Countdown (The Shadow Wars Book 9)

  COUNTDOWN

  –A NOVEL OF SCI-FI ACTION–

  Book #9 in

  The Shadow Wars

  written by

  –S. A. Lusher–

  cover by

  –M. Knepper–

  editing by

  –Sarah Lusher–

  Table of Contents

  FOREWORD

  CHAPTER 01

  CHAPTER 02

  CHAPTER 03

  CHAPTER 04

  CHAPTER 05

  CHAPTER 06

  CHAPTER 07

  CHAPTER 08

  CHAPTER 09

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  EPILOGUE

  WARM MEMORIES

  LAID TO REST

  NECROPOLIS 4 – TERMINAL

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  FOREWORD

  What you are about to read is the ninth novel in The Shadow Wars series. It is absolutely imperative that you go back to the beginning of The Shadow Wars and read all of the books in order to enjoy this novel, otherwise, you will be lost.

  You can start here, with the first book, Necropolis.

  If you've already read Necropolis 1, 2, & 3, Absolute Zero, Ceaseless, Syberian Sunrise, Snowblind, Quarantine and Rogue Ops Rising, then thank you for reading this! I hope you enjoy it, as well.

  For the sake of convenience, here is a list of all titles in The Shadow Wars in the order in which they are meant to be read.

  -Dead Ice [Companion]

  -Dead Skies [Companion]

  -Necropolis

  -Necropolis 2: Endurance

  -Nerves of Steel [Companion] (Bundled with Necropolis 2)

  -Necropolis 3: Annihilation

  -Absolute Zero

  -Blood & Tears [Companion] (Bundled with Absolute Zero)

  -Ceaseless

  -Syberian Sunrise

  -Snowblind

  -Quarantine

  -Rogue Ops Rising

  -Countdown

  -Warm Memories [Companion] (Bundled with Countdown)

  -Laid To Rest [Companion] (Bundled with Countdown)

  -Necropolis 4: Terminal

  -Small Acts of Kindness [Companion] (Bundled with Necropolis 4)

  -EB-303 [Companion]

  -Alone? [Companion]

  -Starck's Lament

  -Deathless

  -Outpost 88 [Companion]

  -The Blind War

  -Lethal Cargo [Companion]

  -Into the Void

  -Saturate

  CHAPTER 01

  –Into the Breach–

  They came in low and fast over choppy waters the color of molten lead.

  Drake Winters was leaning out the side of one of a pair of jump ships. He was attached to the cabin and the ship itself via a cable linked up to his suit so that if, god forbid, he fell out, they wouldn't have to come back and pull him from the water. But that wasn't on his mind at the moment. He wasn't thinking about the ship, the people in it or even the mission they were on. At least not the full scope of the mission.

  He only had eyes for the massive metal structure built onto the side of the cliff sheer dead ahead. The facility and the man supposedly residing inside of it.

  Enzo Rains.

  Drake was dead set on murdering the man. As brutally as possible.

  “Drake...Drake!”

  Something seemed to give and his laser focus was broken. He swung his head to the left, returning his gaze and his attention inwards. Only two other people occupied the interior of the little jump ship. One of them he was very familiar with, the other he knew only peripherally. The first was Greg Bishop. He was sitting across from Drake, his helmet off in the seat next to him, revealing his pale face and short, dark hair.

  Done up in the traditional black armor with silver trim of the Special Operations division of the military, he was smoking a cigarette.

  “Yeah?” Drake replied.

  “You okay?” Greg asked.

  They had to shout to be heard over the roar of the engines.

  “Fine,” Drake replied.

  Greg stared at him, clearly unsatisfied with the answer, but instead of opening his mouth, he reached into one of the many pockets on his armor and fished out a battered pack of cigarettes. Galactic Lites was stenciled on the side of the thin white pack. He tapped it, so that the orange butt of a cig popped up out of the opening, and offered it to Drake. He took it almost without considering, and accepted the lighter, too.

