Midnight Zone: a Cade Rearden Thriller

by JK Franks

  85

  “Approaching comms depth, sir. Releasing buoy in three, two, one. Comms buoy away.”

  Thrall hated the annoyance of having a billion dollar underwater flying saucer but being forced to use a decades old submariner’s technology to make and receive calls on the surface. In truth, the Kalypso’s design had been optimized for its real mission, years submerged in the relative safety of the deep ocean. Not for the transition period that preceded that. “Is the doctor back in her lab yet?”

  “Yes, sir, security found her near the restrooms. She said she’d been sick,” a man nearby said.

  “Cancel that damn alarm then. And double the guards on the lovely doctor.”

  “Anything out of Goldman?” Pax demanded.

  Thrall eyed the mean little Asian with contempt. “Nothing so far, but we just reached depth.”

  Pax Ruan walked over and moved the security chief out of the way. “I heard the alarms.” He began scanning through video feeds as the man told him the biologist had disappeared for a few minutes. Ruan was a naturally suspicious person. Some would classify it as rampant paranoia. He would not disagree. The truth was, he distrusted everyone, that was how he’d managed to stay alive so long.

  He pressed ‘Play’ on an earlier recording of Doctor Otera in the lab. She was interacting with the Series-4 Saraph. Interacting was not the right word. Something about the scene seemed…off. She was not examining it, not precisely. The exchange lasted several minutes, then she suddenly turned and exited the lab. Had she gotten sick? Perhaps the SS4 had developed a neural weapon like the previous generations. That could trigger nausea and seizures and even heart failure sometimes. He found a section of video and played it again. It almost looked like she was talking with the creature. Pax unmuted the sound and listened in. Thera asked the creature, “What are you thinking?” Moments later, she asked Astra for the ship’s current depth and position, then abruptly turned and left the lab.

  Ruan instructed the ship's AI to pull related video feeds tracking Thera from the lab until her return and add location markers to each. The request was completed within seconds, and the newly curated video appeared as a new option on his screen. Pax watched the first 85 seconds of it before turning to the security chief. His face a mask of rage. He stabbed a hand down, restarting the alarm. “You failed.” Whipping out a wicked-looking dagger, he sliced open the security chief’s abdomen in one vicious motion.

  “What the fuck, Pax?” Thrall yelled from his seat nearby.

  “We have a prisoner loose on the ship. Thera let her boyfriend out. Alert security teams to deck six and lock that bitch in the lab. I’ll deal with her myself.” Ruan removed the sidearm and holster from the dead security chief and headed for the door. Thrall just nodded as he quietly called Ruslana to join him, then activated his personal security.

  Thera was back in her lab when the alarms re-started. Her legs weakened, and the shakes started. She knew what they were for. Someone had discovered Kissa’s absence, and it would likely only be a matter of minutes before they tracked his disappearance back to her. With the certainty of a condemned prisoner, she moved back to the holding tank where Henry looked up at her with the same unemotional expression as always.

  “I think our time together is coming to an end, Henry,” she whispered quietly. Her eyes began to fill with tears. At least she’d gotten to feel Kissa’s arms around her one last time. Henry had managed to give him a chance to survive at least. She started to speak her next thought, then just decided to think it instead. If Henry could project pure thought, it stood to reason he could receive just as easily. She turned her head up toward the ceiling and thought again of the SS3 Saraphs and the divers. Then, focusing back on the center two of Henry’s eyes, she framed the question in her mind.

  Again, Henry’s goblin looking head tilted much as a dog’s might. No response came to her question. She worried for Kissa, wondered who he’d been talking to and how, but trusted he had a plan. This might be her final moments with the creature. Could she protect him, should she? “Henry what do you know? What are your secrets?”

  “Yes, Doctor Otera, those are the correct questions. You should have focused on that instead of a pointless attempt to free your boyfriend.”

  The blood drained from her face as the brutal little Asian man strode confidently up behind her and peered into the holding cell. The man knew, and she was dead. Had they captured Kissa so soon, though? Was he injured?

