by Greig Beck
He held his hand up, and immediately felt a sensation of cold creep up his arm. Perspiration ran freely down his face as he pushed back – his own mind now pulling at Magera. Sensations washed over him, starting small like a tiny flicker of blue light, then exploding into images of darkness, water, a landscape dripping with mosses and lichens. In the blue twilight he saw cities with silver spires that touched the sky. Beings with heads writhing with monstrous ropey polyps escorted thousands upon thousands of smaller creatures, moving them like cattle along a silver highway. Above them in the sky, a dim orb that could have been a sun or moon was draped with a blue veil that gave the scene a subaqueous feel.
Alex’s jaws clenched from the pain he was picking up from the creature. There was an overwhelming feeling of illness, sadness, and something else, like a longing for home. But there was also madness there – an insane rage – and it was building. Alex grunted as he struggled with it, as he probed deeper.
The thing seemed to become aware of what he was doing and immediately ejected him from its consciousness. The cold in his arm turned warm, rapidly getting hotter, building to an unbearable intensity that scalded his skin. Alex felt the blisters forming beneath his armor-plated glove.
‘Stop!’ he roared.
Amazingly, the heat snapped off and was replaced by the sensation of confusion.
Alex was suddenly enveloped in pain. He knew he was losing; he couldn’t look down any more, he couldn’t resist. It had won. He brought his face up.
As the thing came into focus, the golden glare of the rising sun blasted down the highway. The boiling mist dissipated, and the being itself, Magera, seemed to collapse into dust, or particles, flowing like water into the soil at his feet.
‘What the …’ Alex watched it bleed away, and with it went the sobbing sound. A lingering sensation of anger and confusion remained, like a spirit hovering over the dark road, but then it too dissipated in the sunshine.
‘Boss … what just happened?’ Sam asked.
Alex looked around. There was no physical trace of Magera, but he could still feel the thing close by. ‘I … I don’t know. It just fell apart.’
‘Did we get it?’ Sam’s voice was hopeful.
Alex shook his head. ‘I don’t think –’
The bullet took him between the shoulderblades, on the vertebra, punching him forward to the roadway. It hurt – physically and mentally. Once the mist had gone he was exposed – an amateur’s mistake.
‘Idiot,’ he told himself, and rolled until he was behind cover. The armor had stopped the penetration of the round, and the vertebra was already knitting back into place due to his accelerated metabolism. He looked up, and another bullet whizzed past, slicing his cheek. ‘Fucking Borshov.’ He touched his comm unit. ‘Sam, we’re wasting time. We got to clean out that hornets’ nest once and for all. Release some WASPS.’
‘With pleasure, boss.’
Alex watched as Sam reached into his kit and pulled free a small box. He set some switches inside, before placing it on the ground beside him. Immediately a flurry of small machines lifted out and swirled over his head for a few seconds, before spreading out and heading toward the line of houses. Sam watched their progress on a small screen.
‘Eyes in, boss.’
The miniaturized explosives split up as they approached the houses, then swirled in and out, through open windows, chimneys, and under doors, the vid-feeds on their twin rotator wings letting Sam see inside the buildings.
After a few minutes he shook his head. ‘I know they’re in there, but they must have gone to ground or be wearing some sort of deflective armor.’
‘Time’s up,’ Alex said. ‘We’ll do it the old-fashioned way. Put some pulses into the front row of houses. I want Franks, Jackson, and DK to go in on left flank. I’ll take the right. You and Rogers lay down suppressing fire. Pulses on three, two, one, go …’
Balls of superheated plasma shot into the buildings and exploded inside. There were no fires as the heat of the charges literally seared everything in their path.
‘Go, go, go!’
Alex shot out first, his speed making him an impossible target. He passed the other HAWCs as they were still getting to their feet. Franks, Jackson, and DK went in on the left flank, zigzagging fast while Sam and Rogers let fly a hail of bullets into the houses.
Alex went through a door in an explosion of wood. He rolled and came up fast, searching for a target. The three HAWCs on the left flank did the same, charging through doors or diving through windows, glass shattering and splinters flying.
