The Independent Worlds (The Sixteen Galaxies Book 2) Read online

  The ascending note of the compressor turbine was drowned out by the unholy scream of the power turbine. The rotors picked up speed and the whole machine started to shake. The slow wobble got faster and faster, until it became a constant vibration. The thwack of the blade’s leading edge increased tempo into an immense staccato roar. The scream of the engine and clatter of the blade was a sound most military personnel knew in their heart and never forgot. It was the sound of war; the harbinger of battle.

  Across the concrete apron the Cobra was already in the air. Its sleek, aggressive profile futuristic for its time, it would have looked every inch the weapon platform it was, if Jack could actually see it. Jack did briefly spot the twin 7.62mm mini-guns in the nose pod as they swung experimentally from side to side.

  Jack felt their chopper leave the ground and Drifter’s voice crackled over comms. “This is it ladies; pucker up, we’re going in. LZ will be lively, but the boss lady wants minimal casualties. That means suppressive fire; put ‘em on the ground and keep ‘em down. Oh, and Mitch, stay high as you can for the most part. I can’t see you, and I sure as hell don’t want to find you the hard way.”

  “Copy that, boss,” Mitch drawled. “The feeling’s mutual.”

  *****

  Kestil’s base

  Kestil watched a bead of sweat meander down David’s brow. The Starchild’s face was deathly white; his eyes unfocused and glazed.

  Kestil held out his hands. “Give it up, David. What difference does it make to fight anymore? You have more intellect at your disposal than most people could ever dream of. Surely you can do some simple math. The time ticks away towards your unavoidable failure. My AI was created as a virus; invasion of other systems is its raison d’etre. You even told me yourself that 100% success would be achieved within 76 hours. By my estimate, that means there are less than two hours to go before you must fail. What do you hope to achieve before then; your death? We won’t allow that to happen, surely you know that.”

  David’s eyes rolled back in his head. He managed to squeeze out some words. “I…I am waiting.”

  Kestil laughed. “For what? A sudden rescue by your compatriots? They cannot enter here, especially not the two who would present a real threat. We would hack their implants instantly, and simply portal them out of reach. You can’t win, David.”

  *****

  “All quiet?” John Crabtree and Barney Cantock sauntered out of the tree line towards a guard who leaned casually against a no smoking sign.

  A cigarette dangled from his lips and he squinted at Barney through the smoke that glowed orange in the dark as he took a deep drag. The guard gave an elaborate yawn. “Ain’t it always?”

  Barney bummed a cigarette and the guard lit it for him. The two men lounged in companionable silence, while John panned his eyes around the base.

  Barney sighed. “Relax, John. What the hell they gonna come at us with?”

  John knew he was right. But, he had so many centuries of combat experience behind him, he just couldn’t relax. If there’s one thing he’d learned from all those infused memories, it was that you should never underestimate your enemy. He asked the guard for a cigarette, too. Kestil hated smokers, so John never did it around him. But, he determined to enjoy this one.

  And he did, too. Right up to the second the sky exploded in a crescendo of sound. The effect on all three men was akin to a bucket of ice water dashed into your face while you’re deep asleep.

  Not ten yards away and fifty feet up, the mind-numbing roar of a large, but invisible, helicopter had come into being in the blackness above them. The cacophony arrowed straight towards the center of the compound. A second one thundered into existence hard on its heels. This one was lower, and they all choked on dust whilst being pelted with gravel from the downdraft. It took a different route and went nearly vertical as it climbed, and arced off to the right. Though both moved off almost instantly, the sound sure didn’t.

  John had to yell at the transfixed guard, who stood glued to the spot, the battered remnants of his cigarette plastered to his face. “Sound the alarm and fire on those aircraft!”

  “I can’t see them!” the guard shouted back.

  “Then shoot at the damned great noise they’re making, you jackass!” John screamed at him, before he raced for the silo shaft.

