by Joel Babbitt
“Which plan should we execute, boss?” Langdon asked as he worked on his wounds.
Brutian looked at the bloodied, harried man sitting at the control counter. In times past Langdon had been one of his closest companions, and in other circumstances that might have counted for something. Of course Titus Brutian had a plan in mind, but lugging around a seriously injured liability wasn’t in the plan, so he lied to him instead.
“I think it’s an easy choice,” Brutian said. “I’ll put a suit of powered armor on an anti-grav sled and program the sled to head north at full speed to distract the solkin. Meanwhile I’ll get a pair of grav-sleds ready for us while you get our little surprise ready for the solkin for when they do eventually break into here. You run things up here until I give you the signal, then we both fly out east to the Backdoor and take that private yacht you sold me last year.”
“That’s what I’m talking!” Langdon said excitedly. “Then we fly to some remote planet where no one knows us. Those black accounts we set up should keep us in whiskey and women for the rest of our days.”
“Yes, yes they should,” Brutian said thoughtfully, picking up his weapon and hoisting it over one shoulder before heading out of the control room toward the vault.
* * *
In front of them the blast doors in the outer entryway of the vault began to grind closed.
“Run for it!” Colonel Alexander barked as both he and Captain Shannon Washington simultaneously sprinted toward the lowering blast door.
The door was almost three-quarters of the way down by the time they arrived. Alexander dove under, his slap plates grinding on the bare plasticrete floor as he slid into the far wall. Captain Washington came sliding in right beside him, smashing her rifle between the two of them and the wall with a sudden crack.
“Ah!” Washington cried as she sat up and pulled the pieces of her rifle from behind her.
“Better a rifle than you,” Alexander said as he stood up and examined a strap on his pack that had broken. “Or a strap than me, I guess.”
“Yes, sir,” Washington said, drawing her blaster pistol and setting it on Overcharge before stalking carefully down the hall.
Alexander just slung the pack over his back by its one strap, drawing his own blaster pistol in turn and following the captain. As she reached the next corner, which led out into the large central chamber of the bunker, she ducked back suddenly.
“Sir, we need to get hidden,” Washington whispered as Colonel Alexander came up beside her. “Titus Brutian just walked into the control room. He’s armed, armored, and looks unhurt. And it looks like he’s got the twin of Langdon’s special shield on his hip. All we have is blaster pistols, nanomer, and slap plates. We need to find some firepower.”
Alexander nodded, pointing to a stack of crates sitting not far into the room. “Let’s move to there. Then if we get a chance, we’ll make a run for that door,” he said, pointing at another vault-like door that stood open. The word ‘Armory’ was stenciled on the wall beside it.
Washington nodded, gripping her blaster pistol tightly and risking a quick glance toward the control room again.
As silently as they could, the pair rushed over behind the crates, and not a second too soon, for as soon as they had taken cover Titus Brutian emerged from the control room and headed for the blast door that led to the vault. Within moments the vault blast door was grinding its way reluctantly back into the ceiling.
“Now’s our chance,” Alexander muttered as the pair watched Brutian disappear into the vault, gun at the ready and obviously looking for them.
Silently, the pair made their way past the various stacks of crates to the open armory door. Within moments slap plates were replaced with heavy combat infantry plating, or HCIP, and blaster pistols were augmented by high-penetration snap rifles; down-sized rail guns essentially, that fired hyper-velocity slivers of metal. Very pricey weapons with limited ammo, but then they really only needed them for one purpose.
Racking a round in the chamber, Colonel Alexander looked into Shannon Washington’s eyes. He saw there the same determination, to conquer or die, that he felt as well. They were heavily armed and armored; it was time to go hunting, and top of the list was Titus Brutian.
Chapter Twenty Six
Rianna had no real armor and her blaster pistol had been fried in the EMP blast. All she had for protection was her knife, and though she was good with it, that certainly was not enough to stand against the contingent of solkin assassins that she had seen flying over not long before. But she didn’t plan on standing against them anyway; that wasn’t her style.
