Deathless (The Shadow Wars Book 12)

by S. A. Lusher

  But there'd been only one other person, Keron, who was sitting by himself, staring out a window as he drank something from a steaming mug.

  Maybe it was just the timing. As weird as it sounded, it seemed like something seemed to crop up on a fairly regular schedule. Or maybe that was just his imagination. As he finished his meal, Allan made a note to check the dates on their mission logs. He also noted that neither of them seemed to have very much to talk about this morning. Several months ago, that might have worried him, but he was far enough into the relationship and knew enough about Callie that he knew it wasn't a problem. They were both people who were sometimes prone to long silences as they sorted their thoughts. Plus, they didn't always need to be talking.

  Sitting in each others' presence was often enough.

  After they finished up, the pair put their dirty dishes onto the conveyer belt that led back into the kitchen and headed out of the mess hall.

  “What are you going to do?” Allan asked.

  “I've been slacking a little on target practice lately, so I thought I'd get some of that in today,” Callie replied. “What about you?”

  “I'm going to go talk with Greg. And I think we're going to get shipped out again today.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  He shrugged. “Just a feeling.”

  “Fair enough.” Callie gave him a quick kiss on the lips. “Good luck.”

  “Thanks.”

  He watched her head away down the brightly-lit corridor, and when she was gone from his sight, he turned around and started walking. Then he stopped. Where would Greg be? He thought about it for a moment. Maybe he was back in his quarters. Except...no, Greg was usually awake by now. Had he already eaten breakfast? Allan thought about it for a bit longer, then decided to check the observation room. Greg seemed to have been spending a lot of time there lately. As he started off towards it, he found himself falling into deeper thought.

  Would Greg really leave?

  Could he leave?

  He remembered talking with Greg about his problems. The man admitted that he was addicted to taking stupid risks, which this lifestyle provided in abundance. Could he walk away? He hadn't been able to when Kyra had left. But that was a long time ago. Or, at least, it felt like a long time ago. A lot had happened to them all since then and time seemed to move differently when you were cramming a shit-ton of living into your life. Honestly, Lindholm felt like years and years ago, even though it had been only about twelve months ago now.

  As he navigated the chromium corridors of the ship that was his home, Allan wondered if he would be able to walk away from this all. His immediate reaction was to think no, he'd never leave this behind, but then he remembered his assessment of all his various emotional issues, boiling just beneath the surface.

  Who's to say what he would think if something truly traumatic and awful happened to him, after the dust had settled in his head?

  It wasn't something he really wanted to think about.

  Allan came back to himself as he heard familiar voices up ahead. He turned a corner and saw Genevieve and Jennifer walking and talking together, coming towards him.

  “Hey, where are you two going?” he asked.

  “We've got a mission,” Jennifer replied. She seemed to have mixed feelings about that, based on the look on her face.

  “What is it?”

  “We're checking out an outpost that sent out a distress call. They were apparently attacked by a monster,” Genevieve replied.

  “Oh...well, that's not ambiguous or anything.”

  “Ambiguous is in the job description at this point,” Jennifer replied.

  “Yep. Well, good luck.”

  “Thanks,” Genevieve replied.

  They passed each other. Allan glanced back at them as they kept going. Were they dating? As he picked his pace back up and contemplated that, another thought came to him: a lot of them were pairing off. It seemed kind of weird, honestly. He and Callie, Drake and Eric, Jennifer and Genevieve (maybe?), Greg and Eve, (sort of). Sure, at least two of those pairs were in open relationships, but it still struck him as odd. The kind of people it took to do a job like this tended towards extremism and isolationism.

  Maybe that's why they were pairing off: they all understood each other, understood what it would take to hold together and maintain a real relationship. He imagined any one of them would immediately scare off any civilian and maybe even most regular military personnel. It took a special type of crazy to do this job and a similar kind of crazy to date those that did. Well, at least he'd found Callie. He was deeply appreciative of the relationship he had with her. It was easily the best one he'd had in his whole life. Allan realized he was approaching the observation room.

  Sure enough, Greg was inside, staring out the domed overhead window into the infinite vastness of space. Most of the walls were transparent as well, offering a truly awe-inspiring view. Allan approached him and came to stand beside him.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey,” Greg replied quietly without looking down.

  “How are you doing?”

  “Not too good...” He sighed suddenly and reached into his pocket. He fished out a pack of Galactic Lites cigarettes and a lighter. “Want one?” he asked.

  “Yeah, sure,” Allan replied.

  They both lit up cigs and stood there staring out the windows, smoking in silence for a long moment.

  “So what's on your mind?” Allan asked when the silence had gone on for too long.

  “I'm sure Callie or someone else has told you that I've been thinking about leaving,” he replied, blowing a formless puff of blue smoke.

  “Yes...are you?”

