by T. R. Harris
Scanning back along the corridor, he could see another dozen troops coming his way. They’d closed on the site of the explosion and then fanned out, checking the side corridors when Adam failed to continue along the main tunnel.
Adam examined the metal grate covering the air vent. The assembly complex was in the desert, but being buried deep underground allowed it to avoid the radical temperature swings from outside. Fresh air still had to be brought in, and stale air vented. This station was but one of dozens throughout the complex.
Adam ripped off the screen and looked inside. There was a long shaft extending both below his current level and then to the surface in the other direction. No natural light filtered down from above, meaning there would be impediments on his way up. He moved inside the shaft. There was a service ladder embedded in the concrete wall to his right. He scampered up.
The main tunnel for the complex was located a hundred feet below the surface, with three other levels above. At each floor, Adam passed through a pressure hatch and into a circular work area where technicians could service the pumps and fans of the ventilation system. Fortunately, none of the doorways were locked. He made steady progress toward the surface.
Adam and Riyad came to the planet Gracilia a month after Stimmel made it his new home base. With the Dark Matter Collector scandal out in the open, Maris-Kliss had no choice but to ask Stimmel to step down from his position as Regional Director and leave the planet Woken. Stimmel obliged, and moved to the Dead Zone, to settle on Gracilia, one of the twenty-six worlds the company owned in the region. The fabulously wealthy and influential former MK executive came with a full entourage, comprised of attendants, advisors and a massive security force. He already had thousands of mercenaries occupying the worlds he owned. Gracilia was no exception.
In light of the scandal, Adam expected that MK would reclaim their property. The Director purchased them on behalf of the company, but after being terminated, MK summarily transferred ownership to him. They even gave him the two hundred thousand employees who worked the planets, along with the security detail. And for all this, the company got nothing in return. That wasn’t like MK. They always got their pound of flesh in every transaction, except this one. Apparently, having two Dark Matter Collectors in his possession gave Stimmel an inordinate amount of negotiating power.
Once on the planet, Stimmel made an exception to a rule he had in place on the other twenty-five worlds: He would allow the native Gracilians to return to their homeworld. The move came as a surprise to the rest of the Dead Zone and gave hope to other refugee groups that he might amend his moratorium and allow them to return to their homes, as well. That didn’t happen. Instead, he continued to populate the other planets with only mercs and employees. And in return for his magnanimous gesture, the Gracilians were now his loyal allies and confidants, something Adam feared because of their knowledge of the Aris, dark matter … and the Formation.
Adam and Riyad’s primary mission was to retrieve the remaining two dark matter collectors Stimmel stole from the mutants. Adam’s team had already recovered one. But the two remaining DMCs were still enough to destroy the galaxy if properly configured. They needed to get them back.
But they were nowhere to be found in the vast underground complex. Adam’s new ATD could detect dark matter, and he’d struck out in identifying any beyond the small readings associated with DE starships. Either Stimmel had them somewhere else on the planet, or they weren’t on Gracilia.
So, instead of recovering the DMCs, Adam had to settle for the solitary Formation disk the Director’s thieves had taken from the mutant’s laboratory at Camp Forrester three months before. Even so, the mission was a bust. The mutants already had a disk; Adam wasn’t sure what a second one would do for them. But he didn’t want to leave empty-handed—if he could leave at all.
There was still the matter of the troops waiting for him on the surface…
Hurry up! Riyad screamed into Adam’s mind. The troops are repositioning; Stimmel knows you’re in the shaft.
I’m escaping as fast as I can.
I’ll see if I can distract them.
Riyad was lying atop a low dune overlooking the valley where the mercenaries clustered. Below was the primary access into the underground complex, a massive elevator designed to lift dark-energy starships from their assembly areas. Here was to be Adam’s exit point, but it wasn’t going to turn out like that. A hundred troops now sat atop armored personnel carriers, waiting for him to emerge.