  Drake had never really been much of a smoker throughout his life. But ever since Trent had died, he found the urge returning. As Drake finished lighting the cig, he snapped the metal jaws of the Zippo lighter shut and passed it back to Greg. His mind turned to darker thoughts. Trent...if he closed his eyes, he would see Trent's pale, dead face, staring up at him from cracked and bloodstained metal deckplates where he'd found the man.

  His final resting place aboard that ruined Rogue Operations cruiser.

  The man had died with a smile on his face, at least. Killed not by the fast-acting poison that had been introduced into his bloodstream by the enemy, but by the crash that he had given his life to initiate, to not only take down everyone onboard with him, but to spare the lives of a thousand drifters and salvagers in a dead colony below.

  Drake tried to clear his mind. He glanced over at the only other occupant. A Spec Ops soldier they had culled for the mission. He had a shaved head, calm green eyes and dead pale skin, the kind men got when they spent too much time in deep space. All of this was now hidden behind the suit of black-and-silver armor he was encased inside of. His name was Malone and he was a Sergeant in Spec Ops. Drake thought it was strange that they were only sending two men for back up, (the other man was in the second jump ship, with Allan and Callie,) but Hawkins had pulled them aside after the briefing and explained the situation.

  The politics of it all still made him sick.

  After the majority of Dark Operations, the GA's answer for all the shady shit that governments had to do to keep the peace, went rogue, they assembled what was left of Dark Ops to figure out what went wrong and put a stop to them. The renegade faction, relabeled Rogue Operations, was still largely a mystery to them. Because the GA didn't want to feed the beast they'd inadvertently created, they kept a limit on the funding and manpower they allotted to the remainder of the real Dark Ops...lest they follow in the path of the others.

  Enzo's betrayal and the subsequent attack on their one and only cruiser, the Atonement, had hit them twofold.

  Not only had they lost at least half their manpower in the assault, but the government and military were reluctant to give them anymore help. As Hawkins as so eloquently put it before shipping them out on this mission: We are well and truly fucked. And we're on our own. But Drake didn't care. He had a suit of power armor, a gun and plenty of bullets. And the determination to hunt down and murder Enzo Rains for what he'd done.

  In a very fundamental way, he had created the events that led to the death of Drake's best friend, brother-in-arms and, really, the only person who meant anything to him anymore: Trent Stone. The man who had been there, by his side, for over thirty years.

  Thirty years...

  Drake took a long pull off of his cigarette, then flicked it into the ocean. He reached over, grabbed his helmet and secured it.

  They were nearing the facility.

  Vengeance was close at hand.

  * * * * *

  Allan Gray sat in the darkened interior of the jump ship, staring at a holographic display of the facility they were on fas
t approach to, being projected in the central open space of the main cabin, between the twin rows of seats where he, Callie and their sole assistant in this matter, Corporal Donovan, a Spec Ops technician, sat. Donovan was young, in his late twenties, but he was sharp and proficient. Allan trusted him to get the job done. And, for once, Allan actually was beginning to believe in himself to get the job done. For a moment, he stopped seeing the holographic project, hovering there, painted in sharp, angular planes of neon green.

  Instead, he recalled his time aboard the Stygian, the Rogue Ops vessel that had become a plague ship of insane, malignant lunatics that tried to tear apart anything that moved. He'd lost his mind on that vessel, had a full blown breakdown. And afterward, when he'd somehow survived his ordeal, got the data he was after and cured himself of the same sickness that had afflicted the crew, Hawkins had given him a choice.

  Undergo an experimental, dangerous procedure that would just as likely cure him as it would kill him, or leave.

  Of course, he'd taken the procedure.

