by Wesley Chu
The source of your fanatical support will also be the source of your downfall. Either way, make sure the objective is reached.
Zoras had long abandoned trying to dissuade Enzo from some of his more foolhardy habits, such as insisting on leading attacks. He had come to recognize that Enzo was a different sort of vessel. He wasn’t like Devin, who parceled out orders behind the safety of a desk. He was a lion who needed to hunt in order to stay sharp. It was the one vice his Holy One allowed, and for that, Enzo was grateful.
Azumi’s group exited the basement room and made its way out to the main hallways, shooting indiscriminately. This was the heart of the billionaire’s operation in Moscow. All the personnel here were his through and through. Enzo had given them one chance when he first arrived to show their loyalty to the true Genjix. That time had passed. Divine justice was at hand.
Footsteps to the right. Six sets.
Azumi was already on it, moving along the right side of the hallway while Enzo took the left. The security forces coming through were caught in crossfire and mowed down. A few seconds later, alarms rang through the facility, but Enzo was already leading his team to the second floor. He gestured for his rear operative to hold this stairwell as he began to clear the hallway. All through the building, he heard the rumbles of battle increase, shattering windows, cracking wood, and blowing chunks of concrete apart.
These old buildings were complicated mazes, filled with side entrances and doors. The enemy could be anywhere. A guard opened fire from a hidden spot in one of the rooms. Enzo ducked to the side just in time and cut him down. Two more appeared from an opposite doorway.
You are too much in the open.
“Secure this,” he told Azumi, then stepped into the room. The security guard, using an overturned desk as a makeshift barricade, pulled out a pistol. Enzo, staring at the angle of the gun barrel, twisted and ducked the first two shots, and then walked casually toward the guard. The guard fired twice more, and each time Enzo, watching the trigger finger, dodged the bullet, even though he was only a few meters away.
“You might get one more shot off.” He took another step closer. “Decide now.”
The soldier, hands trembling, lowered his gun and fell to one knee. “Apologies, Father. Please guide me.”
Enzo took the pistol out of his hand. “Prove your dedication.”
The soldier nodded and, arms raised, ran out to the hallway right into the middle of the firefight between his people and the security forces. “Lay down your weapons,” he screamed. “You are committing sacrilege against the Holy Ones. Come out and show your faith.”
There was a slight lull in the fighting as both sides watched the spectacle. A few of the soldiers stood up out of their cover. One even laid his rifle down. Enzo strolled out of the room and stopped behind the still screaming soldier . Without warning, Enzo drew a pistol and shot four of the security soldiers in quick succession. The rest returned fire, killing the poor fool still waving his hands in the air.
Enzo used his body as a shield and pushed forward until he moved past their firing line. He threw the body aside, drew his Hanjo Masamune and began to butcher these unworthy traitors. He took out three more of Vinnick’s guards before the rest of them had a chance to react.
As the soldiers turned to engage him, Azumi and the rest of his men finished them off. Without saying a word, they continued clearing room after room, killing soldiers and civilians indiscriminately. There were no rules of engagements when it came to betrayal.
Once they finished the second floor, they continued up to the next level. They met their first group of black-suited Epsilons at the top of the stairs. Enzo could always tell the Epsilons by their uniforms, which were essentially always black three-piece suits. They accompanied Vinnick wherever he went, and he was proud of how impeccably dressed his elite guards always were.
It was a contingent of five that ambushed Enzo at the top of the stairs. One of his unblessed died on the spot from a bullet to the throat. Azumi took a ricocheting bullet to the leg and dropped to one knee. Enzo tried to scramble to the other side of the hallway across the stairs, but their suppressive fire kept him pinned down. He leaned over the edge of the corner and almost took a bullet to the eye for his efforts.
He signaled to Azumi. “Can you move?” She nodded. Of course she could. He looked over at the remaining unblessed. They had done well so far. However, as regular humans, they were here exclusively to serve his purpose. “Prove your worth.”
