by Mel Odom
The Azzie troops hit the dirt, but the frag rounds blew up in the midst of them. Razor-sharp metal chewed into exposed flesh, and sometimes through the armored soldiers’ Kevlar.
One of the helos managed to intercept an HE round and explode it in mid-air. The resulting blast ripped branches from trees and spread smoke and fire across the sky in long, curving tentacles.
The other HE round hit the dig site dead center. A huge spray of dirt and rock vomited out of the hole, filling the general vicinity with smoke and dust. A few seconds later, everything that went up came down again, burying the cave entrance under tons of dirt and rock.
Okay. Now let’s just stay alive. Flicker fired her second salvo. She’d aimed one at the first GX helo and three at the second.
The single AV round exploded meters from the helo, but the second attack helo only managed to take out two of the AV rounds. The third slipped through the jammers like a greased eel and slammed into the GX.
The Azzie helo turned into a flaming fireball, a bit of luck Flicker hadn’t been counting on. Fiery debris rained over the jungle.
The surviving helo targeted Flicker’s general vicinity and fired its cannons. Machine gunners flipped out of the cargo doors, snug in their restraints, and opened up as well, flaying the jungle surrounding her vehicle.
Movemovemove! Flicker dumped six thermal smoke canisters from the ATV and trusted the hot particles contained in the rush of green vapor to obscure the helo’s thermographic vision. She coaxed the engine to life and sped away through the jungle. Small trees and brush went down under the oversized tires.
She raced within cover as missiles struck the area where she’d just been. Shrapnel bounced off the ATV’s reinforced sides, and the run-flat tires remained intact. She paralleled the tunnel as much as she could, twisting and skidding through the jungle while trying to go as fast as she could.
The remaining helo concerned her the most. If they were going to get away, it had to go down.
The blast concussion rushing down the tunnel knocked Hawke off his feet. He rolled and banged against the passageway walls as the shaft of sunlight behind him winked out. The rolling smoke cloud that overtook him blanked his infrared video. As he shifted to low-light vision, he forced himself to his feet and took a firmer grip on his rifle.
The amplified view was only slightly better than being blind. He paused against the passageway, rifle to shoulder, and waited for any Aztechnology troops to make an appearance. Likely some of them had made it into the hole before the blast closed it.
He pulled up Flicker’s video feeds, splitting them between the oculars of the chameleon suit. Relief washed through him as he saw her tense face.
“How hot are you rolling?” Finally convinced that no one had made it into the cave, Hawke turned and ran along the passageway. His muscles felt loose and ready, and the disorientation he’d gotten from the blast was already fading. Also, the sooner he left the dust cloud, the better.
“Blistering. Caught a piece of luck. One of the helos went down.”
“Can you get clear?”
“Not working on that right now.”
“Staying with this isn’t smart.”
“This from the guy who jumped into the rabbit’s hole after we knew things were about to get slotted.”
“I needed a big score.” Hawke stumbled in the darkness as he tried to adjust for the thermographic vision’s inaccurate depth perception.
“You? You’re the guy who always plans for a rainy day.”
“I’ve had a lot of ’em lately.”
“What—”
Hawke cut her off. “You’re the queen of multi-tasking, not me. We’ll talk later. Right now you need to get out of here.”
“You came to me, omae, remember? Partly because you knew I had the skills and the hardware. But partly because you also know I won’t leave you between a rock and a hard spot.”
Guilt surged through Hawke, as heavy as the darkness and the stone and earth surrounding him. He had known Flicker wouldn’t desert him—not as long as there was even a slight chance they could pull this off.
“This one’s over.” Hawke made his voice hard. “Get out now.”
“I’m working on something. You just stay in one piece down there.”
Hawke saved his breath. Once Flicker got her head set, she was set. He adjusted the chameleon suit’s enclosed ventilation, adding more oxygen to the mix to keep his head clear. As soon as he cleared the dust cloud, he switched back to infrared and lengthened his stride.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The nightmare danced in Rachel’s head as she fought against the sec men. Runrunrunhidehidehide! For a moment, she was back in the alien jungle, fleeing for her life. Behind her, something howled, almost powerful enough to rupture her eardrums, and the fetid stink of its breath filled her nostrils. The coppery taste of her own blood coated her mouth.
