by P. R. Adams
Finally, Pasqual slid his tools into his jacket pocket and resumed his position, weapon ready. With Bhat at his side, Rimes edged toward the door, then held up three fingers.
Bhat centered his CAWS-5 on the door.
Rimes squatted and counted down, then opened the door and ducked out of Bhat’s arc of fire.
The door was clear. Lights reflected dimly off once-polished walls.
Rimes brought his weapon up and scanned for movement. “Gold, this is Green. Entry is clear. Power is on.” He was sure his pulse was drowning out his words.
“Repeat, Green.”
Rimes looked inside the entry again. He hadn’t imagined it. “The power is on.”
“Proceed, Green.”
Rimes waved Bhat and Chung into the room. They took positions covering the entries, and Rimes sent the rest of the team in.
Inside, Rimes’s BAS overlaid the building map in a pale green wireframe.
According to Intel, the room had been a processing center for the main research group. About thirty cubicles still held terminals and communications units—bulky, dust-covered anachronisms that must have been outdated even when the facility was active.
The room’s northern doorway opened into an east-west corridor, with access to the second floor through a stairwell. Three north-south corridors led off the east-west corridor, one to the far left, one almost straight ahead, and one to the far right.
Their target was the left corridor.
“Bhat, secure that stairwell door. Chung, cover him. Orr, watch that right corridor, Pasqual, the central corridor. Wolford, left corridor. Go.”
Rimes waited until everyone was in position, then advanced toward the end of the far-left corridor. He stopped shy of the corridor and waited. Wolford signaled all-clear. A moment later, Orr and Pasqual did the same.
Rimes signaled Chung forward. Once Chung was in place, Rimes glanced down the left corridor. He signaled for Wolford to hold position, then moved forward. Chung followed.
The overlay showed six doors along the corridor’s length: four to his right, two to his left. The overlay of the northernmost left-hand door flashed.
Based off the room size and location, it would be a fairly typical T-Corp operations center. However, unlike most metacorporations, which located operations centers in basements or windowless interior rooms, T-Corp preferred operations rooms to have two outside walls. There was no way to know why; T-Corp was one of the few metacorporations the military hadn’t cracked.
Rimes kept his back to the wall and moved quietly down the corridor. Drywall and lightweight aluminum couldn’t stop a high-powered round, but it still provided some sense of security.
At the room, Rimes reached for the doorknob but stopped at the last second, when he realized the door wasn’t completely closed.
“Gold, door to target is ajar,” he whispered.
“Proceed with caution, Green.”
Rimes signaled the rest of the team forward. They arrived a few seconds later. Wolford took up position watching the team.
Pasqual and Chung brought their carbines up. Once again, Bhat positioned himself in front of the door, shotgun ready.
Bhat looked around quickly. “Anyone know any good knock-knock jokes?”
Rimes counted down from three with raised fingers.
On one, he shoved the door in.
The door hit resistance, and he stumbled.
Without losing a beat, Bhat squat-walked into the room, swinging the weapon barrel in a semicircle, but there was no movement. The others followed.
They froze, heads sweeping to take everything in.
It took them all a moment to absorb what they were seeing—a dozen bodies spread around the room, their backs arched, their faces contorted, and their fingers curled in agony.
“NBC,” Rimes called over the communication channel, trying to keep his voice from betraying his near panic.
He unfurled the thin plastic shielding from the top of his helmet, wrapping it around the optics shield and quickly pressing the shielding material to his coat to seal off his face and throat. He retrieved his gloves from a pants pocket, pulling them on as he watched his team seal up.
The plastic shielding’s micro-filter would block ninety percent of known weaponized materials, allowing them to breathe in relative safety for twenty-four hours.
They each had atropine injectors for nerve agents, antibiotic and anti-viral cocktail injectors for bacterial and viral agents, and a broad-based aerosol formula for most other chemical agents. Vaccinations and immunity boosters provided defense against common, preventable threats.
But, depending on what they’d been exposed to, all those defenses still meant they only had a slim chance of survival.
8
21 February 2164. Sundarbans, India.
* * *
Rimes looked around the operations room. The T-Corp operatives had died terrible deaths.
As if there could be a good death. I’m going to see this in my dreams.
“Green, confirm NBC,” Moltke demanded, some concern understandably leaking through.
Pasqual was already testing surfaces and corpses with wipes taken from a hip pocket.
“NBC confirmed,” Rimes said. “We have … eleven … thirteen … fourteen dead. No wounds. Indications of rapid reaction to vector.”
Pasqual set aside the last of a dozen wipes, shaking his head at Rimes.
“Negative on testing,” Rimes said.
Moltke was silent for a minute. “Hold position. Radio check. Any symptoms?”
“Red One, all clear.”
“Red Two, all clear.”
Rimes responded when the other teams were done. No symptoms among eighteen men, no reaction on any of the wipes, no sign of residue or particulate matter—but he was looking at fourteen corpses of seemingly healthy men. Whatever had killed them was fast-acting and left no detectable signature.
“Hold position for five minutes. Green, estimate the time the agent took to act.”