Gunfire rang out. The fight had commenced.
CHAPTER 23
Casey Franks dived in through a window and rolled to her feet. Though the sun was rising, inside the house it was still near total dark. Before she could orientate herself, the gunshot, shatteringly loud in the small space, blew her across the room to land behind a ratty old sofa. Franks lay flat, her hearing temporarily useless, the ringing in her ears a continuous scream. She pressed her cheek to the floor, feeling the footfalls as the agent approached.
At the sofa, he leaped, confident, possibly expecting a fallen HAWC with a hole the size of his fist through their chest. Instead, he found empty floor. He spun, gun up, but still took the armor-plated fist directly on his jaw. Franks got in close and delivered another flat-handed strike up under his chin.
The Spetsnaz was big and fast, and clad all in black with Cyclops night-vision goggles over his face. He adjusted quickly to the attack, never making a sound, using his long leg to sweep around and take Franks off her feet. She went down on her back, feeling the bones grate where she was already bruised from the bullet strike. The pain was agonizing, but, like her foe, she didn’t make a sound, and instead used the floor to bounce straight back to her feet.
She came up fast, but the agent had vanished. So too had the screaming in her ears – just in time for her to hear the tiny sound of a knife coming from its sheath. She could guess what sort – a Kizlyar, preferred by Spetsnaz and ex-KGB for wet work. There would be no gleam from its blackened blade.
Franks stayed low, and threw herself sideways and under the swinging fist that held the blade backward, trailing it to bring its razor edge across anything the fist struck. She counterpunched twice into her opponent’s iron-hard torso, then blocked the blade again. This time she felt it work at her armored forearm.
She drew her own knife – the tanto-edged Ka-Bar; shorter and stouter, and laser sharpened enough to perform surgery. She grinned in the dark; in close-quarters combat, guns just got in the way.
The blades came together, clanging as if they were dueling in a long-gone age. The Spetsnaz managed to nick her body twice, but the armored suit easily deflected the steel each time. She feinted with her left arm, then swung down with the small blade in her right, looking for the side of his neck – the bunched trapezium muscle would be tough, but it was a gateway to nerve bundles that, if severed, would render his entire side useless.
Her knife never found its mark. Instead the Spetsnaz caught her wrist and head-butted her, the Cyclops goggles pounding into the bridge of her nose. Franks was trained to deal with pain, but nothing could stop the automatic physical reflex as her vision swam for a split second. She was propelled backward, her head hitting the ground, and found herself lying against an ancient wooden table and chairs.
Her blade was gone and he was on her now, coming at her with the wickedly sharp blade raised. There was no time to draw another weapon, and his skills seemed a match for hers. There was one last option: incidental proximity weaponing – use whatever the hell you can find.
She grabbed a chair by one leg and rolled, bringing it around fast and hard into the Spetsnaz’s ribs. He angled one arm down and partially blocked the impact, but by then Franks was up on her feet and bringing the chair around in an arc to smash down on the top of his skull. This time it was his turn to go down.
On his knees, he drew his arm back, the blade held lightly between his t
humb and fingers as he prepared to loose the dark spike at her. But time was on her side now, and a hundred options for disarming, disabling, or dispensing death went through her trained mind. She chose death.
She pulled her gun, its magazine loaded with red-coated thermobaric bullets, and fired at near point-blank range into his chest. The reaction was immediate – the Spetsnaz shuddered, his eyes wide, his mouth open. Steam poured from his throat as the exothermic reaction raised the temperature of his body to 4000 degrees. His torso glowed redly, giving off thick greasy smoke, before falling open. He dropped in a heap, the remaining mass hissing and bubbling.
‘Damn fucking right,’ Franks said. She wiped the blood and perspiration from her face and holstered her gun. She touched the button at her ear. ‘Clear. One bad guy down. Moving to next building.’
*
The houses were small and close together, and DK could hear the sounds of smashing furniture, breaking glass, or the thump of fists and boots against human flesh. He eased open the door and snaked into the room. It was dark, just outlines showing, and his senses immediately moved into hyper-alert mode.
