ENDGAME (The Dead Planet Series Book 3)

by Drew Avera

  "Did they tell you they left our planet to die because of their greed? Did they tell you millions of innocent people were put in harm’s way because of money and power?"

  The soldier shook his head. "I have to protect my home, my family," he said as he stuck the tip of the blade into Gentry's chest. Gentry winced, but did not cry out in pain. His face grew pale and I could see blood pouring from the wound and darkening his uniform. Gentry's let his head fall and that opened enough room for me to fire.

  I shot the soldier in the face from twenty feet away and he fell to the pebbled roof as Gentry landed on his knees, holding his wound. I ran over to him to inspect his injuries. "You're still breathing so that's a good sign," I said.

  "Is it?" he asked.

  I unfastened his collar and pulled his jacket off. There was a lot of blood despite such a short period of time, but once his jacket was off I could see the blade had entered below the collarbone, and the wound probably wasn't life threatening, provided the blade had not punctured the lung. If that had happened, he could drown on his own blood. I had to act fast if I was going to save his life.

  Chapter 24

  Instincts took over as I tried to save Gentry's life. "Do you feel any fluid in your lungs?" I asked. He shook his head no as he gasped for air. It was a good sign, but one I wasn't certain I could count on. If he was breathless, then the lung could have collapsed and would pose another problem. "I'm going to cauterize the wound to stop the bleeding so I can transport you somewhere safer," I said.

  He agreed with a nod, and I immediately dialed down the power level on my gauntlet to keep from killing him. A dull blue glow emanated from the diffuser, and I narrowed the beam to the area of his injury and fired. I watched as his body tensed, and smoke wafted up from the singed flesh. I knew it hurt, but it was the only way I could stabilize him until a doctor could take over. He bit his lip and closed his eyes to concentrate on not making any sounds.

  Once done, I helped him put his jacket back on, but we avoided fastening it, which would cause it to rub against his sensitive skin. "Thank you," he said. I could tell he was getting his breath back, but they were shallow breaths. This was only a temporary fix, and I knew we needed to get him seen sooner rather than later.

  "No problem. Let's get out of here. Do you think you can climb back down?" I asked.

  He peered over the side of the building to analyze the situation. He pulled himself back from the edge quickly, just before a gunshot rang out. "It's a little late for that," he said. "There are about a dozen men down there looking for us."

  "I'm guessing they found us, by the sound of that gunshot.”

  "You guessed right. What do you want to do?"

  I took a look around on the roof and saw a hatch on the far side of the building. I didn't know where it led, but it had to take us somewhere inside. It was our best chance before those men mustered up the courage to come up the ladder after us. "Over there," I said as I led Gentry towards the hatch, which was maybe fifty yards away. It took us some time to get there because I didn't think it was safe to have him run if he was having a hard time catching his breath. We got to the hatch and I tried to lift it, but it was locked. It was a rusted red color with old faded stickers that were no longer legible. Keeping it closed were several rusted chains leading to a single lock covered in a greenish corrosion. I knew there was no time to try and pick the lock, so I aimed my gauntlet at it and fired. It took only a second for the metal to weaken and break from the heat.

  Gentry helped me move the chains out of the way with his foot and I grabbed the handle and pulled the steel door open. Along with the smell of mold and rat piss, it revealed a set of stairs going down to another door. There was no light in the room, but the sun illuminated the small shaft well enough for me to get to work. "I'll go first," I said before descending the steps. I put my hand on the doorknob and turned it. There was a vacuum on the other side of the door that made it all but pull from my grip. A nervous sensation came over me because a vacuum could mean there was no air in the room. It was either sealed off, or there was a fire.

  I stepped into the doorway and took a peek inside. There was a series of chain-linked fences along both sides, covered in dust and filled with random junk. I couldn't see to the very end of the hallway, but I was confident there was not a fire. "Come on down," I called up to Gentry.

  He gingerly stepped down and joined me to look at our situation. "Seems like some kind of storage room to me, but where's the exit?"

