by S. A. Lusher
“We're in,” Gen said.
Drake turned around, spying the side entrance opening. Nothing waited on the other side. Good. He moved in between Gen and Greg, stepping within and looking around. They'd come to a short, empty corridor. He moved quickly down it and opened the door at the end, finding himself in a back maintenance room.
Perfect. It had a general access terminal they could boot up and use to figure out the shortest route to the central databanks or the command center, which ever one was closer. Drake indicated the terminal silently and Genevieve crossed the room, wasting no time. They were both operating on the same wavelength: they wanted Rogue Ops brought down and, specifically, Enzo dead. Drake guarded one door while Greg watched the other. Several moments passed in tense silence as Genevieve navigated the internal database.
“Got it,” Gen said.
Drake and Greg joined her, studying the screen. An overhead view of the base's internal layout was being displayed. “Okay, easy,” Greg said. “We head down this hall, get through this security center, cut across this infirmary, and we'll be there.”
Across the room, a door opened and someone tossed something in.
A grenade.
Drake shouted a warning as he dove instinctively away from the object. A loud explosion overloaded his audio sensors, but there wasn't much concussive force behind it. He realized it must've been a flash-bang. Good thing he'd had his eyes closed. That, combined with the features built into his visor, had saved him from being totally blinded. Deaf but not blind, Drake raised his rifle from his prone position on the floor, aimed for the door, flipped to full auto and cut loose. He sprayed a steady stream of armor-piercers into the first guy through the door, then his buddy behind him. As he emptied the magazine, Greg and Gen took over. He rolled out of direct line of sight of the door, gained his feet and hastily reloaded.
They put down another three guards before the flow was stemmed.
“Yeah,” Drake said. “Real easy.”
He led the way out of the maintenance area and into the base.
* * * * *
Allan ducked, narrowly avoiding a spray of gunfire.
It had been a trap. Of course it had been a trap. He blind-fired at a pair of dark shapes up ahead while making for a pylon, seeing the others doing the same off his peripheral vision. He managed to tag one in the chest, practically a death sentence in a zero atmosphere environment. They must have kept the interior of the glass dome free of atmosphere to help maintain all the equipment. They had to get to the door and make their way across the surface. Drake and the others were relying on them for backup, especially if things went south.
All around him, gunfire sparked beneath the thick canopy of the solar panels. Allan lined up his sights on the faceplate of another guard and fired. Silence reigned supreme as a thick spray of bloody glass spewed out and the body slowly dropped to the surface in the low gravity. He hunted around for more targets.
“How many?” he asked, fighting not to scream since his mouth was right next to the transmitter and his voice could only be heard over the radio.
“At least a dozen...less now,” Donovan replied calmly. The man was true professional.
“I've put down three-no, make that four,” Callie replied.
“Make for the exit.”
There were two affirmative replies. Allan took a step out, then pulled himself back as gunfire sparked on the pylon across from him. He cursed, turned and took aim. Another pair of Rogue Ops troops were pinning him down. He squeezed off a shot, but was forced to pull back to cover when they both drew beads on him and quickly returned fire. What to do? He was pinned down. A plan quickly formed and he decided to go with it. He began to lean out one side of the pylon, the one he'd just pulled back around from.
Then he quickly moved to the other side, leaned out and took aim. Perfect. They still thought he was at the other side. He lined up the sights of rifle and sprayed a quick burst at the nearest hostile. It took him in the chest and sent him sprawling. The other began to react, but was gunned down by Callie. She and Donovan came to join him.
“I think that was all of them,” Donovan said.
More gunfire sparked around them.
“Okay, maybe not,” he amended.
Allan spied another half-dozen of them coming at them from farther down the solar array. “Go!” he shouted, taking aim and firing. He quickly squeezed off the rest of his rounds in a series of bursts, managing to tag two of the bastards. Then he turned and ran, ducking and dodging through the forest of pylons as he hastily reloaded, trying to catch up with the other two, who'd made quick progress already. All around him gunfire rained in a silent symphony of stark white flashes. He didn't bother to return fire, instead focusing on running. Up ahead, he saw that Donovan and Callie were at the door, making their way through it.
He ran on. Half a minute later, he was through. Donovan immediately began working on the control panel beside it. Callie watched their backs, in case anyone decided to sneak up on them via surface access, and Allan fired through the open door, to keep the others at bay long enough for Donovan to do his thing. Soon enough, the door closed. Donovan stood up, stepped back and fired a few shots into the panel.
“That should keep them busy,” he said.
The panel sparked and sizzled.
“Let's get to the others. Hopefully they aren't having as much trouble as we are,” Allan said.
They set off.
* * * * *
Greg barely managed to throw himself down behind an examination table before the Rogue Ops trooper shot him in the face. The bullets seared overhead, and he heard the man scream in agony as either Drake or Gen shot him. Greg hit the floor, scrabbled to hide his entire body behind the bulk of the examination table and raised his rifle over the top of it. He blind-fired a few shots and was rewarded with a cry of pain. He pulled his gun back down, ejected the empty magazine and slapped a fresh one in.
