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Chapter Ten

Furan watched as a dozen of his men took up defensive positions inside the hangar, their weapons trained on the giant blast doors. On the other side of the hangar the turbine engines of the Goliath units were spinning up as the pilots completed their final pre-launch checks. Otto stood off to one side with one of Furan’s men guarding him.

‘Seal the doors again once the Goliath units are outside,’ Furan shouted to the man at the door control panel nearby.

The umbilical cables attached to the giant mechs retracted and the three huge machines walked out into the centre of the hangar, the ground shaking slightly with each step. Furan activated his communicator earpiece.

‘Goliath One, wait inside. Goliaths Two and Three, you are to engage the enemy,’ he said. ‘I want them utterly crushed. There are to be no survivors.’

Two of the mechs walked forward and lined up shoulder to shoulder facing the blast doors as Furan gave a quick nod to the man at the door controls. The man punched a button on the console and warning lights started to flash around the massive doors as the huge hydraulic rams started to pull them slowly apart. They swung fully open and the Gatling cannons on the arms of the Goliaths started to spin as they raised their weapons. A rocket speared towards the Goliath on the left, launched by one of the Alpha team troops who popped up from behind the cover of a large boulder nearby. The dome on the top of the Goliath swung towards the incoming projectile and its anti-missile laser fired in the blink of an eye, safely detonating the incoming rocket twenty metres away from its intended target. The Goliath’s arm swung towards the boulder as the Alpha who had fired the rocket ducked back behind it. The cannon roared and the boulder disappeared in a cloud of shattered rock. As the dust slowly cleared the remaining Alpha team members could see no sign of either the boulder or their comrade.

Up in the control room of the Leviathan circling far overhead Darkdoom stared in dismay at the giant armoured machines that had just emerged from the AWP facility and he tried to make sense of the frantic comms chatter coming in from the Alphas.

‘Look at the size of those things!’

‘Open fire, open fire!’

Darkdoom had assumed that Overlord would not move against the Alphas. Tactically there was no point in him throwing his men into an attack against an entrenched enemy as long as the facility was secure, but their plans had made no allowance for anything like the giant walking tanks that were visible in the feeds from the cameras mounted in the Alphas’ helmets. If the Alphas outside AWP were scattered or crushed by those things their whole plan could fail.

‘All Alpha units fall back,’ Darkdoom said. ‘Re-engage thermoptic camouflage systems. Get to cover.’

Darkdoom tapped the button on the console in front of him and switched channels.

‘Max, this is Diabolus. We’ve got a situation up here. Hostile armoured units of an unknown type have engaged the Alphas. How long left on the hack?’

‘Two minutes,’ Nero replied.

‘Roger that,’ Darkdoom said as he saw a missile from the shoulder pod of one of the giant mechs streak straight towards one of the cameras that was transmitting a feed to the Leviathan. The screen went black, as did a couple more at precisely the same moment. He did not need to look at the flatlines on the biometric monitoring screens nearby to know what that meant. For the Alpha team members on the ground two minutes was going to be a very long time indeed.

Nero stared at the progress bar, willing it to move more quickly. He could hear the muffled sound of the battle taking place outside, feel the ground shake in unison with the thud of explosions. They had to get into the facility’s network now, before it was too late. The progress bar slowly filled as the seconds ticked by until finally a message confirming a successful connection flashed up on the display. At the same instant he heard Shelby gasp in shock as the door behind him hissed open.

‘Step away from the terminal,’ Raven said, her swords drawn, their glowing purple edges crackling with energy.

Shelby ripped her gun from its holster and raised it towards Raven, but she was too slow. Raven stepped up to her, her blade flashing through the air in a blur, slicing the weapon in half even as Shelby’s finger tightened uselessly on the trigger. Raven drove her elbow hard into Shelby’s chest, sending her flying backwards and crashing into one of the large metal server cases against the wall. Wing moved like lightning, his foot lashing out and striking Raven in the wrist, and one of her swords clattered away across the concrete floor. Raven spun round and swung a killing blow at Wing’s neck but he moved too quickly for her, ducking out of the way of the flashing blade and diving towards her. He slammed into her, wrapping his arms around her waist and driving her into the wall behind with all his strength with a bone-crunching impact. Raven slammed the hilt of her sword down on to the back of Wing’s neck and he collapsed to the floor. She raised her sword as Wing tried to get back to his feet, still stunned from the force of the blow, but the bullet from Nero’s gun sent splinters flying from the concrete wall next to her head.

