by Jan Domagala
While Hawk was en route to Celeron, Storm and his team were being briefed by the General about what would be happening when the team leader arrived.
They didn’t know Hawk, but like the good soldiers they were, they trusted the General’s judgement and followed orders.
A freighter commandeered from a company with whom Col Sec had dealings had been refitted in record time with some special fitments and renamed the Hyperion. The shield generators had been increased and some armaments had been installed and concealed so that they would not be suspected. The last item to be added was a stealth shield enabling them to pass through the border of Colonial and Alliance space without being detected.
When the munitions and hardware had been installed and all the briefings had been completed there was only one thing left to do and that was to board the ship and leave for Toldax.
Captain Reynolds’ First Officer and certain members of his crew, now all suitably attired as merchant spacers, had replaced the original crew of the freighter.
It was a short jump through hyperspace to cross the border and then they were in Alliance territory. Another jump put them within a few light years of the solar system of which Toldax was part.
Hawk and Storm and the rest of his squad were on the small bridge of the freighter as it came out of hyperspace. Watching through the main viewer they saw Toldax in the distance, a small ball of blue against the obsidian backdrop of space.
“How do you want to play this, gentlemen?” asked Commander Park, the First Officer, as he turned in the command chair to see the small group standing just behind him.
“Commander Park, is there any way to get a transmission through to Captain Stryder’s NI from here without us being detected? I need to inform him of our intentions,” Hawk asked, not holding out much hope for an affirmative.
“It’s very doubtful, sir, not without the planetary sensors detecting the transmission. They might not be able to pick out what the signal says or where it was going to, but they would certainly detect a signal coming from somewhere. As we are the only merchant craft out here, it would be just a matter of time before some bright spark wanted to know what a beat up old freighter was doing here anyway,” replied Commander Park dubiously.
“Then we’re just gonna have to get a bit closer,” Hawk said.
“I was afraid you were going to say that,” Cowboy muttered to himself.
“Button it, Cowboy!” Storm ordered.
Commander Park turned to the helm officer and gave the command to take them in closer using the sub-light engines.
Hawk said, “Guardian, are you and your men ready for immediate ship evac?”
“We are, sir. All munitions have been checked and we are as ready as we can be. We’d just like some hint of the plan so we can acquaint ourselves with it, sir.” Storm replied.
“Ah!” said Hawk taking Storm to one side, “That’s a good point but you see this is a rather fluid situation. We are just going to have to do the best we can with it.”
“You don’t have one do you?” Storm realised.
Hawk’s face split into a rather sheepish grin and he slowly shook his head. “Not really, I’m making this up as I go, going with the flow as it were. It’s difficult to plan for something like this when we have no intel on the planet or the facility down there.”
“I see, sir,” Storm said. “Well, sir, General Sinclair seemed to have enough faith in you to put you in command of this mission, so who am I to argue with that. We’re with you sir, one hundred per cent.”
“That’s good to hear soldier. There are two Recon Delta Marines down there and I don’t intend leaving here without them.” He added, “If I just knew how though, it would be a help.”
Storm huffed a short laugh that almost went unheard, but Hawk knew this officer would follow him even though this mission was absurd in the extreme. He would go through with it probably because of its absurdity. Times of battle were times of extremes and absurdity and it was this that brought out the best in some men and the worst in others. Hawk knew he had with him some of the best and he felt secure that whatever happened these men would give their all to help make this mission a success, or die trying.
He could ask for nothing less and want for nothing more.
CAPTAIN ANDERS ACCESSED the facility’s main computer that was still online. He attempted to put fire prevention measures in place. Other security measures were being demanded by the various commands from various other sources. Instead, Anders inputted the codes for the Recon Delta tracking nodes via data transfer through his NI and asked the computer for a location of Stryder. Within less than a second he had what he needed. Ordering the computer to keep relaying live feeds of his location directly to his NI he began to formulate a plan to capture Stryder.
24
Solon was in his office. He’d issued orders to Captain Anders and his team and all that remained was for them to complete their mission. The whole facility was coming down around his ears; the main lab was a complete blaze, a conflagration that threatened to engulf the whole building. Anders and his men would carry out their mission with complete disregard for their own safety for they belonged to the Special Forces known as the Black Knights. They were the Alliance’s elite Marines; equivalent and maybe superior to the respected Recon Delta of the damned Confederation.
There was no reason he should remain inside the facility and put himself in danger; he had other concerns to concentrate on. He was in charge of all the Special Force missions for the Alliance and if this one was going to bite the dust then he had to resurrect his career by making sure no more mistakes were made in the other missions that were planned.
Even he had his masters to whom he was answerable, and it was they who held the real power. He was just a pawn in a galactic game of chess spanning many solar systems.
Picking up his small travel grip, he headed out of the door and towards the nearest exit. He would wait at the spaceport landing pad for the arrival of Anders and his team, and hopefully Stryder. The woman, Hardy, was expendable.
