The Intruder Mandate: The Farthest Star from Home: a military sci-fi suspense novel

by William Cray

  “Don’t let one of their scabby hookers scratch you Sarge,” the cruiser’s driver said as they exited.

  An officer in the trail car climbed out, following the sergeant who headed in the direction of the downed vagabond, now huddling behind an incinerator. Each cruiser deployed a P-Tek and they motored into the lead, shock restraints unfolding as they closed. “At least he ain’t running,” the Sergeant said.

  The other officer laughed as he pulled out his firearm, a Hauser P70. “Fuck…I chased one of those skinny Phelman’s freaks for twenty minutes last year in Green-Three. Whacked-out fucker slammed straight into an old razor fence barrier down in the railhead. He left half his skin and part of a finger, but that whacked-out freak just ripped free and kept runnin. I was done after that.”

  The Sarge laughed as they neared the incinerator, the huddled form hiding behind it, stirring at their approach. The P-Teks arrayed into a protective shield with the shock restraints fanning out, cornering the man curling away from them under a pile of loose refuse.

  “Come on buddy. Come on out…how about a nice hot meal tonight, courtesy of the city.”

     

  Emergency Coordination Platform

  Barge 2

  The Zone

  “Command One…this is Tango Tango Eight…we are under attack! I say again…we are under attack…Send back up! Three officers down…one perpetrator…send back up!”

  The New Meridian City Police Department dispatcher dialed up the calling units camera mounted on the roof, just in time to watch the image roll over and cut out in a shower of static. The hot mike in the car picked up screams as the vehicle made its death roll, smashing into the side of the building. Crash warnings sounded in the dispatchers headset in the command center, putting the incident on speaker and calling over to her boss. The signal from the first car blanked out and she switched over to the remotes on the second vehicle. The view slewed to the overturned car and she caught a glimpse of movement passing out of the field of view. She swiveled the remote to keep up, tracking right into the barrel of what looked like a Hauser P70.

  The image went black.

  The supervisor monitoring in the back of the command center stood up. “Telemetry. Status on those men.”

  “Two are unconscious but vitals are steady. One has chest trauma and internal injuries. Serious, but not fatal. Tango Tango Eight is fine, but his car is off the grid with collision cells deployed. The units two P-Teks are tits up, some sort of software hard reboot intitated.”

  “Surveillance?” The senior sergeant barked.

  “Negative contact, but we have cyclos about two blocks away, we’ll be there in fifteen seconds.”

  “Sergeant! Tango Tango Seven is moving!”

  The supervisor looked down at this screen, seeing the unit’s icon start to accelerate down the street map. “Lock it down!”

  “Can’t…disabled, It’s off the grid and on street level.

  “Can you give me an internal?”

  “Coming up now Sergeant.”

  The internal camera on the police cruiser clicked on, revealing the interior of the cruiser as it accelerated with a basso wail of rubber wheels against the city’s streets. The occupant seemed oblivious to the camera as the driver crouched low in the seat, opening the manual speed lever to full. The driver was tall but not overly so, but under the charcoal redcoat with the collar pulled up around his neck, was defiantly an off-world physique. The driver swept his eyes, looking briefly outside the cruisers passenger side windows before staring into the camera. The supervisor saw a flash of green, glowing in the swiveling eyes. The camera cut out as the driver smashed it with his fist.

  “Roll everyone in the vicinity but tell them not to approach. And get me the Constabulary Command Center. Tell them we found their jigjob and he just took out two of my units!”

     

  Duran ducked into the narrow tunnel entrance after ditching the police cruiser, leaving the pursuing cyclos whirling on the street. Swiveling and spitting as their counter-rotating fans gyrated, looking for an entrance that would allow them to get down into the tunnel and continue their pursuit. Duran leapt the narrow stairs with a painful grunt on each landing, putting even more separation between him and the whirling devices. In the silent dome, the sound of sirens rang in the distance, closing with each second. Duran’s internal navigation system plotted a fast winding approach through the tunnel towards the address left for him by Celeste. The path he had selected should be able to shake any aerial pursuit and force anyone following him to do so on foot. It would buy him some time. The residents of the Zone had long ago torn down the domes internal surveillance network and he was counting on that. Any glimpses of him or his heading would be fleeting for any pursuers if any spotted him at all.

