by S. A. Lusher
Greg felt certain he wouldn't betray them.
Even if he did, Greg would make sure he died.
Reaching the end of the shaft, Greg hopped off and spun around, raising his weapon. There was nothing in the maintenance tunnel with him, at least as far as he could see. It stretched away from him for several dozen meters and inter-cut with other tunnels. The light was good, but still this was a shitty place to be.
“Hey, move it, huh?” Campbell asked.
“Yeah, yeah, quit bitching.” Greg moved out of the way.
He moved down the maintenance tunnel a few paces, listening for signs of life. Nothing but the quiet respiration of oxygen filtration and the soft hum of power. It would have to do. Greg glanced behind him. Everyone was down now.
“All right, keep your eyes open, there could be anything down here,” he murmured.
There was a general affirmative response and they set off, keeping up a brisk pace, eager to be free of the squalid confinement. Greg tossed quick glances down the other tunnels that intersected with his, trying to spy a hint of movement. Nothing. He swallowed, keeping his shotgun at ready, finger inside the trigger guard. Stupid, especially when one was nervous, but Greg needed to be able to react in half a second.
They kept going. How long did Cage say it was? Something like seventy meters. How big was this ship?
“Hey, Campbell, what can you tell us about the ship we're on?” Greg asked.
“Well, it's called the Anubis and it's the flagship. Williams runs the whole thing. Graves is his...bodyguard? Cleaner? Shit, I don't know. He's not number two, because he doesn't seem to make any decisions, he's just...always there. Starck is head of security. She's a bit of a whack job. I've seen her torture lots of guys, personally. I think she has some kind of thing against men. Probably why she had me around, always screaming at me...”
Greg could tell he was losing focus. “What about the Undead? What's the point of all this? The experiments, the prisoners, all of it.”
Campbell scoffed. “You kidding me? You ever hear that old saying, 'He who has the gold makes the rules?' It's the Golden Rule, right? Only now, it's not gold or money, anymore. To be sure, money still talks, a lot, but at the end of the day, all that really matters is who's swinging the biggest fucking stick. You feel me?”
“I guess so...so, what, Dark Ops is trying to make an Undead army to make sure that no one ever threatens the Galactic Alliance ever again?” Greg replied.
“That's ridiculous,” Billings muttered.
“Look around you, man. Ridiculous my ass, but I don't know the plan, really. All I know is that they were trying to control them. They didn't really tell me anything. I spent enough time in the labs. Starck liked to watch all that shit and I think she knew I didn't, and so she made me accompany her. Fuck, I hate that bitch.”
Greg froze, he thought he heard something, a footstep maybe, echoing through the maintenance tunnels. The others bunched up behind him, all listening for themselves, but there was nothing. Greg let out a long breath. He kept going, but didn't really feel like talking anymore. At least not until they were out of the tunnels.
The opposite ladder was in sight now. Greg felt better about his chances for getting out of these narrow confines without running into anything. He pressed on, picking up the pace, snatching views down identical passageways, some of which were noticeably darker. There might have been things in that darkness.
Eternity finally passed and he hit the opposite end of the tunnel. Glancing up, he saw nothing in the ladder shaft above and began climbing. Good, he'd made it. He thought of Cage's route as he ascended. They'd have to cross a few corridors and it'd likely be through Undead territory, but that shouldn't be a problem, not with the five of them. Greg hit the hatch at the top, opened it up, and popped his head out.
Nothing he could see in the storage room they'd emerged in. Yeah, not a problem, they all had guns and training. He pulled himself up and out, and then they'd meet up with Cage and-something whizzed by his head at an alarming speed and pinged off the wall behind him. He'd been in the process of helping Campbell up and promptly let go of him.
“What the hell?” Campbell cried, falling back into the shaft, barely managing to retain his hold on the ladder.
Greg brought his shotgun into play, looking for whoever it was had shot at him. Only it didn't quite feel like a gunshot, more like a...well, he wasn't sure what it seemed like. Something shifted behind a stack of crates at the far side of the room. Half the lights were out, casting it in shadows. Greg frowned, aiming his shotgun.
