The Far Shores (The Central Series) (6 page)

“Nice and smooth, Alex.
Just like the drills,” she whispered, close enough that he could see the red
tint in her eyes. “You good?”

Alex nodded. He was too
nervous to chance words. Miss Aoki nodded back and moved down the line to
Min-jun. Alex glanced back a moment later, but she had already disappeared – using
a downloaded apport protocol to meet Xia somewhere nearby, no doubt. Min-jun crept
forward to join Katya and Alex, and the three of them huddled together, staring
off into the dark. Haley had floated away, but was presumably overhead,
invisibly monitoring.

Adding remote-viewing
interface...now.

Neal sounded a little
uncertain. It was likely his first time channeling remote-viewing information
telepathically in anything other than a training simulation. Alex’s vision
blurred and he experienced a brief ache behind his eyes. He blinked a couple of
times, and then it was there – a glowing blue path, about a meter wide, winding
up the beach. At the end of the path, nestled at the base of the dark cliffs, a
skeletal blue outline showed the location of the facility protruding from the
rock.

“’Bout time,” Katya
groused quietly, shaking needles from an old film container into the palm of
her hand. Alex knew from experience that she had more tucked into the headband
that held her hair back, and another reserve concealed in the lining of the
waistband of her fatigues. “I’m freezing my ass off. You ready for this, oppa?”

Min-jun grinned and
nodded.

“Very much so, Katya.
I’ve been looking forward to seeing you in action.”

Alex was certain that
Min-jun and Katya knew each other prior to the Korean’s return to the Program
from field study. Min-jun had graduated from the Academy three years earlier
and had since been working as an Operator-in-Training for Central, while Katya
had skipped the Academy entirely until recently, as she was enrolled in (and
then, apparently, expelled from) the Black Sun’s assassination training.
Nonetheless, they interacted with a professional familiarity from day one, and
Katya adopted the mysterious term of endearment for Min-jun not long after.
Alex had yet to work up the courage to ask what it meant.

Then again, what did he
know? The politics and divisions in Central were complicated, and personal
relationships impossibly so.

“What about you, Alex?
Still worried about that guard?”

He was careful not to
glance at the ocean, where the body was still probably peacefully bobbing
along. He kept his eyes on the telepathically illuminated path in front of him.

“No. I’m fine,” Alex
said, secretly pleased that his voice was steady. “Be happier when this is over.”

“Good man,” Katya said,
ruffling his hair in a gesture that he wouldn’t have tolerated from anyone
else. “Stay focused. Kill anything that isn’t us. You’ll be fine.”

Alex didn’t answer. He
didn’t need Katya’s reassurance. He probably did need her protection, but that
wasn’t something to be thinking about right now. He was too busy trying to find
the anger that had brought him here, that made investing himself in the combat
track seem like a good idea in the first place. It wasn’t necessary for him to
be angry in order to fight, or to use his protocol – actually, that seemed to
make it all the more difficult – but he had discovered that it was impossible
for him to be angry and frightened at the same time. Unfortunately, where anger
at the Anathema had once burned, now all he could find was the image of the
corpse floating peacefully on its back amongst the rolling breakers.

Mark. Five minutes.
Move out, kids.

Miss Aoki’s orders were
crisp and concise. For one dreadful moment, Alex was sure that his legs would
give way beneath him, that he wouldn’t be able to walk – his fear had swelled
to such epic proportions. But when Min-jun and Katya stood up, he did as well,
almost automatically, and started forward, just behind Katya, before he had time
to reconcile his situation with the anxiety that gnawed his insides.

“All clear,” Katya
whispered, with a quick glance over her shoulder. “I don’t see anything at all
on the beach. Let’s move. We’ve got a minute or so until our distraction...”

