April 29th, 2263. 23:34 Sissephin Prime – SW of Central Colony
The pair of Talons, the main drop ships used by Marines to conduct orbital insertions, were flying fifty feet off the ground. Any poor soul that was flown over would need a trip to the clinic to get their hearing fixed. A sense of urgency could not only be heard but felt in the engines’ output.
Each ship contained a platoon of marines plus NCOs to coordinate communication and the platoon officer. And three pilots but their fun was being had right now. The Marines needed to get dropped off in order to have fun.
“Sixty seconds from orbital fire. Eighty seconds from disembarkation on my mark,” John said from his harness, “Mark.”
Multiple countdowns were notated in all of the Marine HUDs. In a break from normal operations, John was in command of both platoons. His platoon was the only one that had anyone officially certified to use the new Broadsword class of power armor. That meant his platoon was the spearhead, though they would likely also act as the hammer too.
Ten four-member squads were made for this mission. One was wearing the new heavy power armor, while three were using the smaller class of armor. John inserted himself into one of the squads. His peer from the other platoon reluctantly stayed behind on the Talon to coordinate the attack.
“Here it comes!” John shouted.
Just as the Marines had a chance to look up four beams of light pierced the sky, it was as if Zeus himself threw lightning bolts down to the ground. Except these were electromagnetic beams that were at a dizzying temperature and fired from the laser lances on the CNS Fargo.
Targeting from orbit was always a bit sketchy as a minor miscalculation in the angle of attack could result in missing a target by a wide marge and striking something that they didn’t intend to annihilate. Two of the four anti-air missile batteries were vaporized in the attack.
Thankfully the second attack, a targeted EM burst that was meant to jam communications with the outside world, successfully incapacitated the other batteries. The pilots on the other hand were none too happy about that development.
“Lieutenant, we’re dropping you off and hightailing it out of there. Suggest you divert teams to disable them,” a pilot said.
“My team has one,” Lukas shouted.
“Mine does as well,” another Marine said from the other plane.
“Coordinate which one y’all will take. Hot drop in ten!” John shouted as he was itching to get out of the plan.
Mere seconds later the pair of planes fired retro thrusters and slammed them to a halt in mid-air. As they did the doors and rear landing ramp opened. The harnesses holding the Marines in place unlocked when the planes were only a couple of feet off the ground.
John took a single step before he leaped out of the transport. Twenty seconds later everyone was on the ground and rushing the compound. Just as the squads behind John got to the main ramp the base defenses engaged the Marines.
A rocket-propelled grenade was fired at John. He didn’t notice it until it was too late. It struck his chest plate square above his abdomen. The explosion, and the subsequent shockwave, did nothing other than scratch the paint.
The defenders were taken aback as this human-sized tank shrugged the attack off as if it were less significant than a mosquito bite. More rockets were fired and more of the rounds struck true but did nothing.
“Broadsides, lead the charge!” John shouted as he activated his kinetic shield far later than he should have.
The fight up the ramp and into the main hangar of the base was a quick one. The few defenders were quickly overwhelmed or outright cut down by the fire the Marines were laying down. Once in the room, John directed one squad to kill power to the facility.
“Charlie Squad, kill the power. Everyone else fans out. If anyone fights back, they are dead. Secure everyone and everything else.”
Moments later main power was shut off for the base. John and his squad took a right in the hallway and began their sweep of the base. His adrenaline levels were coming down but now was the true test of the armor. They were in an enemy base in confined spaces.
“Big Papa reports remaining anti-air batteries have been taken out. They are fanning out and scanning the forest for any hostiles,” Lieutenant Cole Perkins said, “Heavy fighting is occurring on the west side of the base.”
“Dead ass quiet on our end,” John said as he cleared another room, “They got to be hiding.”
“Thermal readings can be found down the hallway and in the room to your left,” Cole said.
“Derek, you take care of sweeping back here. Vanessa you and the rest of the squad scan the rooms up to the heat source. I’ll take care of that,” John said.
John jogged down the hallway. He engaged the kinetic shield and raised it as he took the turn. But that was for naught, there were no enemies ahead of him. He continued his pace to the door at the end of the hallway. But it didn’t open when he pressed the open button.
