Syndicate Wars: False Dawn (Seppukarian Book 4)

by George S. Mahaffey Jr.

  Instead of detonating, the rocket skipped up like a rock tossed across the surface of a lake. It kicked up a wave of dust and then corkscrewed directly toward the bridge where it slammed into a metal girder that Rane’s SUV was nearing.

  BOOM!

  There was a flash of light as the explosion ripped the girder off, collapsing a portion of the bridge.

  The SUV with Rane inside was struck by the flying debris, and fishtailed.

  Brakes squealed as the SUV rammed into the fallen girder and collapsed portions of the bridge with a thunderous crash. There was the echo of metal blasting apart as the SUV smoked to a stop, smashing into a still intact section of the bridge before grinding to a stop.

  “Jesus,” Giovanni said to himself.

  Quinn didn’t respond. She was too overcome with emotion. She grabbed her rifle and began running down the road, praying that Samantha wasn’t inside or that if she was, she was uninjured. The glider was visible in the air on the other side of the bridge, banking hard to the east. Quinn watched the last of the metal darts fall into the water without striking the wrecked SUV.

  Approaching through a gathering cloud of dust and smoke, Quinn shouldered her rifle.

  “SAMANTHA!” she shouted.

  Nothing stirred inside the SUV.

  She took several more steps. Dark silhouettes were visible on the other side of the spiderwebbed windshield, but she couldn’t make out what they were.

  “SAMANTHA!”

  Five more paces and she was stopped, a hundred feet from the SUV.

  The passenger-side door kicked open.

  Quinn dropped low.

  Instinct took over.

  She squeezed off a burst from her rifle.

  Bullets shattered the passenger-side window. A bandit clutched at his ruined stomach and fumbled back.

  More doors opened.

  More bandits appeared.

  Quinn could see that there was only one figure left in the SUV and it was too large to be Samantha. Thank God! she thought as the bandits began firing at her.

  She dove to the right, fighting to conceal herself in a thicket of tall grass.

  Gunshots echoed from behind.

  Giovanni was firing now.

  Bullets buzzed the air all around Quinn and ricocheted off the ground. She brought her rifle up and took a bead on a man emerging from the back of the SUV. He was dressed all in black, holding a machine-pistol, smiling as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  She locked eyes with the man.

  They aimed at each other.

  Then Quinn looked down.

  Studying the tributaries of gasoline that were spreading out from under the belly of the wrecked SUV.

  Quinn fired first.

  Her first round flew wide, but the second quicksilvered off the road, setting the gasoline afire. She fired again and again and soon a river of flames were streaking back toward the SUV. Several of the bandits ran for cover or dove off the bridge into the water as the hungry flames continued on, licking the underside of the SUV as—

  BOOM!

  A fireball erupted, followed by a visible shockwave that roiled the air.

  The pressure from the blast knocked Quinn to the ground.

  When she looked up, Giovanni was standing over her.

  He reached a hand down and she swatted it away.

  “Samantha’s not there,” he said.

  “Would’ve been nice to know that before we started shooting.”

  She rose to her feet and set off toward the bridge, rifle up and at the ready, tasting the bitter funk of burning gasoline. Her eyes narrowed to slits, irritated by the smoky haze. She stepped over and around the bodies of the bandits she’d shot down. She headed to the left of the bridge, to what was left of the SUV, as Giovanni moved to the right.

  “Clear!” she heard Giovanni shout.

  Quinn nosed around the charred remains of the SUV when—

  WHUMP!

  A figured jumped out at her.

  It was the black-clad man.

  Rane just stared at Quinn for several long seconds. So this was the Marine Sergeant he’d heard so much about. The girl’s mother. She was more imposing than he’d imagined, likely six feet tall give or take an inch. She had the rounded, muscled shoulders of a gymnast, her face was tight, and she had the look of an animal that had been backed into a corner. What had he heard once? That the love of a mother is primitive, primordial. He realized then that he’d likely underestimated her, that he’d made a mistake in coming between Quinn and her child. He’d taken an unnecessary risk. Then he felt a portion of the melted flesh on the right side of his face slide down his cheek and past the hole where his jawbone was likely exposed. His tongue slipped through the hole in his face there and something inside Rane snapped, a back of the throat hiss echoing from his open mouth.

