Deathless (The Shadow Wars Book 12)

by S. A. Lusher

  “This is what they built. This is the colony, where the scientists and support staff live. Then there's a military outpost, for protection, and finally there's the research site itself, built over the caves and the artifact. They finished construction about a year ago and set in on the research. From what I've managed to gather, the thing stonewalled them, being practically impenetrable. They couldn't get almost anything out of it. Then, suddenly, last month, something changed. There was some kind of breakthrough.”

  “Any idea on what changed?” Drake asked.

  “No, nothing. I think they know but they won't spill it. Either way, suddenly, three days ago, all contact was lost. A Search & Rescue vessel happened to be nearby and they headed over to the system to investigate. They reported back that the planet was completely impervious to any form of scanning technology available to them and no contact of any kind could be established. They offered to land and investigate, but the government called them off and sent in a team of Marines to investigate. They arrived yesterday.”

  “Lemme guess, contact was lost?” Greg asked.

  “Yes,” Hawkins said, nodding tightly. “All contact was lost and they haven't heard a thing from them or the planet since. So, finally, they're turning to us. This is about where the intel ends. They were at least kind enough to offer us some intel, so you'll be reviewing maps of the structures, whatever facts and figures they've gathered on the planet and the scant few other pieces of intel they threw in there. Now, let's outline your mission objectives.

  “You'll be landing about a mile away from the structures, to the south, for safety reasons. We're loading your ship up with some all terrain vehicles. You are to investigate the colony, the base and the research installation. You do not have authorization to go into the tunnels below the research site or look at any sensitive data.”

  “What a fucking surprise,” Drake muttered.

  “Yeah. You are to locate the missing Marines and assess the nature of the threat, should there prove to be one. You are to offer any necessary assistance and do whatever it takes to reestablish contact with Ash. They've also added a priority target, someone you should be looking for above all others. His name is Doctor Samuel Kruger. He is the head of the research project there and one of the top minds in his field. He was one of the few geniuses in the field of, basically, the study of ancient alien civilizations and artifacts that aren't the Cyr. There's even fewer of them now than there were before because some of them got snapped up by Dark Ops before they went rogue. They want to make sure he is alive, well and functional.

  “Now, your gear is being loaded into Raptor Three right now. It's been checked up, fueled and powered. Martel is going to be your pilot. It'll be about a twelve hour flight out there, so you'll have some time to rest up and look over the intel. Are there any questions?” Hawkins asked.

  “I've got one,” Drake said. “If this is such a big, hot-shit deal, why the hell aren't you bringing the Dauntless out there to support us?”

  “We're busy,” Hawkins replied.

  “With what?”

  “Politics.” Hawkins sighed heavily. “So, some of you maybe have been noticing all these investigatory missions I've been handing out recently. Essentially, the government has gone from actively distrusting us to making us 'prove our worth'. Technically, it's a step up. That's why they've been sending us on these missions. There's a lot of people in the government who are looking to cut funding anywhere they can and due to the nature of alien, paranormal or otherwise 'strange' research becoming a complete dead end roughly fifty percent of the time, those kinds of projects are always first on the chopping block. And we cost a lot more than usual.”

  “This is fucking horseshit!” Greg snapped. “Did anyone miss the part where we, I dunno, saved the fucking galaxy and the entire human race!?”

  “Luckily, enough people in pretty high power know and respect this fact. Which is why we have access to the amount of money that we do and why we are allowed to continue with honestly not much in the way of oversight. Unfortunately, because everything is a fucking balancing act, this also means we need to 'pull our weight', which roughly translates to helping out with more regular work. So, the Dauntless and her crew will be continuing to investigate and search for this rogue military faction,” Hawkins explained.

  Greg cleared his throat. “Uh, speaking of that, I was having some...thoughts.”

  Hawkins raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

  “These, uh, extremists, and their...technological body mods? That sounds a lot like Erebus and the Augmented.”

  Hawkins grunted. “Yeah, I know...I've thought about that. In fact, it's part of the reason we were tapped to run these missions. If there was any way that AI got out of the system...unfortunately, there isn't enough to go off of.”

  “Fantastic,” Greg muttered.

  “All right, any other questions?”

  There were none.

  “Good. Head for Hangar Three, grab anything you need, the ship should be stocked and powered up by the time you get there.”

  Hawkins reached out killed the projection, raising the lights.

  Eric rose from his seat with the others and followed them out of the room.

  It was time for his first real mission.

  CHAPTER 04

  –The Calm Before–

  Drake looked up at Raptor Three as he and the others filed into the hangar. It was a good sized ship, though slightly smaller than the original speedships that he and the crew had been whisked around across the galaxy on back when there was no Anomalous Operations and they were just a bunch of crazies who had survived some crazy-ass shit. He supposed, in a lot of ways, they were still that, it was just that they were a lot better at hiding it in routine and regulation. Speaking of regulation...he frowned as he crossed the hangar, making for the airlock, thinking about politics and bureaucracy. It often seemed like there were too many politicians and bureaucrats stuffing up the works and keeping the galaxy from actually running smoothly.

