by M. R. Forbes
Ginny had gone to see the movie with Heather and Nick. Had she gone to find her?
“Hold on, Nat,” he said under his breath. “I’m coming.”
He continued to descend, freezing when the doorway below him pushed open. He leveled his rifle, heart pounding with the illogical hope that Natalia would come through the door.
She didn’t. One of his deputies did, stumbling through the doorway and falling onto the landing, the door catching on his foot before it could close all the way.
Hayden wanted to address the deputy by name, but his face was so bloody he didn’t recognize him.
“Deputy!” he said, rushing down to the man.
The deputy looked up, only one bloodshot eye still intact. “Sheriff?” he said, the expression of hope ringing through his croaking voice. “That you?” His voice was muffled through the damage, but it held a familiar light drawl.
Hayden’s heart went from full-throttle to a near stop. “Solino?”
“Sheriff. I…”
“Where’s Natalia?” Hayden asked. “Where’s Ginny?”
Deputy Solino shook his head. “Don’t know.” He paused to gasp. “Chaos. Lost Ginny. I’m sorry.”
Hayden put his hand on Solino’s shoulder. “It’s okay. Try to tell me as much as you can.”
“Trying to get to Law. To the armory. Comms are down. Light’s green, but doesn’t connect.” He reached up, motioning to his blood-soaked badge. “Tried every deputy I know. Even ones I saw outside.” He shook his head. “It’s broken.”
Hayden shifted his grip from Solino’s shoulder to his hand, clasping it. The comms weren’t broken. It was the Axon.
They had been sabotaged.
A fresh pounding drew Hayden’s attention, reminding him the enemy was right outside.
“They’re in the lobby,” Solino said. “Some smaller ones too.”
“Did anyone make it to Law? Did you see Natalia?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see her. I’m sorry. Heather…sh...she’s gone.”
Hayden pivoted as the door began pushing open again. A xaxkluth was behind it, small like the ones he had seen in the Department of Health building.
He switched his rifle to stream and opened fire, bathing the alien in superheated gas. It whined and tumbled back, the door closing again on Solino’s foot.
“We’ve got to get you to the bunker,” Hayden said, turning back to Solino.
The Deputy’s remaining eye had glossed over. His mouth hung limp. Hayden leaned in close, feeling for breath on his ear while putting his fingertips on Solino’s bloody wrist.
Nothing.
“Damn it,” Hayden cursed softly, pushing Solino’s eye closed.
He was probably better off now than the rest of them.
Hayden stood up. The stairs into the garage were on the other side of the lifts. He would need to go out through the lobby to reach them. He could hear the xaxkluth inside it—either waiting for survivors to pass through or preventing them from even trying—their tentacles smashing whatever they could find to batter. He didn’t think the Relyeh creatures were intelligent or patient enough to lie in wait on their own. The Axon were assisting them, making any expectations he’d had for an alliance between the Axon and humanity beyond hope.
Or so it seemed.
And the odds of survival were slim.
The thought sent a chill up his spine, but he shook it off. Nothing was more important at the moment than finding his wife.
He looked at the overlay in his glasses, hoping to find Nathan’s network back within range. It had been more than long enough for the Parabellum to get to the crashed dropship and back to the city. But the network was still down, his beacon the only one visible in the HUD.
Unless whatever the Axon had done to the comms was blocking his signal too? He looked back up the stairs. What if Josias had put something on the roof to jam their communications? Was it possible to block them but still fool their equipment into thinking it was connected?
Natalia would know the answer. He was just grateful when it all worked.
He didn’t have time to go up forty plus flights of stairs. Maybe if he went outside, he could reach Pyro and tell her to blast the top of the building.
But he wasn’t going outside until he had either found Natalia or decided she wasn’t in the pyramid.
And he was going to find her.
Or die trying.
9
Hayden
Hayden stood beside Deputy Solino’s body, ready to kick open the stairwell door into the lobby.
