VENGEANCE
The Kurgan War - Book 4
By Richard Turner
©2015 by Richard Turner
Published 2015 by Richard Turner
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission, except for brief quotations to books and critical reviews. This story is a work of fiction. Characters and events are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 1
The proximity alarm boomed over the room’s speakers, startling the night duty officer sitting half asleep at his desk. He hadn’t expected anything to be arriving on his shift. In fact, according to the duty log, nothing was supposed to be coming to the remote outpost for another ten days. He rubbed his tired eyes, stood, stretched his arms over his head, and moved over to a nearby computer console. He picked up his reading glasses, put them on his bulbous nose, and brought up an image of the spaceship that had just come out of its jump on the tactical display screen. It was a military freighter designated RV-317. The officer leaned over, checked his computer, and saw that it had requested permission to land with the station’s bi-monthly supplies.
The officer pressed a button on his console to speak with the craft. “Romeo-Victor 317, this is Eris control, you’re early. We weren’t expecting you for another ten days.”
“Roger that, Eris control,” replied a woman’s voice over the intercom. “After the recent incident on Earth, ADF Headquarters thought it prudent to resupply all the remote stations just in case something happens and we are unable to come to your location for some time.”
The duty officer thought it odd but decided to carry on with the landing procedures before waking his superior, a grumpy captain, who was always pissed about something. “Romeo-Victor 317, send the clearance code, and I’ll lower the station’s shields.”
“Roger that, Eris station.”
While he waited, he tried to imagine what the woman speaking to him looked like. She hadn’t sounded too officious or bossy. He saw her in his mind as a young blonde with curves that filled out her far too tight flight suit.
A couple of seconds later, the correct code flashed up on his computer screen. The officer reached over and deactivated the installation’s protective screens allowing the freighter to land.
“Thanks,” said the woman’s voice. “We are beginning our descent, now.”
The man watched as the craft began to descend toward the small station’s only landing pad. He got up out of his chair and ran a hand through his thinning hair before placing his blue cap on his head. He checked himself out in a mirror just before he walked out of the office. He knew it would take the freighter a couple of minutes to land and another few more for the station’s docking arm to mate with a door on the ship’s hold. He didn’t need to hurry. Not that he would with the twenty extra kilos he carried around his waist these days.
He passed the only other person awake, a nighttime technician who looked bored and tired, on his way to the airlock. When he got there, the officer checked that the docking arm had connected and the pressure between the ship and the entrance to the installation were the same. As everything looked good, he pressed a button on a panel. “Romeo-Victor 317, this is Lieutenant Joshua Oliver, my console reads green. You are clear to depart your ship. I’m waiting at the airlock to greet you.”
“Roger that, Lieutenant Oliver, I look forward to meeting you.”
Oliver smiled at the thought of meeting the mystery woman. Perhaps his long and boring shift wasn’t going to turn out so bad after all. While he waited for the door on the freighter to open, Oliver tried straightening out his rumpled uniform.
The far door slid open and a group of people exited the supply ship.
Oliver smiled when a tall woman with short, jet-black hair, alabaster skin, and red lipstick began to walk down the corridor to the airlock. She wasn’t at all how he had imagined her. In fact, in his mind, she was near perfect. Slightly behind her was a young black man with a smooth head. His confident stride told Oliver that the man was a product of one of the ADF Academies. Right behind them were six heavily armed soldiers.
Oliver pressed the button opening the airlock to the installation. With a whoosh, the door slid aside. Just before the people from the ship stepped inside the base, Oliver remembered that he had failed to inform his superior that a ship had landed.
“Good morning, Lieutenant Oliver,” said the black-haired woman with a trace of an Italian accent. “My name is Lieutenant Monica Solari. I hope that our unannounced arrival is not too inconvenient for you and your people?”
“No. None at all,” replied Oliver as he looked deep into Solari’s dark brown, almost black, eyes. His heart began to race. He had never seen such intensity in a woman’s eyes before.
Solari looked around. “Mister Oliver, where are your people to help unload the supplies?”
Oliver chuckled. “I guess in all the excitement that I forgot to wake them. I’ll call Captain Martin and let him know that you are here.”
“There’ll be no need for that. We can do that.” Solari smiled at Oliver and did the unexpected. She reached over and pulled a fire alarm. In an instant, alarms sounded throughout the installation.
“Why did you do that?” yelled a surprised Oliver, trying to be heard over the shrieking alarm. “There’ll be hell to pay for this!”
“I have my reasons,” replied Solari cryptically.
