The Animus Gate (Book One of The Animus Trilogy) Read online

  The maintenance room that held the reservoir was dim, industrial, rusty, and dank. Most of the operations down here were mechanical due to the high humidity. That meant that there were no security consoles to wrangle. You just had to find the right switches and levers. And despite the low-bid construction, everything was clearly labeled.

  There was a valve mechanism by the exit bulkhead that could close the pipes that sucked the cool water in and pushed the hot water out. And machines like this always had manual overrides. So the team simply closed the intake valve, hid in the shadows, and waited to pounce on the maintenance crew when they came to check on the temperature fluctuation. The bulkhead door at least required a biometric authentication to unlock it...or you could just trick someone into opening it from the other side.

  The two-person crew never saw the team coming. It was quick and clean. The team dragged the bodies into the shadows and entered into the maintenance tunnel.

  From here, there was just a ladder to climb at the end of the tunnel, and they would be inside the facility proper.

  They stopped at the base of the ladder. This was the point of no return. They looked at one another. Darius nodded to them both and went up first.

  The ladder led to a maintenance closet, as they’d expected. There were just a few dusty shelves here with janitorial supplies, various repair tools, and canisters of that armor gel.

  There were no cracks around the door, so Darius opened it slightly and slipped a fiber camera out into the hallway. It was no thicker than a fishing line. You’d have to be standing right in front of it to notice that it was anything more than a cobweb.

  He signaled to Cahill and Bellamy: Coast is clear. They snuck into the empty hallway. The dormitory and warden’s quarters were to the left, and the prison block was down the hall to the right. Bellamy went left, and Darius and Cahill went right.

  Then the alarms went off.

  Darius gestured for the team to form up on him, and they advanced as a group to the cell block. With the guards alerted, there was no point in sending Bellamy toward their dorm by himself. They would have to improvise as a group.

  Three guards came around the corner from the cell block, weapons raised. The team opened fire and took down two. The third guard retreated into cover. Bellamy was watching their six and dropped a guard as she was coming out of the dorm. That would put a pause on anyone else running blindly into the hallway from that section. He sealed the deal with a proximity-based smoke bomb and flash bomb that would go off for the next one through that door.

  Darius lobbed a flash bomb around the corner where the guard had retreated, and there was a wild spray of gunfire moments later. As soon as it stopped, Darius popped out, sighted his target, and put him down. A second blinded guard leaped out of sight through a side door before Darius could draw a bead. He signaled to his team. They came around the corner, and Darius signaled again: That door, one guard, shoot on sight.

  The smoke bomb and flash bomb placed moments ago at the dorm entrance went off. Bellamy tossed one more of each around the corner. He was now out. He signaled to Cahill and Darius: I hold here, you go ahead.

  There was no time to argue. Darius tore the ID tag off the dead guard’s chest in case it was needed to activate a door, and Cahill followed him down the hall to the cellblock.

  Darius opened the door that the other guard had just gone through and tossed a smoke grenade inside. No point in wasting a flash bomb; the guard had probably adjusted his visor by now. There was another spray of bullets as the guard blind-fired through the smoke, but Darius had already shut the door, which he knew would be bulletproof. Darius’s visor used the sound of the impacts to triangulate the guard’s position, then he waited. Soon enough, he could hear the guard reloading. Darius threw the door open and put him down before he could take aim.

  They were only a few feet from the cellblock entrance when the PA crackled to life: “Whoever you are, this is the warden. All security codes have all been cycled. You will not be able to enter the cellblock.”

  If it hadn’t been a trap, it certainly was now. Without an access code, he and Cahill were effectively trapped in a dead end.

  Bellamy put his rifle down as several guards came around the corner from the dorm. They were armed with lethal weapons.

  “I suggest,” continued the warden, “that you put down your weapons, and we can—”

  Suddenly, the entire structure was rocked by a violent explosion. Everyone lost their footing, and all the lights went out.

