by J. N. Chaney
Not content to wait for the others to follow his orders, Cypher grabbed Sara from Reginald and dragged her over to one of the pillars. She was conscious now, but still weak and barely standing. Despite her half-hearted struggling, Cypher didn’t have any trouble restraining her.
“Smile, pretty, you’re about to be a star,” he cooed menacingly. “When people see how easily cowed one of the Union’s big bad Constables is, they’ll be less afraid of resisting the tyranny.”
Reginald was shamed into action. He grabbed the lights and started setting them up as Cypher had instructed. Blaise and the rest of the fake security officers snapped into action next. They helped set up the camera and the broadcasting equipment, like a team of worker ants.
Killington and Cade didn’t move. They exchanged a glance of continued concern. A moment later, Cade shrugged, as though deciding that his best chance of survival now was to help the stubborn Cypher get what he wanted as quickly as possible. He went to help set up the broadcast.
The brave second-in-command decided to try one last time. “How would it be for nothing if we didn’t do a video? We’d still have destroyed a major space station, still have lit a spark under all those who stood for freedom but were too afraid to fight for it. This video, it’s just vanity.”
He’d pushed too far.
Cypher’s face crumpled and his anger flared, making the veins in his neck stand out. “It’s not vanity!” he screamed, his face turning even darker red as he exploded. “This is about explaining the flaws in the system! This is about having a platform that people have to listen to, for once, and using it to tell the universe how fucked everything is. It’s our one chance to make them understand!”
They glared at each other, Cypher with rage erupting from his face, but Killington with a look of fatherly disappointment.
Killington pulled out his comm to check the time. “Well, I suppose none of it is going to matter in a minute, anyway. Tell you the truth, Cypher, I never contacted Stack to tell him the mission was off. His mission is still on. He’ll fire on the station from the Union ship, and thus incite a war between the Deadlands and the Union. That’s how you affect change.”
Warning sirens started to ring as a preprogrammed emergency announcer told the occupants of the station to prepare for imminent impact.
Cade leaned over to Reginald. “Ever get the feeling that our leaders have two completely different plans? If Killington wants the Union to be forced to take responsibility for the destruction, then Cypher’s video would actually get in the way. Though both of their plans seem to involve killing us, so I’m not sure which I like more.” Reginald hesitated with a camera in his hand. He didn’t know whether to carry on with his instructions or stop and watch what was about to happen. Cade on the other hand was captivated by the possibility of violence between the two alphas. He watched intently, oblivious to the warning blaring around them.
Cypher drew his knife and pointed it at Killington.
Then came the moment of impact. If they had been on a planet, Cade would have assumed they were in a quake. The entire station shook. Steel creaked audibly and raucous crashing sounds could be heard where things on the higher levels collapsed and fell over. The lights flickered on and off as the station’s power grid threatened to buckle under the strain.
Just as suddenly as it had come, the shaking ceased. The deck steadied beneath their feet. The lights came back on as the power stabilized. Everything went quiet aside from the low hum of the recycled air.
The station was still standing.
The voice from earlier came back on to announce that the station’s shields had held up during the assault. It then proceeded to give a list of instructions for where those injured in the turbulence could seek medical attention. Next it advised everyone to keep away from any buildings that had withstood major structural damage, and for those who might be trapped to shelter in place and await rescue.
Killington and Cypher stood there, stunned.
A beat passed.
And then they lunged at each other.
Cypher pulled his arm back to launch his knife at his second-in-command. Killington was already reaching for the weapon that was holstered at his side. He was a quick draw, and if he hadn’t tried to reach for it with the hand that Burner had shot earlier that same day, he might have even been able to get a shot off before Cypher’s knife reached him.
As it was, he was too slow, and Cypher slammed the knife into his chest. In an extra twist he buried it to the hilt. Killington looked more dumbfounded than hurt. His mouth moved to form words, but nothing came out.
The aggression in Cypher’s face started to recede. A half smile of sadistic satisfaction crept onto his lips. He slowly pulled the knife from the soldier’s chest. Then he plunged it in again. And again. And again. He was grunting, yelling, screaming, as he stabbed his former second repeatedly in the chest, stomach, neck, and face. Blood ran down Cypher’s arms and splattered his face. Somehow, Killington kept standing up through all of it, as if his body hadn’t quite realized that it was dead yet, the pulling out of the knife pulling him back over his center of gravity after each thrust pushed him back. It was only after Cypher had finished with his frenzy that the mangled corpse that had once been Killington dropped to the floor.
Ignoring the stunned and frightened looks of the rest of his men, Cypher calmly wiped the blood off his blade with his shirt, adding one more bloodstain to the many. Then he turned his attention back to the others. “Well, what the fuck are you all standing around for. We have a video to shoot.”
They scrambled into action.
Burner had lost the assholes.
He had been fairly confident in his guess that Cypher had led his men into the tunnels below the engine. His suspicions had been confirmed when he saw signs of their passing, notably an expended cartridge from a weapon that was standard issue to most security forces. But the station’s tunnels were labyrinthian in nature. Burner had only a brief moment to glance at the plans of the station, certainly not enough time to memorize such a complex maze. The terrorists, either by intention or dumb luck, had managed to avoid leaving any other traces for him to follow. He was now relying entirely on his sense of direction to navigate roughly in the direction of the core.
