Desperate Measures

by Michael Anderle

  Erik launched all but his last two grenades at the wounded behemoth. Jia waited until right before the smoke and explosions cleared to add her contribution. Alpha Three shouted in defiance as his launcher flung grenades at the monster, and Alpha Six finished off with two rockets after turning his exo to account for his out-of-position launcher.

  The massive explosions enveloped nearby tanks, burning them and blasting out chunks. Thick, dark smoke covered that part of the cavern, along with scattered fires.

  The huge outline of the behemoth appeared in the smoke and moved forward, revealing a blackened crater in the chest extending almost to the back. It toppled forward and crashed, shaking the floor.

  “You’re right, Jia.” Erik smiled. “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”

  “Told you!”

  Erik ran forward to avoid the surviving behemoth. The yaoguai crashed into a nearby gestation tank, the collision cracking the cylinder in half before the monster kicked the pieces out of the way and raised its arm shields, roaring from behind them.

  “Same strategy.” Erik jumped backward, sacrificing his last two grenades to bring down the arm shields.

  Jia, Alpha Three, and Alpha Six repeated their performance, but this time when the smoke cleared, the arm shields had been blown clean away, but most of the yaoguai’s surface armor remained.

  Erik growled in frustration. He was out of grenades. “Explosives check.”

  “I’m dry,” called Alpha Three.

  “Two rockets,” yelled Alpha Six.

  “One grenade,” Jia called.

  He would have liked more to work with, but battles often came down to judicious use of remaining resources. The most important resource was the dead behemoth. It was proof they could win.

  “Alpha Two, Alpha Six, open a hole!” Erik bellowed. “Give it everything you’ve got!”

  Jia sprinted toward the monster, her exo’s feet clanging on the metal floor. She shot the grenade before leaping to the side and letting Alpha Six nail the wounded behemoth with his final two rockets.

  Erik didn’t wait for the smoke to clear or bother with controlled bursts. He sent a constant stream of bullets at the behemoth. Jia turned to face the monster and joined in. Alpha Three added his fire, but there wasn’t much Alpha Six could do with his damaged barrel.

  The behemoth stumbled forward. Bullets riddled its now-exposed body, shredded it and painting it blue. They kept up the attack. If they couldn’t finish it with the exos, they were going to have to get out and hope their backup rifles could do it. As long as they had a single bullet, they could win.

  The large constant fire filled the cavern with an echoing cacophony of death. All the other enemies they’d encountered that day would have long since fallen.

  Erik’s ammo indicator hit one percent before the monster collapsed and crushed a tank. He grinned. That was the Lady, always keeping it exciting.

  “Everyone all right?” Erik asked after taking a deep breath.

  “I’m good,” Jia called back. She sidled her exo close to Erik’s and lowered her voice. “I’m out of grenades, but I’ve still got ten percent for my rifle.”

  Ten percent? That was impressive combat efficiency, considering everything they had gone through. He’d been worrying too much.

  “I’m fine,” Alpha Three called.

  “I’ve got some broken ribs, I think,” Alpha Six offered, his voice strained. “And some lacerations. That thing hits…well, about as hard as you’d think.”

  That was nothing medpatches couldn’t fix. Erik looked at Alpha Six. The behemoth had torn deeper than he’d realized, including into the armor, judging by the jagged cuts through the soldier’s tactical suit. It was a living exo-killer.

  “Huh,” Vincke offered, sounding genuinely surprised. “I was hoping to kill you with the yaoguai, but I knew collecting my data would involve taking some risks. No matter. All interesting experiments produce surprises. I’ll take care of you soon enough.”

  “Really, asshole?” Erik replied. “I’m willing to bet if you had any more monsters to send at us, they’d be here already, and there are twelve angry people with exos who have an appointment with you.”

  The large door closed.

  “You don’t understand, Blackwell.” Vincke laughed. “You’re trapped down there, and your friends outside can’t do anything. I’m going to leave, and in ten minutes, this facility is going to explode. Unfortunately for you, that will, I suspect, necessitate you dying, but at least it’ll be quick. I’m a merciful man.”

