by Lee Stephen
The Ceratopian is dying.
“No,” Scott said, his voice breaking. “No!” This was their everything—their evidence, their purpose, the thing they’d gone to Cairo for, that they’d killed for. This was Svetlana’s life. One turn away—they were one turn away!
Behind them, Rashid and the lone slayer who’d stayed with him on the surface emerged. Both men joined the defense.
On comm, Esther addressed Scott. Her voice was cracking. “Scott, Centurion’s not moving.”
“I know, Ess!”
A shot struck the slayer with Rashid. He stumbled backward then fell. A kill-shot. Moments later, Auric’s knee was taken out. The German screamed and collapsed.
Gunfire was peppering them. One by one, they were falling. And Scott had nothing. “God, save us.” It was all he could pray. “God, please save us.”
Centurion’s hand lurched upward—the giant’s palm pressed against the floor. Releasing a low, rumbling growl, he slowly pushed up.
Eyes widening, Scott said, “Get up. Get up, you tank, get up!”
As One returned to Scott’s side to fight, Four remained behind to aid the Ceratopian. Blood spurted from Centurion’s mouth in sporadic coughs. But the alien rose.
Scott got on the comm. “Pilot, fire up that transport and back it up to the elevator, fast!”
Centurion hobbled forward with Four’s assistance. Esther, out of the fight but not wholly incapacitated, propped Auric on her good shoulder. The rest of them—Scott, Rashid, Jayden, and One—were rapidly emptying their ammunition. Slowly, the group backed to the last turn.
The pilot didn’t affirm. Why didn’t he affirm? Scott queued him up again. “Pilot! Are you getting this?” Nothing. “Boris?”
Finally, there was a crackle of reception. When Boris spoke, his voice was stoic and low. “Our pilot is dead.”
Scott and Rashid looked at each other. “Why is our pilot dead, Boris?”
The reply Scott received was through Boris’s signal—but the voice wasn’t Boris’s. It was Natalie’s. “Because I took his gun, and I killed him.”
“Are you kidding me?” Scott asked off-comm, shooting a glare to Rashid. “Who was watching her?”
The Turkish fulcrum cursed over the gunfire. “That would be the pilot.”
“How did a single woman disarm a Nightman pilot?”
“Because he’s a pilot,” snarled Rashid.
Moving back around the corner, Scott checked the progress of Centurion and the injured. The Ceratopian was limping into the elevator. Auric was being helped right behind him. Everyone else was ready to go. “Natalie,” Scott said as he engaged the elevator upward, “we’re on our way to you. Don’t shoot us.” He got no response. “Are you copying this?” Still nothing. “Veck,” he said under his breath. As much as Scott was frustrated at Rashid for leaving a pilot in charge, he knew the fulcrum wasn’t solely to blame. Scott had ordered immediate backup for Centurion’s extraction. The pilot and Boris were the only two left to watch Natalie while they were gone. That she’d disarmed a Nightman, pilot or not, was a testament to the level at which they’d underestimated her.
“How’s he holding up?” Scott asked, looking at Centurion. The Ceratopian was wheezing painfully. By the look of it, the shot to his neck had been solid. That Centurion was still kicking was a testament to the strength of both the species and the specimen. He had bullet wounds at virtually every unarmored point.
No one answered Scott’s question. No one knew.
The moment the elevator door opened, Four assisted Centurion outside. Far ahead, their Vulture transport awaited. Boris was clearly visible standing atop its open ramp—the form of Natalie was right behind him. She had a gun to his neck.
I thought a critically-injured Ceratopian was worst-case scenario. I was wrong.
Behind him, whispering in his comm from a hidden corner of the elevator, Jayden asked, “Sir, do you want me to hang back?”
Hang back? Why would I want you to...
...hang back...
Scott’s realization of what Jayden was asking was both sudden and awful. Jayden was offering to hang back to take a shot. Nothing about the way the Texan had asked the question was eager. It was asked out of necessity. If the situation became critical, was killing Natalie Rockwell actually on the table?
“Hang back, Jay, but not in the elevator. I don’t want it going down on you.”
Yes. On the table, it was.
Slinking to a dark corner to the side of the elevator, Jayden crouched and raised his rifle.
