Countdown (The Shadow Wars Book 9)

by S. A. Lusher

  “It's on a lockdown,” Donovan said.

  Allan heaved a sigh. “Of course it is! Can you cut through it?”

  “Yeah, I think so. It's a fairly simple one...give me about fifteen minutes.”

  “All right. We'll spread out and search the area for survivors or...signs of what the hell happened,” Allan said, moving over to a general access terminal. He booted it up and studied the map of the ship after trying and failing to get into more important systems. There was a mess hall and some dormitories within walking distance. Allan didn't want to leave anyone on their own for too long. He pointed to the mess hall. “Malone, Parker, check out the mess hall. Callie and I will check the dorms,” Allan said. He received affirmative responses.

  They split up.

  Allan tossed one glance back at Donovan, who was knelt down in front of the exposed circuits of the control panel, hard at work, and then he walked out of sight with Callie, around the corner into another corridor lined with doors on both sides. Allan moved to the first one on the right while Callie moved to the opposite door on the left. Allan opened it up and looked inside. An empty bedroom awaited his inspection. One bed and one desk in either corner, with a door at the back that led to a shared bathroom.

  Allan moved into the bedroom, slowly picking through the room. It was immaculately kept. Nothing out of place. He wondered what kind of people had lived here. Why they were doing what they were doing? Was it just money? Fear? Power? Or did they honestly just think they were doing the right thing? There was a good chance they had no idea what their ultimate goal was. Allan finished his search of the room and rejoined Callie out in the corridor. Silently, they worked their way down the hallway, preforming a cursory sweep of each dormitory. They'd made it most of the way when Donovan said he'd opened the bridge.

  “Did you find anything?” Allan asked as he and Callie immediately began making their way back through the ship.

  “Yes,” Donovan replied.

  “Well, what is it?”

  “...you're going to need to see this yourself.”

  Allan felt the tension ratchet up another notch. He hurried on. They made it back to the bridge about the same time as Malone and Parker. Donovan was standing in the doorway. He stepped aside, admitted them access. Allan felt a sense of dread settle over him like a cold, smothering blanket as he stepped into the bridge and laid eyes on Donovan's mystery. The bridge wasn't very large, with banks of control monitors and workstations to either side. The chairs in front of them were empty. There was just a single chair dead ahead, the pilot's station, and the chair was occupied. Around them, energy hummed and oxygen whispered.

  The chair was turned away from them.

  Allan slowly advanced. He could see the back of a helmet and a hint of arms around the sides. Whoever it was wasn't moving, and whoever it was must be dead, otherwise Donovan wouldn't have presented the situation in this way. After what seemed like an eon, Allan reached the chair. Cautiously, he reached up, grabbed the back and turned it around. He'd seen dead bodies before, hundreds of them, so why was this creeping him out so much?

  Then the chair fully turned around.

  “What the fuck?” he heard Callie whisper.

  “Holy shit,” Malone murmured.

  Allan was struck with confusion and horror at what he saw before him. The face inside the visor was no face at all: it was a bleached skull, perfectly white. It seemed to be grinning at him. Almost without thinking about it, Allan reached out and disengaged the suit's right gauntlet. He gripped it and stepped back, feeling a bolt of fear shoot through him, as a pile of bones fell out. The man's hand. No longer held together by meat and muscle, the bones fell into a pile.

  “How...how is this even possible?” he heard himself ask.

  “I don't know,” Parker said. She had joined him and was now studying the suit. “I don't see any holes or tears or rips, but...let's be sure,” she said, tapping into the suit's data suite with a small wired lead from her own suit after reattaching the gauntlet. While she did that, Donovan came into the room and moved to one of the workstations, booting it up and investigating the vessel. Malone remained in the doorway, standing guard.

  Callie stood next to Allan, watched Parker work.

  “Huh,” she muttered.

  “What?” Allan replied.

  “The suit is...fine. There's nothing wrong with it. It's totally undamaged, one hundred percent sealed. I'm showing no signs of radiation or energy build up or any strange microbes...I've got nothing. Obviously this guy was flashed into a damned skeleton and it didn't damage the suit or the ship or anything around it. Just him.”

  “That's not very encouraging,” Callie said.

  “Neither is this,” Donovan added. “It seems they arrived here about three days ago. They spent the first two days trying to get into the ship and finally managed to discern enough about their computer systems from the Cyr database that they got the airlock open. There are a few reports of them setting up an outpost in the ship...but the data is pretty light. No reference to this guy,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at the pilot, “or anything else anomalous. I figure we'll have to get into the ship if we want more data.”

  “Of course, flying blind again because hey, why not?” Allan muttered bitterly.

  Donovan grinned. “Best way to fly.”

  With one last look at the mysterious skeleton, Allan turned and walked out of the bridge, making for the airlock.

  * * * * *

  Allan's apprehension only grew as they approached the unknown vessel.

  “Malone and I will go first,” he said as they came in sight of the airlock. “Then, once we clear the area, the rest of you will come through.”

