by Mark Walden
‘You sound like Number One,’ Darkdoom said coldly. ‘And we put him down like the rabid dog that he was. I swear that one day I’ll do the same to you.’
‘Enough!’ Drake snapped. ‘What is it to be? Surrender or massacre. The choice is yours.’
Darkdoom stared back at Drake. He could see it in his eyes, he was not bluffing. There was nothing to be gained by further resistance. It would just cost the lives of his crew.
‘Power down the defence grid,’ Darkdoom said quietly. ‘All crew members are to surrender immediately.’
Nero ducked into a corner behind a piece of heavy machinery as he heard the sound of approaching footsteps. A moment later three men wearing black military kit and carrying assault rifles rounded the corner ahead of him. They moved like professionals, sweeping the corridor slowly and carefully. It would only be a matter of seconds before they found him. Nero had always refused to carry a gun, much to Raven’s displeasure, but even if he had been armed he would have stood no chance against three men with rifles. He would rather surrender with dignity than be found hiding like a trapped rat. He stepped out from his hiding place, hands raised, and the three black-clad men all raised their rifles, pointing them in his direction.
‘Stay where you are,’ the lead man barked. ‘Down on your knees, hands on your head.’
The three men advanced as Nero dropped to his knees and put his hands on his head as instructed. The lead man lowered the muzzle of his rifle, pointing it at Nero’s head, his finger tightening on the trigger. Just as he was about to fire a voice in his helmet spoke.
‘New standing orders from command. All units are to capture and restrain any opposing forces; repeat, capture and restrain,’ the voice said.
‘Looks like Mr Drake doesn’t want any more bodies,’ the lead mercenary said, looking down at Nero. Nero felt a surge of anger at the mention of Drake’s name. He had suspected that he would be planning some sort of attack on G.L.O.V.E. but he hadn’t been expecting it to come as quickly as this. The soldier gestured for Nero to stand with an upwards twitch of his rifle’s muzzle. ‘I guess this is your lucky day,’ the man said with a twisted smile.
‘Happily, I can’t say the same for you,’ Nero said with a grim smile as he got to his feet.
The mercenary in the middle of the group of three grunted with surprise, looking down at his chest where the tip of a blade crackling with purple energy had just appeared. He toppled forwards as Nero dived to one side. Raven stepped behind the second man and wrapped one arm around his throat while using her free hand to grab his rifle. As his finger jerked reflexively on the trigger she pulled the rifle hard, bringing it to bear on the other man, who staggered backwards, several rounds hitting him squarely in the chest. Finally she twisted the other man’s head to one side with a sickening crunch and he fell lifelessly to the floor. She stepped forward and pulled her sword from the body of the first man to fall.
‘Time to go,’ she said, offering Nero her hand.
‘Where are the others?’ Nero asked quickly as he stood up.
‘Waiting on board the Shroud,’ Raven replied. ‘Where’s Diabolus?’
‘On the bridge. He wouldn’t come,’ Nero replied.
‘I’ll get him,’ Raven said, putting her katana back into one of the crossed scabbards on her back.
‘No,’ Nero said quickly. ‘We have to get the students out of here. Especially Nigel. That mercenary just confirmed my suspicions: Jason Drake is behind this.’
Nero didn’t want to think about what would happen if Drake got his hands on Darkdoom’s son. Raven stared back down the corridor leading to the bridge, a look of angry frustration on her face. After a couple of seconds she let out a sigh and turned back towards Nero.
‘You’re right,’ Raven said quietly. ‘I just don’t like leaving Diabolus behind like this. He’s saved both our lives in the past.’
‘And we will repay that favour,’ Nero said firmly, ‘but not today.’
Raven gave a small nod and picked up one of the dead men’s rifles. Without another word, the pair of them hurried away down the corridor, heading for the hangar bay.
