Black Ops

by Alan Baxter

  “Do you even know what you’re looking for?” I asked.

  “Have some faith, Ethan,” Roth chided. I snorted to hear that coming from a fellow Luminous operative but he failed to register my amusement.

  “My life’s work has consisted of collecting accounts of the research these brave men and women were conducting here.” Roth gestured to a pulverised skull. “Exclusively from secondary sources, mind you. Trakiin and his cronies aren’t invulnerable, you know. They’re too reliant on the Dominions for that to be the case.”

  Roth approached a safe embedded in the wall. Or partially embedded anyway. In the process of forcing the fortified door Xorin had wrenched the safe loose.

  “Some even theorize the Dominions are intended to protect the Savior Gods from each other as much as from us,” he said.

  He turned on his penlight and probed inside the gaping hollow. The narrow beam darted around, illuminating naught but bare metal surfaces.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “Xorin wasn’t going to come all this way from orbit, slaughter a bunch of nerds, nearly rip a safe out of the wall in the process of trying to open it, only to leave behind whatever he found inside it,” I said.

  “Unless he didn’t know where to look,” said Roth. He stuck the penlight between his teeth and began feeling around the empty box with both hands. The whole mission objective was beginning to seem absurd. I needed to weigh the odds of success against the lives of the men and women under my command. I mentally agreed to indulge him for another minute when I heard a click followed by a triumphant “Aha!”

  “And this is why you don’t send the God of War to recover sensitive materials,” said Roth as he removed a steel plate from the safe and placed it on the floor. “False bottom. Classic misdirection. That big meathead would have snatched whatever was in the primary safe and never given it a second thought.”

  “Well? What’s in the box?”

  He rummaged around inside the recess and retrieved what looked to be an autoinjector and a sheaf of papers. He flipped through the papers and a smile spread across his face, gleaming white in the dark.

  “Salvation,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  I hadn’t imagined a fully functional blast-lance could fit inside the strongbox but I was hoping for something slightly more impressive than a spring-loaded syringe and an instruction manual. It certainly didn’t resemble salvation to me.

  “I’m up-to-date on all my vaccines, doc.”

  “This is no vaccine. This is a virus, a techno-virus to be precise, and it is imperative we deliver this to a Luminous lab to be analysed, reproduced, and tested. If this is what I believe it to be, it could very well end the war.”

  I was about to ask Roth what the hell a techno-virus was and how it could end a decades long conflict – and that, naturally, was the moment everything went to shit. The only warning given was the sudden widening of Roth’s eyes. I ducked, pivoted, and drew my weapon in a single motion, startling the Templars who were breaching the building through our egress point. I hosed them with rounds as they discharged their own weapons in a strobe of electromagnetically propelled ball bearings.

  “Side door!” I shouted at Roth over the high-pitched whine of the Templars’ coilguns, hoping he was still alive to hear me.

  The nearest Templar staggered and sank to one knee, blood pumping from the wide-spaced holes punched into his plate. Those filing in behind him dove for whatever cover the debris provided and I used the lull in combat to scoot on out of there, but not before lobbing a homemade explosive in their general direction to keep them occupied. I reunited with a remarkably intact Roth at the side door and kicked it open, dragging him into the alley with me.

  We took off at a sprint, stumbling as the IED detonated with an impressive crump. One of my hand’s clutched Roth at all times while the other maintained a grip on the MP7. We navigated the ruins of Kennedy Space Center at breakneck speed. The streets crawled with Templar patrols, and after a few more frenzied shootouts I found myself running low on both bullets and bombs. Just as Roth was about to collapse from exhaustion I found a secluded corner to catch our breath. I took a slug of my canteen and passed it over to him.

  “What do we do now?” asked Roth between alternating gulps of air and water.

  “You and I exfil to the boat and bug-out.”

  “What about the others?”