Now, as she stood scanning the lower portions of the backside of Brutian’s so-called ‘secret’ bunker, she smiled a wry smile. The specs of this place had actually sat unsecured on his personal home network. It had been a simple matter of running a search on the data she had sucked down when he’d visited Alyssa and the girls a couple of days before the disaster. Fortunately she’d thought to analyze it all before the disaster, as all her tech went dead with the EMP blasts.
Rianna shook her head at how easy it had been to find what she was looking for. Brutian was careless, arrogant, and some day that would get him killed. It had already lost him his colony.
Approaching the slightly shimmering foliage near the base of the hill, she put her hand right through the tall grass—then walked through the ground as though it wasn’t there, because it wasn’t. It was a simple enough deception, a holographic projection of a portion of hillside.
As she entered the landing pad area of the outer garage, her eyes adjusted to the dim light under the cover of the hologram. Looking around, she quickly noticed that the back door of the relatively small space was one large plasteel door with a rather complex looking biometric locking mechanism next to it.
Rianna stood looking at the lock, chewing her lip in thought as she pulled out a small set of tools from the pouch she wore on her hip and got to work on the device. Before long the casing gave way, then the wiring inside yielded to her expert ministrations. Inside of five minutes the lock was hers to control. Standing up and putting her tools away, she touched the two wires together and was rewarded with the quiet whoosh and white light of the garage door opening.
She looked around the large garage, counting several grav-sleds, a trio of jet quadcopters, and a pair of heavy skimmers, complete with heavy lasers on top. All of it was good equipment, and she was rather tempted to take one of the grav-sleds and bolt, but Rianna hadn’t come this far just to depart. She had a clear mission that she was determined to finish, one that was likely very time sensitive now that the solkin assassins had shown up.
Opening the door from the garage into the rest of the bunker, Rianna looked around the corner. Seeing nothing, she headed quickly down the corridor toward the far door. Suddenly, the light that was coming from under the far door was broken by a shadow. Looking around, she dove into the closest door, which happened to be a men’s room.
As Rianna moved to close the door, the far door to the corridor slammed open and Titus Brutian, dressed in a suit of powered armor, forced his way through, running at the door to the garage in his heavy armor, slamming through the door like a brick through a window. Behind him several rounds from a hyper-velocity rifle ricocheted off the walls, scattering and spinning off into oblivion as they spent their momentum on the plasticrete.
By the time Brutian was through the far door, Rianna had found cover behind an interior wall. But now, as she heard Brutian’s grav-sled powering up, she wondered who it was that was shooting at him. She knew solkin assassins used kiz’zit slicers, not snap rifles. Whoever it was, however, she knew she didn’t want to be seen.
As Rianna moved to close the door the rest of the way, the far door to the corridor slammed open and Colonel Alexander barreled through, carrying Shannon Washington’s limp form on his shoulders. Blood from the unconscious captain dribbled down his armor as he swept the corridor with haggard eyes before shuffling quickly down
the corridor. Rianna opened the door to the latrine, surprising Colonel Alexander and almost receiving a hyper-velocity round to the chest as a result.
“Rianna,” Alexander whispered hoarsely, sweat running down his face. “What are you doing here?”
“No time,” Rianna said. “Brutian went that way, he’s escaping on a grav-sled.”
“Did you see him? Are you sure he didn’t stop?”
“Yes, he’s still running. Here, leave her here with me,” Rianna said, an earnestness in her eyes that revealed a hidden loyalty. “You’ll never catch him with Shannon down like this. I’ll get her out.”
Alexander looked at Rianna as though he was searching her soul. He’d heard all the stories of what she had done, yet for some reason she was here in this bunker and she appeared to be the same Rianna he had known for ten years.
“You’re working under cover, aren’t you?” he said in a moment of sudden realization.
