“Just because it looks like a human, it doesn’t mean it is one,” Erik replied, his voice tight. “We learned that on Venus.”
The team pointed their weapons at the tank. A sustained barrage from twelve exoskeletons would be lethal to anything remotely human, if anyone who worked in the building could be called that. Jia had her doubts, regardless of how pure their DNA was. Being human was about more than having forty-six Homo sapiens chromosomes. She wasn’t so sure if the people creating the yaoguai weren’t more monstrous than their beasts.
“I’m going to give you one chance,” Erik announced. “Come out with your hands up. If you don’t do it, in ten seconds, we’re going to assume you’re hostile and send you to join all the yaoguai that tried to eat us outside.
“Don’t shoot!” screamed a distinctly human male voice. Two pale hands rose over the tank, followed by a thin, wizened man. He wore a white uniform with a design Jia didn’t recognize.
Jia didn’t normally think that anyone had to get rejuvenation, but the barely flesh-wrapped skeleton in front of them needed it. Her stomach tightened at the possibility he could be another half-Leem hybrid.
“Come out slowly,” Erik replied. “Or you’ll end up with a lot of new holes. What’s left of you, anyway. Trust me, after what we’ve gone through to get here, we’re not in a forgiving mood.”
The man stepped in front of the tank, his hands still up. “I surrender. My name is Doctor Vincke. You’ll want to take me alive. I can give you useful intelligence. That’s why you’re here, right?”
“Oh, can you now?” Erik chuckled. “Where’s that conspiracy loyalty? Those Ascended Brotherhood bastards fried themselves rather than let us get anything from them. That alien hybrid on Venus was willing to try to take us with him, and here you are, ready to surrender. Man, I guess they’re hiring the bottom of the barrel now.”
Vincke sighed, sounding more annoyed than upset. “I didn’t think you would survive the test subjects. You were more resourceful and adaptive than anticipated.”
“So, you’re the one who sent those monsters after us?” Erik chuckled. “You’ve got to understand that didn’t endear you to us, but we’re not here to take prisoners. Give me a reason not to waste you right now.”
“You’d kill me in cold blood?” Vincke sounded impressed.
“I don’t know if it counts as killing you in cold blood after you admitted to sending a horde of damned monsters after us,” growled Erik.
“It was nothing personal. I don’t even know who you are.” Vincke’s face contorted. “May I lower my arms? They’re starting to hurt.”
“Okay, fine,” Erik replied. “But if you try anything, I’ll add some new holes to your face. I’m still waiting to hear why we should waste our time with you.”
Vincke lowered his arms. He took a moment to rub his shoulders before responding. “I don’t know who you are, but obviously, you’re either with the ID or the DD. I know both of those little government agencies are interested in my employers. That alone should be enough.”
Erik nodded to Jia. They might not be police officers, but good cop, bad cop was always useful.
“He’s right,” Jia explained softly, faking a smile. “Our orders are to recover a kidnapped man. Nazeer Ahmed.”
There was no reason to explain the part where they were only supposed to take down people who resisted. She wasn’t sure Colonel Adeyemi would care if someone like Vincke was killed.
But the man was right. They needed intel, and this was one of the first times they’d encountered someone who might be able to willingly provide it without an autopsy or a post-death PNIU hack.
“Kidnapped man?” Vincke cocked his head. “Ah, yes. I vaguely remember something about that.” He laughed. “You have to understand operations isn’t my area, but if you let me live, I’ll be more than happy to help you.”
When he reached for his ear, Erik barked, “Hands back up, or you’re dead.”
Vincke’s arms shot toward the ceiling. “My ear itches.”
“Too damned bad,” Erik growled. “You should be happy we weren’t so trigger happy that we took you out the minute we got here.”
“Calm down already,” Vincke replied. “Your bloodthirst is quite unbecoming.”
For a man with six exoskeletons pointing weapons at him, he was remarkably calm. His smug sneer didn’t fit either his words or the mood of the room. Some people didn’t understand the situation they were in until it was too late.
