“Get behind the hover-train!” he shouted. Jadis’ armor would protect her from the Black Crows’ blaster bolts, but he wouldn’t risk an unlucky shot taking her down or knocking her out.
The clattering roar of the MK75 echoed from a few meters behind Nolan as Bex joined in the fight.
“How many grenades you got left?” Bex asked over comms.
Nolan didn’t need to glance down. “Two flashbangs and a frag. You?”
“Flashbang and a Gatecrasher,” Bex answered. “That’ll have to be enough!”
Nolan shot down a Black Crow peering out from behind cover before the enemy could loose a shot, then was forced to duck as the contractors on the opposite side of the tunnel entrance poured a barrage of blaster bolts into the front of the hover-train car. The metal was lightweight, designed for speed on the anti-grav rails, and it couldn’t take much more.
“Enough for what?” Nolan demanded. “Tell me you’re not thinking of making a break for it!”
“Not a lot of other options.” Bex had to shout over the roar of her firing machine gun. The MK75 poured a steady stream of blaster bolts at the enemies at the mouth of the tunnel, keeping them pinned down and preventing them from advancing. “We’re in a fucking kill corridor here, and that hover-train car’s not going to be good cover for much longer.”
As if to emphasize her words, one of the Black Crows’ blaster bolts chewed through the hover-train car’s front wall and whizzed past mere centimeters from Nolan’s left side. Growling a curse, Nolan popped up and shot down one of the hostiles pouring fire on their position. Dread seeped down his spine as he caught sight of more Black Crows spilling onto the landing pad. He counted twenty, maybe thirty reinforcements coming to join the fight.
“So what’s the plan, then?” Jadis asked, opening up with the BR51 rifle she’d found in the cabin’s armory. “Tell me one of you two geniuses have an idea that gets us out of here!”
“Working on it,” Nolan and Bex both shouted back at the same time.
Nolan fought to work the problem. He could cover the hundred meters to the tunnel’s mouth in the space of a few seconds, hopefully moving fast enough to evade the enemy’s fire. But once he reached the landing pad, he’d still be surrounded by close to fifty Black Crows. Even if he could soften them up with the last of his grenades, there’d still be a damned lot of them.
And he had nowhere to run. He glanced at the countdown clock on his HUD. 08:19, it read. Eight minutes until the Scimitar arrived with backup. He couldn’t lug Jared’s unconscious body into the forest while engaged in a running firefight. Bex would never be able to fight and carry Roz.
No, in this scenario, with these specific parameters, there was only one thing they could do.
“We can’t try and break out,” he said quickly. “Our best bet is to hold here, force them to come to us. All we need to do is buy ourselves time for Master Sergeant Kane and the Scimitar to get here!”
“I believe the Phantasm will be operational within twelve minutes and nine seconds,” Taia said. “However, without a connection to my systems outside the interference field, I cannot be certain.”
“Hear that?” Nolan spoke without taking his eyes off the enemy, and without letting up on the fire pressure. He squeezed the trigger even as he talked, taking down first one Black Crow, then another, forcing the contractors holding the tunnel’s northern wall back. “The Scimitar should be here in eight minutes. Eight! We can hold that long!”
Bex rumbled an angry growl, but replied, “Fuck, I hate it when you’re right, Cerberus!”
Nolan would have chuckled, but he was too busy putting holes in the Black Crows. He had to focus on his targets, make each shot count. At the same time, he had to keep an eye on the reinforcements and watch for any sign of RPGs or heavy machine guns that could inflict serious damage on their defensive position. He let Bex’s MK75 and Jadis’ BR51 do the heavy lifting of keeping the contractors from advancing.
And they would have to advance, he knew. A hundred meters was reaching the far end of close combat range for the average firefight. The Black Crows would likely be trained to shoot up to two hundred meters, but their accuracy and superior numbers would be maximized under seventy-five. Between their light-caliber blaster rifles and poor marksmanship, the contractors presented far less of a threat to Nolan and his companions than they might realize.
The moment they did, however, they’d call for an advance. Worse, they might have another of those goddamned Mamelukes nearby—or simply call over the one that had slagged the cabin.