It had been a hard fight to the infirmary, and this was just the halfway point. What was worse, they hadn't heard from Allan's team yet. Time to try again. Greg leaned out, sighted one of the Rogue Ops troops across the room trying to draw a bead on Drake and squeezed the trigger. A three-round burst hit him in the neck and sent him down.
Greg pulled back and activated his radio. “This is Bishop to Gray, give me something, Allan.”
A pause. “I'm here. We were hit at the solar array. It was a trap. They were waiting for us. We managed to lock them inside the dome and we're almost to the facility. We should enter the facility in a few minutes.”
“Affirmative. Be ready for heavy combat, we're in an infirmary right now.”
“Got it.”
Rogue Ops had since managed to get the emergency power back online and now everything was cast in an eerie yellow glow. Greg leaned out and put another few rounds into the arm of someone in black armor who was trying to murder him. The man screamed in pain, then ceased screaming altogether as Gen put a round through his visor. This was getting nasty and Rogue Ops was fighting for every inch.
Suddenly, the gunfire fell away.
Greg cautiously poked his head out. There were no more bad guys in black armor standing. Slowly, he stood up, gun still raised, finger still on the trigger. Drake and Gen rose as well. They surveyed the ruined infirmary.
“I guess that's it,” Drake said. He set off across the room. “Let's go.”
“Was that all of them?” Greg asked, following.
“Hopefully. Let's go get that data.”
They left the infirmary, stepping out into a long, broad empty corridor bathed in low levels of ambient, sodium yellow emergency lighting. The trio met no more resistance as they pounded down the lengthy corridor, making for the control center at the end of if. Greg frowned. Where were the guards? Where were the backup squads, ready to fight to the death to defend the core of the facility, the precious heart of the installation?
Up ahead, a loud clang reverberated down the corridor and the lonel
y echoes, edged with ominous tension, causing them to stop in their tracks. Okay, so here were the backup death squads. Greg looked around for cover. None around and no time. He shifted to the side of the corridor, dropping to one knee, rifle aimed, finger on the trigger. The clangs finished echoing and silence descended. Then, finally, footfalls.
Greg counted around three or four of them, making slow progress. Was that good or bad? Were they cocky and overconfident or did they simply not know what they were walking in to? Time seemed to stretch out as the boots got louder. Greg swallowed and could feel himself sweating inside his suit. He waited, nearly squeezing off a shot prematurely and forcing himself to relax.
A figure stepped cautiously out into the corridor, about halfway down its length. Greg nearly fired, but there was something about the armor. It wasn't full dark. It had a silver trim. He let out a sigh of relief and stood up.
“Allan,” he said, over the radio.
“Here,” Allan replied, turning to face him and beckoning to him. Behind him, Callie and Donovan stepped out.
Greg, Gen and Drake regained their feet and hurried down the corridor. Once they met up, the group began making their way down the final stretch of corridor, to the large, vault-like door at the end. The ominous silence settled once more.
“I don't like this,” Greg said. “Where is everyone?”
“Maybe we killed them all,” Callie suggested.
“I don't know. There were supposed to be...what? Seventy life signs? We've killed perhaps half that,” Drake replied.
“Well, it's probably half security, half support staff,” Gen replied. “Maybe the rest are hiding.”
“Either way, let's take advantage of the lull in combat,” Drake surmised.
They reached the door. Gen opened it up in a matter of seconds. It wasn't even locked down. Greg's unease continued to grow as they stepped in through the opening door and found absolutely no resistance. The main control room was totally abandoned. Everything still looked functional. Workstations lined the walls, a raised dais overlooked the area from the center of the room where the base commander would reside. The team split up, moving all over the room, checking for any hidden places, if anyone was hiding in the gloomy shadows. The front wall was made up of a curved, immense, thick pane of glass that offered a grim view of the rocky surface of the asteroid. Greg slowly walked up to it.
“Clear,” Drake said.
“Same here,” Callie muttered.
“Where the fuck is everyone?” Allan asked.
“Doesn't matter,” Gen replied, settling in to the main chair. “What matters is that we have to grab this data while we can.”
They continued searching the room while she worked. Greg couldn't shake the feeling that he was being watched. He'd spied a few cameras around the room, but they were powered down, not considered important in the grand scheme of things for emergency reserves of power. They'd only found a few vent grates and three doors, all of which were now closed. So why this bad feeling? He glanced over at Gen.
“Well?” he asked. “Is it bullshit or did we hit the jackpot?”
“Jackpot,” Gen replied. “There's a shitload of data here and just a cursory glance through it indicates a lot of information on the artifacts. I'm already halfway through downloading it. Just need another minute.”
Greg felt relief flood through him, but still the sense of disquiet persisted. They had the data...but what if it was fake data? Obviously Rogue Ops knew that they were on their way, they'd set a trap...the trap hadn't yet been sprung.
So where was it?
“Done, let's go,” Gen said, standing up.
“Thank g-” Callie began to say when it happened.