How much time he had wasn’t clear. With their head start, Cypher’s men could have planted the bomb and detonated it already, though doing that would have killed them, too. They hadn’t come past Burner in the tunnels yet, so they hadn’t tried to make their way back to their ship.
The one thing he could think of that could be stalling them was the video. Burner had seen the broadcast equipment all stacked and ready to go while casing the farmhouse. Cypher had the right amount of ego and penchant for flair to go through with filming his psychotic home movie even after the situation had changed. Burner had assumed the filming equipment would have been abandoned when their truck full of supplies had broken down, but it could have been one of the things Cypher had pulled from the back.
That meant Burner had at least until they finished filming and uploading Cypher’s manifesto. Cypher had come all this way to do this himself, instead of leaving the task to his plants, just to film that video. He wouldn’t half-ass it, either. He would make it a production. Complete with props and...
Hostages. Burner hoped that Cypher hadn’t learned the truth about Sara’s identity yet. That would be a coup, executing a Constable for all to see.
As he was halfway through that thought, the entire station suddenly started to shake. He worried he was too late already and the station was about to tear itself apart.
The station managed to withstand whatever had assailed it, and a voice assured the occupants of the station that the shield had managed to hold.
When in the field, Intelligence operatives were constantly taking in new information and reforming their theories on their enemies’ plans and motivations as new data became available. It was easy for them to get lost in thought, which is why i
t was important for them to maintain rigid awareness when approaching a dangerous situation.
It was a lesson Burner had apparently forgotten. His mind was trying to assemble the pieces of the recent explosion with his existing theories, and he was just coming around to wondering if the Union mole might have had something to do with it when he rounded a corner and very nearly bumped into a man in a station security uniform.
The suddenness of the encounter stunned both of them. The officer was holding his weapon. It had been recently fired, Burner could tell, from the heat emanating from it. One of Cypher’s plants no doubt.
The officer turned his weapon on Burner and started to shout. “Here!”
That was as far as he got before Burner’s knuckles made contact with his throat. Burner simultaneously reached for the officer’s weapon hand and pried his fingers from the trigger to prevent him from accidentally firing. The officer stumbled back, gasping to draw breath from his crushed windpipe. Burner caught him as he fell to keep him from making a racket hitting the ground.
The half shout he gave, however, was enough to attract his closest ally, whom Burner heard rushing over. Burner grabbed the officer under both arms and swiftly dragged him around the corner just as he heard someone else enter the tunnel.
“Maxi?” The new arrival, also dressed in a station security uniform but clearly another of Cypher’s subordinates, carefully stalked down the tunnel. He had his gun drawn as he took one careful step after another. “Maxi, if this is another one of your jokes, it isn’t the time. You’ve seen how fucking terrifying Cypher is today. Quit messing around.” He sounded as though he hoped this was just his friend dicking about.
Burner kept himself pressed against the wall around the corner, carefully listening to the sound of the approaching footsteps. The second officer came closer. In a careful motion, he peeked around the corner.
The most common disarming technique used in the military was the quick reach-and-twist, a method in which you quickly grabbed the opponent’s weapon around its handle and twisted. When a wrist is rotated to a painful degree, the hand reflexively opens, thus forcing them to lose their grip on the weapon. This method had the added benefit of putting the weapon in your own hand, allowing you to quickly turn it on its original owner.
Burner had put his own spin on the move that he had perfected over the years. Instead of reaching for the weapon, if he was close enough, he would reach for his enemy’s upper forearm and twist at the elbow. This served not only to angle the weapon’s barrel away from him, but to give him leverage over his foe from the elbow to the shoulder. He found that while more difficult to perform, it worked better on trained soldiers who had been taught to expect the reach-and-twist and how to counter it.
That was why, despite the second officer’s care in using a proper double grip on his weapon to prevent it from being easily ripped away, Burner was able to quickly disarm him, get him into an armlock, and smack him on the back of the head with his open weapon. When one blow didn’t knock him unconscious, Burner struck him again, this time opening a bloody wound on his head.
Burner laid the two officers’ bodies out of sight of the tunnel and crept onward through the tunnel, knowing he must be close now.
It got warmer the closer he got to core. He knew the core gave off a lot of heat, and he figured that the station designers had not seen the need to cool the air heading into the service tunnels since they would rarely be used. Burner was already sweating through his shirt. He wondered sardonically if Cypher had brought sweat-resistant make-up for his shoot.
He saw two more station security officers standing guard where the tunnel connected to some more open room beyond. They hadn’t yet spotted Burner, who was carefully peeking from around a bend, but they were both facing his direction. There were no other paths forward he could see, and he had no possibility of sneaking up on them. Whatever happened next was going to announce his presence to everyone in the room.
Burner still had the element of surprise on his side.
It was time for an ambush.