‘Put the sword down, Natalya,’ Nero said, his pistol aimed at her head.

‘You won’t shoot me, Max,’ Raven said, taking a single step towards him.

Nero pulled the trigger. Raven felt the bullet leave a crease in her temple as she twisted and spun towards him impossibly quickly. Her sword slid into Nero’s gut, its glowing blade spearing out of his back as she swatted the gun from his hand. Nero gasped in pain as she pulled the sword back out and he dropped to his knees, both hands clutching at the wound in his stomach, blood oozing between his fingers. Raven stared at him as he toppled over on to his side. Her head throbbed but it wasn’t from the long gash that Nero’s bullet had left in her forehead – this was something else, like something inside her was trying to claw its way out of her skull. There was a fleeting look of confusion on her face and then the sensation subsided. She stepped over Nero and towards the terminal that he had been about to access.

Nero tried to ignore the searing pain in his abdomen as he reached for the pocket on the front of his body armour. Raven saw that he had not been able to access the network before her arrival and turned back towards her injured prey. He pulled the silver cylinder from inside his pocket and twisted it, a short needle snapping into place at one end of the tube. Raven kicked his wrist, sending the silver cylinder spinning away across the floor.

‘All for nothing,’ she said as she lowered the tip of her sword towards his throat.

With a cry of unbridled rage Wing flew across the room, hitting Raven like a freight train. She staggered backwards, her free hand snapping out and closing on Wing’s throat, her thumb pressing down on his windpipe. Wing gasped for air as Raven pressed harder. Suddenly she felt a tiny stabbing pain in her side as Wing used his last shred of strength to drive the needle on the end of the silver cylinder deep into her flesh. Raven shoved him away from her hard and he landed flat on his back, gasping for air.

‘What have you done?’ Raven snarled at him as she felt an agonizing burning sensation spreading across her body. She pulled the needle out angrily, throwing the cylinder across the room. Wing forced himself to his feet as Raven dropped to her knees in front of him, the sword falling from her numb fingertips as her body went into convulsions. Wing bent down and picked up her sword. Raven’s head snapped up, a look of feral rage on her face as she stared up at him.

‘Do it while you still can,’ she spat.

Wing raised the sword and closed his eyes. A fraction of a second before he swung a hand closed around his wrist.

‘Wait,’ Nero said through gritted teeth, his voice broken with pain.

Raven tipped her head back and screamed as she felt pain like nothing she had ever felt before. The Animus antidote that Otto had created aboard the Megalodon was racing through her, destroying the substance that had twisted her into a puppet of Overlord. Nero and Wing stared down at her as she fell silent, her chin dropping on to her heaving chest. After a few long seconds she lifted her head and looked up at them both, tears trickling down her cheeks.

‘Max?’ she whispered. ‘My God, what have I done?’

Nero knelt down in front of her, one hand still pressed to the wound in his gut.

‘It wasn’t you, Natalya,’ he said, placing his other hand on her cheek. ‘It wasn’t you.’

Raven stared at him and for a moment he saw in her eyes the frightened, lonely girl he had first met so many years ago. A moment later that girl was gone, replaced again by the diamond-hard woman that she had become.

‘Furan’s men hit me when I retrieved Lin Feng. They injected me with something and from that moment on I had no choice but to obey, no matter what they told me to do, no matter who I hurt. All that the tiny piece of my free will that remained could do was watch. What they did to me – it – I’m going to kill them all,’ she said, her voice filled with a quiet rage that chilled even Nero’s blood.

‘Of course you are,’ Nero replied, ‘but first we have to make sure you get that chance.’

He stood up slowly, blocking out the pain, and walked back to the terminal, where he began to type, inputting the series of commands that Professor Pike had given him earlier. Shelby groaned and Wing hurried over to her and gently helped her to her feet.

‘Is she back?’ Shelby asked, nodding towards Raven as she rubbed at the back of her head.

‘Yes, I believe she is,’ Wing replied with a nod.