“Please stand down, Nat,” Scott whispered to himself. “Please.”
As they approached the Vulture, Natalie pressed her sidearm to Boris’s head. “No closer,” she said over the comm.
Lifting his hand, Scott signaled his team to stop. Natalie had already killed the pilot. He knew she wasn’t bluffing. “Let’s talk, Nat.” Even at their moderate distance, Scott could see her glare of revulsion.
“Who are you and why are you here?” she asked pointedly.
“I don’t have time to explain everything,” he said, holding a palm out. “But I can tell you this: we came to extract this Ceratopian with the purpose of uncovering a conspiracy in EDEN Command. My team was sent here to locate and take back the target.” Not two minutes ago, EDEN guards had been trailing them close from behind. At any second, that elevator would go back down.
As if on cue, the elevator doors closed.
Scat. I should have broken the panel.
Natalie was unwavering. “You’re a Nightman.” Scott wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement. “Did Thoor send you here?”
“Yes. Yes, he did.” Forget minutes. Their time left could be measured in seconds. “Natalie, we need to get on that transport.”
“You’re not going anywhere.”
Quietly through the comm, Jayden said, “Sir, she’s completely behind Boris. All I’ve got is her head.”
Inside his fulcrum’s helmet, Scott was sweating. Reaching up, he unclamped it and took it off. He wanted Natalie to see his face. “Please. I am begging you. We need to get on that transport.” Don’t make me kill her. Please, God, don’t make me kill her.
Jayden’s voice was shaking. “I don’t want to take it, but I can take it.”
Scott’s eyes were brimming. “Natalie, please, for God’s sake, please move.” The elevator would be down by now. And loading with operatives to come up.
“Come in, Lo,” Natalie said in her comm. The Australian affirmed.
God, forgive me. Please, God, forgive me. “Take the shot, Jay,” Scott whispered. “Take it, now.” Closing his eyes, Scott braced. He couldn’t watch this.
Jayden’s breathing grew extreme.
Through streaming tears, Scott said, “Take it, take it, take it, take it.”
“I’m takin’ it.”
Scott looked down. “Oh my God.”
Suddenly, Natalie gagged. But no shot accompanied it. Eyes flying open, Scott looked up at the transport.
Natalie dropped her weapon—not to her side, but to the ground. Mouth open in agony, she buckled over and grabbed her head. Shrieks burst forth.
What in the world? As Scott and the escapees froze, an urge struck him in his mind. He sensed that he needed to run to the ship. Now.
Ju`bajai.
“Stand down, Jay!” he hollered. The Texan already had; he was running full-speed to Scott. “Everyone, go, go, go!” Scott and the escapees, Jayden included, bolted for the transport. “Boris, what’s your plan?” He was the closest thing they had to a pilot. Leaping over the dead body of said pilot, Boris dove into the cockpit.
Scott’s gaze swiveled until he saw Natalie. She was right there in the middle of them, still clutching her head. “Let her go!” Scott instructed the Ithini. “Whatever you were doing, stop! Someone get her off the—” His request was interrupted as bullets ricocheted around the rear door. EDEN had caught up with them. Scott, Rashid, One, and Four dove to block Centurion from
the volleys. Behind them, the gargantuan Ceratopian crouched as best he could; his frame blocked almost the whole bay. Natalie was pinned inside. “Wait—stop!” he yelled in a last-ditch effort to maneuver her out. But it was too late. Rashid’s palm slammed against the bay door button. As bullets dinged all around them, the door slowly rose.
Esther spun to Natalie, who was being pushed aside frantically by the close-quarters chaos. “Scott, she can’t come with us!”
“You think I don’t know that?” The Vulture’s hull popped with bullet fire. “Lower the...” The door? What kind of order would that be? Put themselves in the line of fire again? They’d just made it to the Vulture. Sticking with his original plan, Boris was engaging the autopilot. They were escaping.
In the midst of the calamity, Scott looked at Natalie. Her hair was mussed in every direction. Panic was flashing in her eyes. She looked totally lost. Yet even seeing that, Scott knew what would happen if they threw her from the ship. Not only would they be exposing themselves to more casualty or death, but EDEN would likely gun her down from afar. In the heat of a firefight, how were they to know she wasn’t one of them? And just like that, his decision was made. “Up! Up! Let’s go!” They’d just taken a hostage.