“Who goes there?” He hoped it might just be a survivor or something, maybe a startled technician with a bolt gun.
That's when it stepped out into the light.
A gasp tore from Greg's lungs.
It was a zombie, an Undead, to be sure, only not like any he had seen so far. It was still in the shape of a man, it still had all the distinguishing features of a zombie: pallid skin, blackened veins, eyes of oil or tar, claws and teeth, but its chest...it had been split or torn open, as though someone had cut its ribcage and opened it like a purse. Amid a sea of slick, glistening, black and red muscle were a trio of black holes, arranged in a triangular formation. From one of these holes came a black spike, shot like a bullet.
Greg screamed and threw himself to the ground, feeling it whiz by him. He landed and rolled best he could, bringing his shotgun back up. He squeezed the trigger once the thing pointed in the direction of the creature. There was a wretched, wet explosion of black blood and shredded, pale flesh, and the thing crashed into the crates.
“What the fuck was that?” Campbell cried.
“Greg, you okay?” Kyra called up.
“Fine,” Greg replied breathlessly, slowly standing up.
Campbell had pulled himself up from the hole, followed shortly by Billings and then the others. They all approached the newest addition to the Undead army. Campbell poked at it with his boot. He made a face.
“Christ, it's ugly.”
“Great, I was wondering when we'd see a new one...and this one shoots shit,” Greg muttered.
“What do we call it?” Billings asked.
They stood around for a long moment.
“Lancer,” Greg said, finally. They all looked at him. “What?”
“Fine name,” Kyra replied.
“You name them?” Holt asked.
“Better way to identify them quickly. I mean, imagine running into one of these and you're trying to convey what it is you see. 'Oh, it's that one that shoots things from its chest' takes too long to say. Lancer sums it all up nicely,” Greg replied in defense.
Holt shrugged. “Okay, fine. Good idea. It figures, you naming it.”
“Why's that?” Greg asked, turning to face him.
“Always had your head in an infopad, you know? Books, always with the books, with you. Heavy reader. Hell, you'd read on duty, when things were particularly dull. They didn't like that.” Holt chuckled.
“Huh,” was all Greg could think to say.
“This is fun and all, but could we get going?” Campbell shifted with impatience.
“Yeah, yeah, come on,” Greg muttered.
They left the storage room and found a corridor liberally sprayed with blood. A handful of corpses were spread out along the floor like speed bumps. Greg led the group out into the passageway, hurrying down it.
“We're near,” he reported.
“Good. We'll be waiting.”
“And bad news. There's a new sub-species.” He spent a few moments describing the Lancer.
“Fantastic,” was all Cage had to say to that.
They turned a corner, and headed down another passageway. Not too far away, Greg could hear gunshots, screams, the occasional explosion. They didn't speak as they came to the end of the corridor, to a large pair of double doors.
“Weapons ready,” Greg murmured.
Rarely was there something good behind a huge set of closed doors. Kyra hit the ac
tivation button. Greg found himself wondering where all the Undead or Dark Ops were. Had Cage cleared a path? Had they all killed each other or moved on? The doors split at the center, slid into the walls. Greg scanned the immediate area beyond.
A room stood between them and the area that Cage and Powell occupied. It was large, dark, and reminded Greg of a vault. Big, blocky devices that must have been the databanks themselves studded the floor, spread across it in a grid-work pattern. Greg had a clear view of the actual data network center. The doors were open over there and he could see Cage standing in the doorway, Powell behind him, sitting in a chair.
So why was he hesitating?
Something was wrong. Greg kept scanning the area.
“What is it?” Campbell whispered.
“Dunno...feel like something's kinda-”
Greg grunted and flew backwards as a bullet punched him straight in the chest, knocking him off his feet. The breath left his lungs and he heard an explosion of activity around him. Screaming, gunfire, chaos. He focused on getting his breath back, and then scrambled to his feet. Inside the data vault, anarchy boiled.
