by Mark Walden
UNRECOGNISED TRANSMISSION SOURCE
Stirling frowned and opened up the custom-written signal analysing software and set it processing. He turned off the monitor and headed back towards the door. There was no point waiting; it usually took the triangulation equipment several hours to isolate the source of a new transmission somewhere in the city. Just as he put his hand on the door handle the terminal pinged again. He returned to the terminal with a frown on his face. There was no way that it could have completed the analysis that quickly. He switched the monitor back on and examined the results.
SIGNAL SOURCE LOCATED
Stirling read the coordinates listed below and felt his blood run cold. The signal was definitely alien in origin and the source was less than a hundred metres from where he was standing at that precise moment. He looked at the signal strength and felt a moment of panic. Whatever was sending that signal wasn’t just telling the world its precise location – it was screaming it. He ran out of the room and down the corridor to his lab. He flew through the door at such a speed that he startled Will, who was sitting at one of the benches performing a secondary examination of a piece of the Hunter.
‘Is everything OK, sir?’ Will asked. He had never seen Stirling so panicked before.
‘No, it isn’t,’ Stirling snapped. ‘The signal tracker that Jacob took on the mission to Wembley the other night – where is it?’
‘It’s in the storeroom,’ Will said, ‘but why do you need it?’
Stirling didn’t bother to reply; he simply ran through the lab to the storeroom door at the far end. He dashed into the cluttered room and desperately scanned the shelves for the object he needed. After thirty seconds he saw it and grabbed the small black box off the shelf and activated it. He punched in the wavelength characteristics of the signal he’d found and waited for several long seconds as the machine searched for it. A moment later the device pinged and the display indicated that it had a firm lock on the signal. The direction and range indicator confirmed Stirling’s worst fears; it was coming from somewhere inside the base. He ran back through the lab and out into the corridor. He followed the arrow on the display indicating the direction of the source and realised that it was situated below his current location.
‘Ops,’ Stirling said under his breath, and sprinted through the double doors at the end of the corridor and flew down the stairs, taking them three at a time. He nearly sent Anne flying as he charged through the door into the Ops Area and saw Jackson standing off to one side as the other kids crowded around Sam, Jay, Nat and Rachel, peppering them with questions about what had happened on the operation that night.
Jackson looked over in surprise as Stirling ran towards them, his instincts telling him that something was very, very wrong the moment he saw the expression on his friend’s face.
‘What is it?’ Jackson snapped as Stirling approached.
‘Move,’ Stirling shouted, pushing the others out of the way as he walked towards the four battered-looking members of the Ops Team. The regular beep that was coming from the device increased in frequency as he walked up to them one by one. As he moved towards Jay, the device began to beep faster and faster Stirling swept it up and down him, from head to toe.
‘Turn round,’ Stirling said.
‘What’s going on, Doc?’ Jay asked, looking confused. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I said turn round!’ Stirling barked.
‘OK, OK,’ Jay said, holding his hands up and turning his back on Stirling.
Stirling swept the tracker down Jay’s back and the beeping got faster and faster until he reached the empty ammo pouch hanging on the back of his belt. The beeps became a constant high-pitched tone and Stirling popped the pouch open and reached inside, pulling out a small black crystalline disc.
‘What the hell is that?’ Jay asked, looking over his shoulder.
‘That is a Threat transmitter,’ Stirling said, dropping the disc on the floor and stamping down on it hard. The squealing from the tracking device stopped immediately. Stirling looked at Jackson. He didn’t need to say anything.
‘Jack,’ Jackson snapped. ‘I want a rifle issued to everyone in the facility, NOW!’
‘Everyone?’ Jack asked. ‘But . . .’
‘I don’t care if the nearest they’ve ever been to a real weapon is a water pistol,’ Jackson barked at him, ‘just do it!’
‘Yes, sir,’ Jack replied, running towards the armoury.
‘What’s going on?’ Jay asked, sounding slightly bewildered.