Without hesitation, one of them dove into the hallway, sliding toward the opposite wall head-first. Enzo saw at least two bullets strike her leg and chest. The other unblessed followed suit, charging forward. He made it three steps before falling to a barrage. This gave Enzo and Azumi just the opening they needed.
The two of them were able to lay enough suppressive fire to force the Epsilons back and charged the enemy’s fortified position. One of the five Epsilons fell to a point blank shot to the chest, another from the Emei piercer attached to Azumi’s wrist. Then it turned to melee, as Enzo and Azumi fought the three remaining Epsilons hand-to-hand, with the suited men wielding their trademark bayoneted pistols.
A slash to Enzo’s chest right above his armor drew blood. He ducked the second slash and moved into the Epsilon’s guard. He kicked the inside of the Epsilon’s knee just enough to throw him off-balance, and then he threw an upward punch that sent the man’s nose up into his skull. He was dead before he hit the ground. Enzo spun around and drew Hanjo Masamune, cutting the second Epsilon clean through from navel to neck.
Enzo turned and saw Azumi struggling with the last Epsilon. He was a massive man easily twice her size. He had both his hands around her throat and was squeezing. Her face was red, and veins bulged from her forehead. She was slashing at his sides with the sharp point of her piercer, but most of her blows were ineffectual against his armor. The left side of his face was bleeding from several large gashes.
Enzo wondered if he should help her, but Azumi usually hated being interfered with. He leaned against the wall and coughed, lazily waving at the Epsilon when he glanced Enzo’s way. That earned him a glare from his sister. That slight hesitation proved costly for the Epsilon. She took advantage of his momentary lapse of focus, swung her legs up and wrapped them around one of his arms. She twisted downward and flung him face first into the ground. Azumi finished him off with a piercer to his throat.
Enzo offered a hand and pulled her up from the ground. “Well done.”
“Your assistance was unnecessary, brother,” she said.
“None was given.”
He handed her a rifle and they continued up the stairs, taking out three more Epsilons along the way. However, other than that, resistance on the upper levels was surprisingly light.
Vinnick would not have so few of his Epsilons guarding him. He must not be here.
Enzo cursed. Was he too late? Had he delayed too long? Well, no matter. As long as he showed the Russian government who controlled the Genjix and who they should be dealing with, that was all that mattered. Sometimes, a show of strength was the best form of diplomacy, even if it was technically against his own people. Especially if it was against his own people. The Russians could only imagine how he would treat them if he treated other Genjix who crossed him in this way.
He put his ear to the comm. “Report status.”
“Front gates secured,” Matthew said.
“Epsilon group at rear exit. We have them pinned down,” Akelatis added.
Enzo leaned into his comm. “The Epsilons are useless to me. Leave no survivors.”
He looked at Azumi, who nodded and left the room. The operation here was almost completed. All they needed to do now was round up Vinnick’s surviving intermediaries to the Federal Assembly and show these bought politicians how little their bribes were actually worth.
23
Genjix Facility
Timestamp: 2944
Eventually, we learned to game the system and stay
below the radar. At first, my family and I tried to live a normal life as the entire Prophus network entrenched and reinvented itself. We enrolled Cameron in grade school. Jill joined a small law practice and I… um… I ran a black market for firearms. Hey, let me know if you guys need some real guns. Ha ha, okay you’re right. It’s not funny.
We could never stay in one place for long, though. Those damn Penetra nets kept popping up all over the place, and the government was making scanners increasingly smaller and more efficient. If either Jill or my son got caught in just one of those nets, the damn IXTF swooped in, and then we’d have to move.
* * *
It was rare to have Marco at a complete loss for words. He stared through the monocular and stuttered. “That… that is supposed to be a reclamation plant? What the bloody hell do you boys recycle there? Plutonium?”
He handed the monocular to Roen, who whistled. “That’s no moon.”
“Pardon?” Marco asked.