The black man standing next to Solari turned about and looked at the soldiers behind him. He pointed down both ends of the corridor before stepping aside to let the troopers move past him. Right away, the men charged their weapons and broke down into two teams of three.
“What the hell is going on?” demanded Oliver.
“Shut up,” replied Solari as she pulled out a hidden pistol from behind her back and jammed it hard into the confused officer’s stomach.
People woken from their deep slumber by the alarm ran out of their quarters and into the hallway, only to be mercilessly gunned down. None of them were armed as they had not expected the base to be under attack. There were only thirty-four people on the installation, all of whom, except Oliver, died without ever knowing who their assailants were, or why they were being killed.
Oliver stood there, impotent to help the people being slaughtered right before his eyes.
The black man pulled out a card from his shirt pocket, reached over, and inserted it into the fire alarm turning it off. Next, he grabbed hold of a small handheld communications device on his belt and turned it on. “Alpha Team, r
eport.”
“All clear,” replied the team leader. “We have taken the command center. No casualties to report.”
“Bravo Team, what’s your status?”
“We’ve found the captain’s quarters and have secured the passkey,” responded the Bravo team leader.
“Excellent work. Meet Solari and me at the command center.”
“Who are you people?” asked Oliver, his voice quivered in fear.
“Isn’t it obvious?” said Solari, “Now, shut up and walk.”
The black man grabbed Oliver by the arm and pushed him down the corridor. He stumbled forward, nearly tripping over his own feet. He was numb with fear. As they passed the dead lying on the floor looking up with unblinking eyes, Oliver turned his head away. When they arrived at the station’s command center, the rest of the assassins were already there waiting for them.
Solari placed a hand on Oliver’s shoulder. Her touch was as cold as ice. “Now, Mister Oliver, what I want you to do is bring up the service elevator from below.”
“What elevator?”
In a flash, Solari slapped Oliver across the face, splitting open his lower lip. “Don’t play dumb with me. You know precisely what I mean. There are only two people on this base with the necessary authority to access the elevator. As your captain is lying on the floor of his quarters with a hole blasted through his chest, that leaves you. Now be a good man and bring it up, or I’ll have Harry pop out your right eye with a knife and use it to gain access.”
Oliver recoiled back in horror. “I can’t.”
Before he could say another word, Lieutenant Oliver was grabbed from behind by two of Solari’s soldiers.
The young black man smiled, drew a slender blade from his belt, and walked over to the terrified man. “Hold his head,” ordered Harry Williams.
Oliver saw the light glisten off the razor-sharp blade and struggled to break free. “No! For the love of God, please don’t hurt me.”
“Bring up the elevator,” repeated Solari.
The terrified officer saw that there was nothing he could do to escape. He lowered his head in shame. “Okay, you win. I’ll have it brought up.”
Williams pointed to the far wall. The men holding Oliver manhandled him over to a computer station and forced him to sit down in a chair. A gun was thrust against the side of his head.
Williams leaned over and grinned at Oliver. “Don’t try anything foolish. I know the process you need to complete to call up the elevator down to the last keystroke. What I don’t have is your retina. Do this and I promise you a quick and painless death.”
With his hands shaking like leaves caught in a storm, Oliver began to type. When the computer asked for a retinal scan, Oliver placed his head on a stand that held his head in place while a machine scanned his right eye, verifying who he was. A second later, the far wall began to slide to one side revealing a set of closed elevator doors.
“Bene,” said Solari.
Oliver pulled his head back and looked up at Williams. Fear was written across his face. “I’ve done what you asked me to do. Please don’t kill me.”
Like a cobra striking, Williams thrust the knife in his hand into Oliver’s temple, killing him. His body jerked and then went limp. He fell face-first onto the computer keyboard.
Solari pushed a button. The elevator doors slid open.
“After you,” said Williams to Solari.
She nodded, stepped forward, and walked into the lift. Williams joined her and pressed the down button. The doors slid shut and the elevator began to descend. The ride took less than thirty seconds. With a chime the doors opened. Williams and Solari stepped out and looked at one another. The rumors were true. Spread out before them was a secret biological warfare storage facility. There were dozens of hermetically sealed rooms packed with containers that were filled with the deadliest and most virulent agents ever created by mankind.
“Look for the virus,” said Solari. “It’ll be marked with a black biological warning sign.”
It did not take long for Harry Williams to find what they were looking for. Inside a closed room was a single canister sitting inside a clear glass container. “Praise the Lord. It is true, it does exist.”
Solari gasped when she saw the cylinder. “Behold, Harry, the instrument of Earth’s Armageddon.”
