There would be time to fight later, he was wounded and ill equipped. Christ, he didn’t even have shoes… Steele broke to the left and headed for the lobby waiting room in a crouch. He knew it was bad before he reached it; all the decorative glass separators between the lobby area and the clinic, shattered across the floor. Heart skipping a beat, Steele felt the flash of heat scream through his body… it was a bloodbath. Men, women, children, even an infant… The rage was difficult to contain. It was explosive. It was all he could do to keep from roaring in fury.
■ ■ ■
Steele wanted a hand grenade. Or two. Two would be good. Roll a couple through the doorway and paint the walls with their guts…
“Did we get everything?”
“Yeah, this is all there was…”
“Argh! You’ve got to be kidding me. This can’t be all there is, there has to be more somewhere…”
“We’ve looked everywhere…”
“Then look again, dammit. This was supposed to be the bonus. We’re not leaving here till we have every bottle in this place, I don’t care what it is.”
“What about the package?”
“Forget about the package, the package has been delivered. Let’s be sure there’s no breathers out there who can burn this OP.
“What about our time? Aren’t you worried about Pathfinders?”
“Pathfinders? There’s no law out here. Now get back to work. Since our bonus is so damn lousy, collect some ITC cards.” Interstellar Trade Credit. “And don’t forget the right thumb to go with it, or they’re no good.”
“Yeah, I know. But what the hell am I supposed to put them in?”
“Here put them in these…” Steele peered around the corner as the man backed out of the doorway, catching a small plastic container that was thrown at him from inside the room. “Find me some damn money!”
“Yeah, yeah…” The man shook his head with a groan and turned lazily in Steele’s direction, walking up the corridor, Jack backpedaling in a crouch, out of sight. The nurse’s station was the quickest place to duck into, concealed low, on the floor behind the high counter. He looked more like a mercenary than a Pirate to Jack. But they appeared better equipped, more tactical. Though judging by the amount of violence and ammunition used, sloppy. Maybe undisciplined. The last thing he wanted to do was underestimate them…
He could hear the footsteps… Walking past the front of the counter now… Turning to go down the corridor… He was going for the doctor on the floor of the corridor…
Or not.
“What the hellion is this...?” grumbled the voice.
Steele watched the Pirate’s legs as he turned the corner and entered the nurses’ station, coming to a stop right in front of him. When Jack looked up, they were both surprised; the Pirate, eyes wide, back-stepping as Steele sprang to his feet, the pole held in both hands like a spear. Lunging, he caught the Pirate under the chin in the soft spot in front of the trachea.
The assassin grabbed it one-handed to prevent penetration, swinging the plastic box at his assailant’s face with his other hand, a flurry of rubber gloves flying through the air as the box split open on Steele’s face.
Heart pounding, adrenalin flooding his body, Jack drove him backwards and upwards to lift him off his feet, the Pirate scrambling backward, unable to kick, scream or fight off-balance.
The box lost, both hands were on the pole trying to prevent impalement. The Pirate glanced off the wall behind him that the crazed lunatic in the lab coat tried to pin him to, barely managing to stay on his feet. The guttural growl, bared teeth and wild, piercing eyes were animalistic, and it horrified him to the core. Any thought of the Pirate reaching for his sidearm was gone, he was in full panic mode.
Pumping his legs like a running back trying to break a tackle, Steele drove the assassin backwards down the corridor, blind fury fueling his body, desperately needing a solid surface to help him bury the pole through…
Pedaling frantically backwards, stumbling over the doctor’s prone form, the Pirate went down backwards, arms windmilling for balance he would not regain. Steele’s momentum carried him down with the Pirate, his full weight on the pole as they crashed to the floor, Jack somersaulting over the top of him, pitched by the pole as it crunched into the man’s skull with a sickening squish, a short-lived blood fountain decorating the floor.
