Fast nodded. “This’ll be Humberto’s office?”
Makaffie nodded. “Process of elimination says so. There were just the three scientists on this hulk. And their devotees.”
Grumbling in the background, Wild Man mumbled something that sounded to Fast like, “I’ll ask.”
“Ask what?” Fast whispered as they moved toward the last office door in the corridor.
“Thought we were gonna kill Savages,” the big man replied.
Makaffie gave a knowing smile. “Be glad you haven’t had to yet. I hope it stays that way.” He looked down at the motion screen. The only blips on the display belonged to Echo Squad. “So far… so good.”
They moved in a tactical formation to the final office door. The only sounds to be heard were their rapid, purposeful steps against the metal decking and the oomp, oomp, oomp of the motion sensor.
Fast remained on point. As he approached the door—which was much larger and more durable-looking than the two previous—his eye caught a series of bullet holes on the wall opposite the door. The thick acrylic had spider-webbed where bullets had struck it, shattering in some places and spilling out soil and vegetation onto the deck. The effect was a barren dead spot in the otherwise lush tropical biome. Long, ivy-like vines had stretched across the decking, as if they had grown until turning brown and red from a lack of water—the ruptured section had probably lost its ability to retain moisture, and the plant’s growth was stymied as it ventured onto the deck.
“Some fighting happened here,” said James, stating the obvious.
His younger brother knelt and moved his hand over a stained section of decking. “Wasn’t just against plants, either. Looks like old bloodstains. It goes on up the corridor, see?”
“Or you’re imagining things,” said Kimbo.
“Someone was shooting at something.”
Fast shook his head. He looked to Makaffie, who was considering the blood, chewing on his lower lip. Lost in thought.
“All right, Echo Squad, we’ll—”
A thud sounded somewhere far away in the ship. General Rechs came back on the comms. His voice sounded weak and distant. “We’re about to begin the main assault, Makaffie. Are you in position?”
“Just about, Tyrus.”
Echo Squad exchanged a can-you-believe-this-guy look. Who called the old man “Tyrus”? His own mother probably called him sir.
“Pick it up,” Rechs growled. “We’re about to breach. Command out.”
“Well,” Makaffie said, his eyes wide in mock surprise, “I guess that means it’s time to see what’s on the other side of this door.”
Rather than waiting for the team to stack and breach, Makaffie simply pressed the switch and stood dead-center as the two heavy doors slid apart.
“Echo Squad,” hissed a clearly annoyed Sergeant Fast. “Go!”
The team stormed the room, N-1 rifles dragging white beams of light through the red glow of the emergency diodes. There was a tinkling of spent brass cartridges as they pushed inside, but no signs of life.
Fast moved straight ahead to a desk that matched the one he’d found in the previous office. Glass top, futuristic in the old and corny style of those who’d first begun to jump across the galaxy. He found Humberto right away. The man had a revolver in his hand and a gaping hole in his head, which lay on the desk amid a grisly scene of suicidal carnage that had long since dried up and become a permanent fixture.
“Office is clear,” Fast called.
“Hey, Sergeant.” It was Kimbo. “Get a look at this.”
Fast turned and saw a pair of mounted automated machine guns just inside the doorway, positioned to give converging fields of fire at whatever might come through. The spent brass they’d trudged through in storming the room clearly had been expelled by these stationary weapons.
“Explains those bullet holes outside,” said James.
“Yeah, explains those bullet holes,” confirmed his younger brother. “Glad these weren’t still on.”
“They’re powered by a separate circuit,” Makaffie said as he stepped across the threshold and into the office. “Part of a security package that—”
He was interrupted by the sound of his own motion device. Its oomp, oomp, oomp that had become part of the background noise was now a ting, ting, ting. And somewhere, deeper in the office, behind another set of doors, a new blip of motion had registered.
