The Bloodless (3 page)
“Right now we’re about fifteen minutes from the substation. Let’s lock and load and start fanning out. I don’t expect there to be any guards but we’ve been fooled by these glorified science experiments before.” I took out my side arm and flipped the safety off. “Fox, you go off ahead and we’ll start soon thereafter.”
Fox nodded and struck out at a swift pace. This plan basically hung on the abilities of Fox, which was why it was such a solid plan. That visor he wears all the time is something special. It had a full holographic heads up display which displayed any information he needed. Distances, temperatures, certain mines, and the visor even produced a low energy cloaking field. He also managed to get a very useful old world motor vehicle technology in it. It warned him every time someone or something was in his blind spot, making it impossible to sneak up on him.
A couple minutes after Fox disappeared from our sight we split into our groups. Crowder and Saturn, Burns and Pillar, Buggs went by himself, as is his custom, and that left Crist and I. We walked in a similar path to the one Fox took but slightly more due East. Our job was to get to the rear of substation and keep an eye out for any wandering Bloodless. We also had to arrive first in order to disable any laser trips that may have been set up since The Invasion.
It was always nice to get some alone time with Crist, even in the current situation of impending death. Although, that did make it a bit hotter, fear and a heightened sense of arousal is basic chemistry. We walked in silence for about five minutes when I suddenly remembered, “You brought the Torch, right?”
“Of course I brought the Torch, dumbass. Who do you think you’re talking to?” She gave me a look and then tapped her pocket.
I smiled at her, “Wanna do it when we’re done?”
“You’re a horny little bastard, aren’t you?”
“I’m a scientist. When we’re not thinking about protons and neutrons, we think about sex.” I gave her butt a little tap. She smacked my hand.
“Hey! Get your damn head in the game! Assuming we survive this suicide mission? Sure. Now focus, because I’d rather not bang a corpse.”
I chuckled and we kept walking. Finally the rest of the substation came into view. It was foreboding and it looked as though it had been outfitted with a few upgrades. “Yeah, I didn’t expect Mendel to ignore the importance of these stations. Looks like an extra eye is in the sky. I’d better relay that to the team.” I passed the information along on my communicator.
Fox came back first, “I am aware of the extra security. However, from what I have seen, it should not pose a problem. I can eliminate it easily.”
“Good, take it down. Everyone halt until it’s taken care of.” I wouldn’t normally use “halt” but I like to try and sound official, like I have half a clue of what I’m doing. When Fox radioed back I gave the go ahead order and we resumed and made it to our inception points.
*****
“I’m gonna show you the finer points of shootin’ Crowder,” Saturn said as they hunkered down in their elevated vantage point. “First, you’re goin’ to spot for me. A sniper is nothin’ without her spotter.” Crowder nodded. “Take these.” She handed him a pair of binoculars, “They’re similar to Fox’s visor but less sophisticated if you can believe it. They’ll give you a distance read out and that’s the first thing you’ll relay to me when any Bloodless are spotted. They have an automatic detector calibrated to their unique energy signature with a ten mile range, but I had to scale ‘em back for this mission. So if anything comes within 5 kilometers of our location you’ll auto lock to the target. Got it?”
“I think so, yeah.” Crowder seemed less than confident which didn’t sit right with Saturn.
“Now, I need you to be on my page kid, we can’t afford to fuck up on the first mission. Understand?” Saturn gave him a little smack on the side of the head.
“Yes ma’am. I do understand and you can count on me.” There was a little more confidence in his tone that time. Crowder smiled.
“What?” Saturn looked confused.
“Oh it’s nothing. Well, it’s just that you seem much more refined when you’re not around the others. It’s just kinda funny.” Crowder looked around with the binoculars.
“Yeah, well, when it comes to shootin’, I get excited and when you know as much as I do, it can’t be helped.”
“No, it’s cool.” Crowder lowered the binoculars, “It’s kinda sexy.”
“Don’t even think about it.” Saturn said, snapping a clip into her gun.
“Yes ma’am.”
*****
Burns and Pillar made their way around to an alcove in a cluster of rocks that had a direct view of the front of the substation. They ducked behind it and started setting up shop. Burns primed a few plasma grenades and then activated his napalm launcher.
Pillar loaded a bullet box into her minigun. She looked around at Burns, “You think this shit’ll work?”
“The fuck should I know? Ima soldier, I follow orders.”
“Man, this dude better know what he’s doin’.”
“You a real asshole, ain’t ya?”
“Fuck you.”
“Look, all I know, is we gotta do what we gotta do. People weren’t meant to live like this. When we die, we supposed to stay dead, none of this comin’ back to life shit. Things have a natural way about them, but what’s goin’ on now, that ain’t natural. So we gotta step in and make it right. See? We created this mess, we gotta clean it up.”
“I didn’t create shit, man. It was those damn lab coats who done all this. They thought they were gods up there, playing with life.”
“Yet you still here. Why’s that?”
“Because those empty vessels murdered my whole damn family,” Pillar said and she laid her gun down before continuing. “Now the only thing I want to do is take down as many of those fuckers as I can. I can’t cause them pain, but I can rip their bodies to shreds and that’s what I plan on doin. You?”
