by Tobias Roote
“What do you intend to do ?” she passed the buck to Grady to see what his reaction would be.
“We don’t know the size of their force, but I want to get inside that dome and see how many prisoners they are holding. We might be able to organise a mass break-out,” he suggested.
“They’re not going to be totally without alarms and surveillance, Grady - it’s a stupid idea.”
“True, but if I link my recorder to yours you will be able to see what’s happening. If I get caught you can rescue me,” he grinned mischievously. In truth, he needed some time with the prisoners to make his own evaluations. He didn’t see any other way of getting close to them and making his assessment. With Shrilla on the outside he felt he had a more than good chance of getting himself in and out of there along with the prisoners if they were willing to follow him.
Shrilla sighed. This was a human laboratory, there were armed security guards. The planet was owned by their enemies, the corporations. They were here undercover with no back-up. What could go wrong ?
“You stay back and provide cover for me. There is only one guard. Do you have darts for that rifle ?” Grady asked.
“I have a magazine full of the usual four-hour knock outs. You want me to disable the guard for you ?”
“Wait until I signal you, I need to be close up before you hit him.”
Grady is captured
Shrilla covered herself in local fauna and set her inhibitor to passive so that it would only operate when it received a signal from a search drone. Her sniper rifle was laid out in front of her and she had a good view along the main thoroughfare between the habitats. She was ready, but still thought the idea was silly. She understood it was no different to putting herself in danger on an assassination mission, but this seemed frivolous to her. She didn’t understand why Grady needed to do this, except he’d explained he needed an opportunity to interrogate the prisoners himself to short cut their way to some answers. She admitted that it would be good to get some information on the corporation’s activities, but they could have done that with one of the guards.
The dome-shaped buildings were erected by internal gas pressure within the membranes then hardened by a chemical wash. They could be easily and quickly dismantled by reversing the effect. There were five large blisters and four small ones probably housing the machines and surface transport.
It was easy to identify the different structures. He was currently hidden behind the dormitory, it was a model 44B which meant there was a complement here of approximately forty personnel. The science laboratory was opposite, right next to security and operations. To his left was logistics.
He was about to make a move towards the security blister when all hell broke loose. One moment he was watching a very quiet camp, the next there was a burst of activity and men appeared everywhere around him. Their energy weapons whined and he could hear at least three behind and with two either side, it was too many for him to deal with.
The nearest guard took one look at him and pointed at the ground, universal sign language works where unknown languages don’t. Grady knew what to do. He’d left his weapons with Shrilla. Unarmed, he had no choice but to surrender. So he knelt, looking carefully around him to register all of the guards. He needed to know how many they had to deal with.
A voice growled at him. “He don’t look like no fucking mutant, boss.” The nearest guard looked more closely tempting Grady to respond, but he sensibly held back. It wouldn’t end well, he wasn’t sure how these men were going to react. He hoped Shrilla had the sense to keep out of it until they knew what was going on. They had surprised him, which meant they were expecting him – or someone.
A larger man came to Grady’s front and checked him.
“No, he’s human, alright. Let’s take a bit of care with this one. I think he might be the one they’re looking for.
“Harris, call the ship. Tell them we’ve got a ‘visitor’ and he ain’t no ‘mute’. They can come and get him. Stick him in the cell with the others,” he ordered the guards that now stood either side of him.
Another human ? Grady thought. Are we missing anyone – another mutant hunter, maybe ?
“I’m an Alliance World Agent, you cannot detain me. I’m here officially,” Grady complained knowing full well it wasn’t going to cut any ice with them. He just wanted them to know that they couldn’t just make him disappear without repercussions.
“Oh, so you’re a damned AW spy are you, creep ?” The one in charge said as he grabbed Grady’s hair and pulled his head back. “We know how to deal with your kind in the field ‘mute lover’ - you’re going to get to bunk with them for a bit - how do you like that ?” he spat.
Grady smiled inwardly. Good ! That will be interesting, he thought.
Harris came back and pulled to a stop in front of his boss, “They don’t want him up top, boss. They said they have an inbound team that will take care of him, angels, or some such. We’ve got to hang onto him until they get here - tops four hours they reckon,” Harris puffed.
Grady’s blood ran cold. Angels ! That was bad news. They were real trouble and Grady knew just how bad, he’d come across them twice in the past, never the target - luckily. They were like malevolent ghosts - in like a bad wind, and out again without a murmur. Some said they were re-animated clones, but Grady knew they were genetically enhanced humans trained from birth. They never failed on a mission, killed their own wounded and never left a trace of themselves behind. Even fully armed and with Shrilla, they were out-gunned and outmatched.
One of the other guards had heard of them too. “Crap ! those guys will kill you if they even think you’re looking at them. You’re not going to want to mess with them, boss. Tie this ‘mute-lover’ to the landing zone and let them take him without us being involved,” he recommended.
“Hmmh ! That’s not a bad idea, but I’m not going to leave him in full sight for the next four hours - throw him in with the mutes, like I said, then we’ll pull him out when they’ve broken through the ‘atmo’ - that will still give us thirty minutes to post him,” he ordered.