Legionnaires: Chapter Fifteen
Staged outside the door leading from Humberto’s office, Sergeant Fast motioned for Kimbo to get into breaching position. He looked to Makaffie, who stood just outside the doorway, next to the sentry machine guns. “What are we dealing with?” asked the sergeant. “How many?”
Something was on the other side of the door, and other than what they could imagine based on the fact they were aboard a Savage mini-hulk, the Legion candidates didn’t know exactly what.
“Just the one, still,” Makaffie said as his motion sensor tinged. He was beginning to sweat. Looking over his shoulder despite the lack of a sensor reading behind the group. Like he expected trouble to come from back there, even if his device said there was nothing to be found. “It’s moving, but in one place. Like… I dunno, rocking back and forth.”
“I take it that we need to get to the other side of this door whether you sense movement or not,” said Sergeant Fast.
Makaffie nodded. “That’s right. Humberto ran the brain of this ship. Handled the research lab and then later the… the experiments. His office leads to the control room, central computer, navigation, and piloting stations, plus the lab. Everything else is just living space for the people who paid to make it happen.”
“None of this is making sense to me,” James said, shaking his head.
“You hear that?” asked Randolph.
The team, having already been whispering, quieted down. The lab door was thick, dense enough that conversations should stay on the other side. But Sergeant Fast did hear something.
“It’s like some kind of… clicking.”
Wild Man looked up at the ceiling. There was a brushed-nickel air diffuser directly above them. “It’s coming from the vents. Carryin’ the sound.”
Everyone looked up. The vent barked its clicks. Steady. Rhythmic.
“All right, let’s see what we’re dealing with,” Sergeant Fast finally said. “You got a way to open this door, or do we need to blow it?”
“It’ll open,” Makaffie said. He stooped and picked up a lanyard with some kind of passkey card that looked to have fallen from the long-dead Humberto’s hand. “Use this.” He flung the card side-arm, its yellow string tail fluttering behind it.
Fast caught it out of the air and handed it to Kimbo. “Slide it into that slot.”
Kimbo pushed the card in. Everyone tensed, ready for the door to open. It didn’t.
Kimbo let out a sigh. “Doesn’t work, man.”
“Flip it over and try again,” said Fast.
“For real?”
“I got a little familiar with old tech before I got caught up in playing soldier. It’s… finicky.”
Kimbo pulled the card out, flipped it over, and reinserted. A green light lit up and the door began to open, pulling apart with a protesting creak from being sealed for what may have been decades… centuries even.
From the other side, the clicking grew louder. More pronounced.
As soon as the doors pulled open wide enough, Fast ordered, “Go!”
Wild Man pushed himself through, then the brothers, then Kimbo, and lastly the sergeant. He entered the room and found all of his squad standing at ease, staring at an interior corner, their heads tilted up.
The clicking sound was coming from that direction. Fast quickly confirmed that the rest of the room was secure.
They had stepped into some sort of decontamination bay. Large
glass walls and doors lay ahead, revealing a darkened room. Its only light came from hundreds of glowing buttons at workstations.
Satisfied of their safety, Fast inspected the source of the noise. It was a fifty-caliber machine gun suspended from the corner ceiling by a rod. Its barrel swept back and forth, covering the entirety of the room as its pin dry-fired repeatedly.
Click-click-click-click-click. A full-auto tool with no ammunition—thankfully. Fast could see a belt hanging limply from a cavity in the ceiling, drooping down like some constricting snake from a jungle treetop. It must’ve gotten loose over the years and fallen out of the feeder.
Fast turned and saw a matching defensive setup in the opposite corner. This one had its belt still fed into the weapon. But it wasn’t moving.
“Must’ve been a bad wiring job,” Makaffie said over comm, remaining outside in Humberto’s office. “Probably came back online with the low-level emergency power I had you switch back on. That’s a no-no.”
“Echo Four, disable both of these,” Fast said.
“On it, Sergeant.”
The Legion candidate went to work bringing the weapons down, joined by his squadmates.
