by S. A. Lusher
“Where will you go?”
“Dunno. Away. I don't have anything tying me here.”
They left the base and moved to the detached garage. There was nobody on duty. Allan imagined that almost everyone was likely asleep or out patrolling, as all the death would have forced the local government to respond in some way, even a useless one. He'd seen it happen before, had spent many nights awake just to make people feel safer, even though he wasn't really doing anything. They found a jeep, got in and drove off.
Chapter 12
–The Hard Truth–
“So what happened?” Allan asked as they drove through the desert darkness. He realized that he'd slept through the entire day and now it was night again.
“I don't know, Montgomery didn't give me the details. She was...” he hesitated, seeming to consider his words. “Pissed, and scared, I think.”
“Huh,” Allan murmured. “I don't know why she wouldn't just recapture him and try again.” He stared out over the passing miles through his vision filter, watching the flow of the landscape sway and rise and fall, the dust blowing in the wind.
“Something's changed,” Johnson said. He pressed on before Allan could ask what he meant. “I don't have any solid facts, just a feeling. A vibe, man. You know what I mean?”
Allan considered it for a moment. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”
They both fell silent, listening to the quite drone of the engine. Allan considered the situation, trying to feel it out, but he just didn't have enough pieces. What could be different? Was the killer somehow more powerful now? Had he managed to reach his destination...wherever the fuck that was? Not enough pieces.
Allan kept his peace, happy enough to be back in his armor and out of prison. Whatever happened, his life here was done, he knew that much. Maybe Montgomery could help him cut some kind of deal, go somewhere else. Maybe he was badass enough to sign up for Spec Ops. They had brutal standards, but he'd gone through some pretty brutal shit.
So, for now, Allan simply sat back and waited.
* * * * *
The pickup zone turned out to be a spot in the middle of the desert wasteland that comprised a large portion of Lindholm, roughly fifty miles north of Lansing. There was a single jump ship waiting for Allan, its lights off, its presence hidden from anyone who didn't have some kind of light-enhancement technology. The skies were still gray and overcast. The moon and the stars were hidden behind the thick clouds.
Two men in black-and-silver armor waited for him, sitting on the back ramp, helmets off, smoking cigarettes. One of them were dark skinned, with a shaved head, a gold earring and eyes that glowed white in the darkness. The other was pale with a gaunt face and a fuzz of brown hair along his skull and jawline. They both stood up.
“Sergeant Allan Gray?” the glowing-eyed man asked.
“Yes,” Allan replied.
“Could you de-polarize your visor, please?” he asked.
Allan hesitated, a feeling of absolute terror shooting through him, freezing him into place. He trembled briefly, fighting to get get himself under control.
“Sergeant Gray?”
“Yes, sorry,” Allan murmured. He did as they asked. They both stared into his helmet, scrutinizing him, studying his pallid face.
The man with glowing eyes nodded. He took a deep pull on his cigarette, flicked what remained out into the desert and then exhaled a thick cloud of blue smoke. He stuck out his armored hand. Allan shook it.
“You can call me Poet,” he said. “I'm the technical expert of Shadow Team.”
“Icaurs, I'm the medic,” the gaunt man said, shaking Allan's hand.
“I, uh...” Allan felt confusion slowly flood his system. “I'm afraid I'm not sure what Shadow Team is.”
“Yo!” Johnson called. Allan could hear the jeep's engine idling behind them. He turned around, squinting into the glare of the headlight. Johnson was leaning out the driver's side window. “Montgomery made some promises, so...can you guys deliver on those promises?”
Poet sighed. “Yes. Here.” He crossed the distance between the back of the jump ship and the jeep, reaching into one of the pockets on his armor and pulling out an infoclip. “This contains all the information you need. Where you need to go, the ship you need to get on, where you're going. I suggest you get going. Your flight leaves in an hour.”
Johnson glanced down at the infoclip. “Oh, uh...thanks. Well, good luck with your...everything,” he said, glancing at Allan, then at Poet and Icarus.