  And if all the lights were out, then maybe the power to the doors had been cut. They had maybe ten seconds until the emergency generator kicked on.

  Darius scrambled to his feet, activated his night vision, and attempted to heave the door open.

  It opened most of the way, then the emergency power switched on. Before the door could slam shut again, Darius placed his rifle lengthwise in the frame, preventing it from closing and giving the team enough space to wiggle through.

  Cahill lobbed a smoke bomb down the hallway, and Bellamy used its cover to retreat back to the rest of the team. Darius and Cahill slipped underneath the jammed rifle as the door strained against it. He didn’t know how long it would hold.

  Bellamy came sprinting down the hallway, and the guards were not far behind. Cahill covered his retreat with a few rifle bursts, and Darius added supporting fire with his sidearm.

  Bellamy went sliding under the rifle, Darius yanked it back towards him, and the door slammed shut just before the guards could get to them. Now nothing short of a shaped explosive would get that door open until the main power came back online.

  “What the fuck was that explosion?” asked Bellamy.

  “Don’t look at me,” said Cahill.

  “Let’s just find Nadira and exfil,” said Darius.

  They entered into a T-junction with cells on either side. Darius turned on his suit speaker. “Nadira? Nadira, can you hear me? It’s Darius. We’re gonna get you out of here. Call out if you can hear me. I need to hear your voice to narrow down which cell you’re in.”

  “Darius? Is that really you?”

  “Yes. You told me about the emperor, and we saw the portal. Keep talking, and I’ll home in on you.”

  “Darius, you should not have come. You’re too important to the resistance to be in a place like this!”

  “That’s good, keep scolding me!” It sounded like she was to the left.

  “Darius, you’re an idiot! You may know your way around a jungle, but—”

  He came to her cell, and she paused. She came up to the bars. Her dark hair was now shot through with gray, and lines were on her face that he didn’t remember seeing before. Getting cut off from the emperor’s purple gel was already having an effect on her aging process.

  “Cahill,” said Darius, “you got the thermite ready?”

  “Right here.”

  “Okay, Nadira,” said Darius. “Step back from the bars—we’re gonna melt the lock off.”

  “Darius,” she said, “why did you come?”

  “Well, I figured you could use a fresh set of clothes and a hot shower, and I don’t see the empire helping with that anytime soon.”

  “Darius...”

  “You can be angry all you want when we’re back on the Pegasus,” he said. “Now back up. Cahill, thermite, please!”

  “Everyone step back!” said Cahill.

  Darius and Bellamy backed away, and the thermite did its work in seconds.

  Darius handed Nadira a pressure suit from a pouch on his back. “You need to put this on over your clothes. There’s a couple klicks of Eloris between us and the LZ.”

  “Might as well be twenty, at this rate,” said Bellamy.

  “Well,” said Cahill, “we’re not taking the bridge exit, that’s for sure.”

  There was another, smaller explosion, this time at the other end of the cell block.

  “I think we’re about to have company,” said Darius. He looked down at his rifle. It w
as bent out of shape. If he tried to use it now, he’d probably end up needing a second hand replacement.

  He peeked down the hallway, towards where the explosion had come from. A group was advancing through a new hole in the cell block wall. Between the smoke and the darkness, he couldn’t get a decent head count.

  Nadira and the extraction team huddled in her cell.

  Cahill loaded her grenade launcher. “I have an exit strategy...”

  “I hope it doesn’t require going back the way we came,’ said Darius.

  “No, I was thinking I could blow a hole in the other wall, then have a little swim.”

  “I’ve heard worse plans,” said Darius. He peered around the corner at the advancing party. “Bellamy, hand me your rifle. Mine is shot. I’m gonna toss the rest of my bombs down the corridor and then lay down some suppressing fire. Then Cahill blasts that hole and you all make a run for it.”

  “Bakari, I can’t just let you die here,” said Bellamy. He added with a grin, “I’d never get my rifle back.”

  “It’s wasted on you, Bellamy. I’m a much better shot. Now hand it over, and that’s an order.”

