Countdown (The Shadow Wars Book 9) Read online

  “All right, asshole,” he said.

  Enzo started laughing.

  Drake put the barrel of his rifle to Enzo's faceplate. “What the fuck is so funny?!” he snapped.

  “They weren't sure you'd come,” he replied. The words sounded like they were spoken through gritted teeth. Drake wished Enzo's visor was transparent, so he could see the pain on his face. “But I told them you would, so they leaked the information that let Hawkins track me here. And you all came. Well...almost all of you.”

  Drake realized that he was holding something.

  But it wasn't a pistol. It looked like...

  “What are you doing with that?” Drake asked.

  It looked like a detonator.

  Enzo started laughing.

  He pressed the little red button at the top of the device clenched in his armored fist.

  All around them, the whole room shuddered. Drake had expected something more powerful, more cataclysmic...only the shaking wasn't subsiding. It was getting worse. The shakes became tremors, violent tremors. Dust fell from the ceiling. Enzo continued laughing, then, suddenly, he hit Drake with something that sent a nasty shock through his suit and his body. Drake cried out and collapsed to the floor, his suit momentarily shut down. Some kind of EMP device. There were defenses built into the suit for that, protected backup batteries would soon come online, but for the moment he was effectively paralyzed.

  “Have fun,” Enzo said as he staggered to his feet.

  Drake watched, helpless, as his enemy disappeared through a nearby opening. Around him, the shaking was getting worse. In a flash, he realized what Enzo must have done: demolition charges had been planted all along the primary support struts, on the exterior of the facility. When Enzo had blown them, he'd allowed the entire facility to begin sliding down the side of the cliff sheer. Not quite a ninety degree angle, but close enough.

  He knew it to be true, it's what he would've done.

  Enzo had lured them into a trap.

  Abruptly, his head's up display flickered weakly to life. He had some control back. He activated his radio as he struggled to his feet. “Bishop! Gray! Report in!”

  “Gray here, what the fuck is going on!?” Allan snapped back.

  “It was a trap! Enzo set charges! The whole fucking facility is coming down! Get out now, I'm going on after Enzo.”

  There was a brief hesitation. “Fine, we're going! Get your ass out of there as quick as you can!” Allan replied.

  Sure, as if he'd leave without Enzo.

  Drake ran off, ignoring the pain in his muscles.

  * * * * *

  “This is insane!” Greg cried as they began running through the facility.

  All around them, it was falling to pieces. Walls broke, deckplates ripped apart, support beams crashed like felled trees.

  “Yeah, no shit!” Allan yelled back.

  “We need extraction now!” Callie was yelling into the radio.

  “We've already lost one bird,” the pilot was saying. “Tumbled off the side, into the ocean. Your best bet is going to be to get to the roof. There's not really any other realistic way I'll be able to pick you up.”

  “Affirmative! We're headed up!” Callie replied.

  “Where's the nearest roof access junction?” Greg asked.

  “Fuck, I don't even know...” Allan replied.

  “This way!” Callie replied. She seemed pretty damned certain of herself, so the four of them, Greg, Allan, Malone and Donovan, raced off after her. She led them back through the derelict mess hall. Which was splitting in half. A foot-wide gap had opened up in the floor. Callie was leading them. She hit the gap and jumped, landing with no problem, continuing her sprint. Allan went next, then Donovan, both men leaping over the ever widening gap. Greg was up next. He kicked it into high gear, sprinting and then leaping...

  He just barely made it, maybe half an inch of his heels sticking out over the edge. The whole room was falling apart now, debris from the ceiling crashing to the floor. Greg turned and spied Malone racing towards him. The man leaped...but the gap was too wide. He hit the side and scrabbled for purchase, flailing his arms, trying to grab onto something. Greg dropped to his knees and snagged one of the man's groping hands.

  “Come on!” he called, grunting with effort as he lifted the Spec Ops warrior up out of crack in the ruined floor.

  It was a near thing, but he managed it.

