Vendetta: A Near Future Thriller (Forsaken Mercenary Book 4)

by Jonathan Yanez

  Despite the wheel finally beginning to obey our commands, the dropship was coming in too hard to call it a smooth landing. The nose of the craft obliterated the first sand dune we came in contact with.

  Whoever thinks sand is soft hasn’t hit it doing a hundred miles an hour plus in a dropship with no way to stop.

  I didn’t remember much about the landing besides being jostled so violently in my seat that my skull felt like a bobblehead.

  The dropship skidded for what felt like an eternity until one big son of a gun of a sand dune stopped our progress like we hit a brick wall.

  I was jerked forward in my seat then slammed backward. The back of my head bounced off the headrest of the copilot’s seat so hard, I saw stars.

  I sat groggy in my seat once we came to our final stop. The pilot’s cabin was dark. The window in front of us covered in a mountain of sand.

  I looked at Wesley who still gripped the steering wheel in both hands. I would have thought it was funny, but the smell of fuel hit my nose like a wake-up call.

  “We got to get out of here,” I said, unbuckling myself. “Fuel leak, and those engines were on fire.”

  “Right,” Wesley said, the sound of my voice breaking him out of his momentary trance. “We need to get word to Immortal Corp. If they want to silence us, then we can bet the corporation is next.”

  My mind went to Jax, Angel, and Preacher. The first two I was confident could handle themselves, but Preacher was weak and his healing factor had been nullified by the Voy. If the Galactic Government went after him, he’d be an easy target.

  “This is Wesley Cage, do you read?” Wesley shouted into his earpiece.

  Remembering that the exits to the ship were locked, I looked for an alternate means of escape. The window in front of us was covered in sand. How much sand I wasn’t sure, but the glass was already cracking from the intensity of the impact.

  I drew my MK II, taking aim at the corner of the window. I turned my face to avoid being impaled by any glass shards.

  “Immortal Corp, this is Wesley Cage,” Wesley shouted into his earpiece again as he moved into the dropship’s seating area. “Does anyone read me?”

  Three short bursts and the glass shattered spilling gallons of sand into the pilot’s cabin. A fist-sized glimpse of the night sky rewarded my efforts. Our exit appeared in the upper left hand corner of the window over where Wesley had sat.

  I climbed up on the seat, digging a hole large enough for us to escape.

  With a grunt, I pulled myself up and out of the downed craft. The cold night air hit me like a slap in the face. I didn’t realize how much I was sweating until the chill of the night combated the heat on my face.

  One look around told me how easily we had gotten off. The damage to the dropship was unbelievable. A deep trench in the sand as far as I could see showed where we had taxied in.

  The engines were still on fire as black plumes of smoke ascended to the heavens. I could barely make out Athena a few kilometers to the south as the metropolis slept, oblivious and probably uncaring of how close we had come to dying.

  I reached down to help Wesley out. If I thought his expression looked glum before, I was wrong. Wesley Cage’s face was etched with concern. It was like he had somehow aged ten years right before me. The wrinkles he earned looked deeper, his movements a bit slower.

  “There’s no response from Immortal Corp,” Wesley said as we moved down the sand dune together. “I’ll try the back channel next, but we have to get out of here. The Galactic Government won’t deal in half measures like this. They’ll send a cleanup crew Probably a squad of Shadow Praetorians.”

  I didn’t need any convincing.

  “Use my jacket to cover our tracks,” Wesley said, shrugging off his coat. “I’m going to make sure the GG thinks we’re dead.”

  I accepted the offered coat, dusting the tracks we left in the sand. I was about to ask Wesley how he planned on faking our deaths when the answer became immediately apparent.

  Wesley produced his lighter from his inside jacket pocket, lit the flame, and tossed it toward the dropship. The flame landed in a puddle of fuel and went up in a roar.

  I felt the explosion in my chest as heat licked my face and hands. A ball of fire shot upwards.

  “If the GG didn’t know where you landed, they know now,” X said out loud. “You’ve got to move. They’ll be here in minutes.”