  Rane swung a knife at Quinn who parried the thrust with the end of her rifle.

  Rane loosed a guttural scream, “AGGHHHH!” then charged at Quinn.

  She brought the rifle around like a quarterstaff and struck Rane in the forehead. The skin on his forehead came away like wet wallpaper.

  He groaned and fumbled back like a drunken man. He took a step towards Quinn....and vanished from sight.

  She blinked, then saw that he’d plunged through a hole in the bridge that had been opened by the initial explosion caused by the rocket. Quinn jumped forward and peered down into the roiling water below, but nothing was visible. Rane’s body had been swept away by the current.

  Quinn swiveled and saw the glider landing at the other end of the road. She moved briskly past Giovanni toward the Jeep, whose windshield had been blown out in the hail of gunfire unleashed by Rane and the bandits. Eli pushed open his door and stood, woozy, but still alive. He quickly fired up a smoke. “That’s the last time I drive anywhere with you guys,” Eli said, taking a long drag from his lung rocket.

  Cody, Hayden, Renner, Milo, and the others were visible, exiting the glider. Hawkins dropped to the ground and kissed it. “Please God tell me that it’s over,” he said.

  “Sure is,” Hayden replied. “Right after we save Quinn’s daughter, bring Xan to justice, and take out an alien base or two.”

  Hawkins groaned, collapsing to the ground.

  Cody moved forward and hugged Quinn, whispering, “We may have a problem.”

  “Yeah, we don’t know where Xan is.”

  “I do,” he replied and Quinn tensed. “That’s the problem. She’s in an SUV headed toward the alien bases.”

  “Please tell me you mean base,” Quinn said. “Singular.”

  “No, he means bases,” Hayden retorted, moving over. “When we were upstairs we caught a glimpse of what lies over the horizon and it ain’t pretty. We spotted at least ten alien structures in the middle of some big goddamn body of water.”

  “Okay, so we know where they are,” Quinn said, nodding. “Let’s go.”

  “How the hell are we gonna assault an ocean?” Mackie asked.

  “And what about the time ship?” Mira asked.

  “We need to think about priorities here,” Hawkins said.

  “I’m not leaving my daughter,” Quinn said. “Even if I have to go alone, I’m not bailing on her.”

  “We have to go forward with Quinn,” Milo said, the others looking over. “Xan’s got Samantha for a reason. If we don’t stop her from doing whatever it is she’s got planned, we may never make it to the time ship.”

  Mackie raised his hand. “That still doesn’t answer the question: how the hell are we gonna attack a bunch of alien bases?”

  “Crosseyed and Painless,” Renner blurted out. He’d been silent during the exchange, but was grinning and had his arms crossed over his chest.

  “Were you sniffing glue up in the glider?” Giovanni asked.

  “I wish,” Renner replied, shaking his head. “Crosseyed and Painless is the name of an old song. Talking Heads. Lyrics go something like, ‘Facts all come with points of view, facts
don’t do what I want them to.’”

  “Anybody understand how that has any relevance at all?” Milo asked. Everyone shook their heads.

  Renner smacked his hands together. “When faced with uncooperative facts, what do you do? You flip the fucking script. You take those bad facts and you transform them into something you can work with.”

  “I vote for not letting Renner speak anymore,” Milo said.

  “He’s got a point,” Quinn said.

  “Yeah. A totally insane one,” Milo quipped.

  Renner pointed toward the hill and the alien bases that lay somewhere on the other side of it. “We were up there with them. We know how the Syndicate operates. They’re some overconfident sonsofbitches. They’ve ceased to calculate. Fact is, who the hell would ever expect a bunch of jackasses like us to just roll right up to the front of the gate and ask to be let in?”

  “They’d never expect it,” Quinn said.

  “Which is why we know what we gotta do,” Renner replied. “Sam’s one of us and we don’t leave nobody behind. I’m in like Quinn no matter what. Who’s with me?”

