by Rick Barba
“Wait! Wait!” cried Rika. She pointed up at a canister with a lens, rotating twelve feet up the wall above Darox. “Is that a camera?”
Mahnk skidded to a halt next to her. “By god, yes!” he called, aiming his shotgun.
His blast shattered the canister before the lens could swivel toward them. Rika followed with a second shot that tore the canister completely off the wall. She stared at her shotgun muzzle.
“I barely heard those shots,” she said. “These XCOM suppressors actually work.”
“Lady, you can thank Lily Shen and her team for that,” replied Thibideaux over the radio. “Best engineers on the planet.”
The Skirmishers made another quick scan along the back wall and found no other surveillance devices.
“Looks clean now, Xray,” said Darox.
“We’re coming in fast,” replied the captain.
From his corner, Darox admired the expertise and efficiency of the XCOM team. Within seconds, two specialists on folding stepladders had sliced through the access panel with laser cutting-torches. In less than a minute, the entire five-man squad and its Gremlin had disappeared inside.
“Going radio silent now,” said Thibideaux quietly over the frequency.
Darox exchanged a look with Rika. She smiled, something he did not expect to see. She hadn’t smiled since he met her.
She said, “These guys are very good.”
Darox nodded. “They know what they are doing.”
Mahnk grunted. “So far, I have killed a camera,” he said.
“You sound disappointed.”
“I am.” He sighed. “But yes, these XCOM warriors are indeed impressive.”
For years, the ADVENT propaganda stream flowing through their neurochips had depicted XCOM as some sort of failed terrorist cell filled with mentally disturbed malcontents. But Thibideaux’s soldiers were pros. Mission prep had included a remarkably detailed XCOM intel briefing followed by a set of skillfully designed tactical field sessions.
Suddenly, Darox heard Mox’s voice in his ear.
“Sierra and Romeo, this is the Avenger,” he said.
“I hear you, Avenger,” replied Darox.
Petrov’s voice crackled over the frequency. “Copy, Avenger, this is Romeo,” she said.
“Be advised,” said Mox. “Heavy activity up in Roaring Basin to the north. It may be heading your way.”
“What is it?”
“We do not know. Are you seeing anything?”
As Mox said this, the ground shuddered with a series of gut-churning low-frequency bursts. The air around Omega Station seemed to crackle with energy. Darox glanced up. Purplish domes of intense light pulsed upward, one after another, from behind the northern ridgeline.
* * *
Bradford had ordered the Avenger flown close to Omega Station for the operation. Rather than relying on scans stolen from ADVENT’s network, he wanted the Avenger’s own sensor bank to provide nonstop, real-time scans while the infiltration team was at work.
A few minutes earlier, the sensors had started popping with psionic activity. Purple spectral signatures bloomed all over the live map display in the bridge.
“Who the hell is that?” growled Bradford.
“Pretty sure the psionic mystery guys are back,” said Gilmore, digging fingers nervously into his scraggly mane. He started typing furiously at a console workstation. “I’ve run the spectroscopy. Same readout. It’s them.”
“I count at least a dozen blips,” said Marin.
“More like fifteen,” said Gilmore. “Look, three groups of five.”
“Maybe they’ve come to help again,” said Lopez, adjusting the scan ratios.
“Let’s hope.”
And then a larger purple signature drifted down-screen from the north.
“Uh oh,” said Lopez. “Our walking tower is back.”
“Is it part of their crew, maybe?” asked Bradford.
The scan seemed to answer the question as the smaller blips encircled the larger spectral signature. Suddenly, all of the echoes began pulsing wildly.
“Holy mother of god,” said Gilmore. “It’s a battle.”
Bradford leaned in closer. “How can you be sure?”
“Look,” said Gilmore, pointing at his console screen. “The smaller blips are disappearing, one by one. Looks like the big guy is wiping them out.”
Bradford spun to the tactical command console. “You guys hearing this?”
“Yes, sir,” called an officer. “Trying to get a drone camera up there, but the snow is making it difficult.”
Mox sat with the XCOM C2 team. “Contacting all go-teams now,” he said, punching a button.