  Six

  Five Days Until the Voy Invasion

  “She’s right, let’s move,” Wesley said, taking a route that would lead us deeper into the desert. “X, I’m going to transmit the channel that’s an emergency back line for Immortal Corp for you to pick up. This is where we’ll communicate from now on. We can’t risk using the public channel anymore.”

  We took off at a jog with Wesley on the comm line to Immortal Corp’s secure back channel.

  “Does anyone read?” Wesley asked every few minutes. “This is Wesley Cage. We’re alive. If you can hear me, the Galactic Government is trying to bottle the Voy Invasion. We were wrong in going to them. I repeat, find somewhere to hole up.”

  Anyone who has ever run on sand for any kind of long distance feels my pain. Each time I pulled my heavy boot out of the sand, I felt like I had taken a shovel full of the stuff with me. Every time I placed my foot down, I swore it sank a good half-meter into the ground.

  How Wesley Cage kept the pace I have no idea. The older man was made of high octane caff and the need for revenge. We must have crossed a full kilometer of sand before X gave us the warning.

  “I have GG dropships inbound from the city,” X said. “You should grab some cover as soon as possible, preferably behind one of these dunes, and then cover yourself with sand. They’ll do flybys to ensure there were no survivors.”

  “Over here,” Wesley said, leading us to a sloping dune that came to an end at a sharp cliff a few meters off the ground.

  I dragged Wesley’s coat behind me, still covering our tracks.

  Wesley made his way to the top of the dune and began to dig a crude trench for us to lie in. I fell to my knees, scooping the soft sand like a dog.

  The sun was till a few hours from rising and the cold of the night made my hands numb. Numb or not, I dug like a man possessed. The last thing I needed was a fight with a GG dropship and their Shadow Praetorians.

  “You think she knew?” I asked Wesley, referring to Captain Valentine. “You think all that talk at the back of the dropship was for show?”

  “I’m almost positive she didn’t,” Wesley said, throwing another handful of sand behind him. “As much as she loves the GG, she loves that daughter of hers more. I don’t think she was lying to us. She had no idea. It must have come from General Armstrong himself.”

  I hoped Wesley was right. It made me feel sick to my stomach to think that Zoe had betrayed us.

  Once our pits were deep enough, we lay down on our bellies and poured the sand over our bodies. Wesley went full camo, even putting the stuff into his hair.

  I wasn’t a big fan of sand in all my crevices, but when in Rome. I covered my boots, pants, and shirt, and finally, my head. I hoped it would be enough. My gut instinct told me they would think we died in the crash. The flyovers were a moot point. They wouldn’t be searching intensely for survivors.

  We heard the dropships before we saw them. Twin mustard-colored ships with the Galactic Government sigil of the aggressive feline with the open mouth came into view against the sky that was beginning to show shades of red from the approaching sunrise.

  The dropships came down a few meters away from our burning ship. With X’s help, I was able to zoom in my vision, allowing me to see a group of dark armored Shadow Praetorians leave the dropships and approach the wrecked Immortal Corp craft with drawn weapons.

  “Can anyone hear me?” Angel’s voice sounded through the Immortal Corp back channel. “Is anyone out there?”

  “Angelica?” Wesley said in a voice heavy with relief. “Are you okay? Where are y
ou?”

  “We got out in time,” Angel said in a hard tone. “Jax carried Preacher, and I cleared the way. What’s happening? The GG stormed the place and started killing people, no questions asked. It was a small war inside the Immortal Corp building. We went into full lockdown.”

  “The GG wants the Voy invasion covered up. Get somewhere safe and keep your head down,” Wesley ordered.

  “You know me well enough that that’s not going to happen,” Angel answered. “Where are you? Daniel?”

  “I’m here,” I chimed in.

  “We’re in the desert north of Athens,” Wesley told her. “The GG are out on patrol, but once they leave, we can move again.”

  “I’ll come get you,” Angel said with a determined edge in her voice. “I’ll swing around wide and come pick you up.”

