This was more “in the lair of the beast” than Heath had ever been.
Their team wore a collection of random gear; various pieces of body armor, HALO kit and rebreathers, different fatigues and boots, paired with the distinctly alien Kel rifles. And, of course, leading them all, Zac, who wore no extra armor, no helmet or mask; just a bit of tac gear, an earpiece and a neck mic for communication, slinging the giant Minigun at one hip, instrument of destruction, bag of ammo belts at the other.
Kick-ass indeed.
Heath directed Zac toward the nearest door, across the bay, under a larger craft and around two Kel fighters. Superman stayed out front, checking all directions as they hustled.
“Eyes sharp,” Heath reminded as they moved, speaking over his helmet mic. “Find Objective One.” They all knew what to look for. A port that would work for jamming the hack. The “hack” came on USB-type sticks they carried, each with an acid ampoule they would break once the stick had been inserted and the code planted. The acid would eat the evidence. The code, if it worked, would give them all sorts of access, directly to the nerve centers of the Kel.
Or so they hoped.
“Do you have it?” came the crackle of Fang’s voice. The secure feed was working, so far, even there in the heart of the massive warship, but at the rate of signal degradation Heath wondered how long it would last.
“Not yet.” So far no more resistance. They made the first door across the wide hold. Heath pointed his team to position as Zac stepped to the heavy obstruction and tried it. Locked. He swung the chain gun to the side, out of the way, raised a fist to deliver a massive punch and …
BOOM! banged a hole right in the center. Though they were ready for it everyone jumped, the impossible impact echoing back multiple times from distant walls. Heath swore he felt it through the floor. They all knew what Zac was about but …
Damn.
He punched harder, reverberating the whole ship, it felt like, and Heath cringed, then Zac was peeling back sections of door and frame with shuddering groans of stressed metal that vibrated Heath’s bones.
Crack! one of the Kel rifles went off; one of theirs and Heath found the source.
“Contact.” Two SAS guys were lighting up a handful of Kel running into view behind them. Precise shots. Crack! Crack! Crack! and the Kel were down.
And the door was clear.
“Let’s go,” Zac’s voice was audible over the comm channel and in the air. He swung around the chain gun, back to his hip, stepped through the gashed metal of the torn entryway and Heath pointed his team in behind. Heath followed last, checking for contact, seeing none, then he was stepping through and into a long hall that led away from the docking bay.
Up front Zac went live again and he was engaging a squad of Kel dumping from a far entrance.
BRRRRRIIIIIIPPPPP!!!! the close confines of the hall jacked the already loud volume of the gun, walls flashing in a hard staccato of bursts. The earpieces they wore and the helmets themselves shielded much of the sound, but it was tremendous.
Between bursts Zac nodded to the wall on the right.
“There,” he said.
As he laid down another killing stream Heath checked where Zac nodded and there was a port, in a console on the wall.
Yes!
Zac was taking a step forward, past the port, spraying the next group of Kel rounding the far corner. It felt like entering a bee hive, and the bees were pissed.
One of the SAS guys was at the port and pulling his stick. Heath turned to cover the rear, expecting more Kel to come through the gash from behind.
“Inserted,” came the report. The SAS guy stood.
Heath clicked to Fang. “Check it,” his voice was washed out by another brutal volley from Zac. “Check it,” Heath repeated.
“Got it,” came Fang’s crackling response. “Stand by.”
“How long?” one of them asked.
“He’s got it,” Heath relayed. “Stand by.”
But Zac was moving.
“Pull it,” he called back. “Pull it and let’s move.”
“Do it,” Heath agreed. “Move. Don’t linger.” They could try another port if that one didn’t work. Zac was advancing. The SAS guy pulled the stick and they headed down the hall, stepping over the results of Zac’s handiwork, ruptured Kel bodies, splattered blood.
They rounded the next bend.
“Got it,” came Fang’s voice. “Got—” Another blast from Zac cut all sound, then the gat shut down. “—in progress.”
“Repeat,” said Heath, covering the rear, walking backward as they moved down the hall.
“It worked,” Fang was excited. Even in the chaos Heath could hear it in his voice. “Everything took! I’m clear. Hack is set and ready. Inserted. Hooks are set. Holy shit, we did it. You guys did it.”
For a moment it was as if everything held still. In theory the mission was done. This was all they hoped to accomplish and they’d done it. For a fleeting instant Heath felt a misplaced sense of relief.
We did it!
But they still needed to execute the cover mission.
And they were now, quite likely, all going to die.
“Stand by for schematic,” Fang’s voice broke on and off over the channel. Heath and the team stood vulnerable, waiting …
“Sending schematic,” came Fang’s next update. “Hold …” he seemed to be checking something on his end, “… good. On its way. Confirm. Move on Objective Two.” Then: “Objective marked.”
Objective Two: Satori. And as the feed came through Heath searched the starship schematic, displayed in fine lines on the ocular eye-piece inside his goggles. His team’s location and their objective were indicated. Their path was set.
It looked like GPS directions straight into the bowels of Hell.
