Killing Machine
[Configuring secure uplink… COMPLETE]
[Running encryption protocol… COMPLETE]
[Initializing audio call … COMPLETE]
UNIDENTIFIED: Standing by.
K: Target eliminated?
UNIDENTIFIED: Affirmative.
K: Good. Proceed with exfiltration. And if you're detected… no witnesses.
UNIDENTIFIED: They will know fear.
[END TRANSMISSION]
November 7th, 1995 - Tian Shan Mountains, 35 kilometres South of Bishkek, Liberated Aldastan (former Kyrgyzstan) - 1845 hours
The explosion's roar echoed down the tunnels, its vibrations shivering through Solomon's body. He felt a cold fist clench at his guts.
"Ben!"
Solomon took off, sprinting toward the noise. Parker was right behind him, keeping up while lugging the heavy chain gun.
"Pinpoint to all call signs, be advised: a massive anthrax bomb just detonated in the main lab!" Solomon could hear stress chewing into Lieutenant Lee's voice on the radio. "Chinese forces are reporting heavy casualties. All units, fall back to Rally Point Charlie immediately. Repeat, fall back immediately, over!"
"So we're on our own," Parker said.
Solomon ignored Parker. He ignored Lee. He ignored everything that wasn't his brother. Pounding down the tunnels, he followed the echo of the explosion as though it was Ben's voice, calling to him.
He's okay, James thought. He's got to be okay.
The entrance to Doctor Thrax's command room yawned like a dark mouth up ahead. Something crunched under Solomon's boot.
Solomon halted and looked down. Ben's shattered silver sunglasses, blown from his body by the explosion, stared blankly back up at him. Jim stooped and picked them up with fingers that suddenly felt numb.
"In here! I need help!"
Toyama's voice called from within the doorway, sounding shaken. Solomon and Parker moved in.
The command room was a charnel house smouldering under a haze of poisonous gas. Doctor Thrax's final stand was marked by a concentric ring of blasted debris: overturned furniture, jagged shrapnel, and charred scraps of flesh. The ring was strewn with the broken bodies of dead GLA and of the USA's elite Achilles Team. Including Ben 'King' Solomon.
James Solomon had studied chemical weaponry at West Point. He had seen war footage of what sarin nerve gas did to human beings. But never, not in his darkest nightmares, had he imagined witnessing sarin taking his big brother.
The explosion had shattered Ben's limbs, but it was the poison that was killing him. Toyama had pried off his ruined gas mask, exposing Ben's twitching face and foaming mouth. Muscle spasms ripped through his shuddering body like there were giant centipedes burrowing through his skin.
Ben saw Jim. His eyes were clouded, half-closed with pain. He tried to speak, but only gagged.
Jim fell to his knees.
"Ben!"
He heard Toyama's voice in his ears, faint and fuzzy, saying something about atropine and lethal dosage and Ben saving her life. Then she turned away. Solomon's hand shot out to grab her arm, rough and hard.
"Do something!"
"I'm so sorry, Jim."
Lieutenant Toyama's words were muffled by her gas mask. The medic was covered in blood and grime, but looked like she had survived the blast unharmed. Thanks to Ben.
"I have to check the other victims. There could be survivors. Parker, please help me." She sounded composed, even clinical. A doctor at work.
"But Ben-"
Solomon looked down at his brother. His brother had gone completely still. His brother had gone completely quiet. His brother's eyes were wide open and seeing nothing. His brother would never see anything again.
Something in him broke. Jim screamed and slammed his fist into the ground, as though he could punch the life back into Ben. He pounded again, and again, and again, rhythmic like a heartbeat.
"Cap!" Parker was shaking him. Jim ignored it. "Hey, Solomon! The bad guy's getting away!"
Solomon heard that. Parker's silhouette was blurry, like he was in a fog. Tears were smearing the goggles of Solomon's gas mask. He blinked them away.
"Doc told me - it was that invisible Brotherhood guy. He set off the bomb when he killed Thrax." Parker pointed across the command room, at a jagged hole that had been smashed straight through a stone wall. "And he went that way."
Solomon leapt to his feet, gripping his rifle. Toyama got in his way.
"Sir, Colonel Burton is still alive! If you help me, I can-"
"Do what you can," Solomon ordered. He wasn't using the Voice of God now. This voice was suddenly even deeper, rougher, coming from somewhere lower down. "Parker, with me. Let's take this bastard."
Solomon left them. He left Toyama, he left Burton, he left Ben's body, and he didn't look back. He stalked through the hole in the wall, weapon raised, to hunt down the Brotherhood that had taken his brother.
"Right behind ya, Cap," Parker said.
The hole led back into the tunnels beneath Doctor Thrax's base. There was no sign of the assassin. No footprint, no track, no clue. Solomon moved as fast as he dared, feeling terror scrabbling inside his skull: not for himself, but that his brother's killer might slip away in the shadows.