“Ok, elbow grease time,” John said as he punched the door.
Four more punches were necessary to create a good handhold. Eventually, John forced the door open. A curious and very macabre scene was found in the lab. As John stepped inside the six scientists scurried to the back of the room, terrified at what was happening.
John raised his gun and fired a lone shot at the rear door. The armor-piercing round ricocheted off the door and embedded itself into the doorframe. Two of the scientists yelped as red-hot chunks of metal burned through their clothing.
“Move and your dead,” John said as he slowly talked through the room.
“Big Papa, I found three of the colonies missing persons. Have six scientists in custody,” John radioed back.
He was scanning each of the scientists. His VI was running the scans against databases he had access to. Three of them were Confederate citizens. One couldn’t be identified and two were citizens of the Alliance.
“You three, other corners,” John hollered out as he pointed at them, “You stay put. You two sit down next to that corpse. Understand this, if you do not cooperate with me, I will end all of you.”
“We have rights…” one of the Confederate scientists said.
John turned and fired another round above the man’s head. The round sent out more sparks and burned not only him but the two other scientists that were near him. The three were quickly trying to get the tiny metal bits off of their skin as quickly as possible.
“Next round explodes you. I’m not fucking around here,” John said.
Vanessa then walked into the room, “Holy shit…”
“What is it, Corporal?” John said as he scanned the room.
“Sweep of the base is done. Two locals were found on the other side of the facility. All guards or hostiles are dead. Ten people are detained outside of this room. Three people were found outside, but we’re not sure if they are locals or related to this facility.”
“Big Papa, have the squads bring the individuals they found outside to the ramp,” John said as he turned ominously to the scientists.
He walked over to the unidentified man, “Who are you?”
“No,” the scientists looked up at John defiantly.
John reached down and picked the man up and pinned him to the wall, “I don’t need you alive. Name. Now!”
“I can’t tell you that…” the man insisted.
John lifted him up four feet off the ground and began to squeeze. A loud crack could be heard followed by the scientist screaming out in pain and sobbing. The other scientists began to plead with John to stop.
Vanessa turned around and left the room, clearly not caring what her commanding officer did or didn’t do. There were several corpses in various states of disassembly. Nothing good could have been happening in that room. And nothing good could be done were she to stay and witness things. Instead, she walked to the end of the hallway and stood in the way of anyone that wanted to walk down the hall into the science lab.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
“ANSWER ME NOW!” John said as he continued to put pressure on the man.
“Ha…r…old,” the man said between gasps and pain.
John dropped him. He thudded on the ground and curled up into the fetal position. He was whimpering and crying in pain. John nudged him with his heavy boot.
“Last name and where you are from?”
“Erickson. Delta Trivignus Minor.”
“Merc, I see. Why are you all here?”
“If I answer that we’re dead.”
“You might find a degree of redemption with my organization, otherwise I could just end you now and speed up that visit to hell that you’ve earned from your actions here.”
One of the confederate scientists stood up, “We’re doing research for the Livingston Institute.”
John turned around, “On live humans? On kidnapped people from the colony? You do understand that there is literally nothing justifying your actions, right? What are you researching?”
“Don’t answer…” Harold said hoarsely before John kicked him.
“What do we get if…” the female scientist on the ground said.
“DON’T…” Harold said before being kicked much harder by John.
“Out with it,” John said.
The three scientists from Confederate space looked at one another and nodded. The two from the Alliance were shooting daggers at them. A single finger being pointed at them by John changed their attitudes.
“Genetic research. Trying to uplift the common man to a superior or plus through gene sampling. We needed recruits and these four did agree to…”
John cut her off, “Did you run a command to wipe the servers?”
“No, they were functioning normally,” another one said.
Then the Alliance scientists spoke up, “Only the commander of this base can do that. Doctor Abraham.”
“Big Papa, is Doctor Abraham alive or KIA?”
“Checking in with the squads now,” Cole said.
A moment later Erica spoke up, “KIA sir. Did get confirmation that the servers weren’t wiped.”
“Get a team up on the roof and remove the transmitter for this facility. We aren’t powering it back until we know for sure this place can’t receive a remote kill command,” John said as he paced the room.
