by S. A. Lusher
“Any day now!” he called.
“Hold on! Almost there!” Eve called back.
What the hell did that mean? What was almost there?! He glanced back over his shoulder as he continued running back the way they’d originally come from. The Bandersnatch was getting closer and he was running out of space. As he prepared to go back through the door he’d come through, as risky as that was, he heard the unmistakeable sound of a rocket being fired. A tremendous explosion cut through the air and suddenly he saw flaming pieces of gore flying past him. Greg skidded to a halt and turned back around.
Eve was holding a rocket launcher on her shoulder. The tube was still smoking.
“Well...that works,” Greg said. “Got any more rockets?”
“I need to finish searching this gear. Help me out,” she replied.
Greg jogged back across the room and saw that she had discovered a store of guns, stashed away in a bunch of crates marked simply weapons. He joined her in hunting through the crates. Unfortunately, most of it was just more ammunition, and none of it was armor-piercing, which didn’t make any sense. That would have been basically number one on his list of ‘shit we need’, if he’d been in charge of the security for this fucked up project. He managed to refill his ammo at least, and although they didn’t come across another rocket for the launcher, he did manage to secure a single-shot grenade launcher and a handful of specialized grenades fitted for it. Eve ended up abandoning the launcher, since it was functionally useless.
And there were only so many guns they could carry between them.
“All right, cover me,” she said as she went to work searching for the spare parts. He fiddled with the grenade launcher while he waited and kept watch, then sorted through the grenades he’d managed to grab. Two of them were flame grenades, one was high explosive and another one was fragmentation. Well, that was pretty cool. It would make dealing with Bandersnatches easier. Okay, hopefully it would make that particular chore easier.
“Got it,” Eve said.
Once they had that secure, the pair of them slipped back into the underground tunnels. They managed to get to the second cache and grab the final parts and get back out in another fifteen minutes, having to put down a good dozen Mutants and a pair of Guardians along the way. But, as he climbed back out and headed for the surface, he hoped that he didn’t have to go back down there again. Being underground sucked.
“All right, Volker, we got the parts,” Greg said. “Now what?”
“Now you two get to go onto the roof. Head for the nearest exit, and then move clockwise around the exterior of the facility until you find a service lift. It will take you up to the roof. From there, you can locate the communications tower. Then you fix it.”
“On it,” Greg replied. “Jennifer, how are you two doing?”
“Good. We’ve secured the fuel and are in the process of refueling. Should be done in about ten minutes, then we find the power cells.”
“Perfect.”
They moved quickly through the building, putting down a pair of Shadows, and hunted down the exit that Volker had identified on the map. Greg took a look at the temperature readout. It was around negative one hundred and seventy degrees out there. He shook his head at the readout, his mind blown by it. Had he ever operated in such a cold environment before? He honestly didn’t think so, besides space, obviously.
He looked over at Eve. “You ready?” he asked.
“Ready,” she replied.
He opened the door and they stepped into a small transitional room, almost like an airlock, and then opened the exterior door.
Neither of them spoke as they began moving along the exterior of the building, kicking through the snow, which was easier with the suit on. Greg tried to organize his thoughts as he walked. Surely there was nothing out here with them...right? He seriously hoped so. He’d been spending the past month or so, in what little time had available to him, trying to reorganize his life, his thoughts. He’d realized, all at once, about two weeks ago, that he lived his life in pretty much a reactive way. He simply reacted to everything that happened to him, he was never very proactive. Greg didn’t honestly do much in the downtime beyond the stuff that he already knew how to do: train, work out, drink, have sex. Occasionally, he found time for reading or gaming.
But he didn’t really do anything else.
For the most part, he thought that was okay. His job kind of demanded constant attention to the body, constant reinforcement of strength, speed and skill. But he’d never found a way to work on his real fear and problem: he was boring. He didn’t seem to have a personality. He didn’t have much of a sense of self.
Maybe that was why he ended up getting so fixated on the women he dated.
Greg came out of his mind as he saw something up ahead, something dark. Something big. “Contact!” he called.
“What is it!?” Eve replied.
“I don’t...I’m not sure,” he answered, quickly switching over to his grenade launcher. He’d loaded it up with a flame grenade. It was big like a Bandersnatch, but it didn’t have the same proportions, and it wasn’t quite as tall. And its arms seemed to end in huge, wickedly curved talons. Okay, definitely not a Bandersnatch.
Well, whatever it was, it was going down.
Greg aimed the launcher and fired. The grenade sailed through the air as it was ejected from the tube and it nailed the creature directly in the chest. A bright orange-red explosion ruptured and the beast wailed as it caught aflame. Greg quickly cracked open the tube and slotted another grenade, this one a fragmentation, then snapped it closed, waiting to see if it was still going to come for him. But with a resounding groan, it crashed to the ground.
“What the hell was it?” Eve asked.
Greg looked back at her. “I don’t know, but-” He froze as he spied another two dark figures appearing out of the gray snowy mist. “Behind us!”