  “You’re not going to be able to escape,” Jia shouted.

  “It doesn’t matter because you’ll be dead. I have some tricks left. It’s as I said; you were nothing more than a means to an end. And… No. Wait. What? It can’t be.”

  “Problem, Doctor?” Erik asked.

  A white-garbed Emma appeared in front of Erik with a smug smile on her face. “He’s busy trying to figure out how to get out of the room I just locked him into. His fleshbag fear is overwhelming him.”

  Erik grinned. “It’s about time.”

  The door on the far end of the chamber opened. A grinding noise from farther inside followed—another door.

  “I thought about letting you believe the self-destruct was still active for my personal amusement, but you’ve been through enough. I can’t do anything about the doorway he blocked with the explosion, but you can follow the tunnels out the other way. They will take you to the surface.” Emma smiled. “I’ve disabled jamming, as you might have surmised from my appearance.”

  “Beta Squad?” Erik transmitted. “What’s your status?”

  “We’ve neutralized all AAA,” replied Beta One. “We ran into more yaoguai, but we took care of them. Minor injuries and two of our exos are trashed, but no one’s dead. You need backup, Alpha One?”

  “Negative. We’ve taken care of things in here.” Erik grimaced. “We still need to find our informant.”

  Emma clucked her tongue. “Yes, Mr. Ahmed. He’s unconscious but alive in a room on the main level.” She burst out laughing. “Oh, this is too much. Coming with you on these missions is worth it for this kind of thing alone.”

  “What?” Erik raised an eyebrow.

  “That idiot fleshbag scientist is now destroying his PNIU in a panic,” Emma explained. “I think he finally understands I’ve taken control of all the systems here, and he won’t be escaping.”

  “Anyone else here?” Jia asked.

  Emma shook her head. “I have control of all cameras, drones, and sensors in the facility. Based on that, I’m comfortable saying there are no other humans present, and no active yaoguai. I’ve brought in drones from the perimeter, and I’m not detecting anything or anyone other than Beta Squad in the nearby forest.”

  Erik surveyed the carnage around them. Smoke drifted off smoldering debris. Yaoguai bodies and parts covered the floor. A steady drip of blue blood and fluid dropped through the grating. It was a slaughterhouse.

  “Let’s go pay Doctor Vincke and Mr. Ahmed a visit.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Jia prodded Vincke out of the front door of the mansion with the arm shield of her exo. She’d thought about using the rifle, but years of weapon safety training overwhelmed her desire to intimidate the man. They’d tied his hands earlier, and he didn’t seem nearly as confident surrounded by exoskeletons and pieces of yaoguai.

  She almost pitied the man. He’d thought he had a perfect plan. The battle could have easily gone his way. If the attack force had been less brave or well-trained, they could have easily been overwhelmed by the yaoguai’s attacks. Discipline had helped them preserve the necessary ammo until the end.

  Jia wasn’t sure if the typical NSCPD TPST team would have survived the raid. Nobody sat around training to fight hordes of strange monsters. Well, nobody except Erik and Jia.

  “At least they aren’t jiangshi,” she muttered.

  Erik carried the informant. The man was breathing, but they couldn�
�t wake him. Vincke had grudgingly volunteered that Ahmed was drugged and would be okay in a day. He’d kept him alive in case he needed a hostage, but he’d intended to blow him up with the rest of the facility and team.

  Jia was surprised by how confident Vincke remained despite his entire yaoguai army being wiped out and being taken prisoner. She wasn’t sure if it was bravery or arrogance.

  “The cargo flitter is on the way,” Emma reported. “I am maintaining thorough coverage of the surrounding area, and there is no indication of enemy support, either human or yaoguai. I think it’s safe to declare this a decisive victory.”

  “That’s the best kind,” Erik replied. “I’d worried we’d be running through the forest under enemy fire, dodging arty barrages.”

  “I think I would have preferred that to fighting those monsters,” grumbled one of the soldiers.

