by Wesley Chu
Forty-One
Rescue
After the war, Prophus Command removed me from all positions of influence and authority. The Japanese-American Internment was the last straw. By now, after having suffered so many failures and disappointments, and ashamed by the trail of poor decisions and deaths I had caused throughout time, I had given up and was only too happy to accommodate them.
Karl died in peace and in ignominy. I survived the last few years of his life despondent and inactive, and finally, after a thousand years of futility, was ready to give up and possibly give myself to the Eternal Sea. I stepped away from the Quasing war and the world theater in disgrace.
* * *
Hundreds of dockworkers congregated at the Bio Comm Array construction site’s four main entrances shortly before sundown. There was a group of two hundred at the south gate leading to the primary facility, a hundred at the supply line entryway, fifty or so at the Dumas corridor, and three hundred just above the road leading into the docks. They stayed calm enough at first, merely mingling on the streets and lounging about. That was important. If they got loud too early, the police would disperse them before they caused the necessary distraction. If they started too late, or didn’t draw enough attention, Cameron’s team would get caught before they got a hundred meters in. No, the dockworkers had to stay under the radar until the signal.
The signal came an hour later.
“Cameron, Dana here. The fish has taken the bait.”
Cameron clicked over. “How many?”
“Full line and sinker. Two hundred military. Roughly double that in police. They’ve surrounded the entire automart. Lots of confusion with the locals. Man, these guys are taking no chances.”
“Come on,” Cameron chuckled. “Us versus half a thousand? Sounds like even odds.”
“Maybe with Dubs. The five of us might have a hard time.”
He glanced at Ella and grinned. “We have Ella now. Evens it back up in my book.”
Ella blushed and fiddled with the communicator piece. It felt weird stuck into her ear. She wiggled her head and scowled as it fell loose. Cameron picked up the earpiece and turned her head to the side. He looped the wire around the belt holding the string of smoke grenades strapped across her chest and then wrapped it around her earlobe. He gave her a thumbs up. Ella shook her head vigorously. This time, the thing stayed in place. She returned the thumbs up signal and then tapped the button on the piece. “Hello, hello? Can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear, Ella,” replied Dana.
“Are the Fabs there?”
“Only the youngest. Wait, the other two are there as well. Oh, damn. There’s an Adonis here.”
“Is it Shura?” Cameron asked.
“No, the hot guy.”
“Too bad. Shura’s the more dangerous one. Stay clear of them. Hamilton, status on our extraction?”
“Boat is moored and ready to rendezvous at your order, Commander.”
“Everyone’s in place. We are a go, team.” He continued giving last minute orders. “If separated, everyone head as close to the extraction location as possible. The boat needs to avoid the coastguard patrols, so you can’t depend on front door service.” He waved his hand in a circle. The rest of the team, huddled close together, moved across the cluster roof and made their way down the catwalk to the alley on the ground level, and then hurried to the fishing bridge over the road heading into the docks.
“This could be the worst insertion point ever,” Jax muttered. “Jumping on top of a moving truck is stupid beyond belief.”
“The kids here do it all the time,” said Ella.
“The kids here are stupid,” he replied.
“Or hungry.”
Jax looked sheepish. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be flippant.”
Cameron signaled for them to get down as a military truck appeared around the turn a few minutes later. To Ella’s chagrin, the truck bed was covered by a canvas.
“You sure you want to come with us?” he asked her. “Last chance to back out.”
She watched the rapidly approaching truck. It was rumbling along at approximately forty kilometers an hour. Not too fast, but not exactly meandering either. At least not slow and comfortable enough to jump off a bridge onto. She nodded.
“You kids here are crazy,” Cameron muttered. He wrapped his arm around her waist, and then timed the truck’s approach. He held his other hand up and ticked down from five.
I do not like this, Ella. If you fall off the truck and break your neck, there will be no nearby hosts to enter. Maybe you should just stay back.
“Maybe you should mind your own business.”
Ella tuned Io out. By now, she was tired of trying to decipher everything Io said. She decided she didn’t have the energy to figure out what was advice and what was sabotage. In the end, Ella was the one who controlled her body. She was the boss. If the dumb alien couldn’t say anything constructive or helpful, then Ella was ready to ignore Io for the rest of her life.
Cameron’s grip around her tightened, and then he leaped off the bridge, dragging her with him. The rest of his team followed a quarter-second later. Cameron lost his hold on her as they hit the canopy. The landing was a little softer than she expected. Being so light, she took a wrong bounce and almost tumbled over the side. Fortunately, Lam grabbed her forearm as she tumbled by. A second later, Cameron managed to grab her pant leg. They hauled her back up to them.
“Good catch,” Ella said to Lam. Her calm demeanor masked the heart attack she was feeling inside.
“Sorry about that,” he replied. “That bounce was like a knuckleball.”
Ella didn’t know what that meant, but she gave him a stinkeye.
Lam shook her head. “Where would you be without me, Cam?”
“Probably dead in a ditch somewhere back during the war.” He looked apologetically at Ella. “And now with one less host under my command.”