He raised the launcher as Eve spun around. She opened fire at the same time he fired off a second grenade. It nailed one of the figures, a second eruption lighting up the environment. The second dark figure was forced to stumble away by the explosion, and it went down as Greg fired his second flame grenade.
“Come on,” he said, slotting the final high explosive grenade, “we should get out of here before more of those-”
He froze as another three figures began coming at them out of the darkness. “Run!” he shouted, aiming and firing the final grenade.
It hit the central figure and he didn’t take the time to see what had survived and what hadn’t as he turned and began running after Eve. The two of them raced along the exterior of the structure, going as fast as they could through the shrieking winds and falling snow. Suddenly, a huge shape appeared out of the mist ahead of them. A wall of some kind, extending away from the wall they were running alongside.
Cursing, Greg broke left and ran along this new wall, but it ended abruptly. Now that he was closer, he realized it wasn’t a wall, exactly, it was the side of a huge shipping container. They ran around it and kept going forward. More shapes came at them out of the mist: crates, containers, huge pieces of machinery.
They were in some kind of construction or cargo yard.
Tired of running, Greg turned around. He realized that he’d dropped the launcher at some point during the run. Growling in frustration, but letting it go because it was empty anyway, he raised his rifle and hunted for the threats. Almost immediately, one of the shapes came out of the mist. Behind it, he could see another one, limping along. There were no others. Well, one damaged, one dead, one still in great shape.
“Keep them busy!” Eve called. “I’ll see what I can find.”
“Again!?” Greg cried.
“Yep!” She disappeared into the mist.
Sighing in frustration, Greg shouldered his rifle, flipped to full auto and focused on the wounded one. He wanted to at least get one of them out of the way. He sprayed it down with lead, trying to focus on its chest and then its head. As the
rifle clicked empty and the magazine ran dry, the creature let out a roar and then collapsed into the snow. It was dead or incapacitated, either way, it was out of the game. Which meant he just had one more of these big ugly fuckers to deal with. As he reloaded, the last one came closer.
He began to get a better look at it.
Now that he could actually see the thing, he realized what it was: a Mutant. What had Enzo called these big things? Ires. This was an Ire. A nine-foot horror with razor talons for hands. They were tough as hell. Greg leveled the rifle again and opened fire, but this Ire wasn’t having it. It dodged left, then right, then dashed forward, right towards him. Greg barely managed to throw himself out of the way, but he only missed the initial attack. He screamed as a blinding white agony erupted across his back. He was picked up and thrown a good ten feet. The thing had basically backhanded him hard and hit him right in his wounded back.
He hit the snowy ground and rolled, his rifle thrown from his grasp. Rolling over, groping for his pistol, he saw the huge horror coming towards him, moving with a sure stride, growing closer and closer, talons raised until-
A huge projectile came sailing out of the mist, right over his body and into the thing’s stomach. The Ire was bodily picked up and hurled backwards about fifteen feet until it stopped abruptly, becoming nailed to the front of a shipping container. Greg laughed in shocked surprise, then stopped as the thing began pushing itself off of the giant spike. Then a second one flew forward and hit it dead center in the chest, and it went slack.
“Told you I could do it,” Eve said as she approached.
Greg got to his feet, wincing in pain, his back aching badly, and spied her. She was holding two guns, one of them his rifle. She handed it to him and he accepted it. “What’s that?” he asked, staring at the big, long-barreled gun.
“Basically a big nail gun,” she replied. “Fires rivets, I think.”
That reminded Greg of his own experimental rail driver and he felt for it, and it was still there, slung over his neck, hanging under his left arm. He readjusted it. “Come on, let’s get on with it,” he said. “I want to get back inside.”
“Same,” Eve replied.
They pressed on through the cargo yard and managed to track down the service lift. It was still, thankfully, functional. They rode it up to the roof of the building and moved forward across the snowbound rooftop. The communications tower appeared to them out of the mist. It was a huge, monolithic thing wreathed in ice and mist. There were a few corpses around it, Mutants corpses, frozen into solid lumps, and a few of the soldiers who had once defended this place were there, too. Greg frowned as he saw the black-and-silver armor.
“Spec Ops,” he murmured.
“I guess that takes away any real questions about whether or not this is a military operation,” Eve said as they hunted down the damaged area.
“Looks like they were trying to fix it, too. And this might not be officially sanctioned,” Greg replied. “Remember that Dark Ops went rogue.”
“Yeah, maybe. I’ve never really trusted the Galactic Alliance.”
“Me either,” Greg muttered. He thought it was kind of a rule of society that governments weren’t made to be trusted. A sad reality, but a true one.
He stood watch while Eve made the repairs, working as quickly as she could. He tried to keep from worrying too much about things he couldn’t do anything about. Either Vanessa was alive or dead. Either his friends were alive or dead, and he couldn’t do a thing to change that at present. But he couldn’t stop the thoughts, the worries, the anxiety from seeping in. It was times like this that he wondered if maybe Eve didn’t have the right idea about being more of an isolationist. Did it help her care less? Worry less?
Did she hurt less when her friends died?
