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

by William Cray

  The phalanx of hostiles covering the command center began to move, reorienting their weapons and turning away. Cole spotted Duran, crouching behind a decon truck as rounds and neuro beams narrowed towards him. They were going for him, circling around to the flanks.

  “Line up!” Cole yelled, redrawing his service pistol.

  The remaining armed officers in the center gathered at the exit, filing into a hasty tactical assault line, weapons drawn. Cole pushed into the lead, unarmored and with pitiful little firepower, but no one tried to hold him back this time. They knew they couldn’t.

  “One,” He bellowed. “Two…Three!”

  Cole burst out of the open door, his service pistol up, tracking the carnage on the deck as he searched for targets, a stream of armed officers following. Claire Nyuen brought up the rear with an oversized assault rifle she picked up. Cole looked up to see a lifter circling the barge, drowning out the noise of the barge’s throbbing suspension engines. Hot flames littered the deck and flushed his face as he exited the air-conditioned command center. Cole put two rounds in the direction of the crates hiding the man he observed earlier on the cyclo feed. The stack of men and women behind him broke off as they fanned out just a few feet from the entrance.

  A stream of blue energy pulsing behind the decon truck drew him to his right but he couldn’t see the attacker wielding it. Cole moved quickly, jumping onto the frame of an overturned cruiser. The beam was angled down to the deck, illuminating an area just a few feet in front of him with blue sparks. The operator held a textbook stance, with the blue beam trained on a downed subject. Duran. Two more hostiles came around the back edge of the truck, weapons ready, oriented on the helpless Duran.

  Cole took aim and fired into the nearest of his controlled officers, unloading his full magazine into the armored trooper, dropping him to the ground in a lifeless heap as one round struck his exposed brainstem just under his helmet. Two flanking officers rushed up beside Cole, opening up with quick bursts of fire from rifles on high velocity settings to bring down the other two in quick succession.

  A second series of shots rang out behind him, but Cole rushed towards the decon truck and the fellow cops he had just brought down. Duran lay on the ground, quivering as his nervous system tried to reinitialize. Duran looked up at him through unfocused eyes, a puddle of drool leaking from his slack mouth. Duran continued to struggle as Cole approached, grabbing his limp form under his arms and setting him upright against the truck. Duran exhaled, trying to form words as his right hand flopped clumsily towards his Mag-gun.

  Cole reached over again, checking Duran for wounds, yelling over the increasing pitch, “Its Ok. We got them. We’re clear.”

  Duran continued to fumble, now raising his left hand to his chest, trying to release a long black magazine with a strip of red tape at its base from his vest. He released air from his lungs in a whisper as he struggled with the magazine release.

  Cole reassured him again, “The feeling will come back, just give it a minute Rory.”

  Cole looked into Duran’s urgent blue eyes, focusing on something behind him. A loud pitch turned into a furious wail. Cole turned, looking into the setting sun, just off angle from the black spire reaching into the purpling sky. A wide insectoidal shape dove directly at him through the sun, pitching over as its engines roared.

  Cole stood, realizing it was too late to run from the diving craft. He drew his service pistol and emptied it at the lifter screaming down on them in a suicidal charge. The rounds from his gun peppered the craft as it continued right at him, ignoring Cole’s pitiful sidearm. His gun clicked empty.

  Cole dropped his pistol to reach down and grab Duran, trying to drag him under the decon truck and some cover, if only to ensure their remains would be found beneath the mangled vehicle. As he turned in desperation to grab Duran, a roar of hypersonic shockwaves ripped though the air below him.

  Shocked by the outburst, Cole dove down towards the deck, looking at Duran laying on one side with his gun raised in his right hand, pressure waves streaming from the Mag-gun’s muzzle as hypervelocity armor piercing rounds streamed out with a deafening continuous roar of violence. Following the shockwaves with his eyes, Cole turned back to the lifter, as its left tubular-shaped tilt engine burst open in a catastrophic flash, showering sparks and mangled parts into the fuselage.