“I am calm,” Erik offered, his voice cold. “Now tell us where he is.”
“I can’t do that. It’s too difficult to explain. I’ll have to show you.”
“No.” Erik scoffed. “Here’s how this is going to work. I’m going to put binding ties on you while the other five people with me point heavy exo rifles at you. If you try anything, first I’ll kick your ass. If it turns out you’re a mutant freak and manage to knock me away, they’ll shred you until you’re nothing but a pile of jigsaw puzzle pieces. Understand?”
Vincke wrinkled his nose in disgust. “You’re a barbarian.”
“I’ve been called a lot worse.” Erik shot him a bright smile. “But you didn’t answer the question. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” Vincke replied haughtily. “It’s you who don’t understand. I’m the one jamming, so I took measures to make sure I could still do what I needed in that kind of environment.”
“You are ab—"
He snapped his fingers and dropped with mocking laughter. Something loud clanged, and his laughter stopped.
Jia moved to the side to get a better angle on where Vincke had been standing. She shifted to thermal mode. Slight temp differentials surrounded a large portion of the floor.
“Door in the floor,” she explained. “Must be a hidden elevator.”
“Bastard,” Erik ground out.
Emma’s hologram appeared, and she pointed toward the IO port. “He won’t be able to do much if I control the facility.”
“Let’s just blow a hole in the ground and go after him,” suggested one of the soldiers.
A harsh grinding noise sounded from above as portions of the ceiling retracted to reveal multiple large opaque tubes. A foreboding mixture of loud droning, buzzing, and skittering echoed from the tubes.
Erik raised his gun. “We should have just dropped a cruise missile on this damned place.”
Chapter Nineteen
Explosions outside rattled the building. Vincke must have thrown the yaoguai gates open for both squads, but the squad inside needed to handle their own problems.
Alpha Squad waited, their weapons trained at the tubes in the ceiling. Whatever was coming at them wouldn’t be as large as the demon rhinos, but the squad had already gone through a lot of ammo. Erik didn’t want it to come down to them getting out of their exos and using their backup rifles.
They wouldn’t last long.
New yaoguai erupted from the tubes, an unholy mix of a giant bee and tailless scorpion about the size of a large cat. They were fast, spiraling toward the squad before the first exo took a shot. The rife round penetrated two of the scorpion bees, splashing their nearby friends with dull green fluid.
At least these weren’t bulletproof.
The squad continued firing. Their combined targeting blasted the emerging scorpion bees into a fine paste, but the creatures continued boiling out of the tubes and flying toward the humans. Sheer quantity allowed some of the yaoguai to escape the initial onslaught and draw close, their pinchers snapping and eager for human flesh.
Without being told, Alpha Five took up Jia’s cleanup role from the dire wolf fight. He concentrated on downing any monsters that got closer than three meters. The other combatants directed their weapons fire at the different tubes. Less-concentrated fire didn’t produce spectacular kills, but it reduced the number of scorpion bees that made it close to the team and gave Alpha Five more time to line up shots.
Erik glanced at a side readout. If they’d co
me equipped with the standard ammo loadouts, they would have already run dry. Everyone but Jia had dropped below fifty percent rifle rounds, but they had preserved a good chunk of their explosives.
Monster parts dropped from the sky, wings, bodies, and pincers. The steady thump of the disgusting rain added a rhythmic counterpoint to the rifle fire echoing through the large room and the constant buzz of the yaoguai’s wings.
Erik adjusted the timer and launched a frag grenade. It exploded near the tubes, the shrapnel and blast taking down four scorpion bees at once—overkill on pest control.
“Mix in a frag every five or ten shots,” he bellowed. “Stagger them. Save all your plasmas in case there are more of those demon rhinos in this place.”
The team hadn’t bothered to bring stun grenades, but when Erik caught up with Dr. Vincke, he was going to take the bastard back for interrogation even if it meant shooting out his knees.
