by John Walker
“That’s not too bad,” Gorman said. “Finishing our sweep … I wonder how many are inside.”
Intel wasn’t clear about their overall opposition which made the assignment crap. Satellite photography gave Heat the impression they might find a grand total of fifty men inside but that included technicians and scientists. Actual combatants might’ve topped out at thirty and that depended on how paranoid their opponents were.
After all, they’d setup base in the middle of the mountains with limited overland access. Air strikes were possible but these guys knew they had a valuable commodity. They were working on some seriously advanced weapons, the type no one should’ve had. The debate came down to whether they should blow them up or take them.
Heat’s presence there proved what they decided. His orders were to take the research and data then destroy the facility to create confusion. Eventually, it would come out that the data was stolen but by then, the government would’ve replicated it and made it work. The marines weren’t told what they were stealing but they knew it would be a game changer.
I guess we’ll see about that.
The head scientist used to work at Gamma Alpha. He had access to the Orb and one day, he disappeared. Many thought he’d been kidnapped but later, intelligence confirmed he’d defected. The fringe faction offered a lot of money and the resources to do some unethical research.
Though he wasn’t at the facility, he was marked for termination. Some other unit had to go kill him and Heat was grateful they hadn’t been given that assignment. He didn’t like the assassination tasks. They were always messy and he especially didn’t like having to take out civilian targets.
That was a job for … well, he didn’t know but as long as he didn’t have to do it, he was happy.
“We’re good,” Gorman said. “No troops outside the base perimeter.”
“You think they’ve got more of those bioengineered sensors you guys worried about?” Heat asked. “Or can we just go in there and get the job done?”
“Anderson checked. We’re good.”
“Hey.” Heat turned to Anderson. “How the hell would you know anyway? You weren’t entirely sure above.”
Anderson shrugged. “There was something off about the path.”
“Something off.” Heat glared at him. “When we get back, we’re going to have a talk about gut feelings and backing them up with something substantial.” He shook his head. “Gorman, get us into position. Evans, you’re just about up. I hope you’ve prioritized your targets. I don’t want some maniac with an RPG taking a potshot at me.”
“Don’t worry, Sarge,” Evans said. “I doubt they’ll waste good ordnance on you.”
“You’re a real joker.” Heat sighed as they picked up the pace, moving toward the facility. The plan was to take position around the door. Anderson would creep up to get through the lock. When he was ready, Evans would start shooting. Then, marines would rush in and secure the courtyard. They had practiced the plan back at base dozens of times.
Unfortunately, their rehearsals didn’t include the icy cold of a mountain night. Their targets wore thick garments, heavy coats that would likely hamper their movement if they needed to react quickly. Heat crouched behind a large boulder, watching a nearby target stare off into the distance.
They’re exhausted, cold and bored of their assignments, Heat thought. When this goes down, they won’t be prepared.
“I’m in position,” Anderson muttered. “Beginning the hack now. Twenty seconds to go time.”
Heat started counting the seconds in his head. Once again, thoughts tried to break through his concentration. Cassandra Alexander. Darren Gabriel. Desmond Bradford. Vincent Bowman. The names clicked by one after another, blurry faces accompanying each one. He knew them, as well as he knew his own name but only Gabriel made sense.
Lieutenant Gabriel never commanded one of Heat’s units but he’d seen him around the bases before. They were passing acquaintances at best but even that seemed wrong. Somehow, he knew him better than that … Somehow, they were close enough to have private conversations.
This literally makes zero sense! Frustration boiled to the surface of his mind as he tried to puzzle through the confusion. Evans voice brought him out of it. “Firing now.”
Wait, what? Shit! Heat shook his head, getting back in the game. The whisper of the silenced rifle popped over their com net and one of the guards fell off the wall, landing near Anderson. Another shot killed the flanking soldier.
The doors opened. Heat called to the others, “Advance!”
The marines spilled out of cover and formed two lines. They broke left and right, drawing the attention of the remaining eight guards. Heat took aim and popped one in the head, red mist quickly evaporating behind him. Silenced weapons cracked all around him, bringing down the opposition before any of them could so much as lift their own guns.
That wasn’t as bad as I thought. “Good job,” Heat said, “secure the courtyard. Markel and Dahl, I want you on the doors to hold this place. The rest of you form up on me. We’re going to penetrate the base in thirty seconds.”
“On it,” Gorman said. “You heard the sergeant, make sure there aren’t any more of these jerks hiding out in here! Hurry it up! We don’t have all night!”
Heat moved over to the door and leaned against the wall. If they had cameras, they’d already know they were under attack. The marines were ready to go loud when they got inside. They might be outnumbered, but it wouldn’t matter when they got into the tight quarters. Besides, they weren’t dealing with seasoned soldiers. Just hired guns.
And they aren’t prepared. Heat’s head began to ache. The Gnosis came to mind … A spaceship that hopped all over the galaxy. Humans piloted it … He was on board but that didn’t make sense. Earth had yet to field such a vessel, let alone have it leave the solar system. What the hell was wrong with him?
