I used my free hand to rip the helmet he wore upward and plant my blade in the base of his skull.
He went wobbly-legged as he breathed his last. I bullied him forward into the incoming fire of the other two guards. Shoving the dying man into one of the soldiers, I went after the other.
I batted my next target’s hand away as he tried to point his weapon around his dying comrade. I struck out as hard as I could with the bottom of my right foot. The strike landed on the man’s left knee, forcing him down as cartilage and ligaments tore and snapped.
He let out a cry of pain before I snapped his neck with a violent, short-lived jerk.
“Daniel, look out!” X warned out loud.
The last guard shoved the dying man in his arms away and lifted a pulse rifle to the side of my head.
I was caught. He had me dead to rights. I had taken too long with the third enemy, as short as it seemed. I was a half second too late.
This is going to hurt, I thought to myself as I prepared for the rounds to strike the side of my skull.
They never did.
As if by magic, the hilt of a sword sprouted from the Immortal Corp guard’s chest. The blade glowed a beautiful red color, going through the armor as if it weren’t there at all.
The guard looked down at the sword sticking out of his chest as if he couldn’t believe it either. His weapon fell to the ground as his hands hit his sides. He sank to his knees then keeled over.
I was breathing hard, still coming off the adrenaline dump. Preacher ran over, pulling his sword free from the Immortal Corp guard’s chest.
The weapon hummed as if it were activated by his touch. I was so close to it now I could see it did in fact glow with a dull red light. Preacher pressed something on the hilt of the weapon.
The blade lost its glow, reverting back to gunmetal steel. He cleaned the blade reverently then placed it back in its sheath behind his shoulder.
He was wounded both in his torso and shoulder. Dark bloody spots showed through his clothing. I was going to ask him if he was going to be all right, but that seemed silly.
I knew what he was just as much as I knew myself.
“Why didn’t they stand down?” I asked. “You still work for the same organization, right? They don’t take orders from you?”
“They knew who I am, but the Pack operates apart from the rest of Immortal Corp. We’re like the shock troops while the guards are your normal infantry. They had orders, so they did what they felt they had to do. We did the same.”
In the distance, the familiar wail of sirens permeated the cold night air. It seemed our luck was finally up. Even in this deserted business section of town, someone had seen or heard enough to call in the local praetorians.
The sounds of the approaching Galactic Government forced me into movement. I cleaned my own knife and holstered my MK II.
“Let’s clear out,” Preacher said, turning to look at me. A shadow of a grin rested on his lips. “We’re done here. It’s true, you really don’t remember, do you?” Preacher asked with a tilt of his head. “Danny, it’s good to see you. I wish it was under better circumstances, but we have to go. Do you trust me?”
“Trust is a strong word,” I told the man I so desperately wanted to remember. “But I’m willing to have a conversation.”
“Good enough for me,” Preacher said as the wails of the sirens grew. “We better have that conversation somewhere else or we’ll be in cuffs taken downtown. Follow me.”
I obeyed, taking in the destruction we left in our wake. Eight guards equipped in the latest armor, well trained and lethal in their own right, lay dead on the ground. Preacher had taken a pair of shots, and me, nothing.
I shuddered, thinking of what two members of the Pack could do. Sam and I had taken out a small army. If there had been a total of seven members in our original pack, what had we been able to accomplish together? Seven near immortal beings trained to fight and enhanced to kill.
Maybe the better question was what weren’t we able to do. I could imagine a scenario where we were created to take on an entire army. Give the Galactic Government a run for their money in a guerilla-style war even.
I walked behind Preacher as these thoughts ran through my mind. We made our way down the street away from the safe house and the approaching sirens. Preacher wove his way through a few city streets. Finally, he slowed his pace as the sirens began to fade. A large park sprawled out in front of us. Sand crunched under our feet. Everywhere, there were carefully carved sculptures. To our right, a small lake; to the left, equipment for children to play on.
The hour was still so early, there was no one in sight. My breath made puffs of steam in front of my face.
“I have transportation on the other side of the park,” Preacher said to me. He lost some of the hard edge to his tone. “We’ll cut through and be out of here before the Galactic Government ever gets sight of us. We have a lot to talk about, Daniel. I’m glad you’re back.”
