didn’t find any semblance of anger or sarcasm, it appeared to be a genuine congratulatory gesture.
I smiled back politely after realising that I’d been staring, “Well thank you, she is pretty magnificent.” Kate giggled and began looking at her feet.
We reached the cafeteria and it was reasonably empty again, there was one table occupied by a serious looking guy with headphones in. He had jet black hair in a braid down his back, long features and pale olive skin. It suited the grey t-shirt, jean and combat boot combo that he was wearing.
Another table had three guys sitting and laughing about something one of them had said. The one closest to me had well-kept curled red hair, freckles and a slightly chubby face.
The one to his right was blonde and had a buzz cut, his button nose complemented his small mouth.
The one furthest from me had thick brown hair that hung just above his neck. His wide set jaw and high cheeks made me think of an elf I’d seen in a movie a few years before.
They all wore white t-shirts and blue jeans. I nodded in their direction, “That’s Mink’s team?”
Kate nodded, “The red head is Kyle, the blonde is Steven, Mikael’s the brunette, and that guy over there on his own, that’s Gabriel. He’s a good guy, he recently lost his father, cancer, he’s coping in his own way.” I found myself very interested in Gabriel as we wandered over to the table where the group of men sat.
“Hey, can we take seat here?” Kyle looked me up and down in distaste.
“Hey Wolfgang, Kate. Well, that depends, who are you?” He sounded like he was from somewhere in South America, maybe New Orleans.
Wolf’s voice cut in, “This is John, your new commanding officer.”
Kyle’s face drooped, “Sorry sir, I didn’t know, um… yes sir, feel free.”
We grabbed seats and arranged them around the table, “It’s not a problem. I take it Jason has filled you guys in?” I said with smile that must’ve been convincing. The faces around the table relaxed a bit and they nodded in unison. “You have any input?” In unison, again, they shook their heads. It was like being surrounded by robots, or those creepy horror movie kids, “Guys, you can relax, really, I’m just another guy.”
They looked unsure, Steven shot out his hand, “Great to meet you, I’m Steven, I’m the pilot and driver.” He said in a noticeably New Yorker accent, I took his hand and he shook it firmly.
“Nice to meet you, and you guys are?”
Mikael was the next to offer his hand, “I’m Mikael, close quarter combat and tech. I can crack pretty much anything.” His Scottish accent seemed to reverberate in my chest.
Kyle’s hand extended more warily than the others, “Kyle, explosives, nice to meet you sir.” I smiled at him and he replied in kind weakly.
I pointed over to Gabriel, “And what about him?”
Mikael looked over, “That’s Gabriel, he’s our sniper and scout, he’s quick and personally I wouldn’t get anywhere near him if he has a knife on him. He’s nice enough. He’ll be ready for the mission.”
I nodded, I really found this guy fascinating. “So what’re you guys up to today?”
Mikael shrugged, “Eh, not much, we’ll probably get drinks tonight. You’re welcome to join us.”
It was my turn to shake my head now, “No thanks, I’m meeting Marcus soon, I don’t know how long that’s going to go for yet.”
Mikael nodded knowingly, “Ah, I get you, well we’d better get going, you have yourselves a good day.” The three stood, nodded at each of us and left.
Kate shuffled closer to me and started holding my hand. I looked over and smiled at her, then I felt someone grabbing my other hand and turned to see Wolf smiling slyly and winking at me.
I immediately shook my hand free, “Come on Wolf, you ruined it.”
We all laughed together.
“Either of you know what time it is?” Wolf looked at a small leather bound watch I hadn’t noticed before, odd… I usually notice everything, anyway,
“Quarter past one.”
Forty five minutes to kill, “I’m going to grab some water, you guys want anything?”
Kate brushed a stray piece of hair off her forehead, “Water sounds good, Wolf?” Wolf shook his head.
I walked over to the counter that a tall man stood behind. His bright blue eyes looking at me contrasting with his extremely dark skin, he was bald with a thick black beard.
“How can I help you?” His South African accent was beautiful, accentuating each word in his sentence unlike most clear English speakers, whose sentences seem to blur together into one word.
“Two waters thanks.” He gave me a thumbs up, spun around and grabbed two plastic bottles from a large white refrigerator.