Jia launched a grenade next. It exploded at the top of its arc, killing a group of the scorpion bees and pushing the others into an unstable flight path that made it easier for the other soldiers to pick them off.
Erik’s conscious mind receded as the squad fell into a rhythm, firing bullets and occasional grenades. Jia and some of the soldiers tried to end the problem by getting a grenade into the tubes proper. The resulting explosions tore new holes in the tubes but didn’t staunch the flow of creatures.
Mounds of dead scorpion bees grew all around the room, some of the creatures twitching in the last seconds of their deaths.
For all the slaughter around them, Erik could only imagine what would have happened if the conspiracy had stuffed a couple hundred of the scorpion bees into a cargo flitter and released them in a city.
The conspiracy had already proven aiding terrorists was trivial. Their efforts in Neo SoCal, Chang’e City, and Parvati indicated no potential body count was too high.
The incessant buzzing quieted and the gush of monsters slowed to a trickle, now easy to pick off with careful shots. Erik’s squad’s gunfire died down as everyone waited for the final monster to appear.
When a minute had passed without another monster, Erik was confident they had won, but not that anything was over.
The explosions outside had also died down, but that could mean Beta Squad had been defeated. They had to do something about the jamming. If they couldn’t locate and blow up the equipment directly, they would have to rely on another form of electronic warfare.
Erik jogged forward, scorpion bees crunching under the feet of his exoskeleton on his way to the IO port. He kicked a couple out of the way. “The bastard was trying to stall us. It doesn’t matter if he’s got a plane or flitter because we’ve got external eyes on this place. If he goes anywhere, we’ll know, and I’m sure Adeyemi will shoot down anything that gets away.” He had to double back after a bad choice for a shortcut. “Or at least anything flying that’s not us.”
He rechecked the squad’s status. No significant vital sign disruptions to the exoskeletons, but they were down to twenty-five percent for the rifles and no frag grenades. The remaining grenades were plasmas. Queen Jia of the Kingdom of Ammo Efficiency was doing the best, with thirty-three percent of her original ammo remaining.
Erik stopped in front of the IO port, then pulled his arm out of the exoskeleton to remove Emma’s core matrix from the port in his exo and insert it into the wall.
Emma projected a hologram of her wearing the same white uniform as Vincke. “This security is incredibly sophisticated. It’ll take me some time to gain control.”
“What about the door from earlier?” Jia asked. “Can you at least open that?”
“Give me a moment,” Emma replied. “I’ll prioritize it.” She snickered. “Things are much easier when I don’t have to care about who knows or what I might break.”
“Should someone check on Beta Squad?” Jia asked.
“No.” Erik shook his head. “They have their job, and we have ours. Everything about this feels like a big stall, and I want to make sure someone is watching out for our LZ if we run dry and have to get the hell out of here.”
“Ah!” Emma curtsied. “Our good doctor was sloppy. In a sense, he left the door open electronically. Learn this, Dr. Vincke: I exceed the capabilities of mere fleshbags.”
Scorpion bee parts tumbled down as a large panel in the floor pulled back in near-silence. Erik had been expecting some small elevator. The opening revealed an angled ramp and a winding corridor. Scorpion bee bodies rolled down the gentle incline.
“Let’s go,” Erik ordered.
“Wait,” Jia replied.
“What?”
Jia nodded at the IO port. “Emma doesn’t have control. If we leave her alone here before she’s established control, she’ll be vulnerable.”
“Damn it. And they could be watching,” Erik growled. “Emma, how long is this going to take?”
“I’m unsure,” Emma replied, annoyance in her voice. “The system is sophisticated, and they obviously understood the potential threat of this type of attack. I’ll prioritize door, camera, and jammer control when I locate the relevant systems.”
“We could wait,” Jia suggested. “I think if they had more of those flying things to throw at us, they would have.”
“We can’t wait around. They might kill the informant if he’s still alive, or they could be opening other tanks to release crap like giant toads that explode in clouds of acid.”
Jia winced. “How many monsters could they possibly have here?”
