Target: Earth (Extinction Wars Book 5)

by Vaughn Heppner

  “I have not,” N7 said.

  “Saul is why we should ride express elevators to the center,” Ella said. “They know we’re here. So let’s hit them as hard and as fast as we can.”

  Before I could respond to that, a huge Abaddon clone teleported into our corridor. He was wearing dark garments, gripped a massive .55 hand cannon in one hand and held onto a tall, stooped, badly beaten-up Ifness with the other.

  There was a strange light in Saul’s eyes. I expected him to aim the hand cannon and start firing. Instead, he moved the nearly limp Ifness toward me as if passing him off.

  I was so startled by the action that I failed to attack. I guess the same was true of Ella and N7.

  Slowly, the hitman raised his battered head to peer at me. He seemed surprised at what he saw, and he grinned with cracked lips, showing that he was missing teeth.

  At that point, I realized that neither Saul nor Ifness wore breathing gear. That meant normal Earth-breathable air must have been circulating in the corridor.

  My helmet motor whirred as my visor slid open.

  -82-

  “What’s going on?” I demanded.

  “I found Ifness,” Saul said in an altered voice. “They have tormented my friend for many weeks, although he said they regrew his mangled arm.”

  Ella and N7’s visors came down.

  “This is a trick,” Ella warned. “We must phase out immediately.”

  “I disagree,” N7 said. “Saul, how did you find us?”

  “What do you mean?” Saul asked.

  “The PDS is vast,” the android said. “How could you possibly have found us in all this mass?”

  That was a good question, and it made me doubly suspicious.

  “You not understand,” Saul said. “I…fixate on that.” The clone pointed at the Abaddon force axe at my side. “I sense it here, look, and find you.”

  I traded glanced with N7.

  “Can others sense this weapon?” I asked Saul.

  “Maybe,” the clone said. “I do not know.”

  That was just great. I was carrying a veritable beacon.

  Ifness began to cough, and his lanky body shuddered.

  “Ifness has been cloned,” Ella said, as if figuring out the answer to a complex problem. “Jennifer must have cloned your hitman friend with her DNA stamper,” she told me. “Jennifer must have made a least one more Ifness and used the accelerator to turn the clone into an adult. You killed the Ifness clone—an Ifness clone, as there could be more. That Ifness clone was controlling Admiral Sparhawk from the drone in the Quebec.”

  The obviousness of the deduction struck me hard. Yes. Jennifer hadn’t only fashioned Abaddon clones, but Ifness clones as well, at least one. But if that was true—

  “You’ve been telling the truth all along,” I said to Ifness.

  “Bright boy,” the hitman wheezed.

  “I could be wrong,” Ella said. “This Ifness could be a clone meant to trick us.”

  “No,” Saul said, angrily. “This is Ifness. He is the original. He is why I came to this place, to rescue my friend.”

  I made a hard and fast decision. I decided to believe Saul and thus Ifness. Yet in a way, I hardly had a choice. If they had tricked us, we were dead anyway. If they were friends, and we were too distrustful to use their help, we would likely lose as well. The one way to win was to use what Saul—and possibly Ifness—represented.

  Saul could teleport and likely “see” just about anywhere in the PDS. Ifness must have specialized knowledge. We were going to need both if we were going to save our fleet.

  “Listen to me,” I said. “Ifness, you once said you had a T-suit. Is it here?”

  “On the PDS,” he said, “yes.”

  “Can you direct Saul to it?”

  Ifness gave me a beady bloodshot study with a single eye. The other was almost puffed shut. “The T-suit is my most priceless possession,” the hitman said. “You think I’m going to just hand it over to you? You’ve already stolen my phase suits.”

  “Those extra suits are the reason we’re here to help Saul rescue you,” I said.

  “Nice try,” Ifness said, weakly. “Saul did the rescuing by his lonesome. You didn’t do a thing.”

  I turned to Saul. “Did I give you a ride near the PDS?”

  “Creed helped me,” Saul told Ifness.

  “Inadvertently is all,” the hitman said.

  “Fine,” I said. “What’s the price for the T-suit?”