  Barney headed in the opposite direction. He had no idea what the hell was going on, but he wanted distance between him and the two roaring machines that had to be brought down.

  Behind him several guards came to their senses and opened fire into the darkness. Barney’s heart fell when he heard several heavy machine guns hammer out a reply. There’d been something weird about both birds, he thought. When they appeared, it was like he could sort of see them in the momentary glimpse he got before he was blinded by the dust, but more as an area where there was empty blackness, in the shape of a chopper. He was soon inside the tree canopy, and found a perch behind a huge fallen tree. He unslung his AX338 and tried to get a bead on either chopper. One was near the ground and close to the compound. He could make out occasional muzzle flashes when the M60s barked at someone, but the bird was damned near invisible. The other one had simply vanished, although he could still hear it.

  *****

  Kestil sighed. “Come on, David; give it up. You say you wait, but nobody’s coming. You’re extending your suffering for-”

  Kestil was cut off by his AI over the PA system in the base. “Seal the access shaft. Surface forces converge on the main entry. Airborne attack incoming; two signatures. Get those doors closed, now!”

  Kestil ran for the doorway, shouting as he went. “How the hell have they got aircraft anywhere near us? Why didn’t you stop them?!”

  “The aircraft came in through a portal located just out of range of our jammers. The aircraft themselves are helicopters; old relics. They have no on-board computer systems at all. Their controls are archaic and I have no access.”

  “Get a call through to Maitland, now!” Kestil’s shouts faded up the corridor.

  David leaned his head back with a sigh. “I was waiting,” he whispered, “for that.”

  *****

  Truly had instructed Drifter to take the Huey straight to the center of the compound, find the main shaft down to the base and wait for instructions. He’d never married, but he thought that, in the last six months, he’d come to know what it felt like. He went in and did a sweep of the large round shaft; the original silo the base was built around. The two concrete doors were wide open; the guards had no time to close them before the chopper arrived on the scene. He used the pintle-mounted M60s on either side of the chopper to keep the guard’s heads down. Meanwhile, Bobby and Bear did the same from their positions in the doorways. One guard got brave and fired a quick burst, and Drifter demolished a corner of the building where the muzzle flash was.

  Others were brave enough to send some bullets their way, but the quick replies from the Huey soon saw them lose interest in that idea. It was obvious they had been overconfident in Kestil’s AI’s ability to counter any attack from above without resorting to heavier weapons. It was equally obvious nobody had thought of this unusual counter to the protective abilities of the AI. That situation would change in short order, Drifter knew. He scanned the area adjacent to the shaft, but wherever he set down, they would be horribly exposed. The big doors started to slide shut.

  “Take us right over the shaft, Drifter. Keep this height,” Jack said over the comms.

  “You crazy?” Drifter said. “What you gonna do, just jump down the damned hole?”

  “Yep,” came the terse reply.

  Drifter’s eyes focused on the shrinking gap between the two huge doors. “The doors are closing! The gap will be tight!”

  “Well,” Jack shouted, “how good a pilot are you?”

  “I am the God-damned best!” Drifter snarled, and threw the chopper at the gap between the doors. He flicked the nose up and pulled it to a stop perfectly above the opening.


  Jack and Ron both leapt into the gap with just inches to spare.

  Drifter saw both men drop into the gaping maw. No way they’d survive that, he thought.

  “They’ll be fine, Drifter,” Truly assured him. “Just be ready to pick them up when they appear at the top.”

  The old pilot swung the chopper away from the shaft and commenced a continuous sweep around it. “Yes dear,” he muttered.

  *****

  John sprinted as fast as his lithe new body could go, focused on the shaft where one of the choppers hovered. He realized he had no gun, and cursed. Well, let’s see how these enhanced muscles go in hand to hand, then, he thought. As he closed on the shaft, he saw two men drop into the hole.

  “Oh no you don’t, he growled. He couldn’t get much closer without exposure to the chopper’s machine guns, and he didn’t fancy that idea. It was a long way for a quick portal, but he tried to request one from the AI anyway. The reply took precious seconds, but he soon disappeared.

