The air felt damp and smelled of rot. Bindings on her wrists and ankles kept Nina secure to the hard surface; a table or the like. The black ceiling above appeared featureless save for red and green lines that could have been wiring-or veins.
She heard the voices again.
“The first implant is complete, your Excellency.”
“Did you take care to conceal it?”
“While dormant it appears as nothing more than a common skin blemish. Even when activated it will remain small.”
“Very well. And the second phase?”
“The processors are encoding the appropriate memories based on our scan of the subject female’s brain chemistry. The supplemental memory unit will be available for implant in a short time. Prior to implantation, we will suppress all recollections since her capture and route chemical paths to those memories through the supplemental unit.”
“We must accelerate the process! If we do not return her to the crash site soon they will cease their search and the opportunity will pass. We already failed to neutralize the surrogate’s female carrier on the first day of hostilities and her location is no longer known to us. In the same day our assassination attempt of the surrogate’s genetic predecessor failed and he has avoided our detection since that time. She represents our last hope at disrupting human resistance before it can coalesce.”
“I understand, your Excellency.”
Then it stood over Nina and glared at her through emerald eyes on a face covered in decaying skin.
“Do not fear, my child. Soon we will purge these unpleasant hours from your mind and return you to your human compatriots. You have a duty to perform for the blessed Voggoth.”
The Bishop glared at an underling as he moved away from the blob-like Chariot transport and walked-nearly glided-across the pavement of the parking lot. The young Missionary man who met him bowed and they spoke, but Nina could not hear the conversation as she watched the Bishop’s arrival through binoculars.
She felt her heart thump faster and a wave of anger build in her bones.
Next to her along the berm lay Carl Bly with his own pair of binoculars eyeing the new arrival. The two hid at the fringe of a ring of vacant cookie-cutter duplexes to the west.
“Man, I think that’s the first time I ever saw one of those Order guys looking pissed off. Whoever he is, he’s not happy. I guess a couple of B-52s can pretty much ruin anybody’s shit.”
Nina’s team received news of yesterday’s strike via radio, the same radio call wherein she had requested-again-for transports to be sent to Clinton, Missouri. Her team directed any survivors they came across to that small town.
Command’s answer? Vague. A sort of ‘we’ll see what we can do’. At the very least Nina hoped they could air drop supplies to the survivors but even that remained uncertain.
But thoughts of survivors, air strikes, and supplies held little importance at that moment. She remained focused on the creature dressed in clergy garb with emerald eyes and a robe underneath which things squirmed.
She recognized him.
Not a memory passed from Trevor’s consciousness to hers. Not a falsehood planted by Voggoth’s henchmen. A real memory. One originally suppressed during her captivity. This memory belonged to Nina, like those other memories from The Order’s prison where they had infected her with their implants.
Bly spoke unaware of Nina’s silent rage, “Cap, this was a good idea on paper. Doesn’t look like they’ve got a lot of security around. But this place is huge. We don’t have enough C-4 to bring it all down.”
Bly referred to the massive series of warehouses formerly owned and operated by Sysco Foods of Olathe, Kansas. Years ago the world’s largest food distribution company used the place to store everything from frozen mozzarella sticks to prime rib to bags of soda syrup. The entire complex stretched hundreds of yards from south to north parallel to Interstate 35. Rows of discarded tractor trailers lined the docking bays; abandoned cars lay swept into a pile at the perimeter of the massive parking lot; a handful of monks walked patrols with support from Spider Sentries and Ogres.
The facility seemingly served two functions. First as a refueling depot for The Order’s Chariots. The blob-ish ships swooped in, hovered above the center of the complex, and received fuel via wiggling tubes protruding from roof-mounted piles of metal and bubbling black rock.
That fuel, in turn, arrived at the complex in the form of a dark gel transported in on boat-like vehicles escorted by Shell Tanks. As far as intelligence could discern, Voggoth’s minions drained this ‘fuel’ directly from the soil, sapping the Earth of nutrients that could be used to grow crops.
The second purpose of the facility appeared to be command and control. Gordon Knox’s intelligence people suspected that directives-such as where to march and what to do-were delivered to The Order’s troops via broadcasts of some kind, perhaps radio waves, maybe even telepathy. All attempts to isolate and block those broadcasts had failed.