They hustled along in a
shuffling half-crouch, feet dragging through wet sand. The pack seemed heavier
than before. Alex kept his eyes focused on Katya’s back. He could hear Min-jun
breathing heavily to his right and a little behind him. The information
telepathically inserted into his vision marked a path up the beach that curved
to meet the base of the cliff, then hugged along it for a hundred meters or so
before approaching the facility. Katya urged them on, and Alex moved into a
trot with difficulty, wet sand trying to pull the boots off his feet. The Glock
in his holster bounced painfully against the point of his right hip, tritium
night sights glowing softly, but he didn’t think he would end up using the
pistol. When push came to shove, Alex had more confidence in his protocol than
he did in his aim.

They reached the base of
the cliff without incident. Five steps later, the incidents started.

The guards must have
been on patrol, because if they had been there when Miss Aoki scouted their
route, they would have been dismembered. Instead, they were waiting behind a
rocky outcropping a few meters from the cliff face, in cover and partially
concealed. They had night-vision gear, Type 05 submachine guns with flash
suppressors and silencers, ballistics-rated Kevlar body armor, and the
advantage of surprise.

It wasn’t anything like
a fair fight.

The first burst sounded
like the percussive hissing of some large animal from in front of them, hollow-point
shells splattering into the sand all around. The muzzle flare was mitigated,
but not enough to completely hide the guards’ position. The following bursts
were more accurate; Alex felt the air displaced by a bullet that passed near
his cheek, and Katya stumbled when the round embedded in the Spectra armor
plate that protected her left lung. Then Min-jun activated his protocol, a
faintly green, luminous field encapsulating the Operators in a protective dome.
Bullets pinged and splintered harmlessly against the barrier.

It must have been the
training. Alex didn’t seem to think at all, he just moved, scrambling to the edge
of the barrier and then focusing on the point just to the left of the rock,
where he could see the flicker of muzzle flash. There was no need to extend his
arm, no distance to figure or angle to determine. His protocol did not need to
be aimed, not when the protocol itself could detect the electromagnetic
activity of the man’s thoroughly armored brainstem.

The Black Door opened
easily on well-oiled hinges, and the cold on the other side came rushing in, causing
Alex a brittle pain that was reminiscent of an ice-cream headache.

The blood partially
froze in the guard’s carotid arteries while the surrounding tissue withered
from internal frostbite. Behind a gas mask and bulbous night-vision goggles,
the guard gagged and coughed as lethal blood-borne ice crystals permeated his
brain. Alex watched neurons flicking off like light switches while the guard
experienced a profoundly accelerated variety of brain death.

Alex turned his
attention to the other guard, but the few seconds he had taken dealing with the
first were enough for Katya to recover her bearings and charge forward, the
barrier clinging to her like a laminate as she passed through the limits of the
dome. Four steps were all she needed to clear the requisite distance, rounds
glancing off the curved surface of the barrier that coated her. There were
three sewing needles in her hand, and then there weren’t. There was no moment
of transition.

The guard tried to
cough, vomit, and clutch at his chest and head simultaneously, failing in all
activities as he spiraled into shock, his heart, cerebellum, and brain stem all
neatly impaled. He died on the ground, unable to breathe, twitching like a fish
out of water.

Min-jun cautiously
released the barrier, and Alex ran to Katya, who was wheezing and resting on
one knee.

“You okay?”

“Fine,” she said,
tugging the indented chest plate out of the pocket that held it in her snug
vest and tossing it aside. She coughed and spat, one arm resting on Alex’s
shoulder while she reoriented herself. “Fuck. Everybody must have heard that.
No point in stealth, now...”

Min-jun arrived beside
him, but Katya brushed away further attempts at help, straightening up and
adjusting the vest that held the remainder of her armor plating, grimacing when
it brushed against what must have been a nasty bruise, if not a broken rib.
While the armor was more than capable of stopping a 9mm round, it wasn’t able
to fully absorb the impact.

“Move out,” she
grumbled. “We see any more, hit ’em hard and fast.”