  “If you’re going to keep working side ops for Adeyemi, you better get used to this kind of thing.”

  The soldier grimaced and looked away. Jia couldn’t blame him. She wasn’t sure when facing off against yaoguai or full-conversion Tin Men had become another day at the office for her. The only thing she knew was she wasn’t the same woman who had been afraid to fire her stun pistol or the kind of woman who was disturbed by the aftermath of a battle.

  Smoking remnants of missile launchers and turrets dominated the front, along with craters, most of them larger than the ones her team had made in the back. Metal pieces blasted from the AAA during the raid were scattered everywhere. The mansion’s beautiful, perfect lawn had been destroyed in mere hours.

  Dead yaoguai were clustered in piles—the same types Alpha Squad had faced off against for the most part: scorpion bees, dire wolves, and demon rhinos, as Jia had learned Erik called them, but there were no behemoths.

  Jia was grateful for that. They’d been able to use the cramped conditions to their advantage. The behemoths would have been able to charge far too easily on the spacious front lawn.

  Given that Vincke knew who Erik and Jia were, he had obviously saved his deadliest creations for them. Alpha Squad had drawn the worst danger away from the others.

  Erik set Ahmed gently down on an untouched portion of grass before removing his arm from the exo and lifting his faceplate to sneer at Vincke, who knelt in the grass but maintained a defiant look.

  “It’s not your day, is it?” Erik asked. “All your little monsters got shredded, and then your grand plan to blow us away amounted to nothing. I don’t know. Does that make you zero for two, or is it more like zero for a thousand? I stopped counting after, like, the first twenty yaoguai I wasted.”

  Vincke scoffed and turned his head. “You came close to death today, Erik Blackwell. You can only do that so many times before it catches up with you. Don’t mistake luck for anything more.”

  “Close to death?” Erik chuckled as he looked around before focusing on the doctor. “I’ve come close to death so many times, I invite Him over to watch the game over beers. I think he’s coming over for New Year’s.”

  Jia pushed a dead scorpion bee out of the way with the foot of her exo. “You screwed up, Vincke. You understand that, don’t you? You didn’t kill us, and now we have you and this facility. You were planning on blowing it up anyway, so I’m willing to bet the system isn’t totally clean. Even if you don’t give up anything, you’ve already helped us get closer to the heart of the conspiracy.”

  Vincke narrowed his eyes and glared at Jia. His mouth twitched, but he didn’t respond.

  “I should note he did partially purge the system,” Emma transmitted to Erik and Jia directly. “I stopped what I could, but it was obvious he was only keeping certain key systems active for his tests.”

  “Every breadcrumb helps,” Jia murmured. “And we have him, which is the most important breadcrumb of all.”

  “ID is going to have a great time talking to you, and a great time going through this place,” Erik offered loudly to Vincke. His smile turned predatory. “I get that you were planning to blow this place up, but you wasted all their money and time, and then you couldn’t do what you were supposed to, which makes you a damned loser. You’re pathetic. We’ve taken on a lot of you conspiracy bastards in the last couple of years, and the others were all braver and smarter than you. They knew how to take care of themselves, so we wouldn’t get them. But you’re just too damned important to die, huh? I thank you, and the Intelligence Directorate thanks you.”

  Vincke spat at Erik but the glob fell short, ending up on the exoskeleton’s foot. “You people. You’re all insects. You have no idea what you’re dealing with. I’m amazed you’re granted the power of speech, considering you waste it on pointless prattling.”

  “Prattling?” Erik beamed, looking at Jia. “I like that.”

  “You would.” She huffed.

  Erik gave the doctor a lopsided grin. “You mentioned before that we didn’t know what we are dealing with, but doesn’t that make it extra pathetic that somehow I keep managing to beat them? They got one good hit on me, and since then, I’ve been bringing the pain.” He nodded at Jia. “As has she.” He gestured at the gathered soldiers. “The DD and ID, too. We’re kicking your asses left and right. So much for the great, all-powerful conspiracy.”

