"How so?"
"What point around Zephyria did I leave undermanned and open to attack?"
"The detention center. I questioned you days ago about it, and you offered no reply."
"I want them to attack it and retrieve their prisoners in a blatant attack on the MSA. We’ll then have support across the planet and on Lunara."
"So that is why you ordered the farmers into the area, to set up a delay or a distraction of some sort?"
"Actually, to monitor it. I’ve been getting some interesting reports. Our forces are in position, and I’m withdrawing the machines today."
"Then what? We capture more prisoners."
"No, we crush them. We’ll draw all their ships into a kill position and strike back with our new defense system."
"So we are baiting them into making a fatal offensive error," Samantha said, rubbing her chin.
Gwen stared at the western horizon. "I don’t want to hurt them, but if the Alliance wants to continue to strike at us and our children, we have to protect ourselves. And I’ll make it permanent and clear to Mars that the members of the Alliance were the aggressors this time."
"You don’t have to justify anything to me or anyone else. You’re the supreme chancellor and your motivations are your own."
"And what motivations do I have?"
"You want to carry on your father’s vision. You think he was the most brilliant leader in the history of the world. If he thought the MSA way was correct, then that is how it should be on Mars."
"I would have done anything he asked me to do, but that isn’t enough to drive me to rule the planet—"
Samantha interrupted her. "Secondly, you want control so you can force Seth into loving you."
"That is absurd. He is married. I’m on to bigger and better things."
"You’re more in control of your emotions than I could have ever thought," Samantha said, eyeing her for a reaction. "Then I guess you won’t mind if I try to capture the two of them and continue the experiments."
"I couldn’t care less," Gwen said, sweeping her hand across Samantha’s legs, easing her off the desk. "Get out."
"I’ll set up a plan to capture them. Maybe Shannon Buckley can be used again," Samantha muttered as she stood, spinning Gwen’s chair around.
"Who?" Gwen said, placing her hand out to stop the chair.
"Never mind. I’ve reports to prepare."
As Samantha started to walk toward the door Gwen said, "Make sure you inform me when the two patients are captured. Don’t do any experiments until I’m informed."
In the wake of her long strides, her heels echoing as they clipped along the floor, Samantha craned her head and smiled. "Of course, my lady. I understand."
Chapter 39
The sewage was reddish-brown, greasy, and viscous. Of all the horrible odors Seth or Shannon could remember in their lifetime, this potpourri of fecal stench was definitely the worst. The silty muck was knee high, collecting at the center of the pipe, and flowing away from the direction they were heading.
"Stay toward the side," Seth said.
"I am, I am," she complained, but as she turned her head to say something else to him, she took a blind step, and her foot slipped on the dregs. Her hand stabbed down to catch herself, but it plunged into the flowing sludge. He grabbed her belt at the small of her back, holding her up. She shook her hand of the excess sewage and groaned. "I’m going to have to burn this hand off."
"Just wipe it on your pants," he said. "I thought the smell was bad, but I can taste it."
Shannon rubbed her hand on her thigh. "At least we’ll have something to reminisce about when this is all over." She tested her footing and then continued along the pipe. "I’m glad you made me tuck my pants into my boots, though I expected worse."
"Worse?"
"To tell you the truth, I thought we would have to crawl inside of a smaller tunnel. The fact that we can stand is a huge benefit."
He stepped forward, making sure he secured his foot. "You wanted me to go face first on my belly into this stuff."
The pipe was as high as him with his hands stretched upward and as wide as two people lying down. A string of faint strips along the top lit the tunnel. The flowing water purled in front of them.
"I thought you were committed to this mission," she said, smiling at him. "Watch out. It’s starting to incline, and it’s slick." She inched her way up the pipe, one foot sliding in front of the other. Then she stopped. "Hold up. What’s that sound?"
In the distance, a definite squeak chattered along with several kerplunks as something entered the sludge.
"I don’t know. Keep moving…it sounds natural." He pushed on her backside to help her up the incline. "Grab that handle on the side of the pipe; it’s only a meter away."
Balancing his foot from slipping under the slick sewage, he heaved Shannon enough for her to reach out, grab the handle, and pull herself up to safety. Using her slimy hands, she grabbed his hand. Judging by the smirk on her face, a small satisfaction surfaced when she saw that him feeling the goo between his fingers.
"Sorry, no time to be ladylike."
He grunted in displeasure.
"Come now, you didn’t expect to escape this beast unscathed?"
Seth smiled, then looked past her down the tunnel. "I don’t see anyone. But that sound—look." He pointed.
The kerplunking sound they discovered was the sewage runoff, exiting several smaller pipes and falling into the stream. He could only describe it as the most vulgar thing he had ever seen. Adding to the fact that this was the worst smell of his life, he was sure this day would live in infamy for him.
They hurried along the tunnel.
When they reached the end, they stopped as they moved into an abrupt mist. But more abrupt was the change in décor within the tunnel. Gone was the curved piping and the sewage stream, and in its place was a single walkway that extended around an open expanse at about waist height above them. Their senses sharpened.