‘Fletcher,’ Sam said, shaking his head. ‘When the Grendels smashed into the Voidborn recycling centre and you got knocked out – he must have planted that thing on you, then.’
‘What did you just say?’ Stirling asked.
‘Voidborn is what the Threat call themselves,’ Sam explained.
‘No, before that. Did you say “Fletcher”?’ Stirling said, his eyes narrowing. ‘Oliver Fletcher?’
‘Yeah,’ Sam replied, ‘and he seemed to know your name too.’
Stirling gave Jackson a fleeting glance that seemed to carry a lot more meaning for them than it did for the others.
‘Right, well, we can all have a lovely little chat about this later,’ Jackson said. ‘Right now we have to assume that Threat forces are inbound to this location. I need everyone ready to fight.’
‘Shouldn’t we just run?’ Rachel asked. ‘We’ll never be able to hold them off for ever.’
‘We don’t need to,’ Jackson said. ‘We just have to delay them while Doctor Stirling takes care of something. That much we can do.’
‘How long have we got till they . . .’ Sam fell silent, his question unfinished.
Through the heavy steel doors at the far end of the room they could all hear the sound of something approaching. Hunters. Lots of them.
Stirling ran into his quarters and over to his terminal. He launched the crash backup of the base’s servers and watched impatiently as the machine calculated the time remaining. After a few seconds a message flashed up on the screen.
TIME REMAINING: 4M 38S
He ran back out of the room and into the lab where Will was still continuing his examination of the dead Hunter, clearly oblivious to what was happening downstairs.
‘William, I need you to report to the Ops Area,’ Stirling said as he hurried towards the secure cabinet bolted to the far wall.
‘What’s going on?’ Will asked, looking surprised.
‘Our location has been compromised,’ Stirling replied. ‘Threat forces will be arriving any minute. I need you to go to Ops and help them hold the main entrance while I prepare for evacuation.’
Will just stared back at him, mouth hanging open.
‘Now, please, William,’ Stirling said punching the combination in to the keypad on the front of the secure cabinet.
‘But I can’t fight,’ Will said. ‘I’ve never fired a gun in my life.’
‘William, if those things get past Ops before we’re ready for evacuation, we’re all dead,’ Stirling said calmly. ‘You can die up here or die down there, but at least that way you get to take a few of them with you.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Will replied, looking slightly dazed. He turned and walked out of the lab as Stirling opened the doors of the cabinet and pulled out the silver canister that contained their one real hope against the Voidborn. He placed the cylinder in a padded backpack, which he slung gently over his shoulders.
He hurried out of the lab, headed back to his quarters and checked the display on the terminal screen.
TIME REMAINING: 3M 27S
He opened a command console and began to type furiously. A few seconds later another window popped up with a password entry prompt. Stirling’s fingers flew over the keyboard once more and a final window appeared.
FACILITY DESTRUCT SEQUENCE ACTIVE. REMOTE DETONATION PROTOCOLS ACTIVATED.
From somewhere below him he heard the sound of gunfire.
Jackson unfolded the bipod at the end of the barrel of
the heavy machine gun and rested it on the sandbags of the firing-range wall, thirty metres from the main entrance door. He checked the belt of ammo that fed out of the box and into the gun, making sure that it would run smoothly and not get caught on anything. To his left, Rachel and Sam knelt behind the sandbag wall, checking the rifles that Jack had just issued to them and stacking spare magazines on the floor next to them within easy reach. Jay and Nat were on the other side of Jackson, doing exactly the same thing, with identical expressions of nervous concentration. Ten metres to the left of the firing range Jack, Kate and Adam took cover behind a pair of overturned metal cabinets, their weapons raised and ready. Twenty metres behind them Liz, Anne and Toby were crouched down behind three of the room’s concrete support pillars, holding the rifles that they had just been issued with.
Behind them the door to the Ops Area flew open and Will ran in. Anne handed him the rifle that Jack had left for him, and he took it with the same expression that he might have used if someone had just passed him a live snake.