“Got it,” he confirmed; clicked to the others. “We’re good. Objective One achieved.” A few of them punched the air in victory. “Destroy the sticks.” Heath took his out and the others did the same, crushing the acid ampoules and dropping the modified USB sticks to the deck. They watched as the little pieces of plastic dissolved to smoke.
“Everyone got the schematic?”
Nods and thumbs up confirmed they’d each received Fang’s feed; a team of faceless HALO helmets, nodding in the green light, at the front of their motley crew Zac, helmetless, dark hair, beard and stern visage making him look, somehow, more dangerous than any of them. He heard the comm but did not have an ocular lens to see. Heath watched Willet in particular, trying to discern his reaction to the news from his body language.
They were about to go find his girl.
“That way,” Steve, closest to Zac, pointed him forward. Zac led off as directed, even as yet another group of Kel came into the hall ahead. Another zipper-burst of gatling rounds and they were down, like all the rest, and as their armored bodies jerked against the press of kinetic impacts Heath had the epiphany Pete had been right. The Minigun was a better, faster solution. Better than Zac simply pummeling Kel by hand. Death from afar, and the big guy was mowing down the attacking Kel as fast as they appeared.
“Go right,” Steve instructed and Zac peeled them down the next hall. Heath and Pete covered behind, deeper into the heart of the ship, and after a few more deadly beat downs from Zac the entire rest of the team was covering rear, no need for their help up front. As they wound their way closer to their objective Heath realized the usual CQB clear and move tactics did not apply. Not here. Zac was tanking like no heavy in history, absorbing blasts, spitting high-power death and slowing for nothing. Nothing got through him, nothing got around him, nothing stood in his way.
Steve stayed close, directing him. He tapped his shoulder and pointed.
“Left.”
**
“Confirmed,” the senior infantry commander aboard the flagship spoke via video feed in Voltan’s situation room. Eldron listened to the exchange, an icy sensation gripping him, of the creeping sort he’d been coming to expect on this
increasingly bizarre campaign for empire.
For the infantry commander had just confirmed the one they called Horus, the human freak of nature, was among the small group that had just been allowed aboard the queen’s flagship.
“Video shows it’s him,” the commander reported, concern on his face. And why not be concerned? He was sharing a ship with the unstoppable human.
How did he survive the blast?! was all Eldron could think. How?! He’d delivered that shot himself, right to the mountainside, wiping away half a forest moments after Horus crashed. How could he possibly have gotten away from that? Did he crawl out of the hole later, like Kang? But Kang had been shot by a much smaller gun. Horus … Horus was hit by the spinal mount of a battle cruiser, a massive ship of the line, and even if the shot had been indirect it should’ve been close enough …
Now, after all this time, no word and no sign and he shows up here, among the human resistance, siege boarding the queen’s flagship.
Eldron looked for any sort of reaction from Voltan, but the Praetor only nodded, seemingly unfazed, and Eldron looked harder, for any indication of doubt as to what he’d allowed.
“I have a feeling they’ll try to get off,” Voltan said to the commander, voice calm. “They came for some other objective. I don’t believe they expect to damage or take the ship.”
“How should we proceed?”
“Continue your efforts. Your squads will be ineffective against the superhuman, but you may eliminate the others. I can almost guarantee this Horus will attempt to leave the ship once he has what he came for. Do yourself a favor and let him.”
“What do you think they want?”
“That is what I want to find out.”
Eldron and Voltan both watched tracking overlays of the progress of the humans, making their way to some definite objective aboard the queen’s flagship. Eldron tried to adopt more of the nonchalance of their supreme commander.
It had been a trick, as suspected. Only, of a far greater sophistication than they would’ve dreamed possible, and that, of anything else going on right then, did have Voltan alarmed. Eldron could tell. It meant dangerous things. It meant the humans on the ground had managed to confuse Kel observation enough to conceal what they’d done, and, more than that, it meant they’d been able to convincingly disguise Kel communications—spoof them to the point that the Kel bought the ruse that their commander aboard the lander was actually flying the ship, actually talking to them, assuming he was just under duress, held captive by the humans and made to act. Now that things were unfolding it had turned out to be far worse even than that.
Again the creeping feeling.
Yet, Voltan chose to watch. The commander aboard the queen’s dreadnought would continue his attempt to repel boarders but with their current tactics the superhuman would, as they knew, be unstoppable, and would, as Voltan pointed out, escape. And so the question was, what were they after?
Eldron watched closely the progress of the infiltrators, wending through the maze that was the inescapable immensity of a Kel dreadnought.
Then Eldron saw it. Heading right for …
“It looks like—”
“Ah.” Voltan saw it too. “Of course.”
CHAPTER 32: SATORI
There she was. Like a vision, come to life.
Alive.
Willet was across the tiny cell and to her, helmet off, pulling it free, goggles and mask catching in his rush but no time for that and he jerked them clear and had both arms around her and was holding her close, lips pressed against her scalp. Breathing her in.
“You’re alive!” he whispered into her hair, filled with the urgency of the moment—even as the powerful sense of finding her held him in a state of rapture. In the instant it took to cross the cell he managed to see one of her eyes was barely open, the other a blackened hole. Ruined or gone, he had no time to notice the details.