  *****

  Drifter spotted a guard setting up some kind of launcher behind a truck. “SAM at the truck, 4 o’clock!” he yelled into his microphone. He frantically swung the big chopper round, but he heard the sputtering rasp of the Cobra’s mini-guns and the truck started to disintegrate at an impressive rate. The guard dropped the launcher and made a break for the adjacent building. Bear sent a volley of copper-jacketed lead after him to underscore the point.

  “Nice work, Tiny!” Drifter called.

  “You’re welcome,” came the reply.

  Three men made a run together to get a better spot to attack from, and Bobby tore up the tarmac in front of them with his M60. All three did a rapid about face, and Drifter used the pintle-mounted quad M60s to hurry them along.

  *****

  Jack and Ron hurtled down into the black emptiness of the shaft. On their way down into the depths, they had just one brief exchange.

  “Hope this works.”

  “Me too.”

  When he could see the bottom loom out of the dark at him, Ron flicked the switch on the gravity nullification field Truly had supplied him with. The pair decelerated and stopped five feet from the floor. Ron flicked the switch again and they both landed with a thud on the concrete at the bottom of the shaft. The sound of the choppers and occasional gunfire was still audible, but heavily distorted and full of echo down here. They heard a grinding sound and saw the two big doors at the top shut with a thud.

  “Hope we got another way out of here,” Jack muttered.

  “Guess we must have,” Ron replied. They both gave a start when a young man in his twenties appeared right beside them. Jack swung a fist without hesitation and the young man slammed into the opposite wall. He came straight back at them, and Ron threw a sidekick that the young man dodged. He danced back, a savage grin on his face. “You two aren’t the only ones who’ve had a little upgrade, boys.”

  He leapt at Ron, who sidestepped him and put a rabbit punch into the back of his head. It threw the young man face first into the wall. He spun round and wiped a dribble of blood off his chin. “Boy, you’re still a hard man to kill, ain’t ya?”

  Ron did a double take. His eyes narrowed. “Crabtree?”

  Jack had got behind John and slammed a boot into the back of his knee. John doubled over backwards and Jack hit him with both hands clenched together. John flew across the shaft and once more hit the side wall of the shaft. Ron unslung a Heckler & Koch MP7 and fired a burst at Crabtree, who disappeared.

  Jack frowned at Ron. “Who the hell was that?”

  Ron shook his head. “You’re not gonna believe this, but that was John Crabtree. Seems like he got some kind of body swap.”

  Jack shrugged. “Unimportant right now, we’re on a clock. He looked around him. The bottom of the shaft was now empty. Sunk into the wall on one side was a heavy armor-plated blast door.

  Jack fished in his pocket and pulled out a tiny plastic bottle. “Get ready,” he said. He squirted the contents of the bottle onto the thick steel blast door.

  They both got their weapons ready and set themselves up on either side of the door. The cylindrical shape of the shaft was less than ideal for this situation, but beggars can’t be choosers.

  The micro-drones from the plastic bottle, coded specifically to consume steel and self-replicate until the steel ran out, made short work of the door. Ron and Jack both knew that several guards would be on the other side, but none of them were adventurous enough to emerge. Jack tried a portal, but it didn’t work. He didn’t think for a minute it would, really.

  He unclipped a small sphere off his belt and showed it to Ron. “You ready?”

  Ron gave him a terse nod, and Jack tossed the sphere into the corridor. The instant the sphere hit the floor inside the doorway, it lit up with an intense white light. One second later there was a deep thump, and the power went out. The white light was replaced by deep darkness. It took only a few seconds for the two men’s eyes to adjust, and they sprinted through the short corridor and into a large room. They both flitted across the room in diagonally opposite directions. There was no hail of gunfire, no cries of alarm. The men inside the room were completely blinded by the two extremes of light the little sphere had created.

