Rampant Destruction (CERBERUS Book 10)

by Andy Peloquin

  “Take a look at this,” Master Sergeant Kane said.

  “Incoming data packet from the master sergeant,” Taia said. “Displaying now.”

  Images popped up on the screen. Nolan frowned as he studied the pictures of what looked like four long, narrow corridors that ended at solid metal doors. However, as Taia zoomed into the images, he spotted twin laser-targeting lights barely visible in the dim lighting of the tunnels. The barrels of two small blaster turrets protruded from holes in the tunnel’s ceiling.

  Then there was the lock: a biometric scanner identical to the one that had secured the entrance to the Protection Bureau’s Bolt Hole office. Nolan felt fairly confident that his palm-print wouldn’t get him through this particular door.

  “We’ll talk next steps when I’m back,” the master sergeant said. “Troll, hold pos. The rest of you, get a good look and come up with an action plan.”

  “Solid copy,” Nolan said.

  “Ten-four, Wyvern,” Darren said over team-wide comms. “The minute our little buddy pops his head up, I’ll track his movement.”

  “Copy that, Troll,” Zahra said.

  “You good, Phoenix?” Darren asked. “You need anything, you make Cerberus get it for you.”

  “You know it, Troll.” Zahra chuckled. “As long as he brought my toys, we’ll be good.”

  “Oh, shit!” Nolan plucked up the small thermoplastic case that had been sitting in the skimmer-craft parked outside the Derring mansion. “Here. Taia said to make sure you got it.”

  Zahra looked up from her perch, took the case with a nod of thanks, and popped it open. A huge grin broadened her strong face. “It’s Christmastime, baby!”

  She rose from the seat and moved toward the large crate that held the two burned-out Djinns. Plucking up the drones, she brought them back to her place by the window and set to work replacing their damaged components with Taia’s replacement parts.

  “Make sure she eats something, Cerberus,” Darren said, his rumbling voice quiet. “She gets so focused on her work she forgets sometimes.”

  “I ate an hour ago,” Zahra protested. Evidently Darren had forgotten to switch his comms to a channel for Nolan’s ears only. “Had a cup of water and used the bathroom too, mother hen.”

  Silence came from Darren’s end of the comms.

  Nolan couldn’t help smiling. Those few words held such a depth of tenderness and connection between two people that had, for all the years he’d worked with them, been close friends and solid companions, but never anything more. Darren had always been concerned for his teammates, but during her Warbeast Team days, Zahra would have dismissed his attention with a snarky retort. She’d always been strong, never needing anyone’s help with anything. Now, however, Nolan heard a note of gratitude in her tone, as if she secretly welcomed the attention despite not needing it.

  “What’s that dumbass grin about?” Bex asked, nudging Nolan in the ribs. “You look like a fat kid locked inside an ice cream shop.”

  Nolan chuckled. “Just enjoying it,” he said. “The feeling of being a team again. Been a while.”

  “Yeah.” Bex nodded, and her mocking smile slipped, shadows darkening her eyes. “Yeah, it has.”

  For the first time, Nolan realized that he hadn’t asked her about her team. Ever since he ghosted Warbeast Team after his injury, he’d felt guilty for his actions, and that guilt had loomed so large in his mind that it had all but consumed him every time he thought about it. After the op on Diomedra, he’d made peace with his team and put his guilt to bed.

  But he’d never considered how Bex felt about being cut off from the people who had been as much her family as Warbeast Team was his. She’d been medded out just like him, never able to return to her team. That had to be painful for her. He kicked himself for being so self-centered that he’d never given her feelings on the matter a second thought.

  “You in touch with any of Divinity Team?” he asked.

  Bex shook her head. “Lost touch a while back. I tried to reach out, once, but got the usual spiel that Divinity Team was unavailable. After that, it was just too hard.” She shot a sidelong glance at Zahra, then a questioning look at Nolan, as if asking how much they knew about her.