Tumbling none too gracefully, Steele was forced to ignore the eye-watering pain in his shoulder, gathering himself up, scrambling back to the Pirate to strip him of his gear. The whole encounter couldn’t have taken more than five or six seconds, but Jack, only aware of the hammering and whooshing of his own heartbeat in his ears, had no concept of the noise they may have created. He needed to be fast.
For a moment, as he worked feverishly to remove the gun belt and sidearm, he contemplated dragging the body into the exam room where he got his Pirate Impalement Device, which was right next to where he knelt.
But the running footsteps changed his mind…
■ ■ ■
When Drago rounded the corner by the nurses’ station near the labs, the corridor had three dead bodies where previously there had been one; the doctor. Heaped together, his brother, Argo, had a long metal tube sticking out of his throat. Another body in a lab coat covered in blood, lay at an angle near his side. He hung his head, “Ahhh, my brother, what have you done...?” Tears welling in his eyes, the side-loading automatic shotgun that he carried, dropped to his side as his arms went limp, shuffling over to his brother. Kneeling at his side, opposite the bloody corpse in the lab coat, Drago laid the long gun down on its side on his brother’s chest, the magazine sticking up in the air. “How by the Gods did you get bested…?” he wondered out loud. Taking hold of the pipe with both hands, he wrenched it forcefully out with a sickening slurp, producing a metal on bone scrape as it came free.
“Like this!” announced Steele, lifting his head and his hand holding Argo’s slug-thrower. Drago recoiled in horror at the bloody specter rising from the dead.
“You! I killed you!”
“And now I kill you…” grinned Steele. PWOM! The back of Drago’s head all but disappeared, the slug blowing a hole through the wall behind him, a huge slop of gore spread in all directions, running down its surface. The body remained as it had been, on its knees, now leaning back against the wall, the jaw slack, a crater in the middle of the face where the nose had been.
■ ■ ■
Kunar tromped to a stop just past the nurses’ station, stunned at the litter of dead bodies in the lab corridor, “Drago...? Argo...?” The slug-thrower, ready in his hand, found its way back into its holster as his heart sank. He turned away to project across the clinic, his voice filled with urgency, “Draus! Draaaaaus! Come quick!”
■ ■ ■
Drago’s shotgun lay across Argo’s legs where Steele had positioned it, laying on its side. Lying still, he sighted down the barrel, elevating for effect… PWOM! PWOM! The shotgun jumped off its position, the first round taking out Kunar’s right knee, the second hitting him in the groin as he fell, screaming.
Steele’s artificial eye caught the object in flight, his CABL system tagging it as it bounced off the wall from an angle, CK13 Cryo Grenade. He caught the well-placed throw left-handed and flicked it back out toward the nurses’ station before rolling toward the exam room door, abandoning the shotgun where it lay. The door slid open as he scrambled through the opening, the grenade going off with a WHUMP, a blast of freezing cold air rushing through the door behind him, painfully covering his bare feet with ice. A strange crackling sound followed drifting snowflakes. Tucking his feet underneath him for warmth, they soon regained their feeling.
When he approached the exam-room door, it squeaked and scraped, frost and ice falling away from the corridor side as it opened. Slug-thrower at the ready, he tucked it into his waistband, opting for the frosted shotgun laying on the floor where he left it.
Shotgun at the ready, he found Kunar pretty much wher
e he had fallen, completely flash frozen to the floor. He swung the shotgun barrel, “You must be Draus…” he said to the other man, laying on his back, about ten feet from Kunar, his legs flash frozen to the floor. His arms were up in a defensive position, his fingers snow-white.
“Who are you...?!” croaked Draus.
Steele smirked, “I’ve waited a long time to say this and mean it; if I told you I’d have to kill you…” He reached down and stripped the slug-thrower from the man’s holster, moving it out of reach. “Ah, what the hell,” waved Steele, “I’m in a good mood, I’ll tell you. My name is, Jack Steele. I’m an Admiral with the UFW. I’m working an assignment with the GIS…”
“By the Gods, you’re a GIS Agent?”
