Rogue

by Mark Walden

  ‘It will be my pleasure,’ Ghost said with a nod and walked away.

  Trent knew just how much Ghost would enjoy extracting the location of H.I.V.E. from Raven. He tried not to think about exactly how she would do it; he wanted to be able to sleep at night.

  ‘Hook back into G.L.O.V.E.net,’ Trent said to Otto as they both walked over to the stairs leading up out of the hangar. ‘Tonight’s events might prompt further communications between members of the ruling council. If we can’t immediately locate Nero and Darkdoom, I want alternative targets for our next attack.’

  ‘Understood,’ Otto replied.

  ‘I am aware that you took an active role in the mission this evening,’ Trent said. ‘Do you feel ready to be more involved in tactical operations in the future?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Otto replied with a nod. ‘Somehow I seem to feel stronger every day.’

  The Shroud set down in the clearing a couple of kilometres from the military base where they had seen the H.O.P.E. helicopters land.

  ‘You did a good job,’ Cypher said to the relieved-looking pilot. ‘Well done.’

  ‘Are you going to let us go now?’ the pilot asked, turning to face Cypher.

  ‘Of course,’ Cypher replied, raising his pistol.

  ‘No, wait, I –’

  The shot sounded very loud within the cramped confines of the flight deck.

  Cypher punched a series of commands into the Shroud’s computer and then climbed down the ladder to the passenger compartment. The frightened faces of the three girls told him that they had guessed what had happened to the pilot.

  ‘It just went off in my hand,’ Cypher said with mock innocence, tucking the pistol into his belt.

  ‘Murderer,’ Shelby said angrily.

  ‘Sticks and stones, my dear, sticks and stones,’ Cypher said with an evil smile. ‘Now I know it’s going to break your hearts, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave you. But don’t worry – as a special treat I’ve arranged one last special trip for you with the autopilot. The bad news is that it’s going to be a very short flight, straight up and straight down really, but the good news is that when you hit the forest floor at a thousand kilometres an hour you are going to make for a truly spectacular diversion.’

  ‘You won’t get away with this,’ Laura said, trying to keep the fear from her voice.

  ‘Oh, I think I probably will,’ Cypher said with a smile as he hit the switch to lower the boarding ramp. ‘I normally do.’ He disappeared down the ramp and into the pre-dawn darkness.

  A few seconds later they all heard the unmistakable sound of the Shroud’s engines starting to spin up.

  ‘Laura,’ Shelby said urgently, shuffling around in her seat so her back was to her friend. ‘Hairgrip.’

  Laura stared at the back of Shelby’s head for a moment or two, unsure what she meant, but then spotted the thin strip of metal in the back of Shelby’s hair. She leant forward and grabbed the grip with her teeth, pulling it out as carefully as possible.

  ‘Now drop it in my hands,’ Shelby said, cupping her cuffed hands together behind her. Laura looked down and very carefully dropped the tiny clip into Shelby’s hands. She watched as Shelby pinched the hairpin between her thumb and forefinger, closed her eyes and slid it delicately into the tiny keyhole in her cuffs.

  Outside, the noise of the engines reached a high-pitched whine.

  After a couple of agonising seconds there was a click and the cuff on Shelby’s left wrist popped open. Shelby leapt up out of her seat and pulled another identical grip from her hair. She knelt down between her two friends, simultaneously inserting the grips in each hand into the keyholes in both pairs of cuffs. At almost exactly the same moment the Shroud began to slowly lift into the air.

  ‘C’mon, you clumsy idiot,’ Shelby said to herself with a frown. A moment later both pairs of cuffs popped open and the other two girls leapt out of their seats.

  ‘I am so full of win,’ Shelby said with a huge grin.

  ‘Shel, sometimes I could just kiss you,’ Laura beamed.

  ‘Less kissing, more jumping,’ Lucy said, pointing at the treetops that were visible through the open rear hatch. Shelby and Lucy sprinted down the Shroud and leapt off the loading ramp. Laura stopped and scooped up the device that Cypher had discarded earlier before running and jumping off the ramp after them, praying that the dense foliage she could see outside would somehow break her fall. She hit the forest canopy, limbs flailing, twigs and leaves whipping at her as she fell, until after a few metres she hit a larger branch that stopped her descent with a crunch.

