Gamma Nine (Book One) (13 page)

The moment
flashed on his visor as Rivers pulled back to unleash another right
hook, on the verge of ending another attack sequence. Instead of
taking the hit this time Christian stepped towards the older Titan,
pivoting his hips so the blow would hit his chest and not his head.
Christian countered with a right hook of his own, perfectly timed
to catch the Sergeant’s arm on the inside of his elbow. The two
Titans locked in place, right arms interlocked like chain
links.

Christian put
all of his weight on his left leg, bending it slightly as his left
hand gripped tight to Rivers’ struggling right arm. He lifted with
his back and raised Rivers over his right shoulder, tossing the
heavy Titan with one fluid movement into the obstacle he was
resting against earlier.

Rivers hit the
metal obstacle almost completely upside down, the hit made the
giant, heavy obstacle vibrate, and the thing that was put there to
never move, moved slightly.

“Mark.”
Christian said to the Sergeant.

Rivers had
landed on his shoulder, struggling to sit upright as his senses
corrected for the unexpected move. “Agreed, good one lad, I think I
am going stay here for a while, gathering my thoughts and such.” He
coughed and chuckled when he finished speaking. “That one hurt a
tad, more than I thought it would. I need to thank the almighty for
this suit again. Good on you for beating an old man.”

Christian
laughed with his squad member. “Old man my arse - hang on a
second...”

Both of them
broke out in maniacal laughter, Rivers grinning and baring the pain
with every chuckle. The kid had finally understood the joke about
his name.

Christian beat
his fist to his chest plate in respect to Rivers and ran away from
the collapsed Titan still laughing. He had two more Wolves to deal
with.

In the
distance, Nathan and Locke stood watching on top of a square, metal
obstacle overlooking most of the fighting pit.

“That was
impressive.” Locke said to his second in command. “This won’t be as
easy as we thought.”

“He is
arrogant. We need to put him in his place.” Nathan replied without
taking his eyes from the other two in the distance.

“We can’t kill
him, too much paperwork.”

“No, but we can
try, stamp out the arrogance now, before it gets him killed.”

“Alright,
whatever you say, he is your family after all.”

“He was. The
squad is my family now.”

Locked jumped
off their perch spot, “As long as I am not the mom, call us
whatever you want.”

Nathan watched
his brother disappear into the depths of the pit before jumping off
the perch as well. “Rivers is the mom,” he said as the pair of
Titans continued their hunt.

“What’s the
problem Ben?” Jessica had entered the lab she worked in moments
before, greeted by frantic confusion by the other technicians and
researchers on duty.

“Doctor,” Ben
greeted her without taking his eyes off the display he was working
on. “All of the data, and I do mean all of it, the research, the
experiments, the data from your father, the historic data on the
enemy, even the personnel files, are all gone. All of it deleted
during the last shift.”

Jessica was
speechless. That was not even remotely possible. “What about the
backups?” she asked, a pit in her stomach started to form, filling
up with terror.

“Gone,
everything is gone, we have nothing. We are trying to find the
cause now.”

“This can’t be,
all of our advancements and all of the research, we were
protected...” she drifted off as a thought occurred to her. “What
about the prototypes?”

“They are safe
behind the vault doors, someone tried to access the vault, Sam’s
cyphers and encryption system kept everything safe inside. The OS
systems are another story.”

“Where is
Sam?”

“Back there,”
Ben pointed in the direction of the databanks behind sliding glass
doors at the other end of the lab. “He has been here helping the
entire time, refusing to let anyone enter the databank room.”

“Keep me
updated, we need to get our work back. I won’t accept that the last
eight years of my life was an utter waste.”

Ben nodded in
acknowledgement and went back to typing furiously on his
keyboard.

Jessica’s
stress rose with every step she took towards the databanks, this
was a complete nightmare, and it felt unreal to her. The lab’s
security systems were infallible.

She entered the
databank room without knocking or allowed entrance, this was her
lab, and not even Sam would deny her entry.

“Sam?” she
called over the data-storage towers, “where the hell is he?” she
added, but mostly to herself.

