Midnight Zone: a Cade Rearden Thriller

by JK Franks

  “Okay, if I die, you will regret that was the last thing you said to me,” Charlie responded.

  “So, don’t die.”

  “I mean, Nomad, we are fucking around down here with a goddamn ghost instead of getting on with our job. We are SpecOp elite with the best of everything. Plus, at least one of us is BSC.”

  “Your point?” Cade asked, already pretty sure of what the answer was.

  “Beast mode,” Charlie said, already beginning to rise. “I’ve been nearly drowned, too close to an explosion, shot at, and nearly eaten by several different things today, and it’s not even lunchtime. Fuck these shadows.”

  Oh crap, Cade thought just before being slammed in the shoulder by something fired from the far corner. Just as Charlie had suggested, Brutus rose to the surface and carefully reviewed the battle plan before taking a virtual shit on it and rubbing his ass down the wall to get clean.

  This is going to be fun, Gus stated from somewhere high up in the nosebleed section of Cade’s mind. Chickenshit, Cade challenged.

  Charlie had multiple weapons out, firing ordinance at every section of the right side of the room. Brutus liked what he saw and did the same to the opposite wall. Within a few seconds, a spray of arterial blood followed by a body cascaded toward the center of the room. Brutus stomped over to it.

  “Is he dead?” Charlie asked.

  Cade could see it was a male, a very skinny one with the same unusual camo-pattern on his face. Then Brutus stomped down on the skull with a sickly, satisfying crunch.

  “Yep…dead,” Cade managed to say as Brutus once again settled back into his own dark corner.

  “At least one more of them out there, Deuce.”

  “Can we go then, or do you have other issues to deal with?”

  Again, the two-man assault team raced the last fifty yards to the control bridge. Outside the smooth steel hatch, a series of alert lights were flashing. Charlie stated, “Looks like they are in lock-down, Nomad. Think we can blow this door?”

  Dee responded with a negative. “But you don’t need to.”

  “Holy shit, we are so stupid.” Cade palmed his comms. “Warlock, do you have Raptor freed up yet?”

  “Yes, sir, they were breaking out before I even got here. We’re on the move now.”

  “Okay, let Cutter take her team, you bring me Greg, and tell him I need the Magic Stick ASAP.”

  “Roger-roger.”

  “Well, damn, why did we leave that in the lockout chamber?” Deuce asked glumly.

  “It’s too big. It was that or more weapons, so you know what we chose.” Cade leaned against the wall to wait. Out here, they were vulnerable and doing no one any good. He could check in, though. First, with Thera, who said she had no idea how to prevent the Icarus device from deploying. She had learned from Henry that it did only work if activated on the sea floor. So, they will have to dive again, he thought.

  Nance had also checked in to let them know Trondo was still alive but on life support. The medical team assigned to him seemed genuinely trying to help. Cade would get Alex up there with a TCP trauma sleeve as soon as he could. In the meantime, he moved Nance and Alias to the lab to help defend Thera and Henry. He felt sure Thrall would make a play for the research, if not the Saraph, and Thera as well.

  “Doris, how did the kindness work?” If she had control, then they wouldn’t have to wait on Greg and the disruptor bar. The only response was a squelch of static followed by a poorly modulated synthesized voice.

  “Busy, N, N, Nomad.” Then the broadcast abruptly cut off.

  “I do believe our Warrior Princess is preoccupied with battle. Think the next round is on us,” Cade suggested.

  “Nomad!”

  The call sounded urgent, frantic even. “Hey, umm…fuck. Greg, that you?”

  “Yes, Kissa and I are under attack, but we can’t see anything.”

  “Go full autofire, let the targeting scope handle it, just keep pulling the trigger until the gun has to recycle,” Cade said.

  “We’ve been doing that, well, our Dee suggested it, but Kissa is hit and…” The kid's voice faded out.

  Cade called up their location on his SmartCom. Shit, they were down a level and a good 75 yards away.

  “We need to go get ‘em, Boss,” Charlie said.

  Cade nodded. He knew; he just hated giving up valuable ground they’d just taken.

  Kissa’s voice came over the Comms, weak but determined, “We got this, Nomad. Stay put, I’ll get your boy to you.”

