Mineran Influence

by PN Burrows

Sam considered rushing back to the kitchen area as there was a collection of novelty magnets on the fridge. Alas, the banging of the doors was drawing nearer. He pulled one of his thin cuff knives out and jabbed it behind the magnetic plate screwed to the door. Being designed to raise the alarm from intruders from the outside, the small screws were vulnerable from the inside.

  A small amount of leverage loosened the screws. Sam had to carefully pry the magnet off the door whilst maintaining contact with its counterpart. He slowly opened the door, firmly pressing the magnetic bar to the sensor with the blade. He slowly pulled the knife away; the bar stayed in place. But now the screws were the problem, they would catch on the door as he closed it, dislodging the magnet. With the sounds of banging doors drawing closer, he wiggled the strip slightly one way then the other as he removed the screws. He stepped through and carefully closed the door, trying to reduce the noise as the locking mechanism clicked into place.

  Outside was colder and darker than he expected. Above the door, a single bulb gave off a dim glow which illuminated a small circle onto the concrete path. Sam cast a quick glance all around. He’d exited from a structure built into the rock. The door opened into a narrow rock fissure with no clear view of the sky above and a concrete path lead the way into the gloom. Turning around, Sam saw that there were no windows in the narrow strip of visible brick. Sam replaced the dagger into his cuff holster and jogged off into the darkness, his dark clothing soon merging with the shadows.

  Expecting to emerge from the crevice a few hundred yards behind the hamlet’s cliff face, Sam stopped and stared across a vast flat expanse of hedged fields, poorly illuminated by a pale rosy sun descending for sunset. Fields full of livestock or crops created an idyllic shadow filled scene that any true artist would lovingly try to capture.

  But where the hell was he? He hadn’t thought he’d passed out whilst being tasered and if he had it certainly wasn’t for long enough for him to be moved far. This certainly wasn’t Minera and from this side of the hamlet he should be able to see Llandegla in the distance. All he could see was a dirty great big mountain in the distance, fields and lights from a dozen or more clusters of dwellings and small villages that were shadowed by the mountain. He looked up, the sun was in the correct position, but much paler and not as warm as it should be, even for a March sunset.

  He looked in the bag and found the map Reb had mentioned. It was roughly drawn on the back of a café napkin. A simple scrolling blue line was drawn from the letter ‘A’ to ‘B’. ‘A’ was by a drawing of a door and ‘B’ sat next to a house with a broken roof. Scattered around the napkin were the words ‘village’. The mountain was at the top of the next drawing of a derelict house with the words ‘Not Mordor’. Sam might have laughed if the situation was not so bewildering.

  After a rough calculation, Sam decided he had 10 minutes before the sun went down completely. Twilight wasn’t ideal in unknown terrain. Removing his phone again he checked for a signal, there was none, nor any Wi-Fi signals.

  He looked at the map and the layout of the land. He realised Reb was not taking him via the visible roads as they did not correspond with the blue line in any shape or form whatsoever. He was being directed across the fields and along animal tracks.

  Ignoring the directions he headed off for the first village, following the nearby road, gauging that it should no more than forty minutes away. Reb had purposely marked out a route to avoid habitation, presumably to prevent Sam from alerting the residents and the authorities to the nefarious activities within the rocky range behind him.

  As Sam was approaching the outskirts of the village, he heard the roar of a fast-moving vehicle a mile or so behind him. Looking back he could see cones of lights heading in his direction. Judging by the height and the sound, it was a pickup or a four by four which had spot lights mounted on the top bar. The outermost lights swivelled ninety degrees, the arc of light shining into the nearby fields. Sam realised that there must be people on the back of the truck actively searching the fields. Judging the distance from the village and the speed of the truck that was approaching, Sam knew he would never make it in time. If he stayed on the road, then he might as well just stick a white fluffy tail on his arse, hop along the road and wait for the shot gun pellets to impact, and once he was in those lights there was no escaping.

  ‘Shit!’ Sam mouthed, not for the first time that day. He couldn’t see any gateways nearby; he ran. The vehicle was gaining ground fast. The curvature of country road was giving Sam an advantage in that they had to slow down for them and there was no direct line of sight. However, it also meant he had further to run. Exiting around a bend he still couldn’t see a gate or side road in the darkness.