  He received a trio of affirmative replies and then stepped into the airlock with Malone. As he reached out and hit the button, a wave of anticipation rolled slowly through him. Behind them, the doors ground shut, sealing them in. He couldn't get that skull, hidden away behind the visor, out of his mind. Whenever he blinked, he saw it in a flash. Allan jerked slightly as the airlock finished its cycle and the inner doors opened up.

  Beyond was another world.

  An alien world.

  It was obvious that Rogue Ops had already begun to establish their presence in the alien derelict. A long, oddly angular room awaited their inspection. It was too tall for comfort, the ceiling coming to a strange series of peaks overhead. The area was lit with brilliant, stark white work-lights. Several stacks of crates were spread out along the peripheral of the room. Allan noticed the walls had odd outward curves to them and the floor was uneven. He had a strange idea that all of these oddities had been intentionally designed.

  “Man, this place is weird,” Malone muttered.

  “Yeah...but I don't see anyone alive,” Allan replied. “Come on through,” he said into the radio. A moment later, the others joined them.

  “Whoa...weird,” Callie said, looking around. “What the fuck kind of ship is this?”

  “An unhappy one,” Allan replied. “Let's spend as little time here as possible.”

  “Couldn't agree with you more,” Parker said.

  They set off across the room, first checking all the nooks and crannies with a grim proficiency, desperate to get a move on with the mission. Allan had an idea that humans weren't supposed to be in a place like this. Finding nothing, they moved through an opening near the far right corner of the room, into a low but broad corridor that stretched away from them. More work-lights had been strung up along the ceiling, painting everything in a grim, stark light. Allan was at least glad that there was nowhere to hide, but this amount of light seemed kind of excessive. It was almost as though they were afraid of the dark...

  Allan honestly couldn't blame them.

  They made their way slowly down the corridor, resisting the urge to duck under the low-hanging ceiling. It just cleared the top of their heads by a scant few inches. There was another opening at the end of the passageway. It led into a room with
a roof that slanted sharply up and away, coming all the way down to the floor on one side. This seemed to be the outpost that the computer in the ship had referred to.

  The team split up and searched the place over.

  One corner was devoted to sleeping quarters, such as they were. It seemed they hadn't managed much more than rolled out, inflatable mats and steel rods and curtains to provide some form of privacy. Allan couldn't help but stare at these beds for a long moment, imaging trying to sleep in such a place. As if to make matters worse or play on his fear, there were two bodies, both of them complete skeletons wearing Rogue Ops jumpsuits. They found piles of bones scattered across the outpost. A few were discovered around a table meant for eating, another hidden behind a pile of crates, more at various workstations.

  Donovan set to work as soon as they made sure the place was secure. Again, Allan noted how damned bright it was. There were lights everywhere...well, almost everywhere. A few of the lights had been either broken, turned off or cut of power. Either way, one corner of the room was recessed in relative darkness. As he stared at it, he found himself drawn to the darkness, his gaze lingering on it as he heard the others move around him. It was almost like...there was something moving around in there. Some vague shape, something alive...

  “Allan?”

  “Huh?” He jerked, turning and saw Callie standing next to him.

  “Are you okay? What were you looking at?” she asked, glancing at the dark corner.

  “Thought I saw something in the shadows,” he murmured. “What's up?”

  Callie scrutinized the corner a moment herself, then returned her attention to him. “Donovan has something. Come on.”

  She led him across the outpost to where Donovan stood hunched over one of the workstations. He straightened up as they approached.

  “What have you got for me?” Allan asked.

  “Good news. First, I found a map. They managed to get a scan of the vessel using some Cyr technology, so we've got that and we at least know what we're looking for.” A holographic display of the ship appeared. Just looking at it gave Allan a headache, but he could at least discern a path to where they needed to go. “The other good news is that I've found this.” He held up a small silver device that looked similar to an infoclip.

  “Okay, what is it?” Allan replied.

  “It's a device developed by Rogue Ops to mesh with Cyr databases. Apparently they Cyr have a similar outpost here, deeper in, and that's where the data is stored. This device will, once plugged in, search for, copy and translate the data. All we have to do is wait,” Donovan replied.

  “Fantastic. Let's get going then,” Allan said.

  They left the Rogue Ops outpost, plunging into a series of bizarre corridors that seemed to have no rhyme or reason. The feeling of unease only continued to grow, like a string that had been drawn almost to the point of snapping and left there. As they progressed, they felt the watchful, uneasy gaze of some alien presence, some otherworldly intelligence probing their minds. The deeper they went, the less work-lights had been strung up. They also found the scattered remains of the Rogue Ops crew originally assigned to investigate this vessel. Skeletons in armor and jump suits, spent shell casings, indicating that they had been clearly shooting at something, though from the rarity of the casings, whatever it was must have been fast.

  Allan was willing to believe that he and his small crew were the only human beings still alive onboard the alien derelict.

  Finally, as they neared the end of their journey through the guts of the vessel, they ran into a curiosity.

  The corridor they were in terminated in a bulkhead of dark metal. About a half dozen Rogue Ops personnel were piled at the base of this bulkhead, near an opening. As Allan picked through the remains, it came to him that they had been cutting through the bulkhead, but as he investigated further, he slowly realized that they had been cutting through the bulkhead...at first. And then they had been trying to seal it.