Rianna rolled her eyes. “Let’s just say she’ll be safe with me.”
Alexander didn’t have a choice. He doubted he’d make it very far with a wounded companion. Laying Captain Washington down in the entryway to the latrine, he helped carry her into the far stall before quickly turning to go. As he opened the latrine door, he turned and handed Captain Washington’s pack to Rianna.
“Here, she’s got a first-aid kit in there—keeps it well stocked. Also, there’s a blaster pistol and one last thermobaric grenade in there. It’s all she has left for weapons,” he said apologetically. “Don’t use the grenade unless you’ve got cover. Even then, make sure you throw it far.”
“Yes, yes,” Rianna pushed him out the door. “Go!”
Looking at her square, Colonel Alexander smiled. “Don’t try to take on the solkin. I don’t know what you’re doing here, but I can guess. Don’t go getting yourself and Shannon killed, Rianna, get out before the solkin discover the back door.” With that he turned and ran through the far door, while Rianna retreated to the back of the latrine to tend to her friend Shannon Washington.
* * *
Jim Ryker was no idiot. Even though his memory had been wiped, he was pretty certain that the woman with the long, raven-colored hair had in fact been his sister. He’d dug through the logs, checked his maps on his situence glasses and linker, and quickly figured out where his sister was heading. It was like picking up a novel half-way through, and having to go back and re-read snippets only of the first half of the book, but the appearance of the solkin commander told Ryker clearly that he had absolutely no time to waste. His sister was surely in trouble, if she was moving toward the bunker that they had both heard about from her friend Alyssa. Now was a time of action.
Though the bunker itself was easy enough to find, what with all the solkin gathering there, the issue that Ryker had was that he really didn’t know how to get into the bunker, and the gathering host of solkin assassins, paradroid suppressors, and a solkin commander at the front gate to this bunker clearly told him he wasn’t going to get in that way—and his sister wasn’t getting out that way either. He’d been lucky enough to not be spotted as he’d climbed the bunker to get a look at them.
Where she was something of a mystery. He’d found the mining cart in a ravine directly behind the grassy hill that was the bunker’s outer cover, so he knew she had to be here somewhere, and there was nothing else here but the bunker, so he assumed that she was inside. But how had she gotten in?
Then, as Ryker was standing looking at the lower part of the hillside, suddenly a grav-sled appeared flying at top speed out of the hillside. A man in powered armor was piloting the craft. Behind him came a jet quadcopter, probably twenty seconds later. The pilot of that vehicle, however, Ryker instantly recognized. It was none other than Colonel Marshal Alexander.
Running to the point in the hillside where the two vehicles had emerged, he wasn’t surprised to find that a large square of earth and grass was, instead, a simple holographic projection.
Ryker drew his Mk-12 pistol and entered the garage carefully.
* * *
“Boss, is that you?” Josh Langdon called out from the control room not twenty feet away from where Rianna had stepped on a loose floor plate that had creaked and groaned, giving away her approach.
She drew Shannon’s blaster pistol and stepped quickly toward the control room door.
“You get ‘em both?” Langdon called out again as Rianna swiftly and silently bounded up the stairs.
“Don’t move, Josh,” Rianna commanded as she stepped into the doorway, Mk-12 leveled at the man at the command console for the bunker.
Langdon slowly raised his hands and turned around. When he saw who it was, he just smiled. “Thought I’d see you again,” he said.
“Wish I didn’t have to see you again,” Rianna countered.
“Ah, come now. You and I were close at one time, lovers even,” Langdon said.
Rianna shook her head and scoffed. “Close, yes. Lovers, only in your dreams. I saw you for who you really are long before you turned traitor on my uncle.”
“Come now, Ree, now that Mark’s gone, surely you get a little lonely at night,” Langdon wheedled at her. “Why, you and I could still be lovers. It’s not too late.”
