by G. P. Eliot
“Take them out!” Lory heard Hank shout as she advanced, moving with Steed into the room and using the banks of pipes as cover. Which was kind of ridiculous, the agent thought–what else were they going to do? Make them tea and teach them how to crochet?
The sound and crackle of fire was all around them.
As Hank and Steed were making progress coming up through the room behind her, and with Lory right in the middle of the firing line, the red-suited guards were pinned near the far entrance to the generator room.
“I can’t move!” she heard Hank snarl over their suit-to-suit channel. Her Captain had managed to get himself pinned down at one end of a section of pipes, with red-suited guards on either side of the far end—
These people are such amateurs! Lory gritted her teeth as she moved. She had already rolled across the floor, and now started to scramble under the lines of pipes and pull herself along–her HUD registering just how hot some of the pipes were–but without any time to care.
“Lory!” She heard Hank shout, but she was too close to the red-suits to answer back. Another few feet and she’d managed to get to their end of the room, behind their position.
Lory felt a calm wave of deadly concentration settle over her as she slid out as silent as a spider from the bottom of the pipes and got to work.
“Ach!” She spun on the ball of her foot and landed her heel against the neck of the nearest red-suit, completely surprising him and slamming him into the metal pipes. There was a sharp crack as his neck broke.
“What the…?” the red-suit on the other side of her was turning to see what had happened to his colleague, but Lory already had her pistol up.
She fired. He went down.
A snarl from behind her as the third red-suit rounded the corner of pipes-
“Hyurk!” and then, with a sudden exhalation of breath, his head opened-up like a flower as Steed’s bullet found it. There was only one left–the scrabbling, lazy guard whom the superior had come down looking for.
“There he is!” Lory saw his back as he tried to dart to the exit.
“I got him!” Hank shouted as he ran up behind her–freed from his attackers by Lory’s actions…
“Argh!” The man threw himself to the side of the exit corridor, dodging Hank’s first bullet as he bounced off the wall and felt to the floor.
Ryan!? Lory gasped as Hank aimed to fire again. It would be an easy shot. No way even the Captain would be able to miss…
“WAIT! NOT HIM!” Lory shouted, slapping Hank’s pistol down with her bare hand.
8
“Control Override: Wolverine Delta-Delta,” the Jackal said as he stalked through the corridors of the research facility. Stalked was the right word for the way the man moved–or perhaps even loped. It was a cosmic irony that the massive, severe injuries that had caused both his throat and hands to be replaced by cybernetic prosthesis were also from the very animals that he most admired.
Wolves.
“Three KIAs. Recent.” Grunted one of his Wolverines as they roved ahead of him through the facility. They moved like a pack, in that there were always one or two out front, checking doors and passageways as the rest of his black-armored squad swept behind them.
“Hm,” the Jackal didn’t even pay the dead guards at the front of the facility any heed whatsoever. His own soldier suit had pinged him with an alert the moment he had set foot inside the facility. It was the Artificial Intelligence X3–a petty librarian sort of intelligence, really, demanding for clearance–which he just gave.
“Location of intruders,” Jackal said, picking up his pace as they entered the main lounge, to find the Displacement Doors locked in place and an additional four dead bodies of the research facility guards.
It looks like Captain Hank and his team had been busy! The Jackal paused for a moment to admire their handiwork. One had their neck broken, and others had singular gunshot wounds.
Hmph, the Jackal shrugged inwardly. It was okay work–but sloppy. The red-suits had already managed to make it halfway into the middle of the room by the time that they were neutralized, and, from the state of the firefight that had occurred it had been a chaotic encounter.
A man like Snider takes no pride in his work, the Jackal sighed. What a shame. He had just been starting to enjoy the confrontation he would finally have with the errant special forces Captain. Perhaps, even, it would have been a match worthy of pulling his knives out for?
But it looked as though the man was just another lucky soldier. He wasn’t a professional like he himself was, the Jackal thought.
“Accessing Emergency access chute, sir,” returned the ever-calm voice of the X3 intelligence. “But my base guards are nearby to their location…”
“No,” the Jackal murmured to himself. “And don’t alert your base guards as to their whereabouts, if you please…” the Jackal tapped his chin.
The nearest Wolverine, overhearing him looked up and gave the Jackal not the wary, confused look that any lesser soldier might have done. Instead, the Wolverine in his attack team only grinned. She knew her superior officer only too well.
“Obeying, sir. But it is base protocol to activate guards to any signs of threat…” the X3 even dared to argue with him.
“These are dangerous dissidents and traitors to the Union, X3. And I am tasked with bringing them down. Please do not force me to disobey my orders.” The Jackal sneered at the Artificial Intelligence. “And open the quickest route to the Message Center.”
“Of course, sir,” the X3 said, and clicked off.
