“At least we agree on something.” Cato remarked.
“Just how many people worked here?” Viker wondered aloud, changing the subject.
“Officially, around 1000.” Doran reminded him.
“Yeah, the ‘official’ number is clearly bollocks,” Viker retorted, “We’ve encountered a grand total of three people so far, and two of them are corpses.”
“Leave it to Viker to complain about a LACK of things to kill.” Cato joked.
“Hey, I just want to know where everybody is.” Viker answered, “Also, how in Terra’s name did J.E. Co. manage to build a facility this big right under our noses in a major star system? Is the DNI’s intel really that bad?”
“Any insights, colonel?” Doran asked.
“I agree,” Gabriel responded, “normally illegal labs like this are small and hidden out on the frontier. But this place must have taken years and cost tens billions of credits to construct, and probably a lot more to keep it secret.”
“What are you saying, sir?” Bale asked.
“I’m saying that either there was an awful lot of corporate – and possibly political – buy-in to this project,” Gabriel clarified ominously, “or something about this location meant that the base couldn’t have been built anywhere else. Maybe both.”
Without warning, the lights died. The squad closed ranks as their visors readjusted, then two office doors slid open on either side of them simultaneously and the squad opened fire.
Bale shot one target through the wrist, who screamed in agony as his hand was severed clean off, his fingers still wrapped around a grenade. The other target opened fire with an auto-pistol, hitting Viker in the back. His shielding deflected the shots, and Doran returned fire, three controlled bursts eviscerating the target’s organs.
Cato and Gabriel covered the corridor while Doran and Bale secured the two rooms.
“Clear!” each of them shouted in turn.
The attacker who’d lost his hand was still alive. He lay on the floor, groaning in pain and struggling to breathe, clutching the mangled remains of his wrist.
Bale stowed his weapon and picked the captive up by the throat.
“Where’s the prisoner?” Bale questioned him through his helmet speakers.
“Go to hell!” the prisoner spat back defiantly.
Bale paused for a moment.
“You first.” He replied, snapping the man’s neck with an audible crack and discarding him on the ground like a limp doll.
“If killing the lights is their only plan for slowing us down,” Cato remarked, “this’ll be an awful lot easier than I thought.”
“Found something.” Doran announced.
Still covering the corridor, the squad filed into the room Doran had secured, stepping over the bleeding corpse on the floor. They found themselves in a small security room with banks of computers and security monitors. The monitors were dead and the computers had been powered down, and the equipment lockers had been emptied of their contents.
Doran held up a data pad that had been discarded on the table.
“Looks like they were worried about an infiltrator.” Doran said, scrolling through its contents, “listen to this: ‘the walls have eyes and the floors have ears. Dani is watching and listening, an agent of the fricking corporates and government spooks. The Voice has whispered to me that only the Temple can be deemed safe; fall back there and leave her to watch over nothing and listen to silence’.”
“What the fuck does all that mean?” Cato asked rhetorically, “Apart from the fact that they have a leader who receives instructions from voices in his head.”
“‘The walls have ears and the floors have eyes’,” Gabriel said pensively, “could there be spyware in the system?”
“That’s what I think.” Doran replied, “It would explain why the computers were shut down; and if it had root access, it could hijack all the security camera feeds.”
“That doesn’t mean there wasn’t an infiltrator.” Bale replied sceptically, “Assuming those aren’t just paranoid rantings, if there really is spyware in the system, someone would have had to plant it in the system. Perhaps someone called ‘Dani’.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Viker objected, “if ‘Dani’ is a Human mole, then retreating to some stronghold further back wouldn’t root him out.”
“Well, what else would ‘Dani’ refer to?” Bale asked.
“I don’t know,” Viker admitted defensively, “a codename, a metaphor, a figment of the facility’s staff’s imagination, it could be anything–”
“It doesn’t matter who or what Dani is.” Gabriel interjected, cutting short the discussion, “We can find out more on the way to the objective.”
“The medical bay is on the other side of the ‘live-testing hall’, whatever that is.” Doran said as he consulted the map, “it should be at the other end of this corridor.”
Practically on cue, the door at the far end of the corridor opened, letting in a beam of light from the other side that forced the squad’s visors to readjust yet again.
“New contact!” Gabriel shouted.
The squad exited the room and took aim at the source of the light.
A figure appeared, standing on the other side of the doorway, partially obscured by the light behind him. Though difficult to make out, the figure was dressed in a technician’s overalls with the J.E. Co. logo instead of body armour, and was apparently unarmed. Of course, this wasn’t the first time they’d encountered a supposedly harmless techie.
Gabriel primed a single high-powered shot and crouched down on one knee, taking dead aim at the silhouette’s head. His helmet’s optical suite was equipped with a variety of visual filters, and the software darkened the otherwise blinding halo of light around the target whilst highlighting the target itself in enough detail to line up a clear shot.
Then the doors shut again, plunging the corridor back into darkness.
Somewhere, deep down beneath the layers of training and psychological conditioning that had made him a voidstalker, Gabriel was starting to feel a rankling hatred for this deranged enemy. They had brazenly kidnapped a member of his squad, and were using his life to lure them deeper into this Mastermind-forsaken death-trap.
Gabriel didn’t mind death-traps. He did mind being mocked on his way through one.
“Everyone,” Gabriel growled over the comm., “On me.”
The squad followed Gabriel’s lead as they walked towards the door, weapons raised and ready to shoot. ‘Walk to your death, don’t run’, the drill instructors always said.
The door light was green; it was open and didn’t need to be breached. Doran and Viker leaned against the door on either side whilst Cato, Bale, and Gabriel crouched down with weapons ready. Doran stretched out his free hand above the electronic lock, indicating a countdown with his fingers. Four…three…two…one.
On zero, Doran tapped the green button and the doors slid open.
With weapons raised, the squad emerged into the ‘live-testing hall’: a cavernous chamber with a domed roof illuminated by flood lighting high up on the ceiling. The walls were lined with supplies and mechanical gear, but the centre of the chamber had been cleared to create a big open area that looked like an arena. Exactly like an arena.