by Mark Walden
‘Much improved,’ Raven replied. ‘We should be able to set out for the abandoned facility shortly.’
‘I’ll wake up the others,’ Otto said.
A few minutes later the Alphas were all awake and getting ready for the trek that lay ahead of them.
‘I’m starving,’ Tom moaned. ‘I suppose it was too much to ask that one of those Disciple soldiers might have been carrying some rations.’
‘I believe that part of the challenge of the Hunt was that we were to find our own sources of food,’ Wing said, ‘though I concede that foraging probably isn’t very wise under the circumstances.’
‘I am thinking that I am actually being too frightened to be hungry,’ Franz sighed.
‘OK, that’s it, we’re doomed,’ Shelby whispered to Laura.
‘There are five rifles left,’ Raven said, slinging one of the salvaged weapons over her shoulder. ‘So three of you will have to remain unarmed. Wing, I know you won’t take one even if I tell you to so I need two more volunteers.’
‘I’ll pass,’ Penny said. ‘I’ve never fired a gun in my life. I’d probably only end up shooting myself.’
‘I don’t need one either,’ Laura said. ‘I’m no good with the damn things anyway.’
The other five Alphas all took one of the rifles. Tom picked one up and gave Otto an embarrassed look.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve got a minute to . . . erm . . . show me the basics have you?’ he asked quietly.
‘Sure,’ Otto said, ‘it’s a piece of cake really. Safety’s here, white dot means that the safety’s on, red dot means it’s off. Best to leave it on until you’re ready to shoot. Sights are here – just make sure that you keep whatever you want to hit in the middle of them but never point your weapon at anything you don’t want to kill. Keep your finger outside the trigger guard until you want to pull the trigger. I’ve been chewed out too many times by Colonel Francisco for bad trigger discipline to forget that. Right, OK, pull the stock tight into your shoulder. That’s it. It will kick a bit so lean into the rifle as you squeeze the trigger. Squeeze, not pull, gently does it. Try to use short controlled bursts of fire – you haven’t got enough ammo for spray and pray. OK?’
‘How do you know all this?’ Tom asked, looking at Otto with a slightly bemused expression.
‘Benefits of a good education,’ Otto replied with a smile.
‘OK, time to go,’ Raven said. ‘Keep together and keep up.’
Nero stared at the satellite image of the Hunt base camp as Francisco’s assault Shroud touched down. Two more hovered nearby, scanning the area for any sign of hostile forces. Nero watched the Colonel’s men move around the wreckage-strewn site.
‘It’s bad, Max,’ Francisco said over the comms system. ‘There are a lot of bodies. All the pilots and security personnel are dead and we’ve found nearly twenty dead students. The others are all missing. Raven’s Shroud seems to have escaped the initial attack at least. We’re going to sweep the area and see if we can find any sign of it.’
‘Damn it!’ Nero shouted, slamming his palm down on the display. ‘Colonel, I want you to find the people responsible for this atrocity and I want you to make sure they suffer before they die. Do I make myself clear?’
‘It will be my pleasure,’ Francisco replied. ‘We’re going to start our search immediately but it’s going to take some time. There’s a lot of territory to cover.’
‘Report anything you find,’ Nero said angrily.
‘Understood, Francisco out.’
‘H.I.V.E.mind, begin scanning the satellite imagery of the surrounding area,’ Nero snapped. ‘Look for something that might give us an idea where these people are or where they may have taken any survivors.’
Nero stood in the middle of the control room and felt pure rage welling up inside him.
‘Summon the ruling council,’ Nero barked at a nearby communications technician. ‘Tell them I will be sending Shrouds to pick them up immediately for an emergency meeting at H.I.V.E.’
If it was war that the Disciples wanted, it was war they were going to get.
chapter ten
Otto tried to ignore the freezing wind as he pulled himself up towards the next handhold. He was also trying very hard to ignore the fact that there were no safety lines protecting him from the increasingly long drop to the jagged rocks below. In fact, Otto thought, there were all sorts of things that he would rather ignore at the moment, given the choice. Above him Raven, Wing and Shelby were picking their way up the rock face with an ease and grace that made the rest of them look clumsy.