A squad of black-armored soldiers took on Greg's rag-tag squad of survivors.
“I fucking said not to kill Bishop! Who the fuck fired that shot?” an unfortunately familiar voice screamed.
“He had on a bulletproof vest,” someone called back.
Greg stumbled to his feet, leveled his shotgun at a black-armored trooper that had the misfortune of poking his head out from behind cover at that exact moment, and squeezed the trigger. The man's faceplate shattered in a spray of blood and glass. He flew back, skidding across the floor, his armor making a horrible squealing sound.
“Told you.”
“Shut up. Bishop, if you want your friends to survive this, I suggest you surrender,” the familiar voice called.
“We're beyond that, Starck,” Greg called back.
“Rez, you fucking bastard! I'm coming for you! Bet your fucking ass that I'm coming for you, bitch,” Campbell screamed.
To that, there was no response. A black-armored trooper fell as Cage delivered an expertly placed shot. Another one went down under combined fire from Billings and Holt.
“You're running out of bad guys, Starck,” Greg shouted.
“Fucking get it together you bastards-” Starck let out a startled grunt as someone landed a shot on her.
Her troops thought they had the drop on them, but all they'd really done was get caught in a crossfire. Greg saw her go down onto her knees, but recover, the bullet either having glanced off her armor or caused only superficial damage. Cage took down another trooper, his bullet punching through the softer armor in the man's neck. Greg lined up another nice shot and punched a solid hole through a man's faceplate.
“Hey Rez! This one's for you, buddy,” Campbell cried, his declaration followed by a string of gunshots.
There was a grunt, and Campbell cursed as a bullet grazed his neck and he was forced to retreat. Greg took stock of the chaotic situation. He, Kyra, Campbell, Billings, and Holt were all bunkered down on either side of the corridor, taking potshots into the data vault. Opposite them, Cage and Powell were firing on everyone they could see. Caught in the middle were Starck, Rez, and a quickly diminishing supply of troops.
Greg did a quick headcount. Besides the two in charge, he spied only three left. They weren't easy to take down, but Cage seemed to have learned all their weak points already. Greg just focused on the thing he knew worked: faceplates. He aimed for another Dark Ops soldier, trying to get the right timing for when the man would expose himself...
“Bishop!”
Greg turned, saw a man, Rez, he realized, rushing straight at him with a startling speed and, before either of them knew what was going on, he squeezed the trigger. Rez's entire head disappeared in a flash of glass, blood and brains.
“Hey, that bastard was mine!” Campbell cried.
“Shit,” Starck yelled. “Fall back!”
Only there was nowhere to fall back to. The remaining two troops tried to turn and flee, but were quickly gunned down. Starck looked for somewhere to go when Cage rushed up behind her and played baseball with her head, using his rifle as the bat. There was a hard metal clang and Greg thought he heard her head actually bounce around inside her helmet. Starck sprawled across the floor, her gun thrown from her hand.
“Hold that bitch down,” Campbell snarled, going over to Rez's corpse.
“I agree, let's see if we can't get some information out of her,” Kyra said.
They gathered around her. Cage knelt, disengaged her helmet and tossed it away. He took away her pistol and combat knife. Greg stared into the pale face of the woman who had shot him in the neck back on Dis. Her eyes weren't tracking properly and there was a gash across her forehead, which bled profusely.
“Wake up,” Greg snapped.
“Fuck off,” Starck replied sharply. She blinked, closed her eyes, and opened them again. “I'd sooner die than tell you assholes anything.”
Campbell returned, shouldering his way through the others.
“Move aside, move aside,” he said. Campbell knelt, held up a long, wicked, custom-made serrated knife. “Feed me to the fucking wolves, huh? Fuck me over, bitch?” He held the knife over her right eye and gave her a nasty grin. “Maybe, I should fucking do you with Rez's knife, huh? Maybe I should just-”
Starck snapped her head forward sharply. The blade of the knife pierced her eye and brain, killing her instantly.
