"Colonel, what exactly is the purpose of Project Brimstone?" asked Harrison. "Not just defense, I'm guessing."
"No, major, not just defense. Our goal is use this technology to find additional technologies and alternative fuel sources for the future defense of this nation. We need to have better weapons to defend ourselves from future aggressors. Faction Three and Faction Four are likely much more advanced than we are. Sooner or later, they're going to come looking for us. We need to be prepared. The president would rather not have to resort to nukes and bioweapons on our soil to drive them off."
"If I may, colonel," Dr. Dixon interjected. "It is probable that there are other factions out there even more advanced than the cyborgs. We need teams that can go out and retrieve technology, like you did with Faction One, major."
"You want me to go out and steal technology?"
"Acquire technology, major. Liberate. We're talking about defending our nation from any and all threats, no matter how fantastic, but that isn't what I have in mind for you. We need you to deal with Faction One."
"What about Faction One?" Harrison asked, wary.
"We think they have only the one facility. We think that, with the first device destroyed, they'll set up the second in the same place. Stupidly, all of their scientists who understand it seem to be at that one facility, as well."
"You mean like we do here?"
The colonel ignored him. "We want you to take it out."
Harrison sighed. "What do you want me to do?"
"Dr. Dixon will teach you how to operate the portal device. We want you to infiltrate their base, find their device, and eliminate the threat." The colonel paused. "I've been authorized by the president and the joint chiefs to deploy a tactical nuclear device for this operation."
"You can't just beam it over there?"
"We expect the device to be in a hardened bunker. We need the bomb to be inside the bunker when it goes off."
"So this is a suicide mission, sir?"
"No. That's why we want you to learn about operating the portal device. You can use their device to get home, with a short delay before it shuts off. The nuclear device can be set to go off just after the portal shuts down. You'll be safely home, and they will have lost the ability to attack us."
Harrison sighed as he looked around the room at the anxious faces of the men there. He could see that they needed him to do it. He was the only one who had been to the other side. He didn't mind doing the job – the job was all he knew – but he didn't want to commit suicide by doing it.
Still, he knew there was only one thing he could say. "When do I start?"
Chapter Twenty-Four
Harrison entered the portal room with a sense of foreboding. What was he going to find on the other side? Nobody had any real idea. Were there watchwords? Special hand signals? Salutes?
"Got everything fixed to your liking, major?" asked Dr. Dixon.
Harrison smiled humorlessly. It had taken him days repair his gear after it has been "sanitized" the last time. He'd only just found out about that. The idiot assigned to clean his weapons has completely taken the guns apart – every little part. He hadn't kept the parts separated, either. The colonel wouldn't tell him who had done it – probably figured he'd kill them.
The next time he'd take care of his own gear. He had to requisition a few new parts for the repairs, including a new grenade launcher. The armorer had been almost as disgusted as Harrison at the condition of the weapons. A few days of work had gotten them back to the way they had been. Of course, Harrison wasn't about to take an untried weapon into battle, which meant three more days spent on the firing range.
The colonel was irritated with the delay; he wanted to get the mission over with, but he wasn't the one out at the sharp end. It wasn't as if the colonel could get rid of him and find someone else for the mission. Harrison wasn't that lucky.
"You'll want this," Dixon said as he handed him what looked like a full-face scuba mask.
"What good is that going to do me?"
"If we drop you in the water, it'll keep you alive long enough to get back to the portal."
"Comforting thought," Harrison remarked as he examined the mask. It had a soft rubber seal around the edges, and two small air cylinders under the front. "How much air do I have?"
"About five minutes."
"That's not much, doc."
"It should be enough to get you back home."
"I'll take what I can get, I guess."
"We've built a new device that has maps of the enemy base taken from their captured computers. If you'll follow me, I'll get you fitted with the new device. I'll need your left forearm."
"Just as long as I get it back."
Dixon shot him a glance at that, but Harrison managed to keep his expression blank.
The device the doctor strapped onto Harrison's arm didn't weigh much. It was a bulky touchscreen with a protective cover, like an iPhone on steroids.
"So how does this thing work?"
"Standard touchscreen interface with a microprocessor and digital flash memory."
"I meant, how do I operate it?" Harrison said, smiling.
"Oh." Dr. Dixon explained how to select the map, and the basic routing system. It worked much like a standard GPS, except it used the Earth's magnetic field lines for reference.
Harrison complained about that. "How do you know they're the same over there?"
"The other Earth didn't branch off all that long ago," Dixon explained. "Remember the finger prints and the scars? This device will work fine there."
Harrison sighed. "When do I leave on this crazy mission?"
"In a few minutes, major."
"Okay. What about the nuke?"
"The techs are getting it ready."
"Any luck on making the portal transition feel better?"
Dixon shrugged. "Hard to know what to change. We don't want to mess with it too much. We did make a couple of small changes that I think will help."
"You think?"
"Well, the robots didn't complain."
"Funny."
"How're you doing, major?" the colonel's voice boomed out over the intercom.
"Good, sir. Just waiting on the nuke."
"We're all counting on you. Safe return, major."