Nonetheless, those orders came from Voggoth from his Temple in the Urals to his army via his cadre of clergymen, in which the Bishop held high rank. The theory held that the Bishop distributed these orders via various Missionaries and couriers, with various levels of redundancy.
All of this knowledge held little interest to Nina as she watched the Bishop enter the facility with a gang of monks and a Missionary providing escort. Overhead an orange sunset shared the sky with a slow-moving veil of gray; not The Order’s storm but rain clouds of Earthly origin.
“You’d think they’d guard this thing with a little more heavy duty shit,” Bly went on, still not noticing Nina’s silence. “But I guess that clicks with what we were hearing this morning.”
Bly meant reports of Wraiths, Roachbots, Mutants, Ghouls and more pouring toward Excelsior Springs like ants to a picnic. Reinforcements, no doubt, for The Order’s core army elements destroyed by the B-52s.
When she did not react, Bly asked, “So what is it, Cap? This place a good target still?”
“The place? No,” she answered and thought but the Bishop, yes.
“Get the others ready. We hit it when the sun goes down.”
One of the blob-shaped Chariot craft hovered above the center of the complex. A series of pulsing red and green lights from the craft’s underbelly lit the starless, rainy night. In response, a black hose slithered from the roof like a snake rising from a basket and met a bulging orifice underneath the flyer. A burst of steam signaled the cementing of their bond.
Glug-glug-glug.
The sound carried above the noise of a steady rain clanging off the roof and drumming on the pavement as The Order’s version of fuel pumped up from a pile that resembled charcoal-colored gelatin atop the occupied warehouse.
After a few minutes, another burst of steam squirted from the bond and the hose fell away. The Chariot’s engines hissed louder and the ship flew away, passing over the dark parking lot on its way south.
The Dark Wolves moved between wrecked cars and approached the large complex. Nina halted her group and, through night vision goggles, eyed their entry point.
She saw the remains of a human building of metal and glass and concrete succumbing to tendrils of green and black ivory although the grainy haze of the night vision did not afford much detail.
She spied a steel door that had once been an employee entrance. Two monks wearing soaked brown robes stood guard outside, each armed with The Order’s version of swords attached to rope belts as well as forearm-mounted pellet guns. Above the door a solitary orb of light provided a cone of illumination.
Oliver Maddock joined Nina at the front of the group. They both raised suppressed Colt M4s. Two quick pops broke the silence in the parking lot followed by two damp thumps as the alien-assimilated bodies dropped.
Caesar and Bly raced forward with the latter making a little more jingle and clink than Nina preferred due to the light machine gun he carried.
Nina approached and opened the door. A gust of foul-smelling air rushed out. The Dark Wolves moved inside.
The interior lighting immediately created problems for the team. They entered a long concrete hall with doors to either side. A pair of thick root-like conduits ran the tops of the walls, probably carrying electricity or fluids or whatever ungodly substances The Order needed to run their horror chambers. Two glowing balls provided patches of an almost liquid-like light illuminating either end of the corridor. The rest of the passage remained dark.
Nina removed her night vision. The others did the same. While shadows still remained the light created enough interference to make the high-tech gear more a liability than an asset.
They walked the hall stopping at each door to glance inside. They found empty offices with smashed computers, a chamber full of dust-covered filing cabinets, and a janitorial closet overrun with mice.
A continual rumble reverberated through the complex, helping to hide their footfalls but the sound added to the tension. Anywhere else Nina would say the noise probably came from large machines chugging away somewhere at the heart of the complex. But inside those walls laced with organic-like conduits and filled with the smell of decay, she easily imagined the noise to come from a giant creature. The noise of the machine or monster-whatever it may be-joined with the constant metallic pitter-patter of raindrops on the roof to create enough sound to make ‘hearing’ the least reliable of their senses.
They reached the end of the hall and paused where a human door had been replaced with skin-like drapes. A humid breeze blew in from beyond and a sound like a nervous stomach rumbling broadcast over unseen loudspeakers.
Something big moved past the other side of those drapes en route to wherever its orders commanded.