  Sam ran directly at the lowest part of the hedge, controlling his stride pattern. Throwing the backpack in front of him, in a technique that will never be accepted by the Olympics Committee, he dove over the hedge. It wasn’t a substantial hedge and thankfully it didn’t have a ditch in front of it or barbwire behind, as Sam only managed to clear it by a hair’s breadth. He landed by tucking in his head, rolling his right shoulder underneath him, rolling diagonally across his back and coming out into a commando roll. Running from a crouched position, he grabbed his bag and headed off across the field whilst wiping his stark white face and neck with the mud that now covered him from shoulder to hip. He ran on into the darkness, pumping his legs as hard as they could go. With the surety that he had just wiped fresh manure over his face, Sam muttered, ‘Oh, I’m gonna make these bastards pay,’ as he spat a piece of crap from his lips.

  Sam managed to make it across the pasture and through another gateway just before the spotlights illuminated the hedge he’d jumped over and started searching the field. He lay down behind the gate post, which was a large recycled railway sleeper. Keeping his partially darkened face low to the ground, he watched the pickup, which was now driving slowly, move along the road. The beam was not powerful enough to reach Sam’s cover effectively and he watched as it criss-crossed the grass in an erratic and inefficient manner. More lights lit up the sky, coming from the village. Sam heard engines roar into life and move off, He presumed that they were joining in the search for him. ‘Two nil for Reb’s plan,’ Sam conceded. Struggling to look at the napkin in the moonlight now that his night vision had gone, and not daring to use his torch, he formulated the quickest route to find the predefined path. Reb had clearly expected him to head for the nearest village and fail as there were extra landmarks on the map to give him his bearings. He hated being played and again swore under his breath.

  Resting by a small stream after a long nights’ slog over unfamiliar terrain, Sam wearily estimated he was only ten minutes away from the derelict farmstead. He had eaten the sandwiches around midnight and drank the water sparingly. He didn’t want to drink from the streams he passed as he immediately thought of the unknown contents in the barrels and worried about the toxicity levels in the area. He had managed to wash himself and clean his coat in a cattle trough, as the water was mains fed so he felt it reasonably safe to do so. Again, thinking of the barrels and how they would rust and eventually leak, Sam could not figure out why the locals farmed the area. Obviously the hired goons in the villages were not fully aware of their employer’s actions.

  At nearly five-thirty in the morning, it was still pre-dawn as Sam continued on. He was starting to feel the chill now that he had stopped, and he pulled the woolly hat down over the top of his ears. The early morning rays should start to lighten the sky over the eastern horizon soon.

  Sam came upon the derelict farmstead, and after carefully watching it for ten minutes from the partial cover of a nearby hedge, he decided to perform a quick reconnaissance around the stone wall perimeter.

  The derelict farmstead would have been a lovely, quaint, rural cottage with several outhouses and an extensive garden, which must now be grazed by the local sheep as all the foliage was trimmed low. The roof had collapsed on
the main building, with signs of ancient fire damage on the remaining trusses and smoke stains marring the tops of the empty and lifeless structural openings.

  As Sam started to climb over the low stone garden wall on the far side of his expected arrival, several things happened in such a quick succession that they were almost instantaneous. A shadow detached itself from the nearest out building with a quick glint of silver in the morning sun. A barely audible ‘pfft’ whispered across the courtyard, and Sam felt as if he had been hit in the ribs by a sledge hammer. His body’s auto reflex threw him backwards before he knew what had happened and he found himself lying on his back in the shadow of the wall. He could clearly see three glistening metal fletchlets protruding from his torso, three inches below his left pectoral. They seemed to shine even in the shade. The steady sound of boots walking over the yard, crunching on the small stones, brought Sam back to his senses.

  ‘I assume you saw that over the feed?’ an adenoidal voice said, getting louder as it approached. ‘Three to the heart, I’m checking now, keep calm, do you want a souvenir?’ A sallow-looking figure suddenly appeared, peering over the wall. The butt of a rifle set into the shoulder, the barrel moving upwards, only inches away from clearing the coping stone.