I don’t have time for flights of fancy! Planets formed in his mind, images of space stations and distant fleets. He shook them off, staring at the door they were about to breach. If I don’t pay attention, I’m going to get slaughtered on this mission. Come on, Heat! Knock it the hell off!
***
Desmond rubbed his chin, contemplating the experiment. The fact it impacted multiple people worried him. The Orbs were already an unknown factor so nothing surprised him but the inexplicable outcome needed a quick explanation. Were Gil and Cassie brain dead? Did the Orb have anything to do with their status?
Nothing else seemed likely but he didn’t have the naivety to assume. They’d dealt with so many insidious threats, he couldn’t put the situation past something like sabotage. Gil and Cassie represented two major advantages. If they were taken out of play that would seriously hamper their ability to solve the problem.
But why not Harper and Thayne? The latter is the foremost expert on Orb technology and the other’s in charge. Desmond tried to put himself in the shoes of an insurgent and short of a Tol’An, he couldn’t imagine why anyone would try to prevent their success. Especially a Pahxin or human. This might be the only hope for both our cultures.
“Captain,” Salina’s voice pulled him out of his reverie. “I … might have some bad news.”
“I’d love to hear it.” Desmond sighed, joining her at her station. “What’ve you got?”
“I was going over our communications logs and I found something odd. Just before we went into hyperspace, a message was sent out of our solar system.”
“Pahxin?” Desmond asked. “Maybe they were just letting their people know we were on our way.”
“It wasn’t directed toward their home world and not where we’re going either.”
“Do you know what was said?”
Salina hummed. “It was a coded message. I’m working to break it now but the operator who sent it masked their identity. They even tried to erase this from the logs but I’ve got a triply redundant system in place to prevent such tampering.”
“Thank God for your pa
ranoia,” Desmond replied. “How long before you know what they said?”
“Thirty minutes at the soonest.” Salina looked up at him. “Cassie might’ve been able to break the code faster than me.”
“What about Dawson?” Desmond asked. “She’s supposed to be pretty good at her job.”
Salina winced. “What if she’s the one who sent it?”
“I sincerely doubt it, but I see your point.” Desmond patted her chair. “Do what you can and get back to me as soon as possible. Depending on what they got up to, we might need to be hunting them down before they cause any real trouble.” They might have had something to do with what happened to Cassie and Gil.
The thought made his stomach sink. He’d hoped getting them into hyperspace would be sufficient to keep them safe, at least until they emerged. The Gnosis just became a locked room mystery, one that was stuck in hyperspace for several more hours. Plenty of time for a clever saboteur to cause a lot of trouble.
***
Gil struggled with a sense of vertigo and illness. He found himself standing on the surface of a planet long declared to be off limits by his government. Travelers were warned about the violent weather and the strange mutants that ate outsiders just for visiting. Many such restrictions seemed ridiculous to him in the past. This one, he agreed with.
The flight down in the shuttle felt truncated and went by in a blur. Gil barely remembered boarding the vessel before it took off and deposited them on the surface. They parked it in the courtyard while everyone, including the pilot, departed to create a perimeter. Gil knew why they had to be so vigilant.
The facility they were about to penetrate had been a holy place, some kind of temple from the past. He figured the mutants still considered it sacred on some level and that meant desecration was met with extreme violence. Though honestly, he figured anytime someone ate a sentient being, the situation became extreme.
Quinda joined him on the search and didn’t seem to want to let Gil out of his sight. It felt like he might be a prisoner and he resolved to ask about it when they got inside, out of the light and the immediate threat of being shot or impaled by a spear. The doors were already taken out, crumbled from some kind of explosive.
What have they done here? Gil looked all around, noting that everything but the entrance was immaculately clean. At some point in the past half hour, the Kalrawv Group blasted the door. If it had been any longer, the monsters would’ve been on them already. The urgency came from fear of what the beasts would do and how quickly they’d do it.
“Was this necessary?” Gil gestured to the rubble as they traversed it but Quinda didn’t respond. Gil stopped and grabbed the man. “Answer the question. Why didn’t you wait for me? We could’ve opened that gracefully. You risked angering the things that live here. Why? I want to know before we go in there.”
“We agreed to your price, Quinda said. “Regardless of how unreasonable. What do you care how we got inside?”
“I care when my life is on the line,” Gil replied. “I care when I might be eaten by the indigenous people.”
Quinda sighed. “We were in a hurry, okay? Does that make you feel better? We were hoping for a simple smash and grab but it turned out to more complicated. You’re here because we couldn’t get what we needed fast. Now … are you satisfied? Do you want to waste more time because you seem to know these creatures will come for us?”
Gil wanted to decline, he wanted to get back on the shuttle and get the hell out of there but he knew the Kalrawv Group wouldn’t take kindly to it. They were his ride, unfortunately, and that meant he needed to finish the job or he’d likely be stranded, if not outright shot. Just my luck I’d be dragged into this kind of mess.
He looked back at the shuttle, noting that it was one of their newer models. That meant hyperspace capable in a pinch. He put that information in the back of his mind and smiled at Quinda, nodding once. “Whatever you say, boss. Just lead the way.” Extracting the data might take a while so further argument merely wasted time.