This triggered his exchange with Darox. After Mox issued the warning, Darox’s reply was broadcast over the room’s audio feed: “Yes, we are seeing heavy psionic activity over the ridge to the north.” Then he grunted. “And feeling substantial concussive waves.”
“We felt that one too,” reported Petrov over her link. “Wow, it’s knocking rocks loose up here!”
“Romeo,” said Bradford. “Can you see anything from your position?”
“Not from here,” replied Petrov. “If I follow this ledge around the crown, I might get a view.”
“Stay in overwatch, Petrov,” said Bradford. “I want your eyes on the ground teams. Send a soldier.”
“Will do,” said Petrov. “Mia?”
“I’m there,” reported Mia over the comm.
Suddenly, Lopez started rapidly tapping her controls. “Is this right?”
On-screen, another large psionic signature drifted in from the east side. Seconds later, a third purple signature appeared from the west. Both were moving slowly toward the center of the map.
Marin looked dismayed. “That’s just . . . a lot of psionic power converging,” he said.
“What’s going on?” exploded Bradford.
And then another voice popped onto the field frequency.
“Xray One here,” called Captain Thibideaux. “Pickup was successful. Repeat, pickup successful. All units, be advised. We have the package, children, and we’re coming out.”
Bradford practically leapt to the tac-comm console.
“Birds One, Two, Three, this is your green light,” he barked. “Light fire to the LZ with all possible speed.”
“Roger that,” came a pilot’s voice. “All birds inbound at zero-two mikes.”
Marin turned to Tygan. “What the hell are they saying, Richard?” he whispered.
Tygan’s eyes were round with excitement. “Roy’s team extracted the coordinates!” he said. “And our Skyrangers will pick them up in two minutes.”
Petrov’s voice broke in. “Mia, what do you see?”
“Snow’s getting worse,” answered Vo. “But holy cow, it’s a battle, yeah.”
Now Darox’s voice broke in. “Avenger, we have big trouble in the North Flats.” The sound of explosions crackled over the radio. “Taking heavy fire.”
Bradford looked like he was about to explode too.
“Romeo, what’s going on?” he shouted. “We need eyes! Where are my goddamned eyes?”
* * *
Petrov put her scope on a great, hulking shadow that stomped across the North Flats. Though murky in the swirling blizzard, the figure was clearly a two-legged mechanized walker. As it moved, it spattered laser rounds at the corner where Sierra team hid. Then it skidded to a halt.
Petrov heard Mahnk over the radio. “Is that a Sectopod?” he growled.
“It’s bigger than the ones we knew in ADVENT,” said Rika.
“It’s charging up its cannon,” called Darox. “Pull back from the corner.”
Petrov could see the Skirmishers backpedal down the alley. Out in the flats with what seemed like deliberate malice, the Sectopod hunkered down, then unleashed a roaring Wrath Cannon blast. The strike tore off a large chunk of the building’s corner where the Skirmishers had just stood.
Vo broke in on the channel.
“That’s correct, Avenger,” replied Petrov.
More concussive waves rattled the rocks. Eyeing the walker down in the flats, Petrov shut off her mike and called over to Epstein.
“Joe, load EMP rounds,” she shouted.
“Gotcha,” he cried back, covering his mike. “It’s just a big robot, right?”
“Right.”
Vo couldn’t hear them, so she kept talking.
“Man, heavy enhanced rounds are incoming on the big brute,” she said excitedly. “Looks like the same purple stuff that tore up all those bugs back in the canyon.”
As she said this, Petrov and Epstein fired EMP rounds into the Sectopod far below, which was advancing again. The walker staggered as blue energy wracked its frame. Then it dropped into a protective crouch, unmoving.
“Nice hit, Romeo,” called Darox over the comlink.
“Wow, this horned monster has a shield,” continued Vo. “Incoming fire-stream is splashing and flowing around him like water. Wonder if I could try hitting it with a . . .”
Vo’s transmission ended.
“Mia?” called Petrov. She remembered her mike was off. She flipped it on and called, “Mia? Mia, respond!” She waved Epstein toward the crown. “Joe, go see . . .”
Epstein cut her off: “Going!” He was already scrambling up the icy path.