STRYDER AND HARDY HEADED down the corridor and turned the corner to face yet another corridor.
“How many more of these things do we have to go down until we get there?” Hardy asked showing her frustration.
“Not far now. It’s just down here,” replied Stryder and just then his hyper accelerated senses warned him of danger from behind.
Stopping suddenly he spun around to see three guards turn the corner behind him all armed with assault rifles. Dropping down to one knee he fired a quick burst, which caught the lead guard across the chest. It opened up a series of wounds as the bolts stitched across his torso sending blood spraying outwards splashing the walls of the corridor. He was sent staggering backwards and the two other guards had to move to either side to avoid him delaying them using their own weapons.
Hardy turned when she saw Stryder spin around and took in the scene straight away. Her own reflexes immediately came into play. She brought up her assault rifle and fired at the two remaining guards. Her salvo caught the guard to her left in the centre of his chest and sent him crashing into the wall whilst Stryder fired another burst at the remaining guard with the same effect.
Within the space of a few heartbeats three more guards were dead. Stryder got to his feet and looked at Hardy, concern on his face, which she picked up on. This was something new.
“What?” she asked.
“They shouldn’t have found us so quickly, the computer had the guards looking for us in the corridors around the main lab and heading towards the exits. How would they know to look for us here, and so quickly?” he replied posing the question that had sprung to his mind after the sight of the guards had almost caught him off guard.
“Could they be lost and it was just lucky that they found us, or unlucky for them?” she posited.
“Doubtful, I’m certain they were acting under orders, which can only mean one thing.”
“What, that they were told to widen the scope of the
search?”
“If that was the reason, why here, and why not somewhere else closer to the spaceport landing pad? If we wanted out of here we would eventually have to head in that direction. No, they’ve accessed the tracker inside my NI. That was how they found us on Celeron; someone gave them the codes. Sinclair told me when you had been taken. Now they’re using the same codes to track us inside this facility via the internal sensors,” explained Stryder and Hardy’s jaw dropped open.
“Oh, this just keeps getting better and better. Anything else I should know before we continue?” she asked her voice fairly dripping with sarcasm.
“It’s not as bad as it sounds, I may be able to cloud the sensor’s search parameters,” Stryder said slowly. His eyes had that thousand-yard stare again and she knew he was concentrating on something.
“If I can access the computer I may be able to readjust the internal sensors just enough to....”
“Pity you couldn’t just turn off your tracker,” Hardy said as a throwaway comment not really expecting him to take her seriously.
Stryder looked at her and said, “Brilliant, why didn’t I think of that?”
“What? You can’t turn off your tracker that’s why; it’s a permanent signal so that we can always be located.”
Stryder didn’t answer, he just focused all his attention on what he was attempting to do. His eyes took on a glassy stare, actually going milky white, as his brain worked in overdrive. His mental powers expanded into unknown areas and then, his eyes returning to their normal colour, he looked at her and said, “Okay, done.”
“Excuse me?” she said almost in apoplexy.
“It’s off,” he said in a matter-of-fact way.
“But that’s impossible, how?”
“Don’t know, I just concentrated on gaining control of the output and once that was done, I just turned it off. I can turn it back on just as easily too.”
Hardy didn’t know what to say. Stryder had just demonstrated an ability that should be impossible and yet he was convinced of it being successful.
“Cool ’eh?” he added with a smile, then becoming more serious said, “C’mon, let’s move, I just hope they hadn’t figured out which direction we were headed and send more guards to stop us.”
“What if they were tracking both of us?”
“I’m banking on them only tracking me, no offence but they will need me now that I’ve destroyed their source of the serum and any future ability to recreate it. I’m hoping they only thought to track me.”
“Hope you’re right.”
“Me too, c’mon let’s get moving,” he repeated.
ANDERS RECEIVED CONFIRMATION from the computer that the signal from the tracking codes was lost. For a second he was unsure what to do because he’d been assured the signal would be a constant. He asked the computer if the signal could be masked in any way, such as if the subject had entered an area where it could be interfered with, and received the same reply. The signal had just ended.
Having no other recourse but to change his strategy, he ordered the computer to correlate the data from the position where the signal was first intercepted to when it was lost and compute a possible destination.
Within a second he had the answer he was looking for and a location for Stryder, so no great harm done.
Using his NI he accessed the comm battle channels and, ordering the guards to surround the Life Support station, he told them to await the arrival of Stryder and to detain him until his team got there.
He had him now he thought, as he quickened his pace.
STRYDER AND HARDY CARRIED on down the corridor until they reached the end where a door barred their way. It opened to Stryder’s touch and they walked through onto a huge gangplank that stretched out for a hundred odd feet before them across a deep chasm. Hardy looked down and saw that they were standing on top of a walkway that was fifteen feet wide with a drop of over three hundred feet straight down.
“Whoa!” she said when she saw how high up they were.
