Lockdown (Fugitive Marines Book 3)

by David Ryker

  Lockdown

  Fugitive Marines | Book 3

  David Ryker

  Douglas Scott

  Ryker’s Rogues

  Available Now

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  Fugitive Marines

  Framed - Prequel

  Breakout - Book 1

  Wanted - Book 2

  Lockdown - Book 3

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  Recruit - Book 1

  Contents

  Prologue 1

  Prologue 2

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Epilogue

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  Prologue 1

  PROLOGUE 1 – THE STAR ALPHA PISCIS AUSTRINI, 25 LIGHT YEARS FROM EARTH

  The ship lurked on the periphery of the shimmering ring, waiting. It looked almost like a Terran angler fish, with a hulking mass up front, dwindling to a smaller tail higher up on the rear of the body, and just as ferociously ugly.

  The blunt-nosed assault cannons stood at the ready, jutting from their housings on either side of the ship’s nose, prepared to fire the moment they reached the receiving end of the Span’s wormhole if need be. They would be the tip of the spear, cutting a swath through any opposition they encountered, mowing down all Earth resistance with unmatched brute force, until the opposing ships had been reduced to mere cinders in space. The rest of the armada, some thousand ships strong, would follow and immediately begin the subjugation of the system that orbited the star the humans called Sol, adding it to the ever-expanding collection of systems that now belonged to the sentient thought species that referred to itself by a term that meant, essentially, the Gestalt.

  At least, that was the plan.

  The entity once known as N’Yhillit glared through multi-faceted insect eyes at the readouts on the bridge monitors. Still no signal from the other side of the Span. But there was no shortage of signals running through the collective consciousness that N’Yihillit shared.

  It is of no consequence, said one aspect.

  He is no longer one of us, said another.

  Disunity, disunity, disunity, disunity, an endless chorus of disunity running through his consciousness.

  The Gestalt aspect on the other end of the Span now referred to itself as Officer Kergan, which was an aberration on its own. It could be overlooked if that was all it was, but it was far more—rather than achieving full attenuation and subjugation of the host, it had merged with him somehow. Kergan was now part of the aspect’s overall consciousness, instead of the empty vessel it should be.

  It might have been the result of the way that the aspect was conceived. New aspects of the Gestalt were drawn into the physical universe by the presence of the God Element. It was how the species had first emerged, but it was also uncommon—the last example of such a conception was N’Yhillit’s own species, many years earlier. So they relied instead on using subjugated species to transport them through space to find new species with which to multiply.

  But nothing like what had happened to Kergan, and to the other aspect which had been known as Sloane, had ever occurred before. Species were attenuated and subjugated. That was all. Now Kergan had merged into something other, and the Gestalt still couldn’t determine what had happened to the aspect that had become part of Sloane when its vessel expired.

  Whatever had caused it, the situation was unacceptable for any number of reasons, the most pressing being the fact that it was interfering with communication. N’Yhillit reached out once again to contact Kergan’s mind, and once again received only symbols and vague images: a human with small eyes and a hairless head. The God Element that was the Gestalt’s lifeblood, which had first brought them to this plane of existence millennia earlier. A small army of human drones, working to build the receiving generator for the Span’s wormhole.

  That was as it should be.

  But there was more. There were feelings. Images of a female, Ridley, that made Kergan’s pulse quicken. Others that made his chest flare with hot anger, males whom Kergan thought of as Jarheads, for some unknown reason. All of it meant confusion and uncertainty, which the Gestalt did not appreciate.

  Kergan must be dealt with, the voices chimed.

  N’Yhillit agreed as its host ran a chitonous extremity over the controls of the ship to stabilize it against a passing stellar wind. The other drones simply stood at attention, their bodies ready to carry out orders as they were received. They would enter the wormhole the moment it opened, and they would make glorious war on the other side.

  Attenuation will be achieved, he assured the other voices. All will be as it should be.

  Prologue 2

  PROLOGUE 2 – IN ORBIT ABOVE OBERON

  Oberon One loomed in the ship’s forward monitor like El Dorado, the fabled lost city of gold. At least, that’s how Dr. Toomey saw it.

  He’d been aboard the ship, an aging military Raft ferry and cargo ship that had been modified into the fastest spacecraft currently known to mankind, for three days. He refused to call it by the designation it had been given by the men who stole it from the station he was approaching. “FUBAR” was beneath his dignity.