The tunnels were a maze, dark and deserted and twisting in all directions. He and Parker entered what looked like a hub chamber, with different branches splitting off to other parts of the base. The paved ground was strewn with piles of scrap metal, big steel pipes, and spare engine parts. The GLA had been using this crossroads as a dump for scavenged items. Solomon guessed that these materials were intended to repair damaged structures of the base from below the ground.
There was no hint of where to go next.
Solomon thought fast. What did he know about the Brotherhood? What could he use against their hidden assassin?
Through Adilet, they knew that the black market massacre was carried out by a seemingly superhuman figure. Someone with impossibly advanced laser weaponry. Someone with the strength to rip a man's head clean off his shoulders. Someone that could turn literally invisible.
Someone that had hunted Doctor Thrax like a dog to protect the secrets of this 'Brotherhood.' Someone serving an organization that wanted the world kept ignorant of its existence.
Oh. Solomon knew how to find the bastard.
"Parker, keep a sharp eye out!" Solomon yelled out, letting his deep voice echo freely down the tunnels. "This 'Brotherhood' commando is using some kind of active camouflage!"
He could see Parker blinking behind his gas mask. The sniper wasn't used to being the least noisy person in a team.
"Play along," Solomon hissed. Parker's eyes widened, then he nodded.
"The Brotherhood's got all kinds of tricks like that," the Captain continued. "That's how Thrax hit Beijing - with their GPS Scrambler!"
"Oh, right!" Parker called back, sweeping the tunnels with his chain gun. "The one he got from Prince Kassad!"
"Exactly."
Solomon bared his teeth as he spoke. He knelt behind a heap of rusted rebar and squinted into the darkness with his rifle raised, hoping for something to reach out of the shadows and just try and shut him up.
"Kassad betrayed the Brotherhood by selling their tech… and intel on the green crystal! Now their precious secrets are out! We need to tell the whole world!"
With that, Solomon took a smoke grenade from his combat vest, pulled its pin, and rolled it down the tunnel. The canister hissed like an angry cat. A billowing white cloud rose from the ground, filling the junction chamber in a fog of war.
Ben loved using smoke bombs. Called them 'cloud in a can.'
Jim bit his tongue, forcing Ben out of his mind. If he didn't focus, he would die here underground.
They'd cast their bait into the dark. Now they had to wait, and see if the enemy bit.
Solomon hand-signalled for Parker to quiet down and get back-to-back with him. The two men crouched next to a pyramid of thick pipes in the center of the chamber, scanning the room with their weapons raised.
The smoke clouded their view. Solomon was gambling that it would also conceal them from the enemy. More importantly, unless the Brotherhood had an actual ghost fighting for them, their invisible foe would still disturb the smoke as they advanced - giving away their position.
Stillness. More hissing. Solomon's heartbeat, thudding in his chest.
"Hey," whispered Parker. "I've lost comms."
Solomon frowned, raised a hand to his ear, and tried to raise Toyama. Nothing. He tried Pinpoint. Not even static.
Their connection was cut. They were truly alone.
"Jamming," he muttered. "Be ready."
Stillness. The hissing faded. The cloud thinned.
Solomon suspected that he was dealing with a patient hunter, an enemy willing to slowly stalk them instead of blundering into their trap. Once the smoke cleared, the Brotherhood's assassin could pick them off unseen.
Time for another bluff.
"Wait-" He touched his ear again. "I'm picking up Command! They've broken through the anthrax and are coming down. I'll transmit our location and get us some reinforcements."
"Really?" Parker wasn't following. "I'm still not getting any - contact!"
Stillness vanished. Solomon turned to see Parker's chain gun raised and buzzing, a blazing stream of tracers slashing through the smoke at movement within the cloud. Solomon glimpsed sparks flying from a hulking, fuzzy figure down the tunnel, and fired his rifle at the orange flicker.
Red light stabbed at Parker. He yelled, hurling himself aside, and dropped his molten chain gun. The weapon's multiple barrels steamed as they sloughed apart, motor whining as it died. The big gun's steel had been sliced clean through, like a soft loaf of fresh bread.
Solomon sighted on the laser, tracking the smoke shifting as a body darted through it, and fired again. More sparks.
Parker rolled on the ground, steam rising from fresh burns on his armour, and came up with a pistol in hand. He emptied it into the figure, now storming towards them, vaulting over the rebar pile. Solomon tracked its advance by the flashing sparks and ringing sounds of rounds bouncing off armour.
Tough - tough as a tank, Solomon thought. He aimed lower, at the legs, and went full-auto with his rifle, recoil pummelling his shoulder. The hail of bullets would have shredded an ordinary soldier into bloody meat. On this target, it just produced more hopeless sparks.
Then the cyborg was upon him.