‘I suppose it’s pointless to ask them to slow down,’ Penny said as she hauled herself up alongside Otto.
‘I think the idea is that we go faster,’ Otto replied.
‘Oh, I could go much faster,’ Laura said. ‘All I have to do is let go. OK, I’d be travelling in the wrong direction but I’d be going really, really fast.’
‘Not for very long though,’ Otto replied with a grin. ‘In fact, I think you might find that eventually you’ll come to a rather sudden stop.’
‘I am being glad that everyone is finding the idea of us being plummeting to our doom so highly amusing,’ Franz moaned.
‘Franz, I thought we agreed not to use the word “plummeting” again until we reached the top,’ Nigel said.
‘Ah, yes, sorry.’
Otto looked upwards and saw Shelby pulling herself on to a wide ledge beside Wing and Raven.
‘Come on, guys,’ Otto said. ‘Just a few metres then we can rest.’
A minute later Otto pulled himself over the edge of the outcropping and stood up. They were now a couple of hundred metres above the cave they had sheltered in overnight and the view back down into the valley was impressive. Raven stood silently looking out across the valley.
‘See anyth—’ Otto began to ask before Raven raised a single finger to her lips.
‘Listen,’ she whispered.
At first Otto couldn’t hear anything over the wind but then very faintly he began to pick up another sound – the distant, regular thump of rotor blades.
‘Everybody on to the ledge quickly,’ Raven shouted as the last stragglers scaled the final few metres. ‘Get down.’
They all lay down as the sound of the helicopter got louder and louder. A minute later they watched as a helicopter flew into the valley below at low altitude. The helicopter landed on the valley floor and a dozen men in white poured out of its rear hatch. The Alphas all knew who it was they were trying to find.
‘Well, that can’t be good,’ Shelby said quietly.
‘We have to keep climbing,’ Raven said, watching the Disciple troops fanning out across the valley floor below. ‘It won’t take them long to find our trail and I don’t want to get caught halfway up the side of a mountain by that helicopter. Let’s go.’
‘I’ve got a really bad feeling about this,’ Laura whispered to Otto as Raven stepped up to the rock face and began to climb again.
‘Well, you know what they say about being at your lowest point,’ Otto replied.
‘What?’
Otto looked at her and then up the mountainside.
‘The only way is up.’
The squad leader of the Disciple search team walked up the steep slope to the cave that one of his men had found a few minutes earlier. Still clearly visible in the snow around the cave mouth were several sets of footprints. He followed the trail for a few hundred metres and it ended at the base of a steep rock face. He looked upwards and for an instant thought he saw something moving. He pulled the binoculars from his belt and looked through them, scanning the rock face. There, clearly visible now, were several figures dressed in black climbing up the mountainside.
‘Tell our sniper that I want him back on the transport chopper and in the air,’ he said to one of his men. ‘I have some target practice for him.’
Raven pulled herself over the edge of the plateau and looked back down into the valley. She could barely make out
the shapes of the men searching for them far below but what she could see were the rotors on the transport helicopter starting to spin. Within just a few seconds the chopper began to slowly lift into the air.
‘Quickly,’ she said, taking Shelby’s hand and pulling her up. Wing climbed up beside them as the helicopter started to ascend rapidly towards them. ‘They’ve spotted us.’
‘Guys, come on,’ Shelby yelled down to the others, who were twenty metres below and still climbing. ‘We’ve got company!’
Otto glanced over his shoulder and immediately wished he hadn’t. There was a helicopter a couple of hundred metres away at the same height as them. He began to climb again, as quickly as he could. Above him Raven unslung the assault rifle from her back and aimed at the helicopter’s cockpit. She fired a three-round burst that left a series of spiderweb cracks across the curved plexiglas and the pilot tipped the transport away from the mountainside. Raven lowered her rifle as Shelby raised hers.
‘Don’t bother,’ Raven said as the helicopter dropped back into a stationary hover a thousand metres away. ‘That pilot knows what he’s doing, they’re out of range.’