He would need to be fast and cross the banks of lifts around the corner to the emergency stairs before the xaxkluth could block his path or catch him in their monstrous limbs. He held his plasma rifle on stream mode, prepared to melt anything that tried to get too close.
He breathed in, forcing his exhale to remain steady. He had to make it across. He had to get underground. There was a chance Natalia was outside, but he didn’t think so. When he had left Sanisco, she was in the apartment alone with Hallia, and he was on his way to capture a khoron for her. He was willing to bet she’d decided to go down to the lab to prepare the interlink for his return.
Was she down there now, trying to restore power? He could imagine her working feverishly in the dark, desperate to get the reactor running again so she could use the device to summon the goliath Alpha and his mate.
Hayden shoved the door open with his foot. He moved through it, quickly taking in the scene. A xaxkluth had roosted in the center of the lobby facing the other direction, its tentacles hovering above its central mass, searching for targets. A handful of smaller aliens lingered around it while the bodies of nearly two dozen uniformed officers and a number of civilians were cast around the floor in various states of mutilation. It was a horrifyingly gory scene, and it took all of Hayden’s will to keep his nausea at bay and remain focused on the mission.
The xaxkluth were already facing the stairwell door. They knew he was in there from the one he had killed, and they also seemed to know he would have to emerge to get any further. The largest of the aliens didn’t turn its central mass, but its tentacles all shifted toward the back, and the smaller creatures groaned and charged.
Hayden didn’t hesitate. He rushed forward, sprinting at the oncoming xaxkluth and racing them to the edge of the lifts. They were faster than he expected, their many limbs moving agilely along the floor. He squeezed the trigger of the plasma rifle, sending out a gout of plasma like a flamethrower, blasting the front line of creatures and forcing the other to slow their approach.
The xaxkluth only hesitated for a moment, deciding quickly that it was worth a few casualties to end his life. The superheated gas burned into them, sending them to the floor in shrill screams and writhing limbs. They split from the center, some of them heading to either flank. Some of them used their limbs to leap into the air, pushing themselves in powerful arcs over the plasma stream, while a few others pressed themselves low against the floor, forcing him to make a choice. He couldn’t target them all at once.
He didn’t need to. He only had to get to the stairs. Even if they followed, the narrowness of the descent would force them into a bottleneck that would be easy for the plasma rifle to cover. If they followed, they would die.
He aimed high, running sideways toward the end of the lifts and using the HUD in his glasses to keep an eye on the rest of the creatures. He made it to the corner, slowing to round it. One of the xaxkluth leaped at him, and he brought his arm up to block it. Tentacles wrapped tightly around the augment, the creature trying to hold on and lunge forward at his face. He held his other arm out straight, swinging the left hand into the right and smashing the xaxkluth between them, Its central mass popped like a grape, spraying him with ichor. A wave of nausea passed over him as he flung the dead xaxkluth away.
As he drew closer to the door, two of the smaller creatures grabbed his legs, getting their tentacles around them and pulling. He fell forward, twisting in t
he air and landing on his back. A third xaxkluth climbed up his leg, and he quickly switched the rifle to bolt mode and fired a round into its mouth. It exited through the back of its head, killing it.
The aliens closed from both sides, prepared to overwhelm him. He continued shooting them, the close range and their smaller size making it easier to hit them with fatal shots. He killed three of them before one managed to get a tentacle to his face, nearly biting off his nose and settling for the glasses instead. It ripped them off so forcefully the cord burned Hayden’s neck before breaking away.
Hayden used his free hand to punch the alien, hitting it hard enough to knock it away. He scrambled to the door, dropping the plasma rifle. “Get the hell off!” he roared as he tore the metal door from its hinges, swinging it in a wide arc that sent the xaxkluth scattering. He threw it into their midst, crushing one of them and forcing them back long enough to recover the plasma rifle and dive into the stairwell.