She got on her scope and sighted down the Omega Station alley where Xray squad was crawling out of the vent and dropping to the ground. The Gremlin zoomed out of the duct, followed by the last man out, Captain Thibideaux. Darox and his Sierra crew had joined them.
* * *
When Thibideaux hit the ground, he pointed at the Gremlin and gestured up the canyon toward Indigo Pass.
“Specialist Hayes, float this junk-box up to the extraction point, and I mean now,” said the captain. “Take the rest of the squad for support.”
“Aye, sir,” said Hayes. He turned to the Gremlin. “Five-two-six, on me!”
The Gremlin drifted toward Hayes. When he started running up the rocky ravine, the drone drifted behind him like a kite on a string. The remaining Xray soldiers jogged behind, guns high in escort.
“Johnny, do you hear me?” called Thibideaux holding his earpiece.
Bradford broke in and said, “Roy, we’re downloading the dump right now.”
“Good move,” said the captain. He turned to Darox. “What’s out in the flats?”
“Right now a sleeping Sectopod,” replied Darox. “But it’ll wake soon, and I expect ADVENT support troops any second.” The ground shuddered, and the air shimmered again. “We’ve also got some kind of psionic artillery exchange going on over the rim up in Roaring Basin.”
Thibideaux tapped his earpiece. “Let’s get home. All units, full withdrawal.”
Then they heard two rifle shots up on the cliff.
“Romeo, what is that?” called Darox, peering upward.
Through the churning snow, he spotted Petrov one hundred meters above them, firing her rifle at a towering, black-helmeted figure on the cliff face. The entity stepped to the cliff’s edge, dragging two limp bodies that it promptly tossed over the precipice.
“Good god,” said Thibideaux.
Before the ground team could make a move, the tall figure flung its arm upward . . . and then suddenly seemed to fly horizontally along the cliff face toward Petrov.
As the monster glided to Petrov’s position, Darox watched her leap off the cliff.
* * *
Petrov jumped without thinking.
As she fell, she heard the Hunter’s deep laughing voice call, “Goodbye, Reaper!”
She hit the shallow snow-bowl thirty meters below. By kicking up hard, Petrov managed to stay in an upright position as she plowed another twenty meters downward through the powdery, nearly vertical patch. Luckily, she struck no rocks, and the slide significantly slowed her fall rate.
But when she reached the end of the bowl’s gentle outward curve, she shot off the cliff wall with another fifty meters left to the rocky hollow below, where Darox and the others watched helplessly. It was nearly a straight drop, and she clearly saw, as if time’s flow had slowed to molasses, how the trajectory curved inevitably to a solid granite slab that would shatter her leg and hip bones if she was lucky enough to land feet first.
I might live, she thought.
And then Petrov felt something strike her back. It penetrated her armor slightly, stabbing her left shoulder blade. She screamed in pain as her body jerked to a bouncing halt in midair.
Then she felt herself slowly lowered.
Darox had his Ripjack claws out before she reached the ground. With a violent swing, he sliced cleanly through the metallic cable attached to a small silver grappling hook embedded in Petrov’s shoulder armor.
With a whining zing! the cable retracted upward. They all looked up.
An impossibly deep voice called down: “I decide when you die, Reaper.”
Then a dark helmeted head with glowing purple eyes leaned over the precipice far above. In a flash, the Hunter produced his rifle, aimed, and fired.
The round struck Roy Thibideaux in the center of the forehead, splitting apart the front of his combat helmet.
* * *
Then things got worse.
Before the captain’s corpse even hit the ground, laser fire sprayed the hollow. Darox helped Petrov to her feet, and they both spun to see the Sectopod squeezing out of the alley exit. The walker had to crouch-walk to fit beneath the overhang of the cliff wall, but that didn’t stop it from spewing hot laser fire that riddled Drask, dropping him.
“This is Bird One,” called a Skyranger pilot over the comm. “We have the drone team, and we are away. Birds Two and Three now at the pickup.”
“Go!” shouted Darox to the team. “I have rearguard.”
Despite the throbbing pain in her shoulder, Petrov pulled out her Vektor.