‘Well, that can’t be good,’ Otto whispered as their pilot was marched out of the control room by one of the soldiers who had been searching the area. The pilot had left the Shroud to see if he could find a way to initiate the ship’s refuelling but had only managed to get himself captured in the process. Now Otto and the others lay hidden among the piles of equipment at one end of the passenger compartment, watching through the open loading hatch as the remaining soldiers began to methodically search the other two Shrouds docked in the hangar bay.
‘Anyone got any ideas?’ Shelby said quietly.
‘Not really, unless you’ve got seven thermoptic camo suits hidden somewhere that you’re not telling us about,’ Laura replied.
‘I am thinking that the Arctic is not seeming like such a bad option now,’ Franz said in a nervous whisper.
Otto’s mind raced as he watched the two men move across the hangar towards them. He had only one option. Taking a deep breath he closed his eyes. Otto hadn’t tried to connect directly to the digital world for months but he knew that his ability to directly interface with the computer systems that surrounded them might be their only chance. The noises of the world around him seemed to fade away and he had the uncanny sensation of detaching from his physical body. Suddenly the data network that kept the Dreadnought functioning appeared around him, a crystalline lattice pulsing with neon bursts of light. He extended his senses and searched for the control systems of the Shrouds in the hangar bay. They were protected by multiple layers of security and encryption, but Otto just brushed them aside as if they weren’t there. He was surprised by the ease with which he’d been able to circumvent the protection; it was almost like someone else had done it for him. Suddenly he had an odd feeling that he was not alone, as if there was someone right behind him, and yet there was no one else there. He shook the sensation off and refocused on the task at hand. Finding the systems he wanted he seized control and allowed some of his consciousness to return to his body.
‘Otto,’ Wing whispered, placing his hand on his friend’s shoulder, ‘are you OK?’
‘Fine,’ Otto said, feeling the familiar sense of slight disorientation as he reconnected with the physical world. ‘Keep your heads down.’
Otto pushed with his mind and the engines on one of the other Shrouds parked in the hangar bay whined into life. The two soldiers spun towards the unexpected noise, raising their rifles as the Shroud began to slowly lift off the deck. Both men opened fire, strafing the aircraft’s cockpit with high velocity rounds, puncturing the fuselage and cracking the reinforced glass of the windows. The Shroud swivelled in mid-air, turning to face the startled mercenaries, and with a roar from the engines raced across the hangar straight towards them. One of the men dived out of the way but the other was hit full on by the rounded nose of the dropship, flying through the air and landing with a heavy thud several metres away. The other soldier climbed to his feet, raising his rifle again. Otto sent the Shroud spinning slowly on the spot, raising the nose and lowering the tail. The soldier just had time for one short burst of fire before the tail of the aircraft swung around, inches from the ground, and swatted him backwards with a bone-crunching smack.
‘Get their guns,’ Otto said quickly as he mentally fought to control the spinning Shroud and bring it back down to the deck safely. Wing and Shelby ran from their hiding places, sprinting down the Shroud’s loading ramp and towards the injured soldier’s fallen weapons. The first man was almost on his feet when Wing reached him and put him down with a swift kick to the side of his head. Shelby scooped up the second soldier’s rifle moments before he could reach it and levelled it at the advancing man.
‘What are you going to do, little girl, shoot me?’ the mercenary sneered as he stepped towards her. Shelby lowered the muzzle of the rifle and shot the thug in the knee. He dropped to the ground, howling in pain
.
‘Something like that, yeah,’ Shelby replied, keeping the rifle levelled at the whimpering soldier.
Wing popped the clip out of the other soldier’s rifle, smoothly removed the firing pin and threw it across the hangar, dropping the useless gun to the floor with a look of distaste. Otto shut down the engines on the Shroud that he had been controlling and followed Laura and the others over to where Shelby and Wing were standing.
‘Jeez,’ Lucy said, looking down at the wounded man, ‘you guys weren’t kidding about the whole trouble magnets thing, were you?’
Wing stepped forward and placed one foot on the soldier’s wounded knee.
‘I have no desire to inflict further pain on you,’ he said calmly, ‘but I will if you force me to. How many more of you are there?’
