Gamma Nine (Book One) (21 page)

They came from
the sides first, hitting the line in the most vulnerable spot -
right in the middle of the weaker Lancers.

Jessica had
already knocked on the door three times and still there was no
answer. Her panic grew as her mind told her that she was too late.
She just wanted to fall to her knees and just wait for the
inevitable end, and that end would come swiftly with the growing
threat on New Horizon. All of the trouble they went through and
everything they saw to get here, and now it was all for nothing.
The man they needed to open the door was either long dead or he was
already inside his safe bunker. Jessica wanted to scream, tears
tried to fill her eyes as she banged on the door with her fist
again.

Tristan was
crouched in ball against the wall opposite the door her sister was
slamming her fists against, every hit made the thirteen year old
wince, shock from the Black Saint’s death still affecting her.

Sam stood watch
over the sisters, his pistol at his side, his other hand held the
portable radio to his ear. He kept glancing behind him, keeping an
eye on the other side of the corridor as Jessica bloodied her hands
against the unmoving door. Luckily he had turned down the volume on
his little radio, if the sisters heard what was going on outside
they would surely lose it.

Santor was
dying, in less than two days the military had lost control of the
sprawling city. Units further away from the city centre were still
broadcasting, but that was not the case for units closer to the
centre, those units closer to the Titan facilities. Most of them
were silent and not responding to any communication from units
closer to the outskirts. Every now and again Sam would hear a
muffled scream from the radio followed by weapon fire and then just
static. It was unsettling knowing that those monsters were wreaking
havoc with the population of his home planet, killing everything he
ever knew in only a few days.

The monsters
that had escaped the facility had infected vast amounts of the
population, somehow their instincts telling them not to feed, but
to recruit instead. And so they recruited, not killing everything
they found, only maiming threats, releasing their horrible,
infectious spores into groups of civilians huddling in dark
corners, hiding from the military and whatever else was stalking
the streets of Santor.

Infection took
hold almost instantly, and within a few hours an infected human
would be insane with uncontrollable anger, killing or infecting
anything it came across that did not carry the same infection. This
uncontrolled massacre would continue for a few days, after which an
infected human would start to mutate, becoming far deadlier.
Mutation would happen slowly but within two weeks of infection an
infected subject would be fully mutated, and capable of anything.
The worst thing about these mutated monsters was their sudden rise
in intelligence and tactical thinking, something that was still a
mystery to scientist researching the infection. Instead of just
killing, they would work together to kill and then feast on their
victims, surprising even the most experienced tactical minds at
their situational awareness and ability to turn any situation into
an advantage. Perhaps it was due to the mutated mind of a subject
not having to worry about every-day bullshit, instead freeing up
the mind to only process the need to feed, and then using the rest
of the infected brain to find ways to feed that hunger.

Sam had zoned
out as he thought about the top secret reports he had read,
discreetly of course. From his recollection he estimated the
mutations would begin within a few hours and he needed to say
something to Jessica. “Jess, stop, we need another plan,
quickly.”

Jessica stopped
her incessant banging, turning to Sam with her tear-filled eyes.
“What other plan? We have nothing! This was our only shot! We can’t
go back and we can’t escape the city, so what do you want us to do?
Go hide in a dark corner somewhere and wait for those,” Jessica
waved her hand in disgust, “...things. Just let them take us, let
them take Tristan?”

Sam looked down
at the girl; her eyes were glazed over, as if she was watching
something far away, something only she could see. Seeing her like
that ignited his survival instincts. “Step away from the door,” he
said to Jessica, aiming his pistol at the rusty handle.

“I wouldn’t do
that if I were you,” a voice said from the other side of the door,
sounding muffled behind it. “She might not look like it, but the
door you are aiming your pea-shooter at is almost a foot thick and
made from solid steel. If you fire at it you might just catch the
bullet when it ricochets, with your face.”