  He said as much to the others.

  “So, the big mystery is...what were they trying to seal in?” Callie asked.

  No one said anything.

  Allan sighed. “I guess we're about the find out. Stay sharp everyone and...let's go once more into the breach.”

  He ducked through the opening.

  CHAPTER 07

  –Shadows–

  “Holy shit,” Allan muttered.

  They had come into an immense room of black metal. There were a few work-lights in the area, but the shadows ruled this section of the ship, gathering along the edges of the light. Someone had stuck twin lines of sharp blue lights down the middle of the room, creating a pathway into the darkness. The direction they had to go.

  “What...are those?” Callie asked softly.

  All along the walls to either side of them were honeycombs of hexagonal doors. Several of them were open, but the majority of them were closed. Unable to deny his curiosity, Allan led the group off the blue path and to the wall. Allan stared up in mute wonder at the honeycombed chambers. What was in them? The material was a solid, flat black that looked faintly moist. One of them in the area had been opened through some unobservable method. There were no control panels, no buttons or switches or anything to indicate some method of control. Allan cautiously approached the open one, which was one row above those on the floor.

  He peered inside.

  A hexagonal tube extended about seven feet into the wall. There was just more black metal. No lights, no control mechanisms, no scanning equipment...no technology of any kind. Just black metal and empty space.

  “Well, what the hell was inside?” Malone asked.

  “Hopefully we don't have to find out,” Donovan replied. “Can we go? This place is really freaking me out.”

  Allan glanced back at him. He normally seemed like the level-headed one, a man who laughed in the face of danger. Now he looked worried and pale. Fair enough. Allan sympathized greatly with him. He began to turn away, but that's when one of the nearest doors began to silently slide open. Malone called out a warning.

  Everyone backed up a few steps, guns raised, trained on the smoothly opening doorway. The metal was very thin, less than a half-inch thick, and swung open on hinges until it finally came to a firm halt. An ominous gray mist poured from the opening, pooling on the floor where it quickly dissipated. Allan sidestepped twice, to get a better view into the chamber, but he couldn't see anything. The mist obscured all.

  “What-” Callie began.

  Something leaped from the gray haze.

  Allan only got an impression of it. Something thin and dark and agile. He hardly had time to see what it was before it pounced on Malone. He let out a scream of fright that was very abruptly cut off. A hollow sound, almost like a dull pop, could be heard, and then he collapsed. Crouched on his body was...was....

  What was it?

  Allan stared in horror as he trained his rifle on it. It was razor thin, vaguely humanoid, five feet tall and...somehow, it seemed to be made out of little more than shadows and darkness. A pair of eyes, burning a cold, cold blue, were all it had in the way of facial features. It was looking directly at Allan, staring at him, its alien eyes burning into his...

  He squeezed the trigger.

  A spray of gunfire caught it in its thin midsection and the thing seemed to pop out of existence, its wispy shadows fading away into the air like ink underwater. Within seconds, there was no trace that it had ever existed.

  “What the fuck was that!?” Donovan cried.

  “I don't know. Parker, check Malone,” Allan replied.

  She hurried to his downed body and shifted him slightly, then gasped. Allan joined her, staring in through the visor, into his helmet.

  A skull.

  “So that's what does it,” she murmured. “How is this even remotely possible?” she whispered.

  “I don't know,” Allan replied, straightening up. “But we need to go. Right now.”

  Another one of the chambers was opening up
now. “Go! Go! Make for the end of the room, that's where our destination is!”

  He aimed his gun into the chamber and emptied the rest of his magazine into it. There was another puff and a bit of fading shadows, signifying another death. At least they were easy to kill. At that thought, half a dozen more open. Allan cursed, turned and began sprinting after the others. They hurried back to the blue-lit path and bolted down it, running full tilt. Allan sighted another one of the shadow creatures and fired, watched it pop into wisps and fired a second time as another moved to take its place.

  There had to be a couple of dozen things around them now.

  And contact with just one of them meant instant death.

  No time to think about that now. Allan emptied his magazine taking down another eight of them, then slapped a fresh one in. They hit the end of the room and ran into a problem: it looked like Rogue Ops had been in the process of cutting through another bulkhead but hadn't quite gotten a chance to finish the job.

  “Donovan!” Allan called as he dug in his heels, spun around and began opening fire on the incoming shadow things.

  “On it!” the Spec Ops tech replied.

  More of them were coming now. Callie and Parker stood beside him, all three of them covering Donovan while he grabbed the torch and started cutting away, working as quickly as possible. Allan aimed and fired, aimed and fired, losing himself in the simple, moment-to-moment fact of keeping his ass and his team alive. He burned through two more magazines keeping the shadows at bay while Donovan did his job.

  “I'm through!” he called as Allan slapped a fresh magazine in.

  “Through the hole!” Allan yelled.

  He provided cover fire while the others made their way through the opening Donovan had made until it was his turn to come through. Inspiration struck him as he was trying to figure out how to get through the hole and he primed and tossed a flash-bang grenade he'd brought with him. As soon as he had, he turned and dove through the hole.