Grady was half dragged, half walked to the Logistics blister and as they forced him to collide with the door he deliberately fell inward. He made no attempt to look, or appear a risk or a danger to his captors. He wanted them to think he was manageable.
“On yer feet ‘Angel meat’,” one guard laughingly e-cuffed him and grabbed his arm, while the other two stood back and kept their weapons trained on him. “Search him before he goes in there,” one of them ordered.
“OK, but I get to keep whatever I find,” responded the one that cuffed him.
Grady’s pockets were searched and all they found was his Wiband, it would need to be cut off if they intended to deprive him of that. They decided it wasn’t worth it. “ Let the Angels cut his arm off, it’s not our problem.” They pushed Grady into the back of a large store room where a makeshift cell had been erected. Grady was relieved as the recorder was built into his Wiband. He needed a record of everything that occurred. Neither did they detect the ear-bud that was admittedly pushed deep in his ear almost beyond detection. At least Shrilla knew what was going on even if Grady couldn’t talk to her at the moment. He wondered if she understood the significance of the assassin team on their way in. He hoped so. They had four hours to get out of here and back to the ship.
Normally, Grady thought that prisoners would have been shipped to the research vessel where there were proper cells, but the ‘mutants’ probably weren’t going there on account of possible contamination and Grady wasn’t going to be with them for long enough to go topside either. They were now only interested in keeping him quiet until the Angels arrived.
On the whole the guards were pretty sloppy and it would have been easy to overpower them, but there were more outside and other reinforcements would be speedily available, if Grady understood their patrol system.
“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about our miss
ing patrol would you, mutant lover ?” The boss guard glared at him suspiciously, his aggression seething below the surface. Grady could see he was containing himself in front of his men.
“Nothing whatsoever, ‘boss’. They probably decided to turn native and go swimming,” responded Grady cheekily.
The smack around his head came out of nowhere and sent him sprawling to the ground, the plascrete grazing his hand as he tried to break his fall. A kick sent him over on his back and he strained to breathe as the paralysis from the kick wore off. He looked up at them and smiled.
“The Angels like their victims unmolested, that means no bruises, ass-hole !” Grady ground out through the pain, making more of it than there was in case they felt like adding to his threshold.
“What makes you think I give a fuck what the Angels want, mutant-lover ?”
“Boss, you don’t want to mix with them. Seriously ! They’re fucking bad news all round. I’m not even going to be here when they come. They might decide to raze the camp with us in it for the grell of it, that’s the kind of people they are,” the guard who had prior knowledge of them cut in swiftly.
“What ! You scared, Ballard ? Maybe I will put you on guarding the prisoner when they come for him,” the boss laughed nastily.
“You won’t find me here when they come, you do your own dirty work, boss. I don’t get paid to commit suicide,” Ballard replied.
The boss looked ashen-faced and rounded on Ballard. His temper now clearly evident.
“Ballard, you sonofabitch. You’ll do as I order, or swing for it, understand ?”
Ballard walked out of the cell to go back to his post waving his hand as he went. “Yeah, boss, if you say so,” he said over his shoulder, seemingly completely unafraid of the threats.
“Interesting relationship you lot have going here,” Grady chuckled then coughed as the pain from the hard kick erupted again.
The man just looked at him as if deciding whether or not to finish him off there and then, but then he looked back at the retreating figure of Ballard and his puzzled frown made Grady realise the warning had got through to the thick-headed goon as he seemed to reconsider. The man turned to the two remaining guards who had stood quietly by as if this was a regular event, which it most likely was, Grady thought.
“Shut this mutant lover up and let’s get out of here. I think Ballard might be right we need to clear the decks in case anything goes wrong.” He stormed off after the other guard.
Angels receive update from CNR Persipis captain.
“Leader, I have an incoming message from the Persipis.”
“Put it onto my comms, I’ll take it here.”
Olgar signalled to his officers to join him at his console. They would need to hear the mission updates too.
“Captain Pritchart,” Olgar identified the caller.
The face that looked back was pale, and showed real fear, even at this range the picture was clear. The Angel’s reputation was fearsome, they had ensured it was so - it was good for business.
“I – I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, er, who am I speaking to ?” Pritchart asked nervously, half expecting to be told it wasn’t his business to know. Olgar on the other hand needed people to know him. As leader of the assassins he was their single point of negotiable contact.
“My name is Olgar, you will only know my name, my organisation works best when it remains anonymous,” he responded neutrally.
“Well, Olgar. How can I help you ?”
“You can start by telling us what you know of these targets, and who on your ship, besides yourself, knows anything about them. We might need to talk to them for additional information,” Olgar asked innocently. He intended to know as early as possible how many needed to be taken down on the Persipis.
“I’m the only one besides my comms officer who is monitoring them. He won’t be able to provide anything substantive, he just fields the calls and monitors the airwaves.”