Nina used her silenced gun barrel to separate the slit sheaths and eye the darkness beyond. She saw a large room. The concrete floor wore yellow and white caution and traffic lines and a forklift lay toppled against one wall. Several rows of metal racks lined the chamber and loading docks remained sealed to the west.
Directly across from her position a wide archway with straps of heavy plastic offered access to one of the larger warehouses while this room, she realized, served as a loading and unloading zone for trucks.
Again, just enough glowing orbs hung on the wall to make night vision impractical.
Nina sent Vince first, then Carl, then Oliver, and then herself from the entrance hall and across the chamber. No signs of enemy activity. No hint of security devices.
The wolves gathered by the archway and then pushed through the sheets of plastic and entered a wide hall. Empty pallets, several parked forklifts, and wheeled garbage bins sat discarded to either side. Metal bulkheads-like small garage doors-lined the walls and the ceiling reached six stories tall but everything higher than twenty feet remained hidden in darkness. The lights along the big corridor provided only spotlight-like spheres of bright in an otherwise empty passage. The constant drum of rain on the rooftop echoed all around.
Nina felt naked in the open, but saw no cover.
Thirty yards away-at the far end of the hall-loomed a closed sliding door. Nina guessed the larger warehouses waited ahead and the Bishop somewhere further beyond.
The sound of another Chariot flying low over the building drew her attention for a moment. Nina wished she had not sent Odin with the human survivors. She forgot how much they depending on his sensitive canine nose.
“Cap?”
Nina answered Vince with a wave of her arm ordering them to spread out and move forward. The rain increased. The Chariot’s engines sounded directly overhead. Nina glanced toward the ceiling again and saw only black.
What was that?
Did something move up there?
She heard-they all heard-a soft clang. Like a chain tapping against metal.
Nina gripped her rifle tight and took mental stock of her armaments: the Mac-11 in a shoulder harness; the desert eagle on a thigh rig; four grenades on her belt and-as a last resort-a short sword strapped to her left leg. She also carried a detpack in her kit.
They reached the halfway point of the hall. The closed door loomed ahead.
Oliver Maddock walked a step behind and to Nina’s right. The other two stayed close to the far wall.
The sound came again. A rattle. A squeak. Louder.
Nina’s eyes darted from wall to ceiling. Vince and Bly hurried toward the sliding door. Maddock checked their rear, turning around in time to see the thing drop from the shadows and swing toward his gut.
He raised his rifle and pulled the trigger. His silenced rounds went askew as the thing shaped like a scorpion’s tail cut into his chest and hauled him up into the darkness above.
More of that clanging noise.
Nina saw him go. She raised her rifle, but suddenly the darkness turned to bright as a hundred orbs of light sprung to life along the hall. She shielded her eyes with an arm and instinctively dove for a spot low against the wall. Maddock-screaming his last breaths-went higher and higher into the rafters carried by the half-shell, half-iron scorpion tail hanging from a series of chains and pulleys.
As it neared the crisscross of rafters above, the tail uncurled and let the man fall from 50 feet to the concrete. Nina-her eyes barely adjusted to the newfound illumination-could do nothing to save him. He and his gear hit the ground with a sickening crunch.
The metal door slid open of its own accord. Two Spider Sentries stood in the entry on their spindly legs. Their high-powered rapid-fire pellet guns fired. Vince Caesar barely avoided a burst as he rolled toward the wall and returned fire with his carbine.
Bly dropped into a prone position and rested his M-249 on its small tripods. As the alien rounds skipped across the concrete around him, Carl Bly fired a fierce volley. The loud rat-tat-tat of the machine gun joined with the falling rain, the complex’s constant rumble, and the hiss of Spider Sentry guns to fill the hall with an eclectic mix of sound that bounced off the high ceiling and echoed to ear-splitting levels.
Bly’s first rounds went wide but his steady hand guided the hose-like stream of bullets into one of the Spiders. Its round head disintegrated into goo.
Nina felt a shot hit her high in the shoulder, catching uniform and padding but not flesh. She concentrated her M4 at the head. The silenced rounds fired from her carbine in a series of pops. Those bullets annoyed the Sentry-knocked its round head side to side-but could not only chipped at its flesh.