  Of course, part of him knew that this might be about as good as it was going to get, politically speaking. The only real way to maintain a sure, smooth order to humanity was with an iron, and often bloody, fist. If you wanted at least the illusion of cooperation and everyone's voice being heard, you needed something like what they had now. Unfortunately it came with all its own problems. Drake sighed softly as he followed Greg up into the airlock. It was big enough to fit all of them without too much trouble.

  His mind wandered to the mission as they cycled through. What could possibly be waiting for them on that planet? It was a desert planet...that made him think of the desert planet he and Trent had met Mosley on and started chasing after those Rogue Ops bastards. He turned away from that thought, back to the mission, focusing as hard as he could. Unfortunately for him, they just didn't have a lot of data to go off of, and what little information they did have meant it left the field basically wide open in terms of shit they could run into.

  Plus, that name...Ash.

  Sounded pretty ominous.

  As the airlock finished cycling, he turned away from that thought, since speculation usually ended poorly for him. Instead, he focused on something he knew he liked: the Raptor. He'd always been fond of the speedships and although this one was slightly smaller than the previous incarnation, it was actually roomier since they'd managed the space a bit better. It came with a galley, an armory, a cargo area, bridge (obviously), engine bay (even more obviously), an infirmary, a bathroom, a training area and two bedrooms. It employed an absolutely top-tier, state-of-the-art FTL engine, meaning it could travel the galaxy in pretty record times.

  The ultimate trade-off for such speed was that they were notoriously expensive to produce and to maintain, and they required constant maintenance, since traveling at these speeds tended to be tough on the ship. What was worse, they had to be replaced entirely after about a year. It was like building a ship that was, from its birth, slowly dying. The fact that they had thre
e of these onboard spoke a lot about Hawkins' bargaining power.

  Eric, Drake realized, was standing next to him. “Armory?” he asked.

  “Sure,” Drake replied.

  He liked Eric. He thought he might even like him in that way, he knew the man was bisexual and currently single, but he also seemed kind of unstable. Plus, well, although Drake was feeling a bit better nowadays, it didn't take a whole lot to ruin his day. He'd been tossing the idea around of asking the guy to bed, but something was telling him no. Something even deeper was telling him: wait. Eric might be the real deal, relationship material.

  Drake hadn't had a real romantic relationship in years. Lots of years.

  He wasn't sure he remembered how.

  Still...he'd be lying if he said he wasn't interested in at least trying.

  So he followed Eric to the armory while the others headed off on their own destinations. The pair hooked a right through the appropriate door and came into the armory. It was, as Hawkins had promised, fully stocked. One of the things he'd had them do was to select their own personal gear so they could spend less time worrying over what to take when a mission cropped up. Eric's and Drake's work areas were next to each other.

  For the first few minutes, the pair worked in silence, getting their weapons of choice out and checking them over. Given the quality assurance provided by Hawkins' crew aboard the Dauntless, this was a fundamentally fruitless endeavor. Nothing was ever wrong. So far, Drake had yet to find a single thing out of place. Really, he just did it to soothe his nerves and fill up some of the dead space in the calm before the storm.

  He'd never found waiting easy.

  After a few minutes passed, he glanced over at Eric. The man seemed a bit pale. Was he nervous? Well, it seemed that much was obvious, but why? Drake looked back at the pistol in his hands. He'd never really gone any deeper with Eric. Honestly, since he'd come back, he hadn't spilled his guts or anything like it to anyone but the therapist.

  “You know,” he said, not sure where exactly to start, then deciding fuck it and to just dive right in, “we've never really talked about how we ended up here. Or, I guess, any heavy shit.”

  “That's true,” Eric replied. “I, uh, didn't know if you wanted to or not. You seemed a little...guarded,” he added.

  “I guess I was. We've got some time, you wanna go or should I?”

  “I will,” Eric replied. He was silent for a moment, gathering his thoughts. Probably deciding how much to tell him.

  “Don't hold back,” Drake said suddenly, hoping he was being helpful.

  “What?” Eric asked, looking over, startled.

  “Whatever you have to say...well, I'm more than a little crazy, so don't worry about scaring me off or anything.”

  Seemingly in spite of his bad mood, Eric grinned. “Okay, fair enough. I guess we're all a little crazy here...” His grin faded and he sighed. “You know how it seems like some people just kinda...it's like, before they were born, they got stuck with something, some trait, you know? Like how some people just can't stop drinking? Or some people just can't stop screwing around on their partner? Something like that?”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

  “Well I got stuck with always losing my friends. Always. My life is a nasty, long history, so I'll skip it, but it ends with the mission that landed me here. After a stint in the military, I wandered for a while and landed a job with S and R. I became friends with them, got real serious with one of them. We investigated an asteroid, found a bunch really fucking hard to kill monsters. Long story short, I was the only one to make it out...well, not entirely. You've met Luna and Sierra. I rescued both of them from that hellhole.”

  Eric shook his head, took a deep breath and let it out in a sharp huff. “I almost killed myself on Theseus Station. If Sierra hadn't contact me when she did...” He shook his head again.