He crawled to a corner, came to his feet, and then froze, listening and allowing his peripheral vision to search out trigger shapes. In the outer area of the eye, the retina had more cone cells that were better at seeing in the dark, and all HAWCs were trained to use their peripheral vision to scan for body- or weapon-shaped targets, or even a hint of movement. He stayed that way for several minutes, barely breathing. He’d already seen the two bodies on the floor – an old man and woman. By the angle of their heads, their necks were broken. He brought in his other senses. There was no sound, but there was something – a smell – like bad breath and cheap vodka.
DK held his rifle loose but ready in his hands. He lifted it and looked along the scope, using the light enhancer to search the darker areas of the room that his peripheral vision couldn’t penetrate. He slowly rotated, seeing nothing but phosphorescent green shapes. He switched the scope to thermal, and rotated again. The green shapes turned to various shades of blue and green. The bodies were pink, some residual warmth still evident in their core.
Gotta get moving, he thought and turned another few degrees. A flaring red giant stepped from behind the door. He’d been on DK the whole time. The giant grabbed the barrel of his gun, and wrenched it from his hands. DK was six foot and weighed 220 pounds, but his attacker outweighed him by at least another eighty pounds. Ogre, he thought as the man lifted him.
Muscle memory overrode shock and the HAWC struck out with his fists, the sharp edges of his elbows, and his feet. He connected, but even with the armor plating on his gloves, the figure absorbed the blows as if they were nothing. Then he countered, the pile-driver blows coming fast and accurately.
DK managed to use the force of the punches to throw himself backward. He landed on the floor, his face wet with blood, rolled, and came up smoothly already gripping a Ka-Bar blade. The big man followed, and a black spike appeared in his own massive fist. The big man slashed back and forth, feinting and lunging. DK parried some, but as he jumped back he felt a trickle of warm blood run from under his arm. Unbelievably, the giant had managed to get his spike in between the suit’s biological plating.
The rulebook said to get in close when fighting a bigger adversary and neutralize his longer reach, then use his own body weight against him. However, DK didn’t trust this maxim with the grizzly bear in front of him. The man was huge, but in no way lumbering or slow, and he seemed as expertly trained as the HAWC. Getting in close would probably only allow the beast to get a grip on him. DK needed space, he needed to even the odds, and he needed a single second to draw a gun. Hand-to-hand against this opponent would be a one-way street to death.
The bearded giant came at him again, feinting to the left and then coming back at him not with the blade but with the back of his fist. DK saw stars as the blow connected with his cheekbone. He went down, and before he could spring back to his feet, the slim black blade pounded down into the meat of his palm, pinning his hand to the wooden floor.
DK grunted from the pain. Before he could ward him off, the bearded giant was kneeling on his chest, swinging sledgehammer-like blows across his face – a left, then a right, sweeping back and forth, over and over, until blood and broken teeth filled his mouth. His head swam, and reality dropped away. The brutality seemed to be happening to someone else, and he was in a pit, watching it, then falling into the bottomless dark.
*
Borshov saw that the HAWC was losing consciousness, but he continued to rain blows down on the unprotected face. It was hard to stop – the sensation of hot brutality was one of his few joys. He just wished it was Alex Hunter’s face he was pounding.
The HAWC’s muscles relaxed, and he lay still, a wet ragged breathing coming from his smashed nose and bloody mouth. Borshov grabbed a tablecloth and used it to roughly wipe the young man’s face and then his own hands. He drew a small box from his belt, and pulled from it a long black needle, close to eight inches long and attached to the box by wires. He carefully inserted the spike into the HAWC’s nostril, wiggled it once or twice and pushed again. There was a small feeling of resistance as it penetrated the upper nasal cavity, then traveled smoothly up into the brain. Clear cranial fluid momentarily flushed onto the HAWC’s upper lip. Borshov ignored it as he continued to probe, slowly now. He needed to plant the spike in a specific area of the brain, between the hippocampus and the amygdala, associated with memory and emotion.
