“No. There’s no sadism or pleasure taken in the butchering. They did this because they are desperate and running out of food. The rest of the brutality is meant to deter any rescuers or security personnel. This was staged for our benefit,” Ezra One stated sadly, beckoning for the squad to follow him.
“So what?” Athos One replied, folding his arms.
“If they are running out of food, and they’ve resorted to cannibalism, they’ll have little choice but to negotiate if they can’t get through to general population,” Calvin One said, stepping out from the squad to follow Ezra.
“What if they have more than one Warden?” Athos One asked.
“Before we lost sat-signal, it looked as though all but two were accounted for, either having been confirmed killed or evacuated. Worst case scenario, they have two and we have to rescue or use our contingency plan to keep them out of the hands of convicts,” Ezra One replied.
“There is no resupply, and we’re low on ammunition,” Athos One stated, tapping the magazine on his rifle.
“We’ll have to go hands on,” Calvin One replied, shouldering his rifle and pulling out a knife.
“The rest of us aren’t as strong as you and Ezra,” Athos One complained.
“Then, stay behind us,” Ezra One said, heading for the pumping station entrance.
Ezra burst into the corridor beyond, bringing his claws across the throat of a convict standing outside. Two more raised pipe wrenches and cutters, calling out as they did. Calvin stepped over Ezra, taking a wrench to the shoulder as he brought his knife around in a wide arc. One convict sank to his knees trying to hold his guts in while the other fell backward, only the haft of his cutter remaining in his hand.
“How many are there ahead?” Ezra One growled, grabbing the convict by the throat.
Athos One and the rest of the squad moved quietly into the corridor as Ezra One attempted to wring some intelligence from their captive. The convict only struggled, shaking his head back and forth. Calvin One stepped in taking the convict by the wrist and holding his knife up to one of his fingers.
“Wait, look at his neck tat,” Athos One said, grabbing Calvin One by the shoulder.
“What are we looking at?” Ezra One asked, gazing at the ink on the convict’s neck.
“D-block, Silent Six gang. He’s a made guy. He won’t have a tongue,” Athos One replied.
“Yeah, but he’s got fingers, at least for a little bit longer. How many?” Calvin One said, pressing his knife against the convict’s index finger.
The convict held up four fingers and then smiled, putting his missing tongue and half his teeth as well on display. Calvin One reversed his grip on the convict pulling him up into a sleeper hold. It took less than five seconds for him to get choked out.
“Let’s go,” Calvin One said, dropping the convict like a rag doll to the floor.
The squad moved quickly along the service tunnel with only a pair of them at the ready with rifles. The rest drew their knives or would rely on their claws if a fight found them. Five hundred meters later, they came to a grating that was nearly twelve feet above.
“That’s the pedestrian walkway used to move between the various facilities offices,” Ezra One whispered, pointing upward.
Calvin One gave Ezra a boost, hurling him upward toward the grating. Ezra’s clawed hand quietly clacked into the gaps and held fast while his other hand set about working a multi-tool. Four bolts later and the grate dropped into Calvin One’s waiting hands below. Ezra One then dropped a rope, securing one end to the hand railing in the walkway above.
“I’m sick of climbing,” Athos One complained, as he exited the grating into the walkway.
“There will be more, but it’ll be all downhill after this,” Ezra One said, patting Athos One on the arm.
Corpses littered in the walkway as they got closer to the facilities office. Most were not convicts and the blood pooling around them had not yet begun to dry. Ezra One stopped at each, checking for a pulse before moving on, the rest of the squad following solemnly along behind him. Whatever had killed these people had literally crushed the life out of them, their wounds already turning a deep purple around the edges.
“This is bad,” Ezra One said, kneeling near one of the fallen security guards.
“You think? We should have evacuated,” Athos One complained, looking toward the ceiling.
“One of them has a crusher and an exo-skeleton. They don’t look like they’ve had much practice with it given the damage they did to the walls up ahead,” Ezra One remarked, pointing to the damaged lighting down the corridor.
“It sounds like even more reason to turn back,” Athos One argued.
Ezra One turned around and dropped the magazine from his rifle, then slowly thumbed the bullets out into his hand. Athos One looked on as he did, wondering why the diminutive scout was counting rounds. Ezra then handed Athos One the ammunition.
“Calvin One, two others, and myself from the squad are going to distract the individual with the exo-skeleton. Everyone else is going to lay down a single round to keep the rest distracted,” Ezra One explained.
“And me?” Athos One asked, incredulous.
“The exo-skeleton will be outfitted for mining, so the back won’t be well armored and could even be just a roll cage. You’re a better shot than anyone. While Calvin One and I distract the pilot, get around behind them and put some rounds into them,” Ezra One said, looking back to the squad.