  Sam acted on pure instinct, he knew his gun was out of action as that was the only thing that could have prevented the barbaric-looking projectiles from ripping through his body. He snatched the throwing knife from his left cuff and with a practiced right arm, threw it into the attacker’s throat just as his weapon’s barrel came into view. The assailant’s eyes went wide in shock, a gurgle came from his lips and the rifle went ‘pfft’ again as three more fletchlets penetrated the ground near Sam’s head. The force completely buried them in the soft soil.

  Sam had grabbed the second knife, but in the fraction of a second it took to transfer it to his throwing hand, the aggressor’s face vaporised in a spray of blood, bone, skin and brain matter which all erupted outward, covering the area in a grisly mist as the larger particles fell slightly to the right of where Sam lay. A wide, bloody, gaping hole, showing the interior of the aggressor’s head, slowly slid from view as the body crumpled down to the ground. Sam held on to the second knife as he heard another set of feet running quickly across the yard.

  A voice he recognised from the cell shouted out. ‘Sam! Just hold on, help is coming. Bob, patch me through to Control. Control, Reb, incursion, I need a medic and backup at the old cottage, stat.’

  A craggy-faced, bald head cautiously appeared over the wall and Sam’s arm tensed ready to throw.

  ‘Wow, easy soldier! Control, Sam is down, repeat, Sam is down but he’s alive.’

  ‘What the hell’s going on and tell me why I should not kill you right now?’ Sam said vehemently, knife poised to throw. He moved his left hand to remove the fletchlets.

  ‘Stop! Don’t move. Move your hand away from the darts. Whoever this was, he clearly didn’t intend you to live. Those two-inch darts protruding from you are razor sharp from tip to fin. They’re normally coated in something very fatal and at room temperature the metal will start to dissolve. Not only does that remove the evidence, but it releases toxins that are so deadly as to be universally outlawed. It’s not the choice weapon of a true assassin, but it’s a firm favourite for contract killers.’

  Sam paused, not quite knowing what to make of it.

  ‘Sam, listen to me, this is not what we planned for. I need you to do as I say, you’re still at risk.’ He slowly started to climb over the chest high wall, a large bore nondescript pistol in one hand.

  That sort of explains the hole in the guy’s head, but where’s the silencer, Sam thought as he started to rise.

  ‘Hold it Sam, stay still and stay in the shadows. I suggest you carefully remove your coat,’ the stranger said, standing next to Sam. He holstered the gun beneath his jacket. ‘Oh, my name’s Reb by the way, nice to meet you again.’ He turned around, scanning the area. ‘Control, Sam is alive. Where are those troops? This is meant to be secure area and I want answers by the time we get back to the village.’

  Sam pushed the blade of his knife into the soil as he squirmed out of the jacket, making sure the prongs were as far away from his skin as possible. ‘He said heart, three to the heart. That doesn’t sound like a competent killer to me.’ Lifting his shirt, he saw the ugly pistol-shaped bruise forming and gingerly tested his ribs with the tips of his fingers.

  ‘You have no idea how lucky you are, pure luck you had your pistol there and even luckier that he didn’t know about human physiology,’ Reb replied, as he offered his hand to help Sam up. Sam gripped it and was almost lifted upright in an easy motion that didn’t even alter Reb’s balance.

  ‘Leave your jacket and come over here,’ Reb said, as he placed a hand on the wall and nonchalantly leapt across, one foot briefly touching the apex for balance as he did so.

  As Sam climbed over, he paused at the top to examine the corpse below him. The man was dressed in dark grey clothing and one hand still remained firmly clasped to an odd-looking rifle. A small box on the top, similar to the electronic sights that Sam was used to, was suddenly crushed, the electronics viciously pushed into the ground by Reb’s boot.

  ‘Camera.’ Reb informed him. ‘He was being monitored by his employer. Someone really wants you dead, Sam, and I don’t understand why. You’re a nobody, no one had even heard of you until the other week. You have no strategic value, but he was here waiting for you. To be more precise, he wasn’t here an hour ago when I arrived, checked and cleared the area.’