  She lay there for a moment, gathering her breath and watching the flare of the uncloaked Shroud’s engines as it rocketed into the sky. It arced upwards and then plummeted down into the jungle not far away. There was the sound of a distant explosion and the dawn sky lit up for a moment as the Shroud hit the ground nose first at full thrust.

  ‘Guys?’ Laura asked. ‘You OK?’

  ‘Ow!’ Shelby said from somewhere further down the tree. ‘No, seriously, ow.’

  ‘What she said,’ Lucy groaned. Her voice came from somewhere off to Laura’s left.

  ‘Erm . . . guys,’ Laura said, ‘how do we get down from here?’

  ‘Report,’ Trent snapped as he walked into the central control area of the hidden facility.

  ‘We’re not sure, sir,’ one of the H.O.P.E. officers said, studying the radar display in front of him. ‘An unknown aircraft appeared on radar from nowhere and then dived straight into the ground about a kilometre to the south. We’ve dispatched a tactical team to investigate.’

  ‘Send a second team as well,’ Trent snapped. ‘It can’t just be a coincidence that this is happening now. I want to know what that bogey was, and I want to know ten minutes ago. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the man replied, before hurriedly relaying Trent’s orders to the squad commanders outside.

  ‘I heard the explosion,’ Ghost said as she entered the room. ‘Are we under attack?’

  ‘Hard to say,’ Trent replied. ‘Radar tracking suggests it was an aircraft coming down.’

  ‘A diversion,’ Ghost said after a few seconds. ‘It’s what I would do.’

  ‘Double perimeter security,’ Trent snapped at one of the nearby H.O.P.E. officers. ‘Nobody gets inside the fence.’

  ‘You want me out there to coordinate the search?’ Ghost asked.

  ‘No, I want the location of H.I.V.E. Have you begun your interrogation of Raven yet?’

  ‘No, the medics are about to wake her up.’

  ‘Let me know as soon as you’re successful,’ Trent said.

  ‘It shouldn’t take long,’ Ghost replied.

  .

  Chapter Ten

  Cypher looked down on the frantic activity in the camp below. The demise of the Shroud had had the desired effect: chaos. Soldiers ran in all directions, barking orders, manning defensive positions and boarding armoured personnel carriers. It was exactly what he wanted. Getting inside would be so much easier this way.

  He crept down through the lush green slope towards a point near the perimeter fence, quickly attached the suppressor that he had stolen from the H.I.V.E. weapons locker to the barrel of his pistol and waited. After a couple of minutes he saw an armed guard walking quickly along the fence line on a standard perimeter security sweep. He waited until the soldier was level with him and dropped him with a single shot that made no more noise than a polite cough.

  After waiting a second to be sure that he had not been observed, he dashed from the bushes and grabbed the man’s body by the feet, quickly dragging him back into the dense foliage. Just a minute later he emerged from the undergrowth wearing the deceased guard’s uniform and carrying his assault rifle. He worked his way slowly back towards the main gate, waiting for just the right moment to walk inside the security perimeter.

  One of the APCs rumbled through the gate, and while the guards were distracted by it he walked quickly through the check
point, talking rapidly into his radio as if reporting in. The guards on the gate did not notice that the hand he held up to his ear, as if pressing on his earpiece in order to hear the response better, also happened to conceal his face. As he had hoped, the panic caused by the blazing debris field so close to the base was providing enough distraction for him to pass through unmolested. Once inside he quickly made his way through the base, still carrying on the animated but entirely fictional conversation on his radio. He ducked behind one of the barracks blocks and looked for a way into the hidden section of the facility. From the safety of the cloaked Shroud he had watched the helicopter carrying Wing pass through the waterfall, but he had no idea how he was going to get inside.