  It only took Ifness a second to decide. “We kill Jennifer,” Ifness said in a cold dark voice.

  I only hesitated a second. “No,” I said. “I haven’t come all this way to kill her. I’m going to save her.”

  Even as I said it, I winced. This would be a perfect moment for Jennifer to appear or maybe all fifty Abaddon clones to appear and attack. I actually looked around as I put a hand on the longish handle.

  Nothing of the kind happened. That surprised me, and it told me I’d guessed right about Saul and Ifness.

  “At least you’re not lying to me,” Ifness said, sourly. “If you’d agreed to kill her, I would have known you were snowing me. What do I want? I want my phase suits back to start with.”

  “After the mission is over,” I said, “they’re yours again.”

  “That works for me,” Ifness said.

  “Anything else?” I asked.

  Ifness eyed us, finally saying, “I want the Globular Blaster, the Disrupter Rifle and the Abaddon Force Axe.”

  I studied the hitman. Even though he was barely standing, he still had fire in his belly, willing to dicker at a time like this.

  “You can choose one between the Globular Blaster and the Disrupter Rifle,” I said. “The axe is not for sale no how, no way.”

  “I want the guns or the axe,” Ifness said.

  “One of the guns and two phase suits is a bargain for a Ronin 9 T-Suit. It is a Ronin 9, isn’t it?”

  “Of course it is,” Ifness said. “I should point out, you stole my two suits. You’re only giving back what is already mine.”

  “The suits are mine at the moment,” I said. “Besides, it doesn’t matter how I got them. I’m willing to bargain with them—that is the point.”

  Ifness glanced at Saul, but the Abaddon clone was no help. The hitman eyed me again. “Fine,” he muttered. “I’m getting ripped off. You’d better not welsh on the deal, though. I’m giving you everything beforehand while you—”

  “What’s wrong with you?” Ella shouted, interrupting. “Saul just rescued you. He needed our help to do it. And you’re here complaining and bickering about giving us the tools so you can escape? Are you crazy?”

  “I have to be paid,” Ifness said, stubbornly. “It’s my code. It’s who I am. Live with it.”

  “Let’s shake on the deal,” I said, hoping Ella would shut up about it already.

  Ifness struggled to raise an arm. I stepped up to him to make it easier. He leaned near, whispering, “This is hitman to effectuator honest, right?”

  “My yes is yes and my no is no,” I said.

  “Quoting the Good Book, are you?”

  I nodded.

  “I accept,” Ifness said.

  The two of us shook hands in an outer corridor of the giant PDS in the pocket universe.

  “One thing,” Ifness said, as we let go of each other’s hand.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “The T-suit will be heavily guarded. It’s questionable whether you can fight your way to it.”

  “How far away is it anyway?”

  “Deep in the PDS,” Ifness said.

  “How do we get there in time?”

  Ifness nodded slyly and grinned so his cracked lips began to bleed. “You’re not going to like it, but here’s the plan…”

  -83-

  In order to do this, we had to trust Saul. Just as the Abaddon clone had grabbed Ifness from his cell and teleported away with him, Saul could do the same with each of us—one at a ti
me.

  Ella, N7 and I had a short council of war. We agreed to the plan, as it was the only way to move fast enough inside the moon-sized PDS in order to win in time—if winning was possible.

  “What do we do once we have the T-suit?” Ella asked me.

  I shrugged. “Seems like we attack and grab Jennifer.”

  “Just like that?” Ella asked.

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  “I do.”

  “Let’s hear it,” I said.

  “First,” Ella said, “we need the T-suit. I say we do this one step at a time.”

  I shrugged and turned to Ifness. “We’re ready. Let’s roll.”

  Saul stepped near, picked me up in my phase suit and the corridor disappeared. Another corridor that looked exactly like the first one appeared. The one difference was that that Ifness, Ella and N7 were gone.

  “Are you sure this is the right place?” I asked Saul.

  The big guy had let go of me and panted as if from exertion. He nodded, and then Saul was gone.

