Gabriel: Zero Point (Evan Gabriel Trilogy) (7 page)

Chapter 10

The security feed was still offline, but Gabriel’s passive scans showed no additional threats between him and the target room. The room where he hoped to find answers. Where were Knowles and Biermann? Who were these gunmen? And why the hell were they trying to kill him?

He ran at a medium pace, feeling the strength in his legs with each step. The nano machines had done their job. He felt different from head to toe; his muscles felt almost refreshed, like just waking up from a nap and taking a long, slow stretch. In fact, he thought as he ran, he was waking up from a nap. A very long one.
 

This was a zero point for him. He was different. Stronger, faster, more capable. He only hoped he’d live through whatever this was to be able to use all his newfound abilities.
 

He slowed as he approached the last elevator bay. He could see the door just past the bay. It was closed and had a simple palm lock. It was very nondescript, like most others he saw on Cielo, but behind this one was his target.
 

He took one last passive scan of his immediate surroundings and walked slowly around to the other side of the elevator bay. Suddenly a flashing icon popped up in his Mindseye. His neuretics threat assessment algorithm had detected movement, but his scans were clear. He froze and brought the rifle up. Again the icon flashed, but had no vector or location.

Gabriel spun around, rifle up and armed, but the corridor was clear behind him. He looked up at the ceiling, but saw nothing. The dim light wasn’t preventing him from seeing; his scans enhanced his vision far better than even radar would be, but he still saw nothing. He queried his neuretics to pin down the source of the movement, but his systems couldn’t. Something was moving, close, but it was invisible.
 

Make them react.
A voice from his past echoed in his head. His instructor back at RTC Great Lakes, showing recruits how to flush out an unseen enemy.
Don’t be predictable, be unconventional. Draw them out by forcing their hand.

Gabriel pressed his back to the wall of the corridor and slowly reached down and pulled the two frag grenades from his thigh pocket. They were close-quarters models, smaller than ones used for room clearing, and both easily fit into one hand. He used his thumb to flick both arming switches. He threw one down the corridor he had just come from, and one a few feet past the door he was approaching. Both rolled to a stop around twenty-five feet from him in opposite directions. He was now in the middle of the explosion zone of two grenades, and he hoped he remembered the correct blast radius of these particular models.
 

Gabriel dropped to his knees and covered the sides of his head with his forearms. He heard a muffled curse just before the grenades went off.

The blasts were within a split second of each other, sounding like two firecrackers going off. Gabriel heard the corridor walls get peppered with shrapnel as the grenades dispersed their anti-personnel contents. He had calculated the distance properly; only a few pieces of metal struck him, and none with enough force to cause any damage. The same couldn’t be said for his unknown and unseen companion.

Gabriel’s neuretics lit up with a bright red icon, just a few feet before the target door. Stealth suit, he saw. The hostile stumbled away from the explosion, his electronics and heat blocking suit shredded from the impact of the frag grenade shrapnel. In the dim light, with the stealth suit’s capabilities, the man was invisible to anything short of a full power active scan, and almost had the drop on him.
Almost
, Gabriel thought as he stood up from his crouch and started towards the man.

The hostile recovered quickly. The suit offered some protection from projectile impact, so his disorientation was only momentary. He pulled a wicked looking curved blade from a hidden pocket and lunged towards Gabriel.
 

The distance was too close for Gabriel to use the rifle as anything more than a club, and the mag pistol was tucked away behind his back. He flipped the rifle backwards as he moved, grabbing the barrel, and parried the blade arm of the hostile.

The man grunted as the rifle stock struck his arm, but he held the blade securely, and Gabriel lost his grip on the smooth rifle barrel. It fell to the floor behind his attacker. Now that Gabriel was up close and personal, he got a better look at the man. He was tall and broad, about his own size, and the head covering of the stealth suit was torn in several places, showing part of his face. The man wore a cruel leer as he swung the blade in a wide arc towards Gabriel’s head.

Gabriel stepped back as the blade whooshed through the air in front of him. As it passed, he lashed out with his free hand and struck the back of the man’s elbow, and was rewarded with a sickening crack as the bone snapped.