Epilogue
Preacher’s apartment was deceptive in that it was in the nicest, tallest building in the downtown area but looked like it was vacant on the inside. It didn’t seem decorating was high on his priority list. The kitchen and living area had no tables, chairs, or even a rug to bring comfort from the plain cement floors.
What he did have was an amazing view of the city of Elysium. Glass windows acted as walls to my left beside the kitchen and in front of me against the space designated as a family living area.
Preacher unhooked the sword attached to his back and placed it on the marble countertop.
“You still take your caf black?” Preacher asked me, heading to a machine on his counter.
“Still do,” I said. I didn’t need any more confirmation that I could trust this man, but if I did, there it was. He knew me so well, he knew how I took my caf.
The single memory I had of us working together on a mission was enough for me to go off of. If he wanted to try and kill me, he could have a dozen times by now.
Preacher came over to me with a pair of steaming cups of caf. He handed me one and motioned me over to the window.
The sun was just beginning to rise. The orange globe cast brilliant rays of light over the waking city. We stood there, each lost to his own thoughts, sipping on our steaming cups.
I had a million questions I wanted answered, but something told me to wait. Preacher was about to unravel something big. I could sense it in the man’s stance; his hesitancy to speak nearly promised as much.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Preacher asked, looking out over the city. “The greatest achievement of mankind. We colonized Mars and it’s everything I could have imagined.”
“It’s something, all right,” I said.
“It’s what we fight to protect,” Preacher said, taking in a long deep breath. “I want you to know I didn’t have anything to do with her death. I didn’t know. I would have tried to stop it if I had.”
“I believe you,” I said.
“I looked for you for as long as I could, but you were just gone,” Preacher said, turning to take me in. “I thought you were dead. Killed yourself from grief or went out in some kind of blaze of glory. I didn’t know.”
“That makes two of us,” I said back to him. “I’m recovering a lot of my memory, but I still don’t know how I lost it in the first place.”
“It’ll come to you,” Preacher said. “In the meantime, I’m glad you’re back in the game. There’s something that’s happened that’s changed everything.”
Preacher’s tone that had been hard-edged and no nonsense softened now. He took in a deep breath, looking me up and down.
“Mijo, what I’m about to tell you comes with no obligation to help,” Preacher started. Each word was halting, as if he were physically having to push the words past his lips. “There’s a fight coming, a fight we may not be able to win. Super seeds, the Order, Phoenix all mean nothing compared to what’s at our doorstep.”
“Is that w
hy you just let Professor Warden go?” I asked.
“He doesn’t mean much anymore,” Preacher said with a nod. “He gave us the information we need, but that’s not what I’m talking about now.”
Preacher took another heavy sigh. He shook his head from side to side. I could see the war waging behind his one good eye.
“By now, you must know the history behind the Order,” Preacher asked in more of a question than a statement.
“The Knights Templar, the illuminati,” I answered.
“That’s right,” Preacher said. “Now do you know the origin behind Immortal Corp?”
The question stunned me for a moment. I knew a lot about the company that created me, but I didn’t know the true origin of the enemy I fought. With the rivalry against the Order, I imagined Immortal Corp was founded to combat them, but I didn’t know.
“I don’t,” I said. “I know Immortal Corp hates the Order and the other way around.”
“That’s right,” Preacher said. “That rivalry goes back further than anyone can remember. Immortal Corp’s name has also changed through the pages of history. Immortal Corp has been around for a long time. They were founded on the doctrine of protecting mankind.”
“They have a strange way of protecting,” I said, thinking of how many deaths they must have been responsible for. Of how many deaths they were responsible for just in my short time of getting to know them.
“They have a lot of flaws in their system,” Preacher said, actually agreeing with me. “Trust me, I’ve gone back and forth on whether it’s all worth it. How many lives killed justify how many lives saved? We kill one to save ten, is that fair? One to save one? Where do you draw the line, or is there no line to be drawn at all anymore?”
I clammed up. I was the last person to form an answer to this question. How many people had I killed working for Immortal Corp? How much innocent blood was on my hands? How much blood on my hands since I realized what was going on? Sure I could justify it, but a life was a life.
What chilled me even more was the fact that I was prepared to keep taking lives. I’d kill my way to the top until I gave Amber’s death meaning and found all my answers along the way.
