by Isaac Stone
15
Once again, the air crackled over them and something began to form in the air. Ash chambered a shell in his impact gun just to be on the safe side and looked up. She heard the rest of his crew do the same. They might be angry over the revelations of Barbara Ann, but something happened overhead they needed to address right away. Whatever it was, the image took a lot of power as it shot electrical bolts that grounded into the walls. Ash knew their armor would hold out against such discharges, though it didn’t make standing ready to fire any easier.
The image of a head formed over them. This time it wasn’t Haddo, but the contact Ash had with the corporation. Up until now, the communications weren’t so energy consuming. He assumed this had to have something to do with the power needed to pump a holographic signal inside an asteroid.
“We’ve got to talk, Ash,” the head said to him. “I need to have a one on one with you right away.” The head flashed a few times as if it had a hard time with the signal to him.
“It’s a little hard to do that right now,” Ash, informed him. “As you can see, I’m really not in any position to do a side chat.” The rest of the team starred up at the floating head.
“I have a solution to that problem,” the head told him. “Grasp Barbara Ann by her left hand. Take your glove off first; you will be instantly connected to the VR center where you were the last time. This should only take a few minutes.” Barbara Ann stepped forward to him.
“That’s all it takes?” Ash questioned him. “What about the rest of my crew?”
“They’ll be safe while we have our one on one. I am in contact with the local AI and both entrances to the vestibule where you are in are secure.”
So they are all in on this, Ash thought to himself. Good, I won’t have to feel guilty later about spending every bit of money I earn on this job to bring them all down.
Ash shrugged, pulled off his glove and grasped Barbara Ann’s outstretched hand.
“How long is this supposed to ….” he began to ask her and was transported to the same office room where he’d had the conference earlier.
Once again, Ash found himself in a chair next to a conference table. He wore the same suit he’d had on earlier. Even the collar felt starched against his neck. The only difference was his contact who was already seated across from him.
“Sorry, but I needed to pull you out quick,” Royce said to him. What Ash hated about these VR conferences was that everything appeared clean and shiny. The programmers who wrote the software, which ran it, left nothing to chance.
“Okay, get it over with,” Ash returned. “We need to get back to the last level if you expect to find Haddo. As far as I know, we’re talking in real time. I have people waiting for me and this stunt is costing you. Every minute I spend here is one less I can use to get Haddo.” He placed one hand on the table and admired how real it felt.
“Haddo is still Priority One, but this station must be destroyed, on that point I’m sure you will agree,” the man explained to him. “EAC wants Haddo very badly, but he must be taken at the proper time, which is a detail that has only recently been brought to my attention. As I am sure you know by now, there are more players at the table than either of us are aware of, lots of moving parts, and we are willing to compensate you for the additional complexities. Considering the sensitive information you now posses, I am sure you understand that discretion has a price tag, and it has been deemed an acceptable expense.”
“Well gosh thanks for not hanging us out to dry just yet,” Ash replied. “But you do know I have other clients and I can’t finance my company with one job, not matter how….”
“They’re increase the bonus tenfold over what they offered to pay you before.”
Ash was thunderstruck. They wanted this guy real bad. If he’d doubted some ulterior reasons for capturing Haddo before, they were now gone. You didn’t pay out that much cash for a common criminal, no matter how big of a fish he was supposed to be. This was higher than any reward he’d ever heard before. Bigger than the money four governments pooled together to pay for the capture of Ding Shao-Zu.
“Guess what he has, you really do want,” Ash told him. “Of course, I’ll need to see this all in writing, especially if I’m going to nuke an orbital as expensive as this place must be. I understand you have to leave some details out, but without a registered contract there’s nothing to keep another group of EAC mercs putting a bullet in the back of all our heads.”
Royce held up a form with a time stamp and notary mark. It spelled out the amount of money and how it was to be paid. Another stamp on it showed a duplicate copy to exist with the deeds of records on four different planetary colonies. It could be forged, it wasn’t impossible considering the resources he was witnessing EAC already willing to put into play here on the station. He decided to put his trust in their greed, if they saw paying Team Omega off as a better investment than simply bushwhacking them as soon as they left the station, then there was some value yet in keeping the troopers alive. Ash was certain this was all real. He reached out and signed it with a virtual palm print.
“You could hire twelve other teams for the cost of what you’re paying me,” Ash told the man.
“We already have Ash, you’re just one piece on the chess board, as it were,” said Royce, “But while our opponents play against pawns and rooks, its going to be Omega that delivers the check mate. This mess is bigger than just Inferno Station, and if we’re going to clean it up it will take all of us working together.”
“I guess that seals it,” Ash replied to him. “So, anything else I need to know?” He waited for a response.
“Yes,” the man told him. “Barbara Ann. She is corporate property as I’m sure you’ve realized by now, consider her EAC confirmed. So don’t get any ideas about slagging her just yet, as much as you might want to. She must be returned in working condition at the end of the mission.”
“Whatever you want, its your money. I’ll see your toy woman is returned to the corporation.”
“Good, you do that.” He turned to one side. “Okay, Barbara Ann, he’d ready to come back.”