Tristan’s eyes
focused again, she stood up and looked at the door. “Can you see
us?” she asked the voice behind the door.

“Of course I
can, I wouldn’t be much of a hermit if I did not have safety
measures in place.”

“Then you can
see we want to get in, what will it take to open the door?” Jessica
asked.

“That depends,
what do you want?”

Sam was looking
at the walls surrounding the door, searching for the hidden camera
the person inside was using to watch them, his trained eye could
not find anything, meaning the man inside was more of an expert
than he was.

“We want
safety, we know about your hidden bunker, we want you to let us
in,” Jessica said, her forehead resting on the door, she had moved
to rest against it after the voice had told Sam to not try his
idea.

“You are asking
a lot without offering anything,” the voice said, followed by a dry
laugh.

“We don’t have
anything to offer you.”

“Oh I don’t
know about that girl.” This time his words were followed by a
deeper, and more perverted laugh.

Jessica’s
muscles tensed, she knew it would have to come to this. But she
would show her anger at the situation before she agreed to
anything. She banged her fists on the door again, screaming at the
man on the other side. “My father trusted you! He said you would
help me if I ever needed you! Now I need you and you are like
this...” her words trailed off as she kept hitting the door, the
futility sapping her last reserves.

There was a
long silence, Jessica slid down the door and came to rest against
it in a heap of limbs and spluttering tears.

“Your father?”
the voice finally asked.

“Yes, Raymond
Saxe,” Jessica said, her tearful fit calming down as the seconds
passed, as if she had resigned herself to what was happening.

There was
silence again, nothing happened for a few moments. Jessica just
wanted to curl up into a ball and wait for death, but her sister’s
sudden touch made her look up at the dirty teenager. Tristan had
her hand on her bare arm, squeezing it slightly.

Tristan’s eyes
were clear, and she had a smile on her face. “Listen,” she said to
her older sister, pointing at the door behind Jessica.

With a sharp
sound of locks disengaging the door clicked open, Jessica fell
backward as the door that had supported her weight disappeared
behind her. She fell flat on her back halfway inside the dark and
smelly apartment, above her stood a man looking down at her dirty,
tear-smudged face.

“Little Jess
Saxe. My, you have grown up so well,” the man said, a hint of
perverted undertone was still there, but the man was at least
trying to supress his nature.

Jessica was too
drained to say anything from her prone position on the floor. She
relaxed all of her muscles as the old man gripped her wrists and
pulled her into the apartment, Tristan and Sam followed her in.

The last thing
Jessica heard before she passed out from exhaustion was the thick
door slamming shut and the bearded hermit asking if any of them
wanted tea.

Very few beasts
attacked the rag-tag squad from the front or behind, instead they
focused all of their mutated ferocity on the Lancers. The monsters
knew exactly who to target this time, not bothering with direct
attacks against Xander or the Titan brothers at the front of the
line. The beasts side-stepped, or tried to at least, the Titans,
dodging past or sacrificing some of their own brutes to keep the
armoured killers busy, striking only when the bigger threats were
tied up in a melee with the bigger monsters in the swarm’s
midst.

Somehow the
infected on the bridge had warned or communicated with the rest of
the mutated monsters on the Fateful Moment, and there was proof of
it in the way the Wolves and Lancers were being attacked.

Nathan was kept
busy by a pair of gangly creatures, his shield bashed from side to
side as the two awkward monsters attacked the senior Titan. Nathan
had opened up a small area in front of him to fight the monstrous
duo without bringing Xander into danger. Both creatures were able
to climb the sides of the duct, attacking Nathan from different
angles, but even with two against one the fight was too easy, just
enough to keep him away from the intersection. He looked over his
soldier for a brief moment to see if his brother was surviving; to
his surprise Christian was holding his own against an enemy far
deadlier than the two he was fighting.