He glanced at his HUD. 07:51, it read. He cursed. Time had a weird way of dilating and contracting during combat. Hours could pass in what felt like the blink of an eye and seconds could drag on for an eternity.
Come on! He gritted his teeth. Just a few more minutes!
Nolan took his time with each shot, refusing to let the pressure from the enemy at the mouth of the tunnel make him sloppy. His combat-trained mind ignored the blaster bolts whizzing around him, trusting to muscle memory to keep him behind cover and out of the enemy’s line of fire. With the smooth, practiced ease of millions of repetitions, he sighted on his targets, drew in a breath, and squeezed the trigger. Again and again, settling into a rhythm both relaxed and faster than anything the average soldier could possibly manage.
This, at least, Nolan understood with crystal clarity. The hiss and crackle of gunfire, the thundering beat of his pulse in his ears, the bitter taste in his mouth, the sweat dripping down his face. Everything around him felt familiar, because it was. He’d been in combat so many times before, and he knew what to do. He knew how to survive this, just as he had for the fifteen years he’d spent fighting the Terran League, and the nearly five years he’d spent as Cerberus.
In the battle calm, there were no worries about treacherous handlers, hidden plots by clandestine organizations, or mysterious secrets of exo- or astro-biology. All that simply faded into the background, until nothing remained but a man, his rifle, and the enemies trying to kill him. The enemies he could see trying to kill him—because he could see them right back.
Nolan only paused to sight his shots and squeeze the trigger before moving on to the next target. He picked off the Black Crows at the mouth of the tunnel one by one, shooting limbs, heads, rifles, even feet. Any target they presented, he sent a white-hot needle of light through it. Pink misted in the daylight, blood stained the concrete of the landing pad, and the screams of contractors with limbs shredded or ripped clean off by the high-velocity Balefire rounds echoed.
Yet for every contractor he took down, there seemed to be another to take their place. The reinforcements kept streaming in.
How many of these motherfuckers were on that transport? Nolan wondered as another dozen Black Crows joined in the battle.
“RPG, south side!” Bex shouted over comms.
Nolan swiveled to his right, searching his enemies for the threat Bex had identified. His gut twisted as he spotted the Black Crow racing up to join the firefight, carrying a grenade launcher. It was no ordinary RPG—this was a rocket-propelled plasma grenade, the sort that would slag the hover-train and spray liquid plasma particles hot enough to burn through armor, flesh, and bone. The moment that RPPG fired, it was game over for Nolan and his companions.
No fucking way, Nolan thought as he calmly settled his crosshairs on the target. Not the person, but the weapon. There was a spot, he knew—right where the RPPG clicked into the launcher—that would deliver maximum results.
He drew in a deep breath, waited until the Black Crow’s advance slowed and dropped to one knee to take aim down the tunnel. Then he fired. A single shot, barely a twitch of his finger to pull the trigger past its break point. The Balefire Mark 2.1 hummed in his hands and sent a white-hot needle racing toward the enemy.
The bolt struck dead center on the RPPG, and the grenade detonated with a deafening BOOM and a brilliant flash of light. The explosion sprayed superheated particles in all directions, spatte
ring the nearest Black Crows. Everything the plasma touched caught instantly alight—uniforms, helmets, armor, guns, hands, masks, exposed faces, everything. The screams of the burning Black Crows echoed through the tunnel, horrible shrieks of pure agony that chilled Nolan to the bone.
Then came a sound that sent dread rippling down his spine: the deep, mechanical rumbling of a heavy vehicle.
An S-A3CT Mameluke was rolling onto the landing pad.
Chapter Thirty-Four
One shot from the Mameluke’s plasma cannon would be game over for Nolan, Bex, Jadis, Jared, and Roz. No combat suit could survive a direct blast of the superheated plasma particles. The thirty-centimeter ball of concentrated plasma would expand to consume everything within the tunnel—metal, flesh, bone, even the oxygen in the air. Not even ashes would remain behind to mark the existence of Nolan and his companions.
The only way they survived this was taking out the tank before it got into position, turned, and opened fire.
