by Jim Roberts
For the first time in five agonizing minutes the corridor was quiet - except for the still ringing alarm system. Joe looked back at Krieger, nodding his thanks, "Good shooting."
Krieger gave a thumbs up, "I learn from best."
The clock was still ticking.
Time to act and get my boys out. Joe led Krieger forward, making their way past the small heap of bodies pilled on the ground where the Centurions had suffered the most casualties. Joe retrieved his AK and kept it levelled towards the far end of the corridor. From his hazy memory of two days ago, Joe estimated that it was another forty feet and they would be at the POW cells.
Joe's heart pounded.
He called out, "Rangers? It's Sergeant Braddock! Sound off!"
No reply. Joe prayed they weren't too late.
The corridor was full of haze from the explosions of the fire extinguisher. Joe and Krieger pushed their way forwards through the miasma, weapons at the ready in case of any contact.
Krieger whispered to Joe quietly, "The freight elevator is just past the prisoner cells. Thirty feet beyond, give or take."
Joe nodded, eyes peeled. In the distance, outside of the fortress in the yard, he could hear the vague noises of vehicles being started and what sounded like a helicopter powering on. They were quickly running out of avenues of escape; they had to hurry.
Abruptly, through the haze Joe saw several figures standing at the far end of the prison corridor. As the haze began to clear, Joe's blood froze as his whole plan was turned upside down.
Commander Dante stood at the end of the corridor backed with a group of Centurions. The five surviving Army Rangers were clustered on the floor, the Centurions' weapons trained upon them. Their arms were bound roughly behind them, with gags stuffed in their mouths. At Dante's side was Doctor Yune, on his knees. Dante stood amidst these poor men with a look of vile satisfaction stretching his bloodless lips.
The Olympus Commander had beaten them to their quarry.
"That was all very impressive my friends, but the end has finally come."
Joe and Krieger ducked behind stone outcroppings in the prison corridor, doing their best to shield themselves in case Dante opened fire. Joe peered out, his mind racing at what to do next. No matter how he reasoned it out, there was nothing he could do to save his men at the moment. The ball was in Dante's corner now.
Dante kept his hands in his pockets, seemingly having nothing to fear from his enemies, "I suppose you are expecting your armored friend, Mr. Callbeck to come and save you, am I right?" He looked over at the freight elevator. It was a rather large contraption, with a yellow painted steel mesh grating covering the entranceway. Dante smiled, having a moment of inspiration. He walked to the elevator - eyes never leaving Joe and Krieger - and hit the elevator SEND button. With a grinding of machinery, the elevator gears began to lower the platform back downstairs.
Out of the pockets of his tan coat, Dante withdrew what looked to Joe to be several hand-grenades, though they didn't resemble any that he had ever used. Dante pressed a button on each in turn then tossed them casually down the elevator shaft.
"Let's see if your friend can dodge those."
Joe hit the Bluetooth comm and yelled as quickly as he could, "Danny, clear the elevator right now! Grenades incoming!"
Whisper jogged up to the elevator. Perched on pylons beside the door were oscillating yellow lights that warned of elevator usage. As he reached the loading area, the lights turned on, warning that the elevator was heading back down. Good, Whisper thought to himself, Dr. Yune had made it to the top and had to be sending the elevator back down to him. He waited dutifully at the bottom, rifle firmly in hand, just in case anything else came his way.
Joe's comm call came almost a second too late. In fact, Joe had hit the comlink so fast, it had fudged the first few words.
"...right now! Grenades incoming!"
The words clicked in Whisper's mind. As the elevator platform came into sight beyond the yellow mesh safety door, three distinctive black objects hit the platform in unison.
Whisper had one second to act before he would be blown to pieces.
Dante winced as a loud explosion caused the elevator to buckle and then break apart, sending the platform plummeting down. The entire fortress seemed to shake from the force of the elevator crashing beneath them.
Joe hit the comlink again, "Danny do you read? Danny come in, over?"
No reply. Joe looked at Krieger, who responded with a shake of the head.
