by S. A. Lusher
“It's fucking locked!” he snapped, stepping back.
“Here, cover me,” Drake said, hurrying across the room and kneeling to get a better view of the panel.
Trent turned and kept watch. Between the two of them, Drake was definitely smarter, and though he was no certified technician, he knew his way at least vaguely around technology. Thirty heart-pounding seconds went by, then Drake cursed sharply.
“What is it?” Trent asked.
“It's fucking locked down!” Drake snapped, standing.
“Fuck, now what? Is there another exit?”
“They're probably all locked down and the windows are too powerful to break, not without a-fuck, okay, follow me! Got a plan!” he shouted, taking off through one of the other doors in the room.
Trent heaved a sigh and hurried after him. “What are you doing?! We don't have time for this!”
“We might have just enough time,” Drake replied.
He came to a door at the end of the corridor and slapped the access button. This door did open, at least. Drake disappeared into the room. Trent came to the end of the corridor, looked around and took some small amount of solace in the fact that they were still alone. But he could hear shrieking, groaning and some kind of awful wet sound off in the distance. The chorus of the damned, coming to claim their souls.
For whatever they were worth.
Trent came into the room and saw what Drake had come for. They were in an armory. Shelves and crates and tables, most of them barren. But a pair of slim, silver lockers at the back of the room seemed to have caught Drake's attention.
“What's going on?” Trent asked.
“We're going to blast our fucking way out,” Drake replied, tearing open one of the lockers and crouching before it.
Trent felt a little bit better about their predicament. He stood guard, his heart pounding, skin crawling with raw tension.
He activated his radio. “How's it going?”
“Are you out yet?” Sharpe asked, sounding harried and grim.
“Almost.”
“Hurry it up!” she snapped. “Four minutes have already gone by! We're ass deep in bad guys in here, but we're holding our own.”
“Okay. We're going.”
Sharpe said nothing, for which Trent was grateful. No need to make this whole thing anymore drawn out and uncomfortable than it already was.
“Got it!” Drake shouted.
The pair bolted from the armory and back down the corridor. Still nothing, though the noises were closer than ever now. Backup was on its way, tearing through any barriers that got in their way. Trent felt apprehension and terror rip through him as never before, making it so difficult to focus that he nearly tripped over his own feet getting back to the lobby. He played guard again while Drake planted the explosives.
He felt stupid for not setting some kind of countdown timer on his suit, but there hadn't been any time. If he had to guess, he'd say there was something like five minutes left now. How far away did they have to be?
“Done! Get back!” Drake shouted.
They pulled back into the corridor leading to the armory, tucked themselves up against the walls and Drake hit the detonation button. A massive explosion tore through the area, rattling Trent's bones and causing the lights to flicker. Even before the smoke began to clear and the dust settled, Drake was through the door.
Trent began to follow him, but felt a chill cling to his back with such an immense power that it shocked him into a temporary paralysis. The notion, ridiculous as it was, that someone had shoved a cup of ice water down the back of his suit, was the only thing he could think of. Then he began to notice that the cold was spreading, fast, and things were getting dark. He managed to take a few awkward steps and turn around.
His heart froze.
The Darkness was right behind him, sending its obsidian tendrils of icy death his way, the tips of the nearest ones mere inches away. Then the world shifted and Trent realized that Drake had grabbed hold of him and literally yanked him into the lobby.
“Let's go!” he screamed.
The pair emerged into a blinding white area through a blackened hole in the wall. Trent didn't bother looking back, knowing that he needed to run or he was going to die. It was that simple. At least this time he wouldn't be totally helpless in the whiteout. There were a string of poles leading away from the exit, off into the snowstorm, lighting the way towards the landing pad. The pair of men began racing across the area, kicking their way through the knee-deep ice and snow.
Behind them, they could just barely hear the howling of the monsters.
“Run you son of a bitch!” Drake roared.
Trent ran. They both did, racing along the line of blue-lit poles. All thought left Trent's mind then. He'd had moments like this in his life: either he'd make it or he'd die. His only consolation was that there were plenty worse ways to die. The row of light-poles seemed to go on forever and Trent felt doubt began to slip in. Already, he could feel the cold seeping in, the chill of the snow and the storm.
Then his feet hit something hard.
They had arrived on the landing pad, and, looming above them, the angular shape of the Dark Ops ship. The pair didn't even stop, instead rushing up to the side of it where they found a ladder. No one was standing guard. Drake was up first, Trent hurried up the ladder after him. A few seconds later, they were inside an airlock, cycling through.
“Holy shit, I can't believe we made it,” Trent said, his breath coming heavy and frantic.
“We aren't out of the shit yet,” Drake replied, his voice barely more than a growl.
The airlock cycled through. The pair were admitted to a small locker room area where men were meant to change into extra-vehicular activity suits. The lockers were closed and silent, brooding sentinels watching over the derelict room. Trent and Drake hardly gave them a glance as they passed through, coming into a central corridor.
The passageway was also empty, the walls punctuated occasionally with closed doors. Making a blind guess, the pair took a left, hurrying down the length of the hall until they nearly crashed into the door at its end. Drake opened it up and went in. Trent followed and felt vindication. They had arrived at the bridge, which was being manned by a pair of technicians in black jumpsuits.