The room faded and he found himself back in the vestibule with his crew. Barbara Ann’s hand was slowly pulling away. He didn’t know if she heard his comments, but it was likely she did. Her face was back in its unemotional mode it held most of the time they were in the Inferno station.
“So what did he want to talk about?” Costa was the first to ask him. The rest of the team stood there, still gripping their guns.
“Smoke and mirrors as usual, but they’ve pushed our wage up tenfold,” Ash replied. “Haddo is EAC priority one, but now they want him taken at the appropriate time, whatever that means. I’m sure Barbara Ann is going to help with that aspect. Oh, yeah and we can’t put a bullet through her anytime soon, EAC confirmed property, she’s part of the mission package. But we do get to nuke this station into next week, so there is that.”
He watched the look of disbelief on their faces.
“And don’t worry; I have the form signed and notarized that says they’ll pay it. I looked it over before I signed it, and its registered now, so we don’t have to worry about assassins,” He waited for the reaction, “Though I’m sure they could still just ensure that we get killed on mission, but that’s sort of on us isn’t it?”
“I’m speechless,” Kris spoke up. “They must want this guy more than any other criminal in history. If he’d got knowledge they want, it has to be galactic level material.”
“That is what I’d assume,” Ash told her. “Figure it must be something so great it will change all kinds of power balances. Plus they delayed us for the meeting, part of their timing ploy I suppose, but its time to get a move on.”
“Still no guarantee we’ll get it,” Makulah spoke. Ash could see the doubt in his face.
“One thing is certain,” Ash told them, “We’ll not see one bit of it if we don’t find him. Ok synth, what’s next?” He turned to Barbara Ann.<
br />
“Prepare yourselves,” she warned him. “There will be trouble ahead.”
The team did as she advised and steeled themselves for action.
“Oh, Ash, there is one final thing,” Barbara Ann said as she placed one hand on his arm.
“What is that?” he asked her.
“Do not call me ‘synth’ again. The next time you do, the likelihood of me failing to warn you of danger increases tenfold, not unlike your precious payday.” She let it sink in for a few moments.
“Alright, Barbara Ann, “he told her.
Ash pushed the door open after he turned the handle and found himself peering into a sea of red.
Once again, fires blazed out of control in front of him. Ash found himself standing on a cliff that overlooked a cavern of some kind. From what he could tell, this place was hollowed out with the rest of the station from the construction project done on the asteroid. Most of the fires were in progress down below him, a good hundred-foot drop. It was impossible to see what took place at the bottom from all the smoke that drifted to the top. He waited for the rest of Team Omega to catch up with him. Once again, Barbara Ann closed the door behind her as she entered.
“Guess this is hell for sure,” Costa spoke through his transmitter. “Temperature isn’t as bad as that oven we passed through, but I don’t think you’d last very long at a hundred and ten Fahrenheit unless you were in good shape.”
“Place looks like where my mom would threaten to send me,” Jack joined into the conversation. “Not going to be any easier to find our man in this place.” He walked over to the edge of the precipice where they stood and looked down.
“Guns shouldn’t give us any trouble at this temperature,” Theo pointed out. “They might if it gets much hotter though.”
“The temperature is constant,” Barbara Ann, told them. “You will find the worst of them down here. Rapists, killers, the thieves who had no issue stealing from children. Each level represents one manner of sin or the other, but these are the most vile. They are forced to endure a sampling of each level before this, to help them appreciate the truth that they have it the hardest.”
“I guess they would have a good idea what awaits them by now,” Costa pointed out. He could feel the heat from this place just by his observation of it.
“It’s made harder each time they are plucked from here and sent through the levels again,” she explained, “For the upper levels would seem like paradise compared to this.”
“So who is in charge down here?” Ash demanded from her. “It doesn’t seem like anyone is left running the station these days.” He began to walk down the steps.
“The station is slowly consuming itself, the automation is exceptional, though without fresh meat for the levels it will soon slid into emptiness and disrepair as it grows silent,” Barbara Ann told him. “Haddo’s arrival upset the balance, prisoners and security forces clashed, administrators either joined Haddo or died. The prisoners had an administrator until last month, but they killed him soon after Haddo’s arrival. The prison guards were slaughtered too. I believe they are burning their remains right now. This is an endgame scenario.”
Ash led them down the stairs that were built into the side of the cavern. There was no railing, although the stairs were wide enough to accommodate several people. The builders didn’t seem to have any safety concerns. Ash doubted they cared if a prisoner fell from the stairs.
It was the longest stairway they’d found so far. This one took them a good fifteen minutes to walk down to the landing. One of the problems was that it spiraled down from the wall. The stairs were carved into it.
“You know something,” Costa brought up. “There was an elevator at that first level, but I haven’t seen one since. Don’t you find it funny?”
Ash didn’t bother answering him. There were so many things that didn’t make sense in this place that he didn’t know where to start asking questions. If Barbara Ann was correct, it was built as the sick dream of some kind of psychopath or more likely an entire cabal of them who wanted to cause as much pain and suffering as possible. The entire station was a miniature hell built for some purpose beyond his ability to imagine it.