Dante looked to his Centurions and barked an order, "Take the Rangers to the helicopter. Transfer them to Site Two immediately."
The Centurions watching the Rangers nodded. They prodded the POWs to their feet and led them outside into the yard, out of Joe's sight.
Joe couldn't stomach watching them leave, "Dante you sonofabitch! Leave my men alone! Take me but let them go!"
Dante laughed loudly, "You have it backwards Mr. Braddock. I don't want them...I want you. You and your fool of a friend there!"
Dante pulled his hand back and bashed Yune on the head with the underside of his palm. Yune fell forward, senseless. Dante walked towards Joe and Krieger, replacing his hands in his pockets.
"Tell you what boys...I'll give you a free shot. Take it and when I'm dead there should probably be enough time to save your comrades. He stood thirty feet from Joe and Krieger, completely unafraid, "What do you say?"
Joe grit his teeth before barking, "SHOOT HIM!"
He unloaded every bullet left in his AK at the beast. Krieger levelled his SAW and fired continuously, pumping round after round into Dante's massive form. The beast jerked forward, raising his hand in front of his face as bullets ripped through his jacket, tearing it to pieces. As Joe's AK clicked on a dry magazine, he saw Dante was still standing. Krieger's SAW ran dry as well. Both men could only stare at the impossible sight.
Dante lowered his hand, then dusted the remains of his jacket, his highly amused grin widening even more, "That the best you two have? Pity." He removed the jacket's tattered remains. Joe's breath caught in his throat as he saw Dante's body. The man was clad neck to toe in a massive suit of body armor. It resembled Danny's Whisper suit, but way bigger and armored with RynoHyde Kevlar rather than steel. Dante stood amidst the hallway: a thing of nightmares.
Krieger looked apprehensively at Joe, "If you have some sort of plan, let me in on it, yah?"
Joe set his AK aside; then shoved his .357 magnum into his belt behind his back.
"There's one of him and two of us. We kick the shit out of him and tear his fucking head off."
Krieger smiled, dropping his SAW and moving to stand in the hallway, "Ahh! I like plan. Very action-oriented, as you'd say!"
"Come on!" Dante beckoned, "I've been jonesyin' for a good fight for a while. And since your little friend downstairs is probably lunchmeat, you'll have to do!"
Joe's brow furrowed in rage. Before he was finished here, he swore he would feed this guy his own intestines. Joe sucked in his breath, oxygenating his blood. Krieger flexed his arms and cracked his neck muscles.
The corridor became deathly quiet for a brief moment.
The calm before the storm.
At the same time, both men bolted towards the giant. Dante pushed his body forward, readying for the attack. The three men connected in a spectacular crash of bodies. Krieger leapt at the last minute to try to land a right cross on Dante's massive head. He connected, but it hardly seemed to phase the bastard. Joe slammed into Dante's midsection, hoping his weight would somehow throw the beast off balance.
Fat chance of that.
Dante was pure muscle. Joe ploughed into the giant so hard, it felt like hitting a brick wall. The Ranger was staggered and before he could regain his footing, Dante lashed out with a backhand that sent him spinning into the prison corridor's stone wall.
Krieger, taller than Joe by half a foot, was more a physical match for Dante, and pressed his advantage against the brute, whose attention for the m
oment was towards the reeling Army Ranger. Krieger leapt onto Dante's back, wrapping his arms under the brute's neck, trying to get the man into a sleeper hold.
"I'll tear your head off mudilo!" Krieger's massive, muscular arms held Dante's neck tight, not allowing the giant a free breath. Krieger was stronger than Dante had anticipated. The Olympus commander thrashed wildly, trying to throw the Russian off, but Krieger held tight. Exasperated, Dante raised a hand behind him and, grabbing Krieger by the scruff of the neck, and threw his own body forward. Using the forward momentum, Dante tossed Krieger with all his might, sending the Russian end over end into the dirt of the prison corridor in a move that would make John Cena proud. Krieger landed hard - the wind crushed from his lungs. He lay there for a moment: stunned and unable to move.