  "I don't know," I said, before taking a step into the darkness. The floors were hardwood and each step I took made the old flooring groan under my weight. This building has to be very old, I thought, as I slowly walked towards the other end. The only light we had as we walked deeper into it was from our gauntlets. The dim blue lights from the diffusers cast a pale glow over everything and made it look cryptic.

  "Wait, Serus. Do you hear that?" Gentry asked. He held his finger up to his mouth, telling me not to speak. Above us there was the sound of heavy footsteps against the pebbled roof. It was only a matter of seconds before they saw the hatch we entered, and we would be outnumbered with nowhere to go. "Run," Gentry whispered as he pushed against my back, trying to shove me towards the darkness.

  "Not without you," I said.

  "Go, I'll be right behind you," he replied. There was a sense of urgency in his voice, so I turned around and ran towards the other side of the room. All along the sides were storage cages reaching from the floor to the ceiling. When I was almost at the end, I found an alley between the cages on both sides. I looked left to right, wondering if there was an exit, when I heard the soldiers enter the room.

  "There they are!" I heard a man yell. The echo of his voice was cut out by the sound of shots being fired. I dove into the alley to the left and peered around the corner to see where Gentry was, but I did not see him. I looked down the path I had run, fearful he had been shot and killed, but there was no body; I saw nothing other than a group of men firing their weapons in my direction.

  I was trapped. My only chance at surviving was to fight my way out or to run. Considering I didn't know the way out, I had to fight. I adjusted the setting of my gauntlet to full power and aimed towards the group of men. I heard screams and then silence, as the laser cut the men down where they stood. I looked around the corner and all I could see in the sunlight beaming down was the scattered remains of the soldiers.

  "Good work, Serus," Gentry said. His voice came from above me. I looked up and saw him in the rafters.

  "How did you get up there?" I asked.

  "Easy," he said. "I climbed the fence. The exit's this way. Come on."

  I climbed up the fence and joined him in the rafters. It was dusty and moldy, but sturdy enough to hold our weight. There was a door up ahead, and we moved over to it. I jiggled the doorknob in my hand, and it opened to reveal a fire escape. The good news was we were able to breathe fresh air again. The bad news? We were outside and exposed again. "Can you run?" I asked.

  "I think so. Why?" Gentry asked.

  I pointed down the street at a group of Faracon soldiers coming our way. It looked like a large platoon with heavy artillery from where I was standing. I didn't know if they noticed us yet, but we had to get out of sight. "Because we either run or stay here and fight," I said before looking back at him. "Which will it be?"

  He gawked at the enemy for a split second and only had one thing to say. "Run."

  Chapter 25

  We descended a flight of stairs on the fire escape before realizing the stairs didn't reach all the way to the ground. We were faced with a fifteen feet drop below or having to go back inside and face a swarm of men coming at us from unknown positions. My training kicked in, and I reacted as anyone in my position would. I hopped over the railing and let myself drop, bending my knees to cushion the fall. Did it hurt? You bet it did, but I was no longer trapped. Pain was better than dead any day of the week.

  Gentry followed behind me with a form simi
lar to mine; only he landed hard on one leg as he kept a hand over his wound. "Are you all right?" I asked after he stood up and hobbled a bit.

  "I'm not as young as I used to be; that's all," he said. "Let's get out of here before they see us."

  A shot rang out from behind us. "Too late," I said putting his arm around my neck and helping him half-run from the scene. I didn't know if it was because I was tired or because I was ill-prepared, but I was starting to think coming back was a bad decision. Most of the fighting seemed to be taking place about a mile away and there was no way to monitor the progress of the policemen against this rather resilient army. I kept my mouth shut about it, though. There was no need to stir the pot. We just needed to find a safe place to recoup and move on.

  Once we rounded the corner onto another street, Gentry pulled away from me. "Wait," he said. He was out of breath and coughing. I watched him pull his hand away from his mouth with a few drops of blood on it.

  "That's not good. We need to get you to a doctor," I said.

