Assassination Protocol: An Intergalactic Space Opera Adventure (Cerberus Book 1)

by Andy Peloquin

  His gaze went to the workshop, to the steel table where Taia was busy repairing his armor. His eyes locked on the Blitz that had come dangerously close to costing him another life.

  He’d told himself it couldn’t hurt to have a little bit. No one would be harmed—no one else. But that was a lie. The same lie that had lured him into the depths of Blitz so many times in the past.

  Had he taken it, Bex would be dead. She would have died mere meters from where he sat in his wheelchair—just as Tanis had.

  That alone was enough to banish any desire to take the drug. The sight of Bex, so weak, so close to death, only drove the point home.

  This had been him. The emaciated, starved, wasted figure—once a fierce warrior, the pride of the Nyzarian Empire, now nothing but an empty husk—had been him before Tanis. Isolated, trapped within a world filled with the pain of his injuries and the depression of an aimless life without the Silverguard. Desperate to find his next hit, craving it with such all-consuming force that panic gripped him any time his supplies ran low. The guilt over using it and the hopelessness he felt on those rare moments of lucidity when he found himself wishing he could quit had always warred with the desire to fill the gaping void within—the hole torn in his soul the day he was told he could no longer be a Silverguard.

  He thought he’d left it behind, but he knew better now. He could never truly be rid of that—it would be a battle he’d have to fight every day. He’d nearly lost that battle today. He would have been that old husk of a man again had he given into the siren’s call of the Blitz. He’d have sacrificed everything—his strength, his skill, his very life—all so he could escape the painful memories.

  That escape was the easy road out. A way to sweep it under the rug where he didn’t have to feel the pain. But easy wasn’t the Silverguard’s way. Nolan had spent years training to tackle the hardest missions, overcome the most impossible challenges, defeat the mightiest enemies of the Empire. How was this fight any different from those?

  Yes, he couldn’t end this war with a bullet or bolt to someone’s head. His battle didn’t end when he pulled the trigger. It would very likely never end. He would live with those names and faces for the rest of his life. He’d carry them around like scars—on his mind, though his body bore no trace of the damage left in their wake.

  But that was what it meant to be a Silverguard. To carry the unbearable burden, to fight the unwinnable battles. He owed it to them, the people he’d lost, to remember them. It was his way of honoring their memories. If he forgot, even for a few minutes, they stopped mattering. No one else would remember them if he didn’t. It fell to him to make sure their lives—and their deaths—had meaning.

  That was why he had he gotten sober all those years ago. To stop escaping, to stop trying to wash away the pain. Instead, he’d cleaned up so he could use the pain to propel him onward, to make him stronger. To let the memories of those he’d failed in the past make damned sure he didn’t fail again.

  Erasmus, Tanis, Natalya, and the others were already dead. But Jadis wasn’t. Jared needed him. Bex, too. He couldn’t drown himself in Blitz because of them. If he gave up now, if he gave in to the desire to flee the pain, what would happen to them?

  Bex had just reminded him of that something important. By nearly dying, she had proven that he was worth more alive. It fell to him to make sure that men like Gustav Wylun, Wolfe, and Ledren didn’t get away with their crimes. Didn’t get away with things like poisoning countless people with their drugs or killing innocents with their violence.

  He might not be a Silverguard any longer, but his mission hadn’t changed. Not really. His enemies wore different faces, wielded different weapons, and fought a different sort of war, but the end goal remained the same. Take out the enemy. Protect his friends, comrades, and the civilians of the Empire he’d sworn to protect. He might not give a damn about the Imperial government, the Protection Bureau, or Agent Styver, but he did give a damn about what happened to Jared, Jadis, Bex, Bastien, and all the others in his circle. People who were harmed by the actions of men like German French and Wolfe.

  That would keep him going, keep him clean. His hand went to the bronze medallion in his pocket and he gripped it with every shred of strength. He would fight—not only the enemies outside his door, but those within his mind—until his last breath to fulfill that mission.

  “Talk to me, Taia.” His voice came out surprisingly shaky. “How’s she doing?”

  “Better,” the AI responded. “Stable, for now.”

