Syndicate Wars: False Dawn (Seppukarian Book 4)

by George S. Mahaffey Jr.

  Before anyone could respond, there was a flash of light out through the haze. The glider’s console began blinking, detection mechanisms sounding as a shadow appeared out on the horizon, the massive structure of a ship easing through the murkiness of space like a whale through the water.

  “My God,” Quinn muttered. “Look at that thing.”

  The ship continued to grow and then Cody slotted the glider’s controls.

  “We need to get fierce,” Hayden said. “Take up positions in your launch bays. You know the drill. We’re gonna shadow that big bastard and fire out our lampreys, the ratlines, then we’re gonna ride ‘em on down and find a way in.”

  Quinn and the others strapped themselves into their launch bays as the glider bucked and heaved, powering through icy debris of Saturn’s rings, corkscrewing toward the time ship. Quinn secured her rifle and an ample supply of ammunition and waited. Red lights overhead blinked and Quinn listened to the pneumatic hiss of the exteriors launchers as they jettisoned the glider’s electromagnetic cables at the time ship. There were a few seconds of terrible silence and then the red lights flashed green. It was time to go.

  She looked up to see Cody moving toward her.

  “What’s going to happen to the glider?” she asked.

  “We’ve got it on automatic pilot. Headed directly towards Saturn.”

  “If there’s anyone on the time ship, they’ll see it.”

  “That’s the plan,” Cody replied.

  Cody lurched into his bay as Quinn looked down. The bay under her opened and dropped straight down until she was bobbing underneath the glider. Even with her helmet’s visor, the exterior light was as bright as a bonfire. She could see the cables from the glider attached to the time ship and the others slowly pulling themselves across to it.

  She followed them, swinging down across the cables, shocked at how the brightness of Saturn had blacked out the stars she was used to seeing. She felt Cody behind her, moving slowly down over the cable.

  Everyone moved slowly, using the cartridges in their boots for jets of propulsion as they moved foot-by-foot toward the time ship. Quinn felt very small and insignificant against the vastness of space as she pulled herself forward, Renner singing an old song softly to himself over the comms link, “Let’s swim to the moon, let’s climb through the tide, penetrate the evening that the city sleeps to hide….”

  “Stifle the shit,” Hayden snapped.

  They continued to draw closer to the time ship. Even in her armor Quinn could feel the heat radiating from the craft’s massive engines. The others were already on the rear of the time ship, mere specs when juxtaposed against the immense bulk of the Syndicate vessel which was tiered like a wedding cake, charcoal in color, and crafted from an enormous amount of smooth, nearly featureless alien alloys that emitted a faint, iridescent light.

  Quinn swung onto the decking of the time ship and crawled onto a platform of sorts where the others secured her to the hull with a clipped carbon fiber rope. Cody followed her onto the platform as she turned back to watch the electromagnetic cables detach from the glider. Everyone sat in stunned silence, watching the glider power off without them, flying toward Saturn. Nobody said a word, watching the vessel that had brought them so far become just a shadow as it vanished into the massive interior of Saturn.

  “If this doesn’t work, we are righteously fucked,” Renner said.

  They moved across the deck to what appeared to be an outer hatch that led into the time ship. Around the hatch was fastened a beautifully crafted bank vault-like door that should have required a hefty blast to break through. Quinn grabbed a handle on the door and pulled, but not surprisingly, it didn’t budge. All eyes were on Cody.

  “Like I said before. Two hulls, two doors. What we see here is an exterior barrier, and on the inside is a second door for purposes of pressurization. We should be fine once we breach the exterior barrier.”

  “So who’s got the key?” Eli asked.

  “I do,” Renner replied, holding up a cube of explosive.

  Everyone retreated to the far side of the door as Renner prepared the brick. Quinn watched him pin the explosive with detonation cord and what looked like specialized blasting caps and generally ready it to blow.

  “It’s been nice knowing you guys,” Milo whispered.

  “If the Syndicate really is manipulating things, then even this theoretically wouldn’t be the end of it,” Cody offered.