He didn’t particularly feel like asking her. He was still kind of mad at her, but...he also knew that it was just hurt feelings and she had a right to walk away from him. He didn’t want to see her suffer. Nothing showed up on the roof while she worked and he kept watch. He didn’t know whether or not that was a good thing, since it had given him plenty of time to keep thinking about this crap. Action ensured he didn’t think.
“Done,” Eve said. “Let’s call Hawkins.”
* * * * *
“Greg. Eve. Thank fucking god,” Hawkins said.
Greg felt a tremendous relief, tempered by cautious anxiety, as he saw Hawkins’ grizzled face appear on the screen. He looked exhausted, but otherwise okay.
“Hawkins, are you okay? Is everyone okay?” Greg asked immediately.
“There was a raid on the Dauntless,” he replied. “A few personnel are dead. Peters. Larsen. White. But we were prepared this time, after that raid on the Atonement, I made sure to prepare for just such an encounter. Where are you?”
“Is Vanessa okay?” Greg pressed.
Hawkins nodded. “She’s fine, Greg. She’s here on the ship. Where are you?”
Greg felt a tremendous relief surge through him.
“I’m sending over star charts and coordinates, we’re near the Far Reach,” Eve said. “Besides myself and Greg, Drake, Jennifer, Genevieve and Eric are here and alive. We’ve been captured by a government group. Someone named Blackmore is running the show with a woman named Jericho at his side, and right now we’re working with a man named Volker. They’re the ones responsible for the break-ins and we have several old foes here. The Mutants Enzo and I faced on Syberia, the things Eric fought, the Shadows Allan encountered on the derelict ship. There’s been an outbreak and we’re preparing to deal with it.”
“That’s...a lot to take in,” Hawkins muttered. “I know Blackmore. I know of him, at least. And Jericho and Volker. You’re working with Volker?” he asked.
“Yes. Listen, this is the important part, Blackmore has gone insane. He has his hands on an extinction-level virus that he plans on releasing. You need to get assets here as quickly as possible. He’s on a ship in orbit around the planet. The virus is with him. We’re going to attempt to take him down and stop him, but if we fail, you must destroy that ship.”
“...understood. I’ll scramble assets and get the word out as fast as I can. We’re still recovering here and we’ve been looking for you six.”
“We appreciate it,” Greg said. “I’m afraid we’ve got to get going.”
“I understand. Good luck.”
They cut the feed. Greg sighed and sagged into a chair for the moment. Vanessa was alive. Now he could focus. He activated his radio. “Jennifer, how’s it coming?”
“We’re done,” she replied. “Ship is fueled, powered and ready to go.”
“Good. Volker, what now?”
“Now, all of you have to head to Building Omega. That’s where everything else we need to do is located. And I have to warn you to be careful, that structure has the highest concentration of creatures on the planet,” Volker replied.
Greg sighed. “Of course...all right, let’s get this over with.”
CHAPTER 12
–Shutdown–
Greg lowered his rifle as finished putting down the final Fiend, his eyes wide as he scanned the entrance lobby for more of them.
But they were alone again, for now.
“We’re clear,” he said.
The other three moved into the room, weapons at ready. The walk across the surface had been surprisingly uneventful and Greg was again immensely grateful for the suits. They didn’t have to put up with the damned tunnels anymore. He was also very happy to have another two certified killers and seasoned professionals with him again. Jennifer and Genevieve absolutely did not fuck around when it came to mission objectives.
“All right, everyone knows their objectives?” Greg asked after they double-checked to make sure the area was secure.
All three of the others responded affirmatively.
Jennifer and Genevieve were going to break off into the left side of the structure and hit the primary mainframes to download copies of all remaining files and re
search notes on the creatures, while Greg and Eve would be heading into the right wing of the building and hunt down the kill-code, which was locked away in Volker’s private office on a hidden infoclip.
“We’re almost done,” Greg said, more to himself than to them. “At least...I hope so.”
“We’ll get it done,” Genevieve replied.
He nodded tightly. He could trust them. He had before and he would again. They would get the job done. Honestly, it was himself he was worried about. Greg was exhausted and his back was bugging him again, but he couldn’t just keep stopping to deal with it every time it started to bother him. He shouldered his rifle and broke right, Eve backing him up. Each two-person team disappeared into their chosen wing.
A network of offices and corridors awaited him. He sighed, tired of dealing with offices, and took the left corridor. At least this time he knew where he was going. The path they had to take was dangerous and their progress was slow. Open doors and floor-to-ceiling windows, typically broken out, lined the walls. Each one housed a potential threat. They both had to check every office as they passed. Generally, they were empty, but every now and then…
“Contact!”
Greg squeezed the trigger, putting a three-round burst in the dark center of a Shadow as it prepared to leap out of its nest and attack him. It had been lurking under a desk, bathed in darkness, and only its eyes had given it away. As he killed it, a cacophony of sounds erupted from all around them: Altered of every variety. Apparently the Shadow had been a loner, this place belonged to the things with Slugs in their chests.
Half a dozen Mutants and a trio of Harvesters stepped out of the offices that lined the walls. Growling in frustration, Greg sighted the first one and blew out its chest with a wall-placed shot. He was not in the mood for this shit.