Just behind the rat-tat-tat of the machine gun, the pop of her silenced weapon, and the sharp hiss of the Spider Sentry guns came the whir and clang of the scorpion tail descending from the heights somewhere-not far-behind her.
Vince, from one knee, launched an M203 grenade hitting the second sentry in the side. A nice chunk of its centerpiece fell away but it kept on shooting at Nina. She found cover along a metal bin-a kind of dumpster-but a new threat garnered her attention.
Her instincts felt the thrust of the scorpion tail’s razor-sharp stinger and she dropped and rolled at the last instant. The strange device hit the metal bin where its stinger lodged. The tail-thing immediately wiggled to try and free itself.
Despite incoming fire from the sentry, Nina wedged an anti-personnel grenade in the last joint by the tail’s sharp point. A moment later it freed itself from the metal bin and retreated toward the ceiling.
Nina threw herself to the ground alongside the bin and covered her head.
The grenade exploded. Pieces of metal and a kind of hairy skin fell to the floor but the sound of machine guns and air guns and rain drown out any noise the impact may have made.
Nina sat up and re-focused on the remaining Spider Sentry just in time to see Bly’s M-249 finish it off. The thing wobbled side to side and then collapsed.
“Move! Move! Move!” She commanded and led them into the next room-where they stopped dead in their tracks.
The three soldiers entered a massive rectangular chamber filled with pallets full of cereal boxes, canned fruit, powdered milk, shortening tubs, chemical jugs, pasta crates, and much more. All stacked in piles seven to eight feet tall, shrink wrapped into tight bundles, and aligned in rows to create a maze of boxes. Most of the goods inside certainly spoiled a long time ago; an acidic sour smell emanated from the collection joining with the already pungent aroma of the facility.
The room stretched as long and as wide as a football field. A catwalk ran the length of the chamber halfway up the four-story western wall. Bright fluorescent lights hanging from a flat metal ceiling lit the whole place up like a stage on which a play would soon begin and Nina knew exactly who the players would be.
“We have to keep moving,” she said, but she did not get a chance to finish the sentence.
Nina felt hot shot fly passed her face, inches from her nose. She instinctively dove toward the first line of packed pallets.
Carl never stood a chance. A round hit him in the forehead. The weight of his M-249 machine gun pulled his lifeless body over like a toppling statue.
Vince tried to dodge but another blast of alien bullets hit him in the leg. He crumpled over, barely finding cover behind another pallet of goods.
The shots came from the catwalk overlooking the maze of crates from the west wall. One of Voggoth’s mechanical commandos served as assassin.
Nina raised her rifle and tried to return fire, but more shots came in from the advantage of an elevated position. She retreated, pulling Vince along with her by his utility belt.
Behind cover, Nina took stock of her mates.
Bly lay in the open in a growing puddle of crimson. The impact tore away the top half of his head. Despite knowing battlefield gore all her life, Nina felt a sharp pang in her heart at the sight of her friend so badly mangled.
She turned to Vince. Blood streamed out and over his black BDUs from a wound to his knee. His face twisted in agony, but he refused to cry out.
Captain Forest removed her pack and retrieved a heavy bandage. She struggled to wrap it around the wound. His leg shook violently from the pain.
“Listen, we have to stop the bleeding; or at least slow it down,” she spoke the obvious. “Then I can get you out of here.”
“I can’t walk, Nina.”
“Not yet you can’t. But look, I’ve got strong shoulders. We’ll get you out of here.”
“Strong shoulders? Yeah-yeah…” he mumbled as she wrapped the bandage tight. Blood spouted but with each trip around the leg the dressing grew firmer and pressed against the hole in his leg.
A grating metallic sound interrupted the first aid treatment. The two soldiers faced south and saw the bulkhead from which they had come slam shut with a very permanent clang.
Nina returned to her work, pulling the bandage tight on its final trip around his knee.
Another grating metallic sound. This one farther away. This one from the north end of the warehouse. Nina did not need to see the bulkhead opening; she could picture it in her mind. She wondered how the Christians had felt when the Romans opened the tigers gate on the far side of the coliseum…
The north side door finished opening and out of the black came Voggoth’s robotic commandos skating in and swaying side to side on the wheels in their heels. Kind of like rollerbladers gliding along a sidewalk.