  Once down on Level Three, he jumped into the old unused mag-lev train tunnel, moving through it in complete darkness until he reached the platform. The lights flickered and buzzed in the distance as he made his way down the track. Duran stopped, pulling the Hauser he liberated from the unsuspecting police unit, listening as voices echoed down the tunnel. He listened for a moment, but nothing indicated the voices belonged to law enforcement. Duran continued moving along the path until he approached the door with a flickering green light that matched up with the address Celeste had left for him. He took a breath of stale air the felt for her presence.

  Nothing.

  The original glass exterior pressure door had been shattered and an improvised plaz door had been tacked to its front with a plaque that read, East Meridian Mercy Health Clinic. A black scar had been scorched across the words and a replaced by a sloppy scrawl burned from an arc torch. Some gang had put their mark on the clinic, but there was no one was around.

  Duran put his hand against the door, feeling with tiny antenna in his hands for the electrical impulse of heartbeats waiting on the other side. Again, Nothing. With one rapid motion he stepped back, crashing the flimsy improvised door open with a violent kick, sending a jolt of hot needles into his damaged ankle. The door flew open with a crash that echoed down the corridor. Duran entered, gun up, sweeping the room.

  Scattered and disheveled formas and couches lay about in the empty foyer. There had been a small fire in the room, evidenced by the scorched remnants of the interior, but Duran moved on to the second door, this one intact and more formidable. Duran again checked for heartbeats with his hand, which would detect the electrical signature of a beating heart at short range through a non-insulated wall or door.

  Duran tried the door with his hand. Locked. He grabbed a nearby metal table with both hands and used it as a battering ram to smash the lock open. The table disintegrated into shards and leg stands on the last blow. He threw the parts of the shattered table down, then pulled his pilfered Hauser before kicking the damaged door the rest of the way open.

  The hallway beyond was dark. There was the faint glow of light under some of the doors along the hallway. Duran checked each of the adjoining rooms, using the light mounted under the barrel of the Hauser to sweep each of the six rooms as he passed. The arc of the light intruded into the first room, illuminating the remains of an administration office whose records and computers were long ripped out.

  The second room was situated with a cot and lamp, with scraps of food and an incinerator. There was a filthy washroom adjacent to it. The next four rooms were outfitted as examination rooms, all dilapidated, except for the final room containing a serviceable portable medical scanner. It was reasonably sanitary compared to the others. Used skinseal bandages were scattered on the floor. Duran scrounged for drugs or braces he could use for his hand. If he had time, the medical scanner might allow him to at least set it properly.

  Celeste had to know the scanner was here. Was it possible she trying to help him by showing where he could treat his hand? Duran thought. He nodded in the dark.

  Duran moved on to the last room through the double doors at the end of the hall. Sensing nothi
ng and feeling more confident, he pushed through the door. A dim white light glowed from a surgical lamp in the center of the room.

  Duran tensed and swung the gunlight around the room. The antiseptic smell had the odor of clinical death. He covered his nose briefly as his eyes watered from the smell.

  His gun light flashed over stainless steel tables which were arranged along the walls of the room. Plastic medical bags sat on top of each table. Some of them were still occupied.

  Duran could hear the whisks of air that puffed from the machines mounted on the five occupied tables. The bodies were sealed in the plastic medical recovery bags. Duran approached them slowly, swiveling his gun light onto one. Inside the sealed medi-bag, was a person whose lungs filled and dropped with each uneven pulse of the machine. The indicator on the first machine was flat lined but it still pumped air into the body. It made a bubbling wheeze with each pump of air.

