Critical Strike (The Critical Series Book 3) (3 page)

They rounded a dogleg. At the end of the tunnel a small glow of white light spilled out of a room. Charlie ran forward, leaned against the wall and looked around the corner. “Looks like a lab. There’s an entrance on the other side.”

“Go for it,” Layla said.

The noise of metal scraping on rock screeched from behind them. Denver knew the hunter must have seen him. He aimed into the darkness and backed away, following Charlie and Layla into the brightly lit lab area. Vials and measuring instruments cluttered the metal tables.

Charlie swept an opaque piece of plastic to one side and entered a carved stone corridor. Layla held the sheet back to allow Denver to back safely in. They turned and ran into darkness, their hurried footsteps slapping against the smooth surface.

Glass shattered against the floor in the lab. The damned hunter was right on their trail now. Charlie skidded to a halt at the end of the rough-hewn tunnel.

Layla screamed, her voice high-pitched and full of panic as an alien shriek pierced the air. A muscly tentacle lashed out from the shadows, knocking Denver’s rifle out of his hand. A black, stealthy form slithered across the wall. Denver turned to face the enemy and staggered back at the sight of it as it prepared to attack.

CHAPTER THREE

Sparks arced through the cold frigid air like a rainbow of fire. Each ember sizzled against the workshop’s stone floor made frosty by the chilled exhalations of autumn.

The grinder screamed its satisfaction while smoothing off the sharp edges of Augustus’ new steel mask. The croatoan engineer had proved to be surprisingly artistic in its creation.

Augustus had only given him a rough sketch of what he wanted, but the little alien took the task personally and embellished the design with dramatic eyebrows, deep cheekbones and a breathing grille hidden beneath cruel lips.

The idea initially was to polish the steel to a high chrome-like gleam, but standing there in the workshop, Augustus liked the tarnished texture. Each sweep of the grinder added a streak of tightly woven scratches.

“I like it,” Augustus said with a smile. He ran a fingertip down the scarred side of his face, tracing the labyrinth of smooth tissue, each one a reminder of his past—and his future.

The scars were prophecy.

He had, against all odds, and known laws of biology, endured through the ages. This new mask represented the next stage of his twisting tale.

Augustus the conqueror would return once more. Despite the failures and losses, he knew he was on the right path.

When one was a god, the fates were in your favor, and time became an abstract construct to play with as a child might play with wooden blocks.

The croatoan engineer shut off the grinder, the electric motor winding down with a whine. The mask, held in the vice at an angle, glowed beneath the orange overhead lamp as though it were freshly cast in the very fires of creation.

Augustus stepped forward and released the mask from the vice. He held it there, in both hands, admiring the brutal visage the engineer had crafted upon its surface.

“You’ve done well,” Augustus said.

“Thank you… I hope you like my interp—” the alien cut off, unable to articulate the human words correctly. But at least he was learning.

“Interpretation is the word you’re looking for,” Augustus offered, receiving a nod from the alien. “You’ve come a long way. Just like me. Without Hagellan and the council ruling you, I trust you’ll become a valued member of new society.”

The alien, whose name Augustus still hadn’t bothered to learn how to pronounce, just blinked its beady eyes, indicating it had understood.

Although it didn’t have the vocabulary, or even the thought pattern to communicate fully, it had learned to think for itself. This proved to Augustus that with the remaining croatoans under his influence, the taking of Unity would be just a matter of time.

Revenge, like all worthy artistic endeavors, was something to savor, plan, and execute with a willingness to destroy all that had come before.

The world was clay to mold in his vision.

He pictured Aimee’s flayed, limp body, skewered atop a wooden pike.

Keeping that image in mind, he placed the mask over his face and adjusted the leather strap behind his head. The heat from the worked steel threatened to burn his skin, but the scar tissue, long dead to feeling, kept the pain at bay. A shuddering breath escaped his lips and traveled through the mouth grille.