The side door of the transport chopper slid open and a few seconds later there was a flash from inside. A moment later there was a buzzing sound and a tiny cloud of dirt was kicked up at Shelby’s feet.
‘Get down,’ Raven snapped as there was another muzzle flash inside the distant helicopter and a bullet whined past Wing’s ear. The three of them dropped to the ground as it struck the edge of the plateau.
‘I thought you said they were out of range,’ Shelby yelled as a shot hit the ground just a few centimetres in front of her.
‘They are,’ Raven said. ‘Unfortunately we’re not.’
Whoever was firing at them from the helicopter was obviously armed with a high-powered sniper rifle with a much greater effective range than the assault rifles they were carrying. They were far enough out that it would still be hard for the sniper to hit anything with real precision, especially from a moving platform, but they would get lucky eventually.
Otto reached for his next handhold. The rock just to his right splintered with a crack as a bullet smacked into it.
‘Keep moving,’ Raven yelled from above. ‘Remember you’re just an easier target if you freeze up.’
‘Easy for her to say,’ Penny muttered under her breath, hauling herself towards the top.
‘Come on, Franz,’ Nigel said, grabbing his friend’s hand and pulling him upwards.
‘I am being climbing as fast as I can!’ Franz shouted.
‘I know, but we have to get to the . . .’
Nigel gasped in surprise as the bullet hit him in the shoulder. He slowly tipped backwards away from the rock face and fell. Franz caught him with one hand, his knuckles turning white as they clamped on to Nigel’s collar. Franz clung desperately to the rock with his other hand as another bullet struck nearby sending stinging stone splinters into his face.
‘HELP!’ Franz yelled.
‘We have to help them,’ Otto shouted up to Wing, Raven and Shelby.
‘Follow my lead,’ Raven said, detaching one of the grappler units from her forearm and throwing it to Wing. He quickly strapped it on to his wrist and watched as Raven fired the bolt into the ground at the edge of the drop-off at the edge of the plateau. Wing did the same and then chased after her as she ran back away from the edge, the monofilament from the grapplers trailing out behind them as they went.
‘Lock your line,’ Raven said, hitting the control on her own grappler. ‘OK, follow me.’
Otto and Penny pulled themselves up and over the edge just in time to see Raven sprint towards them and launch herself over the edge of the drop-off with Wing just two steps behind her. They both flew outwards before dropping and swinging back in towards the rock face below as the grappler lines went tight. Raven hit the rocks just to the right of Nigel and Franz and Wing landed on the other side. Raven swung closer and wrapped her free arm around Nigel’s waist.
‘Franz, let go!’ Raven shouted as a bullet whined past her head. ‘I’ve got him.’
Franz slowly released his white-knuckled grip on Nigel’s collar as Raven took the wounded boy’s weight.
‘Wing, get Franz up there,’ Raven shouted as she pulled Nigel closer and hit the trigger on her grappler, reeling in the line and rocketing up the side of the mountain.
‘Come on!’ Wing shouted to Franz, wrapping an arm around his waist. Franz put one arm around Wing’s neck and gripped on to his collar. Wing hit the trigger and reeled them both in, sending them shooting upwards as a bullet struck the rocks precisely where they had been hanging just a moment before.
Otto helped Wing and Franz back over the edge as bullets continued to kick up plumes of dirt from the ground around them. Moments later Laura and Tom clambered on to the plateau too as Raven and Shelby dragged Nigel back away from the edge.
Suddenly Penny hissed in pain as another one of the sniper’s bullets found its mark. She staggered forward before falling to the ground, clutching her thigh.
‘We have to find cover!’ Raven shouted, hauling Nigel away from the edge as Otto and Tom ran over to Penny. They picked her up, an arm over each of their shoulders as more rounds buzzed through the air nearby.
‘Franz! What are you doing?’ Laura shouted as Franz unslung the rifle from his back and walked back towards the edge of the cliff.
‘I am having just about enough of you,’ Franz muttered under his breath as he raised the rifle and sighted. ‘This is for hurting my friend.’ He fired one short burst and then another.