Rimes considered the corpses. Some were still holding weapons. One had collapsed over a portable computer array; another, the one Rimes had shoved aside upon entry, had been headed for the door.
“Seconds.” Rimes shook his head. “Or hours, possibly.”
It was possible—although unlikely—that prolonged exposure had caused the reaction. But if it had been prolonged exposure, differences in immune systems and exposure levels should have led to different reaction times. No, they died in seconds and almost certainly within seconds of each other.
“Correction. It must have been within seconds.”
“Green, secure the roof. Red, hold until my signal, then move to Ops. See if you can retrieve data from any of the equipment there. Blue, take up Red’s position on my signal. Maintain NBC posture.”
Rimes led his team to the stairwell door, pausing until Bhat disarmed the alarm he’d set on it. They took the stairs in a staggered line.
Whatever killed them, it has to be something new, something we can’t detect. Maybe it’s outside the known arsenals. It’s not the virus that hit the Eurica teams. Those had extremely high temperatures, connective tissue disintegration, hemorrhaging. That took hours, days.
That wasn’t a weapon. This was.
On the roof, Rimes deployed his team to the corners, with Orr covering the door. Then, from the north wall, he scanned the research building windows for any threats.
After a moment, he reported the team in position.
Perspiration rolled down his face. He did his best to blink it away.
Moltke ordered the Red team in to secure the operations building and Blue to remove the corpses before redeploying to the building to the northwest.
After several minutes, Rimes watched Kirk and the Blue team spread out across the other rooftop, less than fifty meters away.
There was still no sign of any other activity in the compound.
“Barlowe’s downloading data from the T-Corp computer,” Mart
inez reported.
“Barlowe, can you give me an estimate?” Moltke asked.
Barlowe clucked into his earpiece. “It’s taken some damage, Captain. It’ll be a while.”
“Is it intact?”
Barlowe clucked again. “I think there’s a chance I can recover it.”
A few heartbeats passed, then Moltke responded. “Red, leave Barlowe on the computer work. Take the rest of your team to the research building. We’ve got eleven operators unaccounted for.”
Rimes opened a private channel to Moltke. “Gold, did you say leave Barlowe in there alone?”
“Roger, Green,” Moltke said with a hint of irritation. “Keep your focus.”
Barlowe’s not ready for this.
Rimes tracked the Red team’s movement through his scope, running his sights ahead of them in an arc. He stopped suddenly twenty meters shy of the research building, where a small structure stood in a clearing that had long ago been a parking lot.
He’d seen something.
“Movement, twenty meters southeast of research building,” Rimes said calmly. “One Tango.” He caught another flash of movement in his limited peripheral vision. “Two. Two Tangos.”
“Red, take cover,” Moltke ordered. “Green, identify Tangos.”
“Lost visual,” Rimes said. He looked to his right. Chung, positioned at the northeastern corner, looked up from his scope, signaled there were three targets, but he’d lost sight of them.
“Update. Three Tangos. Lost visual at the structure in the southeast of the parking lot. They were moving fast.”
“Blue?”
“Negative, no visual.”
“Red, increase spacing and interval. Bringing Horus in for a closer look.”
Rimes listened for Horus’s telltale hum. Moltke was understandably reluctant to risk their eye in the sky, but the situation justified it.
Rimes scanned the structure in the clearing again. The rain had completely stopped, and he was slowly cooking inside the sealed suit.
Another flash of movement.
Rimes fired. “Red, eastern flank, down!”
The target sprinted first north, then east, then disappeared completely behind a stunted tree. Almost as if he’d sensed what was coming.
Horus’s hum became audible as it bathed the field in ultraviolet light that their optics picked up. Moltke hissed a curse under his breath as the high-resolution imaging system identified potential threats.
“Red, fall back to Ops,” Moltke said hurriedly. “Blue, fall back to Ops, double time. Green, cover them. Focus attention on north and northeast. Six Tangos, closing.”
Chung opened fire, a controlled burst of three rounds. Wolford joined him a moment later. Rimes saw a blur of movement headed for a trailing Red team member—Martinez.
There was no time to shout a warning.
Rimes sighted and squeezed off a three-round burst, striking center mass.
The target staggered, slowed. It had a knife in one hand, its other hand struggled to un-holster a pistol. It was within a meter and still closing.
Martinez turned, put another burst at point-blank range into the target. It fell.
“Tango down,” Martinez said.
He’d been a heartbeat away from a body bag and seemed completely unfazed.
Six rounds to take down one target. What the hell?
They used specialized rounds that would take a normal man down with one hit, two at the outside. Then again, a normal man couldn’t move as quickly as what he’d just seen.
Genies. We could really use the latest BAS upgrades.
Moltke fed Horus’s imaging into everyone’s optics. Two targets were advancing on Rimes’s building from the east, while Chung and Wolford were maintaining a steady cover fire. Two more were moving toward Blue’s building to the northwest.
With one down, that left another unaccounted for.
Rimes moved to the west wall, scanning Horus’s targeting feeds. Pasqual and Bhat were doing the same. They found one of the targets as it sprinted toward the north door of Blue’s building and opened fire, driving the target back to cover.
“Blue, target advancing at high speed on your building from the northwest,” Rimes said.