  Allan had endured the experience of traversing the dark, gruesome plains of his own broken mind. Had learned the horrible truth about his past. The seed of his madness, a repressed memory: his girlfriend had cheated on him, and he'd tried to kill himself. Somehow, along the way, he'd forgotten this particular fact, and it had left him broken. But now he had remembered it, faced it down, and...he felt better.

  He knew that he was still a long way from fixed, he was on antidepressants and antipsychotics now, as well as something to help regulate his sleep, and, someday, when there was time, he planned to see a therapist or something of the sort. But undergoing the procedure, the pills and, now, his new relationship with Callie, had gone a long way towards cooling the fires in his head. He still felt anxious or depressed, but no longer with the same power or pathos. His emotions were significantly easier to handle these days.

  Allan returned to reality, focusing again on the display.

  They had tracked Enzo to a long-abandoned water reclamation facility on a backwater planet. A cursory scan by a requisitioned, old military satellite still in orbit revealed the place was hot: it was producing power and had close to seventy life signs inside. Their goal was simple: infiltrate the facility, eliminate the hostiles, recover Enzo. He had a lot to answer for. Besides punishing him, Hawkins wanted to know what he'd given up in terms of information and if there had been anyone else onboard the Atonement working with him.

  It wasn't the most pleasant of missions, but it was of a variety that Allan was familiar with. He'd grown up on a nasty world and gone on to work for Security-Investigations there. How many corrupt cops had he run into? How many had he personally arrested? He didn't like thinking about it, but how many had he personally put down after midnight when he'd had his own streak of vigilante justice? Allan shuddered at that memory.

  He didn't like to think of that time in his life.

  The plan, as Hawkins had outlined it in the briefing before dropping them off in orbit, was relatively simple. They were coming in low and fast, trying to keep off the enemy's radar, and were going to infiltrate the facility from two different (hopefully) unguarded points. One was a very risky and difficult to access runoff maintenance platform, which was where he, Callie and Donovan were going. Another was the roof on the far, unoccupied side of the facility, which was where Drake, Greg and their Spec Ops buddy were being dropped off.

  This whole thing made him think that Genevieve would be perfect for this kind of job. She was an assassin after all. But Hawkins had insisted she stay behind to ensure the security of the Atonement. Allan thought he was still getting ripples of paranoia from Enzo's betrayal. Which, if he was being completely honest, he didn't blame the man for. But the mission should be easy enough. They'd blown through how many of these Rogue Ops pushovers during the past month? And all the intel they'd gathered so far made it seemed as if this wasn't really a solid operation on the part of their enemy, that the water treatment facility was more of a makeshift safe house than anything else. Which was fine in Allan's book, he'd had enough difficult tasks just lately.

  “Hey, you okay?” Callie asked.

  She had her helmet on but her visor up. She was staring at him with her electric blue eyes that glowed with digital implants. The helmet framed her pale face and just a hint of her jet black hair could be seen around the edges. Her eyes belied a touch of loving care that he had come to associate with her, but also a hint of worry.

  He smiled. “Great, babe,” he replied.

  And because he sounded genuine, and not like he was covering up his own emotions to spare hers, she smiled warmly at him, a real smile that he never got tired of seeing. He smiled back at her, glad that he was able to answer that question honestly and positively for once in his life. It had been a long time since he'd had reason to smile.

  “Sixty seconds,” the pilot said over their comms net.

  Callie's features became set and her game face came on like a hammer. Allan was sure his had, too. It was time to get into character. She slid her visor down and turned it opaque. She had selected a sleek blue sheen. Allan pulled his helmet on, his own visor turned a slick shiny silver, like a mirrored surface. He reflected, as he stared out the window of the jump ship at the approaching rock wall, that it was less than three weeks ago since he'd felt trapped inside of his suit, unable to take it off, to even take his helmet off, lest he have a panic attack.

  And now, here he'd been, sitting casually with it off to the side.

  It was great to be on the road to mental health for once.

  “Go!” the pilot yelled, causing Allan to wince slightly, since the voice came in over his helmet-mounted radio.

