The Chiral Protocol – A Military Science Fiction Thriller: Biogenesis War Book 2 (The Biogenesis War)
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The pods were sturdy enough to withstand some pounding and local stellar micrometeorite dust—at least long enough for a rescue to take place. But the section of armored plating that had impacted the pod must have done so with violent force, and with an incredibly sharp edge. A one-in-a-million shot.
The plating had cracked the pod open, leaving it vulnerable to the cloud of debris that had followed in the shrapnel’s wake.
Yuki’s feed showed where Ben’s arm had been severed, and evidence that his flight suit attempted to seal the wound to keep him from bleeding out. It also showed a nonworking ES field, the generator pierced through by yet another piece of debris. And it showed the man’s eyes, staring sightlessly into the black.
{We have a tau-neu pod,} Will reminded them. {Let’s see if we can’t get him into stasis. There may still be time for the docs back home to revive him, if we can get him in there quickly enough.}
His words prodded Jonathan forward, and he maneuvered the Helios alongside the pod, as Will and Nina unwebbed and went aft to retrieve the body.
{Damn,} Yuki whispered. {Sometimes I hate this job.}
* * *
The teams on the station remained unaware of the pitched battle happening in nearspace around the asteroid. They had enough on their hands.
Units One and Two met with a phalanx of soldiers just outside the area Will had identified as the base’s CIC. The coordinated resistance was surprisingly effective, causing the teams to upwardly revise their estimation of the people staffing the base. These weren’t standard Junxun regiment soldiers; they were Tèzhǒng, Akkadia’s answer to the SRU.
That warranted another brief EM burst to update the rest of the teams who had infiltrated—and it was detected. It tripped klaxons and sent lights strobing throughout the base.
The Akkadians knew they were here.
This made it harder for Three and Four to approach the lab where the Alliance prisoners were being held, but they were Unit soldiers, and ‘easy’ wasn’t in the job description.
They coordinated their efforts, laying a decoy trail to lure away those guarding the lab. Some took the bait; others didn’t. The Akkadians who remained guarding the cells ended up very dead as two fireteams converged on them, dispatching them with brutal efficiency.
Unit Four’s leader toggled her drakeskin to visible and stepped toward the isolation room holding the three scientists.
“Are we ever glad to see you,” the woman breathed.
Team Four lead’s drakeskin combat HUD positively identified her as Linnet Thompson, biochemist.
“Do you know if you were exposed to the pathogen?” The leader projected her voice into the passageway.
Linnet shook her head. “The asshole who had Samantha Travis used us as leverage. He threatened to use us as guinea pigs for their new weapon, but never did.”
Four’s leader nodded, took a swift moment to debate logistics, and then stepped away from the ES field hemming them in place. She looked around and spied the two-stage airlock three meters away.
{Connors. Break out the spare suits, and lay them out for our guests. Whitcomb. Drop a LockPik on that room’s ES controls, but don’t activate it yet. Then move back and set up an ES barrier on the other side of that airlock.}
As the two soldiers moved to carry out the instructions, Four’s leader turned back to the prisoners to explain what they were about to do, but she saw Linnet nodding.
“Good plan,” Linnet responded. “We’ll get geared up, pass through the airlock’s decontamination, and then meet you in the hallway.”
On the other side of the asteroid, Thad, Boone, and Asha silently worked their way from the hangar bay to where Sam was being held. They used an access shaft adjacent to the nearest lift to get to the right level, but there wasn’t much cover to be found in the passageways that led to her room.
So far, it hadn’t turned out to be an issue. They’d encountered no one along the way. That held for another two intersections—and then intruder alarms began to blare throughout the compound.
Seconds later, a group of Akkadians came barreling around the corner. The wall of soldiers had their weapons out and were purposely taking up the width of the passageway to prevent stealthed adversaries from slipping past.
{Up!} Thad ordered, and both Boone and Asha engaged their suits’ organogel threads and swarmed up the bulkheads.