  Jack fought back years of training and, instead of two taps per target to the head, he put two bullets into the upper thigh of each man he could see. He dived behind a desk as gunfire erupted everywhere. He saw Ron put three men down in a similar fashion before he also dived for cover. The gunfire continued for several seconds; two men went down to the ironically named ‘Friendly Fire’.

  Jack leapt from behind the desk and into the hallway behind it, Ron close on his tail. They rounded a corner and Ron pulled out a little device; it was in the shape of a cube with a single needle-like protrusion. He reached in behind a cabinet and drove the pointed barb into an electrical outlet. They then made their way swiftly to the inner stairwell.

  19

  Kestil seethed with rage. He’d made his way to the command room of the complex and started to direct his troops. Within a few minutes everything went out. “Power’s down!” somebody shouted needlessly.

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Near the main shaft. They have removed the blast door and are inside the first room. I placed several assets ready, but they are all incapacitated. The top doors are now closed; they have no way out.’

  ‘Oh, they’ll have a way out; somehow. Where’s Crabtree?’

  ‘I portaled him into the main shaft with those two, but they nearly killed him. He is now with the Starchild.’

  Kestil smashed a fist on the console in front of him. ‘Get more assets down to the Starchild, and set up ambushes between them and him.’

  ‘I shall do it now. Do you require-’

  Kestil waited, but in his mind there was only silence. ‘What happened? Where are you?’

  His blood ran cold. Several in the command room had torches out. He snatched one from a nearby technician. “As many as possible, get your weapons and come with me.”

  Another technician grabbed his arm as he headed for the door.

  He rounded on the unfortunate man. “What?!”

  The technician pointed to the opposite wall. “The wires, sir.”

  Kestil looked at the cables that ran along the wall near the ceiling. They were disintegrating rapidly. Lengths of cable fell off all four walls of the room as he watched. He uttered a long string of expletives and led his men down the corridor.

  *****

  Four men had set themselves up on the third level inside the inner stairwell. They wore night-vision goggles and carried AR-15 SP1 carbine assault rifles. They had one goal. Nobody gets past. Out of the corner of his eye, one of them saw two shadows shoot past down the center of the stairwell. “They jumped past!” he cried. He leaned out over the railing and fired a burst at the ground, but there was nobody there. “Get to the bottom, now!”

  All four hurtled down the stairwell. They stopped
on the balcony near the bottom. The leader signaled one man forward. He crept down the remaining stairs, weapon at the ready. A hand came through the gap in the stairs and grabbed one of his boots. The man did a face plant onto the concrete at the bottom and was rendered unconscious.

  “They’re underneath!” the leader cried and jumped the railing to the floor below. Two rapid shots rang out, and he writhed on the floor, clutching his leg in agony. The two on the balcony looked at each other. One nodded to the other and they both ran down the steps together, firing blindly behind them as they went. Two shots, then two shots more, and they were both on the ground beside their unconscious companion at the foot of the stairs.

  *****

  Kestil trotted along a corridor with 15 men close behind. Torch beams flicked nervously down every corridor they passed. One of the men tapped his shoulder. “The generators are the other way, sir.”

  Kestil made no reply, but shone his torch on the floor where small sections of electrical cable that had fallen from the wall conduits rapidly disappeared. The man’s face fell, and he nodded. “Right.”

  They entered the main stairwell and Kestil led them down to the bottom. Four men lay on the floor there, and Kestil pointed to them. “One of you call and get these moved out of the way. Then get them some help.”

  He turned to the others. “The man strapped down in the room we’re going into is the most precious being in the known universe. No matter what happens, no harm must come to him. Am I clear?”

  They all nodded. One spoke up, “What about the two hostiles?”

  Kestil scowled. “Kill them. If you can.”

  *****

  Jack and Ron entered the room David was in. The technicians that had attended him were gone. Jack looked him over. “He’s a mess. Can you hear me, David?”