  “We are still a mile below the ocean surface, Thera. Where did you think he could go?”

  “Is he okay? Did you hurt him?” she asked, her face a mask of rage.

  “By now, I am afraid to say, he is dead. A victim of your own stupidity.” His hand lashed out before she could react, delivering a vicious slap across her face.

  Blood flew from her nose and mouth as she stumbled awkwardly back and then down to one knee. The shakes had stopped, as had the fear coursing through her veins. “You like hurting women, you tiny fucking asshole.” She spat a large gob of bloody mucus onto the gray floor. “Is that how you get your thrills?” Despite every instinct in her telling her to stay down, she pulled that one knee in and rose, blood still dripping from her face.

  Pax just smiled. Not an expression of humor, more one of a predator that has trapped its evening meal. “What gives me a thrill is bitches that know their place.” He balled a fist as if to punch her, but spun instead, delivering a striking leg kick to her abdomen. She landed against the side of Henry's cell, doubled over in pain, unable to catch her breath.

  “You are only alive for one reason, to extract the data from the creatures. Since you seem unable to do that, you really have no purpose.” Slowly, he slid a deadly-looking bloody dagger from somewhere inside his jacket.

  Thera tried to look away, but all she could see was the blade as it approached closer and closer. The light danced off its mirror finish and undoubtedly razor-sharp edge. While her attention was squarely on Pax, her hands were behind her, fumbling with a small object mounted to the low wall.

  Ruan continued, “Ideally, your boyfriend would be here to see this. I would enjoy making him watch as I carve you up in tiny chunks and feed you to the beast. What did I hear you call him? Henry?” He laughed, then moved closer. “So, now he’s a pet, is that right? It’s a lab experiment, woman. We never said make friends with it. ‘It’ lives only to deliver information.”

  He whipped an arm out and instantly Thera felt a moment of hot stinging pain across one breast and her upper chest. Glancing down at the neatly parting fabric of her top, blood was welling out along a ten-inch gouge. She coughed out a shriek of pain.

  A sound cut through the lab, momentarily drowning out the trilling of the alarms. Ruan raised the small radio receiver up to his face. Apparently, his security teams had found something. Thera, though, was no longer focused on Pax Ruan at all. She was entranced in a mental conversation with Henry. As her fingers finally unclipped the latch, a flood of information sprang into her own mind. Knowledge and concepts she could have never imagined. At once, she knew Henry’s place in the universe and in his own species’ timeline. They had it so wrong. So very, very wrong.

  Thera collapsed back to the floor, her mind on fire with all the possibilities of an entire species unleashed inside her own head. The door behind her clicked open, and one of Henry’s stubby legs stepped out, the blade-like claws clicking on the hard floor.

  Pax had been focused on his prisoner’s suffering. The excitement of her pain giving him pleasure in places that he wouldn’t permit himself to enjoy just now. As the security radio went silent, he returned to the job at hand…only something had changed. The woman seemed completely out of it. Her expression was no longer of pain but of…joy. None of that resolved itself with his expectations.There was something else, too, another shape behind the doctor, something that also didn’t fit his mental image of what he should be seeing.

  Pax stood frozen as Henry’s full body emerged from the holding ce
ll. It seemed to have doubled in just the last few days. The large amphibian-looking body was topped by the strangest head of any of the Saraphs. Now he saw the gaping jaw was filled with long teeth in concentric rows. While it had tentacles like the others, these were very different—stunted and thick, almost like legs and arms. Some still ended in the hooked claw, but even that was smaller. Why is it not going after the doctor? he wondered.

  Henry stepped delicately around Thera, who lay crumpled by the now open door. It moved forward in a fluid motion that was both graceful and purposeful. The little man’s eyes never wavered. He moved cautiously several steps toward the door. He was already reaching for the handgun. The Saraph seemed to know what Pax had planned even before the man did. As Pax moved toward the door, one tentacle shot out, extending itself many times its normal length and grabbing Ruan’s ankle, pulling him down, and crushing the bone inside at the same time.

