Gabriel: Zero Point (Evan Gabriel Trilogy) (11 page)

Chaud took the shorter man’s hand in his own and shook it. “Of course, we are honored to be here.” He turned and waved towards his team. “I believe you know everyone?”

Zeno nodded. “Yes. Especially Miss Werth,” he said, casting a longing glance at the team’s sniper. Werth didn’t respond, keeping her eyes fixed on the dim wall above Prophet’s head.

“Anyway,” Zeno continued. “Please, all of you have a seat.” He walked to the table and motioned for the rest to follow him. He pointed each team member one by one to a seat, almost as if they were numbered. He took a few extra seconds to help pull out Werth’s chair for her. He walked around to the other side of the table and took his seat next to Prophet, the portly Zeno a physical antithesis to his slim leader.

Chaud sat down and pulled his chair in a few inches, leaning his elbows on the synthoak table. He was seated directly across from Prophet and stared into his face; he was sure Zeno sat him there for that reason. Prophet, an unassuming man of medium build and average looks, would never have struck fear into the heart of anyone. Until they saw what he was capable of. It was all there behind the emotionless face.

“Captain Chaud,” Prophet said in a low tone. “Thank you very much for your successful mission at the university the other day.” He nodded to Zeno, who stood again and picked up a large decanter of what appeared to be red wine from the center of the table. Just then Chaud noticed there were wine glasses set in front of every person, but no napkins, utensils, or plates.
Good thing we ate before walking over,
he thought.

Chaud caught the scent of the locally produced merlot as it splashed into his glass. Once the glasses were full, Zeno filled Prophet’s, then his own, and resumed his seat.

Prophet raised his glass. “Congratulations, one and all. We’ve made progress in not only hurting the fascists, but have also acquired a significant asset in our fight towards toppling the governmental system, and the people in power.”

Nine more glasses joined Prophet’s in the air with a chorus of
hear, hears
.
 

Chaud took a small sip of the wine, not wanting to appear rude, but not wanting to imbibe too much so soon after combat. He remembered many a mission where he drowned his highs and lows in the bottle afterwards, and the next morning was never pretty. His team, he noticed, didn’t share any of his reservations. Most glasses were set back down on the table with scarcely a drop of red left in them.
 

“Now I have additional information. You,” Prophet
 
said, motioning around the table with his wine glass, “are my top team. My most trusted team. We have very important people to make happy, and very special guests on their way.”

Maybeck, sitting to Zeno’s right, coughed into his hand. “Sorry, sir,” he said, clearing his throat.
 

Prophet continued as if he hadn’t heard the man. “Our financial backers, who you folks have so kindly helped out with the mission, will be providing us with significantly more in the way of matériel and supplies in the coming months. The asset we acquired makes that all possible, as our backers have plans far larger than our little civil war.”

Maybeck coughed again. Chaud looked over at the man, whose face had started to turn a lighter shade of white. He gritted his teeth.
Idiot
, he thought for the second time in the past few days.

“There is a team on their way from Mars, sent to reacquire that asset from us,” Prophet said. “If…no,
when
. When we eliminate that team, we will be provided with additional personnel, both military and political, by said backers, to once and for all get rid of the status quo, and rebuild Eden the proper way.”
 

He set his empty glass down on the table with a loud thunk. “However, we cannot afford any missteps. Any at all. Even the smallest ones, with the team I know is coming, could prove fatal to our entire group.”

Maybeck coughed loudly, his breath now laboring.
 

Chillemi, seated on Maybeck’s right, leaned over and grabbed his shoulder. “Hey man, you okay?” he asked.

Maybeck gasped, scratching at his throat. Chaud started to rise from the table to find out what was going on with the man, but stopped when he saw Prophet’s look.

“We cannot afford any missteps,” he repeated, staring into Chaud’s eyes.

Chaud sat back in his chair, his mouth coming open a fraction. Prophet continued to stare at him, and a wave of queasiness hit.
 

“Mister Maybeck,” Prophet said, finally breaking the stare with Chaud to look down at the wheezing man. “Do you know of the jerumba plant?”