Nolan didn’t bother glancing at his HUD—the countdown clock only mattered if they lived long enough for the Scimitar to arrive or for the Phantasm to be fully operational once more. In the space between galloping heartbeats, he went through every possible option to get them out of this alive.
He had just one course of action.
“Kali, grenades!” he shouted over comms. Spinning, he vaulted the low front wall of the hover-train car and circled around behind Bex’s position.
She spoke without tearing her gaze from the enemy. “The fuck are you—“
“Just hand them over!” Nolan said, cutting her off. “I’ve got to take out that tank’s plasma cannon!”
His gaze went to Roz, who sat huddled with her back against the hover-train car, eyes squeezed shut and hands pressed firmly over her ears. Then to Jared, who lay on the tunnel’s permacrete floor between the rails, and Jadis, who knelt on the opposite side of the car and returned fire at the Black Crows. If he didn’t act, they died. Horribly. He had no choice—even if it put his own life at risk, he’d have to gamble that he was just fast enough, smart enough, and skilled enough to survive.
All of this flashed through his mind in an instant, and when he turned back to Bex, he found her plucking the last of her grenades from her belt. “Go!” She thrust the flashbang and Gatecrasher into his hands. “I’ll carve a path for you.”
Nolan snatched the grenades and, with a mental command to activate his digital cloaking, leaped to his feet and charged down the tunnel. He had nowhere near enough power to use his boot thrusters and conceal himself, but his anti-grav boots lifted him off the ground just enough that he could throw himself forward into a sprinting skim-skate.
He was a blur of motion, his eyes locked on the daylight outside the tunnel and the Mameluke tank rolling steadily closer. Already he could see the plasma cannon swiveling toward the tunnel. He had a matter of seconds to get there before the tank was in position to fire.
“Graahhh!” Bex’s throaty roar echoed over comms, accompanied by a full-auto burst of blaster fire. Her MK75 spat hundreds of rounds per minute, and she raked the enemy with high-caliber bolts that shredded their armor and helmets.
Nolan thumbed the trigger of Bex’s flashbang, then hurled it with all his strength toward the mouth of the tunnel. The Black Crows staggered back from the bright light and deafening sound, and for a moment the enemy gunfire slackened—just enough to put hope in Nolan’s chest.
He tightened his grip on the Gatecrasher, preparing for the moment when he could whip his arm back and forward to send it hurtling at the Mameluke. Not until he got much closer—close enough that he knew for certain that he couldn’t miss. The only chance of surviving was to send the grenade right down the yawning black hole of the plasma cannon’s barrel. A once-in-a-lifetime throw, but everything was riding on it.
The tank’s barrel began to glow, and Nolan imagined he could feel the hum of its engine as it generated the ball of plasma. His HUD marked the distance to his target—thirty meters to the end of the tunnel, and forty to the Mameluke. He leaned into the skim-skate with every shred of strength and determination, willing himself to cross the rest of that space in the last few seconds remaining before the plasma cannon fired.
But even as forty meters became thirty, the glow of the barrel brightened, and Nolan felt the horrible sinking sensation in his stomach. He had just one second before that cannon fired. He had to throw the grenade now or it would be too late.
He wound up but never got the chance to throw. Before he could send the grenade hurtling forward, blaster bolts hissed toward him and slammed into his helmet, chestplate, and torso. The rounds failed to pierce his combat suit, but the succession of blows pummeled him with such force he was thrown off-balance. Caught in full sprint, he had no chance to catch himself. He fell hard, tumbling end over end, and slammed into the permacrete wall of the tunnel.
Darkness washed over him for a second, and when he managed to open his eyes, sparks whirled in his vision. The impact had knocked the wind from his lungs, and the blaster bolt strikes sent pain rippling through his upper body.
Yet that was nothing compared to the horror that consumed his mind. “No!” The roar burst from his lips, consuming the last of his oxygen, and he struggled to rise. Dread weighed heavy on him and fixed him in place, as if his body rebelled against the sight that he knew awaited him when he lifted his head.