  “Warlock! Oh, shit, what’s Kissa going to do?” Cade yelled as he began racing back in their direction. “Deuce! Stay on that door.” Cade felt the floor shift underneath him. What had been a steady incline to one side suddenly began feeling like a descent in the opposite. We’re descending, he thought to himself. His self seemed to respond with, No shit.

  Muffled explosions sounded from below, and Cade took the stairs four at a time. He landed in the smoke-filled corridor just in time to see a thick black arm snatch something off of a tiny track of piping high on the wall. The thing was a person, another woman by the looks of it. From out of the smoke, Cade saw Greg racing by, assault rifle in one hand and the disruptor in the other. “Go, man, go. Deuce is waiting on you!” He flagged Greg through and up the stairs as he brought up his own weapon and trained it at the Schatten.

  He shouted a warning to Kissa, but he wasn’t fast enough. The tiny, waifish assassin went from looking broken and weak to lethal in the blink of an eye. A wrist twisted free, and a knife appeared seemingly from nowhere. The KillPoint system wouldn’t engage, as there was no shot that wasn’t also lethal to Kissa, who was now identified as a friendly. The knife slashed across Kissa’s face, cutting a palm-sized flap of skin nearly free. “Break her, Warlock, no mercy!” Cade yelled.

  Kissa’s grip had loosened as the pain receptors in his face registered the trauma. The assassin seemed to sense this and moved precisely when it was optimum. She spun out of his grip and away. Blades now danced in both hands, and she landed on the floor as lightly as a ballerina. Not only were they masters of camouflage and deadly with all weapons, the Schatten seemed to defy gravity. Fucking ninjas, Gus suggested. Bet her lips don’t even match her voice when she talks.

  “Nomad?”

  The voice jarred him. It instantly transported him thousands of miles away to another life and death battle with one of these…things. “Yes….Mila, what?”

  “Doris is letting me see what you are seeing. This one is our best. Watch her feet, forget everything else.”

  Doris is tied up in her own fight, but managed to get this to Mila, he thought. Cade had no other time to wonder why Doris had shown her this, nor why the girl might be helping, but he took the advice. Kissa was now slumped against the side bulkhead, blood dripping from numerous wounds. His right hand was holding the flap of dark skin back in place with obvious pain.

  “Greg is here with the Magic Stick, do we breech?” Deuce asked.

  “No, hold.” Cade’s eyes were watching the precise movements of the Schatten’s feet. They were covered in the same material as the suits they wore. She was obviously injured, he felt her watching him and knew she made a faking move toward Kissa, but her feet kept pointing at him. Even knowing the girl was there, it was easy to let her blend into the background. Like one of those optical illusions where you see one thing, then bring the hidden picture into mental focus, only to lose it again seconds later. He had to concentrate fully, and still, he found it almost impossible to anticipate her next move. She fired a weapon. His suit deflected the round away harmlessly. She started charging, and Kissa whipped a leg out, tripping her.

  Cade clearly saw her stumble and stretch hands toward the floor to catch her fall and then…nothing. The smell of cordite and smoke from the explosive rounds now obscured everything in the corridor. She would use this. “Warlock, get to Thera, she or Nance can fix you up.”

  “Can’t leave you, man,” the Honduran said in as close to normal t
ones as he could manage.

  “I’m leaving you, I know where she’s heading.” Cade had a clear mental image of her feet just as he thought Kissa had tripped her. They had been firmly planted, and now she was heading toward the stairs. The Schatten must have passed right by him. In the smoke, he hadn’t even realized it. Shit, probably wouldn’t have seen her do it in bright sunlight.

  “Deuce, the crazy bitch is heading your way. I’ll be on her six.”

  Charlie acknowledged the warning. “Cutter, get to Engineering and stop this damn thing from going down.”

  “We’re trying to, Boss, but every water hatch is secured along the way, and fucking security keep popping out of every doorway. Not sure we will make it in time.”

  Ace, you have any ideas? Cade hated calling on his reclusive analyst persona, but he was running out of options, and brute force didn’t seem to be a game-winner today.