  The cacophony of gunfire persisted even when I wasn’t forced to engage the Templars – primarily the distinctive sound of gauss weapons but punctuated by the bark of more traditional chemical-propellant guns. I’d swear that once in flight from a squad of goons I’d glimpsed a couple pin-cushioned with arrows as if Lind was providing cover for us, but in the chaos and terror I didn’t halt to check. At least one member of our team was still alive out there, possibly more, and they were in the thick of it but we couldn’t jeopardize the mission.

  “What about them? You said it yourself; this techno-virus could end the war. That’s bigger than any one of us,” I said.

  Roth looked like he wanted to argue but rationality prevailed. He was a man of science after all. Roth passed the canteen back, I took another swig and fastened it to my webbing. I loaded my last remaining magazine into the MP7 and we left without a further word. Back past the shells of buildings gone back to nature at the skirts of the Space Center. Back through the long grass and tangling shrubbery that clung to our heels like a one-night stand hinting at going steady. Back over the drooping perimeter fence with its strongly-worded sign ineffectually declaring, You shall not pass. Back into that Trakiin-damned swamp and its nose-assaulting bouquet of decaying plant and animal matter.

  With guilt weighing heavy on my shoulders the trudge back to the boat was substantially more taxing than the infiltration had been. The farther we got from the Space Center the quieter it got, the silence smothering me like an accusation.

  “We made it,” I said as we arrived at the location of our lent watercraft, “and someone beat us here.” McCreedy stood by the dinghy, Sig drawn and levelled at us as we emerged from the thicket.

  “You can lower that heater, Padre, we come in peace,” I called to him.

  The gun in his hand didn’t waver.

  Ahhh, shit.

  “It’s us,” Roth added, “Ashton and Ethan. What happened back there? We got mobbed by Templars.”

  “Where are Lind and Jorgensen?” asked McCreedy.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  “We hoped to regroup with them here but we couldn’t risk waiting,” Roth replied.

  “You found it then?” asked McCreedy. “Mission accomplished?”

  Shit, shit, fuck, shit. My grip tightened on the MP7.

  “Yeah, I got it right here,” Roth answered.

  The night gave birth to stars around us and a barrage of amplified voices commanded “Drop your fucking weapons” and “Get the fuck down” and “Hands behind your fucking heads.” The chirp of primed coilguns added authority to the directives.

  Shock and awe.

  I complied, tossing aside my gun, lacing my fingers behind my head, and lowering myself kneeling in the mud too overwhelmed to even consider resisting. As two VTOL-capable ‘chariots’ bathed the clearing with the brilliance of their searchlights, I saw the squads of Templars surrounding us.

  “Why?” I asked as a Templar stepped up to frisk and disarm me while his comrades trained enough firepower on me to render me a sizzling meat pudding.

  “I know what you Luminous heathens did to my God,” Padre McCreedy replied, “so I found a replacement.”

  Mr Handsy finished divesting me of anything even suggestively lethal and secured my hands in manacles behind my back.

  “Be gentle with that one, he’s carrying precious cargo,” instructed McCreedy of Mr Handsy who had moved on to cavity search Roth.

  Bang, bang!

/>   One aerial searchlight winked out of existence.

  Bang, bang!

  The other searchlight sparked and died. From a separate location another shooter opened fire, wielding one of the Templars’ own coilguns against them to fabulous result. Jorgensen and Lind took turns shooting and repositioning. The Templars all reacted with varying degrees of discipline, some going so far as to shoot into the woods at random in all directions. I body-checked Mr Handsy and yelled for Roth to run.

  He only managed a few strides before his legs gave out beneath him. At first I thought he’d tripped on his own feet until I saw McCreedy advancing on us, Sig outstretched. I scuttled to shield Roth’s body with my own. McCreedy stood poised to kill me when a hyper-accelerated projectile introduced the Padre to his deceased deity. Whether the shot came courtesy of Jorgensen and his pilfered coilgun or from a panicked Templar I’m unsure. I’ll never get the opportunity to ask Jorgensen either.

  The chariot pilots recovered from the loss of their searchlights quickly enough. They activated whatever enhanced optics those cockpits offer, pinpointed where the incoming gunfire was originating, and rained down hell on our sniper and spotter. I gotta give Lind credit, she still managed to down one of those bastards, but there was no surviving the volume of ordnance those chariots brought to bear.