The Director, Wolfgang Stimmel, knew of Adam’s abilities, and he was taking no chances with the enhanced Human.
It was mid-morning on this part of Gracilia. Four hours earlier, Adam had slipped inside the complex. But when his mission to find the DMCs went bust, he took the extra time to track down the missing Formation disk. The delay cost him the cover of darkness, and now Adam would be emerging into daylight and in full view of the waiting troops. This was not good.
Riyad lay on the rapidly heating sand watching the troops regroup. The word was out that Adam was on his way to the surface through a secondary exit located at the base of the hill. Riyad had placed four BARs—Big Ass Rifles—along the ridgeline, each separated by forty feet or so. BARS were the most powerful hand-held energy weapons in the galaxy. They would help, but how much against a hundred seasoned troops and eight APCs?
Riyad had one of the weapons pressed against his cheek, spotting through the magnified viewfinder. The enemy troops were within the range of the BAR, and the rifle did carry a bolt capacity of ninety. He was about to find out what the rate of fire was for the weapon, as well as how fast he could run in the light gravity of Gracilia.
Riyad began firing, saturating the nearest APC with tight blue energy bolts. The balls of concentrated plasma travel at such high velocity that their passage appeared more like a ray than a separate shot. This helped with targeting, but it also drew a direct line back to the shooter.
Pandemonium broke out on the field below. The powerful bolts penetrated the armor like it was butter; the troops were even less of a concern. An APC exploded, throwing body parts high into the air. Riyad continued pressing the trigger—right up to the moment several long-barrel flash cannons locked onto his position and prepared to fire.
Riyad was off a moment later, discarding the BAR and sprinting below the ridgeline and out of sight of the troops. A moment later, the spot where he’d been laying exploded, as a half a dozen starship-rated cannon bolts plowed into the sand. He was barely far enough away to survive the concussion.
Riyad plopped down in the sand at the next BAR and lifted the weapon, sighting on one of the flash cannon below. More blue beams flared out, taking out more troops and more equipment.
The enemy was better prepared this time. They knew the general vicinity of the opposition, so it didn’t take long to readjust their aim. Riyad was off again before firing even twenty bolts from the second BAR.
Adam! Get your ass up here! I’m running out of hill.
I’m here, off to your left.
No time for sightseeing. The ship is at the base of the dune. Get to it.
By the time Riyad reached the third BAR, Stimmel’s troops had figured out his strategy. Riyad didn’t make it to the spot before the hill exploded from multiple bolt impacts.
Riyad was thrown into the air, flipping over several times before landing twenty feet down the steep incline of the hill. The sand was soft and cushioning, and he was up a moment later, unharmed sprinting for the speeder at the base of the dune. Adam was angling in from his right.
Can’t you disable the friggin’ cannon? Riyad asked through his ATD.
I could if I had the time. It’s a little hard to concentrate while running for your life. But I can get the speeder fired up. Be ready the lift the moment we get there.
The speeder was a modified Zarin dual-engine sprinter. The modified part came from the third gravity generator placed atop the fuselage between the other two gens. It had no sleeping quarters, n
o galley and no head. It was merely a two-seat rocket, faster than anything in the area—hopefully. At the moment, it was their only way off the planet.
The canopy was open, and the two commandos met at the craft simultaneously. Each used their enhanced Human strength to jump the remaining twenty feet before slamming against the now blistering hot metal hull, heated by the relentless Gracilian sun.
“Ah, damn, this is hot!” Riyad bitched as he grasped hold of anything he could to keep from slipping off the starship.
“No, shit!” Adam cried out. “And you’re in my way—move!”
Riyad tumbled headfirst into the cockpit; Adam was a breath behind him. Riyad’s legs stuck out from where the pilot should be sitting, and it took him an awkward moment to reorient himself. Adam had already strapped into the back seat, and the canopy closing by the time Riyad positioned himself at the flight controls. He didn’t bother fastening his seatbelt before gunning the chemical engines. That was a mistake.