Quietly, with the greatest of care, he reached above his head and grabbed the handrail. Once he had a firm grip, he pulled himself up, slung his leg over the rail, and heaved himself onto the walkway.
His boots made a pinging sound as they came down against the metal. He darted his eyes. Aside from the constant movement of the sewage stream, nothing seemed disturbed. He stood, reached over the side, and hoisted Shannon up behind him.
"Anything?" She whispered into his ear.
"No," he replied, not entirely certain of his answer.
Shannon had the same thought. "What’s that squeaking?"
The squeaking still persisted, and he had yet to pinpoint its origin. It could be just the natural sounds from within the tunnel, but it seemed to be moving in the walls.
"Hey, look out!" he said, reaching for Shannon.
Before he fully reacted, something jumped on her shoulder and bit into her neck.
"A rat!" he exclaimed, thrusting his hand toward it.
She spun around, trying to throw it off, but the claws of the rodent fastened on her. "Get it off! Get it off!" She kept spinning and flailing.
"Quiet, I’m trying," he said. "Stop spinning. I can’t grab it."
"I’ve a monster on my back!"
Finally, he grabbed the creature, pulled hard, and tossed it across the stream to the other side. After it rolled in the sludge, it scrambled to the side and up the wall into one of many crevasses.
She jumped around, shuddering and shivering. "My neck…is it bleeding?"
"I’m more worried about diseases that thing might have transferred. Let me get the med cream." He unzipped a pocket on his jacket and pulled out a tube of cream.
Shannon tilted her neck to expose the bite. "How does it breathe down here?"
"It’s adapting."
"The same as Chloe and you?"
"Like all of Mars." He pulled back her hair. A single bite mark and two claw streaks marked her neck. "Only a nip. The cream will kill anything that entered yo
ur bloodstream."
He dabbed the cream on her neck, and she felt a warming sensation instantly. He blew on the wound to seal it.
"Thanks. Let’s move down this tunnel to search for an entrance." She took only one step and then shot her arm out. "A door! We can cross behind those service pipes over there."
When they reached the door, he listened for any sign of movement and heard none, only the din of several turbines at work. He slid through the door and darted his eyes around the room. The brightness caused him to squint. To his left, several machines pulled liquid goop through the series of smaller pipes into the main sewage stream. Remembering his rounds with Ty on Lunara, he realized this had to be the pump room. On the other side, a long staircase led to the only other exit point.
"Get behind one of those pumps and change your pants. Look there," he pointed. "A water hose, wash yourself. Do it quickly. I’ll cover the door."
She sprayed the water over her boot and hands, cleaning them of the filth. She exchanged her pants, stuffing the old ones behind one of the pumps. She tapped him on the shoulder, and he changed clothes, too.
Finally, they were both feeling normal. The smell had dissipated—not that he would ever forget it.
As he moved up the stairway, every step echoed loudly, and even the slightest whisper sounded like a yell in his ears. Seth took the lead while Shannon covered his back. Several voices filtered down between the walls from the room at the top of the staircase. The door was to the right of the stairway. He waved to signal Shannon to slide over to the other side.
He knelt at the top of the stairwell and reached carefully into this pocket, avoiding any sudden movements. He slid out a handheld device with a screen on the front and buttons along the side. He extended long tubing from it along the floor. After snaking the tube around the doorway, he saw that the screen glowed with a picture pulled from the lenses on the end. He raised his hand toward her and indicated four men in the room.
She nodded her head. He was about to enter and wanted her ready to cover him.
For several moments, he took slow deep breaths. He paused, almost in suspended animation, listening for the slightest movement from the men. He focused on the screen; two of the men were seated, studying a map or a technical blueprint, while the other two paced around the table behind the men. This made it difficult for Seth to gauge where they would be when he entered the room. To the left side, the communications and alert screens were mounted against the wall, the first order of defense when he entered. He placed the screen on the floor.
Shannon motioned with her hand. He looked at her with worry growing within him. The sense of impending danger stuck on her face, too. Perhaps, her terror matched his.
Sweat beaded down the back of his neck. He reached for his holster, unclipped the sonic pistol, and drew it chest high. His other hand slid across his body and fingered the inside of his breast pocket, pulling out a long cylindrical silencer.
Carefully, gradually, he twisted the silencer against the end of the barrel. The methodical scraping of metal on metal seemed to echo down the stairwell. However, the viewscreen at his feet showed the men inside the room giving no indication that anything was amiss.
His throat dried. He swallowed a coarse lump.
After going over the scenario in his head one last time, he dove across the landing to the other side of the doorway. He aimed and fired at the man closest to the communications unit. Traveling out of the silencer, the bullet wisped like a puff of air out of a straw. It hit the man in the neck, and he fell instantly. Seth adjusted his aim and shot at the other standing soldier as he reached for this firearm. The soldier went down.
The remaining two, seated at the table, scrambled to their feet, lunging for their guns across the table. Seth dropped one of them with a single shot to the head.
The final man grabbed his gun, turned, and took aim. But before he could fire, a wisp of smoke appeared over his head, and he slumped to the floor.
Seth let out a long breath. Shannon stood behind him with her gun extended.
"Nice shot," he whispered. He rushed into the room and did a quick scan with his pistol to all four corners. It was clear.