  Nolan spoke mentally to Taia, instructing the AI to relay his words directly to Bex’s earpiece alone. “I painted with broad strokes. Told them about your deal with Oversight, but not the whys or wherefores. And…” He winced. “I mentioned a bit of trouble with drugs.”

  Bex’s face hardened at his words, anger flashing bright.

  “Look,” Nolan continued quickly, “I was telling them about my own problems and trying to talk them into letting me take Sladek’s toughbook to hand off to Oversight—you know how everyone feels about them—and it just came up. If I’d known we’d wind up working together like this, I’d have found another way.”

  Bex didn’t soften her expression, but the fire burning in her eyes dimmed and her clenched fists relaxed.

  “If it helps, they’ve all pretty much accepted you as an honorary member of Warbeast Team,” Nolan said mentally. “Hell, just the fact that Desai didn’t cut you when you started making eyes at her husband proves that. That’s the highest compliment in her book.”

  Bex’s little snort of derision told him that it didn’t help as much as he’d hoped. Still, he took her little shrug and shake of her head as acceptance, though not quite approval. What was done was done, and there was no way to un-scramble that particular egg.

  The door to the apartment opened and Master Sergeant Kane strode in. In place of his beggar disguise, he wore the dull gray robes of an Empyreal, and a patchwork “skull” of metal plates covered his head. Together with his cybernetic eye and the gauntlet he wore to simulate an artificial limb, he looked a damn lot like the mechanophile nutjobs.

  The master sergeant didn’t bother stripping out of his robe, though he did remove the weird skullcap on his way over to the holo-screen. “You’ve had time to look it over,” he said with no preamble. “Desai, thoughts?”

  Zahra shook her head. “Looks uncrackable with what we’ve got on hand. We could probably use an EMP grenade to take out the turrets and short-circuit that lock, but that leaves the door. Solid durasteel.” She looked to Bex, their resident explosives expert. “Ajeen?”

  Bex grimaced. “Gonna take a hell of a boom to knock that thing down. And if we do that, we might as well send a message saying, ‘Hello, secret agency, we’re coming to pay a visit!’”

  The master sergeant nodded, as if they’d just confirmed his thoughts, then turned to Nolan. “Garrett, you and your AI got anything to add?”

  Nolan frowned. He’d come to the same conclusion as the others, but he wasn’t the tech brains of their little outfit. “Taia?”

  “If I had direct access to the biometric reader, I could likely crack its system in ninety-six seconds,” she replied. “Possibly less. However, without being able to fly the Djinn drones up close, that means one of you five will have to get close enough to the door to connect me.”

  “And if they’ve got any kind of thermal or motion scanners to see through our digital cloaking,” Nolan finished for her, “we’d be caught in a kill zone with an unknown number of guards just beyond that durasteel door.” He chewed on his lip, then he, too, shook his head. “I can’t see any way that this gets us in. Not unless we can find a way to knock out their security measures without them knowing.”

  “Then we go with Plan Bravo,” Master Sergeant Kane growled. “We can’t brute force our way through there, then our only option is to finesse it.”

  Nolan’s frown deepened. “Are you sure? There’s a chance Plan Bravo will throw up all kinds of red flags, which could only make things worse.”

  “We’ve prepared for that,” Zahra said. “We lock everything down until we’re sure it’s not going to bite us in the ass. But it’s our best chance of getting through their front door.”

  “And our current intel-gathering isn’t going to get us
any closer to a solution,” Master Sergeant Kane said. “Right now, we’ve got to apply pressure to the one weak link. No matter how secure a system, the human factor always provides a way in.”

  Nolan tried to think of another plan, another way that didn’t involve doing what Plan Bravo demanded. Yet, if none of them could come up with a viable alternative, then they had no choice but to go with their back-up plan.

  “So be it.” He let out a long breath. “I guess it’s time for a face-to-face chat with Agent Styver.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Solaria had begun to ascend over the eastern horizon, and still Agent Styver hadn’t shown his face.

  Nolan resisted the urge to ask if the smart cells on the man’s clothing had come online. Taia would tell him the moment they did.