The Vulture’s engines kicked in—it lifted from the ground, its navigational computer piloting with perfect precision. Scott didn’t even know where they were going. “I hope to hell you have a plan, Boris!”
The technician’s hands were fast on his kit. “You cannot pursue when you cannot see.” A button was pressed, and the entire outer grounds of Cairo were plunged into blackness. The hangar, the airstrip, everything. Cairo went dark.
Cairo Command was screaming. “21-79 Alpha, cease takeoff immediately!”
“Checkmate, good bye,” Boris replied through the comm. He clicked the channel closed.
From her cramped side of the troop bay, Natalie lifted her comm. “Logan!”
The Australian’s voice crackled through. “Natty! Where you are?”
“I’m on board their—”
Esther snatched the comm from Natalie’s grasp with her good arm. She slammed it to the floor and aimed her pistol at Natalie’s head. “Bad Venus.”
“Restrain her,” Scott said, pointing at Natalie before looking back at Boris. “You mean to tell me if they don’t have lights, they can’t take off?”
“Of course they can,” Boris answered. “But it will give us a little bit of lead time. But probably, they will just call other bases to come after us.”
Scott was floored. “That’s our whole plan of escape?”
Throwing up his hands, Boris answered, “Get the tram, turn off the sprinklers, fly the ship! I do what I can!”
“Where is this thing taking us?”
“East. I do not even know.”
Scott’s mind raced. They couldn’t stay in the air for too long or they’d get blown out of the sky. But if they landed, they’d get assaulted on the ground. Hiding in a city wasn’t an option—they had a Ceratopian. If only they could get out of the ship without EDEN realizing it. At that instant, the idea came. “What’s the closest body of water to where we are?”
Boris looked at his map. “The Suez Canal.”
“Set the autopilot to take us right over it. Go low and set it to slow down and make a directional turn following the water. Program a lot of turns.”
“Umm, okay. Why?”
“Because we’re about to pull another Luxor.”
BACK ON THE ground, Logan Marshall was running full-speed into the blacked-out hangar. He snagged the first EDEN guard he saw. “The ship that just took off from here, where’s it going?”
“What? Who are you? We are busy here!”
“Lieutenant Logan Marshall of the Caracals. We need to go after it!”
“We have ten thousand things we need to do right now!”
Grabbing the guard by the collar, Logan slammed him against a forklift. “Listen to me! Captain Natalie Rockwell is on board that ship, she’s been taken as a hostage. Now shut up and get me in the vecking air!”
ADJUSTING HIS COMM, Scott ran into the troop bay and queued up the Fourteenth. “Scott to Travis.”
Seconds later, the pilot replied. “Travis here, sir. We’re leaving Novosibirsk airspace now.”
“Listen, here’s what we’re going to do. Boris is going to take us low and slow over the Suez Canal, then program the transport to fly eastward. He’s inputting course corrections and zigzags so that it looks like a human’s behind the controls.” Technically, a human wasn’t even behind the controls now. “All of us, Boris included, are going to ditch by the shore.” They couldn’t ditch too deeply; Scott didn’t know if Ceratopians could swim. On top of that, Centurion was severely injured. “We’re going to swim to shore and find a place to hide.”
“We’ll just come get you.”
“No, that would be bad! If you come anywhere near here, EDEN will track you. Stay away until we figure something out.”
Travis interrupted. “No one can track the Pariah now, sir. She’s just metal with an engine.”
“Travis, I—wait, did you say the Pariah?”
“Long story, sir! I’ll be happy to tell you about it later.”
And Scott was eager to hear. “You know what you’re doing, Trav. Did everyone make it out okay over there?”
There was a hesitation. “Not everyone, sir. No.”
As Travis’s paused came, Scott locked eyes with the rest of his crew. Esther’s mocha skin paled.
“Derrick is dead,” the pilot said.
The moment Scott heard Derrick’s name, a part of him deflated. Derrick... William had now lost two of his closest friends in him and Joe Janson. The demolitionist would be crushed.
Travis spoke again. “He’s not the only one, sir.”