  Both men were up and stumbling, then running across what remained of the mess hall. Allan was waiting for them at the door, urging them on. The trio burst into the corridor. At the end of it, they saw Callie and Donovan disappearing through a door. Thin gray sunlight was coming in now as the walls tore themselves apart and the ceiling started to cave in. If they didn't hurry there wouldn't be a ceiling to extract off of.

  The trio hurried in through the door and found what they were looking for. Callie was already at the top of a ladder at the back of the room, opening the hatch, and Donovan was behind her. One by one, they scurried up the ladder, which trembled and vibrated in their grasp. Greg was the last one up. As soon as the way was clear, he climbed up into precious gray daylight. The sun was rising on this madness, slowly and steadily. He hauled himself up out of the hole in the ceiling and came to a relatively stable patch of roof.

  “Where are you!?” Callie called, the desperation obvious in her voice.

  Greg didn't blame her. The gray waters below were rising up rather quickly to meet them and although he had a fair amount of faith in this suit, he wasn't sure he wanted to test being at the epicenter of a collapsing building.

  “Here,” the pilot replied calmly.

  Greg glanced up. The pilot was overhead. Both doors opened and security lines came down. There was no time to climb up, so they grabbed the metal clips at the end of the unbreakable ropes and snapped them onto their suits of armor.

  “We're secure!” Callie called after everyone checked in. “Go!”

  “Affirmative,” the pilot replied.

  The jump ship moved up and away, taking them with it, yanking them off the top of the collapsing building. As he was pulled away and whipped violently through the air, Greg stared at the structure, wondering where Drake was.

  * * * * *

  There.

  Enzo was in an old hangar they'd resurrected. A small, sleek black ship waited for him in the middle of it. He was limping, losing blood, but Drake's suit had been damaged and he was slower than he would have moved normally. As he stumbled into the room, fighting his protesting muscles, which had been exposed to the electrical shock Enzo had given him, he raised his rifle and fired. The shots went wide, but got Enzo's attention.

  Not good.

  He turned and aimed something at Drake. He had just a second to realize what he was intending when Enzo fired off another jolt that hit him right in the chestplate. Drake cried out as he felt the electrical surge shoot through his entire body. He fell to his knees, and as the darkness boiled around the edges of his vision, consuming him, he spied Enzo turning and hurrying away up the back ramp of the vessel.

  And then he was out, falling forward onto his face.

  * * * * *

  He was floating.

  Was he dead? Was this heaven? Purgatory?

  No. There was pain. A lot of pain. His body felt as though it was burning. So hell then. Only...he was being lifted, slowly, gently. He thought he could hear voices from far away, as if coming from a great distance, or like he was...

  Underwater.

  Drake opened his eyes. Through his visor, which was cracked and leaking slightly, he could see water, rushing past him. It was getting brighter. Suddenly, he broke the surface of the water, but the ascension didn't abate.

  “What happened?” he muttered.

  “Oh, finally,” Greg said, over his radio. “I thought you might be dead in there.”

  “No...I'm not...fuck! Did you get him!? Did you get Enzo?!” he asked.

  Overhead, a jump ship hovered. He realized s
omeone, (Greg), must have dove down into the water, found him, clipped a security line to him and had them lift him up and out. He glanced over. He could see Greg also being lifted into the sky.

  “No, I'm sorry. He got out in a ship that had FTL capabilities. He broke orbit and made a run for it. The Atonement was too slow and he send out some kind of scrambling pulse. Not enough to do any real damage, but just enough so that they couldn't tell where he was going,” Greg explained. “What happened?”

  “I shot him, but he hit me with a damned stun gun. Twice.”

  “Ouch,” Greg replied sympathetically. “Those are a bitch.”

  Drake said nothing, unable to believe that the mission was a bust, that Enzo had escaped, that they'd all very nearly died.

  He contemplated this as he was pulled up into the jump ship.

  CHAPTER 03

  –Something Like Solace–

  How familiar was this scene?