‘Good,’ Shelby said, ‘because, y’know, she may be a psychopathic ninja assassin but she’s our psychopathic ninja assassin.’

On board the Leviathan Darkdoom watched with an increasing sense of despair as yet another of the feeds from the Alpha team’s helmet cameras blinked out. The Alphas had fallen back and re-engaged their thermoptic camouflage in the face of the withering assault by Overlord’s mechs, but the canyon that led to the entrance of the AWP facility was very narrow. The mechs didn’t have to know exactly where the Alphas were – they simply had to spray the area with as much fire as they could to take out the retreating forces.

‘Nero to Leviathan. Come in.’

Darkdoom did not like the note of obvious pain in his friend’s voice.

‘Max, are you all right? When we lost communication with you I feared the worst.’

‘I’ll live,’ Nero replied, ‘at least for long enough to see this through. Raven is back with us. Tell the Professor that the antidote worked.’

‘Thank God,’ Darkdoom said with a relieved sigh.

‘The network connection is complete. You can start the systems breach now,’ Nero said.

‘What about those killing machines that Overlord has sent against the Alpha squad? They’re getting cut to pieces down there.’

‘Launch the attack on AWP’s network,’ Nero replied. ‘We just have to pray that has some effect on them.’

‘It had better,’ Darkdoom said as another flatline registered on the Alpha team’s biometric displays.

Furan was listening with satisfaction to the reports coming from the pilots of the Goliath mechs in the canyon outside when without warning the entire hangar was suddenly plunged into total darkness. He tapped his earpiece.

‘We’ve just lost power in the hangar bay,’ he said impatiently. ‘What’s going on?’

‘It’s the same all over the facility, sir,’ a voice replied. ‘We were tracking an internal network intrusion when suddenly we lost all internal systems. We’re quite literally blind down here.’

‘An internal intrusion?’ Furan shouted. ‘Why wasn’t I informed?’

‘Raven went to deal with it, sir,’ the voice replied. ‘We were trying to establish contact with her when our systems went down.’

Otto listened carefully to the conversation. An internal breach indicated that someone had managed to get inside the facility. There was no way of knowing whether or not that meant the cavalry was here but he had to act now regardless. He closed his eyes and concentrated on remembering the layout of the hangar bay. The device attached to his neck might have been jamming his ability to connect with electronic devices but it wasn’t affecting his talent for perfect visual recall. He saw the path he would need to take to his target in his mind’s eye as clearly as if the hangar had been fully illuminated. The first thing he had to deal with was the guard who still had an iron grip on the collar of his jumpsuit. He twisted under the man’s wrist and reached up, driving his finger into the soft flesh behind the startled guard’s ear. When he’d done the same thing to Professor Pike a few hours ago he’d tried to be as gentle as possible, but this time he hit hard and fast, hoping that for the fleeting instant before the man lost consciousness it had really hurt. The guard dropped with a thud, his assault rifle clattering to the floor.

‘What was that?’ Otto heard Furan snap. He had seconds to move before somebody fumbled their way through the darkness to the spot where he had just been standing. Moving as quickly and quietly as he could, he made his way towards the stairs to the upper gantry that he had visualised moments before, brushing against someone when he was about halfway there.

‘Hey, what was that? Who’s moving around in here?’ a gruff voice asked.

‘I want the man guarding Malpense to sound off,’ Furan yelled from somewhere nearby. Otto started to move more quickly as Furan’s order met with no response. ‘Malpense, I know you can hear me,’ Furan said angrily. ‘Tell me where you are or I swear that when the lights come back on I’m going to execute the two girls you came here with.’

Otto kept moving, ignoring Furan’s threat. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe Furan would do it but Overlord had already made it abundantly clear that neither Lucy or Laura would survive unless he did something to stop him.

‘Spread out!’ Furan yelled. ‘Find him!’

As he reached the top of the stairs Otto paused for a moment, listening to the sound of someone moving along the gantry between him and his objective. He crept forward, staying low as he heard another footstep somewhere ahead and to his left. The muffled sounds of the ongoing battle outside were not making it easy to pick out where exactly the other person was, so he kept moving, praying that he was not about to walk straight into the arms of one of Furan’s thugs. He thought he’d made it when his arm brushed against something and he felt a hand clutch at his hair.

