by S. A. Lusher
“I’ll see what I can do, but medicine isn’t really my field,” Volker replied, walking over to Eric and flipping on the scanning machinery in the table.
“Some fucking doctor,” Greg muttered.
“I’m not that kind of doctor,” Volker replied. Greg and Drake sat back and watched the man work as he manipulated the controls, ran the scans and then scrutinized the results. “How long as he been like this?” he asked.
“About two hours,” Drake replied.
“Hmm...well, these scans say that physically, he’s okay. No swelling in his head, no extra inter-cranial pressure, no bleeds, no concussions...I think it might be prudent to give him a stimulant to bring him around.”
“Is that safe?” Greg asked.
“Safe enough,” Volker replied.
Greg sighed and looked at Drake, raising his eyebrows. Your call. Drake just sighed and nodded. “Do it,” he said.
Volker did just that, finding a needle, flicking it, pushing in the plunger a little bit to ensure there was no air, and carefully injected a third of it into Eric’s bicep. As he began coming around, there was a chiming from across the room.
“The pods are ready,” Volker said.
“Open them up,” Greg replied.
They got the pods open. Greg looked over the others as they slowly came awake. He took a moment to get them oriented, which proved a little difficult with Eve and Genevieve, as they both almost punched him in the face, not realizing who he was at first. After several minutes, all four previous unconscious members of the squad were up, awake and aware. Once Greg had brought them up to speed a little bit, he turned to Volker.
“Okay Volker, now what the fuck is it that you can tell us?” he asked.
They all stared at him.
To his credit, he didn’t flinch.
“From the beginning then,” he said, and seemed to be getting into his element. Greg suddenly got the impression that this was a man who loved explaining things to people. “I’ve managed to piece this together from rumors, gossip and, just lately, scrounging through the databases I managed to scavenge from Tempest Station and whatever was left here. So these are the order of events as accurately as I’ve been able to reason out.
“Our project director, Blackmore, has had a stick up his ass about Anomalous Operations for a while now. The reason for this is because he had been developing basically the same thing for about a decade: the collection, research and, most importantly, weaponizing of paranormal, extraterrestrial or anomalous entities, locations and objects in the galaxy. Mainly Cyr technology, but other things, too. He believed there was a lot of money in it, provided it could be cracked. And he was making progress...but then he ran into a huge stumbling block when Dark Operations went rogue. Only he managed to turn that around.
“You see, being essentially separate but parallel to Dark Ops, he was in a unique position, and he turned it to his advantage and began to get more traction. Unfortunately, he lost a lot of that traction when Dark Ops was put down and Anomalous Ops was created. And he never quite recovered. So he started causing trouble for your group wherever he could. He added pressure any way he could find. He caused scrutiny. He orchestrated the break-ins at the research facilities and then convinced the government to force you into investigating it. He tried to keep support and money from going your way. He wanted you shut down.”
“Fucking wonderful,” Drake muttered. “All this wasted goddamned time and effort.”
“Indeed,” Volker continued. “He brought me in about two months ago, and General Jericho not long after that. She was brought in for her connection with the military and Special Operations. They provided security. I was project lead. It was so exciting. Not much had been done in the way of real research at these sites containing the creatures or the technology. It was more about containment. But he wrote me a blank check and cut me loose. As I told you before, Greg, I insisted on using the dregs of humankind of test subjects, the worst of the worst, those who did not deserve life. And you cannot argue that they don’t exist.
“Everything was going perfectly. Protocol was being observed and research was moving forward by leaps and bounds. There was so much to discover! And then Blackmore began talking about capturing you and bringing down Anomalous Operations. I was frustrated with him, and so was Jericho, I believe. We thought it was a waste of time and resources, and we’d basically be painting a target on ourselves. But he was insistent. He had all of you captured, had all of you sent out on false missions. You were to be brought here and experimented upon. You were all stuffed into cells and experiments were prepared.”