‘Don’t waste your ammo,’ Raven yelled as she continued to drag the unconscious Nigel away from the cliff. ‘You’ll never hit them from here.’
Suddenly black smoke started to billow out of the engine cowling on the distant helicopter and it began to slowly spin down towards the valley below.
‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ Shelby said. ‘Dibs on getting to tell Colonel Francisco about this if we ever make it back to H.I.V.E.’
‘How is Nigel being?’ Franz asked as he slung the rifle on his back and walked over to Raven who had unzipped Nigel’s environmental suit and was inspecting the wound in his shoulder.
‘It could be worse,’ Raven said as she pulled a field dressing from one of the pouches on her tactical harness. ‘That was an excellent shot, Mr Argentblum.’
‘That is not being important,’ Franz said, shaking his head. ‘What is being important is that Nigel and Penny are OK.’
‘Otto, use this,’ Raven said, throwing another dressing pack to him. Otto ripped open the pack and began to wrap the bandage inside tightly around the wound in Penny’s thigh. Otto could see through the tear in the leg of her suit that she had been lucky – the bullet had just grazed her.
‘Don’t worry,’ Otto said as Penny hissed in pain. ‘It’s just a flesh wound. Not much more than a scratch really.’
‘Oh, I am sorry that my first gunshot wound isn’t terribly impressive,’ Penny said with a pained smile. ‘I’ll try to do better for you next time.’
‘I think I’d rather avoid there being a next time actually,’ Tom said frowning.
Franz, Laura and Shelby watched as Raven finished dressing Nigel’s wound.
‘Is he going to be OK?’ Laura asked, sounding worried.
‘I think so but we should still try to get him medical attention as quickly as possible. It looks like a clean wound, the bullet went straight through, but I can’t be certain that there are no internal injuries. We need to get to the facility and activate the beacon as soon as possible.’
A moment later Nigel’s eyes slowly opened and he looked up at his friends.
‘What happened?’ he asked, sounding groggy.
‘You got shot by a sniper and fell off a mountain, Franz and Raven saved you from certain death and then Franz shot down a helicopter,’ Shelby said with a grin.
‘No really,’ Nigel said with a frown, ‘tell me, what happened?
’
The Alphas trudged through the snow towards the pair of huge rusted metal doors set in the side of the mountain. They had been following the crumbling remains of a disused road for the past twenty minutes. It was the first sign of human habitation that any of them had seen since they had arrived in Siberia and Otto felt that there was something vaguely sinister about it. What was it exactly that the Russian army would have been so keen to keep hidden away out here?
‘So you don’t have any idea what this place is?’ Otto asked Raven as they walked past the collapsed remains of a military gatepost.
‘No,’ Raven replied. ‘Something the authorities wanted to keep hidden obviously but, beyond that, your guess is as good as mine.’
‘How do we know it’s not a nuclear weapons dump?’ Laura asked, eyeing the heavy doors with suspicion. ‘For all we know this place could be radioactively contaminated.’
‘Do you have a Geiger counter on you?’ Raven asked.
‘Err . . . no,’ Laura replied.
‘Well then, I shouldn’t worry about it,’ Raven said with a crooked smile.
In the centre of the doors was a large spoked wheel that was clearly supposed to be rotated to release the huge metal locking bars that bolted the door shut. In the middle of the wheel was an odd, star-shaped keyhole.
‘I’m guessing that nobody has a key, right?’ Shelby said with a smile. ‘Come on then, out of the way, let’s have a look at it.’
The others stepped aside and Shelby began to examine the lock. Penny sat down on a low concrete wall nearby and gently rubbed her wounded thigh as Franz helped Nigel sit down beside her. He was pale and they could all see from his expression that he was in considerable pain.
‘OK,’ Shelby said after a couple of minutes, ‘anyone bring any plastic explosives?’
‘Oh, great,’ Otto said with a sigh.
‘Just kidding,’ Shelby grinned. ‘I am going to need one of those though.’ Shelby pointed at one of the silver cylinders on Raven’s tactical harness.