‘Right,’ Anne said, ‘here’s what Jack told me. The safety’s off. Don’t put your finger on the trigger until you want to shoot. We don’t open fire till the Ops Team have fallen back behind us and then we just empty our rifles into anything that’s moving. Once the ammo’s gone, drop your gun and run. The Ops Team will cover our retreat upstairs. OK?’
Will nodded his agreement and crouched down behind one of the pillars, his face pale. Anne wondered if she looked just as terrified to him and decided that, yes, she probably did.
There was a sudden loud bang from the other end of the room and the heavy steel doors rattled as something hit them hard. Behind the sandbag wall, Sam pulled his rifle hard into his shoulder and his finger slipped inside the trigger guard, gently pressing the trigger. He sighted down the barrel of the gun, aiming at the dead centre of the left-hand door as it rattled again. Flashes of green light began to appear around the edges of the door as first one and then another Hunter energy blast hit it. The buzzing coming from the other side of the door was now a cacophony. He had never heard anything like it. The tunnel beyond had to be filled from floor to ceiling with Voidborn.
‘Choose your targets, controlled bursts – I don’t want any indiscriminate fire,’ Jackson said calmly as the door started to groan and buckle under the sustained assault. ‘Give ’em hell.’
The massive doors finally gave way, blowing inwards with a blinding green flash, and dozens of buzzing Hunters flew into the room. The Ops Team opened fire immediately, the roar of Jackson’s heavy machine gun drowning out the other weapons as the first wave of attackers was cut down. The Hunters returned fire; sizzling bolts of green energy lanced through the air, blowing chunks out of the sandbags and the concrete walls as the Hunters laid down a blanket of suppressing fire.
‘Keep firing!’ Jackson yelled. ‘Push them back!’
Sam tried to concentrate on individual targets, putting short bursts of fire into specific Hunters, but it was hard to track any individual target as the Hunters continued to swarm into the room.
‘Reloading!’ Rachel shouted as the magazine slid out of her rifle and clattered to the floor and she slapped a full one into place with the palm of her hand. The noise of gunfire, both human and alien, was deafening, and the smell of gunsmoke filled the air. The area around the door was now covered in the fallen bodies of countless Hunters, pools of dark green liquid surrounding them. But still they came. There was a sudden pained scream from Sam’s left.
‘Adam’s hit,’ Kate yelled.
Behind the Ops Team, Will saw Adam go down and immediately stood up, slung his rifle over his shoulder and ran for the first-aid kit that hung from a bracket on the wall nearby.
‘What are you doing?’ Anne yelled at him as he ran towards the fallen Ops Team member.
‘What I’ve been trained for,’ Will said, sprinting towards the locker from behind which Kate and Jack were still firing. He threw himself to the ground next to Adam and gently lifted the injured boy’s hand from the wound in his shoulder. Adam groaned in pain.
‘Let me see,’ Will said. He examined the wound and quickly began to apply a field dressing. ‘Don’t worry, you’re going to be fine.’ Will secretly hoped that he was not making a promise he couldn’t keep. The wound was bad and Adam was losing a lot of blood.
Sam felt like everything was going in slow motion. The sound of the gunfire was now just a continuous roaring in his ears, and inside his head he could hear the constant screeching hiss of the Hunters as they continued to pour through the door.
‘I’m out!’ Jay yelled.
‘Fall back to the secondary position!’ Jackson barked. ‘Move!’ The end of the ammunition belt fed through the machine gun and Jackson’s gun finally fell silent too. He snatched up the assault rifle that was leaning against the sandbags and continued firing into the mass of silvery creatures as the Ops Team all began a fighting withdrawal towards the exit to the upper level of the base.
‘Help me with him,’ Will said to Jack, and the two of them carried Adam towards the rear of the room. Sam and Rachel stood shoulder to shoulder, slowly backing towards their secondary firing position, still shooting as they moved. An energy bolt streaked past, within millimetres of Rachel’s head, and she hissed in pain.
‘Are you hit?’ Sam yelled over the sound of their rifles.
‘Just a scratch,’ Rachel said through gritted teeth. ‘I’m fine.’