Cameron signaled to Nabin, who crept to the front and disappeared into the cab of the truck. The rest of them crawled on their bellies toward the back. Ella prayed the truck bed wasn’t filled with armed soldiers or guard dogs or something. That would be catastrophic. Sprawled on top of the canopy, they would make easy pickings.
The others held onto her legs as she hung upside down over the canopy and peered in. Fortunately, there was nothing alive inside the truck bed, just several plastic bins stacked on top of each other. She swung inside and helped the others in. They made their way to the front of the bed and hid in the front corners.
A second later, someone, presumably Nabin, rapped twice and then two more times. Cameron repeated the signal. The four of them settled in and waited, feeling every bump on the road until the truck screeched to a stop.
Ella peered through a narrow gap between two stacks of bins. She heard shouting and tensed, fingering the handle of her long knife, half expecting a bunch of soldiers to jump them at any moment. The truck bed door swung open and a silhouette appeared.
“Wakey, wakey,” Nabin said. “We got some friends to breaky.”
Ella didn’t realize how long she had been holding her breath until she stood and felt the room spin.
Remember to breathe.
“Dork,” Lam said, as he helped them off the truck. “Where are we?”
“I had the driver take us to a supply area north of our target. He’ll wake tied up with a headache worse than a hangover, but at least he’ll wake.”
“Keep your heads low. Take out anything that moves, but only shoot as a last resort,” said Cameron. “Dana, how’s our decoy looking?”
“They have the automart completely surrounded. No one has moved in yet. There’s some confusion with the local populace. Mood’s getting ugly. The Fabs are starting to panic. Have eyes on the Adonis. The kid looks impatient. God, he has great hair.”
Cameron gestured for the others to follow. The truck was parked between a stack of cement sewer pipes and crisscrossing racks of giant steel beams. The five of t
hem made their way south, moving from darkened space to darkened space as the setting sun grew shadows from the tall stacks of building materials.
Ella looked to the horizon. They only had a few minutes before sunset, and they still had quite a way to go. It was a delicate balance between staying hidden and hurrying. Their little ruse wouldn’t fool those five hundred soldiers and police at the east side of Crate Town forever. Once they realized they’d been decoyed, they would head straight back here.
Mogg’s protest at the gates was unpredictable as well. Sooner or later, it was going to either boil over or get stale and lose the guards’ attention. Cameron hadn’t paid Mogg enough money for them to escalate the protests to the point of actually picking a real fight with the guards.
Pay attention.
Ella was so deep in thought she missed Cameron drop to a knee and raise a fist. She would have tripped over him if it hadn’t been for Lam catching her at the last moment. Red-faced, she fell in alongside Nabin next to a stack of wooden pallets.
“Coming from the east. Three, no, five guards.” Cameron signaled Nabin to the right and held up the number two, and then led the rest of them to the left. They reached a crevice and waited as the patrol, rifles slung over their shoulders and cigarettes in hand, strolled down the aisle of construction supplies. Ella slid her long knife out of its sheath and crept to the front.
Cameron held her back with a hand and whispered, “Stay here.”
“But–”
He motioned for her to stay put more emphatically. She nodded reluctantly. She wanted to help, not just tag along. It became obvious a few seconds later that her assistance was completely unnecessary.
The poor saps were halfway down the aisle when Cameron, Jax, and Lam ambushed them, taking all of them down quietly within half a second. The two soldiers who were standing further back only managed to sling their rifles around before Nabin hit them from behind. He clipped the first in the ankle when he charged in and then put a chokehold on the second. This bought Cameron enough time to pounce on the first. Within seconds, all five soldiers were incapacitated.
Now these guys are professionals.
“No kidding.” Ella’s eyes had widened during the fight. Any illusions she had had that she knew how to fight were dashed when she saw the team at work.
“Tie them up,” Cameron said. “Stow them in the sewer pipes.”
In the distance, cracks of gunfire punctured the air. The team exchanged looks.
Sounds like at least three hundred meters away. Probably near the gates.
The team picked up the pace. It took them ten more minutes to reach the building where the prisoners were kept. They paused at the foot of the giant Bio Comm Array facility. Cameron and Lam were having a heated discussion.
“We may never get another chance,” Lam was saying.
“I don’t know.” Cameron looked up at the dark structure. “We’re pretty short-handed as it is.”
“It’s a risk, and we may lose lives,” she said. “But lives will definitely be lost if we need to send a new team in later on. We need some intel on what this damn building is for.”
Cameron reluctantly agreed and summoned Jax. “Change of plans. Poke around in there and upload your findings to Command. Rendezvous at the extraction point.”
“I’m supposed to be at the lookout once you break into the building though,” said Jax.
Lam looked to her. “Ella can do it.”
“Do what?” she asked.
Cameron looked as if he was going to say no, and then, with a sigh, handed her a pair of night vision binoculars. He pointed at the husk of a half-demolished building a few hundred meters inland. “Listen, I need you to head to the top of that building and keep a lookout for us when we go in. It should give you a lay of the land. You can see what’s going on outside the building where the prisoners are being kept as well as the front gates. If you see anyone coming, warn us.”