With a violent snarl, Dante lifted his massive boot and prepared to drive it into Krieger's face with all his might.
In his haste, he'd forgotten Joe.
The Army Ranger had regained his wind after the ferocious backhand and managed to find a weapon among the unkempt corridor - a large fist-sized rock. Joe leapt onto Dante's back and drove the rock as hard as he could into the back of Dante's head. The Olympus commander roared like an enraged dog. He began to thrash wildly again, losing interest in Krieger for the time being.
Joe continued to drive the rock down on his opponents head over and over. He swore the giant's skull was made of stone because it didn't seem he was making much of a difference. Dante had had enough of his second passenger and slammed Joe's body hard against the wall, sandwiching him like a pancake. Blood spurted from Joe's mouth and he crumpled to the ground, the rock falling from his numbed hands.
Things weren't going well. Joe hoped Danny had survived because it was quickly looking like they wouldn't be.
The last second had felt like slow-motion to Danny Callbeck.
After Joe's voice had warned him of the incoming grenades, the entire elevator exploded. The force of the detonation collapsed the inner part of the elevator and caused the platform to come loose from its moorings. The entire structure plummeted down in a second, landing with a deafening shockwave of force that sent Whisper flying backwards nearly twenty feet. He hit the opposite metal wall hard and slide down in a heap.
Momentarily paralysed by the shock, Whisper tried to remember how to breathe again. His brain finally caught up with his lungs and he sucked in large gulps of air. Whisper could only sit there for a time, staring at the destroyed elevator.
Well that way was a no-go.
A beeping noise behind him pulled Danny out of his funk. He got to his feet and stepped back to see what he'd been thrown into. The wall before him was flickering; like it was some sort of projection that had been damaged by his ramming into it.
What the hell?
Whisper put a hand on the wall and felt for a few seconds. Then, as if his hand had brushed over an invisible switch, the wall faded out of view and a door materialized in front of him.
Danny was baffled. It was a stealth door, protected from view using some sort of technology he had never heard of. What could be on the other side worth such protection? Whisper knew he wasn't going anywhere fast, so he reasoned out that whatever was on the opposite side may very well lead back to the surface. It was worth a look. He felt around some more and his hand flicked something that he felt like a control pad.
The mechanical door slide open. Whisper suddenly realized he was unarmed, besides the bo-staff connected to his thigh. He dashed over to the elevator to retrieve his gauss rifle. As he picked it up, the weapon sparked angrily at him; the central coil that surrounded the barrel and assumedly made the whole thing fire, had been badly damaged.
Damn.
Danny tossed the weapon back down. I'll have to rough it, he thought, moving back towards the mysterious room.
As he looked in, large fluorescent lights flickered on and he saw a massive computer mainframe, bigger than Yune's lab by at least three times. The room included long rows of tables stacked with high end computer equipment. At least a dozen gigantic black monolith computer mainframes were situated throughout the room. As Whisper entered, the room seemed to power up; a loud humming noise resounded from the computers and the gigantic mainframes started to drone. Whisper was amazed a room like this could exist in a place so remote as this fortress in Kazinistan; Olympus must have been working here for a longer time then he or Joe had suspected; the resources and technology to build and furnish something like this must have taken years.
As Whisper moved through the computer lab, his gaze flicked to and fro, checking for anything of interest. Abruptly he saw something that made him reach for his Mantis Staff: a large pool of blood. He checked the room further and found several dead bodies; scientists it looked like, and killed very recently. They were scattered throughout the room and had been killed by some sort of blade. Cruel slash wounds covered the lab rats and dark pools of blood collected around their bodies.