“Miss Gordon.” One of the sec men leaned in close to her. She wasn’t sure which one it was. “You have to calm down—” He tried to sound forceful as he attempted to get a slap-patch on her, but she jerked free. He stopped and spread his arms in frustration. “Professor. I need help over here.”
Rachel spun away and cowered against one of the walls. The statues loomed around her, seeming to move toward her.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with her.” Fredericks glanced over his shoulder at Rachel. “This is more your area than mine, I should think.”
“The camp’s been hit, professor.” Doyle unlimbered his rifle and took a position covering the passage leading back to the dig site.
“Hit?” That caught Fredericks’s attention.
“Attacked by Aztechnology.”
Rachel tried to gain control of her breathing and force away the nightmare. If she was going to live, she knew she had to be able to think.
“That’s absurd.” Fredericks frowned, like a favorite student had just let him down.
His objection rang hollow. All of them had heard the blast preceding the cave-in that had sealed the opening to the surface. Rachel tried not to think about being trapped underground, or of any of the things that might be waiting in the darkness.
“Aztechnology has no reason to attack us,” Fredericks said.
Doyle peered down the passageway. “You said you had all the permissions in order, professor.”
“They were.”
“And you told us what you were after was a bit of glory. Nothing anyone was willing to kill for.”
“I told you the truth—I have no idea what they’re doing here.”
Shaking from the effort, Rachel slowly straightened up and gazed around the cave. Her fear was tied to something nearby. She walked into the circle of statues on weak legs, her knees threatening to buckle at any moment. Some of the figures looked human, but others seemed to have been formed from pure nightmare.
One was a tentacled creature that could contort its limbs to form a humanoid shape. A layer of writhing worms overlaid the misshapen skull, and the worm-like appendages wound into vague arms and legs. Its “fists” were clusters of tentacles that looked like hideously long fingers. Another was a scorpion-looking monster with a dozen legs that ended in serrated blades, a whip-like tail, and two front legs equipped with long pincers. Then there were bloated things, huge wolf-things with dead eyes, and melon-shaped creatures the color of spoiled cream whose bodies were filled with wounds and hungry maws. They couldn’t possibly have ever existed. She put her hands out and tried to lock in on the sensation pulling at her. It felt like sandpaper maggots slithered under her skin.
“Rachel?” Professor Fredericks stepped closer to her. His breath came short and his eyes were wide with fear. “What is it?”
She shook her head. She didn’t have any words to explain. The sensation of wrongness grew stronger, and she followed it unerringly now. She couldn’t turn away.
“Beaumont.” Doyle continued covering the passageway opening they’d come out of. “Check that tunnel.”
/> From the periphery of her vision, Rachel saw the sec man step into a tunnel she hadn’t seen before. He advanced slowly, his weapon pointing into the darkness.
Kneeling, Rachel pursued the grotesque feeling wriggling inside her. An echoing clamor now rose inside her mind; an alien voice, crying for blood and vengeance. Even with the fear surging through her like electricity, she couldn’t stop searching for whatever drew her.
Beaumont returned to the cave. “Tunnel goes on for a long way, Doyle.”
“Good. Maybe a way out of this.” Doyle stared at Fredericks. “Do you know if this tunnel has another end, professor?”
“No.” Fredericks watched Rachel as she examined a rough, dirt-encrusted statue almost hidden behind the others. “As I told you before, this cave is uncharted. I don’t know anything about what’s down here.”
“Aztechnology seems to have some idea.” Doyle’s tone stopped just short of accusatory.
Rachel began wiping dirt away. The earth was loose and easily fell away from the statue. As she worked to expose it, she noticed the figure was some kind of—
“A lizard?” His voice hoarse, Professor Fredericks leaned closer,.