Bronze-colored metal helmets protected solitary round red eyes that swiveled sideways surveying the warehouse as they moved in. Their skeletal bodies wore bronze metal ribcages that protected blobs of bio mass that blurred the line between robot and animal. Gun barrels affixed to forearms gave the Commandos fire power equivalent to a human carbine.
A Sergeant-identified by black chevrons atop silver shoulder plates that also sported twin grenade launchers-generated a static-filled electronic tone that served as a communication. The squad of ten commandos split into pairs and entered the maze from the north side and searched for their quarry…
Nina tried to clamp the bandage but Vince grabbed her hand.
“Go.”
“What? Listen, I’m not going to leave you.”
“Then what, Nina? We’ll just wait here until they come and gun us down? Don’t be-don’t be stupid. Get going.”
She stared at him for a moment. Thought. Then pulled him into a small space between two pallets.
“Wait here,” she said. “I’m not going to leave you.”
He opened his mouth in protest, but she silenced him with glaring, narrow eyes.
With that, Nina adjusted her beret tighter on her head and ran into the maze from the south moving fast but silent. She discarded the sound suppressor on her carbine as she moved.
Sterile bright lights from above cast over the labyrinth, chasing most but not all shadows. The same smell of rot that lived throughout the complex remained in the air here, but joined by the sour odor of decaying foodstuffs hovering over the field of crates.
She followed the nozzle of her gun as she ran forward then turned right along a wall of grain sacks, then left and forward again between row upon row of number ten soup cans piled eight feet high.
The sound of wheels rolling on the concrete floor carried through the passages of the maze. The noise grew, then spread all around her. Some to the east, others to the west, more to the north.
Movement to her left.
Nina flattened against a barricade of white cases marked “Sysco Imperial Brand”, held her breath, and grabbed her M4 by the barrel upside-down.
Two pair of wheels rolling-closer-closer…
She stepped around the corner and waved her rifle like a club. The stock smashed into a Commando’s head. The casing cracked. The creature emitted an electronic wail one step removed from a turntable needle scratching across a warped LP. The metallic neck of the thing bent backwards and its red eye went dark as it hit the hard floor on its skeletal back.
As her swing followed through, Nina let go with her right hand and reversed motion with her left. The M4 twirled around and she caught it in perfect firing position.
The second Commando took aim with its forearm-mounted barrel. At a distance of three feet, Nina held her trigger on full-automatic. Flames burst from the gun as it spat a fatal storm of bullets into the gut of the thing. Impact after impact pushed the roller back on its skates, arms flailing wide, taking on the appearance of a tent-revival robot preacher channeling powers from above.
She stopped firing. The creature fell dead into a cluster of cookie tins.
Nina’s instincts gave warning: danger from behind.
Two more Commandos came around the t-intersection of crates behind her. One immediately knelt, the other stood, both took aim.
Nina darted left passed a pallet stacked with industrial-strength salts. Pursuing shots tore into cardboard boxes spilling grains like sand seeping from a punctured hour glass. She disappeared around a corner.
The robotic assassins skated forward, eager to catch their quarry. As they rounded the corner of boxes she fired toward them from the far side of a small open space. The Commandos halted. One returned fire. The other glanced down just in time to see the grenade at their wheeled feet. It howled a screeching electronic scream before an explosion of shrapnel tore apart both their metallic rib cages and splattered the biological mass contained therein. Two more red eyes went dark.
Nina turned away from the ambush and moved north again, racing fast but careful down a center aisle lined with crates of tea bags, shortening, and powdered soups.
As she passed one crossway, a flurry of enemy bullets whizzed by the back of her head. She heard their wheels gain speed in frantic pursuit.
The passage led to an open space. A sort of courtyard at the middle of the maze.
The wheels behind her to the south grew louder. But as she stepped forward she heard more wheels come from the north. And still more from the east and west.
The blood hounds had surrounded the wolf…
The Sergeant skated into the open section with twin grenade launchers on its shoulders ready to fire. It found only the other five of its number. Red eyes stared at red eyes with electronic bewilderment.