  He looked at the base of the waterfall and noticed that there was a narrow walkway that led from the riverbank to somewhere behind the thundering torrent of water. He made his way towards the concrete path, constantly checking to make sure that he was not being watched by anyone. He made it to the shoreline unchallenged and hurried down the walkway. As he passed behind the waterfall he could see that the path ended in a pair of metal doors that were guarded by two soldiers. He was committed now; the guards had seen him, and if he turned back he would arouse their suspicion. He walked towards them, his mind racing, studying the two men. There were no cameras monitoring the door, but gunfire would still attract attention. Besides which, the fact that he had his weapon slung over his shoulder meant they would almost certainly cut him down before he could even raise his rifle. His options were becoming more limited with every step he took towards them.

  ‘Everything OK here?’ he asked as he approached.

  ‘Uhh . . . yeah,’ the soldier on the left said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Just checking up,’ Cypher said. ‘You’re doing a great job,’ he added, patting the soldier on the chest. ‘Great job.’

  With that, Cypher turned and began to retreat quickly down the path.

  ‘Who was that guy?’ the first soldier said to his comrade.

  ‘No idea,’ the second soldier said with a frown. ‘Hey!’ he shouted after Cypher. ‘Hey, you – stop!’

  Cypher kept walking, counting in his head.

  ‘Take him!’ the first soldier said, raising his rifle. Cypher dropped to the ground.

  The frag grenade in the chest pouch on the soldier’s body armour exploded with a muffled crump, obscuring both soldiers in a small cloud of grey smoke. Cypher stood back up and uncurled his fist, dropping the grenade pin to the floor. He waited for a second to see if the small explosion had attracted any unwelcome attention, but the thunderous noise of the waterfall seemed to have masked the noise sufficiently. He walked up to the two smouldering corpses by the door and quickly retrieved a slightly singed key card from one of the soldiers.

  ‘Yes,’ Cypher said with a smile, patting the dead man on the chest, ‘great job.’

  Raven woke up with a start, groggy and disorientated. She strained against the cuffs on her wrists and straps around her ankles that bound her to the large metal chair before giving up and taking in the room around her. The walls and floor were plain grey concrete, punctuated by occasional dark brown stains whose origins she would rather not try to guess. Sitting on a small metal table a few metres away were her katanas and a plastic bottle containing clear liquid. Mounted high on the wall in one corner of the room was a security camera, its unblinking glass eye staring down at her. She was not a superstitious person, but the room felt like it was somehow haunted, that bad things had happened here. The metal door in the wall opposite swung open and Ghost entered the room.

  ‘I trust that the accommodation meets with your approval,’ she said, closing the door behind her.

  Raven glared back at her.

  ‘You’re right, we’re probably past the “witty banter” point now, aren’t we?’ Ghost said. ‘I think we’re more at the “I torture you until you beg me to kill you” stage.’

  ‘I’ll give you no such pleasure,’ Raven said quietly.

  ‘Perhaps not, but you are going to tell me what I want to know. They say that people like you are trained to understand that no one can withstand torture forever, that everyone has a breaking point. The trick is to hold out until rescue arrives or the information you have is outdated and useless to your captors. None of which is really very helpful to you right now. So I’ll make you a deal – tell me where H.I.V.E. is and I’ll kill you quickly and painlessly, or don’t and die in the most excruciating and slow manner I can come up with.’ She brought her armoured mask close to Raven’s face. ‘And I have a very active imagination.’

  ‘Do . . . your . . . worst,’ Raven said through gritted teeth.

  ‘I only wish I could,’ Ghost said, backing off, ‘but I’ve already experienced the worst pain imaginable and it is, unfortunately, not something I can inflict upon you. It wasn’t when they fused my flesh with the cybernetic implants that keep me alive –’ she pressed a concealed switch somewhere near her ear and there was a small puff of gas from each side of her faceplate – ‘though that was a unique kind of agony. It wasn’t even when they dragged my shattered body from the wreckage.’ She placed a hand on either side of her smooth white mask. ‘It was when you killed my sister.’ Ghost pulled off her faceplate.

  ‘You!’ Raven whispered.

  The face that stared down at her was horribly scarred. One eye was missing completely and in its place was a glowing red sensor, while one cheekbone and the jaw had been completely replaced with some kind of dull grey alloy, the pale, ragged skin fused to its surface. But it was still a face that Raven recognised. It was a face that she had last seen as the woman in front of her fell from the roof of a plunging cable car in the Alps.