  The lifter started to cant to the left as its control surfaces ripped apart on one pylon, slewing the aircraft’s nose abeam of the platform as it started to drop. The roar beneath Cole ceased as the Mag-gun clicked empty. Cole jumped on top of Duran dragging him down as the lifter came in broadside, the dominated pilot still fighting to right the wounded ship. Duran went limp as the gun exhausted itself. Cole rolled under the decon truck with Duran cradled in his arms as the lifter passed below them at eye level, striking the side deck of the barge in a jarring impact. The entire deck jumped as the force of the crash carried the decon truck over the edge, mangling the safety netting arranged around the platform. The intertwined Cole and Duran were thrown two meters into the air, crashing back down on the pitching deck as flames and smoke belched from the ground below them, rising up over the hovering deck of the barge.

  The pitch of the wide-open lifter engines died away as the barge tried to right itself. Duran coughed, attempting to pull himself up, trying to change out the empty magazine of the Talon with unsteady hands. Cole looked up at Duran, who had formed a crooked smile at the corner of one side of his numb face, looking more like a wolf bearing fangs than a cat happy to be alive. Duran completed the magazine change as Cole sat up, turning and fixing on the body of the cop he shot earlier. He stared for a long moment at the lifeless constable who had just been killed by his own boss for something he had no control over.

  Duran sat and tested his hands before he tried to get back onto his wobbly feet.

  A massive explosion ripped open the silence, jolting the barge again and showering them with debris as a heat wave flushed across them in an orange flash. Cole looked back as Duran steadied himself, bracing against a damaged cruiser. Before he could make it, they started to slide towards the precipice as the barge began to tilt…

  Leaping to his feet, Cole kept one unstable hand on the deck as the barge started to teeter. He tried to contact his burning command center, holding on as the spin of the barge picked up. Duran rolled onto his stomach and pushed up onto one knee. The barge tilted like a sinking ship with the side nearest Duran and Cole heaving for an instant before dipping towards the street, seventy feet below. Overturned cars and pallets slid towards the edge as the horizon slowly revolved.

  Cole looked over at Duran, who pointed towards the flaming wreck of his command van. “The bomber got through. Must have hit the pilot house, or the drive channel.”

  Cole fought against the current, having to dodge a row of dislodged metal decon cylinders rolling past him, banging the edge rails and bouncing off the end, down into the fires burning below the platform by the wrecked lifter. Others around them held on or slipped along the edge of the barge.

  Cole looked right as the spin picked up momentum like a drunken brawler swinging too hard and crashing onto a three-legged table. Duran stayed low, like a cat, facing the highest point of the barge as it spun. He dodged a pile of loose nitrogen containers that flew off the edge. Overturned cruisers started to slide towards them, jumbled with overturned trucks and crates. Cole went down backwards, dodging a flying pallet and losing his balance, smacking hard on the deck plate, adding to the sliding debris pummeling towards the ledge.

  “Hang on,” Duran screamed at him, slipping to one side, avoiding the sliding body of one of the fallen cops. Cole watched his head loll on a ruined spinal cord at the base of his neck. The body slammed into the hand railing then flipped end over end into the street below.

  Cole reached the edge, his hand stretching out to the railing, watching Duran starting to lose the battle with gravity and slide backward. A massive shadow passed across them.

 
The barge swung wide, causing its lone working engine to strain with a loud whine. The control room was smashed in the explosion. The barge cantilevered over, discharging contents onto the street as the survivors held on to anything they could reach that was bolted down or n-welded to the superstructure. The barge continued its leaf like spiral, until the open space of the plaza ran out. It was moving at a walkers pace, but it was a lot of metal and they were way up in the air.

  Cole looked up to see a massive smelter looming ahead. He tightened his grip, bolting out a warning over the roaring strain of engines and pealing metal, “Grab something!”