The wheels on the Sergeant’s feet retracted and the robot paced the empty space while emitting a series of scathing bleeps and chirps.
It paused as a communication came through from the team’s spotter…
The Commando on the catwalk radioed the search party as its own gun barrel drew a bead on the human running and leaping atop the stacks of the maze. The woman moved with the agility of a cat, never breaking stride just stretching a little further with each step to make it to the next piled pallet.
The spotter opened fire, but the distance did not allow for accurate aim. Instead, it radioed a target…
The sergeant-flanked by two Commandos-skated furiously along the aisles of crates and boxes guided by electronic chatter from the catwalk. As it moved, the small cylinders on the sergeant’s shoulders rotated side to side and then elevated.
One last quick buzz came to the leader’s robotic ear from the spotter on the catwalk. The sergeant halted. Two projectiles launched from its shoulders, lobbing out from the hidden passageways into the air above the labyrinth…
Nina heard the soft pop of the launchers as she jumped from a stack of tomato paste cases onto a cluster of pallets holding boxed detergents. She landed in a kneel with her M4 bouncing hard in its sling on her back.
She turned her head and saw two burning balls arching through the air directly for her.
Nina jumped, falling between the walls of crates and packages yet again. The two explosive shells detonated above, blowing open a dozen containers and sending a grainy cloud of powdered detergent into the air.
Nina felt a sharp pang of pain in her right ankle as she landed but the minor injury did not slow her. She took flight through the warren of passages with the sound of rolling wheels chasing from behind-and then bullets ricocheted off the concrete in front of her just as she entered a four way intersection. The fire came from her left.
The wolf flattened against the wall for a moment, then bobbed around the corner on a knee firing on full automatic. She walked her shots in toward the Commando who stood half-behind a pallet full of cooking oil cans tightly shrink-wrapped in a bunch. The bullets from her M4 made a muffled ting as they pierced the tin containers. Steady streams of Wesson splashed on the floor.
The robot returned fire. Nina retreated a step and switched out an empty magazine for a new one. A moment later she peeked again and rapid-fired not so much to kill but to suppress in order to buy time to gain a better view of available paths.
The one directly across the intersection appeared the most inviting and the most expeditious route to the north; the way she felt she must go to find and kill the Bishop. But just as she decided to dart across the intersection, one of the Commandos appeared in that passage ahead at a distance of thirty feet in a direct line of fire to her, and vice versa.
Nina won the test of speed. Her rifle launched lethal shots just as her foe raised its arm. Some bullets missed wide but in the storm of full-auto fire quantity overcame a lack of quality. The Commando shivered and then fell in a heap to the concrete floor. Its red eye flickered before fading black.
Nina ran across the intersection spitting suppression fire to her left as cover. She raced between a high stack of potato sacks to her left and large red shelving holding drums and crates to her right.
To her surprise, a second Commando stepped over the body of the dead one and into the passage leading north; directly in front of her. Nina braked hard and nearly fell as her momentum grappled with the traction of her boots.
The new arrival had a clear shot at her. This time Nina did not win the test of speed, but she reversed course quickly and jogged side to side to avoid incoming bullets. Fragments of rotting potato peels blew out from her right and jets of smelly liquid shot out from her left as the Commando’s rounds hit the walls to either side but missed the zigzagging mark.
As she raced toward her previous position another of the Commandos-the Sergeant with black Chevrons on silver shoulder plates-appeared 15 yards ahead.
Nina fired her weapon but just as her mental tab sheet knew it would, her gun ran dry before hitting home.
The Sergeant rocked its metal-encased head side to side in what might have been a kind of robotic taunting and launched a pair of burning grenades as Nina approached at full speed with enemy bullets from behind chasing her all the way.
She reached the intersection before the explosives and jumped left. The devices hit a pallet of boxes and exploded. A thunderstorm of peanuts and cashews filled the four-way intersection with nearly shrapnel-like velocity. Nina rolled east beneath it all then found her feet and ran. As she moved she struggled to change out another empty magazine for a fresh one.
The Commandos pursued. She heard their garbled, synthesized conversations and the roll of their wheels. The passage she traveled straightened with crossways every five yards.
A flash of bronze to her left.