Greg heard a small sound from overhead and looked up. How many times had something detached from the ceiling? Only this time, it wasn't something but someone. At some point over the last minute or so, a vent grate that sat overhead, where Callie happened to be standing, had been opened. A thin man in a very narrow suit of glaringly white armor dropped down. Allan screamed something as he saw this and tried to shove Callie out of the way. What ended up happening was they both were landed on by this mysterious assailant.
Greg tried to draw a bead, but this man, this assassin, was fast. Whereas Callie and Allan were tossed aside in a tangle of armored limbs, the man in white landed on his feet, drew a bead on Greg and fired twice. Greg gasped as twin explosions of pain, both in his gut, blossomed out in magnificently horrible mushrooms of burning agony. He fell to his knees, still trying to get a shot on the man. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. Drake had aimed and was firing, but the assassin had somehow managed to pick up Callie and throw her in the way of the bullet. It hit her in the shoulder, passing through.
Callie slammed into Drake and they both went flying back. The assassin turned his attention to Allan, who was screaming at him. He leaped up off the floor and threw himself bodily at the assassin, knocking the man over. But the man in white quickly regained his feet and drop-kicked Allan across the room.
This is when Genevieve struck.
She only had time for one shot, before the assassin, who was just as good as she was, made a counterstrike. But it was a good shot. It hit the assassin right in the neck. Greg clearly saw the spray of blood...then he collapsed to the floor as the pain became too much. As he struggled to his feet, he heard a lot of confusion, wondering idly if he was going to die right here, right now. It seemed likely. Something vital could have been hit.
Then someone was helping him up and he realized he must have passed out for at least a minute or two. Drake was helping him.
“We need to go, now,” he said as he got Greg up and began helping him across the control room. “The assassin ran, but before he left, he activated an overload protocol on the secondary generator. We've got about ten minutes to get to the speedship.”
“Just...just the secondary generator? You mean the, uh, auxiliary one?” he asked. The pain was receding, which meant that someone had hit him with some strong painkillers. He found it hard to think. “Isn't that not as big a deal?”
“No, it's a big deal, it's more than enough to take the whole facility and us with it when it goes,” Drake replied.
They were now heading down the main corridor, backtracking to their point of origin. He felt strangely detached from it all.
“What the fuck was his plan!?” Allan cried from somewhere behind him. “Lure us here and blow the base if he didn't win!? Why not just blow the base immediately?!”
“He's probably some jacked up freak who's so full of himself that he needs to face us personally,” Donovan replied.
The conversation went a little further, but Greg was drifting again. When he came back, they were outside, hurrying across the surface of the asteroid. He worried vaguely about his suits' compromised state, as he'd been shot, but he didn't feel like he was dying, so he figured that someone had probably slapped an adhesive patch over the holes. He drifted once more, and then found himself being strapped into a chair in the speedship.
“Go! Go!” Drake was saying.
Then he passed out for good.
CHAPTER 05
–The Low Down–
“We've got wounded incoming!” Allan shouted as he walked with Callie down the long corridor to the medical bay aboard the Atonement.
They'd patched Greg and Callie up as best they could on the speedship, but it just didn't have the same capabilities as a full cruiser. Ahead of him, Donovan and Drake were carrying Greg, who had fully passed out again. Scans of his abdomen had revealed that one of his kidneys had been hit. Gen had already disengaged from the group, going off to meet with Hawkins and deliver the data. As they entered the infirmary, Allan saw a small squad of med-techs and Eve waiting for them. No doubt she was going to worry over Greg the same way he was worrying over Callie. She'd been shot in the shoulder and they'd had a hard time stopping the bleeding. He followed her over to an examination table and watched as she laid down.
The medic was injecting something into her arm, around the site of the gunshot wound, which looked very nasty against her pale skin, which was even paler than usual. A local anesthetic. Allan walked around the other side of the examination table and took her hand. He caught movement off his peripheral and glanced over. Drake was walking out of the room. Donovan sat down on one of the examination tables and was tended to by one of the med-techs. Allan was at least glad he didn't have to do that, he'd been checked out on the ship and except for some bruising, he was okay. Donovan had been too busy helping them escape by co-piloting the ship. Allan turned his attention back to Callie. She squeezed his hand.
“I'm okay,” she said. “I've been shot worse than this. You should go check on Greg.”
“I'm sure he'll be okay,” Allan replied. “We had a close call this time.”
Callie frowned. “Yeah...that guy. He was something else. Really fast. Faster than all of us. I feel like, I don't know, something was off about him.”
“Like what?” Allan replied, but he had a feeling she was right.
“Don't know. He was too fast. Too quick.” Callie winced.
“Hold still,” the medic murmured.
“Sorry...go check on Greg, okay? I'm really tired. I want to rest my eyes a moment, okay?” Callie asked.
“Okay,” he replied. Allan leaned down and gave her a quick kiss, then straightened up and made for the far door, which he knew led up to an observation deck that overlooked the surgical bay. He found Eve standing at the glass wall, staring intently into the room below. He crossed the room and came to stand next to her.
“How's it going?” he asked.
