Midnight Zone: a Cade Rearden Thriller

by JK Franks

  Riley’s combat dive suit was good, fantastic even. He was the weak point in the system. Cade cried out in pain for help. He didn’t even care where it came from. “Gus, Barbarian, Deuce…oh fuck, this hurts!” The pain was excruciating, and that was with the suit’s systems ordering the med patch to deliver nerve blocking meds.

  You probably voided the warranty on this thing, man. At the very least, you probably need to get this thing in for its regular maintenance soon.

  The voices of any of his other personas would be better than Gus right now.. Sarcasm and witty banter wouldn’t extricate him from becoming a can of meat paste in the next few minutes. Gus, we are being eaten by an alien monster, will you please shut up?

  You are being eaten, Cade—I don’t exist.

  The words stunned him almost as much as the situation he was in. Brutus, Gus, Ace…they were all just him. He had control, he just had to find it. His mind seemed about to break even as the suit was beginning to come apart. “Trigger another suit discharge,” Cade commanded, and the suit gave off a distinctive snap. The encircling jaws of the beast recoiled briefly, and he managed to get Brutus, or maybe it was himself, to lower the glowing orb downward toward the gullet of the monster. The acceleration jets, which had not stopped pushing, now began to move him through a hole he was creating inside the Saraph. He could feel the animal recoiling and immediately try to expel him back the way he’d come, but now he was past the teeth. Now, he was the one with an edge. “Okay, big-guy, break shit.” Brutus’s growl returned with a vengeance.

  83

  Kalypso

  Kissa ran a finger along where the walls met the floor. As far as he could tell, there was no seam; it was like they formed the entire room out of one piece of whatever this material was. He’d spent days searching for any way to escape, anything he could think of to reach Thera. Twice now, he’d heard Sergeant Coffee, sounding like he was speaking to someone. The man was alive and very pissed off, which might be a good thing. He was less sure of the condition of Captain Nance. Kneeling, he felt the floor and then the wall. He felt his center of gravity somewhat off. The pull on one side growing more pronounced if his sense of orientation was right. Did that mean they were ascending or descending even deeper? Spatial awareness was how they described it back in his early dive training. Always know which way is up. Follow the bubbles. What fucking bubbles? he wondered.

  His mental clock let him know it would be several hours before the guards returned with another meal tray. Why are they keeping me alive? Just to torture Thera? Yeah, maybe…probably. That question kept nagging at him. The previous day, several of the guards had taken him to what looked like a medical ward. The big man named Trondo was lying on one of the beds. In the battle with the monster, he’d seen the giant claw from the beast as it had pierced the man’s abdomen. The doctors said the soldier had been in and out of consciousness, but Kissa got the feeling his condition wasn’t good. The medical team looked like they had been trying hard to save the man, though…none of that had made any sense if they planned on killing them all anyway.

  The medics had questioned him briefly on the man Nance and Coffee often called Apache. Once they realized Kissa could offer no real information on their patient, they’d moved away and left them alone for a moment. Now Kissa understood. They were doing it just so he could say goodbye. The wounds were mortal, and there was obviously nothing else they could do for him. While he hadn’t known the soldier long, he was a friend, and he’d been one of the ones to come save him. Now he was dying…or maybe already dead. Trondo had apparently known the end was near, but it was not fear that showed in the man’s eyes when he’d pulled Kissa close with a surprisingly strong grip. It was something else…he wasn’t sure. Anger? The man had been unable to speak and in obvious pain, but his eyes had an almost pleading quality as he gripped Kissa’s wrist with enough force to cause pain.

  Kissa involuntarily held his wrist up, rubbing where the man had grasped him. A faint outline of bruising was all that remained. He rubbed at the marks, wondering if he was the last friendly face the man would ever see. Trondo’s eyes had closed shortly after, not dead…but close to it, obviously.

  Kissa’s index finger found a tiny bump on his wrist. He scratched at it unconsciously. Thoughts swirled in his head; maybe he’d had a chance yesterday to get free. The guards were far enough away, and there were several things in the medical suite he could have used for a weapon, yet holding on to the dying man’s hand was all he did. The little bump was aggravating him now, it felt like a scab, one of many on his body at the moment. It hurt a little as he tried to remove it from his skin, like a band-aid that had adhered itself too well.

  He rotated his wrist, finally turning his full attention to the little inconvenience. The bump stood out in contrast to his own dark skin. It was a ruddy reddish brown and small. Getting a fingernail under one edge, he pulled it away from the skin, noticing a lot of filaments stretch between it and his arm. The realization of what it was hit him immediately. This was how the soldiers had talked to the Doris and the Dee. This was what Trondo had been doing, placing his comms unit on his arm. Surely there is more to it that just this, though. Finally, free from his skin, he held it up and looked at it from all sides. Despite the different color, it was all but invisible on the tip of his finger.

  Kissa recalled how Micah and the soldiers often touched their jawline to use the comms, that must be where it went. Carefully, he reached up and placed the unit just under his ear. Instantly, he heard a tiny female voice calling.

  “Apache? Are you awake? Your vitals look better. Help is on the way, just hang in there.”