  Righting himself in his chair, Nolan wheeled closer to Bex. She looked so emaciated and haggard, wasted by the Blitz, yet she’d struggled with surprising strength. That gave him hope—if she could fight him with such ferocity, she had a chance of getting through the Heavy Detox, too.

  “I’ve given her a sedative and put in an order for ACE inhibitors to improve blood vessel dilation and diuretics to lower her blood pressure.” Taia sounded concerned. “Once you get her on the couch, I can rig up restraints to keep her still in case something like this happens again.”

  Nolan stared down at the woman. “I don’t think restraints are a good idea,” he told her. “You heard the way she was screaming and struggling. She was fighting someone, for something. If she wakes up and finds herself unable to move, there’s a risk of her pulse spiking and her heart giving you trouble, isn’t there?” He was no doctor, but he’d been handcuffed and locked up enough times to know just how terrifying it could be to wake up in circumstances like that. With Bex’s existing heart problems, he wanted to avoid as much risk as he could.

  “Fair point,” Taia replied. “I’ll just up her sedation to keep her unconscious while she detoxes. That comes with its own inherent risks, but—“

  “Do it.” Nolan reached down and, as gently as he could from his awkward position in the wheelchair, lifted Bex back onto the couch. “She can handle it. She’s a fighter.”

  Once Bex was situated, he leaned back in his wheelchair. He needed a few moments to rest and recover from everything that had just happened. And the last thing he wanted was to be back in that workshop with the vials of Blitz so handy. As he’d just seen, even strong conviction could be shaken by temptation.

  “Any luck finding our targets?” he asked Taia.

  “Gustav and Declun haven’t surfaced, at least not that I could find,” the AI replied. “But what Riath said about Ledren being Wolfe’s brother got me thinking. In Agent Styver’s dossier, there was no mention of any familial connection between the low-level goon and the White Sharks lieutenant. So I dug a bit deeper, probing into some of the IDF’s deeper databases, and I’ve found something.”

  Nolan’s gut clenched. He knew Taia well enough to understand what her words meant. “Something I’m really not going to like, right?”

  The screen on his wall flickered to life, and a photo of Ledren popped up, with Wolfe’s photograph next to it. “He’s got other family members in the White Sharks.” A third image appeared: the cold-eyed, bearded, well-tailored image of the gang’s leader.

  Nolan’s eyes flew wide. “He’s related to Gustav Wylun?”

  “He’s Gustav’s son.”

  The words sent a ripple of worry down Nolan’s spine. “You mean…Wolfe and Ledren are both…?” He trailed off—that seriously complicated matters.

  “Not Wolfe,” Taia replied. “Divorce records indicate that Ledren’s mother had a husband before her current marriage to Gustav Wylun.”

  “Well, shit sticks!” Nolan ground his teeth. “Which means that we’ve now not only got Wolfe on a rampage because we took out his kid brother, but the king White Shark himself is after our heads, too.” He turned his chair and wheeled toward the workshop. Blitz be damned; he needed to get his suit operational before every White Shark and hired gun in New Avalon came for him.

  “That about sums it up.” Taia’s voice was irritatingly neutral. “I will double my efforts to find our targets, but—oh, dear.”

  Those las
t two words sent a sudden spike of alarm through Nolan. “Talk to me, Taia!”

  “It looks like we won’t need to keep searching for Wolfe after all,” the AI said. The images on the wall screen disappeared, replaced by video footage.

  Nolan sucked in a sharp breath. He immediately recognized the section of Glitter Trail running in front of the Spacer’s Paradise. He also recognized the well-dressed, gold-earringed man and the assault rifle-wielding thugs—all bearing the slavering, bloody jaws of a white shark inked into their flesh—emerging from three large vehicles and marching into the peeler bar.

  He didn’t need to hunt Wolfe. Wolfe had come hunting them.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Bloody hell! Nolan stared in horror at the men storming the Spacer’s Paradise. Wolfe had some serious firepower and manpower behind him—all fifteen of his goons carried Machnikov X-ARs and extra magazines stuffed into the pockets of their cargo pants. Only Wolfe was lightly armed, with a pair of gold-plated blaster pistols modeled after the Old Terran Desert Eagle. Showy, gaudy weapons, yet they could kill innocent people as easily as any of the IAF weapons.