They complied, running
as fast as heavy loads and shifting sands would allow, reaching the cliff face
and then following it toward the glowing, phantom installation. Alex peered
fretfully at the darkness around them, willing his eyes to somehow illustrate
his surroundings. Katya’s breathing was ragged; he could hear her laboring just
ahead of him. He kept one hand on the crumbling rock of the cliff for balance,
as level sand gave way to a rock-and-boulder-strewn maze. They had veered
considerably from the path Miss Aoki had marked for them, and Alex hoped that
there weren’t any countermeasures waiting for them to trip over.

For another thirty
meters, almost half the distance to the installation, they made steady and
quiet progress. Then the ground shook, dislodging pebbles and small rocks from
the cliff face, followed by an immense fireball and then a tremendous explosion
from the other side of the compound. Between breaths, Alex could hear the
distant shouts, followed by the distinctive rattle and pop of small arms fire.

“Hurry!” Katya urged
them on through gritted teeth. “We need to be there!”

There was no way of
telling which of them tripped the alarm. The screamer was close enough that the
sheer volume brought tears to his eyes and forced Alex to clap his hands to his
ears.

The guard either came
out of an alcove or the mouth of the tunnel. It was impossible to tell in the
darkness. He emerged between Katya and Alex, holding a heavy semiautomatic in a
two-handed grip. Judging from his body language, Alex guessed that he was as
surprised by their presence as they were by his sudden appearance. The guard
raised his firearm, meaning to shoot Katya in the back, but he was slowed by
his mask and goggles. Katya dove for the ground as the gun went off, a quick
double-tap, and then the guard spun.

Alex caught him in mid-turn
with an instinctive tackle. They went down together onto the sand and the
rocks, Alex landing on top, both struggling for control of the pistol. Alex had
the presence of mind to drive his knee into the guard’s leg, one hand pushing
the gun aside, the other prying the gas mask aside, where it would hopefully
obscure his view. The pistol went off twice, the flare of hot gas creating
blinding afterimages in Alex’s vision. Alex tried the knee again, catching the
guard in the upper thigh and eliciting a grunt of pain.

The guard abandoned his
gun and produced a serrated combat knife from a holster slung across his chest.
Alex caught his arm as the guard swiped downward, aiming for Alex’s exposed
face. He blocked the strike, though the knife sliced across the top of the
knuckles of his right hand. There was no pain, but Alex’s hand was immediately
slick with blood.

More gunfire nearby, from
the direction Katya had dived. There was no time to worry about it, though Alex
could hear bullets ricochet against the rock and hiss as they buried themselves
in the sand. Alex kept a firm grip on the guard’s wrist to control the knife,
forcing his other hand beneath the guard’s mask. The guard bit down on one of
his fingers, and Alex yelled as he drove the point of his knee into his
midsection. Alex scrambled, shifting weight so his hips pressed down on his
opponent’s stomach, wrestling for the knife with one hand while clawing at his
face with the other.

There was a gunshot
right behind Alex, an ejected casing bouncing off the back of his head. The
guard cried out again and dropped his knife, instead striking wildly at Alex
about the head and arms. Alex used the opportunity to wrap both hands around his
throat, digging both thumbs into his windpipe.

Alex was blinded by the
flare of another gunshot, this one so close that he felt the heated gases
passing by his cheek.

It took Katya a few
moments of shaking him and saying his name before he finally realized the man
had stopped struggling. Alex groggily released his grip on the guard’s throat.

She helped Alex up, his
legs trembling and unsteady beneath him. The guard had been shot in the
kneecap, with another rather neat bullet hole punched through the forehead of
his rubber gas mask. Katya holstered her pistol and scanned the darkness ahead
of them.

“C’mon, Alex,” Katya
said, tugging him along by the fabric of his fatigues. “We need to keep
moving.”

Another ten meters, and
Alex got his bearings back, enough to wish rather frantically that he had
refused to be a part of this operation. He wasn’t sure if he felt better that
Katya had killed the guard that he had meant to strangle. He wasn’t even
certain that he could blame his training for the impulse. While his time in the
Program had left him trained and primed for combat, Alex worried that his
tendency toward violence was rooted in some fundamental defect in his nature.