Quinda seemed relieved and he picked up the pace, practically jogging into the former temple and down a short hallway. They emerged into a stone room with a computer terminal. Two men toiled at it, the guys who couldn’t figure it out. Gil wondered how they would feel about being replaced.
Relieved, probably. They wanted off that planet as much as anyone and he didn’t blame them. A storm would ground them indefinitely and the last survey of the planet suggested the monsters could travel in them. Shuttles would be useless and without protective gear, they’d be unable to leave the safety of the temple.
Gil approached and Quinda shooed the men away. They stepped back, exchanging grateful glances between themselves.
“Have you figured anything out?” Gil asked, peering at the screen. “Anything at all? Or have you simply wasted your time?”
They clearly didn’t want to say they’d wasted their time, but he knew that was the truth when they hesitated. One of them stepped forward. “We did manage to get the device to turn on. It is a touch screen and when we ran our fingers across it, the thing came to life. And shortly after, we became stuck at a login screen.”
Gil nodded. He wondered if that explanation was enough for Quinda to not give them a hard time but he doubted it. The man was a ruthless mercenary scum and he didn’t have tolerance for failure. Their ineptitude required their main ship to leave the system to fetch someone else. That alone would earn them a serious reprimand.
I wonder what would’ve happened to me if we arrived and they’d figured it out. Gil knew the question was pointless. Chances of these fools opening any ancient technology rested firmly between zero and none. However, Quinda wasn’t a man to waste a resource. He probably wouldn’t have paid for the trip, but at least Gil assumed he’d survive.
“How long will it take?” Quinda asked.
“I’ve literally just started looking at it,” Gil replied. “You’re going to have to go away for a moment so I can work. I recommend setting up a defensive perimeter. Something that we can hold for a time if necessary. I’ll get your precious data but you cannot hover here, giving me a hard time.”
“Hurry.” Quinda started to walk away and paused. “Do you need these two idiots? Will they help if they stay?”
“They can go,” Gil replied. “Let them … do whatever they need to do.”
“Come on,” Quinda shouted. “I want you outside with your eyes on the horizon. If those monsters come, we need as much warning as possible. We’re counting on you, Gil. Don’t waste our time!”
“Oh, I won’t.” Gil shook his head, relaxing into the work when he was finally alone. After fifteen years of excavating tombs and ruins across nearly a hundred worlds, he had amassed a wealth of data and applications to help break old codes. Any society that utilized the Trindisha technology could be hacked into with a universal language.
The trick was figuring out the minor differences in whatever the dead culture used and building upon it until he was into their system. While he didn’t consider the task difficult, it generally proved to be time consuming. Haste never happened and even trying for it merely made things take longer.
Gil allowed his tablet to begin scanning the terminal, finding a protocol which would allow it to access the data. That generally took up the majority of the time as depending on their interface method, whether it was archaic or ahead of its time, he needed to get his equipment on the same page.
Interface. The word conjured more strange images into his head, the things he chalked up to being drunk before. Now, he was sober and the people he thought were figments of his imagination came back to haunt him. Faces appeared in his mind’s eye, those of colleagues he swore he’d never met.
Thayne Rindala had been his friend, so that part made sense but what did he have to do with these other people, this other species entirely? Cassandra Alexander? What kind of name was that? Or Geoff Heathrow … another odd sounding designation. Had he conjured up an image of some old data he
found on another dead planet?
I don’t think so. This feels fresh … new … and I don’t understand it at all.
Quinda was shouting outside at his men. It made Gil shake his head. The fool would wake up the entire planet it if he could. That was one of the reasons that Gil hated working with amateurs and the mercenaries. They never had enough sense to be patient, to find places to work where they weren’t going to be devoured by the locals.
He remembered one of his first assignments with the Kalrawv Group took him into a war zone. They had a habit of picking the most stressful environments imaginable. News agencies loved to talk about their exploits and though few people knew what they were truly up to, it didn’t stop the public from building some legends around their activities.
Even though people in the know fully understood they were criminals, fiends and opportunists.
That thought conjured up something else. Tol’An. Why did he care about that fringe faction? They weren’t going to really be a problem, not to the rest of the galaxy. Once the Pahxin located their hidden base, they’d be wiped out and no one would remember them. What did they have to do with anything?
But his mind continued to hop back to them, as if trying to remind him that they were important. He’d encountered a couple of them in recent weeks. They were zealots, maniacs, idiots, killers … the types of people Gil ran into quite frequently in his current situation. They didn’t care much about him, probably because he didn’t appear to be capable of arming them.
They had something to do with Cassandra Alexander … with a ship called Gnosis. Who cares? The thought made Gil’s head hurt. Why should I be worrying about this right now? I’m a little busy! Am I truly this easily distracted? Quinda’s going to kill me if I don’t get this as quickly as possible!
But the Kalrawv Group wasn’t the problem. Not when compared to some nebulous threat working at the back of his mind. His tablet would take a while to get into the alien terminal. He needed to explore the strange thoughts causing him so much discomfort and determine their origin.