‘He’s up here on the launch gantry!’ a voice yelled from right next to him and Otto broke into a run, knowing he had only seconds before the man who had just given away his position found him again. He reached the end of the raised walkway and put out his hand, feeling cold metal under his fingertips. He had no idea if this was going to work but there was only one way to find out.

‘This is going to really hurt,’ Otto whispered to himself. He reached around to the back of his neck and wrapped his fingers around the metal disc that was hooked into his flesh. Gritting his teeth, he gave the small device a yanking twist and couldn’t stop himself hissing in pain as the claws holding the jammer in place tore through his skin. He pulled again and the disc came away, sticky with the blood that he could already feel trickling down the back of his neck. He flung the device away over the edge of the gantry, hoping that the metallic clatter as it hit the hangar floor might offer some sort of temporary distraction.

I believe I know what you are intending to do, H.I.V.E.mind said inside Otto’s head. I will help in whatever way I can.

Otto didn’t reply – he couldn’t without giving away his position – but he was hugely relieved to be able to hear H.I.V.E.mind again. Now he just had to hope that the rest of his abilities were working too. He reached out with his mind, feeling for the locking mechanism of the armoured canopy in front of him. He quickly convinced the simple keypad lock that he had in fact just punched in the correct numeric code and with a mechanical whirring sound the armoured canopy of the last Goliath mech lifted open.

‘He’s boarding the Goliath,’ Furan yelled, a sudden edge of panic in his voice. ‘Stop him!’

Otto climbed quickly into the padded pilot’s seat of the Goliath and willed the canopy closed again. It shut with a thunk and he mentally altered the keypad code for entry. He was safe for a couple of minutes at least. What he couldn’t know was whether or not Overlord and Furan had some way of remotely disabling one of these things. He had to move fast.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’m going to hook us up to this thing. I need you to scan it and tell me how it works.’

It may take some time to give you a full operational briefing for such a complex piece of machinery, H.I.V.E.mind responded.

‘Just dump the raw data into my head,’ Otto said.

As you wish, H.I.V.E.mind replied. You may initiate the connection.

Otto closed his eyes, trying to ignore whoever had just started banging on the armoured glass of the canopy. He felt the Goliath’s systems all around him as he linked up to them, starting the mech’s power-up sequence and feeling the on-board computers booting.

Beginning system scan, H.I.V.E.mind said.

Otto waited, feeling H.I.V.E.mind racing around the Goliath’s systems, building a map of the functionality of the giant machine.

‘Come on,’ he whispered impatiently.

I am going as fast as I can, H.I.V.E.mind replied.

‘Call yourself a super-computer?’ Otto said, buckling the pilot’s harness. ‘More like a pocket calculator.’

No need to be rude, H.I.V.E.mind replied. Though I am admittedly somewhat limited by the processing power of my host system.

‘Touché,’ Otto said with a smile.

System scan complete. If you are prepared I can initiate the transfer to your consciousness.

‘Do it,’ Otto said, wondering how it was going to feel.

Write access granted, proceeding with transfer.

Otto had the bizarre sensation of knowledge simply appearing in his head fully formed. It was almost as if someone had just flicked a switch, which he supposed was, in some ways, exactly what had happened.

Transfer complete. Was the write successful?

‘Let’s find out, shall we?’ he said as the banging on the darkened canopy got louder. ‘Initiating system start-up.’ He flicked a series of switches and the instrument panel in front of him lit up like a Christmas tree. As the displays flared into life they provided just enough illumination for Otto to make out the enraged face of Pietor Furan standing on the gantry outside. Otto blew him a kiss and punched the button on the control panel that released the umbilicals attaching the Goliath to the launch gantry. He leant on the control stick mounted to the right of the pilot’s seat and the huge mech began to move forward, each step sending a shuddering impact up through his spine. Suddenly he understood why the pilot’s seat was so well padded.