  ‘You said human physiology, how could he get that wrong? Who are you?’ Sam spun round to face Reb. He was getting angry now. He’d been lied to, electrocuted, held prisoner and now shot.

  ‘Wake up Sam, for Christ’s sake. You’re not in Kansas anymore. You are standing on a piece of land approximately eighty miles in diameter that doesn’t exist on any of your maps. You have just been shot at by a man that miraculously got past a garrison full of alert troops. He appeared from nowhere and he had gills on the back of his neck.’ He indicated that Sam should look.

  Sam looked at the body on the floor. Blood had smeared down the stone wall where it had slid to the floor. It was now lying face down, the collar of the grey jacket partially obscuring the cadaver’s neck. Sam wiped the knife blade on his jeans to clean off the soil and used the tip of the blade to move the collar aside. At the back of the dead man’s neck were five slits on each side, reminiscent of shark gills. He opened one carefully with the blade, mucus strung itself between the slit lips, the insides were a greyish pink.

  ‘I don’t fu–’ Straightening up, Sam was cut short by a low beep, followed by a sizzle and an immediate rise in temperature. Reb grabbed Sam’s collar and waistband and threw him a dozen feet across the courtyard with amazing strength. Two gun shots rang out in quick succession as Sam landed in a roll, springing to his feet with the knife still in his hand. He looked back at and saw Reb hastily kicking something away from the body. The body which was glowing from the centre mass and burning up inch by inch as a flameless orange ribbon flowed outward. Within the space of ten seconds there was nothing left but black ash, a tarnished rifle and the smell of burnt flesh.

  Reb put his finger to his ear. ‘Are you seeing this, Bob? Get a tech down here. Tell him I managed to save the left hand for analysis.’

  Sam looked at the item Reb had kicked across the courtyard. It was a hand and forearm. The forearm had been shot off at the elbow and there was a broken trail of blood leading back to Reb. There was a strange branding on the underarm above the wrist. Five short lines, almost making a triangle, two lines per side.

  ‘Ok, that got my attention, I’m listening,’ Sam said.

  ‘Sorry if I was a bit rough, Sam. Poor bugger, probably didn’t know this was a one-way trip. Whomever this guy’s employer was, he had no intention of the guy surviving to tell the tale.
There couldn’t have been an exit route from here, only the ECE, Energy Cascade Erasure. That burning glow is a form of raw energy that devours all organic tissue, it doesn’t stop until it runs out of fuel. If you had been touching him…’ Reb left the words hanging as he walked towards the hand, and rubbed the toe of his boot on some weeds to remove a splattering of blood.

  Removing a small device from his pocket, he knelt down and scanned the hand and arm. A green line of light, similar to a bar code scanner, automatically roamed around the appendage, concentrating on the strange triangle. After a few seconds, Reb put the device away. ‘Bob will have his ID and details sent to the station by the time we get there, we should move on. We can leave this mess for the clean-up team.’

  ‘Reb, you still haven’t told me what is going on.’ Sam started to shiver. The pale morning sun was up but without his coat it was bloody freezing.

  ‘Ok, ok, in short, we are part of the Specialised Universe Militarised Police Force. Our task is to protect and hide areas such as this,’ he said, waving his arms around, ‘from falling into the wrong hands. I will explain about that later. We are also the back up of any planetary system police. If they cannot deal with a problem, then we get called in. If our guys need backup, I or my counterparts get called in. Are you with me so far?’ Reb enquired, moving on before Sam could answer. ‘Everything that has happened to you in the last twenty-four hours, except this,’ indicating the ash and the hand, ‘was staged to see how you performed. You showed promise, you are inquisitive, intelligent and capable. We need a human on the team and we were auditioning you. This is, was, a job interview.’

  ‘Everything? The escape from jail, being hunted by the locals?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Escape! Don’t make me laugh, we are tougher, faster and stronger than you are. They were playing with you at the guard house, to see how you performed and measure your personal boundaries. Sergeant Alcaeus’ knee has been fixed by the way and he asked me to tell you he is looking forward to your future training. He’s our martial arts master and not a dumb slow yokel that he masterfully portrayed. You will be training under him in future.’