“Oh.”
I hadn’t imagined a fully functional blast-lance could fit inside the strongbox but I was hoping for something slightly more impressive than a spring-loaded syringe and an instruction manual. It certainly didn’t resemble salvation to me.
“I’m up-to-date on all my vaccines, doc.”
“This is no vaccine. This is a virus, a techno-virus to be precise, and it is imperative we deliver this to a Luminous lab to be analysed, reproduced, and tested. If this is what I believe it to be, it could very well end the war.”
I was about to ask Roth what the hell a techno-virus was and how it could end a decades long conflict — and that, naturally, was the moment everything went to shit. The only warning given was the sudden widening of Roth’s eyes. I ducked, pivoted, and drew my weapon in a single motion, startling the Templars who were breaching the building through our egress point. I hosed them with rounds as they discharged their own weapons in a strobe of electromagnetically propelled ball bearings.
“Side door!” I shouted at Roth over the high-pitched whine of the Templars’ coilguns, hoping he was still alive to hear me.
The nearest Templar staggered and sank to one knee, blood pumping from the wide-spaced holes punched into his plate. Those filing in behind him dove for whatever cover the debris provided and I used the lull in combat to scoot on out of there, but not before lobbing a homemade explosive in their general direction to keep them occupied. I reunited with a remarkably intact Roth at the side door and kicked it open, dragging him into the alley with me.
We took off at a sprint, stumbling as the IED detonated with an impressive crump. One of my hand’s clutched Roth at all times while the other maintained a grip on the MP7. We navigated the ruins of Kennedy Space Center at breakneck speed. The streets crawled with Templar patrols, and after a few more frenzied shootouts I found myself running low on both bullets and bombs. Just as Roth was about to collapse from exhaustion I found a secluded corner to catch our breath. I took a slug of my canteen and passed it over to him.
“What do we do now?” asked Roth between alternating gulps of air and water.
“You and I exfil to the boat and bug-out.”
“What about the others?”
The cacophony of gunfire persisted even when I wasn’t forced to engage the Templars — primarily the distinctive sound of gauss weapons but punctuated by the bark of more traditional chemical-propellant guns. I’d swear that once in flight from a squad of goons I’d glimpsed a couple pin-cushioned with arrows as if Lind was providing cover for us, but in the chaos and terror I didn’t halt to check. At least one member of our team was still alive out there, possibly more, and they were in the thick of it but we couldn’t jeopardize the mission.
“What about them? You said it yourself; this techno-virus could end the war. That’s bigger than any one of us,” I said.
Roth looked like he wanted to argue but rationality prevailed. He was a man of science after all. Roth passed the canteen back, I took another swig and fastened it to my webbing. I loaded my last remaining magazine into the MP7 and we left without a further word. Back past the shells of buildings gone back to nature at the skirts of the Space Center. Back through the long grass and tangling shrubbery that clung to our heels like a one-night stand hinting at going steady. Back over the drooping perimeter fence with its strongly-worded sign ineffectually declaring, You shall not pass. Back into that Trakiin-damned swamp and its nose-assaulting bouquet of decaying plant and animal matter.
With guilt weighing heavy on my shoulders the trudge back to the boat was substantially more taxing than the infiltration had been. The farther we got from the Space Center the quieter it got, the silence smothering me like an accusation.
“We made it,” I said as we arrived at the location of our lent watercraft, “and someone beat us here.” McCreedy stood by the dinghy, Sig drawn and levelled at us as we emerged from the thicket.
“You can lower that heater, Padre, we come in peace,” I called to him.
The gun in his hand didn’t waver.
Ahhh, shit.
“It’s us,” Roth added, “Ashton and Ethan. What happened back there? We got mobbed by Templars.”
“Where are Lind and Jorgensen?” asked McCreedy.
Shit, shit, shit.
“We hoped to regroup with them here but we couldn’t risk waiting,” Roth replied.
“You found it then?” asked McCreedy. “Mission accomplished?”
Shit, shit, fuck, shit. My grip tightened on the MP7.
“Yeah, I got it right here,” Roth answered.
The night gave birth to stars around us and a barrage of amplified voices commanded “Drop your fucking weapons” and “Get the fuck down” and “Hands behind your fucking heads.” The chirp of primed coilguns added authority to the directives.
Shock and awe.
I complied, tossing aside my gun, lacing my fingers behind my head, and lowering myself kneeling in the mud too overwhelmed to even consider resisting. As two VTOL-capable ‘chariots’ bathed the clearing with the brilliance of their searchlights, I saw the squads of Templars surrounding us.
“Why?” I asked as a Templar stepped up to frisk and disarm me while his comrades trained enough firepower on me to render me a sizzling meat pudding.
“I know what you Luminous heathens did to my God,” Padre McCreedy replied, “so I found a replacement.”
Mr Handsy finished divesting me of anything even suggestively lethal and secured my hands in manacles behind my back.
“Be gentle with that one, he’s carrying precious cargo,” instructed McCreedy of Mr Handsy who had moved on to cavity search Roth.
Bang, bang!
One aerial searchlight winked out of existence.
Bang, bang!
The other searchlight sparked and died. From a separate location another shooter opened fire, wielding one of the Templars’ own coilguns against them to fabulous result. Jorgensen and Lind took turns shooting and repositioning. The Templars all reacted with varying degrees of discipline, some going so far as to shoot into the woods at random in all directions. I body-checked Mr Handsy and yelled for Roth to run.
He only managed a few strides before his legs gave out beneath him. At first I thought he’d tripped on his own feet until I saw McCreedy advancing on us, Sig outstretched. I scuttled to shield Roth’s body with my own. McCreedy stood poised to kill me when a hyper-accelerated projectile introduced the Padre to his deceased deity. Whether the shot came courtesy of Jorgensen and his pilfered coilgun or from a panicked Templar I’m unsure. I’ll never get the opportunity to ask Jorgensen either.
The chariot pilots recovered from the loss of their searchlights quickly enough. They activated whatever enhanced optics those cockpits offer, pinpointed where the incoming gunfire was originating, and rained down hell on our sniper and spotter. I gotta give Lind credit, she still managed to down one of those bastards, but there was no surviving the volume of ordnance those chariots brought to bear.
I knelt over the dying Roth while the napalm-fuelled conflagration blazed around us, a proper Viking funeral that would have made Jorgensen proud. Roth whispered to me his final words and passed away.
I finish my story. “I mustn’t have even made it a mile before your surviving thugs got their shit together, consolidated and captured me. You decreed that the Templar captain deliver me to Kha’cheldaa for questioning, and here I am, awaiting your most merciful, erm… mercy?”
“What a remarkably comprehensive and thoroughly damning account,” says Trakiin. Seated back on his throne now, he straightens his posture, jaw coming off fist, no longer imitating Le Penseur.