  Bellamy gave him his rifle. “In that case, take this as well.” He pulled a gadget out of a pocket in his vest. “This bypass key should activate a nearby imperial ship, if you can manage to reach one. It only works once, though.”

  “Thanks. Now get ready, everyone.” Darius tossed his remaining bombs and followed up with a few bursts from his new rifle. “Go, go, go!”

  Nadira and the rest of the team dashed behind him as he sprayed bursts of rifle down the corridor, and Cahill blew the far wall open. As Darius continued to lay down fire, his people leaped into the swamp below. Their chances were slim, but they were basically nil unless he stayed behind to hold off the enemy.

  Whoever the new arrivals were, they had advanced to the T-junction in the middle of the block. The entrance to the cell block was now to their left.

  The main power flipped back on, and the scene was bathed in bright lights once again.

  Darius stared down the hallway at his unexpected visitors. Now that the smoke had cleared and main power was back on, he could identify his targets.

  And standing in the middle of the corridor was his brother Rali.

  Darius blinked, shook his head, and looked again. It was still Rali. He was dressed in an imperial uniform that Darius didn’t recognize, but it was unmistakably his brother.

  Rali stared back at him and did not appear to be surprised to see him.

  Darius had seen this uniform design before. At Baloneth.

  “Come on out, Darius,” said Rali. He examined his rifle idly. “You’ll never make that jump. We’ll cut you down first.”

  This was not his Rali. He didn’t know how to feel about that. He didn’t know how to feel about anything right now. There was just a hollowness.

  “I’ll give you a slow count of five, brother,” said Rali. “Then we do this the hard way.”

  Should I have seen this coming? Was I naive?

  Rali was flanked by well-armed soldiers. He finally glanced up from his rifle, and he looked bored and tired. “Five...four...three...”

  There was a smaller explosion to the right—it sounded like it had come from the cell block entrance where Darius had jammed his rifle. And just like that, prison guards were pouring into the cell block and laying down fire.

  “Fall back!” Rali yelled. “Fall back!”

  With Rali’s team under attack, Darius bolted from Nadira’s cell and made a dash for the ragged, smoldering hole that Cahill had blown open. Bullets zinged past him and ricocheted off his combat armor. An intense heat bloomed above his left elbow. He leaped into the dark and splashed into the swamp below.

  ✽✽✽

  His left arm had been hit by a phosphorus round, and the incendiary was rapidly eating through his armor, even underwater. If he didn’t get that piece off quickly, he’d lose more than the plating.

  He reached over with his right hand to a latch underneath a flap on his left pauldron. Pulling on this released the section of armor that ran from his shoulder and his elbow. The melting piece fell sizzling and bubbling into the shadowy abyss. Darius swam in what he hoped was the direction of the shore. A stream of bullets darted into the water from above.

  It was a good thing that combat armor was light. If this had been the battle armor that the regulars wore, he might not have been able to surface. Swamp water was seeping into his gauntlet, but he expected the rest of his suit to remain airtight. The toxicity of the lake's water was already making his skin burn.

  It looked like no one was going to try to follow him into the soup. They would probably fan out along the waterline, though, so he had to keep moving in the hopes of slipping out of their dragnet. It was taking every ounce of his military training to think his way to survival—and to keep his head clear.

  As he swam, the lake floor came up to meet him. He found himself at the mouth of a river at the lake’s edge. He waded on to the riverbed and looked back at the prison on its stilts. It was bedlam. People were still exchanging gunfire, so maybe he could slip away after all.

  And he spotted a ship on the lakeshore, looking unattended on a nearby landing pad. It looked less than 100 meters away.

  Darius drew his pistol and crept through the trees for a closer look. According to his visor, he had four rounds left in this mag. He took a moment to swap to one of the two fresh ones.

  The pain of the noxious atmosphere burning into his left arm was incredible. He had no painkillers. It would just have to be the kind of pain that kept him alert.

