Psion Gamma (16 page)

“What is he doing here?” Sammy shouted the words, his voice already hoarse from yelling at Toad. Spit flew from his mouth as his legs kicked against his restraints. Tears from the betrayal he felt fell from his eyes. “What are you doing with him, Stripe?”

Both men looked at Sammy with bewilderment.

“Do you know this man, Albert?” Stripe questioned.

“A Thirteen?” he said. “Of course I know him!” His mind was too far gone to realize the fatal mistake he had just made.

While Stripe looked back and forth from Sammy to his superior, the Thirteen stared curiously at Sammy. He approached the chair with an obvious menace until their faces were only centimeters apart. The red sclera of his eyes shined dangerously against the deep brown of his irises.

“Who are you, boy?” the Thirteen asked. His eyes remained perfectly fixed on Sammy’s face. Stripe stood behind him with a similar expression of wonder.

With his arms cuffed behind his back, Sammy realized the purpose of the blade in his fingers. He scowled back at the Thirteen as he oriented the knife how he wanted it.

Thinking about the endless torture and hell underneath a building in Rio de Janeiro filled his body with an energy he hadn’t felt since the first time the helmet had been put on him.

No guns in the room pointing at me now.

Clutching the small handle of the knife between his right thumb and index, he blasted from both palms with maximum effort. In one fluid motion, he broke the powerful magnetic bond of the cuffs, swung his arms around in front of him, and sliced the Thirteen’s throat, spraying himself in blood.

Stripe sprang across the room for a weapon. Reacting quickly, Sammy reached out, threw his weight forward, and dug the blade into the back of Stripe’s left knee. As Stripe’s leg collapsed, he screamed in agony and hit the floor, clutching it.

Sammy removed the ankle restraints and magnet cuffs from his wrists as Stripe crawled across the floor. Seeing this, Sammy grunted in anger and kicked Stripe away from the table.

“You said you’d help me,” Sammy reminded Stripe with another kick.

He looked down on the man he’d seen as both savior and tormentor and felt more empowered than he’d ever felt in his life. He leaned over Stripe, just as the tormentor had done so many times to him.

“Are you ready to play?” he asked him quietly.

Stripe gazed at him for a long time before answering in a whisper, “Make it fast.”

Sammy crouched down and stared until he made up his mind. Then he stood back up. He turned to the table of tubes and chose two: fire and sharp. In three flicks of his blade, Sammy removed much of the suit that was covering Stripe. He ignored the whimpering and pleading from the fully-grown man below him. Raising the tubes high over his head, he squeezed . . . and squeezed . . . until the contents of both were completely gone.

After removing and pocketing Stripe’s finger, he left the chamber. Two Aegis were standing just outside the door. Sammy blast-jumped into one, killing him the same way as the Thirteen. He grabbed a fallen gun and checked it, shielding with his other hand.
No identifiers on the grip.
He raised it and sent half a dozen bullets into the last Aegis. Then he calmly continued down the hall with Stripe’s gut-wrenching, cream-choked screams following him through the chamber door.

To Sammy, it sounded more like music. He let himself into his cell and released Toad.

“Let’s go.”

As they made their way out of the building, Sammy happily killed anyone who crossed their path.

March 3, 2086

I
N A STEALTH ATMO-CRUISER
above the Atlantic, Byron piloted a crew consisting of himself, Dr. Maad Rosmir, and the Alpha squadron named Tango. Dr. Rosmir sat next to him in the cockpit, catching up on journals on his holo-tablet. The passenger area was a ruckus. The Beatles pumped through the speakers on a portable player. Sung Ju tried to sing along, but she didn’t quite have the vocal range to match. Two other Tangos were going head-to-head on a portable holo-game, and on top of all that, five more were playing a very competitive match of Texas Hold ’em.

Commander Byron paid little attention to any of it. His mind had gone back to the same questions that had plagued him for the last two weeks. Had someone sabotaged the cruiser going to Rio? Had someone tipped off the CAG that a Psion team was coming? Who would do that? Why?

The day after Albert told him about the modulator, Byron had gone down to the hangars and inspected everything himself. The damage to the equipment was minimal, almost non-existent. No wonder it had been missed during the initial checks. With such little evidence, conclusions couldn’t be drawn.

Treason is an unthinkable act. Maybe I am naïve, but there is not one person I know who would do such a thing.

