by Rob Dearsley
Movement draws my attention. The other armed man is heading toward the strike team. He’s going to come up behind them. I’ve got maybe ten seconds before he’s on them. There’s only one option, and it’s one I know the higher-ups will pull me through the ringer for. I line up the shot. The high-powered rifle is designed to go through tank armour. My shot punches through the concrete block-work still carrying enough force to knock him off his feet. He bounces off the far wall, tumbles to the floor and doesn’t move again. The crack of the rifle echoes down the valley sending birds screaming into the night sky. I’ve given away my position.
“Arland,” The mission commander, Captain Ambrose, yells into my ear. “What the hells was that?”
“He was coming up on the strike team’s six, sir. I had no choice.”
“You had no choice? You could have warned them.”
I grit my teeth as the rinsing continues, only half my attention on the berating Ambrose is giving me, the rest still focused on the warehouse. The strike team has finished off the other guard and are moving into the next room.
“First scientist is in the next room, middle of the room but facing the door,” I tell the strike team before packing the rifle up and heading to the next position.
It’s only a couple of minutes before I’m set up again. I flick the thermal optics on and scan the building, looking for the strike team.
There they are. They have the scientist at gunpoint, but something seems off. I can’t see the other scientist anymore and the strike team looks fuzzy.
“Heads up, guys. I think there’s some thermal shielding here.”
No response. I lie in the grass watching, waiting. The sound of wildlife all around me is deafening. But I don’t get a reply from the strike team. I try again, this time worry creeps into my voice. What could have happened to them? The com-line was open the whole time. Surely I’d have heard if something had gone down. Nothing but the sound of insects.
“Sir, I’ve lost contact with the strike team. Permission to move in?”
“Affirmative.”
I pack up the sniper, stowing it in some bushes out of the way. I plan to pick it up later.
The small pistol is the only other weapon I have on me. So, it will have to do. I pick my way toward the warehouse, sticking to the shadows, hoping to blend into the night.
I near the side of the building, the cracked, pitted block-work coming into focus. There’s a window to my right. It’s not far from the cold spot. The cold spot’s the only place the strike team could be. Even if they were dead, I’d have picked up their residual heat. I shake off that thought. They’re still alive, they’ve got to be. I don’t want their deaths on my conscience.
The sound of the window breaking is startlingly loud. I vault through, dropping into a crouch and scanning the darkness, my gun ready. I wish I had night vision.
Light spills under the door at the far end of the hall. Keeping low, I creep forward, careful to avoid making any noise. At least the floor is concrete, no chance of creaky floorboards giving me away.
I pull the door open and go in, gun ready.
Oh Stars, the room smells like a charnel house. I gag, swallowing against the rising bile. The centre of the room is dominated by an operating table. I don’t want to know what’s left beneath that blood-soaked sheet. It doesn’t look quite human anymore. Giving the table a wide berth, I moved to a door on the far side of the room.
The wall there is coated in some sort of shimmery material. It must be what’s blocking the thermals, hiding whatever is on the other side from scanners. This is expensive stuff. How the heck had a bunch of terrorists gotten hold of it?
I’m desperately trying not to gag as I pull on the door handle, expecting it to be locked. The door opens onto a blessedly antiseptic antechamber. I tumble forward with a startled yelp, straight into a young man about my age but a bit taller. I get the impression of dark hair and a dark suit as we both pinwheel.
He recovers first and comes for me, one hand reaching for the small of his back, going for a weapon.
I lunge forward, slamming the muzzle of my gun down on the bridge of his nose. He stumbles, clutching at his nose. I press my advantage, going in low and kicking his legs out from under him.
He starts to rise, but I aim the gun at him. “Don’t move.”
He raises his hands in surrender, a small half-smile creeping over his face.
“Where’s the strike team?” I demand, my attention focused on him.
Hands grab me from behind. I lash out but to no avail. Two of them hold my arms, standing slightly to one side so I can’t get a good angle to kick them. They know what they’re doing.
I feel a sharp prick in the side of my neck, and then nothing at all.
◊◊
When I wake I’m tied to a chair. But at least I’ve found the strike team. Two of the officers are trussed up opposite me.
“Arland,” the one on the right, Hays, asks, “what the heck are you doing here?”
“Looking for you.”
“Muppet,” the other says his voice muffled by the concrete floor. “We told you to run, get out of dodge.”
This is first I’ve heard of it. “Didn’t come through. They must be blocking coms as well as heat.”
“Heat?” Hays frowns.
“Yeah, this whole section of the warehouse is a cold zone. Didn’t spot it until I repositioned,” I explain. “Where’s the Commander?”
“Not sure, they took him a while back.”
We’re interrupted when three suited men come into the room.
“What’s going on?” I demand, pulling against my bonds.
“Come with us, Miss Arland,” the first says, reaching out to loosen my hands. The other two hold squat rifles, compact but powerful enough to punch through our body armour, even if it hadn’t been taken.
The suit hauls me to my feet and starts pushing me from the room.
“Where are you taking me?” My shout joins the voices of the strike team.