Every cell in his body tingled as he dropped his hands and looked through the eyes of the mask. It was as if he were seeing through a different veil. He pictured the future—the fall of Unity, the rise of his new empire.

A laugh gurgled from his throat and he stepped out of the small workshop into a larger hangar. This building was the farm facilities’ shuttle bay. Plastic tarps flapped with the blow of the wind; the large hangar doors were open and overlooked miles of neglected farmland.

As he stepped toward the shuttle being repaired, he didn’t feel the cool air creep against his calves like days of old. No need for robes anymore. He dressed in one of the human soldier’s fatigues. It suited his new role: that of conqueror, general… emperor.

“How go the repairs?” he asked.

A middle-aged woman with grease smeared across her face ducked out from beneath a raised panel. She motioned with a spanner. “I’m nearly done, sir. The engine is in good condition and the engineers have reprogrammed the OS. The shuttle has full autonomy now and is interlinked with the other farms. We’ll be testing the full range of comms within the hour.”

“Good. Let me know as soon as the communication network to the other shuttles is fully established. I’d like to address our new pilots.”

The woman nodded her head with respect and dived back under the panel and into the interior of the croatoan shuttle. A pair of alien engineers shuffled around inside toward the cockpit. They held glowing screens in their stubby fingers, chattering away in their staccato language.

Augustus was pleased with what he heard; they were excited about uniting the other croatoans from the desperate farms.

Over the last few days, he had worked hard on galvanizing the displaced aliens. Their numbers had swelled to over three thousand and counting. The message traveled far that Augustus had created a new home for the aliens, a new purpose.

He got the idea from Aimee and her work with Unity.

Seeing how easily humans and croatoans could work together if given a singular focus made him realize it didn’t need to be an all-or-nothing proposition; neither species needed to be exclusive.

The one thing he had learned about both species is that they needed a haven and a leader. Although humans were by far more autonomous and treacherous, he had many centuries of experience to draw upon to keep them in line.

With that thought, he turned away from the shuttle and stepped out of the hangar into the cold gray afternoon light. He turned to his right and walked past the gaggle of buildings until he came to the square.

The sight of Zoe, also dressed in fatigues, standing atop a makeshift stage, brought a smile to his face. She bellowed out a training drill to the hundreds of croatoan and human soldiers all standing in grid formation.

Zoe must have realized he was watching; she ordered the troops to stand to attention and turned her back to them to approach Augustus. She saluted him and clicked her heels together.

“I’ve an update on the other farms, sir.”

“Go ahead,” Augustus said.

“We’ve got five of them on side; their troops and shuttles are en route as I speak. They’ll be here before nightfall.”

“Numbers?”

“Eight shuttles, twenty working harvesters, fifteen hover-bikes, two and a half thousand troops, and enough weaponry to create an infantry battalion of five hundred.”

“I’m impressed,” Augustus said, resting his hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him with an expression of reverie and pride. She couldn’t hold his gaze for long and dipped her chin. It was probably the fearsome sight of his new mask, but he liked to think it was something else—he’d seen the way she had looked at him during the previous few days.

Power generated its own kind of attraction, he had learned. Regardless of his face, his stature and character had a gravity that few could match. He considered taking her as his bedmate.

She had a fire in her belly that he knew he would find between her thighs. He had known many women like her before. The stronger they were, the more passionate… and also the more easily influenced and manipulated.

The strong always wanted more power.

And as a god, he always had more to give, to deal…

“Thank you,” Zoe eventually croaked. “I appreciate this opportunity you’ve given to me… to all of us. We were so confused before, but now we have purpose. I just want to make sure you know that we’re all thankful, grateful for your leadership.”

Augustus squeezed her shoulder as he closed his eyes, letting her obvious flattery wash over him as though they were genuine compliments.

Even lies feel good if you let them.

“Together we’re stronger,” he said, unclasping his grip on her shoulder. He liked how she bit her lip to avoid showing the pain. This one would tolerate a great deal, he thought. Yes, she would be a fine bedmate… “Come visit me in my office when you’re finished with the drills. I have something I want to give you.”