"Thank you, sir."
"I think we're ready here, major." Dixon said. "Do you remember what I told you about how to operate the portal device, so you can return?"
"I'm not likely to forget that, Dixon." He'd written it down in his notebook, just in case.
The nuclear device was smaller than he'd expected, only about the size of a briefcase. It was heavier than hell, though, almost twenty kilos. He slung it over his back next his backpack and slid the code strip into his breast pocket under his body armor. He felt as if he was carrying too much gear, but he needed to be prepared. This was really a mission that required a full team, but they didn't want to send anyone else through unless they absolutely had to. He wondered what they would do if he failed.
He cleared his mind.
Failure wasn't an option.
Chapter Twenty-Five
He crouched down and nodded to Dr. Dixon. The machine starting humming as the field built up. Harrison felt sick to his stomach with apprehension. He knew this mission wasn't going to work out right. Something would go wrong. Don't be such a pessimist, he chided himself. Let something actually go wrong before you start panicking.
The portal howled open, and he moved through it.
It was worse than ever. The darkness tore at his mind and soul. The transition to the other side was startling, the dim light almost blinding. He stumbled and fell, still disoriented by the journey through the darkness. It was night here, and the air was thick and humid.
A bullet ricocheted off the wall next to his head as he hit the ground, and he returned fire. One man twisted, screaming, as the 150-grain bullet shattered his arm at the elbow, and the other soldier dove behind the wall, shouting. Harrison smiled g
rimly and put three rounds through the thin wall and the man on the other side, listening for the screams to tell him when to stop shooting. That one wouldn't be shooting back.
He checked the mapping device. He was right on target, supposedly. The building he wanted was two hundred meters ahead. The problem was, there wasn't any cover along the way.
Just do it, he thought.
He stood and ran for it.
The rest of the personnel on the base hadn't missed hearing the shots. An alarm had begun, and men ran in his direction, two armed Humvees behind them. Searchlights swept the concrete. Harrison emptied the rest of his magazine at the infantry on full auto, trying not to stagger under the pounding of the SCAR, and then concentrated on getting to the door. A line of pockmarks from the heavy machine gun on one of the Humvees stitched across the wall as he ran. He slapped his hand over the sensor and dove through the door as it opened. The door shook under the impact of more heavy bullets.
Harrison loaded a high-explosive grenade and fired it out through the door, then followed it with two more and kicked the door shut. The room he found himself in was empty. He smashed the sensor plate and then slung his rifle. He hurriedly rigged a claymore on the door. Whoever came through it would get a nasty surprise. He didn't doubt they'd be coming through soon.
The next door opened into a corridor, and if his map was correct, there would be an elevator to the lower level at the end. If it was correct. He was surprised there weren't more people in the building, but they wouldn't be here unless they were using it, he supposed. He wished he knew what time it was in this universe. It was night, but he didn't know how late.
The elevator doors were closing when he heard the claymore detonate. They wouldn't be slowed for long by that. They had to suspect why he here. He slung his rifle and drew one of his suppressed pistol. He'd have to be fast. He slapped a C-4 charge on the control panel with a ten-second delay, but he didn't arm it yet.
Bullets smashed into the back of the elevator as the doors opened. Harrison ducked out of the way and returned fire. He'd hoped to get farther. He armed the explosive, punched the button for the top floor, and dove out of the elevator.
A bullet glanced off his helmet and sent him stumbling. Two more hit him in the chest and knocked him down. He dropped his pistol. He was reaching for his other pistol when two soldiers ran up and stepped on his arms. They didn't look amused.
Just then, the C-4 detonated.
The concussion shook the building, and the burning remains of the elevator dropped down the shaft and crashed into the ground, blasting the doors outward. One of the doors caught a soldier and knocked him down. The attention of the other one wavered enough for Harrison to draw his other .45 and shoot him. He stood and shot them each again in the head.
His chest hurt, but his vest had stopped the bullets. He holstered his pistol and picked up the one he'd dropped. He quickly checked it, but it appeared fine. The map said he was close to the enemy portal room.
Harrison ran down the hall and placed his hand over the scanner.
Nothing happened.
Someone had caught on and disabled his access. Well, disabled the other Harrison's access, but it was really the same thing. He hoped that it caused his double some difficulty. He'd like to kill the bastard, but he didn't expect to get a chance. Unless he's on this base, he thought cheerfully. Then he'll get nuked along with the rest.
He backed up the corridor, loaded his last high-explosive grenade, and fired it down the corridor. He hoped it wouldn't damage the portal device, but he had to get into that room at all costs. He ducked his head as the backwash of the explosion blew over him, singeing his eyebrows.
The doors to the room were blown out. He climbed through the wreckage and searched through the smoke for the portal controls. They didn't look too damaged. He pulled twisted metal away from one of the posts and turned it back to match the others. The power cables were intact.
The controls were the same as the ones in his universe. He turned on the device and set the portal duration for thirty seconds. He then unslung the nuke and opened the case. It took him a minute or two to type in the lengthy code. He set the device to detonate in forty-five seconds, but he didn't twist the keys to arm it yet.
