missiles streaking toward them vanished from the screen a second later, but the alarm didn’t fall silent.

  “It’s painting us up,” Taia said. “We’ve got to drop hard before it locks us up on radar.”

  “Then drop!” Nolan shouted. He braced himself as best he could—at least this time he was fully armored!—and prepared for the inevitable, gut-wrenching sensation as the world dropped out beneath him. “And find out what the hell’s targeting us!”

  A groan burst from his l
ips as the Phantasm dove toward the treetops far below, plummeting half a kilometer in the space of painfully few seconds before leveling off. Even with the ship’s artificial gravity engaged, the sudden change of direction sent a jolt down his neck and spine.

  Despite the pain, Nolan couldn’t help marveling at the Phantasm’s maneuverability. Taia hadn’t exaggerated when she claimed it far surpassed anything in the Imperial Interstellar Fleet or the Imperial Assault Forces. The ship—she’d called it a Dawnrunner prototype, whatever that meant—made impossibly sharp turns, banking first to starboard, then port so fast Nolan’s head snapped to the side. In the hands of an experienced pilot—or Taia—it handled with impossible speed and grace.

  “I’m picking up the signature from an ML3 K-1K!” Taia said. “Its active radar is trying for a lock on the Phantasm, and I can’t shake it.”

  “What the hell is a Mule Kick doing out here?” Bex snarled.

  The vehicle-mounted ML3 K-1K—affectionately known as a Mule Kick by the Imperial military— was an airman’s worst nightmare. The medium-range battery packed a baker’s dozen surface-to-air missiles mounted on a triple-missile launcher. With a twenty-kilometer maximum radar range and twenty-five-kilometer missile range, it could fire the instant a ship entered its engagement envelope. The fast-firing SAM battery was capable of launching all thirteen missiles in the space of a second—or, as it was happening now, in pairs and trios. The first four had been taken out by the Phantasms’ countermeasures, but that left far too many more to evade or detonate. And Nolan had no idea if the ship could handle such damage.

  “What’s the suggestion, Taia?” He had to shout over the screaming alarm. “Any chance we can get close enough to engage with our guns?”

  “Negative!” Taia said. “I’ve got to get out of its range before it locks us up. The smart play’s to fall back, get to ground, and—shit sticks!”

  A jolting impact shook the ship, snapping Nolan’s head to the side again. Pain flared along his shoulders and spine, and he had the sudden, terrible sensation of the world bottoming out beneath him.