Maybeck’s eyes grew wide, and he clawed at his throat. His fingernails left red furrows as he gasped for breath.

“The native jerumba plant, as some of you are probably aware,” Prophet continued, “secretes a highly-lethal toxin from its flower at the very end of its life each year to dissuade predators from eating it before it goes into hibernation. It’s odorless, colorless, and perhaps most deadly, tasteless. Curiously enough, we’ve found it dissolves in wine even faster than in water, and enters the bloodstream much more quickly with alcohol as the catalyst.”
 

Maybeck struggled to speak. “But…but,” he coughed. “Every…body…had…wine…”

Prophet gave a tired smile. “It was already in your glass.”

Maybeck gasped again, coughing as his airway spasmed. He looked wildly at the others around him; no one wanted to meet his gaze. Chaud watched helplessly as his man struggled to breathe.

Prophet continued. “The toxin acts on the respiratory system of the predator, and constricts air flow. Which is what you’re feeling now.” He looked at Zeno and indicated with a small wave for him to refill his glass, which he hastily did.

“After that, to prevent the predator from continuing to eat the plant, the toxin attacks the nervous system. This effectively paralyzes the animal, which then dies slowly from asphyxiation. However,” he said as he took a sip of the wine, “with humans being larger than the plant’s natural predators, the toxin works much more slowly on the nervous system. So what happens is the predator, in this case you, simply chokes to death, fully aware and cognizant of the situation, able to experience every last painful feeling to its fullest.”

Maybeck was pulling at his shirt collar in a desperate attempt to breathe. Chaud watched him as he grabbed Chillemi for support. He stood up from the table and gasped for breath through his closed throat.
 

Chaud swallowed, but knew deep down it was a necessary demonstration of power and intolerance for poor performance. Maybeck had screwed up the shoot at the university, and if things had gone differently after that, they may have lost some people. And it wasn’t his first mistake. As Chaud watched the dying man fall to the floor, gurgling his last breaths, he knew it would be his last mistake.

“Now,” Prophet said, looking back at Chaud, “where were we?”

<<<>>>

Scene from Gabriel’s Revenge - Book 3

Gabriel could hear the thin Mars atmosphere whipping past his combat helmet’s visor. Visibility from a thousand yards altitude was excellent, enhanced by his helmet’s optics, but no matter how hard he stared, there was simply nothing to see. Even the approaching dust storm barely visible in the distance held no interest for him.

Ordinarily, a typical first-time visitor to Mars would gawk at the wide open plain and the terraced steppes of the northern rim of Valles Marineris, or marvel at the flashes of dirty gray water ice in the shade of some of the peaks, or point excitedly at the ancient dust-covered Russian and Japanese landers. But today, like yesterday, his mind was elsewhere.
 

The last time he had set foot on Mars was over a week ago, kissing Renay goodbye in the skyhook terminal. There was a young boy who had been hesitant to approach him, and he had won him over with a tiny gift of a patch. The image of Renay’s smile at that small action flashed across his mind, and he closed his eyes to the outside world.

The ache in his chest returned, a similar type of ache he had felt many years ago when he learned of his father’s death during the Dark Days. But there was something else there, something different from that feeling of despair he had borne for years. He knew Renay wasn’t dead. And he was going to find her.

The secure call he had just received from Major Andon had surprised him, but not completely. Now that he had specific information in hand, information he hoped he would have prior to arriving at Eos Chasma, he was feeling more confident in the plan he was formulating.
 

He gritted his teeth as for the first time, he regretted bringing his team. He opened his eyes and looked around at the battlesuited soldiers arranged around the perimeter of the hopper’s platform. They stared back, though he knew they weren’t seeing him, that it was just an illusion brought on by his regret. He was sure they were looking at their HUDs, or going through their individual battle preps, or in the case of Brevik, maybe napping. They put their full trust in him, as they had for months now, and they followed him unquestioningly. Even now, with an unspoken plan of attack many outsiders would consider seat-of-the-pants, they were here.
 