“Never mind. You suck.”
Elias, lying on his stomach next to Roen, rolled onto his back and checked their surroundings. He gestured at Chase to make a round on the perimeter. Then he pulled out a small map of the area. “Like I said, this joint is nigh impenetrable.”
Marco pointed at the double layers of fences around a two-story concrete wall. “It’s like bloody Fort Knox over there.” He turned to Roen. “You Americans must take your recycling very seriously.”
Roen scanned the perimeter. The two rows of fences, barbed wired on the top, spanned the entire length of the facility and made a ninety-degree turn directly into a steep mountain wall. The wall itself seemed to have been artificially carved so that it cupped the back of the facility like a lid. The front central gatehouse, nestled between double-layered fences, guarded a dirt road just wide enough for a small car. How did the Genjix move supplies in and out? Then Roen noticed something else.
“Oh come on,” he muttered. “That fence is electrified.”
“Splendid,” Marco said. He pointed at several tubes protruding out along the far corner. “Any idea what those are? Exhausts? Waste expulsion?”
Roen moved his sights to two clusters of pipes along each end of the building. He watched as two birds flitted around it. “Can’t be. Intake.” He continued to study the perimeter, growing more uneasy by the second. “What the… I think that’s a machine gun nest. And if I didn’t know any better, I’d think those were murder holes.”
“Did the Genjix use Henry Yeverley to design this place?” Marco mused. “All they’re missing is a drawbridge.”
Roen counted the number of searchlights that lined the perimeter along the top of the walls at intervals of a few meters. With almost two hundred meters of clearance from the tree line, a frontal assault would be impossible, and given how the facility was nestled in a mountain, that was really the only way to hit it, unless they went in from above, which would pose a different set of problems.
“How did Prie get in before?” Roen asked.
“Come with me,” Elias said.
The small group made a wide circle around the perimeter just outside the tree line. A side entrance was bored directly into the mountain a little ways up the base of a steep hill, with a partially hidden tunnel just wide enough for two trucks side by side. If Roen hadn’t been looking carefully, he would have missed the entrance entirely.
Elias pointed into the dark tunnel with the dim fluorescent lights on the ceiling. “This is where all their supplies are off-loaded. Prie waited four days for a supply convoy and snuck in with it. He was able to grab a couple of samples before he was discovered. Based on how he described the interior, we believe the real facility goes far deeper into the mountain. The buildings that we see up front are just the entrance. The Genjix probably excavated deep into the rock to mask their real operation.”
Roen and his team spent another two hours surveying the Genjix base from every angle before making the hour-long trek back to the station wagon, which they had hidden off the side of the road. The group was palpably gloomy as they trudged through the foliage back to the car. Roen had seen his fair share of battles, and while modern warfare was a far cry from the often trench- and battle-lined firefights of the twentieth century, attacking this facility would be the equivalent of landing on Omaha Beach. If the defenses of the base were as strong as they looked, any attacking force would be charging into a wood chipper.
“I don’t know about you, but Ahngr thinks we’re proper fucked,” said Marco.
Roen grunted. “I didn’t need a Quasing to tell me that.”
Chase, manning point, dropped to one knee and raised a fist. The group flattened to the ground and froze. He crept forward a few paces and then signaled back at them. He pointed at his eyes, held up four fingers, then pointed west. Roen listened for anything out of the ordinary. At first, it was nearly imperceptible, but he soon detected a steady pattern of footsteps on leaves and low conversations coming from that direction.
Their group was too close together. If discovered, they would be easy targets for whoever was out there. Marco fell back, signaling for Roen to move forward and for Elias to pull left. Roen swung his rifle forward and kept it close to his body. They held their position.
Chase returned a few seconds later and drew on his hands with his fingers. A dot and a line that passed very close to it. The cracking sound got louder. Roen pulled Chase with him and they retreated into the brush. A few seconds later, a patrol of five soldiers wearing full camo gear passed through where they had just been. He immediately saw the Penetra scanner on one of the men and prayed Marco was far enough away to avoid detection.