  It appeared to be an imperial prisoner transport. Made sense. And if no one was guarding it, this wouldn’t be a bad getaway vehicle. It was likely to have some strong armor, plus a few weapons to counter a boarding party.

  Darius approached the edge of the landing pad. It was well-lit. Once he made a move on the airlock, he would be exposed. He weighed his options.

  A two-man search party came around from the back of the transport. He ducked behind a tree. They hadn’t spotted him. He gritted his teeth against the pain and sighted them with his pistol. He waited agonizing seconds for them to advance to the point where the ship was between them and the prison. As soon as they were out of view of anyone back at the facility, he closed in and dropped them in quick succession with shots to the back of the neck. It was a weak point in prison guard armor.

  He dragged one of the guards over to the transport airlock and used the ID embedded in their armor to gain access. As the airlock cycled him through, he heard a commotion outside. A basic sonic analyzer would pick up on the sound of gunfire even in the middle of a different gunfight, so more guards were coming. As their footsteps approached, Darius grabbed a handle in the airlock and threw a lever that would manually lock the door and disable electronic access.

  He scrambled into the cockpit, jammed Bellamy’s bypass key into a slot next to the yoke, and rushed through the pre-flight check. Guards were running across the bridge now. Small-arms fire plinked off the cockpit transglass and the hull of the ship. That kind of gunfire would never be a threat to a tub like this one, but they wouldn't wait too long to bring out the heavy hitters. They'd rather destroy a ship than catch hell from their superiors about a stolen one.

  The ship’s main thrusters shuddered to life. He strapped in, grabbed the yoke, and pulled hard. He wondered if he was cooking anyone on the landing pad. Well, if they didn’t have enough sense to get clear when the thrusters kicked on, then maybe that was just natural selection in action.

  He blasted away to the sound of more small-arms fire plinking off the hull. As he climbed up Eloris’s gravity well, he tried not to think about the fact that his dead brother had just tried to murder him.

  ✽✽✽

  As he expected, he had a ship on his tail, and it looked like another was vectoring to intercept him at the nearest telegate. The ship his team had arrived in was nowhere to be seen. It was poss
ible that they hadn’t taken off yet. Either way, it looked like Darius had managed to lure away at least one group of hostiles.

  His prison transport, the Dionysus, didn’t recognize the tail. It looked imperial, but there was no corresponding ID in the database. Maybe another black op, or something else altogether.

  There was an incoming call from the tail. Darius opened the channel.

  “Darius Bakari, this is Rali Bakari, captain of the Intrepid and Legionnaire of the Sar-Zin empire. I order you to come to a full stop and to prepare to be boarded.”

  Darius took a moment to steady himself. “Rali, if you’re from where I think you’re from, then no one in this universe answers to your authority. Signing off.” He reached out and closed the channel. His hand was shaking.

  It was a lot to take in. His Rali was dead. This Rali was here. And this one was not like his Rali. Quite the opposite. The empire that Darius knew had no rank of "legionnaire," and that ship didn't use the right naming convention. Sar-Zin liked to name his boats after various gods and goddesses of ancient Earth.

  Something struck the hull, and he was nearly jolted out of his chair. According to his console, it had been the blast of an energy weapon.

  He was being hailed again. Darius took a deep breath and opened the channel.

  “Darius Bakari,” said his brother, “you are ordered to come to a halt immediately, or we will destroy your vessel. This is your final warning.”

  He closed the channel.

  Not my brother, he thought. The face, but not the man. His face, but not him. Get it together, buddy.

  Darius glanced over at the section of the cockpit that controlled his countermeasures. He had chaff, holograms...and apparently, he could lay mines.

  Mines didn’t have to hit. Like that grenade back on Kareeva, the enemy didn’t need to get blown away. They just needed to see what was coming and scramble out of range. Maybe if there was enough distance between him and the Intrepid, he could stay beyond the effective range of their energy weapons. It was a good thing that the Intrepid was apparently too small of a ship to accomodate ballistic slug cannons.