Borshov watched the small box he had set on the ground – the tiny light remained red. Eighty years ago, scientists had found that some brain functions could be reprogrammed through physical manipulation – the process was called a lobotomy. In Russia, they had taken it a step further, using the technique to make interrogation so much easier. The small light flashed green and Borshov let go of the probe. The HAWC’s eyes fluttered as if he was in REM sleep. His brain’s electrical impulses began to involuntarily fire.
Borshov leaned forward, his lips close to the man’s ear. ‘What do they call you?’
‘DK, Lieutenant Steve Dankirk,’ he responded dreamily.
Borshov smiled. ‘DK, you are safe now. It is me, Alex Hunter. What is your operational status?’
‘Boss?’ DK frowned.
‘Yes, I am Arcadian.’
‘Did we get ’em?’
‘Yes, all of them.’ Borshov smirked. ‘We need to move. What are our next steps?’
‘You know, boss.’
Borshov exhaled impatiently, ignoring the temptation to pound the man’s face some more. ‘I know, but you are hurt, and I need to check if you are still … optimal.’
‘Can’t feel my legs … can’t feel anything.’
‘You’re good … safe now. Now answer the question. That’s an order, soldier.’
‘We need to protect the NATO base at Izmir. And then hope that egghead Kearns finds something in Crete we can use to put Magera to sleep.’ DK coughed blood onto his chin.
‘Magera?’ Borshov frowned. ‘They go to Crete?’
‘Yeah, to some cave. He and the English wom–’
The window behind Borshov exploded inward as a figure came through it like a missile, then readjusted its trajectory to hurtle toward the big Russian. Even though Borshov outweighed his new assailant by at least fifty pounds, he was thrown backward like he was a child. He was quickly on his feet, however, standing like a colossus in the center of the room. He drew another of his thin black blades, but didn’t get a chance to lift it. He suddenly found himself in the air, lifted above the newcomer’s head, then slammed down to the ground, splintering a chair as he landed. He cursed and rolled away, coming up with a heavy chair leg in his hands. In the dark he could just make out that the newcomer was kneeling over the fallen HAWC. Borshov knew him now.
‘So, Arcadian. You were dead. I killed you. Then you came back, and you were stronger, faster.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘What did they do to you to make y
ou so strong, huh? To make you this … Arcadian man?’ He backed up, holding his hands up momentarily, before dropping one to feel behind his back. ‘One day we will peel you open and find out.’
Alex Hunter turned toward him, his eyes shining silver, and slowly got to his feet, his fists balled. ‘You’re the dead man here.’
‘Perhaps … but not today.’
Borshov tossed the incendiary grenade at Hunter’s feet, knowing he couldn’t get to him and save his soldier at the same time. The Russian spun and dived through the smashed window, taking most of the frame with him. He rolled and was immediately up and running.
The explosion blew the roof off the small building. Superheated gas and flames gushed out of the door, every window, and every vent and crack in the walls.
CHAPTER 24
Sam sprinted into the burning house, scrabbling through rubble and lifting burning beams to search for his comrades. He found DK first. The man was a shredded mess, eyes open, the spike still embedded in his nasal cavity.
‘Aw, fuck no.’ Sam called over his shoulder, ‘Jackson, get him out.’
The SAS soldier appeared behind Sam and kneeled next to the body. ‘Goodbye, brother,’ he said, then shut DK’s eyes, lifted his ragged remains, and carried him out.
Sam continued his search. He lifted the burning couch to find another body, smoke curling up from it. Alex was intact – the armored suit had held him together, mostly – but the unprotected areas had paid the biggest price. His face was a mess – burned and ripped where debris or shrapnel had torn the flesh. On his forehead, a dime-sized piece of bone showed through, and a finger-thick splinter of wood was embedded in his cheek. Sam could also see that one arm was hanging wrong, and there were probably more bones fractured.
‘Shit.’ Sam splashed water on Alex’s smoldering skin, then gripped the large splinter in his cheek and drew it out. He pressed his hand to the wound; as he’d expected, it coagulated quickly.