  Greg sat down heavily in the plush leather seat of the briefing room. They all sat around that intimately familiar table of polished dark wood. He looked slowly around the table, feeling his eyes droop. Damn, he was tired. How long had it been since he'd had a good night's sleep? Before that stint on the island at least. After he'd been picked up, there'd only been a little bit of time to catch a scant few hours of sleep before getting shot off again to deal with Enzo. Which had been a total bust. He noticed that the others weren't looking so well, either.

  Drake, Allan, Callie, Eve and Genevieve all joined him, sitting silently.

  He frowned.

  Was this all that was left of the old guard? He remembered when eleven people had sat around this table initially, when they'd all sat down for their first briefing to mount an assault on that snowy world and retrieve the artifact and the good Doctor Matheson. But now Trent, Duncan and Colin were dead. Enzo had betrayed them. Kyra had left, gone to find a better life. Greg turned away from that thought. Now, here they were, just the six of them.

  Six mismatched warriors, with a battered old veteran to guide them and a half-empty ship of tired, disillusioned Spec Ops personnel were all that stood against the forces of evil that intended to bring an end to human civilization at large.

  Speaking of that...

  Hawkins came into the room. He looked tired and old. He was really looking his one hundred and twenty plus now. He sat down heavily.

  Greg had a question, but knew it could wait. Hawkins cleared his throat and began speaking. “All right, what happened?” he asked.

  Except for Gen and Eve, who hadn't been there, everyone filled in him on the details. When it was all over, Hawkins remained silent, deep in thought, frowning intensely. Greg decided now was as good a time as any.

  “So...before we go on, I've got a question,” he said.

  Hawkins looked up at him, then grunted and nodded his head in ascent.

  Greg sat up a little straighter and cleared his throat. “Maybe it's all the sleep deprivation or maybe I'm just slow but...what, exactly, did we discover from the artifact Drake recovered? The one that was supposed to reveal just what, exactly, the hell Rogue Ops has been doing?”

  At first, Hawkins looked a little annoyed, then he sighed quietly. “That's fair,” he said. “I kind of rushed through the explanation before and since you were gone, we figured out some more and I've had more time to organize my thoughts.” He sat up, popped his neck and rubbed his temples for a moment. “Okay, this is what we've learned...”

  Everyone leaned in, and Greg had an idea that he wasn't the only one who wasn't clear on the subject.

  “So. The artifacts are old. Ancient. Older than the Cyr, though the Cyr were obviously into the artifacts, trying to use them. The artifacts are part of a set of devices that essentially act as keys. A certain minimum number of them must be gathered in order to unlock a...well, essentially a portal that leads to another dimension,” he explained.

  “Right. I remember this,” Greg murmured. “That's the bad part, right?”

  Hawkins offered him a weary and grim grin. “Yes. That's the bad part. In this other dimension are creatures, beings of immense power. Drake...that thing you encountered on Arctica? That entity behind the glass that the others gave their lives to kill? That was from this other dimension. If I'm reading the intel we've gathered from Rogue Ops correctly, then it was one of the smaller ones. One of the least powerful beings.”

  “Yeah. I remember the research indicated that if it got out, it would be more than powerful enough to enslave or destroy everyone in the galaxy,” Drake replied, though he spoke quietly and didn't look up from the table.

  “That's correct. It seems that these devices will open a portal in deep space and allow one such being through. Possibly more.”

  “Okay, that makes a little more sense...but now I've got a few more questions. Why were these devices actually built?”

  “I have no idea,” Hawkins replied with a shrug. “It could be for research purposes or...hell, maybe because whoever built them thought they were such big badasses that they wanted to kick in that other dimension's door and plant a flag? The Cyr, on the other hand, did manage to capture, contain and devise a way to kill one of these beings, after all. Either way, the reasoning wasn't in the data.”

  “And Rogue Ops? What about their reasoning?” Eve asked. “I mean, they stand to lose just as much from this as anyone else. Apocalypse means apocalypse.”