{They’re trying to flush us out,} Asha sent as she and the sniper clung to either side of the passageway where wall met overhead.
Thad didn’t bother responding; he engaged his SmartCarbyne lattice and used his Marine augments to give him the boost he needed to launch himself over the phalanx of oncoming soldiers. The move allowed him to just barely clear the heads of the two in the center.
{Engage!} he ordered as he landed in a crouch behind the line of Akkadians.
The soldiers he’d just leapt over had felt the air stir as he’d passed over them and had already begun to turn, bringing their weapons around to aim at an invisible foe.
Both Boone and Asha had the five soldiers down before anyone, including Thad, had an opportunity to fire.
{Leave some for me next time,} he grumbled as he rose to standing once more.
He helped Boone slap a nano ziptie package onto the three soldiers he’d knocked out, freezing them in place and rendering their wires inoperable. The two Asha had shot hadn’t been so lucky; their dead eyes stared up at Thad, and he found he didn’t really have a shit to give about the loss of life.
{Come on,} he ordered. {Scan shows she’s just around that bend.}
The sound of footsteps advancing told Thad another cluster of Akkadians were between the team and Sam, and that they’d heard the weapons’ fire. As they came into view, it was evident they anticipated an attack from stealthed opponents; they were warily sweeping the corridor with their firearms, while guarding the officer who stood before Sam’s door.
{Shit. Situation’s about to turn hostage on us, Cap,} Boone warned.
Thad cursed silently as he stared the man in front of Sam’s door. {I know.}
The man’s uniform projected the digital salad of an Akkadian colonel.
“They’ll be coming for her here. Find them and eliminate them!” He barked the order, and his troops went racing down the hall, straight toward the team’s drakeskin-clad forms.
Thad had an instant to decide how he wanted to handle the situation. He knew if he engaged these men, that would give the colonel the precious seconds he needed to take Sam hostage. He also knew Boone was the one of the best sharpshooters the Navy had.
{Boone, get into position to take out that colonel,} Thad sent.
The sniper nodded, moving once more to scale the bulkhead while Thad and Asha engaged their oncoming adversary.
The combat HUD built into Thad’s drakeskin suit showed Boone’s outline clearing the oncoming soldiers, its predictive systems limning the sharpshooter in the green of a ‘friendly’. Thad had just enough time to catch a glimpse of the sniper as he engaged his suit’s ‘sticky’ threads, pressing his back to the bulkhead and bringing his P-SCAR up to his eye.
And then the first soldier plowed his face into Thad’s fist.
Thad followed it by hooking a hand behind the man’s neck and driving his knee up into the Akkadian’s gut. A quick look up had Thad sidestepping to avoid a flurry of flechettes fired by the man’s partner. Yanking the soldier forward into the path of the weapon, Thad used the unconscious man’s body as a shield. A second round impacted, and the man became dead weight.
Thad rushed another Akkadian, his partner’s body hitting him with a wet smack. At the same time, Thad aimed a savage kick at the man’s knee joint, shattering it.
A quick look showed Asha had dispatched her two soldiers with surgical efficiency, as the two neatly drilled holes in their foreheads attested.
“Drop your weapons or the director’s niece dies,” a voice called out.
{How do you want to play this?} Boone asked.
{Not as clean as I’d like,} he admitted. {If you could provide about thirty seconds of distraction, it would give me a chance to move forward about fifteen meters….}
{Done.} Thad sent a mental command, and his drakeskin suit decloaked. “Sorry to disappoint you, ami, but the lady’s comin’ with us,” he said as he slowly advanced.
The colonel’s grip tightened on the pistol he held at Sam’s temple. “Your partner. Tell him to reveal himself, too.”
Asha moved to the other side of the bulkhead before decloaking, a move that would split the man’s focus even further. “Sorry to disappoint, Colonel, but his partner’s a ‘her’.” The medic’s voice dripped with disdain as she reappeared.
The colonel jerked his head toward Thad. “Both of you, together. Hands where I can see them.”