“Oi, down here
Jess, are you alone?” Sam’s voice came from between two of the rows
of data stacks at the far end of the room.

“Yes...why
would you ask me that?”

“Get over here,
you should see this.”

Jessica made
her way to where Sam was, to her surprise the little runt she
called her younger sister was crouched down beside him,
concentrating on what Sam was doing.

“Tristan, where
have you been?” she asked the frizzy-haired dwarf.

“Here. Where
else would I be?” Tristan replied without looking at Jessica.

Tristan Saxe
was only thirteen years old, frizzy, dirty-blonde hair framed her
youthful face in wild tufts of curls. Her piercing, blue eyes
watched from underneath the wild mop of hair, her thin wiry body
crouching next to Sam. Jessica realized how much she looked like
their departed mother, and she even had the same personality as
their mother. Difficult but sharp as a razor, smarter than other
children her age.

Jessica ignored
the little runt’s attitude, instead shifting her attention to Sam.
“What’s going on here Sam?”

“Shush,” he
said, “get down quick. Let me show you.”

She did as she
was told. She shut up and crouched down on the opposite side of
Sam, her sister finally giving her a faint smile as they looked at
each other.

“Look as this
Jess, whoever did this was smart, but not smart enough.” Sam said
to Jess, pointing at one of the displays he had set up around him.
He had plugged directly into the databanks, searching for the cause
of the problem.

“What am I
looking at Sam?”

Sam sighed as
he looked at her through his goggles. “It was an inside job, look
here and here,” he pointed at the display again, highlighting
logins from a lab technician. “I traced this login to all of the
activity last night, there’s only one problem though.”

“Not another
one.”

“There is
always a problem of some kind, huh sis?” Tristan asked with hint of
sarcasm to her voice.

Jessica ignored
the dwarf’s words and focused on what Sam was saying, he was
babbling again.

“...yes yes,
problems and some more problems, nothing that we can’t fix.”

“Why are you
watching the lab through the video feeds?” Jessica asked him,
referring to the second display on his lap.

“Oh, yes, that
is part of the problem. You see, the person that did all of this
never left; there is no entry into the exit log with their user
date. This person, Technician Fisher, is still here, but we can’t
see to find him anywhere.”

“Fisher is
pretty easy to spot. He is a chubby guy with coffee stains
everywhere.”

“He isn’t here,
he was on duty last night, his user login was used to get into the
systems, everything was deleted, and then he just vanished. Look
for yourself.” Sam handed Jessica the display.

“That can’t
be.” She did not look at the display. She stood up and looked at
the lab with her own eyes, trusting them more. After a few minutes
of looking at everyone in the lab, she knew Sam was right.
Technician Fisher was not there.

“Shit, where
could he be?” she said as she crouched back down.

“That’s the
problem,” Tristan said, taking the display from her sister, intent
on finding Fisher as well.

“Sir, forward
scanners are pinging back with a multitude of anomalies.” The
officer at the helm reported to Captain Gray.

“What kind of
anomalies?” Gray asked, still strapped into his command chair,
never leaving the bridge during a jump.

“We are too far
off to get any details, but the exit point will be bumpy.”

“Bumpy? Is that
a nice way of saying we might die once we get out of the jump?

“Uh...I did not
want to be so forward Captain. Yes, we might die.”

Remy sat up
straighter behind Gray, fiddling with her straps to get them free,
always willing to step up and sort out a problem on the bridge.

“Stay put my
dear, not until the jump is done.” Gray said with a glance in her
direction.

She stopped
fiddling immediately, instead speaking around Gray in the direction
of the helmsman officer. “Send the data to my display.”

“Acknowledged,
sending the data to you now Ma’am.” The officer pressed a sequence
of buttons on his own display, swiping the data to Remy’s display
terminal she held in her hands.

Remy’s eyes
darted from side to side as she read the data scrolling on her
display, concentrating so hard that Gray could see the veins in her
forehead pulsing with strain.

“Whatever it is
Captain, it’s definitely more than one and it’s directly in our
path as we exit our jump,” she said without looking up.