  Duran moved onto the next, dreading what he would find. Each torturous image of the dream continued to manifest itself in the torn flesh of others. He wanted to leave this behind.

  Duran turned to leave, his eyes stung and his lungs burned. The wretched abominations were just feet away from him. They seemed to purse him, even when he was not dreaming. He stumbled forward, as all the pain and torture of the last few days landed on him simultaneously. He felt old, crushed by time.

  Let the Emperor cleanse the city with me in it.

  He stopped, in the morbid room, taking a deep breath in the fetid air. A stream of chemical steel flowed into his brain.

  When the human failed, the machine would not. The nanites released their reserves and erected a chemical barrier of euphoria and hatred around his psyche, bringing him back from the precipice of giving up. Duran gathered himself under the weight of his modifications and turned back to the metal slabs.

  The body closest to him heaved with each breath as Duran opened the plastic medibag at the face. Duran shined the gunlight into the man’s eyes. They were open and scanning randomly with frightening intensity. For an instant, their eyes locked. Duran wiped the medical gel from the man’s face with his lame hand. His hair was matted in the purple gel, but Duran could tell it had been gray and something familiar about that hair, causing him to pull the rest of the bag back from his face. Purple bags under his eyes and an unhealthy yellow pallor stained his face.

  IV’s hung from an adjacent stand, feeding thin liquid nutrients into the shell of the man, maintaining the body. A breathing tube obscured the victim’s mouth, but Duran made the connection. This was one of Cole’s men. One of the missing officers he sent to check on Celeste and Kari in the weapons locker the day before he arrived in New Meridian City.

  Duran looked back into the blank pit of his eyes. He couldn’t remember the detective’s name, but it was definitely him. Duran spoke to him, but got nothing but a horrible, blink less stare. Duran slapped him hard on the face.

  Nothing. He was gone. His mind was flushed. His body lived but nothing more. The Intruder had raped the man’s mind and bent him to the will of his master.

  Duran pulled the medi-bag back to his shoulders. The plastic pealed back with lubricated ease, purple gel smearing like coagulated oil. He pulled the bag back to the detectives’ torso as another breath pushed into his comatose body. Duran wiped away the gel from a long black and red incision running the length of his chest, below the ribcage to the upper pelvis. Blood and brackish fluids oozed from the sutures closing the fresh wounds. The wound was held together with intermittent metal clasps that left oozing gaps where the healing had progressed unevenly.

  Duran found what he suspected just above the lower limit of the rough incisions. A plastic, T-shaped ripcord extended from under the skin, running beneath the epidermis. The man was a bomb.

  Each tick of the machines around him kept the human bombs alive. At any moment, any one of them could tear out the cord from their torso and merge the volatile chemicals imbedded in them, creating a chain reaction and setting off the bombs. Just like the man in the club hours earlier.

  Celeste had sent him into the epicenter of a human bomb factory.

  Scanning the other tables, there were three more bodies present, with another four empty tables. One of the human bombs had been used in the club the previous night. That left at least three who were unaccounted for.

  Duran looked down into the detective’s face. The man’s partner was probably out there somewhere right now. His fellow law-enforcement officers could sweep him up in the operation, or he could just put on his uniform and walk into a crowd of cops. The Intruder could use his influence to block out the bombers pain and keep him going until just the right moment.

  Duran estimated about four pounds of flesh and organs could be replaced by the bomb packs, enough to take out a building if set off at the right place.

  A metal crash in the distance shattered the wheezing silence as surgical instruments and implements clattered on the floor in an adjacent room.

  Duran swung around, dropping into a low crouch, gun up. He could hear motion in the next room. A shadow moved under the door to the adjacent hallway. The door popped open and three cylinders popped into the room, each ingnited a tiny spark of flames as thick gray clouds spewed from canister. Gas.

  Taking a quick breath he gulped the last clean air before the gas filled the room. Duran darted to the spitting grenades, grabbing one up and rushing towards the exit in the room. He tossed the grenade back through the doors as a bank of neuro-disrupters sizzled the air near him.