“Oh fuck.” Greg jumped back.
“Shit!” Kyra cried.
“Holy shit, she wasn't bluffing,” Holt muttered.
“You fucking idiot,” Billings said, grabbing Campbell by the back of his uniform and hauling him up. Campbell looked as though he might use the knife to defend himself, but Billings snatched it out of his hand and threw it aside.
“We could have gotten information out of her.”
An uncomfortable silence descended. Campbell looked like he wanted to defend himself, but he was pale and clearly shaken by the turn of events.
“She likely wouldn't have talked.” Cage's calm, quiet voice was a change from the shock that had infected the squad. “It would have been a waste of time. A resource we don't exactly have an abundance of.”
Billings grunted and stepped away from Campbell.
“Gather up guns, ammo, and then bunker down in the data center. It's time to plan our next move,” Greg said.
Chapter 08
–Detour–
“Damn.” Cage tossed aside his rifle after inspecting it.
“You really broke it, huh?” Greg glanced over from his crouched position. The Dark Ops troops had been loaded down with guns and ammo.
“Yes. I was beginning to like it.” Cage crossed the data vault, knelt by a corpse he'd helped produce and retrieved its rifle and a small stack of ammo.
“Can we hurry it up?” Billings asked.
“Hell yes,” Campbell whispered, retrieving a rifle.
“Be lucky I don't take that from you.” Greg walked up beside him.
“Be lucky you don't try,” Campbell replied.
A gunshot snapped through the air, the bullet avoiding Campbell's left ear by mere centimeters. Cage lowered his rifle.
“I don't miss twice.”
Campbell's mouth worked as though he were trying to speak, but the words couldn't find his throat.
“Let's wrap it up.” Greg tried to play the diplomat once more.
The survivors finished collecting weapons, ammo, and gear from the handful of corpses they'd made. Greg found it difficult to get the image of Starck killing herself from his mind. The knife had cleaved into her eye as if it had been jelly...he shuddered and shook his head. Herding everyone into the network room, where Powell had retreated already, Greg took one more look around the vault to satisfy himself that they were still alone and secured the door behind him. He turned and looked around the brightly lit network room.
&nbs
p; It appeared to be an advanced security center, much larger than a regular one. Screens of varying sizes dominated two of the walls. Powell sat before the largest one, typing away at a keyboard, lost in his work.
Greg glanced around at the others. “So, a few things to talk about I guess. We've got guns and I think we've found all the survivors were going to that won't shoot us in the head at the first opportunity.”
“Yes. All the other prisoners are dead,” Powell confirmed.
“Wonderful. So, that shortens our list of shit to do at least. One outstanding issue I think we need to discuss is armor. Specifically, that body armor Dark Ops is so fond of. Having those would do a hell of a lot to protect us.”
“Hell yeah, they would. They're powered, make you stronger, faster, have their own data suite and a head's up display...” Campbell sounded wistful.
“There's a catch, isn't there? There always is,” Cage murmured.
“Yeah. There is. They're all DNA encoded. I mean, not like, one suit to one guy, but if you aren't in the DNA databank, well, then, you aren't using that armor. I mean, I suppose you could put it on, but it wouldn't power up, and then you'd just be seventy pounds heavier.” He shrugged.
“So then we get in the databanks,” Greg said. “Would that be easy? Where would we even go to do that?”
“I think we have more pressing concerns.” Powell interrupted their conversation. They all turned to look at him. He still stared at the screen. They gathered around him.
“Which are?” Kyra asked.
“Dark Ops are losing to the Undead. Whatever you did...you really fucked this ship over, Greg. The only thing keeping them from blowing it all to hell is the fact that you're onboard. They still need you, for whatever reason. I think our end goal here needs to be escaping the system. There's no other alternative. That means we need a ship, preferably a small, maneuverable one, with an FTL drive. Or we're dead.”
“Won't Dark Ops give chase?” Holt asked.