“There,” the Jackal stretched out his arms and yawned luxuriously. “Now, team…” he turned to the rest of the Wolverines. “It is highly likely that our targets will manage to overcome these dullards,” he kicked one of the dead red-suit guard bodies. “And I want them to think that they are home free by the time that they walk into the Message Center–straight into my arms!”
The door straight ahead opened with a hiss, as did the bulkhead door behind that, and the one behind that. As Captain Snider and the crew of the Lordstar, now the booby-trapped Lordstar, fought for their lives somewhere nearby, the Jackal and his team of killers waltzed into the Message Center without so much as a door getting in their way.
“What do you mean, I can’t shoot him?” Hank looked from Lory to the glaring red-suit guard on the floor in confusion.
The guard in question was a youngish man with sandy-colored hair. Probably younger than he himself, thought Hank. He looked fit, capable, and, more disturbingly, wasn’t begging for his life. In Hank’s experience, it was pretty much a universal human behavior when faced with a very sober man who’s had a very bad day holding a gun.
No, this guard is…too calm, Hank thought. He kept his pistol trained on him no matter what Lory said.
“I know him,” Lory said, managing to sound sheepish.
“So?” Madigan grumbled behind them. He was a very big man; and had a very big man’s way of looking at things.
“Explain,” Hank sighed. When was this day going to get any easier? He thought to himself.
Lory turned to the man on the floor, “Ryan?” she said a little awkwardly, and the man was startled.
“Lory? Really? Is that you?” the young man’s face broke into a grin of relief as he started to rise.
“Not so fast, cupcake,” Hank raised his gun a little. “I’m still waiting for that explanation, Lory…”
“Nasbud Dam?” Lory said with a nod, and Ryan nodded back, his face serious.
“Nasbud Dam,” this ‘Ryan’ agreed.
“Ryan is a Shimmering Path agent, just like me…” Lory explained. “I met him, what–six years ago? Seven?”
“Seven,” Ryan nodded. “We were tasked with blowing up the Nasbud Dam. I was already in the Union military academy, but the Shimmering Path had heard that I was dissatisfied with my pay, and they approached me to turn a blind eye one night on guard duty…”
“While the rest of the team and I set the char
ges,” Lory nodded. “I never found out what happened after that. I assumed the Path got you out…”
Hank watched as Ryan’s face behind his own helmet face-plate darkened for a moment, before he shrugged. “Nah. They thought I was more valuable to the cause inside the Union military,” the young man looked around him, “Which–hey, I guess I was right?”
“Well, you could have helped the cause out a bit more…” Steed interjected, sharing a look with Hank that said it all, he didn’t believe a word.
Neither do I, Hank thought. But he believed Lory. She wouldn’t be about to betray them. Not at all…
“I didn’t know the intruders were Pathers!” Ryan burst out–finally getting to that desperate ‘don’t shoot my face’ that Hank had been waiting for. “The Path never told me that there was any active mission about to come here to the center…”
“You know about the Message Center then?” Hank said lightly. I don’t like it. This doesn’t add up, he was thinking to himself. Why, oh, why, if the Shimmering Path had Ryan the base guard in the center, would they need to train Lory for years to be the perfect infiltration agent?
And vice versa, he thought–if Lory was the perfect Path agent to break into the Message Center as she had done before he knew her–then why would the Path need red-suit-Ryan here at all?
“Yeah, I know….” Ryan nodded. “But I never had any orders from the Path to do anything…”
“What, they just forgot you were here? In the most sensitive site in the entire Union?” Hank said.
“Hank,” Lory said warningly. “He’s one of us. We Pathers have a code…”
“A code,” Hank rolled his eyes. He’d had a code once. And he knew fully well where it had gotten him, and how easy it was to break one–given the right leverage. But what was more important right now, the Captain thought, was that they get the Message. “We haven’t got the time for this,” Hank groaned. “If you’re not going to shoot him Lory–then you can babysit him–and I don’t want this guy armed with anything more vicious than his wisdom teeth!” Hank said, ignoring the glare from Lory as he stalked past them and up the passageway that led to the Message Center.
9
“I got movement…” whispered one of the Wolverines in front of the Jackal. It was the same blonde-haired woman who had grinned at him earlier. The Jackal was starting to like her.
The Jackal and his team had waltzed into the Message Center without so much as a door having to request clearance for them. As much as the Jackal didn’t particularly like Artificial Intelligence, he preferred getting his own hands dirty–and quite often bloody–they did have their uses too.
The Message Center was a round room which held nothing of interest to a man like the Jackal. There were banks of data screens and consoles all around the sides, interspaced with doors and in the center was a raised platform holding a metal cage. The metal cage extended all the way from the domed ceiling all the way to the floor, and inside was a thinner column of glittering technology.