He went down the first flight end-over-end, somewhat protected by the bodysuit and his prosthetics, though the jarring sent needles of pain up from the damaged nerves of his one arm to where it connected to the control ring. He hit the wall at the first landing with his shoulder, taking a chunk out of the mortar. Then he turned back the way he had come.
The xaxkluth froze at the top of the steps, smart enough to understand that he had the upper hand in the stairwell. They backed away before he could burn them.
Hayden pulled himself to his feet, taking a moment to lament the loss of the glasses. His comms and night vision had gone with them, leaving him alone in the dark.
He glanced back at the top of the stairs one last time and then continued his descent.
10
Hayden
Law was on the second level of the subterranean garage, and it took Hayden less than a minute to reach it. He pushed open the stairwell door, squinting his eyes to use the light from the plasma rifle’s digital display to see into the area.
The light glow from the screen was barely enough, affording him only a half-meter radius of vision.Hayden could barely see his hand if he stretched it all the way out in front of him. It made navigation challenging, but fortunately he was familiar enough with the layout to estimate his position.
He tried crossing from the stairwell door, straight ahead to where there should be a desk. He only made it halfway before his feet bumped into something soft. He looked down, lowering the rifle closer to the obstruction to see it.
“Shit,” he cursed, the illumination revealing Deputy Gore. The deputy was face-down, angled toward the lifts as though he had been making a run for it. He had four bullet wounds in his back.
His revolver sat unused in its holster on his hip.
Hayden knelt down, rolling him over enough to grab his badge and unbuckle the gun belt. He took both, tapping on the badge and using the green LED to give him a little more light, and strapping the gun belt around his hips. It made him feel a little better to have the familiar weight of the gun on his thigh.
Then he straightened, stepping over Gore and crossing the rest of the way to the desk. He kept a hand on it, feeling his way around it and passing to the next. The armory was in the back of the room, but Deputy Fry would have the keys.
Hayden nearly tripped over Fry’s body on his way to the back. He knelt a second time, checking the deputy. Fry’s revolver rested in his hand. Hayden took it and opened the cylinder. One round sat inside. Four were in Gore’s back. One was in Fry’s temple.
Self-inflicted.
Hayden dropped the weapon and shoved his hands into the deputy’s pockets, locating the armory key. Josias was an Axon. There was no doubt about that now.
He made it to the armory—a reinforced cage lined with racks of guns, ammunition and armor. There was no sign of entry—the door was still locked—and Hayden had no reason to think the Axon had taken anything from it. Why would an Intellect need a gun when it could kill by manipulating the human mind. But it had come into the Law Office and killed the two deputies on duty. For what reason? To what end?
Hayden opened the armory door, slipping inside. He took Gore's revolver and placed it on a nearby table, swapping it for something with a little more stopping power. He grabbed two .50 caliber pistols from a rack of guns, scooping up a pair of ammo belts and a flashlight. He draped the belts criss cross over his chest and then flicked the flashlight on. He swiped it around the space, the beam casting the room in an eerie glow. He found little relief in the absence of more dead.
His deputies should have come running at the first sign of the xaxkluth whether the comms were active or not. The undisturbed contents of the cage, the lack of additional bodies, the silent darkness—it all told him the fight had been lost before it even started.
At least there was still no sign of Natalia. She hadn’t come up to check the comms or try to fix the power. Had she done the right thing and taken Hallia to the bunker?
He hurried away from the armory, back across the garage to the stairwell door. He led with his plasma rifle, sending a stream of gas up the stairs as a precaution. The xaxkluth had remained behind in the lobby, giving him free rein to operate, at least in the stairwell. It seemed strange that they hadn’t tried to sneak up on him, but he wasn’t going to question the decision.
He re-entered the stairwell, able to move more quickly now that he had a flashlight. He shined it down the next flight of steps, the beam landing on another corpse leaned against the wall.