The acceleration was so intense that Riyad was thrown back out of the seat, landing in Adam’s lap and leaving no one at the controls. Arms and legs flailed as Adam pressed against Riyad, fighting the g-forces to get Riyad back in the front seat.
The ship launched at a slight lift-off angle, which was adequate for the flat desert topography—to a point. The Zarin bounced off the top of a small dune, upsetting Riyad again and plopping him back into Adam’s lap.
The flight path of the starship was upset, enough that it soon contacted the ground and skidded along the hardpack, the scrapping sound inside the vessel like that of a wood-chipper on steroids.
With their speed stabilized, Riyad no longer had to fight against the acceleration. He hooked first one leg, then the other, over the back of the pilot seat and lifted with his body scrunched up against the canopy. He barely fit. A moment later, he dropped down into the pilot seat.
Having learned his lesson, Riyad grasped at the waist and shoulder harnesses and fastened them, while the ship bounced along the desert floor.
“Look out!” Adam yelled from the backseat.
Riyad pulled his attention from the belt buckle to the forward viewport. Another hill—no, a rock outcropping—was dead ahead.
Riyad groped for the control stick, missing it the first time when the ship bounced again. He caught it the second time and violently yanked back on the lever.
The ship missed the jagged volcanic rock by inches, and now angled for space at a steep eighty-degree rate of climb.
“Some air pressure might be nice,” Adam said from behind Riyad.
They were already passing a hundred thousand feet, and Riyad had failed to pressurize the cockpit. A second later, things were copacetic, with the black of space directly ahead of them.
“Engaging the gravity drive,” Riyad breathed with relief. “Flight time to Navarus, sixteen hours. The inflight movie will be Die Hard, the original. Yippee-ki-yay, mother—”
“We get the idea, Riyad. Let’s at least keep this rated PG.”
Riyad snorted and flashed his trademark white smile at the stars beyond the window. “Why start now?”
Chapter 2
Adam entered the mutant’s lab on Camp Forrester to find it crowded with dignitaries. Foremost among them was the Union Ambassador Jeanne Euker. She was surrounded by an assortment of military and political figures, including both Lion/El, the president of Navarus, along with his deputy, Sherri Valentine. They gathered around a monitor displaying a link with a narrator wearing Hazmat gear and flanked by several other officials similarly dressed. They were walking through a village of stick-built structures as an assortment of domesticated alien animals feasted on piles of brown and red slime that soaked into discarded clothing, including primitive sandals. The mounds were the remains of once-living beings, now reduced to gelatinous ooze.
Few in the room noticed Adam’s arrival, and those who did gave him clouded expressions of concern. Something awful was happening, with Adam walking in on the initial disclosure.
He moved in closer to hear the narrator.
“We estimate the contagion struck about five hundred individuals,” he reported. “This didn’t happen spontaneously; there’s evidence it could have taken up to three or four hours before full breakdown occurred.”
“Where is this?” Adam whispered to Sherri.
“Someplace in the outer Kidis,” she answered. “I forget the name, but the race is called the Riaols.”
“Never heard of them. What happened?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out, but from what the ambassador says, this isn’t the first outbreak. And the others were different. Still a lot of deaths, but not like this.”
“They look like they melted.”
Sherri nodded. “That’s the consensus. The others showed signs of DNA degradation—they’re calling it. That’s where the DNA in the body stops functioning, and all at once. If cells can’t divide and transmit information, the entire system falls apart. When that happens, this is the result.”
“It’s Kanan, isn’t it?”
“Nothing official yet, but Panur seems to think so.”
Adam turned his attention back to the screen. The narrator was addressing the camera.
“We haven’t detected any transfer of the effects beyond this area, so the life of the contagion is limited. Once these people died, there were no carriers left to transmit the disease.”
“Or this disease—as you call it—was targeted to this specific group of individuals,” Panur offered.