Could the Praetorians have done this? If so why? These guys had to be working for Olympus. Why kill them, and recently for that matter? Whisper wondered this as he checked the room, moving purposefully through the room. One of the computer monitors was still lit. Whisper pressed the touchscreen interface and the computer flashed to the home screen. A huge list of file folder icons began to scroll on the screen unassisted displaying wildly disparate names and phrases. Whisper touched the screen and read some of the options:
* VIET KONG GUEIRRELA TACTICS circa. 1962
* AFGHANISTAN FUEL RESOURCE ESTIMATES circa. 2004
* SYRIAN REBEL TACTICAL MOVEMENT CYCLES circa 2013
* PRESIDENTIAL DICTUMS IN FOREIGN POLICY REGARDING NUCLEAR DISPARITY circa 1997
The phrases were nonsense to Whisper. It went on at length - in fact mind-boggling length - to such a degree that it looked like the computer had been tallying the complete modern history of warfare. Whisper moved to a different computer screen and flicked through the menus.
* HINDU KUSH AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY, circa 2014
* NATO COALITION TROOP DEPLOYMENT RECORDS, circa 2014
* TALIBAN INFILTRATION OF UZBEKISTAN MILITANTS, circa 2014
* ARMY RANGER MOUNTAIN COMBAT TACTICS, circa 2013-2014
The data from this computer seemed more recent; as if it was surveillance data retrieved quite recently. He had no idea what this had to do with Presidential Dictums and Vietnam Guerrilla warfare. As he moved down the computer screens, switching them on one after the other, he found they all dealt in an indecipherably unorganized way with different facets of war, some so totally unrelated they appeared inconsequential.
Whisper was dumbfounded at his discovery. What in the world was a Private Military working for a second-rate dictator doing with a setup like this? What on earth are they planning to do?
As Whisper contemplated his next course of action, one last computer monitor caught his eye. It looked like the central hub computer, attached to the rest in some sort of hive configuration. Walking over, he pressed the touch screen. Rather than the exhaustive lists of data contained on the other computers, a simple warning was flashing on the screen that read:
* PARSING COMPLETE - DATABASE UPLOADED - PLEASE REMOVE CODE DISC
Whisper grunted, and moved his hand to the adjacent rectangular tower to the immediate right of the monitor. He flipped the eject switch and out popped a small cylindrical plastic disc. Whisper pulled the disc out, turning it over in his gloved hand, studying the device.
The piece of plastic resembled a credit card to Whisper, rather than a disc. The exterior of the card was meshed with flash drive components. On the top of the card, the Olympus logo was stencilled; that of an Eagle's head with the word 'Olympus' embossed underneath.
"Hand it over handsome."
Whisper spun around towards the direction of the voice. Behind him some twenty feet away, leaning against a lab table nonchalantly was a woman, clad neck to toe in a suit very similar to Whisper's. But where his suit was almost entirely black, h
ers was black mixed with patches of red. She resembled a nightmarish harlequin for the modern age. She tapped a finger absently against her strong, muscular hips that were oddly accentuated by the suits ergonomic design. Her whole body was toned and perfectly sculpted. But Whisper was focused on her face; her stunning face was something like that of a Greek goddess. Her flawless skin was alabaster white, her lips nightshade black. Her hair, pulled high and held fast in a Japanese style twist, was jet black. Danny had never seen a more beautiful woman in his life. He reached for his quarterstaff, moving to a guarded stance.
"Who are you?" he asked cautiously.
"Oh come on handsome, I'm sure you've heard my name thrown around here since you arrived."
Whisper took an educated guess, "Agrippina."
She smiled coldly, "Correct."
Whisper observed the woman as he spoke, taking in any details that could prove useful, "What the hell have you people been doing in this place?" he gestured at the bodies on the floor.
"The scientists had outlived their purpose. I eliminated them."
"That's...cold."
Agrippina chuckled, "I love the sound of your voice handsome...so soft...so dangerous."
The woman was trying to stall him. Whisper had wasted enough time here. Joe would be cursing his name by now, he was sure.
"I've no time for this. I have things to do, so either fight or get out of my way."
Agrippina looked at Whisper sharply, as if his remark had insulted her, "And I thought you were a clever little boy; finding your way in here all by yourself."
Whisper didn't mention how it had been blind luck that had led him to this place. The seductive lady was clearly toying with him; trying to delay him from finding a way out. He looked around the room before asking bluntly, "Is there another way out from here to the surface?"