  The platform warbled across the street towards the building, picking up speed and smashing into it with a loud crump. The impact jarred loose the command center with a violent jolt as the barge’s forward momentum converted to kinetic energy, smashing into the building side and crushing its northeast corner in a shower of concrete, steel and brick.

  The impact shook Duran free, sending him rolling across the deck, towards the crumbling building coming down around him. The building edge gave way and the three stories above the strike collapsed in a heap of brick and steel. Cole watched as Duran let go, allowing the cant of the barge to carry him down, towards the edge and the street.

  The railing snapped, sending Cole over the edge. He flailed at the last handhold before the street took him. With a desperate lunge, he snagged an antenna jutting off the lip of the barge. He clenched tight, looking down at the street revolving below him. The metal was cold and it bit onto his exposed palms. He caught a grip and shifted his other hand to the antenna. With a sickening groan the antenna array bent to his weight as the hand rail section gave way, pummeling to the street below. He dangled on the antenna edge just feet away from the collapsing building, as the barge cantered away from it and continuing its runaway course.

  More debris slid past him, pelting him with painful impacts on his exposed arms and face, as his feet, dangled free over the street below him. There were screams and calls for help on his earpiece. Hanging over the edge he was helpless as his people struggled above him, some falling to their deaths or crushed by the collapsing smelter. He yelled as one of the command vans sheared loose and caromed off the barge, smashing onto the street below with a crash of metal and concrete.

  Duran had pulled himself into the safety net below the lip of the barge. Rock, steel, and smashed debris slid over the edge, ejecting it into the air and crashing to the ground below, throwing up swirling dark clouds of radioactive dust. Through the smoke, Cole could see Duran looking in his direction, gripping the strained remains of the safety netting.

  They were both still clinging over the edge. A pile of cars, bodies and debris were below them on the street like dragon’s teeth.

  Duran yelled over the howl of the lone engine keeping the barge aloft. “Elijah…Climb out to the end!”

  Cole strained back over his shoulder, trying to spot Duran in the chaos. He yelled out again. “Climb out to the end!”

  Looking down the length of the unstable antenna already bending to his weight he screamed back, “Are you crazy?”

  “Do it. Trust me. Now!”

  Cole looked forward. Ahead of them was a large mish mash of metal suspension tracks and coolant towers. They loomed at every level, creating a maze of scissors in the path of the careening barge. An impact on any one of them would probably shear the antenna array off and send him flying. Cole glanced back one more time, checking his options. He started climbing hand over hand.

  Finally, Cole could go no further on top and he swung out below the rigging with two hands, his feet hanging in the air as the antenna tip dipped under the strain of his weight. Duran yelled one more time at him “Look at me Elijah. Look at me.”

  Cole pivoted, bending the antenna, alternating his hands to face him as the cluster of scissors closed. Cole watched as Duran gathered himself and then let go.

  Duran fell, dropping in the low gravity, but still high enough to break bones and fracture skulls. As Duran dropped he kept his eyes on Cole, waiting as Cole swept towards him on the tip of the antenna. Between blinks of his eyes, Duran had the Talon in his hands, falling to the street, pointing it at Cole.

  The gun burped for less than a second. Sparks showered from the antennas base. It shook in Cole’s hands as Duran’s Talon thrashed the bracing. The three pronged connection to the barge sheared away. He felt the antenna frame give way and Cole lurched downward as the superstructure failed. A loud pop jolted Cole’s grip on the antenna, as he squeezed harder, cursing Duran. Then it began to droop, sagging slowly towards the ground with Cole’s weight dragging it lower, bending it like a tree branch. The top two narrow beams supporting the antenna array were shot away. Cole looked back over his shoulder towards the girders and discharge stacks racing towards him. With time running out and the antenna stressed to the near the breaking point, Cole closed his eyes, and let go. The ground rushed up to him.

  Cole landed hard on the ground, rolling forward in a jumble of coat cape and limbs, but his fall was slowed by the thin Martian gravity and within seconds he was standing. He looked back at the barge, watching his colleagues still clinging to the barge in desperation.