Burner had his every move carefully planned before stepping into sight. First, he levelled his weapon at the guard on the left. Before the two terrorists had a chance to comprehend what was happening, he squeezed the trigger three times. All three shots hit the guard center mass. He gave a half yelp before his voice was gone. The other guard cursed and raised his weapon but didn’t have enough time to fire it before Burner’s bullet found his head.
Before the bodies had even finished dropping, Burner was in a full sprint. A third security officer predictably appeared at the room’s entrance with his weapon raised. Burner shouldered into him, knocking the barrel of the weapon high and causing the shots to be fired into the ceiling. As the terrorist struggled to right himself, Burner pressed the barrel of his gun in his stomach and fired twice. He doubled over, clutching futilely at the blood pouring out of him.
The element of surprise had been expended, and Burner spun to find the closest cover before what was certain to be a barrage of bullets fired at him.
He only had a second to take in the core’s chamber before an impact like a sledgehammer struck him in the face. His vision swam and he was just barely able to make out the form of the security officer that had clocked him. The observant part of his mind made note of a few things. First, this guy must have been waiting for him at the entrance’s blind spot, making him cleverer than the others. Second, he was a full hand bigger than the ones Burner had already taken down. And third, the floor was coming up to meet him awfully fast.
A moment later, Burner found himself flipped on his back with an ache in his jaw reminiscent of his cavity. The large officer put a boot down on his chest and pressed with a painful amount of pressure, forcing the air out of his lungs. The barrel of his gun was pointed directly at Burner’s head.
“I’m going to put one bullet in you for each bullet you put in my men,” the officer growled.
There are a few situations for which no amount of training or experience will ever properly prepare you. These are the situations in which the best advice is “don’t find yourself in that position in the first place.” It’s those moments when you’re at someone else’s mercy and just the pull of a trigger away from having your life ended.
On instinct, Burner launched a straight jab directly above him. The punch connected with the officer’s groin and elicited a pained squeak. The pressure on Burner’s chest lightened enough for him to roll away just as the trigger of the gun was pulled.
Burner bounced to his feet just in time to meet an enraged charge from the guard. They grappled, both trying to push the barrels of their weapons in the other’s direction. Burner gambled on releasing his weapon and using his open palm to smash the officer’s nose. The officer recoiled and released his own weapon. Burner was able to spin it around and put a shot through the guard’s chest.
He turned to find the next threat but saw nothing coming. Cypher and his loyalists were nowhere to be seen. Well, except for Killington, who was lying dead with a multitude of stab wounds over his body.
Then he spied Sara tied to a pillar near the far wall.
Assess.
Cypher’s camera equipment was set up around Sara, the lights bearing down on her face. On the wall behind her, as well as on the pillars and the ceiling, were small square packages that Burner recognized as the high explosive.
Did Cypher already film his video and leave? If so, this place could detonate at any moment. But no, there was only one way back and they hadn’t crossed Burner’s path.
It was a trap, then. They knew Burner would be coming and the rent-a-cops weren’t going to be able to stop him. They also knew that Burner would try to save Sara. Once he crossed into the center of the room, they would pop up on all sides of him.
Plan.
Operatives are not action heroes. It was the final lesson every recruit had to understand before they became real operatives. They would run you through simulations with no p
ath to success to drill in the idea that sometimes operatives in the field had to make sacrifices for the sake of the mission or to save their own lives. It had been Burner’s most difficult trial, and the only course he had been required to repeat. He didn’t accept that fact that sometimes a hostage just can’t be saved, or that people could be trapped beyond help, or that an operative’s imperative to complete the mission took priority over taking time to save a wounded civilian. He adopted the tactics they expected though—just to pass the course the second time. But he never truly bought into the idea.
Assessing the situation he now faced, Burner knew exactly what those instructors would tell him right now. The first priority was to protect his own life and complete the mission. The cost of failure was too high. In this case it meant the destruction of the station, the loss of thousands of civilian lives, and a war between the Union and the Deadlands. The right move was to take a careful circuit of the room that would keep him from getting surrounded, even if doing so would put a defenseless Sara in the middle of the inevitable firefight and likely get her killed. One sacrificed life to save many.
Burner couldn’t accept that. He supposed, at the end of the day, he wasn’t an operative anymore. So, he might as well be an action hero.
Act.
35
Space Station Pharbis, Nimrod Sector, Deadlands
Burner was aware he had put himself at a number of disadvantages. For one, he wasn’t sure exactly where the enemy was going to attack from while he was out in the open. For another, he was surrounded by high explosives. At any point, the terrorists could decide to call the fight a draw and detonate the core, killing all of them. Between the wound on his leg and the ringing in his head, he was hardly at his full potential.
Yet the thing that concerned him the most was the heat. Already his face was covered in sweat, with beads dripping down his forehead and threatening to sting his eyes. He hadn’t drunk any water since leaving the ship. Extreme physical activity, such as combat, could accelerate the onset of heat exhaustion, which brought with it weakness, dizziness, and confusion. If the fight ran on for too long, he might be reduced to a state where he couldn’t finish it.