“So what went wrong?” Greg asked.
“There was an accident on the station. A solar flare hit Tempest and fried a lot of our machinery. Don’t know why the sensors didn’t detect it but it doesn’t matter now. Most of the important stuff survived but enough was damaged or broken that we had a containment breach. Enough of the creatures got out, namely the Shadows, that...we quickly lost control of the situation. That was about three days ago. Luckily, I was down here at the time. Everyone fell back to either the ship or the research station.”
“Okay...so what happened here?” Eve asked.
“Well, see, I did this. But I had a good reason. Blackmore began taking a few of my scientists, virologists and biologists and a few others, for a secret project. They worked for a solid month on something and no one would tell me what the hell was going on. Finally, I got a straight answer out of Blackmore, who had been growing...stranger, over the past several weeks. He told me everything two days ago…
“He had secured a sample of a Cyr virus that had been researched for a long time now. It was one of his own projects when he began his secret branch years ago and he’d finally had a breakthrough. Once he realized what he had on his hands, an engineered, airborne, highly contagious virus with a one hundred percent kill ratio, he...apparently went fucking insane. He decided that he was going to ‘wipe the slate clean’. His own words. He was going begin selecting a ‘pure’ group of humans to save, inoculate them from the virus, then release it unto the galaxy, spread it to every world. From the ashes of the old, he would be at the head of a new civilization. This is a truncated version of what he had told me,” Volker explained.
“So you tried to stop him,” Greg murmured.
“Yes. I was working on several different things at once, but he realized my gambit before I could get everything into place. He ordered me killed. I released every fucking creature in this facility and disabled all the security. In the end, I ended up locked in here with you three as bargaining chips. Or as my agents in the field, if it came to that. Which it has,” Volker replied.
“Why were they in cryo-stasis but not us?” Drake asked.
“All of you were placed in cryo-stasis upon capture. We just hadn’t thawed you three yet because we didn’t have a use for you at the moment...any more questions?”
“Yes. How do we get up there and stop this bastard?” Genevieve asked.
Volker smiled. “I was hoping someone would ask that. Unfortunately, there’s a lot to do. But the good news is that you’re all qualified and if we work well, work together and get a little lucky, we should be able to leave this place, hit the ship in orbit and take Blackmore and his virus, what he called Saturate, out, before the end of the day.”
“So what do we have to do?” Eve asked, crossing her arms.
“Several things. The first is to refuel and power up the shuttle I’ve managed to secure. That will be relatively easy, at least compared to the other stuff, since it’s in a nearby private hangar and the appropriate supplies should be within this building. We also have to kill the Alpha. For those of you not in the know, all of the Mutants here are controlled by a single hive mind, called the Alpha. We have it contained over in the research structure, with a killswitch. All you have to do is activate it. The Mutants will lose their cohesion, which will be good, because we did manage to institute a measure of control over them, but
we were only able to maintain that control via the Alpha. We kill it, and all the Mutants up on the Perseus go nuts.
“Beyond that, we also need to locate my research notes, as well as a kill-code I programmed and hid in the subroutines aboard the Perseus. That’s our ace in the hole. That’s how we’ll get onboard. It will disable all security features and throw the ship into general disarray. I programmed it in secret a few weeks ago when I began to get worried about the operation. Finally, we need to send out a distress call. I have people I could call, but honestly, I thought it best left up to you. I’m hoping that my cooperation will help make my transition back into the Galactic Alliance go smoother,” Volker explained.
“Uh-huh,” Greg muttered. “Who goes where?” he asked.
“Jennifer and I can deal with the ship,” Genevieve said.
“I’m sorry, guys, I’m not going anywhere,” Eric said. He was still laying on the examination table, now with his eyes closed. “I’m down for the count for now.”
“And I’m not leaving you alone here,” Drake said, glancing at Volker, who just sighed and rolled his eyes.