  Renner raised his hand. Hayden, Eli, and Giovanni slowly did, followed by the resistance fighters and eventually, Milo. All eyes hopped to the last figure, Dan the resistance fighter who sheepishly raised his hand.

  “Am I one of you guys now?” Dan asked.

  “Absolutely not,” Quinn replied.

  Quinn moved back toward the Jeep as Giovanni reached for her. “Quinn, I’d like to talk for a sec.”

  She stopped and glared at him. “So you can apologize?”

  “I did what I thought was right.”

  “That didn’t sound like an apology to me.”

  “Because it wasn’t.”

  She shrugged past him, running back to the Jeep.

  SEVERAL HUNDRED YARDS downstream from the Jeep, an unconscious body was gently pushed by the current over an obstruction of a collection of rocks and timber. The current ebbed and the body floated sideways into an eddy, then came to a rest on a bed of gravel. A jolt passed through the man and he startled, pulled himself up, and then spat up a torrent of water. The man, William Rane, marshalled every last ounce of strength and crawled forward before collapsing on the rocky shoreline. There was a vague, strained look on Rane’s face as he lay there, gasping for breath, his fingers digging into the rocks and gravel and muck.

  He rolled over, grimacing, and positioned himself so that he was seated, facing the water. He brought his hands up to his face and touched his cheeks. When his palms came away they were smeared with strips of flesh. His mind wandered, turning back to the bridge. He remembered the explosion, the fire, the way his skin had just sloughed off in the heat. He remembered Quinn, the women who’d done this to him.

  Turning back, he clawed his way across the shoreline and collapsed again near a river bank, the pain so complete, so excruciating that he yearned for death. But death did not come for him that day, and as he flopped onto his back and watched the glider ascend into the sky, he swore a blood oath against the female Marine and all of the others that had done this to him. He didn’t know how, but he would find a way to make them pay for what they’d done. It was only a matter of time.

  19

  Samantha stared out the window, watching the SUV follow the curves in an old canyon road. She looked up and was shocked to see what appeared to be an ocean on the horizon, a never-ending body of water that stretched across the horizon.

  “I’m not a geography whiz or anything, but is there supposed to be an ocean in Wyoming?”

  “There is now,” Quarrels said.

  “The aliens?”

  Quarrels made a dinging sound as if Samantha had just won a prize. She leaned forward and narrowed her eyes as she took in what looked like islands rising up out in the middle of the water.

  “Why would the aliens be building bases out here? I don’t get it."

  “You’re not supposed to get it,” Xan said under her breath.

  Samantha held up her hand. “But if they’re here, why aren’t we going in the opposite direction? Y’know, like … away from them?”

  At this, Quarrels could no longer meet her eyes. He turned back and whispered something to Xan that Samantha couldn’t make out.

  “You guys are nuts,” Samantha said, chuckling. “You think you’re just going to drive right up to the water and say hello to the beetles?”

  Quarrels and Xan remained silent.

  The SUV came to a stop at the bottom of the old canyon road, partially concealed in a glade under some trees. The water’s edge was a stone’s throw away, the alien ocean placid, a bleak fog hanging over it. Samantha seized on this, thinking back on the vision she’d seen earlier, the one that involved the massive metallic constructs doing battle. She worked to process what it all meant until one of the resistance fighters suddenly thumped her in the middle of the back.

  “Get your ass moving,” the fighter said.

  “Haven’t you ever heard you get more bees with honey than vinegar?” she asked, turning around to face the gimlet-eyed resistance fighter.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means your shoe lace is untied.”

  The fighter looked down and Samantha torqued her feet up and kicked him in the groin. The fighter doubled-over as Samantha shook her head. “God you’re an idiot.”

  She turned back to see Bowen pointing a rifle at her. “You do that shit again and I will dirt nap your ass.”

  “I would be really careful about pissing me off, mister.”

  Bowen grinned, but there was a shred of uncertainty in his eyes. “Yeah? And why’s that?”

  “Because I don’t think you’re gonna like it when I get mad.”