Xander shot one
of the monsters Nathan was facing as his Lieutenant’s attention
wavered slightly. Nathan gave him a nod as he heard the shot,
smiling as a limb from one of the creatures dropped to the floor,
gushing thick blood over the metal grating. Xander resumed his
vigil over the few Lancers on his side of the intersection, firing
at anything that came close to them. Luckily he always had a
massive amount of spare ammunition for his pistol, something he had
learned during a mission that almost went to shit many years ago,
more ammo meant more lives were spared, and that was always a good
thing.

Christian was
in a power struggle with a mutated slab of meat, it seemed to be
made out of one solid piece of muscle, its limbs the only
vulnerable spots Christian could see as the muscular horror gripped
his shield, trying to wrench his valuable defence from his armoured
hands. The monster would take swipes at Christian’s head with sharp
claws growing out of its hands, but so far no blows had landed or
come even close to reaching Christian, as if the creature wasn’t
really trying, again only doing enough to keep the Titan out of the
main fight.

Locke was
firing over Pyoter, bullets hitting targets not far from Rivers’
head. Smaller but devilishly fast creatures had attacked the back
of the line. Rivers’ shotgun barely held them at bay, but with the
combined fire from Locke’s rifle they at least kept their area
safe. They fired almost non-stop at the smaller monsters, kicking
their bodies away as they slid closer to the Titan in their last
moments before death. Even so close to death these beasts were
deadly, claws reaching for the Titans before expiring.

Pyoter was
furious at being so useless in the confining space of the
ventilation system, he wanted to help, get up and fight with the
rest, but at best he would be able to sit upright, blocking the
vent with his bulky body. The worst part of being stuck on the
ground not able to do anything was watching the Lancers die only a
few feet away from him. It was something Pyoter would never forget,
he memorized the names of every Lancer that died, and he would
honour them in his own way if he survived. The Lancers in the
middle of the melee fought courageously, but were ultimately doomed
the moment the hornet’s nest was disturbed.

The first
Lancer died mere moments after the swarm of beasts broke into the
vents, his legs were severed from his body by a fast moving
monster, its sharp bone blades protruding from its forearms cut the
poor Lancer’s legs from under him and then pounced on the screaming
man. It was not a pretty sight to watch as the beast cut the
screaming man into bite-sized pieces. Another died as he was
pierced by an ugly monster with long blades instead of fingers,
puncturing the Lancer’s most vital organs, pinning him to the duct
wall as the monster ploughed into him. His name was Roberts, and
the man was a hero, he never stopped firing his rifle into the
torso of his killer, even as his vital blood leaked from his body
in torrents, the man still managed to kill the creature, ending its
horrible life.

Two more
Lancers died, one’s head was cut from his body as he tried to unjam
his rifle, the other disembowelled and then set upon by a group of
smaller beasts. Pyoter watched every one of them die, and still he
was stuck beneath Locke, unable to save the Lancers.

Soon more of
them would die, and if all of the Lancers fell the Wolves would
never forgive themselves. It was, after all, what they were meant
for, why they were trained and given the Titan suits - to protect
humankind. And they would protect them with everything they had,
until their very last breath.

“
The universe is vast and dangerous,
between every star, behind every moon, and on every planet the
unexpected waits for humankind. However, even the universe cannot
see every surprise coming. That blind spot between destiny and
choice is where you will find your truth.”
-Commander Locke, First Generation Star Explorer, Captain - New
Horizon

“Where is it
going Remy?” Gray asked his second in command. Sweat was beading
from his forehead as he followed the Fateful Moment through the
dangerous asteroid field.

“We are still
calculating its path, its erratic flight path is making it
difficult to see its destination,” Remy replied, hunched over the
large tactical display table in the centre of the Hyperion’s
bridge, it was an old piece of hardware rarely used, but it offered
Remy the best way of tracking the cargo vessel’s vectors.

Gray barely
missed a spinning piece of space rock as he listened to Remy
mumbling on about her calculations; his arms were tiring from the
constant manoeuvring. “Can you at least tell me if it is moving out
of this damned field?”