  The solitude of the journey had been bliss for him—he had always preferred his own company to that of others, and it had given him endless time to think and plan—but at the same time, he could barely contain his excitement. The station, an orbital mining facility that also acted as a maximum-security prison, was also home to the greatest discovery in the history of the human race.

  And it was his for the taking.

  Well, except for one small hitch.

  As if reading his mind, the commlink chimed with an incoming message. Toomey knew who it was and what he was going to say even as he motioned for the holographic projection to activate. Instantly, the spherical display was filled with the bland, wide face of Butch Kergan, his new partner.

  The man’s grin made Toomey think of a hyperactive child on Christmas morning. He was wearing an ill-fitting suit that Toomey assumed he’d appropriated from the station’s former warden, who was taller than Kergan.

  “Doctor!” Kergan blurted. “You’re so close I can practically smell you!”

  Toomey managed to keep himself from wrinkling his nose at the artless analogy. “Arrival time is estimated at approximately four hundred hours from now.”

  Kergan’s eyes danced. “I
can’t wait! I’ve got so many things prepared for your arrival! We’ll have a celebratory dinner from Sean Farrell’s personal food stash, with some top-shelf liquor to go along with it. That’s how someone welcomes a good friend, isn’t it?”

  The doctor forced himself to smile. “Indeed it is. I’m looking forward to finally seeing you in person.” He paused a beat. “And, of course, the toomium.”

  Kergan’s smile faltered just the tiniest bit at the mention of the wonder element that was the real reason Toomey had made the journey across the solar system to Uranus. The microexpression would have gone undetected by the vast majority of humans, but Dr. Toomey was not the vast majority of humans.

  “Of course,” said Kergan. “We have a lot to discuss, and a lot of work to do together. But first, we celebrate!”

  Humor him, Toomey told himself. It was second nature to him by now; he’d spent his entire adult life exploiting the resources of people with lesser intellects in order to advance his own goals. Kergan was simply the latest in a long list.

  The doctor smiled again, trying to look more genuine this time.

  “I’m counting the minutes,” he said.

  That much at least was true.

  1

  SAN FRANCISCO

  It had been over a year since Chelsea Bloom set foot in her childhood home, and even though it hadn’t changed noticeably in that time, it seemed almost alien to her now. She stood in the expansive foyer that comprised the main entrance, the same enormous crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling five meters above her, the same golden-inlaid marble floor reflecting her boots like a dark mirror beneath her.

  She was flanked by the pair of soldiers in black fatigues and berets who had escorted her to the 99th floor of what was colloquially known in San Francisco as Bloom Tower. The duo, a man and a woman, had barely said ten words since sweeping her away from Dr. Toomey’s hidden lair in the bay, less than a half-hour after Toomey himself had stolen FUBAR and disappeared. Chelsea still had no idea what had happened to her friends after Tribune Morley Drake had shown up with a contingent of soldiers and taken them all into custody.

  “So,” she said in a shooting-the-breeze tone. “You guys see anything interesting in the news lately?”

  Chelsea knew her companions wouldn’t answer, but she thought she saw their expressions sour a bit at the reference to the viral video that Foster Kenya had live-streamed of Toomey’s confession. That gave her some mild satisfaction. Quinn had taught her that fighting back was always worth it, even if all you could muster was a verbal shot.

  “Thank God!” A familiar voice startled her out of her exhausted reverie, and she turned to see her father striding through the long hallway toward her, his arms open wide. “Chelsea, I’m so glad you’re all right!”

  Her two escorts snapped to attention next to her, which she found odd, given that her father had never been in the military. At least, not as far as she knew.

  “I’m fine, Dad.” She sighed as he reached the foyer and pulled her into an awkward hug. “No thanks to you. Things would have been a hell of a lot easier if you hadn’t been trying to abduct me and kill my friends since the moment I got back to Earth.”

  Oscar Bloom gave the soldiers a curt nod and they disappeared through the apartment’s ornate front door, leaving him and Chelsea alone. She thought his face, while still handsome as always, was starting to show his age these days. The idea that maybe she’d played a role in that gave her a small measure of satisfaction.

  “What else was I supposed to do?” He was obviously making an effort to keep his voice under control. “My daughter was kidnapped by a gang of inmates during a riot at a maximum security space prison! Your ‘friends’ are wanted men!”

  “It’s illegal, Dad! You can’t order someone to kill people, even if they are fugitives!”

  Oscar scowled. “I can do whatever I want, young lady. I thought you realized that.”