“Fine. Uh...” He glanced over at Eve. “We can deal with the communications. Then we can all gather together at the research structure and tackle those objectives.”
“Fine by me. Where’s the armory?” Jennifer asked.
“Out the door, directly across the room,” Volker replied.
Jennifer and Genevieve headed out of the room. Greg was impressed with how fast they could go from literally being yanked out of a cryo-pod to gearing up for a brand new mission, all after being straight-up kidnapped. He looked over at Eve, who was lingering across the room. Well...this was a situation he had to deal with.
Or they had to deal with, really.
“Could you give me some help with something?” Greg asked as he approached her.
“What?” she asked. She sounded a bit guarded.
He pulled out the bottle of artificial, spray-on skin he’d been holding onto and handed it to her. “I need you to put that on my back,” he said, taking off his coat and then unzipping his jumpsuit. He suddenly wondered why he hadn’t had Drake do it back when he’d reapplied the numbing agent. Well, pain made you kind of stupid.
“What happened?” Eve asked quietly as she carefully peeled away the bandage. “Holy shit! This is...awful.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty bad,” Greg replied, wincing. The numbing agent was wearing off already.
“I need to clean it, sit down,” she murmured.
“I already cleaned it,” Greg said, but he took a seat on another examination table.
“What, you just dumped a bunch of antiseptic down your back? It could use a little bit more than that. Not to mention you need an antiviral and antibiotic injection,” she murmured. “You didn’t answer my question,” she added as she went in search of supplies.
“A Mutant got me. A Guardian, specifically.”
“Can’t believe I have to put up with them again,” she muttered. She returned a moment later and set down a few things on the table next to him.
He hissed in pain as she set to work doing whatever it was she felt the need to do.
“Um...how have you been?” he asked after a long moment.
“Fine,” she replied.
“Fine? You don’t sound fine.”
“I’m...managing.”
“Oh yeah? How’s ‘managing’ going?”
“You know, you might not want to be giving me shit when I’m trying to tend to your very serious wounds. I could easily slip and hurt you a lot,” Eve murmured.
“That would be petty,” Greg replied.
“How long have you known me?”
He couldn’t help but laugh. “Sorry,” he said finally. “I’m still angry. Or...hurt, I guess.”
“I told you my door is open to you,” Eve said quietly.
“It’s not the same. And you know it.”
“I do...I’m sorry.”
They fell silent again. Eve began spraying on the artificial skin as she finished up whatever it was she was doing.
“How are things going with your pilot girlfriends?” she asked finally.
“It’s really just me and Vanessa,” he replied. “Weller and I just...have fun. But it’s going good...provided she’s still alive.”
“I’m sure she’s fine, Greg.”
But he could hear the worry in her voice. So far as they knew, they might be the last six surviving members of Anomalous Ops. And there was no guarantee that they would survive this hell, either. “There,” Eve said as she resealed the whole wound with a fresh bandage. “I’d tell you not to move around too much, but obviously that’s not an option. Let’s go hit up the armory and get this show on the road,” she added.
“Yep,” Greg replied, getting up. He zipped his jumpsuit back up and followed her out of the room, across the control area and into the armory, where Jennifer and Genevieve were gearing up. Greg felt a tremor of pleasure surge through him.
This armory...was actually stocked.
And there was armor here. It wasn’t the high-tech, high-quality stuff he was used to working with, but it was a suit of fucking power armor that would deal with the cold and make them far, far less vulnerable to the horrors that inhabited this place.
“Thank fuck,” he whispered.
He also found a fresh black jumpsuit. Abandoning his bloody, torn and burned one, he pulled it on and then took a while to pull the suit of power armor on. Once that was done, he grabbed what he could from the stock of weapons. He swapped out his pistol for a sturdier, more powerful model with a bigger magazine, made sure to get lots of shells for his shotgun and grabbed the rifle that he had been so sorely missing.