Shannon came in behind him and bolted for the doorway on the opposite side of the room. She glanced down the hallway and saw no indication of activity or any sign their presence was detected. She turned toward Seth as he moved the bodies into the stairwell.
"No one’s coming down the hall," she called over to him.
He took off his breathing mask. "That seemed too easy. We need to radio the platoon to move into position." He moved toward the radio unit.
"No, we can’t," she said. "The radios have encrypters. Unless our boys have the decrypters, it’ll only give our position away to the control room."
"Then what should we do?" he said, eyeing the map on the table.
She continued to look down the hallway, shifting her head back and forth, waiting for the inevitable counterattack.
He crept up behind her. The hairs on the back of his neck stood tall, boosting his already tingling senses. The hallway was quiet. Where were they? The MSA would be alerted by now.
"Eastern entrance, find it."
He slid over to the table, leaning his tall frame against the edge. The building layout was in front of him. Its design was basic, having one perimeter hallway circling the facility and one hallway bisecting it into two parts. The control room for the northern defense perimeter was on the far side and the recessed detention facility to the near side. The eastern entrance—the one he immediately honed his eye on—lay several meters down an adjacent hallway to them. Though the distance was farther than he cared to go, the path wasn’t difficult.
Currently, they were on the northern side with the circling hallway just outside of the door. He figured it was a twenty-meter walk to the eastern edge of the building, and twice that to the east entrance.
"Come on," Shannon said. "We have to get there before the platoon is ambushed."
"I got it," he said, dashing by her.
He crept down the hallway, as silently as possible, until he came to a corner. He pressed himself against the wall. He was terrified. What lay around this corner could be death, and he wasn’t eager to take the turn, but he had to because he needed to find Eamonn…and keep Chloe safe.
"Use your snake camera," Shannon said, pressing her hip against his along the wall.
He cursed to himself. "I left it in the stairwell—"
The scuffling of boots tensed their muscles. Sweat trickled down his back, chilling his terrified body.
Frustrated, angered, he tightened the grip on his sonic pistol. He couldn’t let anything happen to Shannon or allow Eamonn to rot in the detention center. Eamonn was so close, and he wouldn’t allow his terror to stop him. He was stronger than Mars, no longer the boy under the bench.
The boots scuffed again, about ten meters away.
He didn’t think. He didn’t even breathe. He pushed his fear away and whirled around the corner.
The entire world around him slowed down. The shouts from two guards grabbing for their guns were deep and elongated. Now, Seth controlled Mars because time was his asset. He leveled his sonic pistol toward the first guard and pulled the trigger.
The wake of the bullet blistered the air in front of him. For only a moment, the refraction blinded his vision of the second guard. Still, even with the moment of hesitation, he was multiple times faster than the man, and he shifted his gun toward him and fired.
Abruptly, the world sped back to normal speed. Both guards lay on the floor.
He couldn’t help but feel pity as they still clutched their holstered pistols. They had no chance of defeating him. They were inferior. He could have shot ten or twenty men in the time it took them to aim at him, and even with them firing, he doubted the bullets could travel fast enough before he would evade them.
For whatever reason, everything slowed down for him. Perhaps this was the same phenomenon that pro
fessional athletes experienced when they made spectacular and unbelievable plays. But unlike them, he controlled it. He could make it happen when he was angry enough, when his fear turned to hate, and the hate inside of him controlled his mind. His hate was the key to unlocking his potential.
"Get moving," Shannon said, pushing him from behind. "Secure the east entrance before any more of them come. We have to disable the turret gun."
He didn’t need another reminder. Seconds later, without caution, he whipped around the corner to the central hallway. His eyes darted left and right, but no one was in sight.
He lowered his sonic pistol and for the first time, noticed he was breathing heavily through his gritted teeth.
"Get them in here," he said. "I’ll cover this area."
"I have to find the wiring to the turret gun!" she screamed at him. "I can’t find it."
He swiveled. "What kind of a moron can’t find wiring to a turret gun?" His abruptness caught him off guard, sobering his racing mind.
"This moron can’t," Shannon said, scrabbling around the doorway, feeling the edges for any loose wires.
Bang! Bang! Bang! A series of thuds resonated against the ground several meters down the hallway.
Shannon swung her head, her face a study in anxiety.
"We’re safe!" Seth shouted at her. "They’re dead." He could see the confusion in her eyes, the change in her demeanor. "I killed them. Come on Shannon. Hoist yourself up the doorframe, the wires will come out where the turret is mounted."
She moved to the middle, jumped up, grabbed the horizontal beam running over the door, and pulled herself up. Instantly, she saw the pressure-sealed hole where the wire ran out, and bracing herself with one arm, she grabbed her multipurpose tool from her hip pocket.
"Hurry it up."
"Sorry for the inconvenience." She gritted her teeth trying to find the strength to cut the thick wires. The cutters she had brought were for thinner wires, and they couldn’t cut the weather-protected wraps. "I can’t get them. They’re too thick."
A series of clicks grinded over her head; the turret had begun to fire. The platoon had arrived.
Lunara: The Original Trilogy Page 62