“No.” Rachel unburied more of it, pushing the dirt away from the scaled back, the wings, the proud head, and the mighty claws. “A dragon.”
“Is that made of—gold?” The professor touched the statue with a trembling finger.
“I don’t know.” Rachel drew her hands along the savage creature’s body. She knew the dragon was longer than she was tall. The metal was dull yellow, and definitely looked like gold. It stood amid a crowd of the monstrous things, head reared back defiantly.
“There’s a jewel.” Hesitantly, Professor Fredericks took an excavation tool from his shirt pocket and reached for the glittering bauble.
The gem was deep blue with faint scarlet veins threading through it. Mounted in the dragon’s snarling mouth, it was almost as large as Rachel’s clenched fist.
“Do you feel the cold?” Professor Fredericks held his open palm over the dragon’s mouth.
“No.” Rachel reached for the gem.
“Allow me.” Gently but forcefully, Professor Fredericks pushed her hands aside and reached out to extract the jewel. As soon as he touched the gem, though, something shimmered in the air and knocked him back into one of the statues.
The statue fell and started a chain reaction as it knocked over other statues. The horrifying things fell like tenpins. The clank of stone and metal striking hammered Rachel’s hearing.
Pale and shaken, Professor Fredericks groaned and tried to get back to his feet. He failed, and collapsed to the floor,.
Even though she knew she should check on the professor, Rachel was drawn to the jewel. Despite what she’d seen the gem do, she reached for it. The dragon’s jaws opened slightly, and she plucked the object from its fanged mouth.
Surprised, but also feeling that everything had happened exactly the way it was supposed to, Rachel examined the jewel. It was egg-shaped. The blue facets gleamed even in the infrared light. She felt the rough texture beneath her fingertips and realized that markings scored the facets.
Then Doyle flew backward into the room, driven by an unseen force.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Outrunning the Aztechnology ground troops proved easy. Outrunning the GX helo was another thing entirely.
On one level, Flicker admired the skill of whoever was piloting the chopper. But on another, she hated that person. No matter what she did, how deep she risked going into the brush and trees, the helo stayed on top of her.
The heavy machine gun fire and 20mm cannons blazed along her backtrail. The helo’s tracking suite was top-of-the-line. She didn’t expect anything less. Some of the trees uprooted by the cannon blasts fell into her path. When possible, she screeched around them. Other times she powered over them. The six over-sized tires slid over the trees and spun across the grass.
Activating the recessed six-centimeter spikes within the tires, Flicker felt the ATV grab fresh traction. Bark and white wood pulp erupted in roostertails behind her. Fist-sized chunks of grass and earth spit out as well.
Desperate, knowing the helo was getting her speed and moves down now, Flicker locked the front wheels, shifted power to the rear drivetrain, and risked a rough bootlegger’s turn. The ATV came around in a gut-wrenching 180-degree spin as she launched another group of thermographic smoke canisters.
The gray-green smoke filled the jungle, drawing immediate fire from the helo. Trusting the pilot hadn’t seen her reversal, Flicker pinned the accelerator to the floor and rapidly went through the gears. The diversion wouldn’t fool him for long, but hopefully it would be long enough.
She shot forward, dividing her attention between the action in the passageway, the geological maps, and the staggered front line of the Azzie troops. As she cleared the smoke cloud, she sent the cave drone deeper into the passageway, mapping the tunnel and racing the dig site sec men in the cave.
“You can get to the underground river.” Flicker shifted and juked, sliding across the broken terrain despite the spiked wheels. Shredded countryside lay behind her. “Do you hear me?”
“I’m here.” Hawke sounded far away, muffled.
“Grab the package and get out of there. Go to the river.” Flicker slewed around a large boulder an instant before an HE round reduced it to rubble. Damn, he was even quicker than she’d hoped. Broken stones rattled against the ATV’s ballistic armor. “You’re a half-klick away.”
“Understood. What’s your sitrep?”
“Eyeball deep in drek.”