There was always the chance that some bizarre event had caused damage to the modulator, and that the Thirteens had coincidentally put up the brick wall that blocked Samuel and Kobe’s exit, and that they’d been monitoring activity at the Rio factory . . . but who was he kidding? The more he analyzed Albert’s debriefing statements, the more he saw the obvious truth staring back at him: the Thirteens had been too prepared for the Betas’ arrival.

He couldn’t bring the information to Command. The mole could be any of them. It could be more than one. The ramifications if it was one of them would be enormous. For now, the only people he trusted were Albert, Ho Chin, and Djedaa El-Sayid.

He steered his focus back to the mission as they approached CAG territory. Sometimes Byron found it hard to believe he had grown up on this hemisphere, back when the world was still united under the New World Government. Each time he flew into enemy territory, he thought of the same conversation, the one that ended with his own father throwing him out of the house. He tried not to think about that now. The man who’d said those words, if he was even still alive, was thousands of kilometers away from Rio.

Byron glanced over at Dr. Rosmir who was poring over another article on his tablet. His face was pale, even with his dark skin. His eyes shifted rapidly back and forth across the screen. Byron pitied his friend, but he needed him along, just in case . . .

“Are you holding everything down okay there, Maad?” he asked.

Dr. Rosmir bounced in his seat, as if he’d been startled. “Oh—yeah—fine. Just getting through all this information. Sometimes I think there’s no bottom to the well.”

Byron watched him for a moment longer, hating that he had to suspect his friend as a possible traitor simply because he was one of the few people with access to the hangars. Such was war.

During Tango’s briefing, Byron had given each member of the squadron specific orders for the investigation. In teams of two, every centimeter of the factory was to be searched, every Alpha armed with heavy-spread hand cannons and bomb tracers. The principal target was Samuel’s body, but they were to report anything suspicious.

Byron, with Dr. Rosmir and one other soldier, would go directly to the hallway where the two bombs had detonated. A reasonable estimation was that the team would only be there for two or three hours, four or five if there was a lot of heavy work to do.

They landed in the loading square, exactly where Albert’s team had landed three and a half months ago. Byron rubbed his face.

“I hate days when I feel my age,” he told Dr. Rosmir. The doctor gave a sympathetic chuckle back as a response.

“What odds would you put down that we even find a body?” he heard one Tango ask another as they geared up.

“Ten to one,” came the answer.

“More like a hundred to one,” Shamila said. Shamila Bessette was the squadron leader and acted all the part. “Find it anyways.”

The fraternizing stopped as they went to work. Byron noted the squadron’s discipline with a touch of pride. As the overseer of Beta headquarters, he knew each Psion personally, including their strengths and weaknesses. He’d chosen Tango Squadron because it was the only squadron made up entirely of Psions. All others included some combination of Psions, Ultras, and Tensais.

Teams paired off with efficient execution, entering the building through different routes. Most of the warehouse looked like a warzone. All the loading doors had been blown away, the dock itself cracked in four places, and two areas sagged under their own weight. Byron, Dr. Rosmir, and Shamila went around the building. Blood stains soiled the cement walkway as they approached the stairs that led down to the basement.

“Should I collect samples, Commander?” Dr. Rosmir asked.

“Not yet. The pilot said he fired on the enemy in this area. How about we take a peek around first?”

Getting inside wasn’t as easy as he’d thought. Two bombs had gone off near the entrance. The bottom steps were badly damaged. A huge pile of wreckage comprised mostly of brick, cracked plaster, and drywall filled the doorway, which had miraculously held strong.

Commander Byron sent Shamila in as the point, Rosmir in second, and he covered the three-person team from the rear. They took caution, trying to be as silent as possible. Inside was the epicenter of the storm. Black soot and ash covered what was left of the walls. Several places had blown clean through into the adjacent offices and hall. Above them, Byron saw a gaping hole where the ceiling had collapsed.

“We’re gonna have to move this piece by piece, aren’t we?” Shamila asked.

“Should I call in for help, Commander?” Dr. Rosmir asked.

“No, I want to do the work myself. Shamila, please stand guard outside while Maad and I get to it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank you.”

Dr. Rosmir gave Byron a puzzled look. The commander ignored it and put on his working gloves, handing a pair to the doctor when he was finished. “This is something I want to do in private; just you and me. They never knew Samuel.”

Together, the two men heaved and hauled both massive and small chunks of the pile further down the hall. The amount of rubble and debris, combined with the awkwardness of the lifting and moving, made the work slow. Byron held his breath with each piece they cleared away, wondering if it was the one that would uncover his pupil. After almost an hour of work, Byron knew Dr. Rosmir had to take a rest. The doctor hadn’t complained, though sweat poured down his pale face. They went outside and Shamila reported on her squadron’s progress.