  The intense pain blinded Pax momentarily. When he could focus again, he found he was being pulled toward that gaping jaw. His outrage that this was happening to him didn’t diminish his defenses. Quickly, he removed the subcompact Glock and aimed at the nerve bundle behind the SS4’s neck. In all the versions of Saraphs, it was what they believed was the one natural vulnerability. The creature didn’t react, and Pax’s finger began to squeeze. Instead of firing a killing shot, though, he suddenly felt a foot hit him in the side of the face, loosening several teeth. Another kick freed the pistol and sent it flying.

  “You evil, fucking prick!” Thera yelled as she fought to fully regain her senses. She kicked out again, then backed away as Henry flashed something else into her mind. She nodded and moved toward the door. Before leaving, she looked back to see a leg of the Asian man sliding down that long neck full of teeth. Then his waist, followed by the squat, muscular abdomen. As Henry clamped down on the man’s midsection, an eruption of blood fountained out of the doomed man’s mouth and nose, Pax’s gurgling screams of agony drowned out by the still trilling alarm.

  86

  Cade’s first sensation upon having his helmet removed was of how bad he smelled. Nearly six hours in the confines of the Jacknife XOD dive suit made for an interesting melange of odors, of which precisely none were pleasant. The second reaction was something akin to ‘Oh, my fucking shit.’ Although, translations amongst his inner personalities varied slightly. The pain in his legs was excruciating. One area felt both hot, cold, and numb in varying degrees.

  “Hang on, Boss,” Deuce said as he pried the right leg’s exoskeleton from Cade.

  Cade nodded as his eyes focused enough to see his friend working on him with some electric cutting tool. He dreaded looking down, as he fully expected the Saraph had separated the left leg from his body. What he was feeling now was probably just a ghost pain. What did amputees call it? ‘Phantom limb pain’...Shit, his leg was probably still trapped in the remnants of the gut of that beast.

  “These damn suits were not designed to come apart except in one way,” Greg said, triggering Rearden’s release servos over and over. “That dragon thing crushed yours to the point it won’t separate.”

  “Kissa, we’re going to need something heavier,” Deuce yelled over his shoulder.

  “Kissa is okay? How did we make it inside?” Cade asked.

  “Later, Cap, we’re behind enemy lines here. We have to get you functional and then move our asses. We have a perimeter set up, but it’s thin.”

  “Okay,” Cade nodded. Finally, drawing up the required courage, he looked down at the left leg. He wasn’t sure if what he saw was a relief or an even worse fear. Something was there, perhaps it was a leg, but the suit’s external shell was misshapen in ways that seemed impossible for anything beneath to still be functional. The massive Saraph had done its best to rip the suit and him apart, but it looked like the suit had somehow survived the onslaught…mostly.

  Deuce threw the remains of the other side of the suit’s plating away and began cutting away the left leg’s misshapen front armor. “Damn polysteel is not designed to be cut through with traditional tools.”

  Every time Charlie pulled on the casing, a stabbing pain shot through Cade. “Hang on, stop. I think it is crushing my leg, or maybe a piece is stabbing through it.”

  “Tough shit, Cowboy, ain’t got time to be polite.” Deuce continued to work away at freeing the leg.

  “Nomad, I’m administering a pain blocker now,” Riley said over his comms. “It will be short acting, as I know you will have to move soon. If you need more, just let me know.”

  Gritting his teeth, all he could do was nod. Since the girl was thousands of miles away, the gesture was wasted, but still, he was deeply grateful. As Charlie pulled away one part of a pressure joint, blood rushed back into his thigh causing his pain to skyrocket. Just as suddenly, a wave of numbing disconnects settled him back down, like a pounding toothache suddenly being deadened by the dentist. Charlie made quick work of the rest of the removal. Greg then ran his SmartCom over both legs.

  “Scans show no breaks, but that may not be the wonderful news. You still probably have torn ligaments and ruptured muscles as well as several intense pressure injuries, Nomad.”

  “Your suits saved us, kid,” he said, finally finding his voice. “Can you give me something to get me moving again?”