  Cole watched as it crashed into the first cooling stack, slicing it like a scythe. The barge plowed into the scaffolding of the city’s industrial district, shedding parts and debris with horrifying sounds of stressed metal and crumbling buildings. The carom stopped and the barge came to a rest, still held aloft by its sole suspension drive, tangled in the infrastructure of the dome.

  Despite Cole’s orders to abandon the Zone, a fleet of police cruisers and lifters cut across the city streets, discharging P-Teks near the crashed barge, preparing to attempt a rescue of the survivors. Cole stared up at the wreck as Duran came up alongside.

  “Elijah.”

  Cole ignored him, looking up at the chaos trapped in the spider web of steel above him. Duran repeated, grabbing him, wrenching him away from the disaster. Cole jerked his arm free, looking down at Duran.

  “Elijah, you have to get these people out of here.” Duran pointed down the street at a line of people forming at the edge of the industrial park. Interspersed in the crowd were soldiers and cops. Some of the civilians toted weapons.

  Duran screamed at him, pulling out his Mag-gun and changing magazines. “Get out of here. There’s nothing you could have done for those people or the ones still up there.”

  Cole looked down at Duran, tasting the bile rising up from his gut, “Those are my people!”

  “This is only the beginning.” Duran said. He turned and started down the street, tightening his vest as he attached strange objects and sensors to the Talon. Looking over his shoulder Duran yelled over the approaching sirens, “Get your people out of here now. And knock out the power to that goddamned tower.”

  Duran accelerated away at a trot, angling towards the flank of the menacing crowd. “This isn’t over!”

  “How do I know who to trust?” Cole yelled back.

  “This is their city until you shut off the power. If she turns on you, that’s it. You’re dead. Don’t trust anyone.”

  “She?”

  “She hasn’t turned you yet. Has to be a reason…you should’ve been the first.”

  Duran disappeared down an alley as the mob came on.

     

  Power Dome 4

  Dynamic Industries Fusion Electrical Generating Plant

  The Zone

  Bai Lee, sat in isolation from the world at her console. She studied the array of monitoring equipment, dials and touch controls with her radiation suit hood pulled back off of her head. The cool air pumped through a hose into her suit along her waist and it felt good against her skin. It was refreshing and just cool enough to keep her awake and alert at her station.

  The console she sat behind monitored her assigned generator’s output, and she watched the reaction rates, ensuring the process was nominal in all respects. It had been weeks sin
ce she had made an adjustment at her station. About three weeks ago, a valve fitting was showing the inevitable wear of superheated gasses flowing through it continuously over a period of months. To resolve the issue, until the valve could be replaced, she raised the coolant levels in the valve housing to compensate, bringing everything back into line and ensuring the valve would not wear too much until it could be replaced. If the troublesome valve showed more problems and developed a structural flaw, the back up system would activate and she would report it and log it properly.

  In reality she actually hadn’t made a decision. All she had done was assented to the control computers request to take the action. She didn’t do anything at all except allow the computer to make the adjustment that it recommended, but she did so on her own authority and didn’t have to ask anyone’s permission. She was empowered to make the decision, to allow the computer to make a change that it would have made anyway within a few minutes. If Bai had not given assent, a flag would have been sent to her supervisor who would have realized that Bai was not doing her job efficiently by not allowing the computer to make the proper decision in a timely manner. Bai did not think this absurd at all.

  Bai was considered an efficient employee, which was below proficient and far below skilled, but was much better than acceptable or the soon to be fired rating of trained. She watched with studious attentiveness the performance of her reactor. Indeed, if it weren’t for the ever present fear of cyber-terrorism, the facility would be completely unmanned and run by robots whose attention to detail was more proficient and never complained about hours or wages or unsafe working conditions. But the world was what it was, and the world demanded some form of human overwatch, although people were far more of a risk than their mechanical counterparts. People were woefully inefficient.