Once he had some grenades and ammo, he joined the others in reporting back to Volker, who filled them in on where they needed to go. As luck would have it, none of them needed to leave the building for this first part. Well...almost. Greg and Eve had to head down into the maintenance tunnels below to gather parts and tools to make repairs on the comms tower...which was outside, on the roof. Once it was fixed, they theoretically should be able to make the call. Once everyone had everything planned and memorized, they set out.
CHAPTER 11
–Communications–
“You sure you’re up for this?” Greg asked as they made their way down the ladder.
“I’ll be fine,” Eve replied.
She’d been quiet ever since they had left the Military HQ. Greg had to admit, he felt a hell of a lot better with this suit of armor. Plus, whatever it was Eve had done, combined with the artificial skin, was making his back feel better. Well, that and the painkillers he’d thrown down. Having a real arsenal helped, too.
He still had very mixed feelings about Eve. He’d been kind of avoiding her over the past month or so, and he’d stopped sleeping with her not all that long ago. It just seemed to cause more problems than it solved. Part of him just wanted to be friends with her and try to forget about his problems, but another part just...hurt too much. He’d really liked what they’d had and had wanted it to go even further, and it was just painful now whenever they got intimate, because it was kind of like a torturous window of what could have been.
One he could never pass through.
Greg hit the bottom of the shaft and stepped away from the ladder, rifle raised. He didn’t bother with the flashlight, activating his vision filters instead. They’d come into a small back room packed with crap. He secured the area with a sweep of his rifle, checking out the niches and hiding places between the derelict workbenches and stacks of crates. He found nothing and moved over to the only door in the room.
They needed parts, and a few tools.
Didn’t they always?
Luckily, Eve was still pretty great with technical things. Volker had marked the two locations they had to visit on Greg’s map. He opened up the door and looked outside, finding a huge warehouse-sized room that was actually mostly empty. Greg moved out into
it, feeling grateful. It was really nice to be in a room that wasn’t absolutely packed with all sorts of stuff to have to navigate through, where, around every corner, there might be a killing horror lurking. He remembered from the map that the first store of supplies they needed to ransack was in the far right corner of the room. The way seemed to be clear, for the moment anyway.
“Come on,” Greg said, heading across the open space.
Eve followed silently behind him. They had made it about halfway there when, suddenly, the sound of rending metal filled the air. Both of them skidded to a halt and raised their weapons, looking for the source of the noise. They found it to their right, where a large door was being peeled open by something trying furiously to get into the room.
A Bandersnatch.
Greg felt his stomach go cold.
“What the living fuck is that?!” Eve cried.
“Hard to kill! We need some heavier ordnance or...to pull something from the goddamned air,” Greg snapped.
Both of them looked around frantically as the thing continued ripping its way into the room. Suddenly, Eve let out a sound of triumph and took off running. “I found something! Keep it busy!” she called.
“Oh come on, why do I always have to be the one to keep it busy!?” Greg called as he opened fire, trying to land a shot somewhere crucial.
“Cause you’re the only who’s dick gets hard at the thought of danger!” Eve shot back at him.
He sighed and kept up his rate of fire. Behind him, he heard Eve searching frantically, knocking over crates and throwing things aside.
The Bandersnatch finally ripped its way into the room.
Greg emptied his magazine into the thing, trying to get a few shots into an eye or its mouth, but didn’t manage to do any real damage. His bullets were basically bouncing off of the thing’s hardened natural armor. What he wouldn’t give for some armor-piercing rounds right now. He slapped a fresh magazine in and kept firing, backing up away from Eve to give her some time and space to find whatever it was she was looking for.
The creature fixed its pinpoint, flickering eyes on him and turned that malignant, insane grin his way and loped towards him, coming for him with murder on its mind. “Aw crap,” he muttered, continuing to pour fire into it. As the second magazine rattled dry, he didn’t bother trying to reload this time, instead turning and running.