Otto flicked another switch and activated the FLIR sensors mounted on the front of the Goliath, illuminating the pitch dark of the hangar with infrared light and allowing him to see where he was going via the canopy’s night vision filter. Ahead of him were the enormous doors to the hangar bay. He could hear bullets from the assault rifles carried by the guards pinging harmlessly off the armoured hull of the Goliath. They might as well have been using rocks and pointy sticks for all the good they were doing. Otto reached out for the mechanisms controlling the doors but found that, just like the rest of the facility, they were currently without power. He grabbed the control sticks on either side of the pilot’s seat, swinging the Goliath’s massive arms forward and opening the triple-clawed pincers. He closed the claws around the framework of the doors and heard the sound of metal grinding against metal. Putting the Goliath into reverse he started to drag the massive doors inwards. With the hydraulic rams offline it was surprisingly easy. The gap between them widened and light from the canyon outside flooded into the hangar, the sounds of pitched battle increasing in volume.

Otto opened the doors just far enough for the Goliath to pass through and set the giant machine walking forward into the early morning light. He could see the two other Goliaths several hundred metres away, their backs towards him, laying down an impenetrable field of fire that was driving the friendly forces back down the canyon. He directed his Goliath towards the two other machines, raising the giant Gatling cannons on the back of each arm and spinning their barrels up to speed. One of the Goliaths started to turn towards him. He had no idea if the pilot of the other mech had realised that he had taken control of this machine but he wasn’t going to wait to find out. He centred the cross-hairs displayed on the glass of the canopy and squeezed the triggers on the arm controls. Both of the giant cannons opened up, sending a hail of shells the size of milk bottles into the hostile mech. The enemy Goliath staggered under the force of the assault, its front armour smoking and pockmarked where the barrage of fire had struck. It raised its own cannons towards Otto and opened fire. Otto activated the engines on the back of his mech and launched into the air, narrowly avoiding the torrent of shells that ripped apart the rock face directly behind where it had been standing seconds before. The enemy Goliath managed one burst of fire before Otto’s Goliath screamed down towards it feet first, sending the machine flying backwards into the canyon wall in an explosion of dust.

‘Warning, anti-missile system damaged,’ a soft mechanical voice said inside the Goliath’s cockpit.

‘Not good,’ Otto muttered.

Staying within minimum safe range relative to the hostile armoured units will ensure that they cannot use their offensive missile systems, H.I.V.E.mind suggested.

‘Get in close, got it,’ Otto replied. He pushed the pedal down hard, sending the Goliath running forward, and slammed shoulder first into the enemy mech, crushing it against the rocks, then swung the Goliath’s arm around to grab hold of the cannon on the other machine’s arm, wrenching it from its mountings with a screech of tearing metal. Otto ducked in his seat involuntarily as he saw the closed claw fist of the hostile mech’s other arm swing at his canopy. There was a colossal boom inside the cockpit as the punch landed, cracking the glass but not shattering it. Otto swung the remains of the Gatling cannon that he was still holding, using it as a club and bringing it crashing down on the other mech. The enemy Goliath staggered and Otto pressed home the advantage, dropping the ruined cannon and grabbing at the reinforced structure of the other mech’s cockpit canopy with both claws. He yanked the arm controls apart and the armoured struts around the enemy’s canopy started to give way with a screech. There was a sudden explosion of shattering armoured glass and the canopy exploded, leaving the pilot exposed.

Incoming, was all that H.I.V.E.mind had time to say before a barrage of half a dozen missiles from the other Goliath slammed into both him and the remains of the hostile mech. The exposed pilot was killed instantly, the flaming remains of his machine toppling forward in a ruined heap of burning metal. Acrid smoke filled the interior of Otto’s cockpit and he coughed violently as his badly damaged Goliath struggled to its feet. The undamaged mech was striding towards him, cannons raised. Both guns fired just as Otto managed to bring his own Goliath’s arms up in front of the canopy, the giant shells shredding the raised limbs of Otto’s mech but leaving the cockpit mercifully intact.

Behind the enemy mech one of the Alpha squad ran up and fired her grappler unit into its back. Using the electromagnetic adhesion system in her boots and gloves she dragged herself up the armour-plated surface, pulling a disc-shaped charge from the pouch on her hip and slapping it down on the dome of the anti-missile laser. She turned and dived off the top of the Goliath just as the missile pods on each shoulder swivelled towards Otto, locking on for a final fatal strike. She landed hard but managed to get to her feet, pulling the detonator from her belt as she ran. With a single squeeze of her thumb she triggered the charge and destroyed the armoured dome.