  He was about to respond, to let them know the mistake, but footsteps sounded outside the door. Someone was keying in the code to his door. He stepped back as it slid open silently, then stared in shocked amazement.

  “Thera?”

  Kissa ignored the voice in his ear and instead, embraced the love of his life. She separated way too quickly.

  “We have to go now,” she said.

  “I have friends here, we must help them, they helped me find you.”

  Thera shook her head as she pulled him out the door. “No time, Kissa, Henry didn’t show me the codes for their cells.”

  Who the hell is Henry? Kissa wondered with more than a touch of jealousy. He followed his fiancée across the expansive storage area in the direction of the ramp leading up to the medical rooms and the labs. “You know where we’re going?” he asked.

  Thera shook her head again. “Just need to hide. Make it hard for them to find us, buy us some time.”

  “We should go down, down to the lowest level,” Kissa said. “They have subs there, craft we can use to escape, but I must help my friends.”

  Thera stopped and turned to face him. “My sweet Kissa, I can’t leave. I just needed to see you, to hold you.”

  He pulled her close and kissed her. The feeling sending shouts of joy through his entire body. “Why?”

  “Henry showed me things. These people are mad…I think they are going to end it all.”

  “Is this Kissa? Are you free to move around the ship?” The volume on the little communication device startled him. He answered quietly that it was. Then, remembering what the others had done, he tapped it lightly and repeated himself.

  “Excellent,” Doris said. “The vitals didn’t match. I take it you are with Thera. Can you talk?”

  “No, not here, we are in an exposed location.” He knew it would be a matter of minutes before they were spotted.

  “Can you get to the docking level?”

  “I believe that is on the lowest level. Possibly, but I am unarmed.”

  Doris told him what was needed. He couldn’t believe Cade Rearden was coming down here to get them. He looked at Thera. Words were unnecessary. It would be better for him to go alone; he was a soldier, and they would notice her absence from the lab in another few minutes. He pulled her close. “Thank you, my love, I will find you.”

/>   She nodded; she wasn’t sure who he had been talking to but understood it meant help. It meant stopping the craziness behind this ship, the Saraphs, everything. Her heart ached as she turned away from Kissa and moved quickly back up the ramp toward the labs. Good luck, she thought. The monsters in here are just as bad as the ones outside…maybe worse.

  84

  Kissa pulled on the heavy door. This had to be the chamber. Twice, he had to evade guards patrolling the corridor by ducking into supply closets and once into a darkened room, where he could hear people snoring. He now descended the steps, noticing a familiar pressure change and increased humidity in the air. In front of him, a line of five of the underwater runabouts sat in cradles just above the floor. This had been where they brought him in. He saw a few workers at the far end, but they seemed to be concentrating on some other task. The entire ship seemed too large for the number of people aboard, something was off about the scale or the numbers. Tapping his cheek, “I’m in the docking bay,” he whispered.

  “Good, Kissa, you are doing great. Cade is in severe distress just outside the hull. Can you locate the controls to whatever they use to launch and receive the small craft?”

  Hearing his friend was in danger sent his adrenaline spiking. Glancing around the room, he saw what might be the launch control center. There were built-in workstations in front of each of the small ships. “Yeah, got it.” He crouched low to stay hidden and moved to the closest one. “Won’t they have me on video by now, Doris? I’m sure they have this entire place under surveillance.” He began flipping through screens on the display to find what he needed.

  “I imagine that is a certainty. I project you have less than a minute.”

  “Oh, good, no pressure.” Kissa found the doors to the moon pool controls. The pool would open up to the water below. He knew normally that only worked when the air pressure in the room matched the water pressure it was holding at bay. Like flipping an empty glass upside down in a basin of water. The liquid would only rise so far, trapping the air in the top of the glass and increasing the pressure of the air when it did so. The display flashed red when he hit the button. ‘Function unavailable at this depth.’ He read the words with a sense of failure. “We are too far down, Doris—it won’t work here.”

  She seemed to almost expect this and had an alternate suggestion, one he understood all too well. On deep water habitats there were two ways you could send people and equipment out. One was a moon pool, useful for larger transfers, but it had some downsides such as only being feasible down to a certain depth. You could use them much lower, but the air pressure required to keep the water out would likely kill anyone working within the launch bay, unless they had a pressure suit on. The other was a mechanical lock-out chamber, something submariners often referred to as the escape trunk. It was a series of doors built into the hull that could be opened, one at a time, on either side. The downside to that was they required time to equalize the pressure, to pump the water out and the air in. Also, they were typically small, only larger enough for one or two divers.

  Kissa searched the nearby hull and floor for anything like that. As high tech as this craft was, it had to have a maintenance port. Probably a dedicated room, he thought. They would need it to store the dive gear, air tanks, and such. He saw another metal hatch at the far end of the room, just beyond where the two mechanics were working, still apparently focused on their tasks.

  “You are nearly out of time, Kissa. I can hear alarms going off on Nance and Coffee’s comms. I think they have discovered your absence.”