“I’m with you,” she called grimly, squeezing off a point-blank shot at the Sectopod as it rose up to full height. The bullet penetrated the walker’s Wrath Cannon barrel, triggering a small orange flash.
“Good shot!” cried Rika.
Next to her, Mahnk unclipped an EMP grenade and rolled it across the hollow.
“Go back to sleep, you foul machine!” he cried.
The blue pulse did the job, disabling the Sectopod a second time. All three Skirmishers rushed in for point-blank Bullpup blasts. Once the robot finally tilted and clattered to the ground, the team darted away—all ADVENT soldiers, current and former, were painfully aware that “Sectopod death” included a deadly self-destruct detonation.
As the walker exploded, Darox pointed in the direction of Indigo Pass.
“Get to the pickup now, all of you,” he ordered, “or I will shoot you myself.”
Mahnk and Rika dashed around the rock wall to the rocky ravine that led up to the extraction point. As Petrov followed, she heard a chilling screech behind her. She skidded to a halt and spun to see Darox sprawled on his back with a massive female creature standing over him. Her arms rose slowly, almost hypnotically, a Daisho-style sword in each hand, one long, one short. With swift downward thrusts, she drove the blades through Darox’s forearms, pinning both to the granite slab as sparks flew.
Horrified, Petrov raised her rifle and fired without thinking.
It was a perfect headshot.
After the Assassin’s head recoiled, she looked stunned for a second, but then she shook it. She turned to Petrov, baring her jagged teeth.
“You assist the hybrid traitor?” she hissed, her voice a metallic screech.
Petrov sighted for a second shot. “Yes, bitch,” she snarled.
Releasing one sword, the Assassin extended her free palm toward the Reaper.
“Then you’re next,” she said.
A purple shockwave hit Petrov and sent her flying. She landed hard, knocked breathless. Her Vektor clattered across th
e hollow into a crevasse, so she rolled over and tried to draw her revolver. Gasping for air, she watched the Assassin extract the swords and cross them on Darox’s neck. But before the alien could slice, the crack of another rifle shot reverberated in the canyon.
Orange blood splattered across the slab underneath Darox’s head.
The Assassin shrieked in anger.
“You poach my kill?” she roared.
Petrov heard the zing! from the cliff above. Then the dark helmeted Hunter landed next to the Assassin. He gazed down at the fallen Skirmisher.
“So sad,” he said with a wicked smirk.
“Perhaps I should take one of yours now,” hissed the Assassin and turned to where Petrov lay.
Still choking for air, Petrov pushed to her feet and scrabbled up the steep ravine. As she rounded a sharp curve, she nearly ran into Mahnk, who was descending fast. Petrov seized his shoulder armor.
“Go back,” she gasped.
“Is my brother down there?” said Mahnk.
“You can’t help him,” said Petrov.
Rika hopped down boulders to them. Petrov turned to her and said, “She’s coming.”
Fear and hatred rippled across Rika’s eyes.
Bradford’s voice burst loudly into Petrov’s ear. “No more losses,” he said harshly. “Romeo, Sierra, get to the goddamn pickup.”
Rika took Petrov’s arm. “The storm is getting worse,” she said. “Let’s go.”
* * *
The Skirmishers helped Petrov climb the ravine to Indigo Pass. There, they boarded the Skyranger designated Bird Two and buckled in. The troop compartment felt empty—just three of them in a cabin built for ten.
As the jump jet lifted off, Petrov gazed through the cabin window at a whiteout snowstorm growing so bad it looked like old-fashioned heavy static on a TV screen.
Next to her, Mahnk sat forlornly. He would not take off his combat helmet.
Across the aisle, Rika stared angrily at her boots.
Petrov was about to speak when a mission briefing monitor suddenly beeped on the cabin’s front wall. Then Bradford’s face appeared on-screen.
“We don’t know yet if this operation was worth what we just lost,” he said.
Petrov watched Bradford’s face flicker between dark and light.
“But if our Gremlin recovered what we think it did . . . then my old friend Roy Thibideaux is celebrating somewhere in a transverse universe right now . . . with a smoky Kentucky bourbon in his hand.”