“Like I said, Ima soldier. I always been a soldier. When they came lookin’ for folks to enlist, I signed right up. By that time military had been dismantled. Lotta hope was lost, task seemed impossible. Then one day they came ‘round, started recruitin’ anybody and everybody willin’ to fight. Lotta people weren’t interested, didn’t want to go head first into a shit storm, see? But he said he knew how to take them down. Said he had information the military or government never got.”
*****
“So what’s your story?” Saturn decided to take a break from scanning with her scope. Crowder didn’t respond right away. She tapped him on the shoulder.
Crowder pulled the binoculars off his face. “What’s that?”
“Your story. Why’re you here?”
“Same reason most people are fighting these days. Got nothing left to live for. Like most people, I lost my whole family to The Cloud.”
“Most of us were soldiers before the military disintegrated. What about you? You don’t seem like military,” Saturn said.
“Naw, I’m not military. My pops was a gun collector. Favored assault rifles. He taught me how to shoot. After they took out everyone I knew and loved, I had no other choice. Do you know what it’s like to have to shoot your own father in the face?”
“Do I know what it’s like to have a father, would be a better question.”
“Oh, shoot, sorry.”
“It’s all right. Didn’t need ‘em growin’ up, don’t need ‘em now. So… seen anything yet?”
“Nothing that’s threatening our perimeter. Those soulless sacks of death are nowhere to be seen.”
*****
“How long is this asshole goin’ to take to get his job done? My trigger finger is getting’ itchy.” Pillar was visibly antsy. She was dancing around doing a “pee dance” but for her it’s more like the “I need to shoot something” dance.
“Calm ya ass down. We have to be patient in this situation. Jumpin’ the gun’ll get us ripped apart.” A couple minutes of silence passed as they waited for the signal to move to the next phase.
“You got any family left?”
Burns lit up a cigarette, “Wow, you don’t seem like the type to care.” He took a long draw from his smoke.
“Well, I figure we’re in this together, might as well try and at least act friendly.”
Burns chuckled, “Yeah. My daughter. She was the only one I managed to save.”
“Where is she?”
“She stayin’ with a small commune we came across while wanderin’. Same place where I was recruited from. They some decent folks.”
“Decent enough to trust them with your daughter. How old is she?”
“She’s seven.” Another stretch of silence. “Man, you right, this is gettin’ boring.”
*****
We sat there, just beyond the rear entrance of the substation. Crist was checking on the others to make sure they made it to their marks all right. “Everyone appears to be set,” she said.
“Good, we just have to wait on Fox then. But he should be out here any minute though, even after re-calculating after the setback.”
“He’d better.”
“Don’t worry, I’ve never known Fox to miss a mark.”
And he didn’t miss either, he was right on time, to the second. A small puff of green smoke floating out from underneath the back door was the signal to let us know to move forward. I radioed to the rest of the team to get ready to move out on our signal as we made our way towards the door. We got to it and slipped in, unnoticed as far as we knew at that point.
Fox was right there to greet us, “Welcome.” He wiped his brow, “That was a close one, that eye was an upgraded unit.”
I patted him on the back, “You did good, Fox. Let’s go.” We three traveled down the back hallway towards the main control room. We had to access the main systems in order to shut it down properly. Burns wanted to just turn the station into a crater but that would’ve triggered fail safes and make shutting the power down virtually impossible. It had to be done in such a way so that the other stations wouldn’t detect any changes in the flow of the power.
It was eerily quiet inside the halls. Either Fox was really good at what he did, and I mean really, REALLY good, or they were ignoring vital parts of their operation. We met zero resistance the whole way through there. Since I helped set up most of the power stations I knew how to navigate most of them easily. After a few minutes of walking we finally arrived in the main control center for the station.
“Now what?” Crist asked as her and Fox kept a look out at the door.
“Now I have to access the main system.”
“Do you have access?” Fox asked.
“I used to but I’m guessing there is probably a single entry point into the system, one which only Mendel can access. I can probably hack into though, it shouldn’t be that hard.” I started typing on the console and sure enough was met with encryption after encryption. It was not easy to say the least. “They must’ve really beefed up the security parameters. Some of these blocks look very new to me.” We sat there in silence as I hacked away and they stood sentinel over the room.
After several minutes had passed I got myself in. I raised my hands in the air, “I am the master. You can’t keep me out of anything, bitch.”
“Now what?”
“Now it’s just the simple, yet precise task of rerouting and bypassing power channels so that they cease flowing through this station. Then afterwards, we have to work our way inwards until we can shut down the station just inside the inner wall.”
Crist looked at me like I was the craziest person in the world at that moment, “Inside the inner wall?!”
“I know how it sounds and it’s gonna be dangerous. But it’s the only way and by that time their systems will be seriously disadvantaged.”
“Will they not notice fluctuations in their processes?” Fox, obviously not feeling a need to continue to keep watch, walked up behind me to look at the screen.
“Only if they run tests, which at this point will not be necessary for several more years.”
“Why?” Crist had also made her way into the room.
“Because it can’t be done. Running a check on all the systems is a massive undertaking for a compound this size. It takes so long and brings down vital systems for inappropriate amounts of time that you’d be wise to only do every decade or so.”