“Good luck Dick Dick,” Allan replied.
Johnson flipped him off, then gunned the engine and sped off into the wasteland gloom. Allan watched the pool of light his headlights cast become every dimmer, then turned his attention back to Poet and Icarus.
“So...what the fuck is Shadow Team, exactly?” he asked.
“I can explain on the way,” Poet replied, turning and heading back towards the cargo ramp. “It's about an hour flight.”
“Fantastic,” Allan muttered. He took a few steps, then stopped as the world began spinning. He swayed on his feet. “Do you have any food onboard?” he asked, eyes squeezed shut, trying to regain his equilibrium.
“Uh...yeah, a couple canteens and MREs in the storage compartment. Are you okay?”
“Yes, it's just that I'm...I actually can't remember the last time I ate,” Allan replied.
“Fucking hell, man,” Icarus muttered. “You sure you're up for this?”
“Yes,” Allan said firmly, snapping his eyes open and marching to the ramp and up it. The pair of Spec Ops personnel followed him up the ramp. Poet hit the close button and the ramp began to raise, sealing them into the compartment. There was no one else in there with them. Poet and Icarus sat down along the right side of the cabin and Allan took a seat on the left, feeling hunger and exhaustion ripple through him.
“Here,” Icarus said, leaning down and pulling open a compartment in the floor. He extracted a pair of MREs and a canteen of water, tossing them all to Allan one at a time. He caught them and set them on the seat next to him.
Allan considered the situation for a moment. He knew it would make the most sense to take his helmet off to eat and drink, but the sheer thought of it made him shudder. Fighting the sudden terror that seized him, he reached up, detached his helmet and took it off. Setting it on the seat next to him, Allan proceeded to tear into the MRE. Within two minutes, he'd eaten everything that could be consumed and drained the canteen.
In the midst of eating the second one, and gratefully accepting a second canteen, he suddenly stopped as he bit into a cracker.
“Aw shit,” he muttered. “I got fucking crumbs down my armor...” He attempted to peer down the neckline of his armor, then realized how stupid he must have looked.
Poet snorted, then chuckled, then really began laughing.
“What?” Allan asked.
“I just...oh man, I had a friend, couple years back...we were all on this jungle planet, rescuing a downed jump ship. We'd gotten the people out and were waiting for pickup when some kind of bug fell down into his suit. He. Fucking. Lost it. Started screaming and running around, tearing at his suit. He got it off in bits and pieces. We found the bug all smashed up against his chest, in between his uniform and his armor. The thing wasn't even deadly, just some little beetle. Not toxic or lethal or even with pincers or teeth, just a beetle.”
Allan started laughing and Poet resumed his own laughter.
“It's hard to imagine a hardcore Spec Ops type flipping out over a bug,” Allan said after a moment of getting his breath back.
“Yeah, I know, right? But shit man, I've seen guys terrified of needles and I knew one guy who fucking lost sleep over ducks,” Poet replied.
Allan frowned. “Ducks?”
“Yes, ducks. No joke. Ducks. We were stationed at this place for a while. This was about five years ago, me and my squad were in between missions and they needed a place to stash us for a few days because something was coming up and they were get
ting transport to us, but it was a few days out. So they rented out this real nice five-star hotel built into the side of a starport. We got the whole top floor. There were some pools and a little pond on the roof and as some kind of publicity stunt or something, they stocked the pool with fish and ducks from Earth. This guy, Barry, took one look at them and about lost his shit. He'd never seen anything like them, and he said there was just something about them that scared the shit out of him.”
Poet broke into another fit of laughter. “Shit, man, I shouldn't laugh so much. I've got claustrophobia issues, and Icarus here is fucking terrified of spiders.”
“Thanks, asshole,” Icarus muttered.
“What about you?” Poet asked.
Allan considered that question for a long time. Finally, he said, “failure.”
That seemed to bring some of the tension back. Another moment of silence passed and Allan finished up his meal. “So where are we going?” he asked.