Asha rolled her eyes and gave a loud sigh, which elicited a shaky laugh from Sam. The sound caused the colonel to loosen his hold on her, allowing her to pull slightly away and for Boone to get off a shot.
Unfortunately, the colonel reacted swiftly to correct the error, moving to pull Sam back. The shot burned a neat hole into the bulkhead just beside the man’s head.
{Dammit!}
* * *
When Sam saw Thad and then Asha appear, she knew Boone must be somewhere nearby. The suppression app Marceau had slapped onto the side of her neck the moment her cell door slid open blocked her entirely. She could neither send nor receive any signals with her wire. That left her with nothing more than verbal and physical cues to communicate her intent.
She’d purposely snickered at Asha’s comment, shifting her body away from Marceau as she did so. As she’d hoped, it briefly broke the man’s concentration, and he’d glanced over at her.
Also as she’d hoped, Boone took the shot, but Sam realized her mistake the moment it passed harmlessly by her captor. She’d actually caused Marceau to move out of the sniper’s line of fire when she’d pulled away.
Later, when questioned, she would be unable to explain why it was this that set her off—but it did. Fury consumed her, a wrath over the test subjects who’d died a horrible death, and an incandescent rage for all the unwitting victims Akkadia intended to kill in its quest for power.
Sam braced the way Ell had taught her months ago, and pushed off her front leg with all her strength as she twisted her torso, bringing her elbow up in a vicious strike that clipped Marceau under the jaw.
It startled the man. He loosened his grip, and Sam staggered out of the way, leaving them clear to take another shot.
“Non-lethal!” she blurted out.
Just in time, too. Boone’s next shot drilled into Marceau’s shoulder instead of through his heart.
The three converged on the man, Thad’s CUSP delivering a brutal pulse plasma shot that sent him to the floor, his face in a rictus of pain. The Marine had the man ziptied and shoved to one side before the paralysis from the shot wore off.
“You okay, cher?” Thad asked, coming up beside Sam while Boone stood guard over the colonel.
Asha had pulled out her medic’s kit and was busy running a scan, but Sam was too preoccupied to tell her she was fine.
“No! They’ve already shipped the vials.” She jabbed a finger at Marceau, her hand shaking with anger. “And he knows where they went.”
STEALTH ESCAPE
Akkadian Base
An-Yang Dust Belt
Proxima Centauri
Dacina came racing into Che’s office, dark eyes flashing, weapon drawn. “We must leave. Now.”
Che looked up, startled by her sudden, fierce appearance, but not alarmed. He knew the depth of the Dagger’s loyalty; she was deadly, but not to him. Never to him.
“What is this?” he asked, and was even more surprised when she crossed to his side.
“We must leave,” she repeated. Her words were low, but they were intense and held the same steel his own voice held when barking orders to troops.
His gaze swept the feeds as he sought the answer on his wire, but nothing he saw seemed amiss.
“Dacina—”
“We have been found,” she told him. “Alliance unit troops have infiltrated the base.”
She stepped toward his office door and turned with an urgency he’d not seen in her before. That and the news of their unwanted visitors propelled him forward.
He reached back for the clearsteel case containing the weapon’s trigger, and followed her out the door.
They walked through the CIC at a steady pace, but once the doors to the outer passage slid shut behind them, she urged him forward. She broke into a fast trot and, with a quick look around, Che did the same.
Dacina darted down a side passage, her hand slapping at a panel inset into the bulkhead. It slid open, revealing a maintenance tunnel Che had never noticed. She beckoned him inside.
{This will take us to an auxiliary shaft that runs parallel to the hangar bay,} she said as they sped through the small enclosure. {I have a small vessel awaiting us. It will require a hard burn.}
She shot a worried look over her shoulder, and her voice sounded doubtful.