Adam looked at the tall, handsome figure. He knew he was Panur, the mutant, but the body was that of the former Gradis Cartel capo TeraDon Fief. Panur acquired the body during the Kracion affair. He’d had been occupying it for the past couple of weeks, rather than the near-featureless grey form with which the mutant was most associated. The TeraDon persona was to be the new public image of Panur, but when he showed up a year ago, he came in the more familiar form of the four-and-a-half foot tall, bland-looking grey alien. At the time, Panur explained that the masters—as he called them—were more durable and better able to withstand energy intake as the result of flash weapons. When he came to Adam’s aide against Kanan, Panur anticipated pitched battles with the ancient Aris service module. He was right. But with Kanan off the radar for over a year, Panur felt it safe to inhabit the TeraDon body again. For her part, Lila was delighted with the transition. TeraDon was a gorgeous alien, tall, chisel-jawed and perfectly proportioned. Adam was jealous of the alien—always had been—even before his body was taken over by the mutant.
“What do you mean targeted?” asked Brigadier General Todd Oaks, commander of Camp Forrester. “You think this is another test?”
“That would be my guess,” Panur continued. “Kanan built the Formation as best he could, and now he’s testing the results, learning how to use it.”
Most of the people in the room only had a passing knowledge of the Formation, including Adam. He knew the Formation was constructed of disks, such as the one he now had in his pocket. But as to what it did, he was still in the dark. All he knew was that it was dangerous and that Kanan was obsessed with it. He would wait until the room cleared before giving the disk to the mutants. It would cause too much of a stir otherwise.
“Does he plan to release some deadly toxin into the galaxy?” Euker asked rhetorically. “Why would he do that?”
“I doubt that’s his end goal,” Panur said. “I never got the impression he wants to destroy life. He just wants to rule it, as have so many before him.”
Euker turned to the Human on the screen. “Doctor Jenkins, do you see this as a continuing threat on the planet or an isolated event?”
Jenkins shrugged. “There’s a much larger native population in the area. If this was a true contagion, there should still be evidence of it in the peripheral population. We haven’t seen any. A pathogen was introduced to this group of individuals, and this group only. Now it’s gone.”
“And you’re sure of
the cause of death?”
The doctor laughed. “No doubt about that. It’s not hard to see. DNA is part of every cell. There’s none present in any of the … the remains we’ve checked. Nothing does that, no virus or bacteria we know of. All we have is an unknown contaminant that attacked the existing DNA and destroyed it. This was intentionally manufactured and deliberately introduced. It was planned.”
Euker sighed deeply. “Okay, thank you for the update, Doctor Jenkins. I’m sure you have a lot of work to do. I will let you go.”
The doctor nodded as the link was broken.
Euker’s eyes scanned the faces in the room. She paused when she saw Adam. She knew he’d been away on a mission, and now she grimaced upon seeing him.
“So, no luck,” she said soberly. She already knew the mission failed to recover the Dark Matter Collectors. She wasn’t aware of his secondary purpose—to recover the stolen Formation disk. Panur would reveal that information to her once he had more to tell.
Adam shook his head. “He’s keeping the lock from the key, hiding them somewhere else, possibly off-planet.”
“While holding all of us hostage.”
Adam nodded. He knew there was more truth to the statement. In reality, both sides were holding the other hostage. Dark matter bombs had been placed in strategic locations by both Stimmel and the allies, set to go off should anyone begin a war. It was a version of mutually assured destruction on a galactic scale. Adam didn’t approve of the strategy. The bombs were to activate automatically, ensuring a counterstrike even if the main base or planet was destroyed. That left the possibility of a mistake triggering the response. It was too great of a risk when the activation of one weapon could create a ripple effect of catastrophic proportions. His primary mission was to recover the DMCs from Stimmel, thereby negating much of the threat. On that, he failed miserably. The Director was too smart to put all his eggs in one basket and risk losing his most-effective deterrent. Adam and the allies needed better intelligence before they tried that again.