Tyrus Rechs’s voice returned. “Beginning main assault. Over.”
Sergeant Fast passed the info on to his squad, then motioned for Makaffie to join him. In the distance, a boom sounded. Fast’s ears strained for sounds of battle, but evidently the main hangar where the assault was happening was too far away, even in the relatively modest-sized mini-hulk.
“Did you make contact?” Makaffie asked Rechs over the comm.
“Negative. Main hangar is empty. Pushing up. Have you got access to the system?”
“Working on that now, Tyrus. Five minutes.”
Makaffie moved to the glass wall that looked out into the darkened lab and control room. The area beyond was swimming in shadow, its dimensions and architecture only faintly hinted at by the dim, pulsing flash of long-unused consoles that flickered in a coded language of their own.
The enigmatic soldier-turned-Legion-scientist leaned closer to the glass, squinting. “That’s odd.”
“What’s odd?” Fast asked, trying to look past the glare of his flashlight as it shone against the glass and sent its shaft into blackness. His face was inches away from the partition.
“I thought I saw something. Way back.” Makaffie inspected his motion sensor. It was giving off its oomp, but it identified nothing moving beyond the door.
“Out of the sensor’s range?”
“Maybe. Tough to tell in the black. It looked like… well. Never mind.”
Kimbo stepped forward. “Guns are disabled, Sergeant.”
“Good,” Fast said, eyeing Makaffie. He wanted the man to give them a heads-up about what he was expecting to see. His evasions were more worrying than him just coming out and telling them what they might be up against. “We’re set to secure the next room.”
Kimbo used the same key card that had opened the door from Humberto’s office. The thick glass doors parted, letting in an electronic hum from the numerous essential devices still drawing power from the mini-hulk’s core.
Computers and consoles were set up in rows, with swivel chairs bolted to the floor beside them. Echo Squad moved down the three steps that led into the sunken pit that was the control room and then split apart into two-man teams. Each team moved along one of the three walkways, moving parallel, separated by the rows of workstations between them.
Behind them, Makaffie moved slowly, his eyes fixed on the motion sensor screen which lit his face a ghostly white. He’d set it to ignore the motion of Echo Squad and was listening to the oomp, oomp, oomp of it searching out hostile elements. It was a sound of safety. A promise that they remained alone in the dark.
A rustling in front of Makaffie caused the man to look up. Sergeant Fast and the rest of the team had taken knees. Fast’s fist was raised in the air. Their lights were sweeping the far end of the lab and control area, looking wide and weak because of the distance. Big, oblong shadows of the consoles in between them and their point of search stretched out along the walls.
“What?” Makaffie whispered into the comm.
Sergeant Fast’s voice was utterly calm. “Saw something move behind those tower things ahead. Just got a glimpse.”
“Those tower things,” Makaffie said, “are meant for splicing genomes.”
The comforting oomp emanating from Makaffie’s hands gave a short-lived ting as a blip appeared on the edge of the screen. It faded almost as soon as it arrived.
Feeling a fear that seemed to deaden his legs, Makaffie edged forward. Another ting, and then nothing. Then two tings.
“Somethin’s in here with us, Sergeant,” said James.
“Need to know what we’re dealing with here, Makaffie,” Fast said over his shoulder. “Other than Savage.”
“I don’t—we don’t know. Not exactly. A hybrid. Human and animal. Savage records are hard to come by and even harder to understand in some cases. But… this group wanted to find the way to achieve harmony with animals. With their pets, specifically. Wanted to be able to communicate. Telepathically or whatever. That led to—I mean, I think it led to—some genetic experimentation which got out of hand and led to a loss of sentience. Whatever is still alive on this ship—it’s not human. It used to be, but it’s not. It’ll be feral and wild. But an N-1 should put it down.”
“So… monster hunting?” Kimbo said. “That sounds fun.”
“Can you get the lights on in here?” Fast asked. “Maybe that’ll scare ’em away.”