  ‘Verity,’ Raven said. ‘I thought I’d already killed you once.’

  ‘Oh, you did,’ Ghost said, ‘technically speaking – at least that’s what the doctors told me afterwards. Do you know what kept me alive? Hate. The thought that one day I might have you in front of me, just like this, and I could give you at least a small taste of what you had inflicted on me.’

  Ghost put her faceplate back on, snapping it into place with a click.

  ‘Let’s get started, shall we?’ she said, picking up one of Raven’s swords from the table. She pressed the switch on the hilt and the black blade lit up with a soft purple glow.

  ‘You know, these really are quite beautiful,’ Ghost went on, sweeping the crackling edge through the air. ‘I think I’ll keep them as a souvenir. I’ve heard they can cut through anything.’

  She pressed the tip of the blade into the gash on Raven’s shoulder that her own wrist blades had made just over twenty-four hours before. Raven winced as Ghost pushed the sword in further.

  ‘I wonder what happens if you make the blade blunter though,’ Ghost said, adjusting the controls to set the blade to its dullest setting. ‘How does that feel?’ She twisted the hilt of the sword and Raven gasped.

  ‘I’m just warming up,’ Ghost said. ‘Now tell me where H.I.V.E. is and you can spare yourself hours of this.’

  ‘Go to hell!’ Raven spat.

  ‘Been there,’ Ghost said and pulled the sword out viciously. Raven howled in pain.

  Ghost brought the tip of the sword to within a centimetre of Raven’s eye.

  ‘There’s an old saying that seems strangely appropriate at this point,’ she said. ‘An eye for an eye.’

  ‘Intruder alert . . . intruder alert . . . intruder alert,’ a synthesised voice suddenly blared out from a speaker somewhere behind Raven.

  Ghost swore under her breath as Trent’s voice crackled in her ear.

  ‘We have a perimeter breach – I need you up here now,’ he said.

  ‘I’m busy,’ Ghost replied angrily.

  ‘Raven’s not going anywhere,’ Trent said. ‘Get up here. That’s an order.’

  Ghost deactivated the katana and put it back on the table.

  ‘I do so hate having my work interrupted,’ she said with a sigh, ‘but not to worry, I’
ll be back soon and we can pick up just where we left off.’

  Ghost walked out of the room and closed the door behind her. Raven tried to ignore the throbbing pain in her shoulder and suppress the tiny scared voice that was whispering in her head: You have to get out of here. You have to get out of here NOW.

  Shelby, Laura and Lucy trudged through the jungle as the first rays of sunshine pierced the forest canopy.

  ‘Are you sure we’re going the right way?’ Shelby asked for what must have been at least the sixth time.

  ‘Trust me,’ Laura replied. ‘The Shroud left on a parabolic trajectory and I was able to calculate its course by plotting that trajectory against the relative positions of the stars.’

  ‘That’s geek for yes,’ Shelby said to Lucy, who nodded.

  ‘Shhh,’ Laura said, holding up a hand. ‘Can you hear that?’

  Ahead of them were sounds of heavy machinery and men’s voices. The girls continued to creep quietly through the bushes until they came out on a ridge overlooking a bustling military encampment.

  ‘How the hell are we going to get through that lot?’ Shelby asked, as the three of them stared at the guards positioned all over the camp.

  ‘We could knock out some guards and steal their uniforms and then . . .’ Laura stopped when she saw the other two girls’ expressions. ‘OK, dumb idea.’

  ‘She’s going to suggest finding a ventilation shaft next,’ Shelby said with a sigh.

  ‘I was not,’ Laura protested unconvincingly.

  ‘I think I have a better idea,’ Lucy said. ‘Why don’t we just walk in the front gate?’

  ‘Or better yet, ride into the camp on unicorns,’ Shelby said sarcastically.

  ‘No, I’m serious,’ Lucy said. ‘Listen . . .’

  She quickly outlined her plan.

  ‘I think this is the point where I’m supposed to say something like, “That’s just crazy enough to work,”’ Laura said when Lucy had finished.