“Enough. We need to make our move.” Erik turned his exo toward the tunnel. “Alpha Four and Five. You stay here and guard Emma. If you get overwhelmed, yank her out, run out the back, make for the front and throw up the flare. Understood? Alpha Three and Six, you’re with us.”
The soldier nodded. “Yes, sir. You think the four of us will be enough?”
“We still need to find the informant, capture or kill that bastard, and get out of here alive,” Erik replied. “If the conspiracy gets their hands on Emma, none of this will be worth it. She’s more valuable than ten informants.”
Erik stepped into the tunnel. “It’s time for these bastards to stop stalling.”
Chapter Twenty
Many cultures told legends or myths of advanced beings who lived in the clouds.
When Jia was a little girl and looked out the windows of her residential tower, she couldn’t help but feel like one of those beings of legend. She lived in Neo Southern California, the greatest metroplex in the entire United Terran Confederation. It was a near-mythical land of massive towers that reached into the sky, where only the best and most honorable people lived.
Adulthood had disabused her of some of her fanciful childhood beliefs about what it meant to be an Uptowner in Neo SoCal, but it had not freed her from her dislike of subterranean tunnels.
As far as she was concerned, they were the realm of maintenance bots and yaoguai.
The narrow tunnel currently hosting the sub-squad didn’t allow them to march side by side, but there was at least enough space that Erik and Jia could both fire at one target if they were ambushed. She tried not to think about what new horrors might await them.
She’d gone from being an immortal living in the clouds to a heroine stepping into a dungeon filled with the most twisted demonic monsters created by man.
No one spoke as they headed down the tunnel at a quick but not too fast pace. They were all doing what Jia was, listening for yaoguai, drones, roars, growls, or odd scratching and skittering—anything that would give them precious seconds of warning.
They arrived at the bottom of the tunnel. A wide door blocked further passage. There was no obvious access panel.
“Emma, can you open it for us?” Erik asked.
There was no response. Jia wasn’t surprised. She’d been honest about having trouble, which meant it was probably harder than she’d let on.
“For all we know, they’ve got escape tunnels that stretch for kilometers,”
Jia suggested. “Those first yaoguai came from a lot closer than the mansion.”
“True, but he might just be holed up in here, waiting for reinforcements,” Erik backed away from the door. “I don’t want to wait to find out. Alpha Six, it’s knocking time again.”
“Yes, sir,” the soldier shouted, moving his exo forward but keeping a healthy distance from the door. He waited for the other squad members to move to either side, leaving no one directly behind him. “Backblast area clear!”
A rocket screamed away from his launcher and exploded against the door. Flaming pieces bounced off the exos’ ballistic shields and clattered to the ground. Smoke swirled up, darkening the small area. The door was cracked but not down.
Two more rockets did the trick, leaving the burning wreckage of what had once been a doorway and choking smoke.
Rockets, the ultimate skeleton keys.
Erik advanced past Alpha Six through the smoke. Jia and the other two soldiers fell in behind him.
“Are the conspiracy secretly mole people?” Jia grumbled. “This place is starting to annoy me.”
“Only starting to?” Erik asked.
They entered a vast cavern that dwarfed the rooms above. Her initial impressions suggested it could have fit a good chunk of the entire mansion. Huge doors lay on the opposite end of the cavern, most likely hangars or garages for vehicles, but that was the least disturbing part of the room.
Row after row of open silver gestation tanks filled half the cavern. Tubing ran from the tanks through the grated floor into the darkness below. The other half of the chamber was a series of transparent sealed metal box pens separated into different sizes. Bones littered many of the pens. Jia hoped none were human, but she doubted it.
“Huh,” Alpha Six offered. “It’s empty. They must have emptied those to throw at us. Sent ‘em through those doors over there.” He looked around. “They must lead to the surface.”
“Vincke isn’t going to try to escape on foot.” Jia frowned, surveying the area using different modes. There were all sorts of fading but recent thermal traces that lent credence to Alpha Six’s theory.
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