  “Insects may swarm and sting a human.” Vincke stared at Erik, wild-eyed. “They might occasionally kill one by poisoning them, but humans rule the planet, not insects. No matter how many temporary triumphs you achieve, you’re nothing more than insects. You’ve always been two steps behind my masters, and as I said, your success is nothing more than blind luck. Your luck will soon fail you, and those close to you in this fight will die, screaming in pain, realizing they were fools to dare take on a superior foe.”

  Jia looked at him for a moment. “Wow, that is an impressive delusion. When you succeed over and over, it stops being about luck. The conspiracy isn’t all-powerful. We’ve stopped them countless times.” She gestured at the mansion. “Don’t you get it? If they’re these godlike people pulling the strings on everything in the UTC, why do their big plans keep failing? That thing on Venus? The news spun it, but that was the conspiracy—your old friends, the Ascended Brotherhood.”

  “Those toys were headed toward failure.” Vincke sneered. “You mistake minor setbacks and damage to disposable equipment for glorious victories. Tell me, do you even know who and what you’re pursuing? Ignoring that, Tin Men are a dead end. The future is biological, not technological. The Ascended Brotherhood was obsolete the minute they were created.”

  “A half-Leem hybrid was on Venus, too,” Erik added. “Genetic engineering didn’t help him win.”

  “I’d heard rumors of such things. That’s the problem.” Vincke clucked his tongue and shook his head. “Proper designs optimize based on our existing knowledge. It was foolish to involve alien DNA with so many unknown factors when we have a plethora of knowledge to draw on here.” A euphoric look washed over his face. “You saw what I did. I made a living creature stronger than an exoskeleton, and that was an early design. Think about what it could be with refining. Your machines will become useless toys that are easily overwhelmed by advanced living weapons.”

  Jia’s stomach knotted. She didn’t need to think about it. She’d seen the demons that could be created through the careful application of genetic engineering. There was no way she’d let that become common on Earth.

  “And that’s enough for you?” she asked, her voice trembling with rage. “You want to be the scientist who creates monsters and unleashes them on the world?”

  “The use of the tool doesn’t matter.” Vincke gave her a pitying look. “Humans first went to the Moon on a Saturn V rocket.”

  Jia’s forehead wrinkled. “Thanks for the history lesson, but I knew that.”

  Vincke stood, smug confidence radiating from his face. “It was an important moment, wouldn’t you say? It was when humanity achieved something we’d been dreaming about since the first human looked at the moon and wondered if it
was a new land, a god, or something far more important.” He smiled at the sky. “That was the moment we began our conquest of space. There would be no UTC without the moon landing.”

  “Do you have a point?” Jia asked, annoyed. “I don’t think ‘The first landing on the moon was important’ is a mind-blowing historical fact.”

  “The Saturn V was the key.” Vincke lowered his head and turned back to Jia. “It was the tool that sent men to the moon.”

  “You’re into rockets instead of biology now? Whatever happened to the future being biological?”

  “No, I’m interested in them because of who designed them.” Vincke stepped toward her.

  She didn’t worry. Even without the binding ties, she was in an exoskeleton and could bat him away with ease. She would welcome the excuse.

  “A German team led by the brilliant Wernher von Braun,” Vincke continued. “And who did those Germans, including von Braun, work for before they worked for the Americans?”

  Erik scoffed. “Yeah, you’d fit right in with his old government bosses. They did all sorts of sick experiments.”

  Vincke jerked his head in Erik’s direction. “You understand nothing. Von Braun was a visionary, as were his superiors under his previous employer, even if they were a misguided regime.” He gave them a sick smile. “He cared more about rockets than anything. Yes, the German military had him develop a ballistic missile, but even they understood its true long-term importance. His army boss said something telling during the launch of the first ballistic missile. Do you know what it was?”

  “Look out below? Boom goes the dynamite?” Erik shrugged.

  “No. He said, ‘Today the spaceship is born.’ The morality and use of the technology are irrelevant. Today I make weapons, but tomorrow I remake humanity into something better. Only the myopic concern themselves with the petty morality of the present.”