He put them on the counter in front of me, “Name and room number?”
I struggled to remember, “John Prince, block… ten?” He gave me a big smile, revealing perfect white teeth, his canines being exceptionally longer and sharper than the rest, another vampire.
“Ah, you're the new guy. I’ve heard a lot about you Prince, you're a good man. You can come see me if you need any help with anything at all.”
I nodded politely and returned the smile, “Thanks, you too.”
I made my way back to the table to see Kate, Wolf and someone new sitting where Kyle had. He had a softness about him yet strong features. Brown eyes behind expensive looking glasses, style cut brown hair, a five o’clock shadow that was somehow not untidy. The man had stylised not shaving, which only further complemented his grey suit and black tie.
I took my seat and handed Kate her water, “Marcus?” He was beaming.
He nodded, “John, John Prince if I’m not mistaken, oh it is such a pleasure to meet you.” He spoke as if he would spontaneously combust if he didn’t get all of the words out in time. His hand shot toward me and for a moment I thought he was going to rip my heart out.
I took his hand and shook it cautiously, “Th… the pleasure is all mine.”
He released my hand, “I’m going to get a drink, I’ll be right back.” He stood, knocking over his chair as he did. He quickly straightened it and walked to the counter.
“Um, guys, is he always like this?” I looked over at Wolf, whose head was backed up past his chair with a confused expression on it, he slowly shook his head, “Noooo…”
Kate, with an equally confused expression on her face looked at me, “Maybe he’s just a little over excited, I’m sure he’ll calm down soon.”
Marcus bounded back with a bottle in his hand and sat, “I have so many things to show you, you’re going to love them, I heard you’ll be using C4 on this mission, for example. So I’ve made a signal based detonator, you can set off all the explosives simultaneously with a single press of a button. The best part is you can assign separate packs to different channels, say you want two different explosions, you change the knob on the detonator to alpha, scan a pack with it then change the knob to bravo and scan another pack, at this point you can detonate all packs in alpha by setting it to alpha and all of bravo in the same way and so on. The final setting is sigma which will detonate all of them at the same time regardless of code, wow I’m talking a lot.” He drank the entire bottle in one hit.
“I… I’m very excited to see it. May I ask, why you’re so… talky?”
He wiped his mouth, “I’ve had twenty two coffees, keeps my brain active. I don’t nod off this way, I haven’t slept since shortly after you got here.”
Wolf looked at him with concern, “Mark… He got here a week ago, and he was in a coma for most of that, you haven’t slept in six days?”
He nodded wildly, “Yes,” He quickly looked at his watch, “One hundred and forty eight hours and thirty seven minutes, I’ll sleep soon. I’ve finished most of my work, I’ll sleep tonight, for now do you require anything else? If not I will just show you what I have so far.”
He was still beaming, it was really quite worrying.
“Not that I can think of, why have you been awake that long? My plan was only made yesterday, what have you been doing?”
He shrugged, “Recently? Making bits and pieces, helping fix the defences and such. I’ve been expecting you for quite some time, I couldn’t sleep until I met you.”
I was actually very touched, “Well, let’s go, I’d like to see what’s available and then you have to sleep.”
Marcus seemed to be thinking this over, “Fair, let’s go. You guys want to tag along?”
Kate shook her head, “I think I’ll try to get some more sleep, broken sleep always leaves me feeling more tired than ever.”
Wolf shrugged, “I’ll come along, I always like new toys.”
New Toys
Before long we were in an elevator, “So what else have you got in store for us?” Marcus adjusted his tie and slipped a lanyard over his neck. Which had a small picture of him dangling at the end.
“Mostly standard weapons, but I’ve also managed to scoop up some explosive rounds.”
The elevator doors slid open to reveal a large white room. As well as a few tables with assault rifles, bullets, round devices I couldn’t identify and a mess of crushed drink cans.
There was no one around which made me wonder why Marcus put on that lanyard. Wolf started fiddling with a bullet as soon as we stepped in. “Mark, where is everyone?”
Marcus looked around confused occasionally ducking and checking under the tables, “I honestly have no idea…”
I noticed someone creeping up behind him, “Marcus!” There was a pop as he spun around,
The Mulligan Planet Page 10