  Milo turned to him. “So what are you saying?”

  “Worst case scenario? We’ll see each other in re-runs.”

  “BURNING!” Renner screamed.

  Quinn looked back as an exceptionally small blast partially lifted the exterior door from its hinges. Everyone scrambled forward to see there was just enough space to slip inside. They all did, one-by-one, Renner staying behind to secure the door as best he could. “We’ve got oxygen, boys and girls,” Cody called out. He pointed up. “Gravity too.”

  Quinn looked up at the ceiling, nearly fifteen feet tall. She could see something toiling in the semi-darkness. What looked like a series of massive wheels, gravity rings, slowly turning overhead.

  “What’s the SITREP?” Hayden asked.

  “All is quiet,” Quinn replied, checking her HUD which was showing a three-dimensional image of the interior of the ship. She scanned the path forward, the one that led to the area where the time travel mechanism was hopefully housed. There were no images, no echoes, no sign of anything else on the ship, which worried the hell out of her.

  Striding forward, Quinn examined the interior of the time ship which was gloomy, thrumming ever so gently from what she surmised was the energy produced by the craft’s massive engines. There was a five-foot walkway that led to the second door, centered with a silver bar that contained a blue liquid. The liquid sloshed slowly back and forth. Quinn powered up her map which projected a pathway through the ship, beginning just on the other side of the door. All they had to do was get past it.

  “The hell is that thing?” Hayden asked, gesturing at the silver bar.

  Renner raised his rifle. “Let’s find out.”

  “No!” Cody shouted. “You do that inside the inner hull and you might set off a chain reaction, depressurize the whole ship.”

  “Is that a bad thing?” Renner asked.

  “Only if you want to live,” he replied.

  Quinn watched Cody brush past Renner and stare at the silver bar. Then he tapped on the side of his helmet so the smoked portion of his visor pulled back to reveal his face. There were audible gasps when the blue liquid coalesced into a gel that beamed a band of white light over Cody’s eyes. Quinn nearly screamed, but then there came the sound of unseen motors and pistons snapping to life and—

  WHUNK!

  The door opened to reveal … darkness upon darkness.

  The inner section of the time ship as black as a coffin.

  “Hope somebody brought a flashlight,” Mackie said in a sing-songy voice.

  Eli whipped out his old cigarette lighter, which brought a few chuckles. Quinn wasn’t having any of the levity, however. “Cody, stop where you are,” she said.

  He did, looking back at her.

  “What just happened with the door?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “My biometrics were scanned when I was taken up. That was the only way to give me universal access to the command and other ships. I guess they just never changed it.”

  “How did you know to do that?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I saw a problem and I helped us overcome it.”

  “Good enough for me,” Hayden replied, moving past Cody.

  Quinn hesitated, wanting to ask more, but there was no time. Renner, Eli, and the others were already on the move, filtering through the open door. Quinn stood there, staring at the open door, its smooth alien alloyed exterior reflecting the light at an odd angle. Quinn saw her own reflection and it was distorted, almost like one of those old funhouse mirrors. She swallowed hard, won
dering what was waiting for them on the other side.

  QUINN WAS SOON at the rear as the group moved down a walkway into the time ship. The map on her HUD flickered and she noted that they had several hundred yards to go before they reached their target. Some of the others removed their helmets, but Quinn kept hers on for the moment. She was fighting to get the very best understanding of her surroundings, including the ceiling, nearly fifteen feet overhead, and the walls, which were eight feet away on either side. The decking underfoot was made of a black alloy, the grating spaced so far apart that Quinn was able to discern the next level of the ship, directly below.

  “We’re ten minutes away from the target,” Cody said.

  “How come there aren’t any alarms going off?” Mackie asked.

  “Is this ship even manned?” Milo asked.

  “Don’t jinx it,” Hayden said. “Now that we consider you an honorary Marine, you gotta expect the worse. It’s better if you stay bitter.”

  Milo laughed. “True that.”