“Immortal Corp started off as a band of assassins.” Preacher picked up the story. “Assassins who swore to protect men against threats both domestic and—alien.”
There was no denying that the way Preacher said the word “alien,” he meant to add extra emphasis to it. I searched his one bright blue eye for meaning.
“Alien?” I repeated the word.
“Whispers, rumors, fake news have hinted at us not being alone in the universe for quite a while now, but we have proof,” Preacher said, setting his jaw. “I’ve seen them, Daniel. I’ve seen them, and unless we find some way to band together, humanity has no chance against them. Nothing, none of this will matter if there is no mankind to go back to Earth, to try and stop the fighting to find answers. It’ll all be over.”
“How, where?” I asked as my mind tried to bring rational thought to an impossible scenario.
“We might as well have sent signal flares to the galaxy when we left Earth and then colonized the moon and Mars.” Preacher took another long swig of his caf. “And even that is only speculation. We won’t really know until we can capture and interrogate one of them. What we do know is that they’re growing in force and it’s only a matter of time before they come for us. They’ll take Mars first, then the moon and Earth will follow.”
“How much time do we have?” I asked. “Who else knows?”
“Knowing and believing are two different questions,” Preacher answered. “The Galactic Government is turning a blind eye, pretending it isn’t real. Phoenix is too wrapped up in their super seed and bringing life back to Earth. The Order, well, who knows what they know. I’m not counting on them to partner with us in any case.”
“How much time?” I asked, still trying to wrap my head around the fact that we were talking about real life aliens.
“Not enough,” Preacher said, draining his cup of caf. “Not enough. They’re building a forward base on the opposite side of Mars. They’ll use that as a staging ground for the invasion. By the time they conquer Mars, it’ll be too late for the forces on the moon to make a stand. Earth goes next.”
I finished my own cup, walking away from Preacher and feeling angry.
“So, what?” I asked, not bothering to mask my frustration. “You want me to help you, is that it? You want me to come to the rescue of Immortal Corp? It’s because of them that I’m on this path. They killed Amber for no other reason than she wanted a different way. I’m just supposed to forget all of that and go fight your aliens?”
“I’m not saying it’s fair or that it even makes sense,” Preacher said with a weary sigh. He hunched his shoulders, defeated for a moment. In that brief window, I saw him for what he really was. He was tired.
Preacher had to be twenty to thirty years older than me. Wrinkles showed easily on his face. His grey and white hair and short beard added to the fact that he was old enough to be my father.
“I’m not asking you to forgive Immortal Corp. Hell, I want to kill a few of them myself,” Preacher said, straightening his back. “I’m tired of fighting too, but soldiers don’t get the choice of when to or when not to fight. Right now, if we sit by and do nothing, then humankind falls. I can’t have that. I won’t have that. Put that hate in your heart on pause. We can’t do this on our own. We’ll need everyone to help if we’re going to get through this alive.”
I rubbed my eyes, trying to figure out what to do next. How could I do anything else but help? If Preacher hadn’t gone crazy and he was telling the truth, then we were all going to die unless we did something.
“Seeing is believing,” Preacher told me as I stood at his kitchen counter at a loss for words. “I can take you there before you make a decision. You can see for yourself what we’re up against. If that’s not enough to convince you, you can go about your way. Just see for yourself. I can get us transportation to the uncolonized side of Mars. We can be there in a day’s time.”
“Okay, okay,” I said, resigning myself to the idea that not only did aliens exist but that I would be working with the very company I swore to defeat. “You should know that I’m still coming after them. I mean, the heads of Immortal Corp. The three figures on the screen that gave Amber’s kill order.”
“And I won’t stop you,” Preacher said. “Loyalty to Immortal Corp is something that died when they killed one of our own. What I do now goes much further than loyalty. It goes to the preservation of our very species.”
Daniel Hunt will be back in the next book in the Forsaken Mercenary Series, Fury. Until then, stay informed by joining our Pack in the “Jonathan’s Reading Wolves” Facebook group and get the latest news on the project.
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Books in the Forsaken Mercenary Universe
Inception
Dropship
Absolution
Fury (Coming Soon!)
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Absolution: A Near Future Thriller (Forsaken Mercenary Book 2) Page 18