Roen, being in the middle of his group, motioned to each: Elias lead. Chase two. Then he set his sights on the third in the group, trailing after them as they passed by. Time slowed. The group, walking single-file, was as relaxed as a pack of wolves on the prowl. Judging by the way they moved, they were professionals. They looked well-armored and -geared too.
Chase put his finger on the trigger and looked to him for confirmation. Roen shook his head. Their team was unarmored. In a firefight, even with surprise on their side, they would be at a disadvantage. Armor technology had far outpaced weapons technology in recent years. Even at their distance of forty meters, unless they got a head shot, these might not be killing blows.
The team held their position for another ten minutes, until well after the patrol had gone. Then Marco motioned for the others to gather. Roen exhaled, feeling the adrenaline dump pass through his body. Even after a hundred battles, this experience wasn’t something he could get used to.
“What’s our location?” Marco asked.
Elias checked the map and the GPS. “We’re eight klicks out of the facility.”
Roen whistled. For the Genjix to have a patrol eight kilometers away from their base made their job exponentially more difficult. That meant any ground force that wanted to attack would have to gather over an hour away by foot before moving in. They would be detected long before they got within sight of the facility.
“This just gets better and better,” Marco grimaced. “Come on, let’s get back to base.”
An hour later, the deflated group wandered into Roen and Marco’s motel room. The team now occupied three adjacent rooms on the top level, with Elias and Helen in one, and Sheck and Chase in the other.
Sheck, the team’s tech, had set up the operations center in his room, while Helen had turned theirs into the supply quarter. That left Roen and Marco’s room for all of their meetings and meals, which was something Roen had an issue with. The team was all career soldiers and rarely stayed in one place for long. Because of that, they all tended to be slobs. Roen, on the other hand, had long outgrown his slob days. He had spent the past few years living planted in a home, so he valued his space and privacy, which was now at a rare premium.
He wrinkled his nose when he came in and saw Helen and Sheck lounging with their feet up on the table – the same one that they ate on, by the way �
� while playing cards. Roen grimaced and gave them the stink eye. He had told them time and time again to act like adults. He caught himself just now. When had he turned forty going on sixty?
My, how the tables have turned, Tao would probably say.
“Guy’s gotta get through puberty eventually,” Roen would probably have answered. “The wrong side of forty sounds like the right time to do that.”
Age means nothing. Sean was in his sixties when he kicked your ass.
“And Jacob was something like seventeen. At least that shows that age has nothing to do with who kicks my ass.”
“All right,” Marco said, gathering everyone around. “Sheck, get the Keeper on right away. We need to have a little chat regarding this bloody impregnable fortress the Genjix have over in the hills. Helen, how’s our situation in the hospital?”
Sheck nodded and left the room. The damn catalyst facility was so well-fortified, Roen wasn’t sure if the US military could have busted through. It seemed, however, that the Keeper was keen on planning an all-out attack on this facility no matter what, as it was the only one of its kind not stationed in a firmly Genjix zone of control.
“I bribed a janitor for his keys and identification,” Helen said, pulling a silver key and ID badge out of her pocket and placing it on the table. “Bought some scrubs at the local thrift shop and spent the entire day wandering the medical center. The entire building has awful security, but there’s a three-man guard at Prie’s door at all times.”
“Any news on our boy?” Roen asked.
“All second-hand gossip from the nurses, but it seems Prie’s something of a celebrity there. He regained consciousness today. Those IXTF cruds tried to interrogate him while he was still groggy. Thank goodness Pri was there to keep his head straight. Then they put him into an induced coma.” Helen looked angry. “Sir, we have to get him out of there!”
Marco nodded. “Not until our mission is complete or they try to move him. I’m not feeling comfortable relying on the word of a federal agent I picked up at a bar. Think we can get one of the scout team’s bugs in the room?”