Both pairs of men looked at each other.
Trent and Drake each fired once, capping both techs in the head. Their bodies slumped and Drake got into one of the seats.
“Oh, fuck yes!” he cried.
“What?” Trent asked, slipping into the chair next to him.
“They had already gone through the warm-up procedures. This motherfucker is ready to take off. Okay, here we go.”
Drake began working the controls, and the vessel responded immediately. Beyond the windows, there was nothing but white and gray, the constantly shifting snowstorm. The ship twisted wildly for a moment, then began to head for orbital escape.
“You can fly this thing, right?” Trent asked.
“The fuck's it look like I'm doing?” Drake replied, not looking at him, his hands rapidly moving over the controls.
Trent decided to shut up. He glanced at his chronometer but had completely lost track of time, all he knew was that they had made it to the ship and, hopefully, they could get to a safe distance. But what the hell was a safe distance?
“Drake, we need to stick around and see-”
Something shook the ship. It wasn't the slow rumble of a massive shockwave rising up to meet them. It was an immense, though very brief, jolt, that threw Trent from his seat. He grunted as he was sprawled out onto the floor.
He stood up. “Was that it?”
Drake paused for a moment, turning and accessing another part of the workstation he was sitting at. “Um....” He hesitated, then let out a long sigh of relief. “Yes, yes that was it. Every piece of scanning technology on this thing says that there's nothing left down there but ice and rock. It worked, whatever 'it' was. And...I guess we're the last two l
eft alive out of this whole fucking mess,” Drake murmured.
Silence on the bridge then. Both of them simply sat there in their chairs, listening to the steady hum of power and the soft blips of the terminals and workstations. They had made it. They had survived when so many others hadn't. Finally, Drake made himself get back to working the controls. The ship shuddered and continued its ascent.
“Is anyone onboard?” Trent asked.
“Hold on,” Drake replied. A moment later, he shook his head. “No, just us. I guess those two were the last left. Shit, man, they must've been pouring all of their manpower into locking that place down. They probably would have it if we hadn't been there, fucking things up.”
“No...I don't think so. They might have, for a little while, but that thing, that...Presence, it would've taken over and gotten out eventually.”
Drake grunted and let his attention be consumed by flight. Trent settled back into the chair to the best of his ability and watched the atmosphere drift by. Alive. He'd never been so happy to simply be alive. Even after all the hell of the past twenty years as a mercenary, all the firefights and betrayals and battle wounds, nothing came close to how he felt right now. Had he made peace with himself?
Had he done that important thing?
Trent didn't think so. He was at peace for now, and might be for a while, but it always came back, didn't it? Maybe that was the truth. Maybe you had to keep doing things, meaningful things, right things. Maybe that was the point to life, if there was one.
“Oh...fuck,” Drake said suddenly.
Trent sat up. He'd been drifting, he realized, close to nodding off. The gray-white atmosphere had given way to the softly twinkling obsidian infinity of space, just beyond the front windows of the bridge. And waiting for them was a cruiser. A large cruiser that bore no symbols or identifying marks.
It was painted black, barely visible against the backdrop of space.
“You've got to be shitting me,” Trent groaned. “Can we jump to FTL?”
“Yeah, but they'll follow us...” A beeping filled the bridge. “Shit, they're hailing us. Fuck...fuck...” Drake was hastily hunting through his workstation. Trent felt tension filling him up so powerfully that he thought he might burst.
The beeping persisted. The ship was coming closer now. How fucking stupid would it be to escape all of that and die here, now, like this?
“Drake...”
“Got it!” He hit something abruptly and Trent's eyes widened as he spied a quartet of bright lights shoot away from their own ship, heading for the Dark Ops cruiser. Hardly three seconds passed before they made contact.
At first, Trent's heart sank, crestfallen. They made a quartet of small fiery explosions along the hull, near the back, the engines, and just fizzled out, whatever flames they made snuffed by the lack of oxygen. The cruiser sailed silently towards them, as unstoppable as some kind of metal space-faring titan, torn straight from mythology.
But then something else happened. Another explosion appeared near the back of the vessel. Followed by a second, then a third and immediately by a fourth and fifth. Soon, a chain of yellow-crimson plumes was tearing across the immense black hull of the ship. Within seconds, the ship had been broken in half, then quarters.
Abruptly, an immense light filled the bridge windows, and when it faded, there was nothing left but a free-floating debris field.
“Holy. Mother. Of. Fuck. Did...how did you do that? What the fuck just happened?” Trent asked after a long moment.
“Lucky shot, I guess,” Drake replied. “I was at least hoping to take out their engines, but this works nicely, too. Now, where was it you said you wanted to go? Lovelace? I can program it into this baby and we can be there in about...” He punched something into the main terminal, then his face lit up with glee. “A day.”
Trent was silent, still staring at the ruins of the Dark Ops vessel, slowly drifting away. He suddenly felt tired and old. Worn-down. He thought of the others, of the dead. Of Sharpe and Gideon and Trevor. Even Sergio, the corporate dog.
They were all dead now.