Nina fired a burst to ward off the shadow.
A volley of enemy fire from her right.
She responded with another burst, but kept moving east.
Nina slowed and turned about and saw one of the skeletal Commandos following her at a distance. She paused and it fired but did so with no real attempt to aim from its concealed position behind a stack of containers.
Bam!
Jugs of fouled sweet peppers exploded in a corridor to the south. Liquid and slimy slivers of green and red oozed to the floor.
She fired in that direction then ran again to the east. Rolling wheels sounded to her right-and her left-and from behind.
They’re herding me.
She ran faster, stopped at an intersection, and aimed to her left-the north. She fired bullets before she saw anything. One of the Commandos-rolling parallel to her flight-drifted into the stream of fire. It spun around like an off-kilter top and went down in a pile of scrap.
Its partner learned from the mistake, stopping shy of the open corridor and holding its arm around the corner, letting fly a hail of rounds. At the same time, to the south, Nina heard the distinct pop of more grenades: the Commandos shadowing her on her right flank had arrived.
She did not wait. Nina grudgingly ran east again: the way they wanted her to go. A moment later a pair of small explosions blew apart chunks of concrete where she had just stood.
The rolling wheels began again, content to contain her and direct her rather than engage.
She ran faster-faster, trying to reach the next intersection before the enemy did, as if maybe she could change direction north or south to avoid the trap. It did no good. The metallic soldiers increased their rolling speed as if sensing each change in her momentum.
She fired bullets to the left. The enemy there had learned not to charge into intersections without caution.
She fired more to her right. The Sergeant and his companion avoided the shots and answered with their own.
Nina ran forward again although her sense of direction-confused as it had become-felt as if all her running, dodging, and avoiding led her closer to the starting point where she had left her comrades than the end. As she moved she changed out yet another clip as ammunition became a scarce commodity.
The pallets piled high with boxes and crates and barrels stopped at an open space facing a trio of loading dock doors in the vast expanse of the eastern wall of the chamber. She arrived there a moment before the Commandos.
My last stand.
She turned south, knelt, and fired at the first sign of movement. Her volley hit the Sergeant’s wingman as it emerged full speed from the maze. That robot rolled across the open space and slammed lifeless into one of the loading dock doors.
The Sergeant blindly launched grenades in defense to ward off her automatic fire. The maneuver worked: the explosive balls hit one of the concrete walls between garage doors. Pieces of stone and mortar fell around Nina and the concussion wave knocked her off-balance. Her fire stopped; she fell over flat onto the cold floor, her rifle slid several paces away.
The three remaining bloodhounds reached the end of the hunt; one from the passage Nina had come, one to the north, and the Sergeant to the south.
They paused in what might have been a soldier-to-soldier courtesy as she stood in preparation for liquidation.
The turrets on the Sergeant’s shoulders swiveled with the sound of whirring gears. The one big red eye dominating its robotic head shrunk to a sliver as if squinting for better aim.
A series of fiery sparks engulfed the Sergeant. The thing shivered and spun around facing a new enemy to the south.
Vince Caesar-a trail of blood behind him-lay on the floor thirty yards to the south holding Carl Bly’s SAW.
Nina dove across the floor, grabbed her M4, and launched bullets into the Commando to the north. It went silent and fell backwards as if something flipped its ‘off’ switch.
The machine gun rounds tore apart the Sergeant. Vince tried to draw a bead on the second one, but it swerved side to side like a smart duck in a shooting gallery. Vince’s fire went high partly because he could not risk hitting Nina.
The remaining red-eyed soldier met Vince’s machine gun with shots from its own weapon. Before it found its mark, Nina blasted it from behind at close range. It emitted a sad electronic hum and fell face-first on the concrete.
The warehouse went quiet. The loudest sound to her ears came from her heaving chest.
Nina hurried along the outer wall to Vince. He lay on the floor. Blood pushed through the makeshift bandage on his knee. He had exerted a dangerous amount of effort.
She spat, “Vince, are you crazy? Your knee-“
“Shut up. I wanted to rescue you for once. About time someone did. That all of them?”
Nina spoke through huffs of deep breath; the adrenaline still ran through her veins like burning aviation fuel.