  I phased into ghost mode and backed into a bulkhead to hide. As I did, I checked a sensor. If this reading was correct, I was hundreds of kilometers deep in the PDS. I waited—

  Saul appeared with Ella. He released her, and did a double take as he looked around.

  I stepped out of the bulkhead and phased in. “Right over here,” I said.

  Saul whirled around as he raised the .55. He checked himself a second later. Wiping his forehead with the wrist of his gun-hand, he disappeared.

  Ella and I both went into ghost mode and backed into a bulkhead.

  Soon enough, we had everyone, included a winded Saul.

  Ifness gave us the coordinates for the T-suit. Its storage cell was several bulkheads and corridors to our left. According to him, Plutonian soldiers likely guarded the suit along with other exotic paraphernalia.

  “You’re going to wait here?” I asked Ifness.

  “Saul will know when you’ve won or not,” the hitman said.

  “If that’s true, why can’t the other Abaddon clones know as well?”

  “They most certainly can know,” Ifness said. “I imagine at least one of them mentally checks on the T-suit every now and again.”

  “When were you going to tell me that?” I asked.

  “Now,” Ifness said, “like I just did. Do you have a problem with that?”

  I didn’t answer, but turned to Ella and N7. We made our plan, went into ghost mode and began walking through bulkheads and crossing empty corridors.

  In less than a minute, we stood inside the final bulkhead and slowly moved forward until the very edges of our visors jutted less than a centimeter out from the inner wall.

  The storage room held a familiar Ronin 9 Teleportation Suit among other interesting technical goodies. It also had six Plutonians.

  Ifness had told me these were soldiers. Instead of being bigger, as I’d expected, they were smaller, with hard shells like snails and seemingly armored tentacles. They peered around with their eyestalks and held bulbous weapons. I imagined those were guns of some sort.

  The Plutonian soldiers did not overly worry me. What really worried me was that they would act as tripwires. Before I killed them, one of them would likely alert an Abaddon clone. If one enemy clone knew, presumably, all could know in short order. Could I defeat fifty Abaddon clones armed with their latest weaponry?

  Some of you might be wondering why the other Abaddon clones hadn’t yet sensed my force axe and attacked us. First, they must have been concentrating on other matters. Second, they didn’t know to search for the force axe. Saul had told me he had to concentrate to find the force axe “signal.” Third, I think Saul had grabbed Ifness without anyone else knowing. Finally, I think we had indeed slipped near with the GEV, and slipped onto the PDS without anyone sensing it yet.

  In any case, as I stood in the bulkhead of the chamber with the T-suit, I realized we’d give away our presence if we attacked openly. The Abaddon clones would know the location of the T-suit. If I were one of them, while I was donning the T-suit, I’d teleport to the room and release a bomb, letting it evaporate everyone.

  I smiled, remembering that the Abaddon clones would not have permission to do such a thing. Still, they would likely T-swarm in, trying to capture me while I donned the suit.

  Hmm… Maybe I could use that to trap—to ambush—the clones as they teleported in to grab me. After some quick analyzing of the plan, that seemed iffy. If they could “see” in some fashion before they teleported, they could “see” our ambush. I should have questioned Saul more closely on his teleporting abilities.

  In that instant it came to me what I should do. We were going about this the wrong way.

  I withdrew back into the bulkhead and motioned the other two. We retreated through the bulkheads and corridors to where we’d left Ifness and Saul. Fortunately, they were still there.

  We phased in and opened our visors.

  “I don’t see a T-suit,” Ifness said tiredly.

  “Correct,” I said. “There’s been a change in plans.”

  “What now?” the hitman asked.

  I told them my new idea. Predictably, Ella didn’t like it. N7 said it bordered on madness. Ifness hadn’t yet made a comment.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “I’m too tired, too beat-up, to do as you suggest,” Ifness said.

  “You’re not too tired,” I said. “Besides, you have the easiest part. I can give you some stims to perk you up if you like.”

  “I don’t like,” Ifness said, querulously.

  “It’s a good plan and you know it.”

  “Your plan will get you killed,” the hitman said.

  “I hadn’t realized you’d grown so fond of me. Thanks.”