You’re alive! He squeezed her tight.
She spoke. “Is this …” her voice was so weak. He pulled back, face to face, looking into her one good eye. The other was definitely gone. She was thinner, probably starved, probably parched, she was naked, red hair caked in spots with blood and an absolute mess, and she was looking at him with that one beautiful eye, that beautiful, bright blue eye, more clear each second, staring back at him, trying to determine if he was real and she was the most wonderful thing he’d ever seen.
She’s alive!
“Is this … a dream?” she wanted to know.
“It’s not a dream.” He kissed her. He knew they had no time for such things.
“Because I’ve had a dream like this,” she explained, becoming more coherent as he watched her transforming. Shrugging off the stupor she’d been in.
“A few dreams, actually,” her voice cleared further. “You know, typical fantasy stuff. Man I love comes to rescue me, sweeps me out of this Hell. Foolish, crazy, ridiculous dreams.” Then, sarcastically pensive—and he loved her so much as she mused: “Somehow this one seems more real.”
He kissed her again; resisted the urge to grab her and just hold on, seeing more and more how weak she truly was. He pressed his forehead to hers, sensing his anxious teammates in the doorway behind. No one was rushing him.
“It’s real,” he assured her. “And we’ve got to move.”
Now, more than ever, more than ever in his entire life and no matter what had ever been on the line before, his life or others, now more than ever he was going to make it. After everything, after every impossible thing it took to get here and now this …
There was no way they weren’t making it home.
“Let’s go,” he helped her to her feet, saw she probably hadn’t stood in a while—was too weak to do so even if she had—and so carefully helped her onto his back, placed her arms around his neck, made sure she could hold tight and hooked his arms under her legs. When he had her up and steady he looked to the team and nodded. They headed back into the hall. He didn’t bother with the helmet and mask. This was a sprint to the finish, nothing more, and there would be no need for radios or helmets or any of that. He was getting out of there, with her, and if the Kel gassed them first … then he would die with his love at his side.
But that wasn’t going to happen.
Zac led and the rest of the team moved protectively around them. They began to hustle, faster, Satori ouching and ooching a few times next to Willet’s ear as he jogged along with her bouncing gently against his back.
“Now I’m ugly,” she mumbled during a steady stretch. Then she snorted; such a welcome, human sound Willet almost laughed. He felt the heavenly brush of her hair against his cheek, her skin lightly against his own. She shook her head, accepting of her condition. “At least I don’t have that burden anymore.” It was like she was having a little mini conversation with herself. “Maybe now people will take me seriously.”
Typical Satori.
He turned his head and kissed her cheek. “Sorry,” he scooched her higher against his back. “But you’re still gorgeous. You’ll never be able to fix that.”
She harumphed and held on, even as up ahead they met their first resistance. Zac opened up with the Earth cannon, and without ear protection Willet winced in stunned shock. He felt Satori spasm against him in reaction to the violent sound.
But they were moving and his ears were ringing and she was holding on and ears could be healed. The group stacked up a moment as Zac halted to punch through yet another bulkhead door, the sound of that creating its own sonic trauma; thundering blows that defied reason. Pete was at his side, urging him on, voice muffled through his HALO mask but clear, shouting encouragement, “That’s it!” he bellowed, “Get it!” as Zac pulled back each impossible shard of metal, “Get it! Get it! Get it!” like a gym partner or something and Willet wasn’t sure if at least some of Zac’s terrific effort came from Pete’s enthusiastic pump.
The Earth kid was a great operator, an even better teammate.
Then Zac was through, gun in ha
nd and pressing forward, trigger down and firing into the next hall.
They were almost there.
Behind them a squad of Kel curved into view and the team at the rear laid into them, knocking the alien soldiers back with electric blasts in a spastic death-dance.
Willet ducked low and followed through the ruined bulkhead door, cringing in the electric air.
We’re going home.
**
“How’s it look?”
“Code is set,” Fang continued his checks.
“And the team?” Drake was more on edge than he had been the entire mission. “Any insight?” They’d had no word; in fact they lost contact and murmurs among the hacker crew seemed to indicate the Kel might’ve identified the channel and cut it. Not decrypted it; just jammed it.
“I’ve got their internal tracking.”
Of course, now that they had the backdoor Trojan planted their eyes were open. Not wide, as this initial access was only being used to build the real backdoor, plans within plans, a way to worm their way into the Kel network and cover their tracks, but they were using the initial hack to some effect. Even if the Kel discovered their entry and the compromise, even if they eradicated it, they would be unlikely to find where Fang and his team had gone. The hackers would take up residence inside the Kel infrastructure, command and control, looking for ways to exploit it.
For now they could see some of what the Kel were tracking.
“They’re almost to the bay.”
“No internal countermeasures,” Fang added, checking and scanning, always checking and scanning, mousing and clicking and typing and scanning. “Not yet. Just force resistance. The Kel are throwing men at them and that’s obviously not working but, so far, orders are to continue that tactic.”
**
Zac was buzzing so hard he wanted to leap ahead and just thrash everything. Anything and everything that got in his way and even things that didn’t.
Star Angel: Prophecy Page 40