A strong hand ripped the gun from Solomon's grip and swatted him to the ground. He groaned, head ringing, and saw his rifle's barrel crumple in midair, crushed like a beer can.
Definitely cyborg, he thought, shaking his throbbing head. Old Soviet experiments - Brotherhood resurrected them-
A jagged line split his vision. His gas mask was cracked. He peeled it off, sucked air into his harsh lungs, and tried to sit up.
"Move, Cap!" Parker yelled, grabbing a grenade from his vest.
Smart, Solomon thought as he forced himself to roll away across the hard, dirty floor. Bullets do nothing - maybe explosives-
Parker's scream cut the thought dead.
Looking up, Solomon saw the grenade falling from Parker's trembling fingers. The commando's hand was suddenly held in a grip of iron. Solomon winced at the sound of wrist bones cracking. Parker gritted his teeth and slugged the unseen enemy with his free hand.
It didn't flinch, but its camouflage flickered, then deactivated. The cyborg revealed his full form, clearly visible through the hazy remnant of the faded smoke cloud. Solomon gasped.
Whatever experiment had spawned the cyborg commando, it had gone terribly wrong. Most of its body seemed to be wrapped in metal: sleek, polished black armour with blood-red trim, with wires and cables sprouting around the joints. Only the head, poking above the hulking armoured torso like a turtle peeking from its shell, retained vulnerable flesh. And that flesh was sick.
There had been a man's face attached to the machine, once. It was now barely recognizable as human. Its skin was puffy and corpse-pale, lit from within by a bile-green glow. Ridges and spikes jutted from the man's features, growths somewhere between bone and crystal. A line of puckered surgical scars cut between the twisted face and the glowing green electronic eye embedded into a piece of complex metal headgear that seemed to swallow the top-right chunk of his skull. Those scars looked livid with infection, grafts being rejected by a human body desperately fighting its own transformation.
"Wow," Parker groaned. "You are one ugly moth-"
The cyborg grabbed his vest, hoisted him one-handed, and flung Parker straight into the steel pipes. He hit hard, grunted, and collapsed to the floor, not moving.
Solomon rolled onto his side, grabbing for his sidearm. He got it loose, squinted in the darkness, and shot the cyborg twice in the head.
It sounded like a pebble bouncing off a car. The cyborg ignored the attack, just like he ignored the exposed metal plate glinting through the bullet holes in his scalp.
The cyborg raised his right arm, its severed human hand replaced with a cluster of barrels and sensors. A red laser dot pulsed from one of those barrels, flashing across Solomon's eyes, and landed on his forehead. The assassin tilted his head, and a tinny voice sounded from a speaker somewhere in his chest.
"Who knows?"
Of course. The Brotherhood and its mania for the shadows. Solomon bared his teeth.
"Everyone. It's all gonna be on BNN tomorrow. 'Secret organization exposed with high-tech weaponry' - news at six."
Solomon's mind raced as he spoke. Can I toss a grenade? No - Parker's too close. Need another way-
The cyborg walked over to Parker, put a steel-clad food on his injured wrist, and pressed down. Parker moaned, face going pale.
"Who knows?"
"Leave him, you piece of shit!" Solomon hauled himself to his feet. If he was going to die, he'd damn well do it standing.
A rush of wind, and a hammer to his chest. Solomon found himself back on the ground, chest screaming, lungs gasping, the cyborg standing over him. He tried to move, but found his body had hit its limit.
"Who knows?"
"Go fuck yourself," he wheezed. "You killed my brother."
The cyborg stared at him. Then he spoke, seemingly to himself.
"OpSec breach confirmed. Captives secured. Extract to interrogation?"
Solomon had to strain to hear the response drifting through the cyborg's built-in comms gear. The voice that answered was cool, calm, composed. The unseen man controlling the commando was as casual as though he were discussing groceries.
"No… whoever they've told, it's too late now. Commander Solomon and Nicholas Parker would have been deadly enemies… in another lifetime. Terminate them."
The title of 'Commander' didn't make sense to Jim, but he knew he would never know more. The cyborg aimed the laser right between Solomon's eyes.
Solomon glared up at him. Maybe he'd see Ben again. That was something, at least.
Sparks blasted from the side of the cyborg's head. The crashing report of a magnum revolver boomed through the tunnels. Solomon turned his head to see a woman advancing out of the darkness, and remembered Black Lotus' report about another intruder spotted in the GLA base.
The woman wore blue arctic gear with her hood lowered. In the gloom, Solomon could barely see her fierce expression as she leveled a massive handgun in both hands and put another round in the cyborg's armoured skull. His green electronic eye shorted and blew out with a crackle.
"E-error."
The cyborg lurched and swayed, static fuzzing his voice. Some kind of green ichor oozed from his opened head.
He bleeds! Solomon thought. The fucker bleeds!