And he was still alive.
Why?
“I was thinking about what Gideon said,” Trent murmured after a long moment. “Maybe we should go to Mezzanine, lie on a beach somewhere.”
Drake frowned. “You all right?”
“Yeah,” Trent said quietly, still staring.
“Okay...to Mezzanine then. We'll have a drink in their honor.”
“Or a couple dozen,” Trent said, managing a small smile, trying to shake the feeling of haunted horror that still lingered about him.
“Mezzanine it is, then,” Drake replied.
He punched in the coordinates and engaged the engines.
And now, a sneak peek at Book #5
in the Shadow Wars series, Ceaseless.
Out now.
Ceaseless Sneak Peek
Chapter 01
–The Lone Survivor of Lansing Six–
Allan Gray laid in his bed, listening to the white noise of his squalid living quarters, and tried not to think of things like insanity and suicide. Sleep was supposed to have come hours ago and Allan suspected that it had in fact at a couple of points during the night, but it had slipped in and out of his consciousness so seamlessly that it might as well not have made an appearance. Overhead, the flat, gray ceiling was as omnipresent as ever. How many hours had he lain awake, staring up at the same sight? How many sleepless nights?
With a sigh, he shifted. The bed creaked, groaning in protest at the weight being put on it. He had yet to take off his suit of armor. There was a small but powerful part of him that was becoming increasingly convinced he no longer had the ability to take it off. His world had slipped out from beneath him, leaving him falling through a black eternal abyss. He felt as though someone had removed all the little bits and pieces that kept his body together and this suit, this second skin of metal armor, was the only thing keeping him from falling apart.
Allan tried to shut out the images, the sounds, the smells. Tried to stop his own personal snuff film from playing endlessly in his mind, but he might as well have tried to stop the blood from flowing through his veins.
It just wasn't happening.
He heaved a soft sigh and considered turning over, getting up, pulling himself out of the suit and having a long shower, maybe losing himself in the mist. But it was as if his bones had been hollowed out, then filled in with some dense metal and chromed over just for good measure. The weight of the last day hung over him and made even the simplest task impossible. Allan wanted nothing but the lost void of sleep.
But it would not come. Not properly.
Something beeped. It was distant at first. He was thinking about a man in a suit of gray-green armor being pumped full of holes and sprays of pink mist beading on a titanium wall. Slowly, Allan registered the noise. It was a flat, rapid beeping, intimately familiar. So familiar, in fact, that it seemed to slip past his perception.
The notion that the beeping was, in fact, quite important, took root in his skull. He frowned and, with all the grace of a beached supertanker, rolled over. His bed groaned again, threatening to give up the ghost. His alarm clock perched on the nightstand beside his single-wide bed, usually done up military style, not that it mattered when you were in Security-Investigations. The clock was flashing in sync with the beeps.
It dawned on him, somewhat sluggishly, like sound traveling across a vast distance, that he had set that alarm. It was just past seven in the morning. The sun was beginning to creep over the horizon, slanting pale beams of pallid light into his quarters. A low sound, what might have been a groan, escaped Allan's throat.
He began the long, arduous process of getting up.
Seven o'clock. It was time for a funeral. Allan climbed to his feet and stood there, swaying for a long moment. Glancing back at his bed, he thought about how easy it would be to just lie back down and continue his long stare into nothingness. It would certainly be easier. B
ut there was still that ember, compressed perhaps to a singularity now, burning inside of him. The thing that drove him ever onwards, somehow, someway.
Allan moved into the bathroom and stared at the armored thing in front of the mirror. He liked his suit. It came with all sorts of attachments and augmentations. When you joined up with Security-Investigations, they gave you a uniform. When you graduated from the four month training course, they gave you some armor.
As a Sergeant in command of an Investigations Squad, Allan had been granted a full suit of powered armor. It was blue-gray in color and bore the symbol of Squad Lansing Six, which was little more than a red L-6. Over the past six months, Allan's interests, hobbies and spending habits had begun to dry up. SI paid for room and board, it came free with the job. He found himself pouring virtually all his money into the armor.
As a result, he now had top-of-the-line gear, far above what was really necessary. SI provided the basic suit and gear, but you could purchase additional upgrades. There was a part of Allan that always thought that was exploitative, but he knew that he really had no case because if you really felt you needed something, you could just check it out of the armory for that particular mission. It was when he began having genuine trouble turning it all back in at the end of missions that he knew he'd be better off just purchasing them.
Allan knew that there were men like him, men who'd reach that sort of emotional event horizon and began pouring all their funds and even their life into a bottomless black pit of despair. Though usually for them that particular pit was composed of alcohol or booze or serial dating. Allan took some quantum of comfort in the fact that his was at least constructive.
The visor enclosing his face and head in the helmet was transparent for the moment. He took the opportunity to study himself. His face was a pallid mess. Dark stubble stained his jawline and neck. His eyes were baggy and bloodshot. They looked sunken, as though someone had punched him a few days ago and the black eyes were really shining now. For a moment, he contemplated sliding the visor up into the helmet, a neat feature that made it so that he didn't have to remove his helmet if he wanted to eat or take a breath of fresh air.