The man howled in pain, and quickly shifted the long blade to his good hand. Gabriel began to reach behind him for the mag pistol, but the man stepped forward and flailed with his broken arm, apparently oblivious to the pain. His hand caught Gabriel’s wounded arm just as he pulled the pistol from his waistband, and a shock of pain staggered Gabriel. The pistol, like the rifle, fell to the floor. He stepped back, as did the hostile, and each man warily eyed the other.

Gabriel was now unarmed, wounded, and apparently evenly matched size-wise with his attacker. Evenly matched except for the blade, which reflected the dull blue light as the man waved it in front of him. The two were just outside of arm’s reach, and both of them dripped blood from multiple injuries. Gabriel knew he’d have to end this conflict quickly, as whoever was behind the door was well aware of his presence at this point and could be preparing for an assault.
 

Realizing this, he ran a full active scan on the room, all the while staring into his attacker’s eyes as they slowly circled each other. Gabriel was now on the door side of the corridor as they changed positions. The scan showed two people in the small room, no sign of weapons, no electronics save for a reading from a basic comm terminal. Whoever was in there wasn’t likely a threat. Whoever was running this show was counting on the five — no, six, he thought as he eyed the blade again — mercenaries to take him out before he ever opened the door.

Suddenly the other man stepped forward, inside the arm’s reach area, blade outstretched. Gabriel calmly deflected the slow move to the side, but was caught off guard by the man’s foot crashing into his lower leg. He grimaced in pain as his knee collapsed inwards, feeling his tendons stretch. He dropped down onto that knee.

His attacker took another quick step in and swung the blade down. Gabriel raised his left arm to block the incoming blow, and then saw his own opening. As the blade arced downwards, Gabriel lashed out with his right fist deep into the man’s stomach. The blade fell from his grasp and bounced harmlessly off Gabriel’s left shoulder, and the man doubled over. Gabriel fired his open left hand upwards into the man’s chin and heard teeth shatter as his lower jaw smashed into his upper.

With a grunt, the man toppled over onto his side, blood leaking from a corner of his mouth. His eyes squeezed shut and he moaned in agony. Gabriel, still on one knee, grabbed the fallen knife and held it to the man’s throat, leaning in.

“Who sent you?” he asked in a low tone. He had the distinct feeling of deja vu from his questioning in the lab not ten minutes ago. It felt like days.

The man only moaned in reply. Gabriel repeated the question, and finally the man opened his eyes. To Gabriel’s surprise, he smiled, his mouth a mass of bloody gums and gaps where teeth had broken off.

“The devil,” he ground out. A wet chuckle came from his throat. “I’m from hell.”

Gabriel pressed the knife further, drawing blood. Before he had a chance to speak again, the man’s arm shot out and grabbed Gabriel’s fallen pistol. His broken arm came up from the other side and grabbed Gabriel’s knife hand and pulled.
 

Gabriel cursed his lack of focus and caution as he lost his balance on top of the man. He rolled off away from the pistol that was swinging his way, pressing the man’s broken elbow into the floor in the process. He felt a lump under his upper back as he rolled, and knew immediately what it was. He continued the roll and as he came off the lump, his right arm grabbed his fallen pulse rifle. Before the man had gotten the pistol fully aimed, Gabriel squeezed off a three-round burst. The attacker’s arm slumped to the floor as wisps of smoke rose from the side of his body.

Gabriel clenched his teeth against the pain from his twisted knee and pushed himself to his feet, using the pulse rifle as a crutch. He ignored the pistol; with one injured arm, he only wanted the burden of one weapon. And the scans he was still running showed no weapons from behind the door. Or so he hoped.

He limped over to the door and checked the pulse rifle to ensure it was charged and armed. The door’s entry pad must have been on backup power as it was illuminated and appeared unlocked. He took a deep breath, and palmed the pad.
 

The door slid aside. He rolled into the room, popping up on his good knee, and sighted down the pulse rifle’s barrel at the location of the two icons. His eyes widened in shock and his jaw dropped at seeing who stared back at him.

“Welcome, Lieutenant Gabriel. What took you so long?”