  The sixteen White Sharks disappeared through the front door of the Spacer’s Paradise. A second later, the staccato rattling of automatic gunfire filtered through the camera.

  Shit!

  “Taia,” Nolan barked, “get me eyes in there, now!”

  “Already working on it.”

  A moment after the AI responded, a video feed popped up on the screen built into Nolan’s wall. The footage was shaky, likely from someone’s personal comm device, and showed the few people inside the Spacer’s Paradise—Stedd the bouncer, a few of the bartenders, Mimi, and some of the other girls helping the custodial team put the bar back together in the aftermath of the earlier drive-by shooting. A few of the bar’s braver regulars had even returned for their afternoon drink and show.

  Panicked screams echoed through the room, but it was drowned out a moment later by a second burst of automatic gunfire. Bullets and blaster bolts tore through the roof, the walls, the bottles on the bar, and a few of the chairs that had escaped the previous carnage. To Nolan’s relief, none of the people were hit. Whether by accident or intention, he didn’t know, nor did he care.

  “Taia, alert the IDF!”

  “Chatter on the IDF scanners indicate they’re fully aware of what’s going on.” Taia actually hesitated. “They’ve been ordered to steer clear.”

  Damn it! Nolan’s fists tightened on the arms of his wheelchair.

  “You, big boy, take your fucking hand off that gun or I’ll put a bullet right through your Terra-damned eyes!”

  Wolfe’s strident, barking voice snapped Nolan’s attention back to the video. The White Sharks lieutenant stood at the head of his goons, both of his golden pistols trained on Stedd.

  “And if any of you idiots behind the bar reach for the gun we all know you keep there,” Wolfe snarled without looking away from the big bouncer, “you’ll find out how hard it is to breathe with fifty new holes in your chest. Clear?”

  The two men behind the bar raised their hands high.

  “What do you want?” An angry voice, one Nolan recognized.

  No, Mimi!

  The girl who stepped from the huddled crowd of terrified people had her blonde hair tied back in the same high, curling ponytail she always wore on the stage, but a thick satin robe covered whatever costume she’d been wearing during her last turn at the pole. Yet that didn’t stop her from marching up to Wolfe with anger blazing in her eyes.

  “Haven’t you already done enough?” She gestured around her. “Or was it not enough to shoot at us once today?”

  Nolan tensed, dreading Wolfe’s reaction. With good reason. The thug casually backhanded Mimi across the face. The girl fell with a cry, and Stedd darted forward to catch her. Instead, he caught one of Wolfe’s bullets to the chest. The golden gun barked loudly and the slug punched through Stedd’s plain black T-shirt. With a grunt, the bouncer fell hard.

  “Stedd!” Ignoring the blood streaming from her nose and lip, Mimi crawled toward the big bouncer and pressed a hand to the wound. The angle and shaking of the hacked comm device’s camera made it impossible for Nolan to tell where the bullet had entered, if it had exited, or what it had hit, but Wolfe had certainly hit Stedd center-mass.

  Nolan cursed and hauled on his chair’s wheels. He’d been searching for Wolfe, and it seemed the idiot had made his job easier. If he could just get down to the Spacer’s Paradise before Wolfe did something stupid—or shot someone else—he’d eliminate two problems at once.

  “Taia,” Nolan called, “get me suited up, fast!”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Taia responded. “Your suit is currently inoperative.”

  “What?” Nolan raced into the workshop. There, his armor lay in hundreds of individual components, with Taia’s robotic arms whirring away as they made the repairs and replacements. He cursed again. “How long will it take?”

  “Thirty-five minutes,” Taia answered.

  No! That would be too long.

  His eyes went to the screen on the workshop wall. Wolfe had moved to stand over the downed Stedd and Mimi, who had slipped out of her robe and now used the sheer satin fabric to staunch the bleeding.

  “There!” Wolfe waved the gun in his left hand toward the bouncer on the floor. “Now that you know what happens if you mess with the White Sharks, you’ll give me what I want so I can get out of your hair and let you get back to your business!” He leered. “Then again, I might just decide to hang around and enjoy the show.”

  “What do you want?” Garry, one of the bartenders, found the nerve to ask.

