The Blind War (The Shadow Wars Book 13)

by S. A. Lusher

  “Jesus,” Allan whispered.

  “Yes. All the more reason to put a stop to these bastards. Now, I'm afraid that all I'm going to be able to offer you in way of assistance is Keron.”

  “Oh, come on, this is getting ridiculous, Hawkins,” Callie said. “What's going on? Why can you only spare Porter and Keron?” She glanced over at them. “Um, no offense.”

  “Still none taken,” Porter said.

  “Agreed,” Keron replied quietly. “We should be getting more assistance.”

  “I'm afraid that everyone else is busy at the moment. Drake, Eric and a few of the others are out on a mission for the government right now. Jennifer and Genevieve are on their own mission as well. Greg is...well, having a bit of a crisis. And I do need a bare minimum of crew to run this ship.”

  “What about Eve?” Callie asked.

  “Another job has just come down the pipe and I'm getting it ready for her. Protection job for something that was just dug up.”

  “Okay, let me get this straight. Last month, the government was all up our ass about nailing these fuckers in order to 'prove our worth', but then, as soon as we get a break in the case, they want to pull support, shift us elsewhere?”

  Hawkins pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut. “Now you know why I look like shit,” he said. “I'm still putting up with all the bullshit. We're slowly winning them over...I think. Something came up, I don't want to get into it for security reasons, blah blah blah, but we're earning some big bonus points for shipping Drake, Eric and a whole team out there. Suffice to say, I feel your pain and I'm doing the best I can.”

  “Okay...curiosity is getting the best of me here, what's happening?” Allan asked.

  Hawkins sighed. “Someone hit one of our research installations. One of the top secret ones that no one's supposed to know about, and took some really important stuff. We're trying to figure out exactly who, what and why.”

  “Huh.”

  “Yeah. Civilians getting kidnapped and experimented on is secondary to government property being tampered with...” He sighed suddenly. “As callous as it sounds, I think they may actually be right on this one. We've got some seriously powerful shit stored away. You've all personally seen that. We don't need another Dark Ops situation on our hands.”

  Allan hadn't even considered that. He felt cold at the thought.

  “Anyway, Weller is getting the Raptor prepped again. We're going to be hanging out here for the time being, waiting to meet up with Eve's transport. I'm afraid you're going to be heading in with even less intel than last time. The only information we even have of this moon was gathered by a survey station set into that valley. It was abandoned a while ago and unfortunately we have no relevant records on it. What little data is available has been routed to the Raptor. Any questions?”

  There were none.

  “Then good luck.”

  * * * * *

  The Raptor settled into a clearing in a frozen forest on the moon.

  The place they were looking for was nestled in the base of a valley. Basic information of the moon in question showed that it had human-friendly atmosphere, gravity and temperature. Though it tended towards the cold side. Passive scans of the immediate area showed them no life signs, but about a hundred energy signatures that were probably the man-machine cyborgs they were hunting. The mission was underway.

  Allan kept his rifle tucked tightly against his shoulder as the airlock door opened up. Nothing but snow and trees out there. He scanned the area as he moved down the small stairway that extended from the base of the airlock. The trees were strange things: conical and, whenever he could see them not buried by the snow, a strange teal color. He ignored them, determined not to get distracted. Not all of the energy signatures had been located in or around the base. Some of them had been moving in packs outside the valley, in the forest.

  Patrols.

  They'd gone over a quick game plan before disembarking. Now they enacted it.

  “Clear,” Allan said quietly.

  Callie, Keron and Porter left the airlock as well, joining him in the frigid air, their heavy combat boots crunching in the snow. For the moment, they were alone. Allan wondered how long that would last as he took point, leading the way into the treeline. Weller was staying with the ship, guarding it and keeping it hot in case they needed a quick pickup. The first part of the plan required them to get to the ridge looking down on the valley floor. Based on the survey data, it was only about five hundred feet above the abandoned station.

  From there, they'd scope out the situation.

  The first several minutes passed in relative peace and quiet. Allan thought they were making fairly decent progress, moving in between the strange, teal cone-shaped trees. Then, suddenly, they heard a twig snap somewhere up ahead.

  They'd been moving down a natural path in between the trees, but they thickened up ahead, becoming more densely packed about twenty meters out. Allan quickly motioned for the others to hide and they did, the quartet of them melting into the environment to the best of their ability. Allan knew that their suits had all kinds of shielding, so it should protect them from whatever scanning equipment the meat machines might have embedded in their heads. Once everyone was in position, they waited in the quietude.

  The snow seemed to drain all sound from their environment.

  Allan almost began to question if he'd heard anything at all when, suddenly, a figure appeared through the treeline up ahead and started walking directly down the path they'd just been on. Two more appeared, then another one. Finally, six emerged, walking in a strung-out line along the path, their heads and weapons sweeping back and forth ceaselessly, clearly on the hunt. Allan activated a private comms channel.

  “Wait til I give the signal, then hit them,” he said softly.

  A string of affirmative replies came back.