“Recommend we get some kit from the Fargo, sir,” Lukas said, “There’s some extra hardware that we didn’t bring with.”
Cole then spoke up, “Another dropship is coming, ETA is twenty minutes.”
“Good man, get the transmitters pulled stat.”
John then turned to the scientists, “What do you know of Dr. Norman?”
He was facing the three Confederates. His rear cameras were monitoring the other three. Five heads were shaking as if they’d never heard of the man. Harold on the other hand grew quite pale. His whimpering ended the moment the name was said.
“Vanessa, I have five prisoners for you. They cooperated in answering questions. Should they continue to cooperate in our questions we will notate that accordingly,” John said as he drew a different gun and fired it at Harold, “I have a high priority mark. Need him brought back to the ship and patched up. Keep him sedated until I’m back.”
Harold was knocked out cold, drooling on the ground, and blissfully unaware of anything that had happened and of his incredible pain thanks to the broken ribs. John smiled as he looked at his sleeping beauty. Holy hell, they had hit the motherload. His introspective thoughts were rudely interrupted.
“Sir,” Erica said, “I hate to be the bearer of bad news but just about everybody here is a Confederate.”
“Our high priority individual here was a Mercantilist. And knew of the organization,” John said.
“I’m aware of the optics of that, sir. But we just uncovered the papers on this facility. The Livingston Institute is supposedly the owner and operator. We have no intel that they are working with our enemy.”
John sighed to himself, “Sergeant, you just kicked me in the balls.”
“You aren’t going to like the next bit of news. The lead doctor did a partial wipe of the workstations. Most of the current data is gone.”
“Fuck, but we ought to be able to rebuild the databases and data we recovered last week.”
“Not quite the bullseye we wanted, but we still hit the jackpot,” Cole said, “We confirmed the idiots outside were facility crewmen. They were hunting but hid when the ground strikes occurred.”
Power to the base then came on. John looked around the room and saw in much clearer detail the horrors the scientists had wrought on the locals. He shook his head in disgust.
“Priority goes to the bodies in this lab. I want the colony to receive their bodies back first. Get into contact with the Governor and see how he wants us to handle the return,” John said as he stepped aside for the personnel that came for Harold.
Several other individuals came into the room. John noticed that all of them wore a disturbed look on their faces. He pulled aside one of the crewmen.
“Petty Officer, what’s going on?”
“Sir, you may not have heard about what was going on at the other side of the base.”
“Heard about what?”
“We found a room, sir,” the Petty Officer looked sick as he shook his head and walked by John.
Darryl then contacted John via a private channel, “Lieutenant, I need your presence at the far side of the base. You really need to see this shitshow.”
The concern in his voice worried John. What had they found? This organization was capable of anything. Ethics or morals be damned. The speed with which John was traversing the facility sped up as he spent more and more time away from this mystery room.
When he turned the last corner he saw a Marine in the corner emptying the contents of his stomach onto a potted plant. Darryl and David were standing with their backs to the room. What’s curious was the door in a place there shouldn’t have been a door.
“Safe room?” John asked.
“More like room of horrors. Fucking hell,” David said bluntly before catching himself, “Uh, sir!”
The two guards sidestepped slightly so that John could see into the room. John had done a lot of unsavory things over the years. Even crossed the line into brutal and bordered on sadistic at times. But there was also a degree of control during those actions. Inside that room, there seemed to be an utter lack of control.
“Go to the end of the hall. No one is to go beyond,” John slapped Darryl’s pauldron, “Fucking hell.”
John stepped into the room. He was purposeful in scanning the entire room. There were four tables, all of which were covered in layers of blood. Three legs, a foot, a thigh, and what looked like a chunk of someone’s shoulder remained.
There was a shelf full of preserved tissue samples and bones. The most disturbing thing was the torso, sans head and arms, laying on the far table. There were three sets of ribs though. The extra sets were slim bones but longer than a normal rib, the inner one coiled around itself while the outer one curved outward.
“Did they cause this person to grow extra ribs?” John said to himself as he looked more closely at the sharp-looking ribs, “This room isn’t hygienic at all, why would they not at the very least clean this room.”
Eve then chimed in, “Farther testing is necessary, but preliminary examination of the images suggests everything found here is from a single source and all of this happened at roughly the same time. This would have happened in the last six to eight hours.”