  And there it was. Her father had just confirmed that everything Chelsea had suspected about who was behind the mercenaries who’d chased them from Vegas to Rome was true. Until that moment, she didn’t realize she’d actually been holding out hope that maybe it really had just been the government all along.

  “Listen to you,” she spat. “The great Oscar Bloom finally comes out and admits that he’s above the law.”

  Oscar rolled his eyes and turned to walk into the 30,000-square-foot apartment that had been the Bloom family home since Chelsea was a tween, when they moved to San Francisco from Hong Kong. She followed him, past ancient statues and priceless paintings, past floor-to-ceiling screens that acted as faux windows, broadcasting the cobalt blue sky outside into one of the apartment’s half-dozen living rooms. This one was filled with antique sofas and armchairs and tables, and featured a stage for a full orchestra against one panelled wall.

  Welcome home, she thought with an inward groan. After almost a year of living in close quarters, both on ships and Oberon One, the familiar room now seemed almost obscenely decadent.

  “You’re not that stupid, Chelsea.” Oscar stopped at the bar to pour amber liquid from a crystal decanter into a tumbler. “You know as well as I do that our wealth affords us unique privileges.”

  She sighed as she dropped her butt into an authentic Louis XIV chair that was some 450 years old.

  “And you’re not stupid enough to believe I was kidnapped, Dad. In fact, the only person who actually did kidnap me was you! What happened to the others after I was spirited away?”

  “Drake told me that they would be taken into custody and interrogated. Frankly, he could have lined them up and shot them, for all I care. My only priority was getting you home.”

  “Jesus!” she cried. “You really have no idea what happened on that station, do you? How willfully ignorant can you be? Did you even watch the Foster Kenya broadcast that was sent out this afternoon?”

  “Of course I did!” he snapped. “I watched it after Morley Drake contacted me and offered to have his people bring you here. Damn it, girl, you can’t honestly expect me to believe that nonsense about alien mind control!”

  “That’s exactly what I expect you to believe!” Her heart was racing with fury now. Nothing had changed since she was a girl—the two of them only knew how to communicate via arguments. “It’s the truth! Why do you think we put our lives on the line to get the information out? And why would Toomey admit to it the way he did?”

  Oscar’s expression changed at the mention of Toomey’s name. “You mean that crazy idiot who was in the broadcast? Why should I believe the ravings of someone who’s probably an actor?”

  Chelsea shook her head. “Nice try, Dad. I know you had your fingers in the Prometheus pie, which means that you know who Toomey is.” She took his silence as a victory. “That’s right, my friends and I are smart and resourceful. We figured out a lot, and now that the information is out there on the network, people are going to start asking questions.”

  “None of this makes sense!” Her father slammed his glass down onto a nearby table, spilling its contents onto the burnished wood. “I commlinked with the warden after you and those inmates escaped from Oberon One! Farrell told me about the riot that you caused, how people were actually killed in it! What do you think will happened to the Bloom family name if that gets out? You’ve already killed any hope of a career in politics!”

  Chelsea twined her fingers into her hair and tugged in an attempt keep herself from screaming. Everything she and the others had been through—escaping Oberon One, making it back to Earth, escaping attacks from mercenaries and finally getting their desperate message out to the public—and her own father was still actively trying to deny all of it.

  “All of that is over,” she said, glaring at him. “The Farrell you talked to is a drone for Butch Kergan, the guy who took over every mind on the station! And right now they’re doing everything they can to build a wormhole gate to bring an invading alien fleet into our solar system. They will take over humanity unless we st
op them. Hell, we might already be too late, which is why I don’t have time to argue with you right now.”

  “Oh, well then,” Oscar said, throwing up his hands. “I didn’t realize you had such important things to do. Don’t let me keep you.” He sighed and shook his head sadly. “My God, Chelsea, do you realize how crazy you sound? I was hoping you wouldn’t force me to have you committed—”

  She felt hot panic mixed with anger flash through her belly. A moment later, she had crossed the space between them and had her father’s tie wrapped in her hand. His face quickly turned red as she yanked it tight against his throat.

  “Listen to me carefully,” she hissed, knowing that a member of the family’s staff could walk in at any moment if they overheard anything that might indicate Oscar was in danger. “I didn’t expect you to help me with this. That’s fine; in fact, I prefer it. But you fucking well better stay out of my way if you know what’s good for you. We beat that cyborg asshole you sent after us more than once. You think a middle-aged man with hands as soft as yours stands a chance against the Jarheads of Oberon? Trust me, you’d better think again.”