Prodigal (12 page)

This is the next phase,
she thought.
This is their new Ascension.

Tiernan’s heart hammered against the inside of his body armor, a burst of caged adrenaline trying to find a way out. He turned a hard stare at the merc lying on the floor next to him, while the urgency of Lea’s order tumbled around inside his head. She had made it clear that the prisoners were his priority, even though his first instinct was to grab his rifle and head straight to the lower chamber. He made several abortive starts in that direction, his indecision—and anger—building each time he went back and forth.

What’s it going to be? The men or the mission?

Tiernan already knew what Lea’s answer would be. It only infuriated him more.

“Dammit,” he muttered, and went back to the prisoners.

The merc Lea had doped was still in and out of it, riding the fringes of a stim haze.
Or that’s what he wants me to think,
the lieutenant decided, and tested out his theory by giving him a potent kick in the ribs. The merc doubled over, wheezing in pain.

“Son of a
bitch
!” he coughed.

“That’s more like it,” Tiernan growled, hauling the merc up to his feet. The young man glowered back at him, though it was hard to tell what scared him more—the armed soldier holding him by the throat or the building about to collapse on top of him.

“Who the fuck
are
you?” the merc wheezed, wincing from the flash burns on his face and the pain in his chest. “What the
fuck
is going
on
?”

Tiernan jammed the business end of his rifle into the merc’s face.

“You got a problem,” the lieutenant said. “Whether you live or die depends on what you do about it.”

The merc believed every word. Tiernan could see that much.

And that gave him an idea.

Tiernan shoved the merc toward the control node, grabbing him by the shoulders and forcing him down into the chair. The merc’s fear changed to amazement when he saw the array of numerics on the virtual display. Even as the domain clusters shorted out all around him, he seemed dazzled by the digital free-for-all unfolding before his eyes. The image fluctuated from overloads and dropouts, but always came back even more chaotic than before.

“Holy shit,” the merc said. “It’s really happening. What the hell did you people
do
?”

“You tell me.”

“It’s a containment breach!” The merc tried working the node, bringing up a series of code banks, but those disintegrated as quickly as he called them. “You can’t just pull the plug on these systems, man! The wave harmonics alone are powerful enough to pulverize the foundation of this building!”

“Then fix it.”

“It’s not that easy,” the merc explained, his hands shaking heavily as he ran a few more permutations, each one a failure. “There isn’t enough of the original code to salvage. The architecture has been totally destroyed.”

“Then I suggest you think fast,” Tiernan said, stepping away and leveling his rifle at the back of the merc’s head. “Otherwise I pull this trigger and let your friend give it a shot.”

“You’re crazy! We need to get out of here!”

“Give me something and I’ll consider it.”

The merc swore under his breath, but it was obvious he had no desire to sacrifice himself for the
Inru
cause. Cracking his knuckles to keep himself steady, he ripped through a dizzying multitude of screens, all while the roar beneath the basement advanced and retreated in an ominous tide.

“
Talk
to me,” Tiernan prodded, his finger flexing on the trigger.

“We don’t have
time
—” the merc started to protest, his words stopping dead when the display—and all the lights—went out. Tiernan flipped his visor and switched on the infrared, scanning the basement as the rest of the clusters tripped one by one. The persistent thrum of their cooling systems lapsed into an anxious stillness—fraught with the tingle of some new, malevolent presence.

And Tiernan knew they were no longer alone.

The merc swiveled around to face him, blind eyes searching the dark. Tiernan saw that young face in the glow of his visor, a scowl of puzzlement taking a sudden turn into fear.

“What the hell…?” the merc asked, before lightning pierced his cranium.

The concentrated burst took the merc’s head off, then slammed into the control node directly behind him. A bright halo of intense heat rode the concussion that followed, smacking Tiernan hard. He stumbled backward, reeling from the blast, his arms flailing as he tried to regain his balance. Three more shots followed in quick succession, each one creasing the space where he had been standing only a moment before, each one getting closer as the shooter led the target. Tiernan didn’t even think to evade them, gravity and momentum catapulting him in random directions—saving his life in the process. But that luck was quickly fading, and would soon leave him in a smoldering heap on the floor.

Fuck this,
Tiernan thought, and allowed himself to fall.

He dived into one of the equipment racks, which brought a hail of components down on him. Several of the pieces detonated in midair under the heavy barrage of pulse fire, dousing him in a flurry of white-hot sparks and acrid smoke. Sweeping the debris out of his way and keeping his head down, Tiernan tried to get a fix on the enemy. Sensors were useless in this much clutter, making it impossible for him to tell how many—but their position was obvious enough. All the weapons fire originated at the basement entry.

So much for our way out.

“Talon Leader,” he spoke into his transmitter, “this is Talon Point. Do you copy?”

Silence greeted him on the other end—not static, not interference, but absolute silence. Tiernan tried rotating frequencies, but all bands were the same.

“Talon Leader, we have hostile fire. Acknowledge.”

Nothing. Communications were off-line, probably jammed.

The
Inru
had him bottled in.

If that’s the way you want it…

Tiernan slowly crawled beyond the shelter of the rack, figuring out his options. The dead merc’s body was slumped nearby, the charred remains giving off a sweet, smoky odor. Looking past that, he spotted the other merc, still on the floor where Tiernan had left him, still breathing as far as the lieutenant knew. The
Inru,
of course, would want him dead, to preserve the secret of what they were working on here—which meant, more than ever, that Lea would want him taken alive. The longer he waited, the less likely that would happen.