A bullet cut across his arm like a red-hot poker, and then two more hit him in the back, under the edge of his pack. He knocked the nuke on the floor as he fell. The portal howled open. He crawled to the nuke and twisted the keys, waiting only long enough to see that the nuke had begun counting down before he lurched to his feet. He flung himself into the dubious safety of the portal, but not before he was hit in the leg.
The pain was torn away as the blackness gripped him.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Harrison was through the portal but still in darkness, and fear gripped him when he thought of being trapped in the darkness of the portal forever. Then he flung himself to the ground as an explosion seared the night. The pain from his wounds was bad, and it was all he could do not to cry out. Even as the afterimage of the explosion faded from his eyes, more explosions lit the night. The landscape was familiar but barren, devoid of life beyond the soldiers who were fighting across it. It looked much like the location of the enemy base in the previous universe; he could even see the ocean. The quality of air was different, stale and bitter.
Obviously, he wasn't home.
He must have typed something in wrong, or the equipment had been more damaged than he had realized. At least he hadn't ended up underground. The portal faded away behind him, but he hadn't been the least bit tempted to go back through it. The nuclear device he set was going to detonate in a few seconds, destroying the enemy base of operations. His world would be safe. Now he just had to worry about himself.
The light from the near-constant explosions lit the night like a frenetic strobe light in a disco of the damned. Soldiers in the familiar digital camouflage were falling back toward dead, burning trees. They were going to get a nasty surprise when the portal didn't open for them. Across the field and coming his way, a line of other soldiers marched in unison. These soldiers never faltered in their advance, even when one of them was blown to pieces by a rocket. They walked with their right arms held out in front of them, and the smoke and dust in the air were lit by brilliant blue bolts of light coming from arm-mounted weapons of some kind, possibly particle beams.
Harrison crawled into a crater. It was muddy and held soft bits of things he didn't want to think about. He reloaded his rifle while peeking over the rim. Now that they were closer, the soldiers seemed much less human. There was something wrong with their heads. At first he had thought they were wearing night-vision goggles, but that wasn't it. The lumps and cables were part of their heads. Their bodies were covered in light grey, overlapping armored plates. These must be the cyborgs Dixon mentioned, he thought.
Another unit of the cyborg soldiers suddenly appeared on the other side of the guys in digital camouflage and cut them down. Harrison couldn't say he was sorry to see them get their asses handed to them, but the fight did seem a bit uneven. The wounded cyborgs did something with their left arms and disappeared.
So they have a device like the one Dixon showed me. He didn't know if he'd be able to use their devices, but it was worth trying. Enough of them had been wounded that he ought to be able to find an intact device and get out before they found him. The remaining cyborgs blinked away, and it took him a few minutes for his eyes to adjust to the darkness.
The moon hung low over the water, but there was something wrong with it. The moon's surface appeared chewed and blackened. It also looked smaller than it should, as if it had been used up, a dark cinder in the sky.
This place also wasn't as quiet as Harrison expected. He could hear something moving over the sound of the waves, so there must be life. Maybe it was crabs coming up from the ocean to feast on the dead. It didn't sound like birds. He took out his LED flashlight and shined it around.
It wasn't crabs.
He s
aw what looked like pieces of dead cyborgs moving around, scuttling across the ground and clumping together in odd, twitching piles.
He moved closer.
The piles were all around cyborg corpses. He was so horrified at what he was seeing that he didn't notice the corpse to his right climb to its feet, pieces of leftover material falling away. It walked across his field of vision and tore the left arm from the corpse he'd been watching. Its own arm seemed mangled. As Harrison watched, the arm fell off, and the cyborg corpse attached the one it had gleaned.
He drew his suppressed pistol, took careful aim at the cyborg, and put two .45 rounds in its chest. There was a flash of light, and it staggered but didn't go down. It immediately opened fire on the crater with its particle beam.
"Fuck me," Harrison muttered, ducking down to avoid the blasts.
He holstered the pistol and raised his rifle.
Harrison peeked over the edge of the crater when the shots ceased. The cyborg was standing about six meters away and examining its right arm. Apparently its gun had jammed or something. He shot it with the rifle. The heavy 7.62mm bullet slammed into its chest. There was a blinding flash, and Harrison could see it stagger. He shot it again, but the effect was the same. He wasn't getting anywhere. He didn't want to use a grenade on it; he might damage its portal device, and he needed that.
It did something with its right hand, and a long, wicked-looking blade slid out at the wrist, glistening in the light of Harrison's small flashlight. It began walking steadily toward him.
Harrison backed to the far edge of the crater and put down his rifle. He drew his knives, crouched below the rim, and waited. The cyborg slowly worked its way down into the crater and walked to him. He could have outrun it with ease, but where would he have gone?
When it came into range, Harrison sprang into action. His boot caught it under the chin, and it staggered back as he came in swinging. It was extremely strong, and faster than he had expected. Its first swing almost had him as it powered through his knife-block. He could tell it wasn't used to hand-to-hand fighting, though. It lacked his skill with a blade and didn't seem to know martial arts at all.
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