“You want to split up?” she gulped.
He nodded. “We need eyes on the protest. If it starts to disperse, you have to let us know right away. This is really important, Ella. Can you do this for us?”
Ella looked at the lookout point, then back at the team. She nodded. “You can count on me.”
“Great.” He patted her on the back and then signaled to the rest of the team.
Nabin came by and handed her the frequency visualizer. “Keep this on. If you see brown, run. Got it?”
She nodded. “You stay safe. Don’t leave without me.”
He grinned. “I wouldn’t dream of it, on either count.”
Their hands touched as she took the small device from him. A thrill shot up her arm. She watched him as he hustled back to the rest of the team. Jax disappeared into the big building a few seconds later while Cameron, Nabin and Lam headed in the opposite direction, leaving Ella alone. She realized how quiet it was all of a sudden, and how dark as well.
Are you going to stand there all day?
She snapped out of it and began making her way toward the lookout building. It was about two hundred meters away through a small maze of machinery and stacks of building supplies. It didn’t take long for her to get turned around once she got into the heart of the site and lost sight of the top of the building. She kept going, but pretty soon realized she couldn’t tell which direction she was facing anymore.
Make a left at the next turn.
“Are you trying to trick me?”
No, Ella. I have the site map memorized. I can lead you to the lookout point.
“Why are you helping me?”
No sense in wasting time staying lost in here.
“OK, fine.” There was a long pause. “Thanks, by the way.”
You should probably pay more attention when the grownups are discussing their plans.
“You just don’t know when to shut up, do you? We just had a nice moment and you ruined it.”
With our relationship the way it is, we had both better get used to this.
With Io providing directions, Ella got back on track creeping toward the lookout point, hugging walls and running along shadows. If it hadn’t been for Io leading the way, she probably wouldn’t have made it, but until she turned the corner and saw the half-demolished three-walled building, she wasn’t sure if Io was taking her to the right place. She ventured inside and scaled the ruin until she found a perch on the third floor.
Ella dug out the night vision binoculars and scanned the prisoner building near the water. She quickly spotted Cameron’s team creeping behind a row of cars toward the entrance. Floodlights shone down on the front half of the building and she could just make out two soldiers guarding the front door.
“Cameron,” she said. “I’m here. I see you guys.”
“Good job, Ella,” he replied. “How does the perimeter look?”
She trained the binoculars back on the protest. “It’s going, but not as loud or disruptive as I thought it’d be. Mogg’s people are slacking.”
“Dana,” Cameron said. “How’s the decoy?”
“The soldiers got tired of waiting and stormed the automart,” she replied. “You guys better wrap it up fast.”
“No time then,” Cameron said. “Lam, Nabin, cover me.”
Ella saw Cameron take off from behind cover, charging directly into the light. There was nothing worse than sneaking around in plain sight. Well, maybe getting caught sneaking around in plain sight. Ella’s throat caught as he seemed to move toward them in slow motion. This was like watching action movies in the theater, but she knew these people and the stakes were real.
The guard closer to him saw Cameron way before he could close the distance and swung his rifle around. Ella gasped and held her breath. There was a loud crack, and the guard fell. The second guard turned just as Cameron plowed into him. There was a struggle for the rifle that ended with Cameron slamming the guard to the ground and punching him several times in the face. Lam and Nabin followed up a few seconds later.
“That was slow as shit,” said Nabin. “Uh, sir.”
“I slipped on the gravel,” muttered Cameron. “Come on, let’s get in and out. You got our six, Ella?”
“Stab Surrett a good one for me if you see him,” she replied.
“Nothing would please me more, but I doubt we’ll see him tonight,” said Cameron. “The minister is unfortunately a secondary objective at this point.”
Ella watched as, one by one, Cameron’s team disappeared into the room. She prayed she’d see all of them later alive and well. The mission had gone pretty smoothly so far. Too smoothly, in fact. Her gut was making a little bit of a ruckus, and that was never good. Plenty of things could still turn this into a very bad night. Ella hoped it was just in her mind, but somehow, she doubted it.
Forty-Two
Race to the Prey
The Prophus sent a young man named Colin Curran to be my new host when Karl died. Colin was a low-ranking operative but a good man, brimming with potential. He had joined the Prophus because he believed that humanity and Quasing could work together to build a better, more peaceful planet. Like me once long ago, he was eager to put his mark upon the world and be remembered throughout history.
And like me, he never did.
To be fair, I held him back. I refused the opportunities offered to him. I just didn’t want to try any more, and I never allowed him to seek his own destiny. Like many of my other human hosts, I dragged him down instead of raising him up. I kept him from possible greatness.
He died wondering what could have been.
* * *
Shura stared at the black-and-green screen floating in front of her as the three figures moved toward the building. The trap had been sprung. Cameron Tan was about to have a very bad night. She was surprised, but almost everything was going as scripted so far. Well, except for the Prophus team’s insertion point. That was something security would have to address at a later time.