Come on, Lea. Where are you?

Tiernan strained to get a look across the basement, in the general direction of the hatch the advance team had used to gain access to the lower chamber. Another pulse blast was his punishment, this one close enough to singe the top of his helmet. Completely pinned down, there was no way he would see them, even if they were coming. And the thought of lying there while the
Inru
took the place down was more than he could stand.

He pushed the gain on his rifle up to full.

You wanna play? Then let’s play.

Tiernan took aim above the entrance and blasted a hole in the ceiling, raining plaster and concrete down on the enemy position. Huge chunks, large enough to crush a man, tumbled to the floor, followed by a haphazard volley of
Inru
fire that erupted from scattered positions. Tiernan continued to lay it on, pummeling every place he saw those blue bursts, until the
Inru
’s synchronized strike fell apart. He then dragged himself toward the fallen merc, tossing a couple of flash grenades for good measure.

Thunderclaps ricocheted across the confined space, along with explosions of poison light. Tiernan still couldn’t see the
Inru
gunmen, but he heard their screams—and that was enough. Popping up from the floor, he sighted a line that cut straight across the basement at waist level and opened fire. Tiernan spotted two of them trying to run for cover and shredded them. Another charged straight at him, only to get hollowed out by a stray shot from one of his comrades. By the time he ducked back down, Tiernan could taste their panic. Their attack, ferocious at the start, was disintegrating along with their numbers.

It was time to end this.

He squeezed off a few more quick blasts, discarding his rifle when it started to overheat. A punch against the hip compartment of his body armor ejected his backup, a pulse pistol good for a couple of shots at maximum power. Tiernan held his fire and kept moving. The
Inru
put a few more bolts over his head, but nobody approached. They were scared now, reduced to taking potshots at an unseen target.

He ignored them for the moment, closing the distance between himself and the fallen merc. Reaching for the man’s shoulder, Tiernan immediately knew he was too late. The lieutenant had been around the dead and dying enough to know, even before the merc flopped over and proved him right.

Vacant eyes stared back up at him in amazement. Then there was the blood. Through the infrared, at a distance, Tiernan had not seen it: that spreading pool, black as oil, encircling the merc’s body in a viscous shadow. A few weak spurts still leaked from a slash in the man’s throat, pushed out of his carotid by a fading heartbeat. The wound wasn’t deep—just a single cut made with deadly precision and deadlier speed, by a hand practiced in dealing death.

The mark of an assassin.

The image intruded on Tiernan’s mind before it materialized in reality: a gaunt figure in flowing black that formed the outlines of a woman, her body defined by the shimmering web that clung to her like secondskin. Tiernan followed the contours of her sensuit all the way up to her face, which glared down at him in ghostly indifference, her eyes hidden behind onyx lenses.

Avalon.

She cocked her head slightly as she regarded him. Tiernan froze in that fraction of a second, willing himself to move but unable to obey his own command. Avalon hooked her right hand into a claw, knocking the pistol out of his hand.

She was on him before he even knew the weapon was gone.

“Fire in the hole!”

One of Lea’s junior officers was halfway through the ceiling hatch when he sounded the warning. He dropped off the access ladder just as the air above him burst into flames, sending down a shower of rubble and cinders. The rest of the team grabbed the wounded and threw themselves against the outer walls, taking cover from the burning embers that scampered across the mesh floor.

Lea pressed herself against Gunny, riding out a wave of intense heat that swept through the lower chamber. With it came a cloud of noxious smoke and crackling ozone—the telltale signs of heavy pulse fire. The explosions kept coming, one after the other, a constant siege that must have torn the basement to pieces.

And Tiernan was in the middle of it.

Lea signaled him, shouting into her transmitter. Dread overcame her the moment she realized all channels were dead, including the telemetry lines that connected her to the members of her team. The
Inru
had done a thorough job of boxing them in—and trapped underground, they were as good as dead.

Lea quickly surveyed her team. All of them were on their feet, two just barely. That included Gunny, who swayed unsteadily next to her. Lea gently lowered him to the floor.

“How’s your aim?” she asked.

He laughed painfully.

“Better than yours, Major.”

Lea took his rifle and slung it over her shoulder. She then pressed a pistol into his hands and put her last shot of stim into his neck. Gunny’s eyes widened, a tiny spark igniting behind them.

“Stay sharp,” she told him. “I’ll be back, I promise.”

He nodded in understanding. Lea patted him on the shoulder, then left him to join the others. She snapped them to attention with the tone of her voice. “Anybody who can walk and shoot, you’re with me. Everybody else remain here.”

Gloves slapped against rifles, in stark contrast to the uncertainty on her team’s faces.

“
Nobody
gets left behind,” Lea assured them, not flinching as another blast lit up the ceiling hatch. “We make quick work of this
Inru
trash, then we get our people out of here. You read me?”

Nobody said a word. It was all the answer she needed.

“Raise some hell.”

Lea scrambled up the ladder first. With no way to ascertain the situation above, she hoped the
Inru
wouldn’t pick her off the moment she stuck her head out in the open. She hauled herself up through the hatch, taking in a split-second visual before a couple of glancing shots forced her back down again. From what she saw, the basement had suffered heavy damage. At the same time, the
Inru
fire leveled off, less directed than before. There was a good chance they were on the run, trying to get out of here before it was too late. If that was the case, Lea would have no better opportunity to seize the initiative.

With half a hope and half a prayer, she pounced into the thick of it.