The column inside immediately made the Jackal think of those weird avant-garde modern art pieces that you occasionally saw in the middle of Union plazas and shopping precincts. He could see glittering silver cables that looked more like they had been grown than manufactured, interlacing between bulbous crystal units that were shot through with the gold of micro-architecture. Here and there was black metal ‘ledges’ clustered with buttons and dials, and flickering with lights
The Jackal shook his head. He had no idea what that was about–but he presumed that it was something to do with the Message.
“Get ready…” the Jackal said, checking his own HUD inside his soldier suit to see the approaching blips of his enemy.
Should I kill one of them first, as a warning–or let them sweat for a bit? The Jackal mused. He liked his job. He got to be creative.
His team was arranged in three groups, with two Wolverines on one side of the column with the blonde woman in that group and another two on the other side. The final group of two were behind the column, ready to act as backup the moment that he nodded.
And as for the Jackal? He stood dead center on the platform in front of the cage and column, without even his gun drawn as he stared at the dimly-lit doorway sloping downwards.
“Charge the interference field,” the Jackal whispered, and one of the Wolverines clicked a unit on their belt for a shimmering, blue-white field to appear in front of the doorway they had trained their guns at.
3…2…1, and—
“Boss? I’m picking up something weird up front…” whispered Ida in Hank’s ear. The team was jogging as quickly as they dared up the last section of the passageway to where the brighter lights of the Message Center were waiting for them—
“What’s that, Ida-baby?” Hank whispered, slowing his pace. He couldn’t see into the room. The lights on the other side were too bright and glaring, making everything appear hazy…
“There’s a massive electronic energy reading,” Ida said, showing him the graph of spikes on his HUD. “Which must be the central computers. But there also appears to be a lot of diffusion static.”
“Could it be a result of the central computer?” Hank slowed his pace even more. He knew that super computers could sometimes have an effect to scramble sensors.
“Perhaps.” Ida said, not sounding convinced.
“Any bio-signs? Chemicals?” Hank asked.
“None that I can pick up.” Ida confirmed, as Hank stepped up to the glaring brightness. Even this close, the light fudged and blurred the details of the room on the other side.
This isn’t just a case of my eyes getting used to bright lights, Hank frowned. “It’s a force field.” Hank turned to look at Alan and Lory behind him. “Is this standard protocol when you worked here?”
Alan looked startled for a moment, then made that strange blinking, twitching thing with his eyes whenever he was put on the spot. “The center was shielded from external sensor scans, if that is what you mean, but I don’t remember.”
“That has to be it…” Hank shrugged. Maybe it was all of the effort and sweat that he had put into getting here that made him reckless. Maybe it was the fact that his muscles were shaking not only from exhaustion but also from the tell-tale withdrawals from battle-stims and alcohol.
Why didn’t I ask the Confederates for some when I was on their base! Hank inwardly snarled before he heaved a sigh. “Ida-baby, is that field dangerous?”
“No human-volatile compounds found. It’ll tingle like a hot bath, but nothing more,” his personal Artificial Intelligence confirmed.
“Good enough for me,” Hank nodded. “Right. You all know what we came here for,” he stopped to say over his suit-to-suit alpha channel. “And we’d better get it done in double-time, as we need to get back to the Lordstar with the Message after we’re done here, and since Cortez has reliably informed me that this A.I. is getting itself back up and running, then we’ll have to get back through all manners of whatever horrors the X3 can come up with.” Hank groaned. He nodded to Steed to join him at his shoulder, and then Serrano behind that.
“Three, two, and—” Hank jumped through the force field to feel the tingle of static electricity across his body just as Ida had promised, and then—
BANG!
The sudden pain of a bullet as somebody on the other side shot him.
“Goddamit!” Hank screamed as he hit the metal floor, pain radiating from his lower calf.
Warning! Impact lower calf!
Blood pressure -10%
“You don’t damn well say!?” Hank heard his HUD report back on the bleeding obvious. He was on the floor of a metal room, surrounded by consoles and computers and looking at a pair of studded, reinforced metal boots. Although he was no longer screaming in agony–his training had taught him how to breathe through the pain–the sharp torment had turned into a monumental dull ache that he knew well.
“You!” He heard Steed snarl.
“I wouldn’t,” said a
strange, almost electronic voice that he recognized.
“It’s him, isn’t it…?” Hank said through a tight jaw as he tried to bite down on the pain.
“Boss! Seven very un-friendlies, all around you!” Ida was saying.
Steed confirmed what Hank already knew. “If by ‘him’ you mean the psychopath that’s chased us halfway across the Milky Way then yes; it is the Jackal.”
“Lower your gun, Steed, or else I’ll have my men put another bullet through your Captain. And this time we won’t be so generous…” The Jackal was saying somewhere over Hank’s head. He opened and closed his eyes and even that seemed to hurt.