  “I’ll send you our location once the local GG has made their rounds and heads back to the city,” Wesley answered.

  “Cage?” Angel asked. “Are we at war with the GG?”

  “Not at war, but wanted criminals at least,” I relayed. Angel didn’t sound worried; she genuinely wanted to know if we had to fight a battle on two fronts. “We’ll be all right. We’ll figure this out.”

  “Did you get your answers?” Angel asked. “I mean, about Amber?”

  “Just more questions,” I said, feeling the wadded up Order mask’s lump in my pocket. “No body.”

  “She’s out there, then,” Angel added, hopeful. “Amber was a survivor like all of us. If there’s no body, then she’s still out there.”

  “I hope you’re right,” I answered. “I hope you’re right.”

  I’ll send you those coordinates when we’re clear,” Wesley said. “Out.”

  The line went silent.

  Cage and I watched the Shadow Praetorian’s for the next hour as they went over the crash site and the immediate surrounding area. They were professionals in every sense of the word. Their movements were precise, their weapons always ready.

  I made notes in my head of what I would do if and when it came time to have to fight the elite warriors of the Galactic Government.

  Once they were satisfied that no one had made it out of the crash alive, they took to the air once more. Just like X predicted, they did a series of flyovers. When a dropship got anywhere near our location, I buried my face in the sand like some kind of animal.

  Between our camouflage job and the rising sun in their eyes, we did enough to keep ourselves hidden. When the flyovers finally came to an end, Wesley radioed Angel to come pick us up.

  “We should get out of this city,” Wesley said. “We have a safe house in Elysium we can head to. We’ll regroup, see who made it out alive.”

  “How many of those safe houses do you think the GG are aware of?” I wondered. “They tricked you once.”

  Wesley shook sand out of his hair and eyed me. “You got a better option? Some mansion you have tucked away somewhere?”

  X opened a small window in my lower right hand line of sight. In that window were the assets Rose left me before she died. The woman had been a prisoner of the Voy. As a well-to-do traveler, she not only owned property but assets and holdings in large corporations that put her net worth in the billions.

  “Actually, I do.” I grinned. It was the first piece of good news in a series of bad events. “There’s a place here in Athens where we can hide. The last place the GG would expect us is right under their nose. If they were looking for us at all. I mean, as far as they’re concerned, we died in the crash.”

  Wesley nodded slowly.

  The rest of the time I waited for our ride was spent brushing sand out of my clothes and hair and telling my stomach to quit complaining.

  Angel appeared in a civilian van an hour later. It hovered just above the sand. We jogged over to our transportation. Angel sat in the driver side seat with Jax in the passenger side. Preacher was laid up in the third row seat of the vehicle. He looked horrible.

  The Voy had taken away his ability to heal with some kind of serum extrapolated from our very DNA. It was the alien’s way of telling us they weren’t afraid of us, not even the augmented members of the Pack Protocol.

  “You look horrible,” Preacher said to me with a weak smile. “Heard the GG tried to put you down.”

  “They tried,” I sneered, climbing over into the middle seat to make room for Wesley. I opened my mouth to say more, then shut it again.

  I still wasn’t sure how I felt about Preacher after he admitted to being the one that knocked me unconscious and left me on the moon.

  I understood why he had done it. He was trying to protect me. After learning about what happened to Amber, he knew I would go in guns blazing trying to kill everyone in Immortal Corp. He wasn’t wrong.

  In his mind, he was protecting me.

  “It’s good to see you two alive,” Jax said. “Where to now? A safe house?”

  “I have a better idea,” I said, giving Angel the coordinates to the residence inside the city.

  “You have a place in the Platinum District?” Angel lifted an eyebrow at me. “You rob a bank or something?”

  “Or something,” I said.

  Angel shrugged and headed back the way she came, giving the crashed dropship a wide berth. The ship was no longer on fire but it smoked in the morning sun.

  “Anyone else make it out?” Wesley asked. “Doctor Bishop? Any of the Founders get in contact via the back channel with anyone?”