  He’d been sitting inside the skimmer-craft for the better part of two hours, on stand-by until he got the order to move. Master Sergeant Kane was calling this op, a fact that felt both strange and familiar at once. Almost as if he was back in Warbeast Team on a proper Silverguard mission. Only this time, his target wasn’t some high-value Terran Leaguer or enemy asset. They were going after the Protection Bureau agent that had been Nolan’s only contact within the clandestine organization.

  Nolan couldn’t help thinking about just how odd it felt to be sitting and waiting. For any other target, they’d have done extensive research, built a physical and psychological profile, and learned routines and habits. However, Taia had spent the last two days searching for anything she could dredge up on Agent Styver, and had come up empty-handed. It was if the man was a ghost, though more likely he’d simply had every trace of his existence scoured from Imperial databases and locked away deep within the Protection Bureau databases.

  The absence of intel on Agent Styver meant they had to sit and wait patiently, with no way to predict or even guess-timate when the man would leave home for the Protection Bureau’s office. Nolan didn’t know anything about his current target’s routines or habits, whether Agent Styver was an early bird or a night owl. If his theory about an off-site terminal with access to the Protection Bureau systems proved accurate, the man might never have to leave his building.

  So they waited. With patience born over years as an elite operator, sniper, and assassin, Nolan sat and focused his attention on his surroundings.

  The skimmer-craft sat in the underground parking structure on the western side of the building that served as their observation post. The moment he got the signal, he’d pull out onto the road and head south. Master Sergeant Kane would call the directions and timing. All Nolan had to do was drive.

  An idea occurred to him. “Any luck cracking Pioneer Data-Comm’s systems?” he asked. If they could find out which apartment belonged to Agent Styver, they’d have a back-up plan in case the man remained indoors all day.

  “Negative,” Taia said. “I’ve sliced through the first layer of defenses, but there are more back-up countermeasures than I anticipated.”

  Nolan raised an eyebrow. “Well, that’s not at all suspicious. Even for a telecomm company, that’s more security than normal, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” Taia replied. “However, it’s not unexpected that the Protection Bureau would take extra precautions to protect any information that could be used against them. Similar to how the blueprints for Derring’s buildings were completely erased, aside from the single backed-up copy he kept on his hard drive.”

  Nolan’s brow furrowed. “Speaking of, have you found anything else of interest on that drive?”

  “Of interest to you, no,” Taia said. “The IDF will definitely be glad to get their hands on the drive’s contents, though. There is evidence here to incriminate one hundred and thirty-nine of the most prominent citizens of New Avalon, and the documents, images, recorded comm calls, and notes dictated by Derring himself will give the Doofs enough to open nine hundred and thirty-two investigations into individuals from Exodus VI, Genesis, and ten other Imperial planets.”

  Nolan whistled. “Damn! That’s…a lot.”

  “Indeed. I’ve made certain that the evidence is transmitted directly to Detective Locke. He can expect to have a very busy few years ahead, and all of the data on that hard drive will drastically improve his career outlook.”

  Nolan smiled inwardly. He wasn’t overly fond of the Doofs in general, but the good detective had begun to grow on him.

  “And you’re sure nothing else is useful?” Nolan pressed. “Nothing that hints at the Protection Bureau’s operations?”

  Only after he’d said it did he realize what he was doing. Before the Vault, he’d have accepted Taia’s word without hesitation. Now, as Bex had pointed out, he was second-guessing her. Suspecting her, really.

  It wasn’t lost on Taia. “If you’re not certain I’m being fully honest with you, I could show—“

  “No,” Nolan said quickly. “Call that a reflex.” He frowned. “It’s not your fault, not really. It’s just…” He trailed off, not certain what to tell her.

  “As Bex said, it’s going to take time for you to be able to trust me completely.” Taia’s voice held no trace of anger, resentment, or disappointment, only acceptance. “I know you have been trained to look for the hidden meaning in everything, the lies beneath every word. It is the way your mind works, and it has kept you—both of us—alive thus far. Though I do not like it, I understand it.”