  I knelt over the dying Roth while the napalm-fuelled conflagration blazed around us, a proper Viking funeral that would have made Jorgensen proud. Roth whispered to me his final words and passed away.

  * * *

  I finish my story. “I mustn’t have even made it a mile before your surviving thugs got their shit together, consolidated and captured me. You decreed that the Templar captain deliver me to Kha’cheldaa for questioning, and here I am, awaiting your most merciful, erm… mercy?”

  “What a remarkably comprehensive and thoroughly damning account,” says Trakiin. Seated back on his throne now, he straightens his posture, jaw coming off fist, no longer imitating Le Penseur.

  “What I fail to comprehend is the why of it all,” he goes on. “Why were you willing to endure such hardship, willing to sacrifice yourselves for such petty defiance? Why is Luminous so determined to depose us? How can you be so certain we are not your gods?”

  “Who cares, Father?” Xorin bellow. “They piss on the gifts we’ve bestowed upon them. They spit in our faces. End this farce of a trial and let me execute him!”

  “‘Bestowed’ and ‘execute’ eh? Don’t overexert yourself there, big guy,” I say.

  The God of War surges toward me only to be restrained by the two nearest Savior Gods, his brother Q’lun and sister Fhariyya. They harbor no love for me but they do fear the displeasure of their father. I sneak a glance. Overhead the Dominions twitch and tense, provoked by the outburst of near violence.

  Their movements, though, display a trace of uncertainty. Hesitance, almost.

  As though something’s up with their programming. As though a ghost has somehow entered the machine.

  I stifle a tiny grin.

  “Show a modicum of self-control, Xorin,” admonishes Trakiin. “Once I have my answer you may do with him as you wish. Now, Mr Nash, before I cede your life to my eager boy, would you kindly answer my previous question?”

  “It would be my honor, your most beneficent majesty,” I say, “though I’ll confess I’m beginning to have some misgivings as to your omnipotence.”

  Trakiin motions for me to get on with it, clearly arriving at the end of his patience. The time has come. With luck, I’ve stalled long enough. I think I may have pulled off what I intended to. I think.

  “How did we peg you for the charlatans you are?” I say. “Simple, really. We killed all our gods long before you arrived in orbit.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Our gods – Apollo, Loki, Enlil, Anubis, Kali, Ryūjin, Yahweh – all those ‘mythological’ deities whose archetypes you shamelessly counterfeited for your own personas, they were real. And we killed them all.” I state this matter-of-factly. Matter-of-factly because every word of it is gospel truth. “Luminous, the Illuminati, has existed in one form or another since the dawn of history, fighting from the shadows to free mankind from the shackles of oppression. We’ve slain every Supreme Being who sought to lord it over us, and we’ll sure as shit do the same to you.”

  “Silence!” Trakiin snaps.

  “You’re frauds, nothing more than cheap imitations of the real gods, and they couldn’t even subjugate us for long. So what chance do you think you have?”

  “I SAID SILENCE!” roars Trakiin.

  “And to top it all off, your genealogy is seriously fucked up. It’s no wonder Xorin was born effectively brain dead. That’s what happens when you keep it in the family.”

  That does it, as far as Xorin is concerned. He breaks free from his siblings, throwing them to the floor, and hurtles toward me. Time seems to slow to a crawl while he barrels ahead like a sentient wrecking ball, eyes bulging, teeth bared, spittle flying.

  Then a thrust from a blast-lance punctures his back. The weapon’s pointed rear tip skewers his heart and erupts out through his left pectoral. Confusion scrunches his thick brow as though he were trying to add two to two and getting five. Xorin takes another step forward, and the Dominion levitating behind him withdraws the blast-lance, swings it around so that the business end is against the back of his skull, and releases a plasma bolt that flash-fries his cranium.