Chapter 2
Captain Michael Sheridan lowered his tablet and looked up at the roof of his quarters. “That’s odd,” he said.
“What’s odd?” asked Master Sergeant Alan Cole as he lifted up the book he had placed over his face while he had a quick nap in his berth.
“The engines . . . they’ve turned off the jump engines.”
Cole glanced at his watch. “We’re not due in Earth’s orbit for another couple of hours. I wonder what’s up?”
All of a sudden, an alarm sounded throughout the ship.
“This is the Captain speaking, crew to action stations. I repeat all hands to action stations,” said a man’s deep voice over the ship’s PA system.
Sheridan looked over at Cole. As they were just passengers on the ship, they did not have a duty station to report to. He sat up and said, “Come on, Master Sergeant, let’s see what all the excitement is about?”
Cole shrugged. “Why not.”
In the hallway, Cole reached over and grabbed a young man on his way to the engine room. “Crewman, do you know what all the fuss is about?”
“I was told that the ship received an SOS message, and we’ve been ordered to investigate it,” answered the crewman.
Cole let the technician carry on his way. He rubbed a hand over his chin. “I wonder where we are?”
Sheridan walked to the nearest computer console and brought up a star chart. “We’re a couple of hundred kilometers from Eris.”
Cole looked at the screen. “I didn’t know we had anything on Eris. I thought it was just a frozen rock in the middle of nowhere.”
“It doesn’t have to be coming from the planet. It could be coming from a passing ship?”
“Yeah, okay, Captain, you may be right.”
The ship-wide alarm switched off.
“Captain Sheridan and Master Sergeant Cole, report immediately to the briefing room,” announced a woman’s voice over the speakers.
“Which way is the briefing room on this bucket of bolts?” asked Cole.
Sheridan scrunched up his face. “I say we go this way,” he said, pointing to his right. “I know it’s not back toward the galley or the gym.”
“Lead on, Captain,” said his friend with a bow.
A few minutes later, they walked into the ship’s briefing room. Inside waiting for them was the captain, a man in his late forties with short red hair and a thick beard. With him was the ship’s first officer, a thin man with dark skin and a smooth shaven head.
“I’m sorry that we’re late, sir,” said Sheridan. “We’re not familiar with the Sydney’s layout.”
“It’s quite all right, Mister Sheridan,” replied the captain. “Commander Nuru and I had just arrived ourselves. Please take a seat.”
Sheridan and Cole sat at the large wooden table in the middle of the room. They were joined by Captain Barnes and his XO.
Barnes began, “I bet you’re both wondering why we came out of our jump early?”
“Sir, a crewman told us that you were responding to a distress call,” said Cole.
“Actually, we have picked up two different distress signals,” explained Barnes.
“Both are automated distress beacons designed to go off in the event of an emergency,” added Nuru.
Sheridan leaned forward in his seat. “Do we know the nature of these emergencies?”
“Could be anything,” replied Barnes. “All we do know is that we are receiving two signals. One is coming from Eris and the other from RV-317, a military freighter.”
“Sir, not that I mind being kept in the loop,” said Sheridan, “but why are you telling us this information?”
“My Marine contingent is well below strength, and we have been ordered to investigate the signal coming from the station on Eris,” explained the captain. “I’d feel better if I knew my Marines were being led by a pair of experienced leaders.
“Ah, I see. We’ve been drafted,” said Cole.
Barnes nodded. “Yes. You could say that.”
“What about the freighter?” Sheridan asked.
Nuru shook his head. “There is nothing left to investigate. Her wreckage is strewn for hundreds of kilometers. We scanned the debris and did not find a single lifeform. A military tug has been dispatched from a base in orbit around Jupiter to gather what she can and return it to Earth where an investigation will hopefully determine what caused this tragic loss of life.”
“Captain, what is on Eris?”
“According to the message I received, there is a scientific outpost on the surface. It is a small installation and is home to thirty-five people. They’re a mix of military and civilian personnel.”
“I take it that you have been unable to reach anyone down there,” said Cole.
Nuru nodded.
“What do the ship’s scanners say?” Sheridan asked. “Are there any signs of life inside the base?”
Barnes shook his head. “It’s odd, but we can’t seem to get a reading from the station. I think there’s an energy shield over the base that’s blocking our scans.”
Sheridan raised an eyebrow at the news. “Sir, doesn’t it strike you as a bit odd that a base as small as that should be able to generate a shield?”
Vengeance (The Kurgan War Book 4) Page 1