“Nah, not really, I’m just on loan…” He stripped off his lab coat and laid it on the icy floor to stand on, reaching back and setting the shotgun on the counter of the nurses’ station. “Hmm, you look about the same size as me,” commented Jack, kicking the man’s boot with his heel, snapping it off of his leg, foot and all.
Draus screamed, “Stop! What are you doing?”
“You’re not going to need them…” added Steele, breaking off the other one with a kick. “I do believe that’s my flight jacket, you’re wearing,” he scowled, snatching Draus into a sitting position by the scruff of his tunic. There was a sickening ripping, cracking, tearing noise. “Ooh, that can’t be good…” muttered Jack, pulling the sleeve of the jacket over frozen hands. Fingers broke free and rattled across the floor like shattered icicles. “You’re just falling apart here, fella,” he snickered. “Tell me, what was your mission?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t play games with me, boy. I can make this easy or let you thaw. I can’t imagine that will be a whole lot of fun.”
“We were supposed to come in and kill everyone. Not to leave anyone alive…”
“Fucked that up, didn’t cha?” commented Steele, sliding on his leather flight jacket.
“And then we could take whatever we wanted.”
Steele crouched again, “How much did you get paid?”
“Two-hundred-fifty-thousand credits…”
“Anybody mention me? Or, Jax Mercury?”
“N-n-n-no,” shivered Draus. “N-n-no names.”
“You had my jacket,” commented Jack, checking his pockets. “Where’s the rest of my clothes… my MOBIUS?” He found his ITC card still in its hidden pocket. Thank God.
“I d-d-don’t know, I only found the jacket while we were searching the rooms…”
Steele stuffed his feet into the now empty, but cold boots. “Whew, cold, but still better than the floor…” He piled his pilfered gear onto the nurses’ station. “Where’s your ship, Draus?” he asked, unsnapping the jacket’s breast pockets. Ahhh, my medallion… He pulled the chain of the two-sided gold pendant over his head.
Draus held up shaking fingerless hands, “P-p-pad seven at the flight terminal, the other side of the city.”
City, that was a laugh. Byas-Kuyol. The place was a shithole. With no more than a handful of buildings over three stories. The medical center was the only place that looked like any thought had been given to create a building that wouldn’t blow down in a strong wind. Most everything else looked like it was cobbled together with junk. The streets were narrow, some were dirt and the whole place was plunked down in the middle of a jungle.
“What’s the ship’s name?” commanded Steele, his eyes narrowing. Draus’ eyes rolled up into his head and Jack slapped his cheek to bring him focus, “The name!”
“The Drake… P-p-p-please, you can’t leave me like this…”
“Y’know what my dad taught me?” asked Steele, straightening up. “He taught me never to start a fight. Don’t throw the first punch. But if you find yourself in a fight, finish it. No mercy… let the bodies fall where they may.”
■ ■ ■
Carrying as much gear as he could shoulder and wearing the clothes of dead men, Steele dumped the excess into the back seat of the truck parked in front of the medical clinic. He hoped the Drake was better than this piece of junk, it looked a hundred years old if it was a day. It was a cross between a heavy-duty pickup truck and a tracked vehicle… tracks in the back, wheels and tires in the front. He stepped up on the running board and climbed into the driver’s seat, slamming the heavy door. When he turned over the engine it chugged to life, rumbling and rattling like an old military, M35 Duce and a half. At least she sounded healthy.
Jack had shown Draus more compassion than he deserved, certainly more than he had shown for his victims… A deep, muffled, WHUMP followed a flash of light, the windows of the clinic momentarily bowing out, one collapsing in pieces, spilling shards across the pavement, sparkling snowflakes drifting out in a frozen cloud, illuminated by twin moons. Steele set the truck in motion, lurching away from its parking spot, “Enjoy your time in hell, you bastard…”
CHAPTER SEVEN
EARTH, NORTH AMERICA : PICKING UP THE PIECES
“Good morning ladies and gentlemen, I'm John Griff on the anchor desk...”
“And I'm Amy Halloran.”