Through his dizzily spinning vision, Nolan expected to see the sudden burst of blinding light as the plasma cannon fired. He braced himself for the loud THRUMM of superheated particles bursting into the tunnel, followed by a wash of blistering heat as it exploded against the hover-train car and fire consumed everything. He could already feel the acid rising in his throat as he watched everyone that mattered to him turned to ash in the space of a horrifying instant.
Then his jaw dropped. The plasma cannon’s glow was dimming. The Black Crows around the mouth of the tunnel, just twenty meters from where he lay, had their guns trained on him and their fingers on their triggers, yet no blaster bolts hissed toward him.
Confusion, shock, and pain rooted Nolan in place. What the hell is—
A man’s voice echoed over the Mameluke’s loudspeaker. “Cerberus, hold your fire!”
Nolan blinked, unable to believe what he’d just heard.
Again, the man spoke. “You’re going to want to answer this.”
Nolan opened his mouth, though no words came out. They never had a chance.
“Nolan,” Taia said in his earpiece, “you’ve got an incoming comms call. The caller is identifying himself as Raptor.”
Nolan tried to understand her words, tried to think clearly. He knew that name, “Raptor”—it was important somehow—but his collision with the tunnel wall and this sudden cessation of hostilities left his mind reeling.
“Put him through,” he finally managed to say as he struggled to his feet, fighting to ignore the pain in his upper body and head.
A second later, an unfamiliar male voice echoed in his earpiece. “Cerberus, you’ve succeeded in getting my personal attention.”
It took Nolan, still mentally locked in battle mode, a full second to finally understand what was going on. To remember who Raptor was and why he mattered. The events of the last few hours washed over him, and everything suddenly made sense. The Protection Bureau had created and thrown up this interference field to cut off all comms signals; they could doubtless let one through if they wanted, especially one this important.
“You’ve proven quite a troublesome asset,” the man continued, though his voice changed to a deeper, richer baritone. When he spoke again, it sounded high-pitched and bordering on feminine—a voice-modulating algorithm, Nolan realized, concealing his voice the way Taia generated the “Hellhound” rumble. “Agent Styver was right to recommend you—“
“Cut the bullshit, Raptor.” Nolan was in no mood for whatever the man wanted to say. He was once more in full control of his mental faculties, keenly aware of the
myriad aches and pains of his body, and more furious than he’d ever been. This was the man who was responsible—either directly or indirectly—for the attack on the Celestial Cascades. Because of him, Jadis, Bex, Roz, and Jared had come within a heartbeat of dying horribly. Nolan wanted nothing more than to put a bullet in the man’s brain. He’d settle for negotiating for their survival. “If you got my message, then you know what I’ve done to your data.”
He didn’t know for certain that Taia’s virus had actually been uploaded into the Protection Bureau’s servers or slipped past whatever cybersecurity measures they had in place. But he couldn’t think of any other reason Raptor would contact him here, now. After all, as Agent Styver had made clear, while he was a valuable source of Project Icarus data, they had more test subjects on hand. Worse, as Jared’s condition illustrated, they could simply make more by administering Mutagen ZX125.
His educated guess proved accurate.
“Indeed.” Distaste echoed in Raptor’s voice, now altered to sound like a petulant child. “That is inconvenient. I take it you have demands.”
“I do,” Nolan said without hesitation. “And after everything I’ve done for the Protection Bureau all these years, you know exactly who I am and what I’m capable of. Which is why we both know that I’m not exaggerating when I say that it’s in both our best interests for you to give me what I ask.”
“Or,” Raptor said, his tone bordering on flippant, “I just give the command to open fire, and you and your companions go splatter and splash across that tunnel in which you’re hiding.”
Nolan tensed, his mind on full alert and scanning the Black Crows for the first sign of movement. They kept their guns trained on him but held their fire. The Mameluke’s plasma cannon showed no sign of stoking its generators again, but all that could change in a moment. Nolan’s chances of walking away from this battle were dangerously slim. Worse, the chances that Jared, Bex, Jadis, and Roz walked out of there were nearly nonexistent as long as the Black Crows had that tank.
Rampant Destruction (CERBERUS Book 10) Page 27