“There’s one still up on the catwalk,” she glanced in that direction but the maze of crates and shelves blocked her view and therefore, in return, blocked any view of them from the spotter.
“Nina Forest.”
Nina turned around fast expecting to see the Bishop standing over her with some implement of torture. She saw nothing other than the labyrinth of stacked pallets and the de-activated Commandos.
“It is good to be near you again.”
The voice came from a PA system. She did not know if that system belonged to the remains of the Sysco facility or something The Order installed. She supposed it did not matter.
“You were always a good soldier,” the Bishop’s words slithered through the air. “Always focused on accomplishing the mission.”
Vince mumbled, “Who the hell is that?”
Nina did not answer.
“You performed a tremendous service for Voggoth many years ago. Your most glorious mission. Do you remember? You delivered Trevor Stone to me. You betrayed him, Nina. I never had the opportunity to thank you for your work. Well done, Nina Forest.”
The back of her neck grew red. Her brow furled as her eyes darted around the chamber searching for the source of the transmission. She did not think the Bishop saw her, but his dead minions certainly gave him a clue as to her position.
“He suffered for days. We nearly purified him. All thanks to you, Nina. It is a shame that you have wasted your skills in service to humanity. Voggoth could use another drone as talented as you.”
Nina stood tall and straight. She cradled her M4 in her arms.
Vince grew nervous. Not for himself, but for her.
“Nina, listen, he’s just trying to bait you. Trying to draw you further in.”
It occurred to Nina that Vince held little understanding of what the Bishop might mean. He-like the other wolves-only knew the general story of her capture, implantation, and stolen memories. Nothing more.
“You are such a good soldier, Captain Forest. Especially when you serve Voggoth’s ends.”
Vince reached up from his position on the ground and grabbed her arm.
“Don’t do it. It’s a trap.”
Nina realized that while Vince did not know the whole story, his faith in her-his loyalty-trumped anything the Bishop might say or suggest.
“I know.”
“Nina,” but Vince’s protest trailed off when he saw her narrow eyes; her determined eyes. “Okay, then, you want the SAW?”
“No, too heavy,” she answered and eyed his wound. She might be able to get him out of there with a strong shoulder, but he could not help her with what lay ahead. “You keep it. Hold out here as long as possible. I’ll come back and get you when I’m finished with this.”
“Here,” he slipped off his shoulder holster with the Mac-11 and held it to her. “Take this. Every bit counts.”
She accepted the weapon and slipped it over the shoulder opposite her own Mac-11.
“I apologize, Nina Forest,” the Bishop’s voice returned. “It is a shame that when your compatriots removed our implant you lost all those memories.”
Nina thought about the missing year of her life. She thought about what she had lost. She thought about a life with Trevor, stolen by Voggoth and his ilk.
If the Bishop had hoped to intimidate or confuse, he failed. His taunts gave birth to the seed of fury planted in Nina the day she had awoke in The Order’s facility with her memories stolen. A seed nurtured first by mystery and then by the revelations of all she had lost. Of all they had taken.
“I am sure you would be proud of how efficiently you performed for Voggoth. I cannot restore those memories, but I could share the story with you if you care.”
Vince threw his eyes toward the ceiling and remarked, “He really doesn’t know who he’s fucking with, does he?”
The energy in her body-every muscle, every nerve-seemed to vibrate. All her life Nina had felt proficient with weapons; now she felt as if her very person had become a weapon, fueled by anger and guided by lethal instinct. The battle in the maze with the Commandos served merely as an appetizer. The main course awaited.
She nodded to Vince and then walked north. After a minute she reached the end of the maze. Far across the chamber on the western wall the remaining Commando rolled along the catwalk and aimed his weapon toward Nina as she moved into the open.
Its shots went wide; distance again thwarted the creature’s accuracy.
Nina changed the M4’s rate of fire switch, raised her rifle, and fired a solitary bullet that traveled all the way across the warehouse.
The Commando’s red eye shattered. Its robotic body rolled backwards, hit off the wall, then slumped forward over the catwalk railing. The thing fell to the floor far below.
Nina paid the dead enemy no mind. She continued walking north toward the exit.
Toward the Bishop.