She opened her mouth to speak, her bottom lip was red and swollen with the bite, but before she had a chance to say anything, he spun away and headed toward the now-empty breeding lab.

Inside, he had set up a secure, private office. He had just one more task to complete before he could relax for the day. He gripped the prism that hung on a chain around his neck and felt it buzz faintly like a dying moth, but the thing on the end was very much the opposite. The scion had news on Charlie and Denver.

Augustus had waited to hear the news, extending his fantasy like a child refusing to open a wrapped gift. The anticipation was glorious in its own right, but with his army falling into place, there was no time left to wait.

He needed to know if the trap had sprung and caught its prey.

***

How the scion truly worked he would never know. He wasn’t even sure how they existed without a physical form, but it was of no concern to him; he had seen enough in his lifetime to know that out there, beyond the moon and the sun, were billions of things humanity would never see or understand.

All he cared about was carving out a section of the cosmos for his own. And working with the scion fitted into the plan.

Augustus locked the office door and sat at his desk, the surface of which contained dozens of books that he was in various stages of correcting. He placed the prism on the surface and activated it, creating a beam of light that drew a holographic keyboard.

This time he didn’t need to use one of the radios to transmit the signal and connect to the scion server. His handler, Drone 21, had instructed him on how to hardcode the prism’s communication crystal to the farm’s transceivers.

Within seconds of tapping out his unique passcode, a purple holographic cone appeared above the crystal, giving the dark room a rich tint. Augustus shivered as he thought about the prism and how it was actually conscious. It contained a living entity that the scion used to connect to their great binary hive mind.

Drone 21 didn’t bother to construct a humanlike face on the cone this time. Instead, Augustus was greeted with a neutral voice he had come to know well over the years.

“Agent 3982, you wish to know the status of your algorithm?”

“Yes,” Augustus said. The idea of an algorithm never ceased to intrigue him. The scion believed life was just a set of rules—a problem-solving program that met particular conditions, and that life could be coded and manipulated as though it were a math problem. “But not just mine… I was promised news on others.”

“The Jacksons.”

“Indeed.”

A stream of code flooded the display too fast for Augustus to make out. The scion often did this to inform him that they were thinking on the problem, sending data across the galaxy to their server farms to analyze the probability factors.

“The Jackson function will meet its terminus in the near future. The probability is undeniable. As for you, Agent 3982, you are entering an uncertain phase that even the Order of Things cannot dictate.”

Augustus coughed, clearing a dry patch on the back of his throat. He wanted to press his handler further; this was a different answer than he had previously been given—the promise that Earth would be his, that his algorithm would know no end.

“The future has changed?” Augustus finally asked.

“It’s mutable. Your kind would say you’re at a crossroads. Defeat Unity, Agent 3982, and your algorithm will continue as promised. Fail… and the Order of Things cannot predict your fate.”

The cone disappeared, the crystal turned dark, and the prism was once more a trinket. Sweat beaded behind Augustus’ mask. Up until now he hadn’t doubted his success. With the scion’s promise behind him, the thought of defeat had never entered his mind… but now…

He stood up and flipped the table, sending the books flying and crashing around the room. Zoe gave her identifying knock.

“Come in!”

The door crept open and Zoe stepped inside. She had removed her hair tie and wore her locks draped over her shoulders. She looked around the room with fear in her eyes.

Augustus removed his mask. “Lock the door.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Charlie shouldered his rifle and searched the darkness for the owner of that dreaded shriek. A light flickered overhead, providing a brief exposure of a lean four-legged creature, at least six feet long. Two tentacles writhed on its scaly green back. Bones were piled on the floor next to its black front talons.

It was like a komodo dragon with more weapons. The sight of it made the hairs on Charlie’s neck tingle as he raised his rifle.

The creature screamed. Its left tentacle whipped through the air, cracking rigid between Charlie and Layla, who managed to duck out of the way of the attack.