‘More than you can handle,’ the soldier spat angrily.
‘How many?’ Wing repeated, pressing his foot down slightly.
‘Aaargh,’ the man cried out in pain. ‘OK, OK . . . at least thirty, maybe more.’
‘Thank you,’ Wing said, taking his foot off the soldier’s injured leg, ‘you’ve been most helpful.’
Wing reached down and pinched a point at the side of the man’s neck and his eyes rolled upwards as he collapsed backwards, unconscious.
‘OK,’ Otto said quickly, ‘we have to get out of here. It’s safe to assume that it won’t be long before they send another team to check on these guys and I, for one, would rather not be here when they do.’
‘Agreed,’ Laura said, ‘but that’s easier said than done. Even if we can get the hangar door open, none of us can fly one of these things.’
‘Which means we have to wait for Raven to get back here with Nero and my dad,’ Nigel said.
There was the sound of gunfire from the other side of the hangar as Raven and Nero sprinted through the door.
‘To be speaking of the devils,’ Franz said nervously.
‘Where’s my dad?’ Nigel said half to himself.
Raven stopped and raised the rifle she was carrying to her shoulder, firing a short burst through the door behind her. Nero ran towards his students and grabbed the rifle from Shelby.
‘Get to the Shroud, NOW!’ Nero barked, turning to squeeze off a burst of cover fire as Raven sprinted across the hangar towards them. Three soldiers ran through the doorway from where Nero and Raven had just come and returned fire, rounds buzzing past Otto and the others like angry hornets as they boarded the Shroud. Raven and Nero continued to return fire and Raven pulled a small grey cylinder from her belt, lobbing it towards the soldiers coming from the doorway. There was a flash and a loud bang and the area began to fill with thick white smoke.
Raven and Nero took advantage of the temporary diversion and were only a few metres from the ramp when there was another short burst of fire from somewhere behind them. Raven grunted, staggering forwards as a bullet hit her in the thigh. Nero caught her before she could fall to the ground and helped her up the last few steps of the Shroud’s loading ramp. He smacked the large red button on the bulkhead to raise the ramp and lowered Raven gently to the ground. He ran towards the front of the passenger compartment, ripped an emergency medical kit from its mount on the wall and threw it to Wing.
‘Gauze pads, apply pressure to the wound,’ Nero said angrily, pointing at Raven. ‘Malpense, with me!’
Nero climbed quickly up the ladder to the flight deck with Otto right behind him as Wing tore the medical kit open. Nero collapsed into the pilot’s seat and punched a series of buttons on the consoles surrounding him.
‘Get those doors open,’ Nero snapped at Otto, pointing at the heavy steel slabs that sealed the hangar. Otto didn’t hesitate for a second; he just closed his eyes and reached out once again for the Dreadnought’s control systems. What could only have been a couple of seconds seemed like hours as he frantically searched through the hangar sections sub-routines looking for the door controls.
Down in the passenger compartment, Wing pressed a pad against the bullet wounds in Raven’s thigh, the gauze already soaked with blood. Raven inhaled sharply, putting her hand on top of Wing’s and pressing down more firmly as more rounds hit the Shroud’s hull outside as it lifted off.
Up on the flight deck, Nero pulled at the joystick and turned the hovering Shroud towards the hangar doors.
‘Otto . . .’ Nero said impatiently.
‘Got it!’ he yelled, his eyes flying open to see the huge steel doors begin to slide apart. Nero waited for a couple of seconds as the doors ground open and then pushed hard on the throttle control. Otto grabbed for a handhold on the back of Nero’s seat as the Shroud shot forwards and through the widening gap with only centimetres to spare.
In the control room aboard the cloaked aircraft high above the Dreadnought, Jason Drake slammed his fist down on the radar console in front of him. He watched the replay of the video feed from the camera mounted on the helmet of one of his men in the hangar. There was no doubt about it: the two figures running across the hangar just before they were obscured by a cloud of dense white smoke were Nero and his pet assassin, Raven.