Cannon rounds blew craters in the ground in front of Flicker. She dodged one and hit the NOX, grabbing enough traction and acceleration from the booster pack to barely hurtle over the second crater. As she landed in an awkward rush, like a three-legged dog trying to make the best of a run across a frozen pond, an HE round hit her directly. The ATV’s reactive armor went off in response, minimizing the damage.
The double-blast shivered through the vehicle, and her traction slipped for a moment. Flicker fought for recovery, then got the ATV under control again.
“You got three minutes to get there.” Spotting movement ahead of her and recognizing it as Azzie troop movement, Flicker aimed for them.
The GX helo burned ammo as the weapons suite tried to acquire the ATV. Falling debris, smoke, and flames filled her screens. Her exterior audio mics were dampened, but she still felt the crescendo of violence and mayhem opening up around her. The shock absorbers managed to keep the rocking impacts to a minimum.
“If you’re not there, I’m leaving without you.” Flicker drove through an open space straight toward a new wave of the Azzie sec men. They spotted her and opened fire with small arms that did absolutely null against the ATV’s armor.
“We’re still underground.”
“Get to the river.” In the next breath, Flicker plunged into the ground troops.
Before the helo pilot recognized she’d driven among his own people, his weapons chewed through them and slammed them to the ground. One man went down in front of the ATV’s reinforced front bumper. Two others bounced up over the vehicle when Flicker hit them. She didn’t hesitate, remembering how they’d killed the unarmed laborers.
Realizing what was going on, the GX helo pilot backed off. Anticipating the moment, Flicker pulled another tight 180 and opened up with missiles again, bracketing the helo the moment she got it in her crosshairs.
Two missiles chopped through the GX’s security jammers. The helo erupted into a crimson and yellow fireball and turned inside out to vomit black smoke into the sky.
The ATV’s alert suite lit up. “Warning. Vehicle has been targeted by anti-tank missile launcher.”
Evidently the surviving groundpounders hadn’t been totally shorn of offensive weapons. Flicker tracked the target acquisition, swiveled her top 7.62mm machine gun toward the danger, and opened fire.
The bullets ripped through the jungle a
nd caught the missile launcher operator as he fired his weapon. The warhead exploded only a meter or two out of the launcher’s throat, destroying it.
Before the chunks of the dead man hit the jungle floor, Flicker rocketed forward again, gaining speed as she shot off into the jungle toward Hawke.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Hawke rushed forward, trusting the chameleon suit to buy him a precious few seconds. In the shadows, using only low-light vision, he was just a ghost of blurred movement.
Still, the nearest man reacted at once. His reflexes were smooth and superhumanly quick, letting Hawke know he had wired reflexes as well. Hawke didn’t want to kill the man. He and the rest of the sec team weren’t like the Azzie troops. These men weren’t hired killers—maybe. Hawke was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Never breaking stride—knowing if he did the sec man would easily target him—Hawke ducked below the SMG, grabbed the barrel in his left hand, and ran his right hand under his opponent’s left arm. Swiveling and putting his right hip into the other man, Hawke yanked the man off his feet, whirled to the left, and threw him into the sec man standing behind him.
The two went down in a tangle of limbs, their curses filling the cave. As the professor dove for cover, Hawke threaded the maze of statues. The third man’s weapon chattered and tore away bits and pieces of the statues around him.
Hawke threw himself to the ground and brought his rifle up, finger squeezing the trigger. A double tri-burst and a shotgun blast slammed into the sec man’s chest. Hit at close range, the rounds stopped by his armor but still imparting their kinetic force, the sec man lost his balance and fell on his back.
Hawke rose to his feet and lunged forward. He slammed the rifle’s butt against the third man’s armored head, pulling the blow just enough to render unconsciousness instead of killing him.
The first man, the one with the wired reflexes, got up almost immediately. Hawke fired two shotgun blasts at point-blank range and knocked the man’s feet out from under him, causing him to topple forward. Hawke kicked the man in the head and knocked him out as well.