John walked out of the room and walked to Darryl, “Sarge, do we have any evidence kits?”
“We don’t have any but I’m sure we can get some.”
“Do it, let me know when they come in,” John said as he walked down the hallway.
He then opened a private channel to Big Papa, “Cole, we need NI to come in here with multiple teams. Request the genetics crime unit and intelligence gatherers. Additionally, all personnel, including support personnel that didn’t enter the facility need to be scanned by the medical crew for any potential exposure to pathogens here.”
“Understood. Talon 3 is twenty minutes away from docking with the Fargo. I’ll have the medical team onboard place a quarantine seal on the docking ring, and they can test everyone onboard.”
John closed the channel and shook his head, “What a fucking mess.”
“Lieutenant, question for you,” Derek said over the comms.
“Fire away,” John sighed.
“Ok, actually that was less of a question and more of a request, sir.”
“Right. What’s the request?” John grinned.
“Please come to the external shuttle pad. You definitely want to see this.”
John turned back but found no obvious switch to shut the door to the horror show behind him. He jogged down the hall and out the central hangar bar. Ten minutes later he jogged up the ramp. A lone shuttle was sitting there. Several marines in power armor and others in combat suits were inspecting boxes.
“What’s up Derek?”
“You will want to go inside. I don’t have words,” Derek said as he pointed to the rear ramp.
John shrugged as he walked in. Derek waited for John to walk past him and followed behind him. The pair walked up the ramp. John stopped two steps from the top. He stared at the cryo-pod.
“Yeah, thought you’d be interested in that.”
John walked over to the first cryo-pod. He carefully wiped the frost off the viewport, a simple task that John found monumentally difficult in the new armor. Inside of the pod was his face. Or at least his face around the time he was eighteen or nineteen years old.
“Fucking hell,” John said as he took a knee to connect his suit to the pod.
“What are you doing sir?”
“Verifying something,” John said as text flashed in his HUD.
Eve then spoke up, “This is a clone from the lab that was assaulted in the Draconis system. These were the only clones that they sent to another facility. They were cloned through normal methods.”
“Except for being flash-aged,” John said quietly.
“Correct. The scans suggest their DNA is stable. We do not know what kind of memory implantation was done on them.”
“Derek, has the data onboard this vessel been copied?”
“Yes sir, that was one of the first things we did out here.”
“Good.”
John unlocked his battle rifle and began firing at the cryo-pods. The high explosive rounds sent shards of ceramite flying. The bodies were shredded into pink mist and chunks of sinew and bone. Derek was stunned, he didn’t understand why his CO had acted the way he had. He was brought out of his temporary stupor when the oversized magazine landed with a loud thud on the floor.
“What the fuck, sir?” Derek was pulling himself off the floor of the shuttle.
“Get out now.”
Derek wasted no time and jogged down the ramp. John strode down the ramp with a purposeful gait. As he did so he locked the rifle to his back. He slammed the ramp retraction button as he stepped off it. John turned and began pushing at the rear right landing leg.
The twin-fusion reactors roared as all their power was needed. Small indentations were made into the surface where John’s feet were planted. Inch by inch the shuttle began to move. The other personnel dropped what they were doing and rand off the pad.
The commotion near the shuttle, coupled with seeing many running into the facility, drew more Marines to witness the epic temper tantrum John was throwing. Three minutes later the forward landing leg was pushed off the pad. Gravity was then in charge of the shuttle now.
It teetered for a brief moment until one more petulant and angry shove into the landing leg was made by John. The shuttle slid off the pad and down the mountainside to the rear of the facility. The forward half of the shuttle was caved in. An explosion annihilated the rest. A shockwave harmless washed over the facility.
John’s helmet was thrown backward and landed near one of the assembled Marines. A dark, guttural, and bestial roar rang out. It was almost inhuman sounding. Everyone took a step back when they heard it.
John took several deep breaths trying to collect himself. He turned and began walking off the pad. While he had controlled his breathing, he had not controlled his emotions. His face bore the visage of both a deeply haunted man and of a rage-filled berserker. The Marines left their CO to his devices and got back to work. Questions could be asked later, but now was absolutely not the right time to say anything.