He let off a burst in front of the target as it cleared cover. A second burst and the target staggered. A third and it dropped.
“Tango down.” Rimes continued scanning as he reloaded. “Gold, this is Green. I can’t find the sixth Tango.”
“One second, Green.”
Horus gained altitude and increased UV output. Digital signals replayed the last minute on Rimes’s optical display. Two signals stopped where the targets had been dropped.
Rimes surveyed the display, identifying the two targets Chung and Wolford had engaged, and the one Pasqual and Bhat had pinned down. Finally, he spotted the sixth. He cursed.
“Blue, Tango in your building.”
As if in response to his call, Rimes heard gunfire. He spotted along the other building’s eastern wall, looking through windows for any possible targets. He couldn’t see anything. The gunfire stopped.
“Blue, status,” Moltke said calmly. “Blue, report.”
There was no response. Rimes brought up a window with the Blue team’s vitals. One was dropping fast, the others were flat-lined.
“Their vitals—” Rimes said.
“I can see their vitals, Green,” Moltke said, his voice emotionless. “We’ve lost Blue.”
A crack of gunfire followed by a wet gurgle caught Rimes’s attention. He turned. Wolford collapsed backward from the southeastern corner of the wall, clutching his throat.
Lewis!
Rimes ran across the roof and took Wolford’s position.
The target was hidden behind a low cinderblock wall, part of a drainage system.
Rimes pulled a grenade from his belt, waited a beat, pulled the pin, and threw it to the right of the wall.
Before the grenade detonated, the target moved to the left—into Rimes’s sights.
Three bursts and the target went down.
“Tango down,” Rimes said.
Gunfire erupted to his left.
“Tango down,” Chung said.
Rimes signaled for Chung to move to the western wall, then checked Wolford. There was a pulse, but it was weak. Wolford’s eyes looked at something far away for a few seconds before closing. Blood spurted from his ruined throat, pooling on the rooftop.
Rimes closed his eyes for a moment. “Wolford’s down.” Rimes took Wolford’s grenade and hoped he wouldn’t have to leave the body.
He hoped there wouldn’t be more.
Silence settled over the communication channel for a moment.
Rimes scanned the parking lot, looking for flashes of more-than-human speed.
The silence was broken by an almost sheepish announcement: “Red in Ops. Room is secure.”
Rimes moved back to the west wall. Pasqual and Bhat still had their target pinned down, but were no closer to eliminating it. Rimes signaled Chung; a moment later, a grenade landed on either side of the target, forcing it out of cover. Pasqual and Bhat dropped it.
“Tango down,” Pasqual said.
Bhat looked at Rimes. “Please tell me that’s the last one?”
Rimes held up a finger and pointed to the building where the Blue team had been slaughtered. The Tango was still in the building, possibly escaping out of sight to the west. It was equally possible that it had circled and was now inside the building somewhere below them.
“Gold, this is Green. Permission to engage final target.”
Rimes signaled Pasqual and Bhat for a grenade and directed them to observe the northwestern building while Orr moved to cover Wolford’s position. Once confident Orr was going to be okay working next to Wolford’s corpse, Rimes slung his carbine over his back and took Bhat’s assault shotgun.
“Granted, Green,” Moltke said, finally.
Rimes tapped Chung, and the two descended to the first floor. Rimes
reviewed Horus’s image overlay, relieved to see the sixth target hadn’t yet exited Blue’s building.
They were halfway to Blue’s building when shots rang out. Glass shattered, and the sound of Horus’s motor changed: the target had hit the UAV. A moment later, the motor gave out completely, and Horus crashed to the ground.
“Horus is down,” Moltke said, with more emotion than when he’d lost the entire Blue team.
Rimes reached the building first, pressing tight against its wall. He had the assault shotgun at the ready, hoping the greater area it covered would compensate for having to fight indoors. Pasqual and Bhat suddenly opened fire, their bullets shattering windows and ricocheting off the wall a few meters from Rimes.
The firing intensified. Bullets thudded and bounced nearby. Rimes turned, saw the target round the corner, heading for him. Rimes got a shot off, clipping the target. Chung fired and missed.
The target was on Rimes then, a flurry of blows—fist and knife, punching and slashing.
Rimes gave ground, letting the fists land, trying to redirect or block the knife with the shotgun. Blood trickled from wounds on his forearms and the backs of his hands.
Rimes managed a lucky swing with the shotgun’s stock, stunning the target. He followed it up with a kick to the abdomen, getting a knife in his thigh for his troubles.
But the kick put room between him and the target.
Pasqual and Bhat opened fire again.
The target shuddered, then dropped.
Rimes brought the shotgun butt down hard into the target’s throat, then followed up with a brutal stomp on the target’s face.
“Tango down,” Bhat reported.
9
24 February 2164. USS Sutton.
* * *
The world was divided into two spaces: quarantine, and everything beyond.
A plexiglass wall—thick, impassable, suffocating—defined the limit of his freedom. The smudge-free wall teased him, allowing him to imagine he wasn’t a prisoner for whole seconds at a time. Beyond it, three nurses in fully sealed hazmat suits focused on another round of blood work.