  “Doing the best I can,” he whispered as he crouch-walked behind the subs, then rose slightly and raced down the far wall. He was within twenty meters of the door when a man stepped into his path wielding a large metal pipe. Well, fuck.

  “Come on, Nomad, we got you.”

  Deuce’s voice was far away and had a dreamy quality that made Cade want to go back to sleep. He knew someone was under his arm and pushing, but he had no sensation of where he was or what had just happened.

  “Almost got it,” Greg said as he tightened a spare oxygen line from his own suit to Cade’s. Air bubbles escaped the captain’s XOD dive suit in multiple places. No way he would survive the nearly two-mile trip to the surface. Greg had come, to, shortly after the last Saraph ceased its neural attack. Now, what remained of that beast seemed to be smeared over every inch of the captain’s XOD. Moving one more bit of debris out of the way, Greg finally got the connector into the port on the damaged suit and slid the coupling tight. His own suit automatically increased O2 production to compensate.

  Cade distantly felt the rush of cool air; it was nice. This must be the feeling people describe when they sleep in on Saturday morning. No work, no pressure, and the bed feels too good to bother with getting up to go fight dragons.

  “Nomad, sitrep.”

  “Not now, Margaret, I‘m trying to sleep…or die. Not sure which.” His words were slurring badly. He knew they were, he just couldn’t correct it. Didn’t care.

  “Deuce, you are in control,” she continued. “Doris is working on an entry point to the Kalypso. Follow the green line when it shows.”

  Charlie had tons of questions. Are there friendlies inside? Is this a trap we’re walking into, are there more of those effing monsters? Instead, he acknowledged the order and began moving the team in that direction as soon as the line appeared in his visor. The original plan had been to use the Magic Stick somewhere along the lower hole to make an entry point. That would likely flood the vessel, but they hoped they could seal off the hole in time to prevent the station from sinking. Now, the disruptor stick was dead. It was still gripped tightly in Cades’ hand, but it had died along with the massive Saraph. He still couldn’t believe Cade had emerged at the back-end of the wrecked animal, still mostly in one piece.

  The WarHawk team was down to five if you wanted to count Nomad, along with Deuce, Greg, Alias, and Yeager, another of the new guys. ‘Hammer’ had taken a vicious strike from the last Saraph, and his suit was taking him back to the surface for evac. Like Greg and Deuce, Yeager had been one of the first to succumb to the mental blast but seemed okay now. Deuce took point as they maneuvered the XODs along the oddly colored hull, which seemed to nose up more sharply and increase its ascent.

  “Greg, how’s he doing?” Deuce asked.

  Greg checked the readout before responding. “No longer critical, oxygen is helping. Not sure if he has a pressure leak, the sensors are offline. No major blood loss or trauma that I can see.”

  Charlie knew the medical team back at The Cove were monitoring his friend’s condition even more closely than Greg could. No one else could have gotten them through those damn monsters. Nomad was the toughest soldier he’d ever seen. He just hoped he still had some fight left in him. A shape materialized off in the distance. With the soft ambient light from beneath the ship the only illumination out here in the blackness of the ocean, it took him a moment to see what it was. The giant bull shark swam within a few feet of them. It was large, the biggest Charlie had ever seen. Yesterday it would have likely terrified him, today it was almost calming to see something that normal.

  “Just a shark,” Yeager stated flatly as the five-man team moved quickly past the enormous animal.

  Charlie checked the depth just as they reached a recessed opening where the green path in his visor ended. He had his depth readout in meters as opposed to feet. They were at 2,755 meters and decreasing. “Team Raptor, come in.”

  Alexandria’s voice came back at once. “This is Raptor-1. Go ahead, Deuce.”

  “You guys need to be ready, adjust positions along this track. The Kalypso should be within your range in about fifteen minutes. I’m not sure our comms will work inside the hull, so watch for any openings and take advantage of it. You know the drill.”

  “Roger that, sir, and good hunting.”

  The airlock was massive, much larger than any he’d ever seen on any vessel. All five men could easily fit insi
de, even with their oversized dive suits. Once inside, they pulled the outer hatch and cranked the wheel to seal it to the outside. A light above the hatch switched from red to green. Now they were essentially inside a giant coffin, unless someone inside pumped in air. The inner door could not be opened. Not until the pressure equalized.

  Deuce called The Cove and let them know they were in the lockout chamber. He got a garbled response but hoped that meant okay. The space was large, but they still had no room to maneuver. Suddenly, the suits’ audio picked up a whistling sound steadily increasing in volume. In thirty seconds, the water level had dropped, exposing their heads. In another minute, the chamber was effectively empty. Readouts showed normal oxygen levels, normal pressure. A knocking came from the interior hatch just before the light over it changed from red to green. The door slowly slid upward, and Deuce could see a pair of legs and the barrel of a rifle being held in a low-ready position. He mentally prepared for another fight.

  “Come, come out, my friends. Welcome to my lovely home.”

  Charlie’s eyes never left the weapon as he stepped out, all ready to trigger countermeasures until he saw the smiling face of his old friend. He unlatched his dive helmet and let it drop. “Kissa, damn good to see you!”