Rianna almost shot him then. The reference to her dead husband almost pushed her over the edge, but she still had a mission to do, and that mission required Josh Langdon to be alive.
“Josh, I’ll say this once. You are going to provide me the locations and details of the production facilities that produced all the contraband items you provided to Titus Brutian. You’re also going to provide me the shipping mechanisms you’ve used and the ties into Stellar Corp proper. If you don’t do this, I will kill you.”
Langdon stared passively at Rianna as she listed off her demands. Lowering his hands down to the arms of his swivel chair, he simply started shaking his head.
“I’m warning you, Josh. Don’t make me shoot you.”
“I don’t think you have the guts to shoot me, girl,” Josh said matter-of-factly.
The sudden eruption of a blaster bolt and the sudden shock of being shot point-blank in his unarmored leg knocked Langdon to the ground where he wallowed about for several seconds before grabbing for his own blaster pistol.
Rianna was on him in an instant, stepping with the heel of her boot on his hand, then pulling his pistol out of its holster and tossing it across the room.
“You shot me!” Langdon cried out, his face smashed against the floor.
Rianna moved back a couple of steps to get out of his reach.
“I can’t believe you shot me!”
“Josh, the data or I’ll shoot you again,” Rianna stood firm.
Langdon started to climb back into his seat, disbelief still evident on his once-handsome features.
“And Josh, don’t think Titus Brutian is coming to save you,” Rianna said, “so there’s no use in stalling. Brutian already took a grav-sled toward the Backdoor. He seems to have left you all by yourself.”
Langdon’s look alternated between one of pain and one of disbelief. He immediately called up the video display and searched the facility for any sign of Brutian. There were a couple of cameras that were out, but the one in the garage clearly showed that one grav-sled and one jet quadcopter were both gone.
“Josh, I need the data,” Rianna said, then shot another laser bolt into the ground at his feet, causing Langdon to jump.
“Okay! Okay! I’ll get you the data!” he cried. “But whatever you think of me,” he said as he started pulling up data file after data file and dumping them in a folder, “think of your own kind.”
“What do you mean?” Rianna asked, pistol still trained on Langdon.
“Well, whether you want to betray all the humans and kiz’zit who are producing these solkin-knock-off items or not is your choice, but Stellar Corp is just a pass through for the items. You see, Rianna, war is coming to the galaxy, war like you’ve never seen it. The Master Race is failing.”<
br />
Rianna shook her head. What he was saying was heresy. No one in their right mind believed that the Master Race was anything less than the absolute power in the galaxy.
“Soon, Ree, the Solkin will be too strong for the Master Race to contain,” he said, leaning forward to look her in the eyes. “They will fall. The real question is, who will be positioned to fill the void when the Master Race falls? Who will be able to stand against the Solkin Overlords when that time comes, or will we miss this awesome opportunity to throw off our chains and become our own masters?”
Hearing a beep behind him, Langdon took out two small chips the size of thumbnails. “This one,” he said, handing her a blue chip, “holds the evidence you need to take down Stellar Corp here on this backwater planet, if that’s what you want to do.”
Rianna took it without taking her blaster pistol off of Langdon.
“And this one,” Langdon said, holding up a red chip, “contains all the darknet contact info on the organizations and locations of the manufacturing facilities that made all the contraband I sold to Brutian. Me, I don’t care what you do with it. I’m going far away from here and am never looking back. But if you care what happens in the upcoming war, I would recommend that you destroy that chip.”
Rianna took the second chip and began backing away without a word.
“Oh, that’s it, huh? Not even going to say thank you? Well, I guess it’s time to blow this joint, then,” he said as he turned around, lifted a clear plasteel cover on the control console, and punched down a large, red button.
Instantly, claxons blared loudly and red lights swirled around. “Self-destruct sequence set,” a distinctly mechanical voice said. “Five minutes until fusion bomb is detonated. You must reach a safe distance in five minutes. Starting count-down. Four fifty-nine, four fifty-eight…”