The man holding me pauses to mutter something to the other men as I’m pushed through the doorway into a long stretch of corridor. The scent of antiseptic fills my throat. The two suits head back into the room, closing the door behind them.
The sharp retort of a gunshot rings down the hallway. I stop, stock-still, my body singing with tension, every muscle taut. Then, another shot.
“What have you done?” I twist to face him, swinging wildly. I know he’ll probably kill me, but right this second, I don’t care. If there’s half a chance I can take this monster with me, I’ll do it.
He catches me, crushing me against him until I stop struggling.
I’m dragged into another brightly lit room. I look up to see Commander Maddix, the leader of the strike team, strapped into a chair and slumped forward. Dead? No, I can see the rise and fall of his chest.
“Come.” The suit shoves me further into the room.
I fall to the tiled floor, the heavy landing jarring my shoulders. As I turn to look back at the suited man, I see the back of the captain’s head.
I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. I’m lost for words. I don’t know what to say. The back of Maddix’s head is gone. Neatly cut away to allow for the rat’s nest of cables that have been driven into his brain.
He turns his head slowly, his eyes meeting mine. His expression is empty, glazed over, like he’s somewhere else.
He’s mumbling something, over and over. I crawl toward him to hear what he’s saying.
“They’re coming, they’re coming, they’re coming…”
“Who, sir? Who’s coming?” I pull myself up into a kneeling position, putting my eyes level with his vacant ones.
He blinks and for a moment his eyes clear. “Arland, you’ve got to stop…” his voice trails off his eyes going distant.
“They’ll kill us all. They’re coming, no way to stop them…” his muttering continues.
“Commander?” I shake him, trying to ge
t his attention, but he’s lost.
The suits grab me and pull me back away from Maddix. He’s gone. It’s worse than death. I wish there’s something I could do for him. As one of my captors moves, I see a gun in a shoulder holster beneath his jacket.
I feint, slumping toward him. He reaches out to stop me, and I reach past him for the gun.
I don’t bother to draw it, just pull the trigger. The man screams as the high calibre rounds rip through his side. I keep hold of the gun as he falls away from me and turn toward Maddix.
His eyes widen, clearing again and a single word forms on his lips. “Thank you.”
I pull the trigger. The round hits him right between the eyes, the blast ripping the cables from the back of his head in a wash of sparks and things I’d rather not think about.
The other men are shouting at me and drawing their own guns.
Already running, I turn and fire at a pair of oxygen cylinders. The blast rips a hole in the wall, leaving fragments of burning material raining down around me as I leap through the opening and into the next corridor. Thankfully, there’s no one there. I sprint down to the next door. It shimmers in the light; it’s on the edge of the cold zone. I don’t stop to try it, instead, I unload the gun into the door, aiming for the lock and hit it at a dead run. My momentum slams the door open, almost ripping it from its hinges and sending spikes of pain shooting down my arm. I ignore the pain – my nanites will repair any damage – and keep running.
“Arland, Arland? Where the heck are you?” Ambrose is yelling over the com channel. Damn, it’s good to hear his voice.
“Here, sir.” I vault out the broken window. “Strike team is dead. Multiple hostiles in the cold zone. Request back up.”
I’m almost back to where I left the rifle.
“Copy, meet at the secondary extraction.”
I grab the rifle and start toward the extraction point. “Sir, we need to get in there before they clear out.”
“You need to follow orders. Extraction. Now.”
◊◊
Eventually, he sends me back with another team, I think he’s just doing it to shut me up. I think I’m just doing it because I feel guilty. The whole team dead and I’m the one who makes it out. How does that work? They were all more experienced soldiers. I should have been able to help them.
Back at the warehouse, we don’t find a single sign of the cold zone or whatever it was they were doing there. Just the bodies of the two strike team members, both executed, single shots to the head from a high-powered rifle. The rounds match the sniper I’d been carrying. There is no sign of Maddix though.
◊◊
I give them my report. Ambrose doesn’t believe me and blames the failure of the operation on me. He even tries to pin the deaths of the strike team on me. There isn’t enough evidence for that, but the court-martial goes through anyway and I’m gone. Stripped of the only life I’ve ever known. Left lost and alone.
Ten
- Mica IV, Three weeks after the fall of Titanite -
Hale stepped back into the shadows of a doorway, trying to appear innocuous. Over the last few weeks, she’d gotten used to it. Hiding, waiting, listening. Two men, dressed in matching, nondescript dark suits, walked down the rain-soaked street. Multi-coloured lights of a hundred neon signs glinted off puddles. They passed the doorway without noticing her.
Hale push off the door and flipped up the collar of her jacket before stepping out into the driving rain. She didn’t think it had stopped since they’d arrived on this planet. Not that is seemed to dampen the spirits of the people here as they hurried between bars and gambling dens.
For a moment she could imagine none of this was happening. That she was home.
“They destroy our two most populated systems and then back off—” A news show blared from a nearby shop front. “—and we have no idea why. Or what they’re going to do next. Are you saying that the SDF has this in hand?” The newsreader gestured to a high ranking SDF officer, the front of his white jacket covered in medals.