“Good, let’s keep it that way shall we ? It makes our job a lot simpler if we have only one point of information.” Olgar nodded approvingly, they only had one target to neutralise on the ship. Easy.
“So, please give us the run-down on their present location and what they are doing ?”
“Well, that’s the thing, one of them walked into our base camp and we took him prisoner immediately. We have him locked up with some mutes we pulled out of the sea yesterday.”
“Where’s the other one ?” Olgar asked excitedly.
“We think they are near, we picked up life signs a while back, but have lost the trace so they may be using an bio-sign inhibitor.”
“She will try and rescue the other agent,” his SIC interjected off-screen.
Olgar nodded.
“If they do we will capture her too. I have enough men down there to take her down,” the Captain responded.
“Hmmh ! Listen Pritchart, that’s not going to work for us. Give me a moment. Standby,” Olgar muted the comms.
He turned to his SIC. “Frankly, we want them away from the camp otherwise we will have a harder job containing the information. We need to know how many people in the camp know who these people are,” his SIC offered.
The third officer who was also present and very much a junior partner coughed, “Sir, we need to let the woman rescue the man, then take them both out when they leave the camp.”
“What about the men who were involved in the agent’s capture ?” the SIC asked.
The third officer was ready for that too. “They could have an accident away from the camp ?”
Olgar agreed. “That would be the preferred solution. I’m alright about wiping out the camp with a missile, but it would raise ugly questions and I want to keep it as clean as possible, just in case we have to take out anything major like the parent ship. Still, I think I know what to do here.”
He re-opened the comms to Pritchart. “Here’s what you’re going to do.”
Chapter Seventeen
Straight From the Melting Pot
Grady turned to look at back of the cage. He found himself facing a crowd of mutants who were viewing him with considerable animosity. Grady realised that to them he must represent the people that were attacking and killing them and they were not able to differentiate between him and their mutual enemies.
They began creeping forward, their hands still shackled with their e-cuffs.
Grady spoke to Shrilla,
“Are you getting all this ? Do we have a Plan B ?”
Shrilla laughed grimly. “I can’t get anywhere near you at the moment. They’ve congregated outside and there’s some kind of conference going on with a comms unit.”
Grady couldn’t respond. He was already moving to one corner of the cage to provide himself with more of a defensive position. They could only attack him from the front now which meant he had more of a chance of protecting himself from real harm.
They looked menacing, and Grady wondered just how this was going to go down. They had the numbers, but not much else, their hands were e-cuffed like his. The first one was about to reach him, but the e-cuffs registered his heightened aggression and assuming it represented an attack on the guards, or an escape attempt and automatically stunned him to his knees. The others drew away from him, but remained close. Their aggression levels, though still raised, were curbed at the sight of their fellow attacker’s semi-conscious body on the floor.
This reminded Grady of his own predicament. He squatted down and pressed the e-cuffs against the heel of his shoe activating the black market neutraliser he’d hidden there, one of his illicit purchases from the Rift. The red light died and they sprung loose. His hands now free, he opened his arms to flex them a little to intimidate the mutants visually. He could handle them if they didn’t come at him too fast, he thought - maybe.
As they closed in again Grady sensed a commotion behind them and a lot of clicking ensued. He remembered the beach. This was definitely sophisticated comm
unication, but on a level humans had never attempted. The sea of bodies parted and a muscular young man pressed to the front and turning away from Grady, pushed the others back. The clicking continued and now Grady could see the throats of four or five of the males articulating the sounds. The one that had pushed them away turned to Grady. The man’s face looked vaguely familiar.
“You killed off-landers,” he accused him in stilted Standard.
Grady looked at him and realised he was one of the men rescued from the beach. He hadn’t stayed free for long, he thought.
“They were bad men,” Grady replied. “They don’t represent my people, just other bad men,” he explained wanting to differentiate between him and the ‘off-landers’ the mutant was referring to.
“We know, friend not here ?” he enquired looking around for Shrilla.
“No, my friend is outside waiting to help us escape,” Grady replied. “If they don’t kill me first,” he chuckled indicating the other mutants still milling around behind their leader.
“You not ‘en’Traech’, not be harmed. I have told.” He gestured, indicating the group.
“Thank you, I see you got re-captured. How did that happen so soon ?” Grady enquired.
“I come to rescue my people. Lead them home,” the mutant offered by way of explanation.
“I see. You have a plan to leave here, then ?”
“No, but will die before allow off-landers to take our people.” The mutant was clicking with the others in between talking to Grady who thought maybe that their conversation was being translated.
Grady took off his shoe and defused the mutant leader’s e-cuffs, then showed him how to do the others. While his shoe was being passed around unlocking their cuffs, Grady took the opportunity to suage his curiosity.
I’m called ‘Grady’ what’s your name ?”
“Off-landers call me Kraell, given name not possible to translate in Standard.”
“It’s very impressive, how do you talk using throat clicks, who taught you to do that ?”
The mutant looked puzzled. “I learned your ‘Standard’ to speak with off-landers so I can say to leave and not return to Ekte,” Kraell replied.