“Hang on.” Makaffie moved to a console and begin to type. “Come on…”
The screen flickered and pulsed, like it was having difficulty powering on. Finally, the words “Aja Enterprises” appeared on the screen, and Makaffie intuitively worked his way through the system from there.
“Okay. I’m taking this a little bit at a time. Just gonna try and bring on the lowest power suite beyond emergency lighting. Should just activate lights and a few essential systems.”
Overhead fixtures began to hum, and soon the lab was bathed in a sterile, industrial white light.
“Going to try and bring on more systems. Get an idea of what’s going on.”
Fast nodded, blinking away the newfound brightness as his eyes adjusted. “Let’s go see what’s hiding back there, Echo Squad.”
They fanned out so they were capable of sending fire at anything in front of them across the entirety of the elongated room. There was a scurrying sound ahead of them, just behind the large genome towers, which stretched from floor to ceiling and looked like columns dividing the control room from the more lab-like sections. Small, sealed modular rooms, mobile base cabinets, numerous high-capacity venting hoods… everything back there looked very scientific. And wrecked. Cabinets were overturned, with papers and shattered glass covering the floor.
A crash sounded from that area, and one of the overhead lights went out, its hood swinging as if something had battered it. That was followed by another crash, like a table falling over and spilling its contents to the floor.
Echo Squad paused at the genome towers. There was yet another crash, and more lights went off further ahead.
“It’s trying to get back into the dark,” Wild Man said.
Fast shook his head. This wasn’t what he’d been mentally preparing himself for. He’d figured this would be a typical combat encounter—tactics, maneuvering, the exchange of weapons fire… but no. This was more like being stalked through some pristine jungle by a local apex predator. Trying to keep his crew alive long enough to finish the job and get paid.
Fast put his back against one of the genome towers and killed the light on the shoulder-mounted camera. He motioned for his squad to take firing positions behind the cover of some consoles. “I’m gonna take a look.”
Echo S
quad hustled into position, N-1s ready for anything that might try to flank around the towers and go after their sergeant from behind.
Sergeant Fast leaned around the corner, slowly exposing his head as the ruined lab came into view. That part of the room was darker, but still light enough to for him to see… it.
It had pale, wet-looking flesh. Naked except for a wild and matted mane that tufted from its head and carried down to the base of its neck. It stood on all fours. And it was big. As high as a man’s chest when measured claw to shoulders. Its shriveled human-like breasts, one set on its chest and another lower, at the end of its ribs, marked it as female. A fleshy tail swept behind its hindquarters.
“What the hell…” Fast peered hard into the shadows.
The thing had its face turned away, but it froze as if sensing that Fast was watching, then turned toward him.
What the sergeant saw was an abomination. The face was shaped like a woman’s, with large coal-black eyes and high cheekbones. But its nostrils were mere slits that puffed open and then sealed shut with every inhalation of air. And when the eyes locked on the sergeant, it opened its mouth—seemingly unhinging its jaw—to reveal a mouthful of crooked and decayed teeth. A combination of predatory canines that looked capable of tearing flesh and breaking bone, and twisted incisors that looked all too human.
The thing reoriented itself, squaring its shoulders so it faced the sergeant, making itself a smaller target, and backed away slowly on all fours, never removing its gaze from Fast.
Then it opened its mouth and screamed.
It wasn’t a bestial scream like that of a lion or wolf. But the high, shrill, bloodcurdling cry of a human female. It echoed across the lab. Then sounded again.
Fast felt some primal fear tug at his insides. Part of him wanted to shoot the dreaded thing, but the scream made him feel as though he ought to… help it. Save it.
It screamed once more and then turned and loped out of sight.
“What the hell was that, Sergeant?” asked Kimbo, moving up and joining him. “Was that… was that a woman?”
Gods & Legionnaires (Galaxy's Edge: Savage Wars Book 2) Page 40