He pushed down the regret. He brought up the schematic Andon had sent him, and he felt his lips tighten into a grim smile.
Now we have a target.

The engines’ scream changed pitch as Ky delicately balanced the hopper on four tongues of flame and began their descent. Gabriel closed his eyes again, thinking back to some of Tomas Katoa’s final words on Eden. “
Joining my friends in the SAR
,” he had said. “
They’ve got larger plans.
” He clenched his armored fist hard enough that it crumpled the hopper’s safety railing he leaned against.
They were behind all of this
, he thought.
 

“Commander I’ve got… I don’t really know what I’ve got.”

Takahashi’s voice over the team net snapped Gabriel’s eyes open. He immediately linked into Takahashi’s sensors and put the image on his helmet’s HUD. The marker showing the research outpost was circled in blue, and a tiny red icon had just popped up adjacent to it. His neuretics instantly tagged it as a threat and his linked Otero systems spun up to full readiness.

“Hang on, we’ve got…” His voice was cut off in a roar of high explosive.

He tasted blood.

Gabriel opened his eyes and saw nothing but blackness tinged with green. His fuzzy brain took a couple of seconds to process the fact that his visor was pressed into the Martian surface, with only his combat helmet’s internal readouts illuminating the few inches in front of his eyes.

He ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth and winced at the pain feedback. He had bitten through the tip of it.
 

“
Oh hell
,” he said in a low voice. A reflex almost made him spit out the blood, but he caught himself before he fouled the inside of his visor. He swallowed, grimacing at the taste, and took a quick sip from his water tube to wash it down. While he drank he sent out a neuretics scan, not trusting the Otero’s systems just yet. The impact of the crash had been hard; a throbbing ache in his lower back confirmed that.

The scan came back showing his team scattered across a swath of land fifty yards across. All pinged back with life signs. He activated the team net, but stayed still. He wasn’t detecting any potential enemy, but there was no sense in giving them a moving target.
Or crawling target
, he thought, noting his own face-down position.

“Everyone report in,” he said, and took one last drink to clear his throat. One by one, verbal status reports came back, all except Olszewski. He checked his Mindseye map and saw that Takahashi was closest to the MDF soldier’s position.

“Ensign, check the private. But do it slowly,” Gabriel said. He sent out a low-level active scan out an additional hundred yard radius. Clear. He raised himself up on all fours and checked their global position. They were just under two hundred yards west of the research outpost.
And from whoever shot us down.

“Commander, Stan’s out cold. Steady life signs, probably a concussion,” Takahashi said. “Want me to hit his suit’s adreno?”

Gabriel shook his head inside his helmet, not remembering no one could see the movement. “No,” he said. “Not until we’re behind cover.” He remained on all fours and did a visual sweep using his retinal IR implant. Nothing but the team and a pile of flaming wreckage that lit the night sky. A pile of wreckage that pinpointed their exact location to the enemy.

“Lieutenant,” he said. “Gather up the equipment. They’ll be coming to make sure we’re down for good, so we have to move quickly.” He scanned the local area map again. “Here,” he said, sending the map and a highlighted location to Brevik. “Behind this rock formation. It’s shielded from their probable approach by the edge of the wadi we’re in, and far enough away from the hopper fire. Take…”

“Commander, ah…” It was Negassi. Her icon showed her nearest the wreckage, right next to…
dammit
.

“Go ahead, Specialist,” he said, suspecting what she was calling about.

“Sir, the pilot… he’s gone.”

Gabriel had forgotten about the pilot. He had only scanned for team links, not untagged civilians. The environment suit Ky had been wearing wouldn’t have protected him at all in the crash. The heavy Oteros barely did, as evidenced by Olszewski’s concussion, but without powered armor and active restraints, a fall from their altitude was unsurvivable.

“See, told you,” muttered Sowers.

Gabriel was about to chastise the petty officer when his battlesuit flashed a warning in his HUD. Multiple icons were headed their way from the direction of the outpost.
 

“Incoming. Move.”

Other Available Works

Find the complete Evan Gabriel Trilogy for Kindle:

GABRIEL’S REDEMPTION
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