  All he did was wave his hand dismissively. "No time," he choked out. "Go to the next block and flank them. I'll wait here and draw them out so you can cut them down," he ordered.

  I looked at him as if he were crazy. "Do you have a death wish or something? We need to fall back. You're in no position to fight," I protested.

  Gentry stepped up to me with a flash of anger in his eyes. There was something to the way he looked at me that reminded me of something from my past. He gripped me by the collar and pulled me close. "I never back down.” The stoic expression and clinched jaw was enough to make me nervous. "You will obey orders, or I will shoot you dead in this street and tell Pontiff White it was an accident." His hot breath fell on me like a wool blanket.

  I didn't know if it was the pain, the anger, or something else causing him to lash out in this way, but I was worried now. He obviously wasn't thinking straight for a man in his position. Neither was he someone to willfully cross. "Fine, I'll come around the west side of the street," I said.

  He patted me on the shoulder. "Now you're seeing things my way. Go now. I don't want to be exposed for too long.”

  I turned to the west and saw a wooded area on the other side of a large building. The windows were shot out, and the bricks had cracks running vertically, with some kind of vines growing out of them. The building must have been over a hundred years old and would probably fall in if anyone tried to enter it. I ran as fast as I could to get around it and could see through the windows all kinds of rotting equipment painted in dust. Some windows had bars over them for security, but it was a moot point now. I couldn't imagine anyone finding any of it of value or worth risking injury to obtain. It was just abandoned and left for dead.

  Once I rounded the corner and headed east, I saw the first rank of soldiers kneeling and firing towards where I left Gentry. A blue laser beam blasted towards them from his position, which was a good sign, but he couldn't hold them off long by himself. I raised my arm and fired at full blast to their side. The men who once were there were all but incinerated by my beam. The ground was littered in bodies and blood, but the battle was far from over.

  I was shocked by how they kept multiplying, with reinforcements arriving every few seconds. Gentry was doing a good job at holding them off, but I felt obscured from my position, not being able to get a good vantage point with such a tight alley. I moved forward and smelled the heat of burning powder from their weapons and the stench of charred flesh from our Martian weapons. It was almost unbearable, yet strangely satisfying. One way or another, we would take down The Syndicate. Even if we had to bring Faracon to its knees to do it.

  There were shouts ahead, and I realized a few moments too late that Gentry was no longer firing his gauntlet. Dread overcame me and I panicked. Even after all he had done to my family; I felt I owed him my life for helping us in this confrontation. It was an odd way to view the man responsible for the death of your father, but ours was a strange relationship. I ran towards the intersection, surprised when two laser beams went headlong into the oncoming solders, tearing them to pieces. I knelt down and fired my own gauntlet and cut several of them down, their bodies falling amid screams of pain and shrieks of horror.

  I didn't know who was backing us up or even if Gentry was still alive, but I felt a second wind coming. It was going to be a glorious day after all. The sounds of battle waned as I approached the intersection. There were still some cries from the dying men, but they were more concerned with themselves than they were with me. Smoke filled the area around me from small fires I assumed were caused both from our gauntlets and the sparks of the Faracon weapons. Blood that had spilled onto the ground began pooling together into a small stream, following the lay of the land. I grew nervous before I turned the corner.

  It was initially hard for me to see, due to the smoke in my eyes. I waved my hand in front of my face, so I didn't choke, and tried to get a better perspective of what was waiting for me. There in a small huddle was Gentry, lying on the ground with someone over him. The person was cloaked in black, but other than that I couldn't make out very many details. One thing was for sure. Whoever it was had helped take out the soldiers, dead and dying under me.

  As I got closer the person looked up at me and I realized who it was. "I thought the doctor ordered you to stay on board," I said.

  Pontiff White stood up and smiled. "I'm old, not dead. Besides, someone had to come save your ass," he replied with a grim smile.

  The truth was we really did need his help, but Gentry grumbled. "Serus and I had it covered. You just wanted to show up and pretend to be a hero.” He looked none too pleased to see his former brother-in-law standing there with a gauntlet on his wrist and blood on his hands.