“Yep, the reactor room is on the lower level and we need to get down there. There has to be an access panel to the vents for the exhaust gases from the fusion reactor.
“And how the hell do you propose we get down there?” she asked a little incredulously.
“I’m working on it,” he replied as he looked around at the room.
Just then a plasma bolt was fired from beneath them. It just missed him, passing by his shoulder on its way up to the ceiling.
“Good job that guards a piss poor shot,” Hardy said as they both dodged towards the centre of the walkway.
“Things have just become a little more complicated,” said Stryder. Leaning over the edge of the walkway he returned fire to warn the guard against shooting again. As soon as Stryder fired his assault rifle over the edge three more guards took the opportunity to try and blast him off the walkway.
Plasma bolts whizzed past him and burned the very air as they passed so close to him that his clothes were singed.
“And how the hell are we going to be able to get down there now then?” asked Hardy once the firing had stopped. She was lying face down on the walkway to minimise her target profile. The guards down below on the balcony around the perimeter of what was in fact a huge shaft could not locate her.
“Like I said, I’m working on it,” Stryder replied as he glanced over the edge of the walkway taking in more with one glance than a normal person could after studying the scene for several minutes.
“And how did they know where we are? I thought you said you turned off your tracker,” Hardy asked. She was getting angry at the thought that the little hope of escape she had garnered from the seemingly hopeless situation was about to be torn from her and trampled under her feet.
“They must’ve guessed where we would go and sent guards on ahead,” Stryder said.
More plasma bolts struck above their heads as the guards below continued to fire at them. A few struck the edge of the walkway near Stryder and Hardy, forcing them to keep back from the edge.
Getting to his knees and shouldering his assault rifle he said, “Right, cover me.”
“What!” Hardy gasped sensing he was about to do something absolutely reckless.
“I’m going to draw their fire to give you the chance to fire back. If you manage to hit any of them, that would be great. All I’m hoping for is that your covering fire will give me the chance to do what I have to. Trust me.”
Before she could argue he had scooted down the walkway and then bobbed up into view of the guards below.
Their attention was drawn to where he was, farther down the walkway from where Hardy remained under cover so they opened fire on him.
He threw himself down on the walkway as plasma bolts struck the edge blasting chunks of plascrete away from it breaking his cover.
Hardy was up on one knee, her assault rifle up against her shoulder as she sighted down the barrel and fired a short burst at them.
Her first salvo caused them to cease fire and retreat to find their own cover.
“Go!” she said and Stryder sprung into action as she kept the guards pinned down with a burst of sustained plasma fire.
Stryder grabbed hold of the edge of the walkway and threw himself over, swinging out beneath it using his momentum to propel his body across the chasm and onto the balcony several feet below, the same balcony on which the guards were positioned.
The second he landed he retrieved his assault rifle from over his shoulder and positioned it to fire.
Caught in a vicious crossfire from both above and in front the guards died as the plasma bolts tore their flesh up in a mist of blood.
Once the guards were dead Stryder looked up at Hardy and said, “Well, what’re you waiting for?”
A smile crossed her lips and as she was about to say something plasma bolts from behind her tore up the air. She leaped over the edge, flinging herself at the balcony below, narrowly evading the deadly weapons fire from above. As she landed a fe
w feet from Stryder, she rolled exactly like her jump commander had taught her in basic training back at the academy. She came up on her knees still holding her assault rifle.
The guards who had fired at her from above followed her down with their assault rifles and were about to fire at her again when Stryder shot two of them. They went tumbling over the edge to spiral into the shaft below, their blood leaving a gory trail in the air tracing their descent into the shaft. The other two dodged back over the edge of the walkway to avoid being shot.
Glancing over at where the guards lay dead on the balcony Stryder said, “Go and see if they have any grenades on them.”
Hardy turned and, crouching again to minimise her target profile, she ran as best she could over to where the bodies lay. In moments she was back with a handful of grenades, small, black and deadly.
“Great, just what we need,” Stryder said.
He pushed the central rod situated at the top of the egg-shaped grenade, enabling the safety clip to spring free and thus armed two of the weapons. He then had five seconds before they exploded and he tossed them up onto the walkway expertly dropping them right next to the two remaining guards.
Seeing the grenades, the guards tried to run for it but hadn’t gone more than a few paces before the explosions ripped into them shredding their bodies and tossing flesh and bone into the air in a shower of blood. The walkway was damaged and a huge chunk of it fell into the shaft.
Stryder and Hardy watched as the slab of the broken walkway passed by them and he said, “Well that will stop anyone following us from up there, unless they have grappling hooks.”
“You’re full of good cheer,” she replied with the hint of a smile then she looked around and asked, “Now what do we do?”
Just then an explosion erupted from below sending a ball of white-hot flame up the centre of the shaft. The shockwave from the blast sent shudders through the walls of the shaft threatening to throw the two of them off the balcony into the ball of flame rising up.