  He heard a small amount of the buzzing verbalizations, but no coherent thoughts came forth. So far, Brutus had been the only one to contribute anything positive. That was discouraging for all of them.

  “Breach the door, Deuce.” Cade had to do something, and he was still several minutes away.

  “Rog…” The transmission ended abruptly.

  92

  “You’re doing what?”

  Ruslana ignored the question. The fool knew exactly what she was doing. They were losing control of the ship's systems. Security forces were being neutralized, and at least one group of attackers was just outside the bridge.

  “Honey, please don’t do this.” Thrall's voice was well past pleading, begging even. “We will be safe here.”

  “Good luck, Ivan,” she whispered before closing the hatch behind her. She spun the wheel to seal it tight. The outer doors would not release until the pressure inside equalized. Up here at the top of the massive vessel, the dome housed only a single one of the modified Corsairs. This one was Thrall’s personal and well appointed runabout. It featured additional upgrades. Best of all, everything in the executive hangar was manual. None of it relied on Astra. The compartment didn’t even show up on the station’s schematics. The lights on the dash flickered from red to amber and finally, to green. She pressed the launch controls and felt a lurch as the craft rose slightly from its cradle before the MHD propulsion drive began softly pushing her out and away from the descending Kalypso.

  Thrall felt the vibration through the deck. He knew she was gone. Richard wasn’t coming, Pax was dead, and Astra had ceased responding. Maybe he should have deployed the Icarus device, but they needed the other Founders. Otherwise, all of this was pointless. Sure, the oceans would eventually rid themselves of the human filth, and the skies would clear, but humanity would be gone. Not even a memory of them would remain in a few thousand years. In 50,000, no one would be able to see mankind had ever existed, much less ruled over this planet.

  The device was supposed to be a reset, push the species back to easily sustainable levels—not to wipe us out. He cradled his head in his hands and watched the video displaying the men outside the bridge. They now had a pry bar of some type. No way they would get the door open with that. Suddenly, a figure flitted through the frame. One of his protectors, the Schatten girl whose name he’d never bothered to learn. She was the one Richard said he could count on. Gunfire and a small explosion outside the door obscured the view. His eyes scanned the other displays.

  Engineering was still under his control. The Kalypso was descending more rapidly now. Ruslana had just gotten out before the Corsair’s crush depth was reached. Glancing up at the feed that monitored external craft, he froze in confusion. “That bitch.”

  No way she would do this, no way she had his credentials. “Astra, stop deployment of the Icarus device.”

  The ship's system gave no response. It would do no good, anyway. Once deployed manually, it could not be stopped. Judgement day was coming for them all now.

  93

  “Deuce, she’s coming up fast.” Cade knew that was an understatement. The Schatten moved like she wore a jet pack. It didn’t seem humanly possible to cover the ground or make the turns and moves that she did. With each step, something unexpected happened, and Cade would lose sight for an instant, only to see her again, nanoseconds later in a different spot. If he survived this, Mila would be giving lessons to the Talon Teams.

  Greg ducked while slashing up with his tactical blade, and a long red streak appeared across the attacker’s thigh. She brought her elbow down on the back of his neck as she passed over his head. The boy’s Battlesuit absorbed most of the hammer-like blow, but still, it drove him to one knee. “Stay down man,” Deuce said as he tracked the shadow with his close quarters weapon. Before he could engage, a string of rounds stitched a line right where he had been aiming.

  “Got your back, brother!” Cade yelled as he pivoted, always looking for the feet of the girl. He squeezed the trigger and felt a blade dig into his own thigh. Not only had he not seen her throw it, the suit’s defenses hadn’t registered it either. The blade was deep in his already damaged muscle. He felt Brutus stirring down deep, ready to be loosed on the pest once more. I got this, he whispered silently. Some part of his brain had recognized patterns emerging in the seemingly random attacks of the assassin. By studying her footwork, he found he was beginning to anticipate where she would be. Deuce was firing at a blank spot on the wall and endangering them all in the process.

  “Breach the door, Deuce!”