  “I’m trying,” Nolan said quietly. “I’ll keep trying, too. Until I no longer question everything.”

  And he meant it. The original Taia had made the ultimate sacrifice for him. Not just giving up her body, but deactivating herself so her liberated copy could overwrite the programming that enslaved her. That should have been enough for him. Had it been a human making a similar gesture, it would have been. But it was her complexity that made it so difficult. He’d never fully understand the millions of tiny lines of code comprising her operating system. Without that understanding, he’d essentially have to act on blind faith. That was a near-impossibility for a man with his background, training, and skillset.

  But he would try. One day at a time, until he felt fully confident in her loyalty—in the code her original version had written to program loyalty into the duplicate.

  Before he could say anything else, Taia’s voice echoed over team-wide comms. “Smart cells are coming online. Agent Styver is exiting the signal jam field on the building’s N-side and heading west.”

  “Kali copies,” came Bex’s voice. “Heading toward W-side position.”

  “Wyvern copies,” Master Sergeant Kane growled. “Moving to intercept.”

  “Bast copies,” Taia said. “I’ve got control of the CCTV feed.”

  “Cerberus copies,” Nolan said. With the touch of a button, he activated the skimmer-craft’s hover engines and set it into motion, pulling it toward the ramp that led out of the underground parking structure. A few seconds later, he emerged onto the street, one of the Cyberwarrens’ less-traveled avenues, and turned south, heading straight toward the intersection where Agent Styver would be appearing. He had the road all to himself at the early hour, which would make the abduction just that much easier.

  He had no way to see the man—he’d left his helmet back at the safe house, and he wore no thermal-enabled goggles beneath the cap that concealed his face. But he didn’t need to. His job was to be ready when Master Sergeant Kane made his move.

  Two blocks south of Nolan, a compact man in a long overcoat staggered out from an adjoining street and headed in the direction of Agent Styver. Master Sergeant Kane played a damned good lush. His warbling voice echoed over the team comms as he sang a drinking song terribly off-key and at full volume, waving around an empty bottle in one hand and weaving in unpredictable zigzag patterns down the sidewalk.

  “Ten seconds out,” Bex said. “Ready on your mark, Wyvern.”

  Nolan reached for the remote control Zahra had given him. “Firing on command.”

  Master Sergeant Kane grunted acknowledgeme
nt, but never slipped out of his drunken persona. On the contrary, he careened more wildly first left toward the street, then toward the building on his right, as if losing a fight against gravity and his equilibrium.

  “Now!” he whispered between verses of his drinking song.

  Nolan gunned the hover engines to full output, and the skimmer-craft leaped forward. At the same time, he jammed his thumb down hard on the button for the portable signal jammer Zahra had installed in the vehicle’s passenger seat. It activated with barely a hum, but Nolan knew it would do its job.

  Fifty meters down the street, Master Sergeant Kane appeared to wobble to his left and collapsed against something invisible. His arms wrapped around that invisible something and held fast. Bex slipped out from the alley and joined Master Sergeant Kane, her arm darting up to jab a hidden applicator at seemingly empty air. By the time the pair reached the street, Nolan skidded to a halt right next to them and triggered the button to open the rear hatch.

  “Get him in!” Bex hissed. She seemed to be struggling with an invisible burden, and though Nolan could see nothing, he heard an audible thump of something heavy plopping into the open thermoplastic crate that occupied the vehicle’s trunk. Master Sergeant Kane slammed the crate closed, flicked the latches shut, and dove into the skimmer-craft’s rear, pulling the trunk shut behind him. In the same instant, Bex slid into the rear-left side of the vehicle.

  “Drive!” she shouted, tucking the now empty applicator up her sleeve.

  Nolan activated the skimmer-craft’s hover engines and raced down the street, cutting a sharp left into the first alley to his right. He kept the vehicle at full speed until he reached the next intersection, then slowed and pulled out of the alley into the broad lane. Traffic on the larger avenue was light this early in the morning, and Nolan passed only two vehicles headed in the opposite direction.