“Are we in
trouble Remy?” Gray asked her.

“Not yet, we
will have to exit with extreme caution. I am calculating new
vectors for evasive manoeuvres, relaying it to navigation now.”

“Good girl.
Helm, keep an eye on the anomalies. Navigation, check those vectors
and confirm Remy’s plan.”

Two
affirmatives echoed on the bridge, one from the officer at the helm
and the other from the watch officer in the navigator’s chair.

“Remy, warn
Captain Locke that there might be a delay in mission.” Gray looked
over his shoulder at the young woman. “Tell him he needs to finish
up before we reach the Castern Sector, the Titans need to be ready
in a few hours, and inform Commander Sabian to ready his troops.
These anomalies might not be a natural occurrence.”

“Yes Captain.”
Remy responded, already hailing Locke on the Titan’s encrypted
frequency.

Captain Gray
resumed his watch over his bridge, his mind now heavy with the new
information. He hoped it was asteroids causing these anomalies and
not the enemy. He preferred to be smashed against a giant
space-rock, instead of being overrun and consumed by hostiles. Gray
had witnessed many vessels fall under the teeth of humankind’s
enemy many times, he could still hear the screams, still see the
faces of people dying. His crew deserved a better death than
that.

Locke froze as
he listened to the message Remy was relaying over the radio.
Stopping mid-run to make sure he heard everything, the adrenaline
build up in his ears made it hard to hear anything above the rush
of battle.

Nathan halted
beside him, scanning the firing zones from nearby obstacles for his
brother. “Trouble?” Nathan asked his Captain.

“There’s always
trouble, better to ask me what flavour the shit soup is today.”
Locke replied sarcastically.

“So, what
flavour is it then?”

“It’s a
particularly nice bouquet of turd and protein paste.”

Nathan
sniggered, sweeping his Kicker side to side, his tactical mode
seeing nothing.

Locke finished
listening, replying with only a word of acknowledgement to Remy.
“The jump might be compromised near the exit point. We have to be
ready for anything, before we exit the jump. No more stalking, we
take the FNG now and go resupply.”

“Agreed, I will
tell Pyoter to drop what he is doing and prepare the main chamber
for our arrival.”

“Call the
Queen, we might need her ship, tell her to warm it up and stand
ready.”

After a few
moments Nathan replied with confirmation from Pyoter and the Queen.
Pyoter was heading to the main armament chamber and the Queen was
rushing to find her co-pilot before heading to the docking
bays.

“Ship scanners
show that Corporal Quinn is on the south side of the pit. We split
and take him from both sides, together. You take the left, I will
take the right. We force him to the middle and then we take him
down.”

Nathan nodded
and ran in the direction Locke had ordered, never lowering his
rifle for a second.

Locke moved to
his determined side and started sprinting down the right wall of
the pit.

The two Wolves
would strike in unison, converging on their unsuspecting prey from
the sides, neutralizing the rookie as soon as possible.

In Titan terms
that would be within moments, one Titan was a handful, two would be
impossible to fight off, especially the two most dangerous Wolves
of the pack.

The Wolves had
found him, pinning him down with unrelenting fire. One fired from
the left, the other fired from the right, expertly hidden behind
cover, never giving away their positions to their target. Both
Wolves kept moving as they fired, Christian was unable to pinpoint
exactly where they were at any given time, and even his advanced
tactical sight could not calculate their trajectories fast enough.
His prey sight could not see anything either, the obstacles too
thick to penetrate.

With every
volley of fire the danger came closer to him, forcing him to
flatten himself even more against the obstacle he was hiding
behind. More than a few bullets had hit his armour, gouging marks
in his armour plating. The gouges were not deep, only scraping at
the paint, revealing the bare Anctinium underneath.

Christian had
only one option, he had to break cover and move north, down the
central trench of the fighting pit. It was not the ideal tactic, it
would make him an easier target, but it would be better than being
shot at while sitting still like a coward. Unwittingly his
decisions would spring the trap the two Wolves had set for him.