  He opened his mouth, closed it, frowned, shook his head. “I don't know,” he muttered. “I don't know about anything anymore. After Ash and...well, you know what happened, after that, my head, my thoughts all seem kind of...scrambled. I know for a fact that I'm not in any shape to deal with a mission right now and Hawkins keeps offering to ship me out to Mezzanine or something. I've been thinking about it, but it just feels like a surface solution for a deeper problem. I need...to clear my head,” Greg explained.

  “So what would that actually entail?” Allan asked.

  Greg shook his head. “I don't know. That's the problem. I don't know. I've been thinking about...” he hesitated, fell silent.

  “Thinking about what?”

  “Kyra.”

  “Oh...I'm sorry.”

  “Yeah, me too. I'd rather not think about her. I mean, Eve is great. And we're...happy. But what I had with Kyra...” he heaved a sigh, took another puff. “I don't know. Sometimes I think I'm still in love with Kyra, which makes me feel like shit. Then I think that I'm just romanticizing, that it's all bullshit and what I have with Eve is great and I'd be an idiot to walk away. I'm just...fuck, I don't know. Everything's all fucked up now.”

  “I'm sorry,” Allan repeated, not sure what to say. Being social had never really been his strong suit. Even now he felt ill-equipped to deal with something like this.

  But he had to try.

  Greg shook his head and straightened up. He turned to face Allan. “Thanks for the talk,” he said. “You're a good friend and I know this isn't easy. I'll, uh...see you around.”

  “All right. And you're a good friend, too. And...good luck.”

  “Thanks.”

  Allan watched him go, worry and empathy filling him. He really hoped Greg got this sorted out without too much trouble, because he had been there, teetering at the edge, unsure of anything, desperate for some sort of change, some answer, something to make him happy or at least like he felt normal again.

  Allan returned his attention to the stars.

  It suddenly struck him how insane his life was. He wasn't sure exactly what it was or why now, but looking at these stars really slammed home the fact that he was living on a space ship, fighting intergalactic horrors the likes of which no one had ever seen before. It was his literal jo
b. They gave him a paycheck for it. When he was growing up in those awful slums on Frontier, he never dreamed his life would be like this.

  Overhead, the shipwide comms crackled to life. Hawkins' gravelly voice came on the air. “Allan, Callie, I need you in Briefing Room One immediately.”

  Allan sighed softly and finished smoking.

  Occasionally, he did lament being right.

  * * * * *

  Callie was already in the briefing room by the time he got there.

  The only two other occupants in the small room were Hawkins and a combat tech Allan had gotten to know only a little bit named Laura Porter. She had smooth mocha skin, short black hair and eyes that clearly had implants, glowing an electric blue. The little that he gathered from her so far was that she was smooth, calm and competent, one of those people that never needed to raise their voice to get their point across.

  “Come in, Allan, we need to get started. We don't have a lot of time,” Hawkins said.

  As always, the aged, grizzled leader of Anomalous Ops looked haggard and a little bit under the weather. He knew it was because the man was perpetually overworked, dealing with all the various political, military and bureaucratic contacts necessary to keep their dubious operation afloat. Plus, the guy was a hundred and twenty six years old now. He would still more than likely live a few more decades, but at his age, most people were retired. Allan got the feeling that Hawkins was going to keep this career going until the wheels fell off.

  “What have you got for us?” Callie asked.

  Hawkins rubbed one dark, bloodshot eye and tapped a few commands into the laptop embedded in the table in front of him.

  “Those terrorists sporting heavy tech mods have finally shown up again. That's the main reason we've spent the past few weeks out here along the Far Reach. Let me highlight the information we have on them so far...” he murmured, hitting a few more commands. The lights dimmed and the holographic projector built into the center of the table clicked to life. It showed a small blue-green planet. “This is the first location we encountered this group. We know very, very little about them, save that they favor heavy technical body modifications that make them extremely effective and lethal in combat and, as far as we've been able to tell, they do not seem to belong to any specific group, creed, nationality or religion.”

  He typed in another command and a second image appeared.

  This one was a still shot of a deathly pale man wearing the ragged remnants of a bland, gray uniform, his black work-boots stained and scuffed. The man stared at the camera and was in the midst of raising his arm. What was on the end of that particular arm was not a hand but a long, black-silver barrel, a gun grafted directly to the flesh and bone and nervous system. One eye glowed with an intense, powerful blue light and a miniature satellite dish had been grafted onto his skull. There were more, subtler mods.

  “For no given reason, some our outer colonies have been targeted. Usually they are not under the jurisdiction of the Galactic Alliance, but enough of them have been that, obviously, the government and the military got very interested. They drop out of faster-than-light flight directly into geosynchronous orbit over whatever colony they are planning on attacking, then drop from orbit in a cluster of attack craft and supply shuttles.