Athos One opened his mouth to object, but the plan was pretty sound. Calvin One had the strength and endurance to go a round or two with someone in an exo-skeleton, but he wouldn’t last long. Everyone in the Drone team would have to do what they were supposed to do with pinpoint timing and coordination.
“If you’re wrong about the exo-skeleton being lightly armored on the back, we’ll all die,” Athos One said, thumbing the rounds into his own magazine.
“No, only Ezra One and I need be lost if things go wrong. If you don’t have a shot on the pilot, save your ammunition and flee,” Calvin One said, thumbing the edge on his knife.
“Everyone clear on what they need to do? We should be close enough to the surface to be able to check in soon,” Ezra One asked.
The other Drones in the team nodded and readied their rifles. It would be another forty meters before they came to a threshold where two blast doors had been pried open. There was a loading dock beyond and a pair of ruined overhead doors hanging by only a single roller or two. A concrete ramp went up beyond that to the Martian colony beyond. Off to the right was a single service elevator and a door allowing access to the stairs.
Ezra One took out his communication harness and put it on, slipping it over his helmet and pressing in an earpiece. It took a moment for the satellite link to be established but his heads up display came to life a second after he was live on the network. According to the reports filed by other teams, it was likely only one or two of the Wardens still lived. No team had made contact at the facilities offices and the Warden on duty there was presumed to be alive and possibly in enemy hands.
The other Drones pressed in against the wall, using the threshold around the wrecked blast doors as cover. As they took up positions, Ezra One softly tapped out his report on the mic, being careful to list his location and the number of active Drones. It was a long thirty seconds before confirmation came back to act. They were to get the Warden out, or use the contingency plan to keep the sally ports from being opened to general population.
They headed for the stairs, moving as quietly as possible. The first floor was filled with tear gas, the silent alarms likely having been tripped. They slipped onto the second floor and began going office to office down a wide hallway divided by broad planters festooned with plants and flowers. Between every office hung a painting or a flickering monitor. The offices
proved to be empty save for some terrified office personnel barricaded in the break room.
The building had been built into the penal colony wall itself, a bulwark of solid rock that hadn’t been mined out for the purpose of keeping the convicts in. As a result, the building only had windows on one side. Ezra One stopped in a corner office and gazed out into the tangled weave of tram-tubes and cylindrical buildings that made up the Martian colony. Fires burned in the narrow streets below, and he could see the shadows of people lying motionless around the entrances to a clinic not far away.
“They went for a clinic. Some of them could be rocking speed cocktails or worse,” Ezra One whispered.
“Third floor?” Calvin One asked.
Ascending the last flight of stairs, Ezra One came to a locked door. It was heavy gauge steel, and he couldn’t pull the mechanism apart. Calvin One didn’t have better luck, even being stronger, so instead he knocked. They looked at each other in wide-eyed horror, but a moment later someone pushed the door from the outside.
“What? You forget your key again?” A convict peered out to the stairwell.
Calvin One grabbed him by the face, closing his vice-like hands around his mouth and pulled hard, knocking the door inward. Ezra One grabbed it before it struck the railing, but the convict’s rifle clattered to the floor. Reacting instinctively, Calvin One tossed the convict over his shoulder and went in, not bothering to watch him free fall three stories to the basement.
There were a dozen convicts armed with cutters and handguns inside, and a single woman in a yellow jumpsuit operating an orange exo-skeleton fitted with a mining crusher. They turned toward the large Drone somewhat stunned at first, giving Calvin One a chance to dive for the planter along the middle of the aisle. Gunfire broke out, tearing the planter to pieces and sending up plumes of dried earth into the air.
The Drone team slipped through the door, sending a single volley of shots toward the convicts. Some of them fell, but the others fired back, hitting walls, tasteful art, monitors, and Drones. Cries of pain filled the hallway as Ezra One darted toward the woman in the exo-skeleton. As he ran past her, he brought his claws across several hydraulic cables at her back. The fluid came out at such a high velocity it battered convicts to the ground nearby tearing through clothing and flesh.
“You little...” the convict bellowed, bringing the exo-skeleton around so she could use the crusher on the tiny Drone.
The crusher came down, its mechanism engaging with a terrific racket destroying the floor and nearby walls as sonic destruction rushed forward from a narrow barrel in front. Ezra One grabbed at his ears and leapt into the air, unseen force fracturing his arm and collarbone. His back met with an interior office window before he finally came to rest on the floor of an empty office.
Athos One breathed easily as he waited for the right moment to take his shot. As the crusher engaged, he could see the barrel of his rifle bounce in time with the sonic havoc it was releasing in the opposite direction. As Drones and convicts met in hand to hand combat and exchanging small arms fire around him, he focused in on the emergency hatch situated amidst a tangle of hydraulic cables and actuators. Two shots rang out, Athos One double tapping the trigger.