  Duran ducked away as the paralyzing beams coursed the door. He moved back quickly, jerking a breathing tube out of the closest body. The body convulsed after the flow of oxygen was jerked free. The former detectives eyes opened wide as survival instincts deep within his genes tried to revive him and save his life. After a brief spasm, he resumed the motionless pallor as he edged towards suffocation.

  Duran put the vile tasting tube into his mouth, taking three quick breaths on it against the gas filling the room. He heard the whirl of P-Teks positioning outside the door.

  He looked down at the ripcord suture of the dying detective. If the cops came in, they would find these bodies and would attempt to keep them alive out of duty, but as long as the Intruder could reach into their minds and animate them, they could self-detonate, with little or no warning. Four bombs.

  The P-Teks were at the door with heavy footsteps following behind.

  Reaching under his holster, Duran pulled out his variknife, extending it to half-length. The metal extended and forged its tip to into a stiletto. Duran took one more quick breath, tasting the foul end of the tube that hand been immersed in the detectives chest just a moment before.

  Using the knife, he sliced into the detective’s side open at an upward angle just under the ribs. The blade passed into him with sickening ease. He moved the blade through the tissue of the detective’s torso and back down towards the hip. Bright red blood and fluids poured out in gouts, as the gash continued to open more of his side. Duran watched the quicksilver of the chemical igniter packet start to dribble then flood out as the knife cut open the thin membrane of the bomb. The bombs accelerant poured onto the floor.

  He had to be careful, not to allow the liquids of the two packs of explosives to combine. Even running together along tiled grooves in the floor would create a wall of fire.

  Duran’s eyes began to burn and he could feel his flesh beginning to numb as the gas hovered in the room’s dark interior. Fighting through it, he moved on to the next body, ripping away the medi-bag and plunging the knife into the second body bomb.

  He was as careful to make sure he didn’t pierce the packets of both components with a sloppy stroke. Gambling the positioning of the packets were consistent, Duran struck into the agitated woman’s side. He didn’t take the time to try to identify her. The P-Teks would come bursting in at any moment, neuro-beams sweeping the room.

  Quicksilver rushed out from the gash. He moved on to the third, near the back
of the room, functioning on the last gulp of stale air from the tube.

  Again, a flash of the stiletto and the bloody silver mix emptied onto the examination table, then the poured into the floor.

  Duran passed one of the empty tables, fresh with bloodstains as he moved on to the next body. Instruments soaked in bloody water pans sat next to the table. No monitors or breathing apparatus were nearby, so who ever had been there, was already up and gone, primed to tear open their flesh and detonate in flash of gore and quicksilver.

  Duran rushed by with the glance, but stopped at the table’s edge. Intermixed with the blood were tiny reflective shards of fabric pealed way and resting in the pool. The fabric reflected in a myriad of bright colors as his gunlight flashed across them. He pushed his finger into the tray, picking up one shard of fabric with blood soaked fingers. He examined the material in the low light.

  His heart sank as the P-Teks burst in.

  2 Hours before NOVA Event

  21

  LTC Special Tactics Team

  Operation Clean Sweep

  Habitation Dome 11

  That was it, time to go.

  Floss’s team leader gave the signal and the breaching torch fired against the door, slicing an entry hole into the wall and showering them with sparks.

  The lead assault trooper shocked the glowing door with a heavy thump of his exoskeleton’s palm and it fell away in a spray of fireworks. They were in.

  Before the heavy door clanged to the floor, the second man in line, tossed in a disruptor grenade, pounding out crashing pulses of high frequency sound waves. Micro transmitters in the grenade cut out Floss’s audio receivers in his helmet the moment the grenade was released into the room, protecting him from the debilitating pulse. Ready P-Teks charged in next with a whirl of electric motors.

  Floss followed his team inside, behind the shielding P-Teks. His boots smacked on the smoking metal piece of wall they had cut through.