“Our temporary HQ. We're operating out of an abandoned mining camp, just a handful of prefab structures,” Poet replied.
“Can you tell me what's up?”
“Honestly? Not really. We've been briefed on everything that's happened so far, and we were there for the initial takedown. All I know is that Shadow Team has been assembled to lead what's left of our forces, you included, on another takedown attempt. We've got new tech and, if I overheard the situation correctly, we managed to find someone alive from Obsidian Station. Someone that can spell the whole thing out for us. Montgomery can tell you the rest,” Poet replied.
Allan nodded, satisfied for the moment.
He leaned back, closed his eyes and fell asleep.
* * * * *
When he woke up, the jump ship was settling down. Allan took a moment to orient himself. He grabbed his helmet and pulled it on, surprised that he'd been able to take it off for as long as he did. Securing it, he glanced out the back window and saw a collection of weather-beaten prefabricated structures. The light level was low and there didn't seem to be much activity going on. Allan frowned as he stood and the back ramp began to lower.
Shouldn't there be more people?
This was a Special Operations project, it was government-funded. So why were they hiding out in a derelict mining camp? Allan stood and moved down the ramp as it finished opening. Montgomery was standing on the makeshift landing pad they'd set up. She wore a pressed black-and-silver uniform. Her eyes were sunken and bloodshot.
“Gray,” she said.
“Montgomery,” he replied.
She stared at him for a moment, then reached into one of her various pockets and extracted a crumpled pack of Solar Flare brand cigarettes and a thin black lighter. She lit up and replaced both items in her pocket, then turned and waved for Allan to begin following her. She strode across the makeshift landing pad in silence.
Allan followed.
“Where did you guys come from? How did all this get started?” Allan asked as he caught up to her. Now that he'd eaten, had something to drink and some real sleep, his mind was beginning to come back to something like working order.
For a moment, Montgomery didn't say anything. Then, abruptly, she shifted her path and walked off the landing pad. Allan followed her. They walked across the wastelands in silence until they reached one of the abandoned husks of a prefabricated that might once have been a storage bay. A handful of unmarked crates were piled haphazardly around the front entrance. Montgomery reached them, hopped up and took a seat on one of them. Allan repeated the action. For a long moment, they simply sat there in silence, watching the base.
“About three months ago, I suddenly get word that I need to take some Spec Ops boys and babysit some eggheads out here on Lindholm. It was all very abrupt, with no real warning. I put together whatever I could, but it wasn't too much. Just some troops, ships and supplies. They wouldn't even give us an actual base of operations. The missions was off the books. Officially, we were all on leave. We all signed to say that.” Montgomery stopped talking for a moment, pulling on the cig, the embers lighting up her tired eyes.
Allan said nothing, listening, finally glad to be getting some real answers.
“We were supposed to have a place to live and work out of at Obsidian Station, but that jackass in charge said there was no room...for most of that three months, we did nothing but waste time out here. Here's what I've been able to piece together: the government found something out here and started doing research. Suddenly, the people who were doing the research had some kind of breakthrough and...maybe they weren't quite reporting in as much as they should have. Those guys you saw, they were from the Intelligence branch, only I've been hearing lots of rumors lately about how the Intelligence branch isn't really following protocol and they're running their own operations...I don't know, it's a typical clusterfuck.
“So as a result of that, they send us out to keep an eye on the place and make sure nothing funny is going on. But it's all fucking backwards-assed politics and bureaucracy. I can't do my job and I can't make them let me do my job, because my superiors are getting the runaround from their superiors are...fuck, I hate this job. So...well, for the next part of the story, what they were really doing down there, you gotta talk to the doctor.”
Montgomery stood up suddenly, flickering her cigarette into the dust.
“The doctor?” Allan replied, standing as well.