  “It was a mess,” Jax said from his front seat. “We were asleep and they hit hard. They were coming in from the roof and the ground floor by the time I had my clothes on.”

  “They sent the Shadow Praetorians,” Angel reported. “By the time we secured Preacher, they were going floor by floor. I’m not sure who got out and who didn’t, but I wouldn’t expect a whole lot escaped. No word from the Founders.”

  I could care less about the Founders. The leaders of Immortal Corp were two men and a woman I had never seen. I had no idea if the GG knew of their real identities, and if they did, part of me hoped they had killed them.

  The Founders were the reason the woman I loved had been a target in the first place. They ordered her killed, and by some twist of fate, she had been rescued. How? I still didn’t know.

  More than anything, I wanted to chase down the single lead I had. Of how Amber had been saved by the sworn enemy of Immortal Corp, the Order. But right now, surviving seemed to take precedence.

  Angel maneuvered through the desert and back into the city.

  “Vehicle is clean and wiped,” Angel said as we passed a Galactic Government heavy assault vehicle rolling down the wide street. “They have no reason to stop us. Just act cool.”

  I tensed, ready for everything, but Angel was right. The heavy vehicle rolled right on by as we made our way through the early morning traffic on Athens. Traffic here was almost a joke. A handful of vehicles on the ground and in the air meandered about their day.

  Mars was a haven for the ultra-rich. Only the top ten percent lived here now. No one really had pressing matters or a job to get to. They woke when they chose and most chose to sleep in.

  Sleep was a sick joke at the moment. I rubbed my tired eyes, remembering that I had been awake through the entire night. First the events at the cemetery then with the GG had seen to the fact that I got none to very little sleep.

  We passed two more praetorian vehicles before we made it to what Angel referred to as the Platinum District. The neighborhood was on a hill overlooking the city. Each house was the size of the Hall of Power.

  Extravagant gates opened up to long driveways where mansions sat like fortresses.

  Jax let out a low whistle. “Tell me how you’re able to afford a place like this again? Not on our salary.”

  “The woman who escaped from the Voy prison,” I explained. “Rose, before she died defending the Way settlement, she passed on her assets. I had no idea she lived like this.”

  Each house on the street got larger and larger
until we were practically looking at castles. The largest one and the one highest on the hill was where we stopped. I think we all needed a moment to realize how massive the compound really was.

  Stone walls two stories tall surrounded the perimeter of the building. A steel gate with an intercom on the left of the driveway would allow us to talk to someone inside to gain entry.

  Past the gates was another long driveway with a bridge that went over a body of water. The main building was four stories tall complete with towers, ramparts, and a giant wooden door that looked like it was hundreds of years old.

  “And this is your house now?” Jax asked, letting out another low whistle.

  “It’s our house,” I corrected.

  Seven

  “X,” I asked. “Who was this woman?”

  I knew she claimed she was wealthy, but nothing I could have imagined in my wildest dreams would have prepared me for what I saw now. The cost for something like this to be built, the water alone that the bridge spanned over had to be in the millions.

  “Born Rosemary Cripps, she was the last living member of the Cripps family. Her family built their fortune on real estate on Mars when the planet was first being settled,” X informed us.

  A small screen in the lower right hand view of my vision appeared. X cycled through pictures of Rose as she spoke. I saw images of Rose and her parents, buildings being built on Mars, and more images as Rose bloomed into a beautiful woman.

  “Rose inherited the family business and built on what had been given to her, amassing a sum of wealth only a handful on Mars have before. She was the second richest woman on Mars,” X said, pausing for a moment. “Never married or had children. All her relatives have passed away.”

  The vehicle sat quiet as we all soaked in the information X related.

  “Well, I guess we have a new base of operations for now,” Wesley said from his seat beside me. “Thanks to Rose.”

  “Let’s get inside and see who’s here,” I said. “I gave Enoch and the Way settlers this address to come and stay once they left their settlement. Let’s find out if they took me up on the offer.”