  “From there, they tend to drop directly into the colony and slaughter everything with wave after wave of troopers. Once everyone is dead, they strip it of resources. They're also obviously intent on remaining anonymous. They've never left a single corpse behind of their own troops and they always hit the colony with an EMP pulse after they're done, wiping any and all digital records or recordings of them. We only have this image because the trooper that managed to get it got away deep enough into his colony's waste system to survive the slaughter and evade the EMP blast. But even based on his and a handful other survivors' testimonies, we know very, very little about these people. The biggest thing we do know, or at least have theorized on, is that these...people, whoever they are, don't seem to be acting of their own accord.

  “All the, admittedly miniscule, evidence seems to suggest they are being controlled by the technology they are implanted with.” Hawkins paused and seemed to fight back a yawn. He sighed. “Knew I should have grabbed a fucking coffee. Sorry. It's been a busy fucking month. Anyway. They seem to be after resources and not a lot else. These colonies that are hit are stripped of guns, ammo, medical supplies, food, water and any other basic resources, including computer technology and heavier medical technology.”

  “Where have they been lately?” Callie asked.

  Hawkins shrugged. “I honestly have no idea. But little to no intel is basically par for the course for us at this point. We should all be used to being thrown from orbit blindfolded by now. Which, I'm fully aware seems like a pretty easy thing for me to say, given that I'm the one sending you all into battle. But believe me, if I still had the bones for it, I'd be right out there with you, decked out with gear and shooting it out, because this kind of work has never suited me. But yes, we have no idea where they've been or why they've been quiet for these past three weeks. We don't even know where their headquarters is located. Best we've been able to guess is that it is more than likely somewhere beyond the Far Reach.”

  “So I imagine they've shown back up,” Allan said.

  Hawkins nodded. “Yes. They've hit a supply ship. The ship managed to get a single burst distress call out, identifying the attackers. That was an hour ago. It isn't too far from our current location. Weller is prepping a Raptor right now. You should be able to get there within the hour. Unfortunately, Porter is the only one I'm going to be able to send with you.”

  “Seriously?” Allan replied. He glanced at Porter. “No offense.”

  “None taken. I have to agree with your assessment,” she replied, looking at Hawkins. “I would think that, given the level of attention this group has been getting from us lately, you would be able to commit more resources.”

  He sighed softly. “I can't right now. I'll explain why later, but for now it's just going to have to be you three and Weller. But I trust you to handle this. All four of you are more than capable and adaptive fighters and thinkers. You can do this. Your gear is already being loaded up. I've shipped the intel, what little of it there is, ahead of you, on the ship that's been hit and the region of space it's in.” He paused, frowned, looked at each of them. “Good luck.”

  Allan nodded and stood. “We'll get it done,” he replied.

  The three of them headed out of the briefing room.

  * * * * *

  The Raptor loomed over them as they filed into the bay.

  A quartet of technicians were just leaving, their jobs done. Allan and the others hurried across the bay, feeling the press of time. Allan, Callie and several of the others had, over the past two months, gone on several missions hunting these bastards. They'd come across many colonies, space stations and ships that had been stripped of resources, those resources including the people who lived there more often than not, and consequently had become more invested in putting a stop to this group than they would have otherwise.

  It had gone from heart-wrenching to frustrating to infuriating, as they came too late over and over again, finding only desolation and death awaiting them. Now they had a chance to nail these fuckers to the wall.

  Although that part of the briefing Hawkins had given, suggesting that these people were not responsible for their actions, that they may not even be alive at all, no more than meat puppets driven by some mysterious force…

  That was more than a little chilling.

  Allan, Callie and Porter cycled through the airlock. As soon as they did, Allan walked over to the nearest comms panel and hit it, calling the bridge.

  “We're all onboard and accounted for, Weller,” he said.

  “Affirmative. I'm leaving the Dauntless now. ETA is forty nine minutes.”

  “Roger that.”

  Allan killed the transmission, turning away from the panel an
d heading deeper into the ship. Such a short trip meant that they would have no time for their usual luxuries like sleep or food or training. They had to get to it right away.

  With this in mind, he led the others towards the armory.

  THE BLIND WAR is the thirteenth novel in

  THE SHADOW WARS.

  Out now. Purchase HERE.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Sean A. Lusher was born in the Midwest. Raised on a diet of Goosebumps and YA Horror, he eventually graduated to mature fiction and began cutting his teeth on the likes of Simon R. Green's Deathstalker series and Bob Mayer's Area 51 novels.

  Lusher has been writing seriously for over a decade now, though he only began to get any good at it over the past few years. (And there's still some debate over that...)

  Currently, he lives in Columbia, MO with his wife and two cats.

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  DEATHLESS. Copyright © by S. A. Lusher. All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entire coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.