"Move your ass if you wanna live!" The woman shouted. Then she ducked.
The cyborg was half-blind but still armed. A blade of crimson light scorched the air where the gunslinging woman's head had been, before she went into a combat roll and came up shooting, emptying the next two chambers of the six-shot revolver into the cyborg's left knee joint. He went down kneeling, buzzing like a broken radio.
Solomon sucked air into his snarling lungs, and forced himself back to his feet one more time. He tripped over scrap metal as he stumble-ran to where Parker was just starting to stir, and managed to get one of Nick's arms up and over his shoulder.
"On your feet, Marine!" He yelled. "We are leaving!"
A laser beam flashed past him, melting one of the steel pipes into glowing slag. The cyborg was rising, its weapon arm glowing crimson like the mouth of Hell.
The gunslinger fired her final two shots into that mouth. There was a whine of electrical feedback, and a flare of blue light. The weapon arm exploded, showering fresh sparks in the darkness.
"E-engaging second-dary systems," the cyborg stuttered. A green lens blinked on his right shoulder, a camera eye opening to replace the destroyed sensor. Cold gas hissed from his right wrist, dousing the flames from the damaged weapons. And a long black blade slid out of his left forearm, smooth and noiseless as an oil slick.
Seeing this, the woman growled, planted her feet, and snapped her revolver open to dump the empty, smoking cartridges out of its chambers.
Solomon turned away and hustled down the tunnel with Parker, back the way the woman had come with what he hoped were heavy reinforcements. As they left the chamber, he risked a backwards glance at the duel between commandos.
The gunslinger was feeding fat magnum rounds into the revolver faster than Solomon had ever seen, thumbs like a machine click-click-click-click, and that's when the cyborg came at her, limping a little on his damaged knee but still attacking fast and hard with his black blade.
"Fuck!"
She swore, slipped past the first jab of the blade, and swore again. The cyborg swatted with his damaged arm, a blur of force knocking the gun out of her hand. Then he stabbed straight at her throat.
Solomon heard her hiss as she ducked - cut, maybe - but then she seemed to flow past the outstretched arm, and was behind him, and smacked something onto the cyborg's back. Then she bolted, the blade ripping at the back of her coat, catching up to Solomon and Parker.
"Move, move, move!"
Solomon shook it. Parker was half awake now, and helped carry his own weight, the two elite soldiers swaying and supporting each other like runners in a three-legged race at a children's fair.
A chorus of furious serpents hissed behind them, and the tunnel lit up with harsh white light. Thermite charge, Solomon thought. That'll stop the bastard.
He didn't look. Thermite burned at over four thousand degrees Fahrenheit: hot enough to melt steel, and bright enough to blind any dumbass who stuck around to watch the fireworks without proper protection.
"E-execute. Exec-cute."
Heavy, pounding footsteps, unsteady but fast. Right behind him. The cyborg was still coming.
You've got to be kidding me, Solomon thought.
"What do they feed this guy?" Parker mumbled.
"Less talking, more running!" The woman slapped a wad of plastique on the rocky side of the tunnel wall as they ran. Then she pulled a cylindrical remote detonator from her belt, and didn't break stride as she jammed her thumb on its red button three times.
"Chew on this!"
A bang. A roar. A rumble. The ground shook beneath Solomon's boots, dust clouding his vision and filling his lungs. And somehow, impossibly, a final utterance from the cyborg, before he was buried beneath tonnes of concrete and rock and earth as the tunnel collapsed on his head.
"O-ne v-vision. One- purp-"
And then, finally, silence. The three commandos stopped running, panting as they slumped. The passage behind them was blocked by a solid wall of jagged rubble.
Grunting, Parker detached himself from Solomon's supporting arm, cradling his broken wrist, and turned to face the woman.
"Whoever you are," he proclaimed. "I'm gonna marry you."
"Shut up," she said. Then she turned her attention on Solomon, and he got his first clear look at her.
He saw tanned skin, brown hair cut off at the shoulders, arched brows over dark eyes, a sharp chin, blood running unnoticed down her face from a cut on her cheek, and an expression that looked ready to slam through a brick wall. And then Solomon realized why she looked familiar.
"Agent Tanya, Allied Intelligence," she said. "And I'm here for you, Solomon. You want me on your team, or what?"
A/N: Thanks to all readers for sticking with the story this far! We've reached the end of the first of three planned major arcs.
Incidentally, one of the author's excuses for not updating sooner is the mod 'Combined Arms' for OpenRA. It's free, fast to install, and incredibly fun. Like Echo Nine, Combined Arms mashes together Command & Conquer's various factions into one chaotic battle for supremacy (between Allies, GDI, Soviets, Nod, and Scrin). It's made with clear love for the franchise - I highly recommend 'Combined Arms' for any C&C fan looking for a new experience!