‘Contact the Dreadnought. Have them blow that Shroud out of the sky!’ he yelled angrily. Drake knew that his own aircraft was too large and too slow to give chase.
‘Our men have only just taken the bridge, sir,’ one of Drake’s men replied nervously. ‘We won’t have access to the weapons systems for a few more minutes.’
Drake cursed quietly to himself. ‘Retask satellites nine and thirteen, track its flight path and scramble an intercept team to go in as soon as we’ve worked out where it’s going to land,’ Drake ordered. ‘There are to be no survivors, understood?’
‘Yes, sir.’
.
Chapter Four
Nero scanned the Shroud’s control panel with a worried expression. They were low on fuel. He knew that he was going to have to put the Shroud down somewhere very soon. They had no chance of making it back to H.I.V.E.; their best chance was if he could touch down somewhere near one of the safe houses that Raven maintained for just such an occasion in various cities around the world. He plotted their flight range against their remaining fuel load and realised that there was only one realistic option, but it would mean flying through some of the most densely populated airspace on the planet. He punched the destination coordinates into the autopilot and activated it. He knew that the Shroud’s stealth systems would render it undetectable to civilian or military radar, but he also knew the increased power consumption would mean running out of fuel while they were still over the ocean – clearly not a desirable outcome. So he had to work on the assumption that wherever they went, Drake would be able to follow them. He got up out of the pilot’s seat and climbed down the ladder to the passenger compartment. Raven sat applying a field dressing to her leg in one of the seats that ran along the side of the compartment.
‘How is it?’ Nero asked as he sat down beside her.
‘The bullet went straight through,’ she said, pulling the plastic cap from a syringe with her teeth and sticking it into her leg just above the wound. ‘I’ve had far worse, as you well know.’
‘Indeed,’ Nero said with a slight smile. ‘I’m taking us to one of your safe houses. I assume you have all the medical supplies you’ll need there.’
‘Of course,’ Raven replied, leaning back against the bulkhead. ‘Have you contacted anyone else yet to let them know what has happened?’
‘No, not yet,’ Nero replied. ‘I’ll contact H.I.V.E. once we reach the safe house. To be honest, I don’t know who else we can trust at the moment.’
‘Hardly an unusual state of affairs in our line of work,’ Raven replied.
On the other side of the compartment Otto sat watching Nero and Raven’s hushed conversation. Nero had said nothing to them about what had happened on the Dreadnought or who was responsible, but he could tell from their expressions that something had gone very wrong.
‘I guess we can forget the training mission then,�
� Laura said quietly, sitting down next to Otto.
‘Looks that way,’ Otto said, rubbing his temples with a frown.
‘Something wrong?’ Laura asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Otto said quietly.
‘What do you mean?’ Laura asked, looking worried.
‘It’s probably nothing,’ Otto said. ‘It’s just that when I took control of that Shroud I felt something weird.’
‘Weird how?’ Laura said.
‘Weird like there was someone helping me,’ Otto said, staring at the floor. ‘It’s hard to describe, but it’s not the first time I’ve felt it. It’s like there’s someone with me, giving me their strength.’
‘It’s happened before?’ Laura asked.
‘Yeah,’ Otto replied, ‘like I say, it’s hard to explain. I’m not sure I like it much. It feels as though I’m sharing my head with someone.’
‘I wouldn’t worry about it,’ Laura said, putting her hand on Otto’s knee. ‘This thing you can do is strange enough as it is, it’s hardly surprising that sometimes you find it hard to understand everything that’s going on. You’re interfacing with machines while in an altered state of consciousness – that’s got to register pretty high on the weird scale. Who knows what tricks that brain of yours could be playing on you?’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ Otto said with a sigh. ‘I just hope I’m not losing it.’
‘Even if you are, who’s honestly going to notice one more nutcase in this asylum?’ Laura said with a grin, gesturing at the others sitting around the compartment.
‘Well, there is that, I guess,’ Otto said with a smile.