“And this is Channel 4 Morning News...” continued the news anchor. “Radioactive decontamination continues in the Washington D.C. area…” A video overlay showed teams of individuals in protective suits placing and monitoring special equipment in and around the nuclear blast crater. “It is reported that over one-hundred of the specially designed radioactive remediation devices have been placed in the area…”
“How do they work John?” asked Amy Halloran.
“Well I’m not a scientist, Amy, but it was explained that the rather large containers attached to the devices, atomize a cocktail of chemicals into the air, producing an electrically conductive cloud. The devices pass a current through the cloud and electrochemically scrub the radiation away. The process runs in twenty-four-hour cycles, the devices taking hourly readings and the teams going in daily to make inspections.”
“Sounds rather far-fetched,” remarked Amy Halloran. “Like something out of a science fiction movie…”
“Yes, it’s the new age we live in, Amy…”
■ ■ ■
Dr. Michelle Fabry picked the remote up from her desk and switched off the flat screen TV on the wall in her office, laying it back down. “You’re right John, you’re not a scientist,” she commented sarcastically.
David Webber leaned through her office doorway, “You say something Mitch?”
“Psh,” she snorted, shaking her head, “just making fun of the media simpletons.” She waved at the chair in front of her desk, “C’mon in, Dave, have a seat…”
“Sounds serious, what’s going on?”
■ ■ ■
Green Bank, West Virginia; a tiny town living in the shadow of the world’s largest steerable radio telescope, standing 485 feet-tall - considerably taller than the 305 foot-tall, Statue of Liberty, weighs in at a staggering 16 million pounds. The Green Bank Radio Telescope dish has an active surface of over 2.3 acres, its 2,004 individual panels manipulated by 2,209 mechanical actuators to maintain ultimate accuracy, allowing it to detect something as small as a 100-watt laser, at a distance of 25 trillion-miles - 4.25 light years.
Sitting in the heart of the United States Radio Quiet Zone, to prevent interfering signal noise, means man-made radio transmissions, wi-fi and cellular service are all non-existent.
Green Bank’s closest operational neighbor; NIOC, Navy Information Operations Center, at the Sugar Grove Research Facility is home to the NSA's ECHELON, MYSTIC and PRISM programs, among others, capable of intercepting every phone, fax, text and email on the planet, as well as internet and satellite communications, foreign and domestic.
Dr. Michelle Fabry sat her petite five-foot-two-inch frame on the corner of her desk, her blond locks pulled up into a loose ponytail, her blue eyes sparkling, a most unlikely astrophysicist. “Serious and joyous, David…” she smiled, barely able to conta
in herself.
His eyes widened, “Holy shit, Mitch, you’re actually going?”
Her eyes momentarily glanced upward, “Our friends have generously opened a position for me and extended an official invitation.”
David sat back, looking stunned, “Damn, Mitch, I didn’t think you’d actually take it if they offered…”
“Offered and accepted.”
He swallowed hard, “When?”
“About a week.” She watched the color drain from his face. “Relax, David, I’m not going forever…” She handed him a box the size of a cell phone box. “We’ll be in regular contact.”
“What is it?” he asked, pulling the box open.
Michelle hiked up her suit jacket sleeve, revealing her device, “It’s called an eGo-H. It’s their version of a cell phone. Except the screen is a hologram - how cool is that?”
He examined the curved glass screen of the bracelet, “Pretty sweet…”
“And then there’s this…” she handed him a sheet of paper bearing the Green Bank Observatory letterhead. “The board has approved all my recommendations, so no arguments on this…”
He placed the box and eGo-H on the edge of the desk, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, reading the formal announcement. “You made me head researcher...?”
“Somebody has to do it. You even get my office. They’ve made you a full Fellow, isn’t that wonderful?!”
David stared blankly at the page with the blurring text, “I… I… I…” he stammered, “I don’t know what to say…”
Michelle smirked, “Customarily, thank you is deemed appropriate.”
David was divided between a laugh and a cry. “It seems so inadequate, Mitch. I…”
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