‘All Alpha missile units, take that thing down!’ she yelled into her comm as she ran.

Otto saw the rockets spear almost simultaneously from half a dozen different positions as more of the friendly forces decloaked and fired. They hit the Goliath’s back in an enormous fireball, knocking it to its knees and destroying the vectored thrust unit on its back and one of its missile pods. The enemy Goliath stood up slowly and turned towards the remaining Alphas, arm cannons already spinning.

Otto looked at the damage control readout for his own Goliath and saw red lights across the board.

All weapon systems are offline. Our offensive options are limited, H.I.V.E.mind said.

‘We’ve still got one weapon left,’ Otto said, checking that one particular system was still working.

We have? H.I.V.E.mind replied.

‘Yeah,’ Otto said with a grin. ‘Gravity.’

He fired the controls for the thruster unit on the back of his own Goliath and launched it at the other machine. There was a thunderous boom as the two mechs collided and Otto grabbed on to the hostile unit with his own Goliath’s badly damaged arms, wrenching at the control stick and sending the two machines soaring into the sky. After a few seconds they had passed fifteen hundred metres and he pulled the arm controls apart. The other Goliath grabbed at one of Otto’s machine’s arms, tearing the damaged limb away at the shoulder, and then Otto watched as the enemy mech tumbled helplessly down towards the desert far below.

‘Happy landings,’ he said, turning his Goliath back towards the AWP facility and flying down into the canyon just as the thrust unit gave out completely. His Goliath slammed into the rocky ground and slid to a halt a few hundred metres from the facility’s blast doors. The surviving members of the Alpha team ran towards the wreckage, unsure what they would find. As they approached the ruined machine a series of explosive bolts fired and the canopy cover popped off. Otto half climbed and half fell out of the smoking hole, getting slowly to his feet as the Alphas gathered around.

‘Ow!’ he said.

‘Otto Malpense, I presume,’ one of the Alphas said, helping him to his feet.

‘Yeah,’ Otto replied as he rolled his head around his shoulders, ‘and who are you guys?’

‘Well, actually, that’s sort of complicated.’

Darkdoom breathed a sigh of relief as he saw Otto climb from the wreckage of the Goliath. The attack on the Alphas had already cost them nearly a third of their team.

‘Darkdoom to Alpha team,’ he said, ‘get inside now. We’re going to turn the power back on once you’re through the doors. Be prepared for heavy resistance inside.’

‘Roger that,’ one of the Alphas replied.

‘It’s worse than that,’ Otto’s voice said over the comm. ‘Is Nero there?’

‘No,’ Darkdoom replied. ‘He, Shelby and Wing are inside the base. They got us into the AWP network and were about to open the blast doors but you beat them to it.’

‘Can you patch me through to him? You both need to hear what Overlord is planning,’ Otto said.

‘Of course. Hold on one second,’ Darkdoom replied. ‘Max, I have Otto on comms. He says he needs to speak to us both.’

‘Go ahead,’ Nero said, his voice sounding strained.

Otto quickly explained the details of Overlord’s plan to Nero and Darkdoom.

‘My God!’ Darkdoom said quietly as Otto finished.

‘That might just be what Overlord will be if we let him do this,’ Otto said.

‘Overlord has to be stopped before he can release these Animus nanites,’ Nero said.

‘The only way to completely neutralise that threat is to destroy Overlord,’ Otto said. ‘We have to find him.’

‘If he knows the facility has been breached he’s going to retreat to the most secure area of the base,’ Nero said. ‘We just need to find out where that is.’

‘It’s not clear from Drake’s plans,’ Darkdoom said, looking at the three-dimensional schematic of the base on the display in front of him. ‘We need to locate the hostages too.’

‘Leave that to us,’ Nero said. ‘Get the Alphas inside and start to clear the facility of resistance. It’s a safe bet that wherever Overlord is, he’ll have surrounded himself with his best men. Otto, once we have taken the hangar you are to stay there with a protective detail. We cannot risk letting you fall into Overlord’s hands now.’

‘I know that,’ Otto replied, ‘but you have to promise me that we don’t leave without Laura and Lucy.’

‘I don’t leave people behind, Otto – surely you’ve realised that by now.’