  “That should be our new motto,” Renner said. “It’s better if you stay bitter.”

  The others laughed as they continued stalking through the corridors, rifles at the ready.They turned another corner. Still nothing.

  “Okay, serious, how come we ain’t been spotted yet?” Eli added.

  “Who says that we haven’t?” Milo replied. “You’re assuming whatever alarms the ship has are audible.”

  “Yeah. Maybe whatever they got is like a dog whistle,” Renner offered. “Maybe you can only hear it if you’re a scud.”

  They continued on, the walkway leading to a central corridor that was lit sporadically by tiny lights that were buried behind the walls.

  “How much farther, Cody?” Giovanni asked.

  “We need to keep going deeper,” he responded. “Eventually we’re going to find what we’re looking for.”

  “Hey, that’s the same thing my last girlfriend used to always say!” Renner shouted back.

  The joke fell flat and it was at that moment that Quinn heard a sound, almost like a hushed voice echoing from behind. She froze and looked back over her shoulder. There was a wall six feet away from her. A wall that couldn’t possibly have been there before.

  “Guys,” she said softly, then, louder, “GUYS!”

  She crabbed back and bumped into Giovanni who, helmetless, was staring openmouthed at the wall.

  “Where the fuck did that come from?!” he asked.

  Quinn didn’t answer immediately. She was too busy watching the wall seemingly move forward a few millimeters at a time. “It can reconfigure itself,” she said softly. “The ship. It’s like some kind of massive puzzle box.”

  “Cody, what the hell’s going on?!” Giovanni shouted.

  “I have no idea,” he replied.

  “Then we need to double-time it!” Hayden shouted.

  Giovanni grabbed Quinn and pulled her back when he caught sight of something underneath them. What looked like multiple pairs of yellow eyes. Glowing down in the darkness like fires at the bottom of a cave. Quinn blinked and when she looked back, whatever was there was gone.

  Controlled chaos.

  That’s how Quinn would’ve described the group’s continued infiltration into the time ship. Cody and Hayden were on point, combat-running following the curves of the corridor as it serpentined into the belly of the ship.

  Quinn was at the back, watching the walls literally closing in behind them. She noticed that there were nearly imperceptible grooves on the floor decking, slots that might allow the walls to slowly shift. And the walls had begun shifting up ahead. Turning back, she could see dead endings where before had been openings which forced the group off their desired path forward.

  “We gotta improvise, people!” Hayden said.

  They did, following a new route that twisted off to the left, doglegging around to the inner chamber that they hoped to eventually reach. They continued on the new course and then Quinn’s HUD began lighting up, pinging sounds echoing. Milo called it before she did. “We’ve got echoes!” he shouted. “Lots and lots of echoes!”

  They stopped, some seventy-yards away from a corridor that would lead to the bridge and the area directly under the bridge that held the time travel mechanism. The areas in front of them appeared to be alive with movement. Huddling in the middle of the corridor, they readied their weapons. Quinn scanned her HUD map and saw that the corridor rounded a nearby bend and then spooled into an open space.

  She realized that they’d been forced into this location. The shifting walls had pushed them off their original path had brought them here to this open space. A perfect place to be ambushed. This had all been by design. The Syndicate had been manipulating things as soon they breached the second door.

  “We got no choice,” Hayden said. “We got nowhere else to go and a shitload of crows waiting for us up ahead. It’s just like we’d do if we were playing football: we hit the hole hard and we keep hitting it until we reach the destination.”

  The others who’d removed their helmets, slid them back on, everyone double-checking the maps on their HUDs, watching the open space fill with small orange dots, what were likely the waiting aliens. Quinn saw a flash in the murk and looked up. What appeared to be a moth was flapping its wings, flying down through the air over their heads.

  She held out her hand and the moth drifted down and landed on her fingers.

  It was a beautiful little thing with delicate jade wings and a velvety thorax the color of spun gold.

  It was also a fucking drone.

  Quinn could tell that by the tiny rockets that were fitted under the delicate goddamn wings.