  Bowen shoved her forward and she moved silently past him, shuffling down as two other fighters dropped the kayak-like boat into the water and prepped its engines. Samantha maneuvered herself forward until she was standing next to Quarrels, who was on his haunches, dipping his fingers into the water. She spotted a rucksack beside him, lying open, filled with bundles of drugs from back at the vault. He looked up at her.

  “How ‘bout cutting me loose,” she whispered.

  He smiled and stood. “I’m gonna miss you, kid. I mean, I’m gonna miss whatever happens next, the fireworks most of all, but I’m also gonna miss you.”

  “You could miss me more if you just let me go,” she replied. “C’mon, you know you want to.”

  “No can do,” he said with smirk.

  She bobbed her head at the rucksack. “Yeah, I guess the life of a dealer is a pretty busy one, huh?”

  Quarrels’ expression darkened as he grabbed the rucksack and closed it. “I think you already know this, but the world is not a good place, young lady. There are no more happily ever afters.”

  “Wow? Really? After the alien invasion and half the world dying, I find that very hard to believe."

  Quarrels smirked, continuing, “People know we’re screwed and you know what they want most of all?”

  “Freedom?” she asked.

  “Nope, a way to escape.”

  “And you’re gonna provide that for a price?”

  “Everything comes with a price,” Quarrels said with a nod.

  “You’re going to turn your back on humanity?”

  Quarrels shrugged. “Humanity is overrated. Besides, I’m more of a loner, a survivor anyway. When everything else falls away, yours truly will still be here.”

  “Just like a cockroach.”

  Quarrels frowned, gathering up his rucksack. “Say hello to the scuds for me," he said, and then he reached behind her ear and pulled out a silver coin. “Little something to remember me by,” he added, slipping the coin in her front pocket before tipping an imaginary hat. “Que tengas un buen dia.”

  Samantha watched him stride over to Xan, who was clutching an oversized rucksack. He gave her one last big hug. Then he moved past the resistance fighters and climbed onto the motorcycle and drove off u
p through the canyon. Bowen and two other resistance fighters entered the SUV and drove off in the direction that Rane had taken earlier, as Xan and two of the others trudged down toward Samantha.

  “It’s time to go,” Xan said, gesturing to the water. “It’s time to be reunited with your friends.”

  They shoved Samantha into the boat, then pushed off into the water. Xan grabbed her and forced her down to a seated position as the boat sputtered into the fog.

  20

  Strategic hamlets.

  That’s the word that came to mind when General Aames thought about the alien bases. He was moving across a suspended walkway in the womb of the largest alien base, remembering how he’d been the one to originally pitch the idea of hamlets to the Potentate, the notion of finding a way to pacify huge swaths of land to prevent attacks from the resistance. He’d reminded everyone about the experiences of other empires in the years gone by: the French in Spain and Algeria, the Americans in the Philippines and later in Vietnam. Those undertakings had largely been unsuccessful because fighting an insurgency was often like battling against the incoming tide: as soon as you withdrew your hand, they simply flowed back into place.

  But this time was different because they’d found a way to create the tide, to actually use the water as a shield against the insurgency. The plan, which was being implemented globally, centered around the creation of immense bodies of water that allowed the Syndicate to occupy land while simultaneously creating a buffer between it and the resistance. Eventually, whole states and entire countries would be completely pacified with water.

  The General thought back on an old quote about insurgencies and guerrilla fighters, about how they succeeded because it was easier for a flea to harm a lion than it was for a lion to harm a flea. He laughed, realizing with this new plan that he wouldn’t simply be eradicating the resistance, the fleas, he’d be drowning the bastards. And then when that was done, he would reach out to those that remained, the survivors, on behalf of the Syndicate. He’d fight to win hearts and minds and if that failed, he would have no choice but to crush the body.

  His thoughts spun to those who’d escaped him, the Marines, Quinn and the others. They’d found their way home and linked up with the other raggedy bands, terrorists. Kipling had been right when he’d once described indigenous fighters as half-devil, half-child, and that’s precisely what the insurgents were. Soon he’d be sending out teams to hunt Quinn and the others down. And because nits make lice, he would have no choice but to kill all of them and their children. There simply was no other way to end the fighting.