  “I can, but the pain will be back, too.”

  He felt the sting from the med patch and knew it had released its cocktail of adrenaline, or whatever endorphin mix, back into his system. “What’s our depth?”

  “You are passing 1,250 meters and beginning to level off,” Dee stated.

  “Cutter, are you there?”

  “Yes, sir,” Alex's voice came back at once.

  “Come on down. Doris will lay in a path. It’s still going to be deep for you guys, so don’t linger. Suit jets to max. The coast should be clear, and we need your help.” Cade signed off; he was in no shape to be the lone hero today.

  A man has got to know his limitations, Gus said in his best Clint Eastwood interpretation.

  Fuck you, Cade thought. You don’t exist, remember?

  That’s hurtful to us all, and we only said that because you were throwing our body down the throat of an alien sea monster.

  Cade wanted to challenge the “our body” statement, but Kissa was desperately trying to get their attention, pointing at several hostiles entering the workspace from doors at both ends.

  Deuce touched his cheek. “Kissa, use the comms so we can hear you.”

  “Oh, yes, sir, Mister Deuce. Just wanted you all to know we are about to have our asses handed to us,” he whispered in the sing-song accented English, before adding, “Was that better?”

  Cade had to stop himself from laughing as the man turned and smiled, giving a big okay sign with his finger and thumb. “Damn, I’ve missed that guy more than I knew.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Charlie said. “Now let’s go stop him from getting dead. You mobile yet, old man?”

  “I will shoot you, Deuce,” Cade growled.

  Charlie offered a smile and swung back toward the enemy. He had command now, just as he’d been trained. His C.O. was injured. It was his time to step up. Cade liked that he never had to tell Charlie what the right thing to do was. McTee was becoming that way, too, before…well maybe, in time he would…the thought got cut off as gunfire began to erupt inside the launch bay.

  “Greg, you and Yeager stay on the lockout chamber and let Raptor on board.” Greg looked nervous but nodded. “Shoot anyone that looks like them,” Charlie said, pointing his rifle barrel at the guys streaming in. “WarHawks, move on me.”

  Cade’s awkward stumbling walk turned into a bit of a run with the slight power assist from the Rapide Battlesuit underlayer he still wore. At least twenty of Thrall’s men lined an upper mezzanine overlooking the docking bay. They had the numbers and the high ground. That should have been enough, but Charlie obviously felt the advantage was all on his side. He synced all the teams’ Dees to target collectively, and
everyone’s weapons switched to the KillPoint autofire mode as they moved into less exposed positions. “WarHawks, engage!” he shouted.

  Like the others, Cade moved his rifle up to fire while he crouched concealed behind a workbench. He felt the small gyros in the weapon maneuvering and switched his tactical glasses to show targeting. His system had already picked out a primary and two alternatives that were kneeling next to the first. The weapon bucked slightly as it spat out its lethal rounds. All three men soon lay dead or dying. The targeting scope moved and fired, moved and fired. Within several seconds, it was over. Deuce had been right; the advantage had been all theirs. For some reason, he didn’t much expect it to stay that way.

  “Let’s go get our people!” Deuce yelled, Kissa racing ahead to be the first one out the door.

  87

  Everyone on the team knew the first objective. Correction, the first objective was to survive. Second, was to find an access point for a clever device Jimmy and Doris had come up with. Kissa directed them to a moon pool control station. Charlie removed the small object and inserted it into the USB slot. The new adapter seemed to shimmer, then melt like putty around the port. In seconds, it was a small rectangular patch the same color and texture as the surrounding material with a fully functional USB port right where the other one had been. Cade didn’t know the specifics, but he was aware it had multiple quantum comms processors built in. Depending on the operating system’s sophistication, and if this workstation was fully networked or not, it provided Doris a way to remotely integrate into the ship's systems.

  The light on their HUD went green, signaling the interface was active. Charlie gave hand signals they all understood. Almost as a single predatory unit, they moved up the ramp to the next level, stepping over the dead security men lying in still-increasing pools of blood. “Nomad, you have rear guard.”