  Not that he could blame the man. They were all hyped up on adrenaline. Allan stood and yanked the side door open. The sound of the engines flooded the cabin. They were supposed to be of a more streamlined, stealthy model, and he had to admit, they did sound quieter, but they were still pretty noisy, at least to him. He was a mere two feet from the jutting metal ledge of the platform they were supposed to get onto.

  He leaped across the gap and landed without making too much noise. There was only a single door and it looked like it hadn't been opened in a long while. He checked the area while Callie and Donovan made the jump. They landed with dull clangs. Allan cut his gaze across the vast, churning sea beneath them, the choppy waters looking like so much broken metal slag hundreds of feet below. Just twenty meters away, to the right, he could spy one of the huge metal ribs of the support struts that kept the whole facility from falling into the water.

  Behind him, he heard another dull clang, this one quieter. The door was open.

  “Okay,” Callie said. “We're in.”

  “Affirmative,” Greg replied over the radio. “We've landed.”

  “Good luck.”

  “You too.”

  Allan wished them luck also as he headed into the darkness of the facility.

  * * * * *

  Greg felt exposed as he hustled across the flat top of the structure's metal roof, his boots banging hollowly. Behind him, the jump ship had powered down, having landed in the shadow of a massive, long-dormant power transformer, hidden from view. Time was of the essence. They needed to get inside, plug into the local network and figure out who was where and what was up. Unfortunately, every second they wasted doing that was another second they could get noticed by some bastard who'd wandered off for a nap or a smoke.

  He reached his destination: a maintenance hatch meant for the poor bastards whose job it was to climb atop this miserable heap of metal and glass when it was functional. It was stuck. He sighed as he pressed the button to open it a few more times, then gave up and yanked open the panel for the manual release hatch.

  “What's the hold up?” Drake asked, crouching behind him with Malone, waiting impatiently for him to get on with it.

  “It's stuck,” Greg replied.

  “Well, hurry up,” Drake said.

  As he star
ted fucking with the manual release valve, straining against the rust and weather damage, Greg found himself worrying about Drake. The man was a pendulum swinging to an erratic tune. Ever since he'd gotten back from the mission that had killed Trent, he was sometimes silent and stoic, calm like a monk, and other times he was a cauldron of furious, barely contained rage. Of course he was miserable and pissed off beyond anyone's ability to calculate: his best friend, his brother, was dead by the enemy's hand.

  Of course he'd want revenge.

  Of course he was going to be a maelstrom of emotions.

  No one handled that shit well. But that was the problem. Greg had come to learn that whenever life dropped a bombshell into a human being's daily grind...they didn't always survive. They didn't always come out the other end intact. Drake was shambling through a wasteland of blood and razorwire right now. As much as Greg and Allan and Genevieve and Callie and even Hawkins were trying to help him...ultimately, it was up to Drake to save himself. Greg wasn't even sure if the man wanted to save himself.

  He supposed, once Enzo was dead, Drake would figure that out, one way or the other.

  Until then...

  “Got it,” Greg said.

  “I'm going first,” Drake replied, practically pushing past him.

  Greg said nothing, stepping back and letting him go. He watched the man disappear down the opening. A moment later, he gave the all clear over the radio. Greg went first, lowering himself into the hole and climbing quickly down the ladder. He could practically feel Drake's impatience. Above him, Malone followed. The pair came down into a derelict work room, a few lockers standing in one corner, hanging open and empty to the world. Drake was already moving through the singular open door across the room.

  Greg followed him out into a corridor that stretched away to the left. It was very dark, as there weren't any windows to let in what scant sunlight there was. His visor compensated, brightening itself so that he wasn't tripping over his own two feet. Drake was moving quickly and quietly down the empty hallway, already halfway down it. The scan had revealed a variety of power signatures, some of them being general access terminals that would grant access to the internal network Rogue Ops would have set up.