“No,” Hayden whispered, heart racing as he ran down the steps to the body.
When Deputy Solino said Heather was gone, he thought the deputy meant she was dead. Hayden realized now that Solino meant he had lost her in the chaos. She had probably come back here hoping to make it to the bunker.
The result was the same. Her lifeless eyes stared up at him, an expression of sadness and terror forever etched into her face, dry tears crusting her cheeks. Like Fry, there was no sign of any physical damage to her body. She had crossed paths with the Axon and it had killed her. It was as simple as that.
Or was it?
His gaze dropped to her hands. She was clutching something close to her chest. He reached out, pulling at her stiff wrist to get a better look.
He jerked reflexively at the scrap of cloth. He didn’t know why Heather was holding it, but he knew where it had come from.
Ginny’s dress.
It was stained with blood.
He turned his head away, refusing to believe what the cloth suggested. He had to find Natalia.
He had to find her right now.
“Naaaaatttt!” he cried, new urgency sending him careening down the stairs.
11
Nathan
One second, Nathan was standing in front of a dead xaxkluth, firing on another charging toward the fleeing Centurions, with the Parabellum behind him. The next, he was flying backwards through the air, flung like a ragdoll by the force of the Capricorn’s detonation.
He spun end-over-end, the world a dizzying blur through his helmet, his ATCS doing its best to continue tracking when its sensors were getting twisted through the cyclone. The ground came up to meet him, and he hit the dirt on his back, digging into the earth as he slid to a stop.
The xaxkluth in front of him was too heavy to be lifted by the force, and it suffered more damage for it. Shrapnel and debris tore through its flesh, severing tentacles and sticking it in the back with a thousand daggers, the flames of the sudden inferno following close behind. The smell of burning flesh passed the filters in Nathan’s armor, the sick scent reminding him of the destruction at Edenrise.
He rolled over and pushed himself up. His HUD was still recalibrating, the sensors trying to make sense of the unexpected explosion. Nathan understood it. Somebody had triggered the ship’s self destruct.
Somebody inside it.
Whoever it was that person was a damn hero.
“General, do you copy?” Pyro said, her voice choppy in his helmet.
“I co
py,” Nathan replied. He looked up. The Parabellum was still on the ground a hundred meters away. Hicks and the Centurions were near the ramp, rifles ready to fire on the next wave of aliens to give him time to escape.
“Better hurry, General,” Pyro said. “There are more coming.”
Nathan’s eyes slid to his HUD. It had shut down momentarily to reset, the overlay reappearing and showing him a dozen red blobs at his back, each one another alien monster.
“How many of these things are there?” he said, racing across the field, forced to dodge the remains of one of the large creatures. He vaulted thick tentacles, toward the Parabellum and the oncoming xaxkluth. “Get on board, we’re taking off,” he ordered through the comm.
Hicks responded first, backing up the ramp. The other Centurions followed.
Nathan joined them a few seconds later, pounding up the ramp without slowing. “Pyro, get us out of here.” He heard the reactor’s whine change pitch and then the rumble of the thrusters as they began pushing the ship off the ground. “Hicks, get the ramp.”
“Roger,” Hicks replied, hitting the controls to close the rear ramp.
Nathan skidded to a stop on the deck, turning to the rear of the Parabellum. The xaxkluth had closed in a hurry, desperate to prevent their escape. “Pyro, we’ve got company. Get us out of here. Fast!”
“You need to get locked in!” she snapped back. The dropship couldn’t make any serious maneuvers while they were free in the hold.
“Strap in!” he roared, activating the electromagnets in his boots. “Now!”
The others all scrambled to the seats along the sides of the hold, strapping themselves in as quickly as possible. The rear ramp of the Parabellum clanged to a close, leaving Nathan with one last glimpse of a xaxkluth leaping toward them.
“Clear!” he shouted, the dropship shooting upwards, the sudden force nearly enough to rip him from the deck.