  "So says the man I found lying on the ground," Pontiff White chided.

  "Oh, go to hell," Gentry snapped as he forced himself to stand. The fighting had taken a lot out of him, and I was sure the blood loss from his wound wasn't helping at all. Gentry stood there with labored breath and stared at Pontiff White. "You're just loving this aren't you?"

  Pontiff White grinned from ear to ear. "And you're not? We've both waited thirty years for this day to come. You should be having the time of your life."

  Gentry just grunted and turned around to walk away.

  "Where are you going?" I asked.

  Without turning around he answered, "The fight is this way."

  Chapter 26

  Things started slowly, but the deeper we got into the city the more chaos we witnessed. Bodies, victims of various fatal wounds, were strewn about the crippled streets. Bodies and body parts desecrated the Earth as blood was drying under the midday sun and the stench of death filled our nostrils. Faracon soldiers and policemen alike scattered the landscape, and I understood then what war truly was. It was an evil as outwardly visible as the evil you would find inside corrupt leaders like The Syndicate and Harris' uncle. Wickedness led us here and claimed us as her prize and we were nothing but pawns in a game in no one would ever win.

  History did a poor job of putting war into words. I had seen death hundreds of times, but never so intense and in my face as this. I could taste bile rising from my stomach, but I swallowed it down. This was not the time to allow emotions and weaknesses of the mind to overcome me. That was where death would claim me, so I kept walking with Gentry and Pontiff White. Pontiff White's eyes were wide and by the looks of it he was going through the same sensations I was. But Gentry was like a rock. On and on he trudged ahead, even after being stabbed and almost killed. He was resilient and determined. Despite our past I felt proud to be in his company. My enemy’s enemy is my friend, so to speak, but it ran deeper and more personal than that.

  We stopped for a moment when we spotted movement. Up ahead there was a crowd of soldiers trying to regroup. They hadn't seen us approaching yet and Gentry made the first move by lifting his gauntlet and firing low, cutting their legs out from underneath them and then finishing the job amid wails by returnin
g the laser in the opposite direction and dissecting the men where they lay. It was a gruesome, necessary evil. "I'm getting tired of this," he said. "All we've seen so far are local troops and our own men. Where the hell is The Syndicate?"

  "The only member I've seen was Ghon Abert," I replied. It was the first time I'd given any thought to what I had watched Harris endure, and it sent chills down my spine. He was a survivor; that I was sure of. It was a curious thing that more members of The Syndicate had not been present when Harris and I were brought to his uncle, Treston.

  "Something’s not right here then," Gentry said as he turned around looking into the tall buildings towering over us like concrete trees in this menacing jungle. They were nowhere nearly as large as the buildings back home on Mars, but they still set an ominous tone as they watched us like silent giant sentinels while we scurried along in the dank city below. "I knew they would hide behind their pawns, but you would assume they would at least show their faces."

  "I agree," I said. "It's very out of character for the antics we're used to seeing from them."

  Pontiff White began walking ahead of us. "Maybe they're in the center of the city, hiding out. I've never known The Syndicate to be very hands on with armed conflict. Do you think they could be behind those walls?" he pointed at the walls for the town square that seemed to go on for over a mile in one direction.

  "I don't know," I answered. Pontiff White had a point, though. They had to be somewhere and it was doubtful they were on the front lines battling the policemen.

  Gentry cursed under his breath. "We're not going to find them by standing here, so let's go," he ordered.

  We continued walking further into the city near the town square where Harris and I had first been taken before I woke up in a cell. We found an opening in the walls to let us inside and it was unguarded, unlike the last time I had been here. Littered along the ground were bodies facing various directions, but there seemed to be some kind of organized placement of the bodies. Heads were sitting next to feet and some bodies were doubled over and intersecting with another corpse. "What is this?" Pontiff White asked as he walked along the bodies. "It’s a pattern. There's a Faracon soldier in between each policeman; and look at the wounds," he pointed to one of our dead policemen.