  Five seconds passed by. “Now!”

  The four of them popped from their hiding spots and opened fire. Four more seconds went by and half a dozen tech-studded bodies flew to the frozen ground. Blood fell and seeped into the snow in spreading stains.

  The squad remained tensed, waiting, but a moment of silence passed and nothing else happened. Allan took the first step into the pathway. Nothing happened. He motioned for the others to join him, though for Keron to hang back and watch their asses. He wanted another opportunity to see these guys up close.

  As creepy as they were, they were also fascinating.

  They were all deathly pale, like corpses lain in the snow for several days, the blood drained from them. Several of them sported mechanical eyes or miniature antenna or dishes grafted directly onto their skulls, and they all had some kind of weapon replacing a hand. Either a big, nasty blade or a barrel, either gunmetal gray or midnight black. They all had other oddities: steel-mesh grilles or plates or silver wiring or some kind of metal stud sticking out of them in seemingly random locations. They were just like the Augmented.

  Allan had spoken with Greg at length about the horrors he had faced down and these were just like the horrors created by the rogue AI Erebus.

  He wondered what had provoked the creation of these things.

  “Come on, let's keep it up,” he said, straightening.

  Keron moved back out onto the pathway and joined them. They kept moving through the woods, splitting up slightly as the natural path came to an end in a jumble of trees. They continued working their way forward, through the trees, following the navigation suite on their heads up displays. Allan found his mind slowly emptying of thoughts as he made room only for the mission ahead. Find the abandoned station, get the data.

  There was more to it, but those were the bare basics of the plan.

  He felt his frustrations and anxieties and concerns melting away. Within minutes, they hit the ridge, which was about ten feet of open space beyond the edge of the forest that ended in a sheer drop. They moved up to the edge, carefully looking down into the crevice in the earth, at the valley floor
. Approximately five hundred feet down was the supply station. Allan activated the zoom function, studying the structures.

  There were about twenty buildings within a fenced perimeter, ranging from single-room shacks to larger, two-story structures. He could see dozens of figures moving between the structures. It didn't look like the alarm had been raised.

  “Okay, just like we planned, Porter, get into position,” Allan said.

  “Affirmative,” Porter replied, crouching down and pulling the slim pack off of her back. She opened it up, revealing a padded interior with several components of a broken-down sniper rifle held within.

  She quickly and efficiently began to fit the rifle together.

  Porter, besides being a combat technician, was an exceptional sniper, and would provide overwatch for them from up here. Allan quickly began to lead Callie and Keron down the ridge, towards the mouth of the valley. They made quick progress, unchallenged by any more patrols, and managed to hit the valley floor before too much time passed. As they started picking their way through the trees, moving in towards the base, Allan felt the familiar comfort of knowing exactly what he was doing. He'd run ops like this before.

  It was more the Investigations side of Security-Investigations, and he'd been very good at it. It hadn't taken him very long to rise to a command position. He felt in his element and a part of him wished he'd been doing stuff like this his whole adult life instead of just patrolling around. He preferred offensive action to defensive action. As they pressed on, their movements stealthy and silent, he reviewed the plan.

  They were to split up, entering the base from three different points, making their way towards the central command structure while remaining as unseen as possible and taking out any targets of opportunity, while at the same time planting explosives anywhere and everywhere they could. All three of them had packed several small but powerful blocks of explosive, keyed to a remote detonator. It was their backup plan.

  Well, actually, they were blowing the base up one way or the other.

  As they made their final approach to the facility, the three split up. Allan made sure his weapons were in working order. They'd all packed silencers for this job. He wished there was some kind of snowfall or storm going on, it would help mask their movements, but there was no such luck. He would have to trust luck, his armor and his skills to get him through this. Allan stood near the edge of the treeline, studying the situation.

  The perimeter fence was, thankfully, pretty broken down. In fact, almost dead in front of him, a whole section had fallen flat, granting him access. Well, there was some luck. He would come in directly behind a heavily weathered structure and start working his way in. He waited a moment, seeing if there were any patrols around, but when he saw nothing, he quickly crossed the open space and slipped into the base.

  Okay, he was actually inside now.

  So far, so good.

  Allan crouched down and planted a bomb at the base of the structure. Then he peered cautiously through a dirty, partially broken window, canvassing the room beyond. Once he was sure it was clear, or as sure as he could be, he slipped in through a back door. He'd come to a disused storage room. Racks and stacked boxes lined the walls, covered in dust and, in some cases, snow. There were snow drifts on the floor where the windows had been broken. Allan moved along the mostly empty racks to the front.

  Two shadows passed along the front, moving from one window to the next. He hit the front wall and ducked down, out of sight. The two shadows paused, lingering for several seconds, and he heard soft beeping sounds and a whirring noise, then the footsteps picked up again, crunching in the snow, moving away, getting lighter. He waited a few seconds more, then stood up slowly, trying to remain hidden in the shadows.

  Scanning the immediate area, he saw a small road of open space between this building and a low row of shacks directly across.

  His next stop.