  Around the chamber the Savior Gods balk at this audacious display of mutiny from one of their trusted protectors. Q’lun is the first to react, leaping to avenge his fallen brother. He smacks aside the blast-lance before it can get another shot off and he hammers a fist into the android angel’s abdomen that cracks its carapace, but before he can deliver a second blow another Dominion swoops down and stoves his head in with a mighty airborne roundhouse kick.

  Yet more Dominions descend from on high, and the chamber degenerates into total anarchy.

  Most of the Savior Gods attempt to fight. Those more inclined to self-preservation make for the exits in hopes of escape. I watch Jhan S’reen, Goddess of Death, hold her own against three Dominions. She weaves between blast-lance thrusts and plasma bolts, her agility contradicting her ample girth. Her touch corrodes the Dominions’ reinforced shells and her talons shear through the weakened material with ease. She plucks the wings off one of her attackers but it latches on to her and creates an opening for the other two to finish her. She perishes with a moan of ecstasy.

  Hlaarina’s dies attempting to resuscitate her daughter Yuu’oria, the Goddess of Love. A series of plasma bolts splatters the two of them across the floor. While their family is being butchered around them, Bræsheen, the Goddess of Agriculture and Harvest, and Kloxiin, the God of Mischief and Partying, cower under the walnut banquet table until the Dominions drag them out by the ankles and transform them into postmodern art.

  One by one they all fall until only two of the Savior Gods remain – the King of the Gods and the Goddess of Hunts and Wilderness. Trakiin and Fhariyya stand back to back, armed with the blast-lances of their vanquished foes. They strike and defend like they’ve performed this dance before, father and daughter leveraging each other’s strengths and guarding each other’s weaknesses. Demolished Dominions pile up before them, and it’s looking as if they might win through when Fhariyya slips and a blast-lance spears into her stomach, exit nozzle first. She tries to pull herself off the lance but the Dominion ignites a plasma bolt and cooks her from the inside out.

  Trakiin lets out an animal cry and flies into a rage, obliterating her assassin and the nearest assailants. Blood sheets down his face from a laceration on his forehead. His chest heaves like a set of bellows and his muscles bunch grotesquely under his tattered robes. He spots me through the red haze and takes the shot. The blast-lance rockets through the air – a javelin aimed right at my heart.

  A guardian ange
l dives to intercept the missile, trading its cybernetic life for my own.

  The Dominions encompassing Trakiin close ranks and he vanishes from sight. Blast-lances piston in and out, arising bloodier each time, and through gaps in the androids’ formation I watch him sink to floor. I approach and the Dominions part to allow me through. Before me Trakiin lies incapacitated, wrestling to find his breath.

  “How?” he croaks.

  “The techno-virus,” I tell him. “NASA discovered a back door in the Dominion programming and developed a virus that would cause them to obey and defend whoever is the virus’s host. Roth injected me with it before he died, thinking I could hide the virus in my blood and escape to pass it on.”

  I turn to one of the pair of Dominions who are now flanking me, blast-lances at port arms, like an honor guard. “Do you mind?” I present it the manacles binding my hands behind my back. The android angel breaks the chains and for the first time in hours I can stretch my arms above my head and roll my shoulders to unkink them.

  “I never expected to wind up on Kha’cheldaa,” I say, “let alone be invited into your private chamber. And then you permitted me to monologue long enough for the virus to replicate and work its black magic. So, thank you for that. Thank you and fuck you.”

  I gesture like a Roman emperor at the Circus Maximus pronouncing death for a defeated gladiator. The Dominions – my Dominions – oblige. Trakiin lets out a last defiant, desperate scream, a guttural yell of furious disbelief that is brutally cut short.

  I climb over his body, the giant somehow diminished in death, and cross the chamber to that chalk-white throne. It was too large for Trakiin, and it’s wayyy too large for me. I clamber onto it, have myself a seat, and survey the carnage I’ve wrought. The victorious Dominions kneel in a semicircle before me, setting down their blast-lances and bowing their heads.

  Bowing to me.

  My laughter echoes through the corridors of Kha’cheldaa.