“Yeah. We found a survivor. He wasn't on site at the time. Apparently he fucking ran. We managed to track him down. His jeep broke down in the middle of nowhere. He's one of the lead scientists on the project. He told us everything, and I want him to tell it to you personally, since you've been so...involved with this whole thing. When you're done talking to him, I'll take you to our operations center and get you up-to-date on our plan.”
They came to one of the structures where a pair of soldiers were standing guard outside. Allan followed Montgomery inside, up a short flight of flimsy, rusted stairs. The building was akin to a trailer, a long rectangle of thin metal. Allan realized it was a makeshift infirmary. At the back, on one of the foldout examination tables, a single man rested. Another pair of soldiers were inside, as well as a medic, who was examining a machine hooked to the examination table. Allan and Montgomery approached the man.
“You must be him,” the man said.
He was tall and thin. He looked like he was wasting away, everything about him seemed hollow and gaunt. He looked like a prisoner of war.
“What happened to you?” Allan asked.
“Stress,” the man said, offering a weary smile. “I've been against what we were doing from the beginning, but you don't say no to Dark Operations. No sir, not at all. At least not if you expect to wake up afterward.”
“Dark Operations?” Allan asked, glancing at Montgomery.
“You didn't tell him?” the man asked.
Montgomery sighed. “Unofficially, the Office of Intelligence has...splintered. Within the government, there is know what is known as Dark Operations. Truly off-the-grid operations. They operate in cells. This was one such cell. They didn't even tell me.”
“The true evil of government and military. If you've got the right clearance, you can get away with anything. Absolutely anything. And no one asks any questions until it's too late. Hell, even when it's too late they usually don't ask questions.” The man trailed off into a coughing fit. “Forgive me. My name is Sergei Patel. And you are Sergeant Allan Gray. We were monitoring you, my friend. I must say, we were all very impressed.”
“Tell me about the killer. You made him. Why?” Allan replied.
“Straight to the point...just like I was. I respect that...why did we make him? We had no choice.” Sergei replied cryptically.
“No,” Allan said firmly. “I don't want any mysterious, half-assed answers that I have to sit around for six days and think about. I want facts. I want hard evidence. I want you to tell me everything in plain, clear detail. I've been tracking this bastard for days now. He's going
somewhere, okay? He's fucking going somewhere. Where the fuck is he going?” he snapped, the tension in his voice rising steadily. Sergei stared at him for several seconds. He chuckled.
“You are like me,” he said quietly, then laughed again. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, no bullshit.” Allan waited patiently while the man gathered his thoughts.
Finally, Sergei took a deep breath and let it out.
“All right, where to begin? At the beginning, I suppose. This whole thing originates from a dig on a planet even further out in the middle of nowhere than here. Some dinky little place on the frontier of the galaxy. A dig crew found evidence of an artificial structure. Nothing big, mind you. But something to suggest that someone else had been there first, and built something. Of course the government stepped in, jumped all over it and covered it up quick as hell. And they dug. And dug. And dug. Until they found something.
“It was old, ancient. Billions of years old. It wasn't Cyr. Much, much older. It was some sort of box. A device. They dug it up and brought it here, for testing. My crew and I were tasked with figuring out what the fuck it was. We figured it out all right. It was a holding cell...” the man's eyes unfocused suddenly, lost in memory. Trent waited. He finally came back.
“Now, this is where it's going to sound completely insane. But it's the truth. Essentially, at the dawn of time, or sometime around there, there was this race of beings. They were very powerful, as far as the physical realm was concerned. There were millions of them, billions perhaps. Maybe more. Essentially, they were gods given form. They broke off into small groups, relatively small, I mean, and kind of just chose a galaxy and took over. They created species and races as they saw fit, and ruled over them.
“A somewhat...not nice group got our galaxy. They built empires and civilizations. They created planets and destroyed them. They had ultimate power. They ruled as gods among several thousand species. They did whatever the hell they wanted. Millennium passed. As time wore on, the species that they evolved and lorded over, got sort of...fed up, with being ruled over by such whimsical gods. And began formulating a plan.