  Wolfe whirled around and swiveled his gun toward the man, who cringed instinctively. “What a brilliant question!” The White Sharks lieutenant gestured to Garry with a broad grin. “Now, see, this guy gets it! Let’s hope all of you are this smart.” His grin disappeared in an instant, replaced by a vicious snarl. “It’s the only way you get out of this alive.”

  Nolan’s mind went cold, analytical, taking in the situation in the space between heartbeats. He had weapons aplenty, but no combat suit operational. That meant no legs. Taking on sixteen goons armed with IAF-grade weapons—and one idiotically ugly pair of pistols—would be hard enough in full armor. Without mobility, he’d be fucked the moment he rolled out of the elevator.

  But he couldn’t just sit here and do nothing! Not with Mimi, Stedd, and all the others below in harm’s way.

  Could he call Agent Styver? No, the Protection Bureau couldn’t arrive in time. With the IDF on orders to avoid the situation, Nolan had no one to call for backup.

  His grip tightened on the cushioned arms of his wheelchair until his knuckles whitened, but even as he racked his brain, he could find no way to deal with Wolfe. Not yet, not until Taia finished with his combat suit.

  Wolfe’s voice snapped his gaze back to the screen. “Much as I enjoy everything you lovely ladies have to offer, I’ve come to your delightful paradise tonight for one simple reason.” The White Sharks lieutenant raised one trigger finger. “I’m looking for a very specific person. A gimp by the name of Nolan Garrett.”

  The sound of his name froze Nolan in place. Acid churned in his stomach, and he found it suddenly hard to breathe.

  He…knows my name?!

  The situation had just gone full-on FUBAR in the space of two seconds.

  “See, I have it on good authority that a certain Mister Garrett has information regarding something that happened to someone important to me.” Anger creased Wolfe’s face and his eyes blazed. “Let’s just say I’d very much like to have a conversation with our wheelchair-bound friend. Right. Fucking. Now!”

  Fear prickled on the back of Nolan’s neck. It didn’t matter how Wolfe had found his name or tracked him here—most likely sources in the IDF willing to part with details of the Ledren investigation—what mattered now was what the hell he was going to do about it.

  “Here’s
the deal,” Wolfe continued. “I doubt Mister Garrett’s capable of getting around too quickly, so I’d like one of you nice people to run upstairs to whichever of the bug-infested rooms above this place that he rents, tap gently on his door, and politely inform our gimp friend that he’s got exactly two minutes to get downstairs. If he’s inclined to decline, well, let’s just say things are going to get REAL LOUD”—he punctuated his words by shooting one pistol into the floor a few centimeters from Stedd’s head—“and REAL MESSY”—another gunshot, this one sending a bullet into a glass bottle beside Garry—“if he makes us go up and drag him down.”

  Time slowed to a crawl as Nolan realized what was coming. His mind raced, trying to come up with a plan that could get him out of this alive. But there was no other way out. Wolfe knew who he was, where to find him, and he wouldn’t hesitate to start dropping bodies if he didn’t get what he wanted. He had only one option.

  He turned his wheelchair toward the door of the workshop. “Taia, can you handle looking after Bex for a while?”

  “Bex is stable, but—“ The AI’s voice suddenly trailed off, then thundered in his earpiece. “No! Tell me you’re not thinking of going down there, Nolan! There’s no way you can take on all of them like this.”

  “I know.” Nolan nodded. A sudden calm descended over him. This, at least, was one problem he could face head-on. He couldn’t run from this situation, nor did he want to. Wolfe had come to him. He had to find a way to make that work in his favor.

  “Don’t be an idiot!” Taia protested. “Going down there is going to get you killed.”

  “Maybe.” Nolan found a smile tugging at his lips. “But better risk my life than those of the people down there. Or Bex’s.”

  If Wolfe came storming up the stairs and Nolan defended his territory, a lot of people would die in the inevitable crossfire. There had been enough deaths in the Spacer’s Paradise today, and all because of his actions in that alley. He’d made the decision to kill Ledren and the other goons—to preserve his Cerberus identity, certainly, but that excuse only went so far when innocent civilians were in harm’s way. Now the time had come to answer for what he’d done. If Wolfe wanted to kill him, the bastard would find Nolan didn’t die easily.