Chapter 11

Gabriel lowered the rifle slowly and looked left and right. The room was small, less than half the length of the lab he just left, with only a utilitarian steel desk taking up any floor space. His neuretics completed their automatic sweep and confirmed the room was empty. No wall units, no screens, no other furniture. Empty.

Except for the two familiar faces that stared at him from behind the desk.

“You can safe the weapon, Lieutenant,” said Biermann from his seated position. Knowles stood just off his left shoulder, her face a mask of anguish. Her eyes were focused squarely on Gabriel’s bloody face and right arm. When she noticed Gabriel looking at her, she lowered her gaze. He noticed she was wearing a clean, unstained, light-blue pullover.

His mind raced. He’d been ‘awake’ for less than fifteen minutes, and behind him in the hall lay four bodies, added to the two in the lab. Two were dead, and one more would probably be dead within the hour without medical assistance. All at his hands. And all… for what?

“Captain,” he said, still struggling to wrap his brain around the situation, “what’s going on? Who…” His voice trailed off as he heard a sound behind him. He snapped the pulse rifle back up to his shoulder as he spun to face the new threat, chastising himself for taking his attention away from his passive scans.

Two men in civilian clothes walked through the door, hands raised above their heads. The first man in stopped, glanced at Biermann, and then continued into the room. The second man slowly followed, staring at the barrel of the rifle Gabriel held.

“Lieutenant, safe that weapon now. That’s an order,” came Biermann’s voice from behind him.
 

“But sir,” he began, only to be interrupted.

“Please, Evan,” said Knowles, her voice low. “We don’t want anyone else hurt.”

He lowered the rifle, letting the barrel drop to face the floor. He held it with his right hand and reached across with his left hand to squeeze the throbbing wound on his upper arm. The pain from the mine’s shrapnel was only now starting to penetrate the mask of his adrenaline rush. The mag pistol wound in his side hadn’t yet gotten that far, but he knew very soon the pain would find its way to his nervous system.

Hurt, Knowles said. So they knew. The remote wipes came from this room, and Gabriel guessed they must have been monitoring his movements the entire time. Probably using the same security system he had. He thought back to his initial plan to round the torus in the opposite direction, only to find the blast door sealed. He suspected then someone was leading him in a certain direction, but he never expected it to be Biermann. Or Knowles. This was all so… orchestrated. That word jumped into his consciousness again. But to what end? He ground his teeth together and glared at Biermann.

“Sir, with all due respect, someone needs to tell me what the hell is going on here.”

Biermann held up a finger dismissively and turned to the two other men, who now stood in front of the desk. The shorter man, the second one in the room, kept flicking his eyes over his shoulder to Gabriel as if he expected an attack. Gabriel shot him a glance and he quickly turned back to face Biermann.

“Report,” said Biermann as he stood up from the chair.

The taller of the two civilians answered. “Two KIA. Four wounded, one seriously with what appears to be a broken jaw and several cracked vertebrae. The two in the lab have already been taken back to the holding cell, and a medical team is on their way for the others, as requested.” He glanced over his shoulder at Gabriel. “Your boy did a hell of a job out there.”

“Bloody tornado, if you ask me,” the shorter one said under his breath.

“I didn’t ask,” said Biermann in a sharp tone. “Collect the weapons after Med is through, then get the cleanup crew to work. Station personnel will be back in just over an hour, and as I see on the monitors, the walls could use some panels replaced.”

“You got it,” the taller one said, then turned and walked out of the room without a second glance at Gabriel. The shorter one walked up to Gabriel and held out a hand.

“Rifle,” he said, his eyes not meeting the much-taller Gabriel.
 

Gabriel looked at Biermann, who had come around to the front of the desk and was leaning against the edge, arms crossed. The captain nodded. “Rifle, Lieutenant,” he said.

Gabriel looked at Knowles, whose face was lined with sadness. Biermann stood impassively, staring back at Gabriel. The short civilian extended his hand further.

Without taking his eyes off Biermann, Gabriel tossed the rifle against the near wall, where it bounced and clattered to the floor. He took four quick strides, bumping the civilian out of his way, and stopped within inches of the captain.