Commander Byron kept the respite brief. He wanted to find the body and get back to safety as soon as possible. After another ten minutes, Dr. Rosmir came up with something. “I found a body!”

They quickly dug to uncover it, but after only a glance Byron knew it wasn’t Samuel. It was a Thirteen. He was so badly burned that the only recognizable feature was a tuft of blond hair. They grabbed him by his uniform and heaved him out of the way.

Dr. Rosmir bent down to inspect the spot where the Thirteen had been. “Check this out. It’s Sammy’s Beta transmitter . . .”

“Still in decent shape,” Byron muttered as he turned it over in his hand. “But not what I came here for.”

He handed it back to the doctor, who slipped the metal into his pocket. Just as they returned to work, crunching noises echoed from down the hall and around the bend. Byron stopped in a half-squat and looked at Dr. Rosmir. The doctor reached for his weapon, hands trembling. Commander Byron stood back to full height. The crunching stopped for a few seconds, but Dr. Rosmir didn’t relax. Then the noise started again.

Dr. Rosmir cursed under his breath several times as he drew out his weapon.

Byron allowed himself to wonder if it could possibly be Samuel. It was a stupid thought. More likely, knowing what he knew now about the possibility of a traitor, more Thirteens had arrived to welcome them. Neither he nor Dr. Rosmir moved. The sound drew closer. Rosmir’s gun pointed steadily at the end of the hall. Byron drew his own weapon. He fingered the switch to the light beam, trying to decide if he should turn it on.

Finally his patience ran out. He flipped the switch, and in a soft voice called out, “Samuel?”

The crunching noises stopped.

“Samuel?” he repeated just a hair louder.

The crunching began again but at a slower pace. Whoever it was stood just around the corner.

Two eyes appeared at the end of the hall, much lower to the ground than Byron had expected. They reflected back two ghostly dots, but Byron couldn’t tell who or what it was. The eyes watched them but did not move. Dr. Rosmir turned on his laser sights and trained it between the eyes.

“Samuel?” Byron asked one last time, louder than before. Two high-pitched, ear-splitting sounds rang out in the hallway. It was a dog. A chocolate Labrador, Byron noted, as it came fully into view. Dr. Rosmir sighed, his hands trembling as he lowered his gun, then holstered it. The dog approached them for a pat and rub. When he smelled Shamila, he pushed past them toward her.

“That was a nice surprise,” Dr. Rosmir commented.

“You look like you just lost two years off your life,” Byron told his friend.

Dr. Rosmir shook his head and got into position to lift the next piece of debris off the pile. “You going to help or make jokes?”

After all they had done, the once daunting task now seemed quite manageable. With only a few more heavy loads remaining, the bottom of the pile wasn’t far away. Byron felt some concern. What would he do if they reached the end of all this mess and Samuel was not there? What then?

He put off those questions and focused on finishing the task. They came to a particularly large chunk of the brick wall. Byron, feeling his age a little more than he’d care to admit, had to call Shamila in to help lift it off the pile.

“Prepare yourself,” he told Dr. Rosmir and Shamila. “He’s probably under this.”

Together the three of them lifted at one end, standing the giant slab against the wall.

“Holy heavens,” Dr. Rosmir said. “Am I really seeing this?”

Byron turned back to see what Dr. Rosmir saw: a hole in the floor the size of a square of sidewalk grinning back at them. “I see it, too.”

Shamila peered into the black square, running her hands along the smooth sides. “How does something like that happen?”

“Flare please,” Byron ordered.

Shamila handed him a flare. The commander jammed it against the wall, and it ignited, fizzling and popping merrily. They all watched as it dropped meter after meter after meter until—

CLUNK!

It landed on the ground and rolled out of sight.

Byron looked at Shamila. “Maad and I are going down there.” Now he spoke into his com. “I need two sets of repelling equipment and one of those boomlights brought to me.”

“Right away, sir,” the voice of Robert Greene answered in his ear.

In under five minutes, with the repelling gear secured and a light in hand, Byron jumped down into the hole and blast landed safely at the bottom. Immediately he dropped into a defensive stance and shined his light around the room in all directions.

“It’s safe,” he said to his com. Dr. Rosmir lowered a forensics kit down the repel line and followed suit with his own land blasts. With two boomlights, the room was nice and bright. The walls were of strong sturdy brick. Shelves lined over half of the room and a giant generator took up a large portion of one corner.