  When it became clear that he was finished speaking, Drake cleared his throat. “I had one friend my whole life,” he said. Eric looked over at him. “His name was Trent. He was my brother in every way that counted. We grew up on the same shitty colony together. Ran away when we were sixteen, became mercs and never looked back. We stuck together through everything, and I mean everything, for over twenty years. And...when we were taking down a rogue government agency, he got poisoned. We didn't get the antidote in time...he died, went down with a ship, ended up altering its course to avoid crashing into a colony.”

  “I'm sorry,” Eric murmured.

  Drake nodded. “Yeah, me too. I, uh, found the guy responsible. It's a little complicated, but one of our own sold us out. Spent six months looking for him. And when I found him...he was already dead. He'd basically killed himself. And I realized that...life isn't that neat. Even if I could have gotten my hands on him, made him suffer, it still wouldn't have brought Trent back and I'm not even entirely sure it would've been right.”

  A long moment of silence passed.

  “This is kind of awkward,” Eric murmured.

  Drake laughed. “I know.”

  They kept checking over their gear.

  * * * * *

  Greg felt the ship shift and rumble subtly as it lifted off the deckplates and began to edge its way out of the Dauntless. In another moment, they would be hitting faster-than-light travel, beginning their twelve hour journey towards Ash. In that time, he had things he needed to do: familiarize himself with the mission, check his gear, catch a nap and a meal. If there was something he'd figured out since shifting into his new life, it was that you slept, ate and went to the bathroom when you could. There was no telling how long it might be until the next time you got a chance to. Especially with a huge mission coming up.

  But for the moment, he wanted to head forward and talk with Martel. She'd been a little...well, equal parts distant and standoffish since their encounter last week. He thought it had been good but maybe it hadn't? It had been bugging him and, well, there were enough things bugging him already. If he could lay this one to rest, it might help. He pushed aside thoughts of Campbell and all those dead men and women he'd left in his wake while he was taking down Rogue Ops. Making his way out of the airlock bay, he entered the central corridor of the ship. He saw Drake and Eric heading into the armory, Jennifer heading for the training area with Keron, and Parker was making for the infirmary. Good, no one to interrupt him on the bridge.

  He walked the length of the corridor and opened the door at its end. Beyond was the bridge, which wasn't really a bridge, it was more of a large cockpit than anything else. All of the consoles were crammed around one seat. Martel was equal parts navigator, pilot and communicator. The set up, combined with her excellent skills, made it possible. She was hard at work at the controls. Greg lingered in the doorway for a few moments, gathering his thoughts and waiting for her to finish up. He was sure she knew he was here.

  Finally, they made the jump to FTL flight, right after the windows were shuttered to protect from the strange energies experienced during these jumps. She continued working the various consoles, no doubt making sure the ship was still in ship shape, then, finally she let out a small sigh and turned around in her chair.

  Martel fixed Greg with her sharp blue gaze. Greg studied her in return. Vanessa Martel was tall, slim and fit, her blonde hair cut short, though she often had it pulled into a short, functional, no-nonsense ponytail. She never seemed to smile and had no room for jokes. Greg had gotten to know her slowly over the past few months.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  Greg sighed and closed the door behind him. “I, uh, just wanted to talk.”

  “What about?” She crossed her arms, not giving an inch.

  How to approach this? Well, like he approached everything else, he supposed. “Look, Vanessa, I'm...not much for dancing around an issue. I'm more of an all cards on the table kind person. So, I'll ask you straight: did I do something wrong?”

  She continued scrutinizing him with her harsh blue gaze for another moment, then her features so
ftened. “No,” she said. She looked away from him for a moment, then groaned and rubbed the bridge of her nose, pinching it sharply. “I'm...sorry, Greg. I've been kind of a bitch and I'm sorry. You haven't done anything wrong.”

  “So...what's up then?” he asked cautiously.

  “I...I'm kind of high strung, in case you hadn't noticed. I've had to be the best for a long time. I've worked very hard to get here. And if there's one thing I can't fucking stand it's people not taking me seriously. And, of course, the universe loves its fucking irony and I...like what I like in the bedroom. It's not easy for me to share that with anyone. And I...felt like I could share it with you. And then I kind of panicked and I've been so paranoid that you'd tell someone that I...like...”

  “Being tied to a bed and slapped around?” Greg replied.

  She sighed, then nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Vanessa, I haven't told anyone. I promised you I wouldn't. I haven't even told anyone we've had sex,” he replied.

  “No one?” she asked, looking up at him. “Not even your girlfriend?”

  “No. I told you, no one. I promised.”

  “...well, thank you. I appreciate it.”

  “You're welcome. But, Vanessa, I just wanna say, I don't think you have to be so paranoid. I mean, it's not like you're the only one who's into that. Or into something weird in the bedroom. Everyone has their own kink.”

  “I know, I know...I'm just a private person.”

  “Okay, I respect that.” Greg let out a little laugh. “Honestly, I'm relieved. I thought I sucked or something at it. I mean, I'd never done it before.”

  Now Martel laughed. “No, you weren't bad at it.”

  “Well, in that case...I'm pretty sure I can find some rope somewhere on this ship...”