The general nodded, perfectly poised. “Yes. We believe Admiral Arthur Ambrose’s sacrifice has given the enemy pause. As we speak, we are gathering our forces. Should these ‘Terrans’ return, we’ll be ready for them.”
Hale let out a snort of laughter. The SDF were ready for them? If the Imperial Fleet came with even a fraction of their full strength, they’d walk right over the SDF fleet. As for Ambrose’s sacrifice, that git hadn’t managed to destroy even a single Imperial ship while losing two systems. She’d never thought the Imperium was geared to war, but they could still walk over the modern military.
She left the news anchor to carry on agreeing with the idiot general, and followed the two Spooks into the crowd, waiting, listening. The Binaries were being annoyingly quiet.
She, Arland and the doctor had plenty of time in that crippled shuttle to talk through what they knew, which turned out to be precious little. The Spooks and their enigmatic masters were either in communications with the Imperial Fleet or trying to contact them. At the very least they seemed to communicate on similar frequencies.
And that was where the plan came from. Get Hale near enough to one of the Spooks to eavesdrop on their mind coms.
Eventually, they’d been picked up by a freighter running rescue ops. After half a week in that crowded, sweaty hold, getting planet-side felt like a blessed relief. Even now the constant musk of rain on the air didn’t bother her.
Arland’s voice cracked through her wrist com, impatient, “Anything yet?”
“Not a whisper,” Hale said into her wrist unit. Passing drunks dressed in brightly coloured shirts waved at her. She returned the wave and turned to a window display.
Augite III.
She spun, looking for the source of the voice. Her eyes skimmed over the Spooks and the drunks, who were tumbling into a nearby pleasure house. Otherwise, the back-street was empty.
Stop. Listen.
Hale froze. At the same moment, the Spooks looked up, meeting her eyes. Hale tensed, ready for a fight. One of the Spooks pulled a small, silver gun.
Augite III was just the start. Now we near the end. Hold to the path.
The Spooked looked between each other, frowning. Hale ducked into a doorway, throwing her shoulder against the door. The metal security door gave way, spilling her into a small dark foyer.
Stop them.
Hale pushed the voices down. Even if she could get any useful intel, it wouldn’t come to anything if she got herself shot or captured. She ducked through a doorway into a long room dotted with tables, a counter running down one wall. They’d had eateries like this back in the Imperium.
She lifted her wrist com. “Arland, the Spooks are after me. Get down here fast.”
A hanging light banged into her head. Growling, she ripped the pendant light off the bloody playhouse sized ceiling.
Movement from the foyer pulled her attention. She ducked behind a booth as the Spooks walked into the eatery. She tracked their soft footfalls as they moved down the room.
Not long. Listen.
Hale held her breath as they approached. An open door behind the countertop beckoned her. Could she make it? Maybe.
Behind you.
The Spooks turned. Hale took her chance and darted through the door and up a flight of stairs.
The upstairs hallway was long and narrow, with no room to move let alone hide. She shouldered the first door on the right open. If her sense of direction was good, this room should look out over the back of the building.
If the layer of dust over the simple wooden furniture and packing crates was any indicator, this room hadn’t been used in years. The smell of must pervaded everything.
Footsteps on the stares.
She glanced at the broken door. Damn. She pushed it back into the frame as best as she could and braced it with the table. It wouldn’t give her long; she had to find another way out.
An empty doorframe led into a dark bedroom and a kitchen no
ok set back into the opposite wall. Grey daylight spilt through dirty windows in the back of the room. They were her best bet for getting out of here. Where was Arland? She should have been able to get here by now.
Augite III is the start. Pull the thread. Find the end. Positive 51.084682 by negative 0.313897.
The door rattled. Now or never. Hale grabbed a chair, meaning to break the window.
The door crashed inward and the Spooks rushed in. The one with the silvery gun aimed it at her. Without thinking, she flung the chair at him. The gun puffed twice before the chair crashed into him, sending him tumbling.
Positive 51.084682 by negative 0.313897.
Before the other Spook could react, Hale leapt toward him, grabbing him by the front of his jacket and pitching him through the closed window.
The first Spook coughed from beneath the chair. “You can’t stop this.” His eyes went distant. Dead? Hale reached to check his pulse when he met her eyes. “The outlier can’t help you.”
Positive 51.084682 by negative 0.313897.
“This point is a fulcrum around which—” The Spook coughed again blood flecking his lips. Then his head lolled back, this time he was dead.
—the future of humanity will turn.
◊◊
“But what does it all mean?” Arland asked pacing between the foot of the bed and the small desk their rented hotel suite afforded them. This should have been their big break. Why did it feel like they’d taken a step back? Lost ground on the Spooks?
“This ‘outlier’ sounds interesting,” Vaughn said from the room’s dining table. “Do you think it’s a ruse?”
Hale shook her head, her eyes going distant. By the time Arland reached the café, the Spook who’d gone out the window had vanished and the other one was dead, a dining chair embedded in his chest, neither of them in any condition to answer questions.
“What were those numbers again?” Vaughn asked.
Hale recited them. They were just numbers. Without a frame of reference, they were meaningless. An equation maybe?