Becan took over the channel from the Pariah’s end. “Max is messed up, Remmy. He couldn’t make it to the ship. Tanneken stayed back with him. Tha’s all we know.”
“He’s alive?”
“He was last we heard, but...it didn’t sound good.”
Worse and worse. Max was one of his closest friends. He suddenly felt sick. “Did everyone else make it?”
The Irishman sighed. “There’s no way to say it, so I’m jus’ goin’ to say it. We lost Sveta.”
Scott’s sickness was gone. It was replaced by pure shock. “What?”
“We don’t know where she is. She was with Max, they were goin’ to leave with Tanneken’s unit. Tanneken found Max injured, but Sveta was gone.”
Esther covered her mouth with a fist. Her brown eyes settled uncomfortably on Scott.
Scott’s face turned crimson. “Turn around, get back to The Machine, and go find her.”
“Remmy, it’s not tha’ easy.”
Nothing was ever easy. They’d just broken a Ceratopian out of Cairo. “Listen carefully, McCrae. Turn that ship around, go back to Novosibirsk, and locate Svetlana.”
“Scott,” said David, jumping on the channel, “Yuri, Egor, and Varvara stayed behind to find Sveta. If the rest of us hadn’t left, none of us would be leaving.”
Inside, Scott was fuming. But he was as guilty as any of the Novosibirsk crew. He’d been willing to leave Auric behind for the sake of the mission. Now the shoe was on someone else’s foot. Grinding his teeth, Scott slammed his boot against the cabin wall with all of his might. Svetlana. He’d gone on this mission to save her. Because he loved her. And now she was gone.
“He’s gonna find her, Scott,” David said. “You know that.”
Jaw set, Scott said, “No, he won’t. I will.” With that, he closed the channel from his end. There was no doubt in his mind who had taken Svetlana. General Thoor. She’d been Thoor’s leverage against Scott from the onset of the Cairo operation—and Thoor wasn’t about to let that leverage slip away. If Scott had been Thoor, that’s what he’d have done, too.
Very gently, Esther touched his arm.
“Captain!” said Boris. “I have
multiple ships leaving from Cairo! Fighters and transports!”
“Time to the Suez?” Scott’s voice wasn’t raised or emotional. It was low. Controlled.
Boris checked the nav computer. “Three minutes.”
“Cut it to two.”
Blowing out a breath, Boris went back to work.
* * *
NOVOSIBIRSK
NOVOSIBIRSK WAS GETTING pummeled. EDEN now had full control of the outer grounds and main building. The push for control of the entire facility was in full swing, as the bodies of Nightmen who’d been overwhelmed were strewn across the airstrip. With The Machine’s defenses failing, EDEN’s forces set their sights on the Citadel.
In the midst of the pandemonium were Dostoevsky, Egor, and Varvara. Having escaped the flood of EDEN soldiers on the grounds, they were now sprinting full speed toward the Citadel themselves.
Dostoevsky knew that if Svetlana had been captured, the Nightmen were behind it. The dungeon of Fort Zhukov was the only natural place for them to have taken her. With EDEN soldiers—Vector Squad included—roaming the surface level and facility buildings, searching those areas for Svetlana wasn’t an option. He would have been gunned down on sight like all the other Nightmen. That would do Svetlana no good at all.
“Yuri!”
Stopping mid-stride, Dostoevsky looked toward the sound of his name. It was Antipov. The leader of the eidola was trotting his direction, assault rifle at the ready. “Iosif,” Dostoevsky addressed him, “I am looking for Voronova. Do you know where she is?”
Nodding briefly in acknowledgment of Egor’s presence, the gritty Antipov turned to Dostoevsky. “The general sent Strakhov to get her. She is being taken to Chernobyl.”
“Strakhov?” Dostoevsky’s faced flushed furiously. “Do you know what he would do with her? Do you know the things he has already done?”
“I know exactly what he would do. He would take her to Chernobyl safely. That is what has been ordered of him.” Antipov glared. “You know how I feel about Strakhov.”
Dostoevsky growled loudly. “It was not a good idea to send him after her, regardless of his orders! I must find him.”
“Chernobyl,” Antipov said. “Even now, the migration begins. Go there, find the rest of our brothers. You will find the woman as well.”