  “No,” Ifness said. “The more I think about your plan, the more…fraught with peril I realize it is.”

  “Look,” I said, starting to get irritated. “This shows the difference between a hitman and an effectuator. You work for profit. I don’t have a problem with that. But I work for a different payment. I might die, as you say, but I might finally grab the woman I love and start the process that heals her.”

  “You’re an idealist,” Ifness muttered. “No wonder you work for the First Guardian. He must have pumped your mind full of mushy slogans that you bought hook, line and sinker. Okay. I’ll do as you ask, but I’m keeping the T-suit if you get killed.”

  “I know you mean that you’ll keep everything if I get killed. But I’m not going to let them kill me. I’m going to win the most stunning melee in galactic history.”

  “Bragging before the fact gives you bad karma,” Ifness warned.

  “Whatever,” I said. “Are you ready?”

  Ifness glanced at Saul before muttering that he was.

  -84-

  Some of you have probably already guessed my plan. I had a teleporting team once we owned the T-suit. The trick was in grabbing the T-suit without causing a bunch of Abaddon clones to appear and shoot us up before we were ready.

  That meant we had to move fast while grabbing the suit and moving to a place the Abaddon clones wouldn’t immediately “see.”

  Saul stared intently into space, disappeared, and reappeared nine second later with a bleeding left shoulder and clutching a Ronin 9 Teleportation Suit. He dropped the suit and staggered back until he struck a wall, sliding down to his butt.

  “Leave him,” I told Ifness. “We’ll take care of him. You get into the T-suit.”

  Ifness hesitated only a second, shuffling to the suit, picking it off the deck with N7’s help. Again, with the android’s help, the hitman began to climb into the bulky suit.

  Ella and I checked on Saul. The wound wasn’t deep but it bled freely. As Ella pressed pseudo-skin to the wound and the surrounding skin to check the bleeding, I studied the clone’s eyes.

  Saul was possibly in a slight state of shock, but he seemed fully coherent.

  “You okay, big guy?” I asked. />
  Saul grinned at me. “I was hit.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “I can still do my part.”

  “You’re not going to die on us, are you?”

  “Saul is tough.”

  “True.”

  “Saul is tougher than you, Effectuator.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But I won’t believe it until I see it.”

  Using the wall for support, Saul began to work his way up.

  “Hold it,” Ella told him.

  Saul ignored her and climbed to his feet. That was just as good, as we probably didn’t have much time left before one of the Abaddon clones spotted us with his T-sight.

  I started taking off my phase suit. I wouldn’t be able to wear it and defeat a chamber full of Abaddon clones.

  Once out of the suit—only wearing my metallic-like garment—I donned the heavy hyper-state bands around my ankles, wrists and neck. Once they were activated, I could move at hyper-speed. Combined with the force axe, it was a lethal combination, especially if one had to do the fighting as fast as possible.

  Ella quietly picked up my phase suit. “You might need it later,” she said.

  I nodded, but I was finding it hard to talk, as I was psyching up for the battle royal. I gripped the longish handle with both hands and breathed in and out, in and out.

  We had a slight advantage that could evaporate at any moment. Saul knew where Jennifer was and could thus teleport there. We were hidden somewhere on the PDS, hidden at a place that they had as yet been unable to find. The force axe would probably give us away soon, though.

  Of course, the Abaddon clones—Jennifer’s elite guard—could teleport away from me if I charged them. But if they were going to protect her from me, they had to stick around on the battlefield.

  I was proud of the logic and hoped the Abaddon clones didn’t grab her and teleport away. Now, I could possibly have had Ifness or Saul teleport in, leave a bomb and vamoose before it exploded. But I had a hindrance, just like Jennifer’s regarding killing me that way. I wanted to save my love and return her to sanity. She wanted to capture me for extended torture.

  Ifness raised a gloved hand, waggling a T-suited thumb. He was ready. Saul still looked green around the gills, but he expanded his already considerable chest in a strongman’s pose. Ella held onto my discarded phase suit. N7 had his Disrupter Rifle out and ready. Both Ella and N7 wore their phase suits and could go in and out of phase as needs dictated.