The exo-skeleton staggered and fell, taking a wall with it. The huge factory orange mechanism began to spasm as the neural link with the pilot went dead, powerful limbs rotating in odd directions. Calvin One cleared the gap, swinging his powerful arms in a wide arc sending convicts flying in every direction. Battering down an office door with one of his adversaries, he stepped into the office where Ezra One lay on the floor.
“Status?” Calvin One asked, grabbing Ezra One by the harness.
“Alive, but mostly deaf and very bruised,” Ezra One replied.
“Serves you right, we were supposed to distract her together,” Calvin One joked, pulling Ezra One up over a shoulder.
“I hate Mars,” Ezra One replied.
The other Drones had triumphed over the remaining convicts but it had cost them dearly. Athos One knelt down beside Avery One as she took her last breath. The grievously wounded Avery One wept as she struggled to breath, Athos One taking her by the hand to steady her. Her reflective grey eyes closed for the last time as her brothers and sisters gazed downward. The few convicts who survived wouldn’t for long, the hallway growing quiet as raspy breathing slowly ceased. Athos One stood up and checked his rifle while the others looked for signs of the Warden.
“Still want to go to extraction?” Calvin One asked, setting Ezra One down on a couch outside one of the offices.
“No. I don’t think I could kill enough of them now. We should make the red planet a little redder,” Athos One growled, watching Avery’s lifeless hand fall from his own.
“Those feelings... it is how we are engineered. We were created to be close, like a family. We feel the deaths of every Drone a little more than a human would. It makes us a more cohesive team, but only if we don’t let those feelings get in the way of the mission,” Ezra One said, after catching his breath.
“Right, okay, let’s find the Warden. Calvin, can you carry Avery? I don’t want to leave her behind and...”
“You need both hands to work a rifle,” Calvin One replied, picking up Avery One and slinging her over his shoulder.
At the end of the hall was the Warden’s office, the door shot through several times from the inside. A pair of dead convicts lay in a pool of blood outside. Ezra One took a quick peak in through one of the bullet holes then ducked back around the threshold.
“Warden, we’re an extraction team sent to get you out,” Ezra One said, loud enough the occupants of the office could hear.
“He’s telling the truth,” a woman’s voice came from within.
There was some commotion inside the office as furniture was moved out of the way. After a few moments the deadbolt on the door slid to the side and it swung open. The Warden was a middle-aged man, dressed in business casual. He had a shotgun and a bandolier of shells over one shoulder. Behind him was a slender Drone, dressed like the subterranean variety from Earth. The both looked exhausted and scared.
“Warden Peasely, at your service. This is my assistant, Chelsea Six,” the Warden said, introducing himself.
“Six? There aren’t any Six. Are there?” Athos One remarked.
“I didn’t think so,” Calvin One said, smiling slightly.
“The Six is for Psychics, yeah?” Ezra One asked.
Chelsea Six nodded, her eyes darting around nervously.
“They’re coming,” she said, looking out toward one of the windows in an adjoining office.
Ezra One walked in and peered out and down to the street below. He could see a large group of convicts making their way toward the building. Standing still in the street was a man the convicts seemed to be avoiding, going around him like water passing a stone in a stream. He was smoking a cigarette and Ezra could see he was wearing a jacket and some sort of leather shoes or boots. Before he could pull out his viewfinders, the man vanished down a side street.
“Did you see that?” Ezra asked, turning to Athos One.
“Yeah, looked like a civilian on the street, and he just turned back and headed into the crowd of convicts. No fear at all,” Athos One replied, blinking.
“We gonna make it?” Warden Peasely asked.
“They’re trying to get through the front, which means they haven’t figured out the overhead doors in the loading bay are down. If we hurry, we can get out ahead of them,” Calvin One said, beckoning for everyone to follow him.
They made their way down the stairs as quickly as they could, with some of the more acrobatic Drones dropping from one floor to the next, leaping between flights. When they got to the loading bay, they could see convicts gathering at the top of the ramp and taking the first few tentative steps toward the entrances.
Athos One popped off a couple of shots, sending them scrambling for cover as they went past the threshold and the downed blast doors.
They broke into a dead run for the grating, shouts from the convicts echoing out behind them. As they closed the distance, they could hear a cacophonous sound from below, a torrent of waste water passing through the tunnel that was to be their escape. Ezra One slid to a halt and turned back toward the Warden, now breathless from running forty meters.
“Where does this pedestrian walkway lead?”
“To one of the CBD sally ports, an incarceration hub, and lots of nothing,” Warden Peasely reported sadly.
“I hate Mars,” Ezra One muttered, dropping feet first into the swiftly moving waste water below.
End, Book 2
Uroboros Saga Book 2 Page 21