As the Ops Team passed the concrete supports, Liz, Anne and Toby stepped out from their cover and opened fire. There was none of the Ops Team’s trained precision, but their fire was still effective in its own way as they emptied their rifles’ magazines into the advancing wave of Hunters. Sam and Rachel both grabbed fresh ammo from the cache on the table and reloaded while Jay and Nat returned to the secondary defensive line and began firing again.
‘We’re just slowing them down,’ Jay shouted. ‘I hope somebody’s got a plan for how we’re going to get out of here.’
‘Hold the line,’ Jackson said as he too opened fire. ‘Just a couple more minutes should be all Stirling needs.’
Suddenly, Toby collapsed to the floor, a smoking hole in the centre of his chest. Will rushed over to him, but he did not need his medical training to know that there was nothing he could do for him. Will looked up at Liz and shook his head.
‘Sam, Jay, stay here with me!’ Jackson yelled. ‘The rest of you upstairs NOW! Rachel, Nat, you go with them. You’re their protection if we don’t make it.’
‘What about Toby?’ Liz asked, tears in her eyes.
‘Leave him,’ Jackson said. ‘He’ll only slow us down.’
‘We can’t just . . .’
Without warning, the room was suddenly plunged into darkness, the only illumination coming from the muzzle flashes of the Ops Team’s rifles and the glowing green energy bolts of the Voidborn forces.
‘Stay calm!’ Jackson shouted. ‘They’ve taken out the generator. Backup batteries will kick in any second.’ A few seconds later, just as he had promised, the lights on the walls flared back to life. ‘Rachel, Nat, get the others upstairs!’
‘Can you walk?’ Will asked Adam.
‘I think so,’ he said with a pained grimace as Will helped him to his feet.
‘Good,’ Will said, taking Adam’s good arm over his shoulders. ‘Let’s get you out of here.’
Jackson, Sam and Jay continued laying down a withering hail of fire on the Hunters, but now that they had successfully broken through the bottleneck kill zone at the door they were able to spread out across the room and take advantage of cover in exactly the same way the humans were. Still more of the Voidborn creatures were flooding into the room behind the first wave. There were now too great a number to count.
‘There’s too many of them,’ Sam said, ducking back behind the concrete pillar as a volley of Hunter bolts slammed into it, blowing chunks out of the surface and exposing the metal rebar beneath.
‘We slow them do
wn for as long as we can,’ Jackson said as he stepped out from behind another pillar and brought a couple of the closest Hunters down with two short bursts of fire. The Hunters had now advanced past the Armoury door, only ten metres from where Jackson, Sam and Jay were positioned. The Hunters’ onslaught was now making it almost impossible for the last members of the Ops Team to return fire.
‘Fall back!’ Jackson shouted, pulling a smoke grenade from his combat harness and rolling it towards the approaching Hunters. The canister hissed and a billowing cloud of white smoke filled the room. Jackson, Sam and Jay took advantage of the cover the smoke provided and ran through the fire door behind them.
‘You two, upstairs now,’ Jackson said. ‘I’m just going to organise a little surprise for our uninvited guests.’ He reached into the large pocket on the thigh of his combat trousers and pulled out a block of C4. Sam and Jay scrambled up the stairs as Jackson planted the charge on the top of the door frame before following them upstairs. They found the others waiting in the corridor that led to the lounge. There was no sign of Stirling.
‘Where’s the Doc?’ Jay said.
‘Don’t worry, Jacob,’ Stirling said from behind him as he walked out of the corridor that led to the lab. ‘I just had a few things to arrange.’
Suddenly, the floor shook and there was the sound of a massive explosion beneath them. Jackson came out of the stairwell in a cloud of smoke and ran down the corridor towards them all.
‘I just brought half the stairwell down on their heads,’ Jackson said. ‘It’ll slow them down, but not for long.’
‘Good. I have everything we need. It’s time that we left,’ Stirling said. ‘Get to the lounge, everyone. We’ll be right behind you. Robert, I need to speak to you in the lab.’