Che almost laughed. {Do not concern yourself over me. I may be old, but do not label me grandfather just yet, Dacina Zian,} he chided. {My lattice will suffice.}
In truth, he was amazed at the amount of thought and planning his Dagger had put into an escape plan such as this. His amazement grew when he caught sight of the sleek shadow ship used by Akkadian assassins that she had somehow appropriated for this mission. How and when she’d snuck all this onto the base were questions he intended to get answers to once they were safely away.
He pulled to a stop beside her, a single thought intruding on his consciousness. “You say we have been invaded, yet I’ve seen no evidence of such. How is it that you know and the rest do not?”
She shot him a look that was a blend of devoted daughter and impatient warrior. “I am of the assassin’s guild. I live in the shadows.”
A connection appeared over his wire, and when he accepted it, he realized he was seeing her personal feed. The recording showed nothing but a pair of soldiers standing guard in front of one of the laboratory entrances. In the next instant, both of them slumped to the deck, victims of an invisible assault. When their bodies began to levitate partially off the deck, sliding backward into the lab, Che shut it off.
He turned to her, his expression grim. “I am in your debt. I should not have doubted you.”
She bowed deeply. “You owe me nothing, my general.”
Turning swiftly, she lifted a hand, swiping at a keypad only she could see.
“I have set a worm within the base’s mainframe,” she said as an access panel slid open on the ship. “There will be nothing left for them to find that would connect you to this mission.”
Her words—her deeds—rendered him speechless.
She stepped back to give him room and gestured for him to precede her into the craft. “It will be a tight fit,” she warned. “This is no pleasure ship.”
Che grunted at that. He knew better than most that the ship was little more than basic life support seated atop a powerful fusion drive. His nuts shriveled at the thought of the radiation he was about to be exposed to; it might render him sterile if he went too long without treatment.
Eh, who wants children at my age anyway, he thought with mordant humor. If I want progeny, I can always have them cloned.
His gaze strayed once more to the assassin who had to practically climb over him to reach the ship’s controls.
Then again, there is more than one way to gauge family….
* * *
Yuki and Will had just sealed the tau-neu pod when Wraith’s proximity alarm went off.
{Brace!}
Jonathan sent the mental shout as he slewed the Helios away from the plume left by the ship that had just rocketed past them.
{Plasma-pissing pulsars!} Blackbird One shouted. {Do you know what that was? Holy crap on
a comet! That was—}
Her voice cut out as a brilliant blue flare presaged the forming of a Casimir bubble.
{One of those mythical shadow ships from the assassins’ guild?} Jonathan finished. {Yeah, looks like. And they’re gone, with no possible way for us to tell where they went.}
Will whistled. He’d somehow made it back to his flight engineer’s cradle and was already pulling up the data from Wraith’s records. {Eighty gs? That’s a helluva lot of stress, even with a lattice fully engaged. Whoever it was wanted to make damn sure we didn’t get a shot off before they transitioned.}
Jonathan shot a look over his shoulder and gave the man a brief nod. {Yeah, which means they knew we were out here. Also means they know we’ve infiltrated the base.}
{What do you want to bet the person responsible for all this was on that ship?} Will asked after a moment.
Nina’s voice was sour when she replied. {I don’t take sucker bets. My credit’s on them slagging all the evidence before they left, too. They’ll be back in Akkadia soon, leaving the rest of these poor fools here to take the blame.}
Yuki’s voice held a trace of sadness as she lifted her hand from the tau-neu pod and pushed off for her cradle once more. {Let’s hope things are going a bit better in there than they did out here.}
DEATH TRAP
Situation Room
Parliament House
St. Clair Township, Ceriba
An urgent request from the prime minister pulled Duncan away from TF Blue’s situation room, where battle reports flowed in from the teams in Proxima. An SRU lieutenant delivered the summons, and then flew him down to Parliament House, where the Alliance’s top leaders had convened.
He was now in a different situation room, a room that held the same hushed quality of a memorial service. Duncan stood with his hands pressed into the hardwood surface of the conference table, his head bowed as he fought to maintain his composure. The report coming in from the destroyer keeping pace abeam of the Atliekan Queen made that a difficult feat.