  “But…”

  “Just do it, I got this,” Cade repeated, louder this time. Reaching down, he removed the blade from his thigh although the memory of it remained behind in all its agonizing glory. He flipped it around in his free hand. It was a good blade, a great one even. Perfectly balanced, not a gram off from the center point in any direction. In one fluid motion, he snapped his wrist forward and let it fly. The blade made contact and sunk home deep in the girl’s abdomen. She fell, and Cade caught her in mid-air. He held her by the throat with one extended arm.

  “We’re in, Boss,” Greg called.

  Cade heard the chatter of gunfire from inside the control room. “Deuce, lead. We need that asshole alive.”

  Doris’s voice cut in over his comms. “Nomad, I’m afraid the Icarus device has been deployed. I have partial control of the station, but it wasn’t done from here.”

  Cade looked at the Schatten struggling to kick him, wrapping her legs around his arm like a snake. She tried vainly to get some slight release from his grip. Her face was covered with the strange make-up pattern now smeared with gushing blood from several points. Despite that, he saw her expression slowly curl into a smile. This one was not the same as Steiger…as Mila. This one lived to hunt…to kill. From a hidden pocket, she suddenly produced a butterfly knife and flicked it open with practiced ease. He shook his head no, but watched as she began a vicious slash down on the arm holding her. The suit’s biomechanics were already jacked to the maximum rates. He drew back and smashed the woman into the hard surface of the hatch while squeezing down on her throat until he felt bones begin to give way. The second time he did it, the body was that of an empty shell, a rag-doll, a mere shadow still, but now of something no longer alive.

  Dropping the attacker to the floor, he bent to see Deuce already inside the control room. Bodies littered the space. One figure knelt behind a large console, firing a small handgun. Deuce fired a spider-taser at the figure. The charged projectile deployed its hooks and latched on to part of the man’s shirt before deploying all of its attached barbs. Several found purchase on the arm. It sizzled and popped. The weapon dropped from the man’s hands, and he fell. In the end, Ivan Thrall had gone down without much of a fight.

  “Clear!” Charlie yelled.

  “Clear,” Cade said, bent over, hands resting on knees, finally able to catch his breath.

  94

  Thrall began to come to. One eye was blackened and leaking blood, possibly from where Cade had struck him previously, maybe several times. Cade
tossed a bottled water at him. “I am Captain Rearden. My team and I are from a very pissed off security agency, and my bosses want answers.

  “Why, Thrall…why all this?”

  They had found the man cowering by the control station desperately trying to reach someone on the comms system. Thrall just shook his head. Cade kicked him again. Thrall’s one good eye seemed to have trouble staying focused. “We all have our roles to play, Captain.”

  Thrall sat heavily and took a swallow of water from the bottle.

  The man now seemed resigned to his fate. He shrugged, “Have you ever heard of hitting midnight on the Doomsday Clock?” he asked as he leaned on the arm of a chair.

  “You mean the one where you have to get back from the ball before your coach turns into a pumpkin, Cinderella?”

  “No, and are you always such an asshole?” Thrall growled.

  Cade considered it. “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “A group of veteran scientists from the Manhattan Project came up with it after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Their annual journal covers, featured a so-called Doomsday Clock, its minute hand always approaching ‘midnight.’ It was thought to be a bellwether of impending doom based on the prevailing nuclear threat level amongst the world’s nuclear powers.”

  “Now,” Thrall continued, “you would think the closest time would have been during the Cold War, or just maybe the Cuban Missile Crisis, but in January of 2020, the clock was moved to just 100 seconds, which is the closest to midnight since the clock's inception back in 1947.”

  “So, what, dude, you originally were planning a nuclear annihilation?” Cade gasped then, the pain from his injuries seeping back into his head at the worst possible time.

  “Of course not, that would be idiotic and just one more crime humanity has inflicted on this planet,” Thrall said in a tone that was both menacing and pleading, if that were even possible. “The problem is, those scientists were a bit short-sighted. Still, you gotta wonder—putting that kind of power into the hands of egotistical politicians, it is a perverse level of madness. No, they neglected to factor in all the other ways humans could destroy the world. From pollution and climate change, to soil degradation and nuclear waste. The fact is that the dramatic, even alarming, loss of biodiversity alone threatens all of us equally. No nationality, no ideology, or capitalist agenda matters to it.”