  Allan checked the area, then hurried across once he was sure it was clear. And that was how the next ten minutes passed. He planted eight more explosives and managed to take out four of the meat machines, catching them in narrow alleyways or inside of buildings. By the time he managed to make it to the command center in the middle of the encampment, he hadn't heard any gunfire, any explosions, any kind of hint that they had been discovered. He met with Callie and Keron and managed to slip inside.

  They hit the command center like lightning, getting inside and putting down the four cyborgs occupying the building with quick headshots. They quickly moved through the building, clearing the few other rooms, finding no one else.

  “Okay,” Callie said, getting up to the central computer, “let's get this done.”

  Porter had given them a device that would hack into the database and copy everything in about a minutes' time. Callie slipped it into one of the ports, initiated it and waited. Tense seconds ticked by. Allan found himself wondering what kind of info they would uncover here. Hopefully the location of their headquarters, or maybe even why in the fuck they were doing this...whoever they were. He was probably most curious about that.

  There was a soft chime from behind them.

  Callie turned and retrieved the device. She checked it over briefly, nodded once she confirmed it held all the data that had been available, then pocketed it.

  “Okay, let's-”

  One of the doors burst open in a spray of gunfire. Allan threw himself to the side, aiming and firing, hosing the two figures that had come inside down with hot lead. There was a loud, squealing electronic sound that cut off abruptly as he or one of the others hit something important and both figures were toppled, slamming into the floor.

  They could hear more meat machines coming their way.

  “You've been made,” Porter said quietly over their comms link.

  “Thanks for the warning,” Callie muttered in reply.

  “Let's go, people!” Allan called.

  He led them out the back door, spying no one waiting for them in the immediate area, then tossed in a pair of grenades back the way they'd come as Callie and Keron cleared the way. As soon as the second grenade left his hand, they took off, rushing back the way Allan had come initially, since it was the most direct route.

  All around them, the base surged to malevolent life.

  “Weller, we need a pick up!” Allan called.

  “Already in the air, heading for Porter's position,” Weller replied. “You'll have overwatch for only another sixty seconds. Do you require assistance from the Raptor?”

  “No, we'll be fine, just get to the LZ,” Allan replied.

  “Affirmative.”

  They hurried down an alleyway in between a pair of storage structures. At the other end, a tall, pale man, shining with metal and bristling with weapons, appeared. Allan took aim and fired a three-round burst, landing the shots directly into the fucker's face. The thing's head snapped back in a spray of dark red, almost black, gore. The corpse hit the ground, twitching spasmodically, sparks shooting as it tried to get back up.

  He fired a second volley and then leaped over it, canvasing the area as he sprinted through, the others hot on his heels. He could hear the distant crack of Porter's rifle as she opened fire. He glanced to the left, seeing a trio of meat puppets abruptly falling to the ground, one after the other, as their heads disappeared in plumes of red-black, sparking gore. He heard gunfire to his left and turned, preparing to fire as they continued sprinting to the other side of the road, but saw another pair of cyborgs turned into corpses.

  Porter was more than just a good shot with that thing.

  She was godlike.

  They reached the other side. Behind him, he could hear Callie and Keron earning their keep, the whispers from their silenced rifles as they put down more of the hostiles. As they continued navigating the alleyways and roads, shifting rapidly in between structures, he heard the growing whine of the Raptor's engines.

  “I'm leaving,” Porter reported.

  “Affirmative,” Allan replied
.

  Their overwatch was gone, they'd have to fully fend for themselves now. Well, they weren't all that far away from the exterior, and once they got to a relatively safe distance, he would blow the bombs and get the hostiles off their back. They burst into another open road, the last one before the storage building he'd first passed through. There were more enemies than ever around now. Allan aimed and fired as he ran, spitting sprays of bullets out that hit more often than not, sending jets of gore and blood to the snowy ground.

  He emptied his magazine, hit the building and slapped a fresh one in. Turning around, he provided cover while Callie and Keron got into the structure. He put down another four of them and felt a few rounds reverberate off his armor as some of the shots hit home. All it would take was one well-placed or lucky bullet and he'd be dead. He pulled back into the structure, sprinting through it, focusing on being mobile now.

  They got out of the back and burst through the hole in the fence.

  The trio ran, bolting across the open distance as gunfire peppered the area, sending up bursts of ice and snow.

  “Blow it!” Callie called.

  Allan triggered the detonator, which was keyed to his suit.

  Behind them, an earthquake began, a tremendous cataclysm of fire and twisted metal and flying corpses. The force of the blast rushed past them in one hard burst, picking them up and throwing them forward several feet, leaving them to groan and struggled to their feet among the trees. The suits took the brunt of the blast and the heat, though as Allan got to his feet and kept moving, he barely avoided being sheered in half by a falling piece of debris.

  A flat, charred piece of metal, roofing or a wall maybe, slammed into the earth, sticking straight up, trailing smoke.

  Allan dodged around it and kept running, trying to both not run into any trees and check to see if the others were still alive.