  Again, Hawkins shrugged. “Same thing? Maybe they found something that makes them think they can control these entities, use them as dogs of war...either way, it's a lose/lose for us. Either they don't know what the hell they're doing and release inter-dimensional horrors on us all, or they do and they become top dog, ruling with an iron fist. Both scenarios are bad. Which leads me into the next portion of this debriefing, which, unfortunately, will be short. Obviously, our primary goal at the moment is to try and recover one of those artifacts. All the research suggested that there were only so many, and that Rogue Ops, recovering the one that Matheson was doing research on, now has enough to go ahead with their plan.

  “Without that full set, they're dead in the water. Taking one back will at least buy us some more time to take them down...although they're still likely searching for more of the things out in deep space, plus we don't know what kind of timeline we're working on here. And the GA still doesn't quite think this is a credible threat. They do believe that Rogue Ops is dangerous and that they should be taken down, but they still think the extent of the damage they could do is in the form of the various top-secret projects they were working on...” Hawkins sighed heavily. “Fucking politics...fucking bureaucracy...” He stared around the table unhappily.

  “Go on, take a break,” he said, slowly standing. “Visit the infirmary, grab a bite to eat, take a roll in the hay...I don't care. We're at a dead end here, guys, and you all could use a little R and R. I'll let you all know the moment something comes up.”

  With that, he turned and walked out of the room.

  Drake immediately stood up and marched towards the door, disappearing through it.

  “Well...uh...” Allan glanced over at Callie. “We could use a shower,” he said.

  Callie rolled her eyes and stood up. “Very subtle,” she said, then took his hand and led him out of the briefing room.

  Without a word, Gen stood up and exited, leaving Greg and Eve alone in it.

  “You okay?” Eve asked.

  Greg sighed heavily. “Yeah...I just-I'm pretty down about letting that asshole get away.”

  Eve made a face. “You and me both but I'm glad you made it back alive.” She stood up. “Come on, we've got our own shower to take.”

  Greg could help but smile at that.

  * * * * *

  “Well?” Drake asked.

  He was lying down on an examination table that had just finished scanning him. After getting picked up by the Atonement, he and the others had only had enough time to strip out of their suits of armor and then march directly to the
briefing room. His whole body was still aching and there was a hunger in his stomach, a dull, low rumble, but he couldn't get his mind off of Enzo. The traitor had escaped...and it was his fault. He hadn't been quick enough, he'd gotten sloppy. He should've seen that fucking stun gun coming a mile away.

  “Well...” the medic replied, scrutinizing his screen and the results of the full-body scan he'd just given Drake. “Technically, you're okay,” he said. “Though I'm showing a lot of tension in your muscles and most of them have been stressed pretty badly.”

  Drake sat up. That was fine. “Thanks,” he said.

  “Wait,” the medic murmured as he started leaving. “You really need to rest,” he said.

  “I'll be fine,” Drake said, then he stepped out of the infirmary and into the corridor. He had no intention resting, or showering, or even eating. Right now, he just wanted to go to the gym and work out. And then, after that, he'd hit the training course Hawkins had set up for them in one of the emptied out cargo holds.

  His muscles ached, but he felt like being in pain right now. It was a good motivator, a good way to remind himself not to fuck up again. Trent was relying on him to get revenge, the others were relying on him not to fail. Now that he fully comprehended what Rogue Ops was trying to do, (well, he knew what they were trying to do, not why, that made no sense,) he now knew that pretty much every human alive now and all those yet to come were relying on him for their own continued existence. It was kind of a lot to bear.

  Drake took a right and stepped into the gym.

  He set to work.

  * * * * *

  “This is a little weird,” Greg said as he regarded himself in the mirror.

  “Why?” Eve replied from behind him, in his living quarters. He could see a bit of movement in the reflection. She was getting dressed. He still stood naked in the bathroom after their shared shower. He ran a hand over his head, his face. His hair was beginning to get long. Well, long for him. He found the electric razor he'd grown fond of and flipped it on.