The emerged from the stairs carved into the walls of the cavern onto a stone floor. In front of them, they could see the cavern as it rose up into the air a hundred feet high. It wasn’t possible to tell how large it was since they couldn’t see all of it through the smoke and fires that burned everywhere. But in the shadows, they watched shapes move and regard them.
“Surprise, surprise,” Jack pointed out. “My visual assist doesn’t work. Anyone else have the same problem?”
The rest of them checked their ability to see through smoke and low light. Just as he had problems, so did they. Not one of them had a visual assist that functioned the way it was supposed to work.
Ash peered across the swirling smoke and blinding fire. In the distance, he could see some kind of building or post. It wasn’t large and consisted of one story. This had to be the administration center. There was a small, long building attached to it that resembled military barracks. It seemed the best direction to take. If Haddo wasn’t there, perhaps they could find a clue or unlock one of Barbara Ann’s coded memories to help keep them going.
“We’re going to make for that place,” he told his crew as he pointed in the direction of the building. “I don’t know what it is, but I can’t see us going anywhere else. Form a wedge and shoot anyone or anything that approaches, if the people down here have seen and experience what Barbara says they have, assume they’ll be driven so mad they’ll be instantly hostile.” He began to walk in its direction, his gun held out as it swept the floor in front of him.
16
The rest followed him closely. Fires burned everywhere. Some of the fire was started by burning wood and office furniture around them. Other fires burned from natural pits located close to the floor of the cavern. As of yet, they hadn’t seen any of the prisoners attempt to get close enough to become anything more than indistinct shadows in the burning gloom. They all seemed to be hiding, either from Team Omega or from something else. Still they marched in the direction of the building.
The path them took led them around several large boulders and obstructions. Whoever built the place didn’t want anyone to take a straight path and created passageways that turned or were blocked by rock formations. Ash was able to keep the building as their objective, but they weren’t able to move in a straight direction.
At one point, he saw men sitting on a rock who stared down at them. They weren’t too far away and he decided to ask them a few basic questions.
“Who is in charge down here?” he asked one of them. They didn’t respond so he turned the volume up on his external speaker until they acknowledged him.
“Ain’t you?” one man answered by way of a question.
“Devils,” a man sitting next to him said. “Devils all over this place. Fire burns. It’s hot, you got water?” His hair hung down in his face and he looked blank in the eyes.
“I want to find a man named Simon Haddo,” Ash yelled up at the men. “He has powers, moves like he owns the place. We might be able to help you if you have.” He kept his gun down not to frighten them.
“I know that guy, doors open for him,” the second man replied. “Devils do what he says. Got the warden. Got the guards too. Those bulls don’t run no more. Heh, heh.”
By now, Ash realized the conversation was going no place. “Let’s keep on moving,” he told the crew with him. “Maybe we can find something out at that building.” He turned around and started to walk in the direction they’d moved before the halt.
“Devil’s coming!” one of the men screamed. “We got to get out of here!” Ash watched as the two men scampered down the boulder to their level and slid between some rocks.
“Do what you want, mister,” the man said to him from the cubbyhole where he pushed himself. “That Devil doesn’t like those toy guns. The bulls found o
ut the hard way.”
Ash was about to ask the man what he meant when his external microphone picked up the sound of something very heavy coming in their direction. It had the profile of an armored tank, but they couldn’t see it from where they stood.
“Another battle droid?” Costa asked him over his transmitter. “I can’t get a match on it. Those men seemed pretty scared.” He couldn’t see it as the object was on the other side of the bend in the curve around some rocks.
“Costa, Makulah, Theo” Ash ordered. “You three down in front. Kris and Jason on me. Weapons ready, I don’t like this at all. Barbara Ann, whatever.”
“That would be a waste, Ash,” she told him as she brought gun up and cocked it with a precise move he’d only seen people who’d handled one for years employ. “You might need another gun. The last code unblocked a lot from my memory.”
“Okay, stand here with us, you to the far right. Nobody shoot until I give the order. We don’t know what’s about ready to come around the bend, but I don’t like the sound it makes.”
Through the smoke and fire came a head that was mounted onto a mechanical body. This body only had two legs, but it didn’t have any trouble maintaining balance with them. Ash watched as the rest of it came into view. He saw the head turn and look at them.
It was a mechanical Satan. Someone had built a goddamn battle droid out of synth flesh and metal to look like the Master of Evil. It even had two telescoping horns that rose above its head.
Mecha-Satan stood at least ten feet off the ground. It had double jointed legs that terminated in hooves. Ash figured it was built to stabilize itself somehow while maintaining the sick aesthetic. Its thickly muscled arms ended at the elbow in twin air-cooled automatic guns with belt feeder leading to the giant ammo drum affixed to the beast’s back. Its face had a permanent smile on it. Someone had etched muscle features into the armored torso for full effect. Best of all was the illuminated eyes and horns on the head. It appeared to be undamaged, probably because none of its quarry had the ability to shoot back.