  “DRONE!” she screamed.

  WHAP! WHAP!

  The drone fired rockets that bounced off Quinn’s helmet. The impact wasn’t enough to breach the helmet, but it did knock Quinn to the ground. Enraged, she stood and used the end of her gun to dash the drone to pieces when it tried to fly away.

  “That’s it,” Quinn said, hitching up her gun. “I’m fucking pissed now.”

  She marched past the others and dropped to her haunches next to Cody and Hayden. She snapped the firing bolt back on her rifle and traded looks with them. “Let’s go.”

  Quinn was the first one out, swinging through the end of the corridor into the open space which was cavernous and contained. With its black walls and ceiling, Quinn thought it looked, for a moment, like some kind of open air cathedral or a deserted sporting arena. But then her eyes adjusted to the murk and she saw the ceilings located some thirty-feet above, were studded with slowly-spinning turbines.

  The walls, barely visible on any side, were slabbed with clear metal baffles that appeared to contain the same kind of gel that she’d seen back on the command ship at the shooting ranges. It was the perfect place for an ambush, she thought. Someone could fight a contained, pitched battle here, and not worry about destroying the rest of the ship. This was the reason they’d been forced here.

  She combat-ran to the left and dropped behind a stack of machine parts. Waiting for the others to follow, she peered up and saw that the space was strewn with what looked like industrial generators and parts from Syndicate machines and worker drones. The others dropped to the ground beside her.

  Quinn squinted and saw what appeared to be rows of Syndicate soldiers, massed twenty yards away, hiding in between packs of small battle drones. Quinn checked her HUD, scanning the orange dots. She lost count at sixty bad guys and there was at least three times that number waiting for them. Casting a look back, she noticed that the corridor they’d just run down was no longer visible, the walls having reordered themselves. They were trapped.

  “Okay, so we’re a little outnumbered here,” Cody whispered.

  Quinn gaped at him. “Ya think?”

  “How come they haven’t fired?” Mackie asked.

  “Because they’re waiting for the walls to close in,” a voice said.

  Quinn froze.

  She scanned the a
rea all around them.

  Milo angled his rifle. “Who the fuck said that?!”

  “Me,” the voice said. “Look down.”

  Quinn did and saw something through the grated decking underfoot.

  A pair of eyes.

  A face.

  What looked like a sweat-slicked human female in her twenties.

  Quinn removed her helmet.

  The woman under the grating blinked, smiled wearily.

  “I had a feeling you weren’t a bug,” the woman said. “I mean, the bugs aren’t all that smart, but even they’re not stupid enough to talk out in the open like that. No offense.”

  Quinn glared at the woman.

  “That a lady down there?” Eli asked crawling over.

  “More a lady than you can handle,” the woman said.

  “Why is there a woman down there?” Eli asked.

  “There’s more than one of us,” another voice called out from down in the shadows.

  “And we’re not all ladies,” still another voice said.

  Quinn dropped to the ground and now she could see the area under the decking was honeycombed with … what? Rooms … cells? The woman under her seemed to read the look in Quinn’s eyes.

  “Boo,” she said softly.

  “Who the hell are you?” Quinn asked, scanning the woman’s features. She was Hispanic with dark hair, cunning eyes, and the wiry frame of a ballet dancer.

  “Who’s asking?” the woman shot back.

  “Quinn.”

  “Kaylin Santiago,” the woman said. “How’d you get the armor, Quinn?”

  “How’d you end up in this ship, Kaylin?”

  “Kidnapped along with the others.” Kaylin pointed to two other figures in the cell—a dark-haired, muscular woman who looked like a mixed-martial arts fighter, and a fairly standard-issue white man. “The intimidating one is Sergeant Riot. The other is Nate.”

  The man moved forward into the half-light and Quinn noted his eyes: the right one was brown, the left one was ghostly white. Her eyes swung down and she spotted a Marine tattoo on his arm. “Sergeant Nate Collins,” the man said, his head held high.