Syndicate Wars: False Dawn (Seppukarian Book 4) Read online

  SYNDICATE WARS :FALSE DAWN

  JUSTIN SLOAN

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Author Notes

  About the Author

  1

  Samantha picked her way down through an untamed landscape, moving over outcroppings of red rocks, beyond thorny underbrush, and along washouts that had been without rain for weeks. She skidded down over granite cliffs and hopped by piles of moraine, the ground falling off steeply on either side into scrub-studded gullies.

  At a steep hillside, she needled her way down and came to a stop on a valley floor that had the brownish color of river sediment. A fine, white mist hovered over the flat ground, shrouding everything in a hazy half light. Her mind reeled. She was lost, confused.

  “Mom?” Samantha called out, hand cupped to her mouth.

  Her voice echoed, but nothing stirred, save a thin breeze that shimmied through a nearby stand of brush. Somehow she’d wandered away from the base and gotten lost. But where was she? What time was it? And more importantly, where the hell were the others? She was alone and felt the bitter taste of abandonment at the back of her throat.

  “MOM!” she shouted again, louder this time even as a hesitant undertone crept into her voice.

  The loop of string Eli had given her began to quiver.

  Something skittered at her feet. The movement was nearly imperceptible, but was there just the same. It was the dust on the ground trembling, as if being shaken in a sieve.

  This was followed by a sound … far off in the distance, at first.

  A dry, undulating note that rose out of the mist to become a buzzing, growing louder still, a sound that seemed composed of a million smaller sounds. The sound trailed across the valley and in seconds it was like being stuck in the middle of the world’s largest bee hive. Before she could process this, something flapped past her right ear. She turned in every direction, her eyes wild, nostrils slowly pulling back.

  What was it? A locust? A small bird?

  Something else suddenly wavered the air near her head. This time she saw it–a large grasshopper. It was followed by five more, then a flock of bugs flapped past, causing the mist to dissipate. The herd of insects turned upward, the congregation of bugs so large that that it nearly blotted out what little sunlight there was.

  The bugs were quickly in her hair, exploring the curves of her face, the small spaces on her neck, and down near the small of her back. The ground was aswarm as well, every inch covered by something shiny and multi-legged, everything clicking and ticking as Samantha screamed and swatted them away.

  She dropped to the ground and, as quickly as it began, the insect invasion was over.

  The creatures had moved on.

  They were retreating, she thought.

  Hopping as fast as they could … away from her, or … away from something else.

  Liquid suddenly appeared underfoot. Seeping up from the ground in places that looked to have been dry since the days of old. Then the earth began to bubble and water poured forth from fissures. Samantha thought back on a passage from the Bible, something about Noah and the fountains of the great deep rising up.

  In seconds, the water was at her ankles, then up to her knees. She swiveled and moved back toward higher ground only to see torrents of water crashing down the hillsides, flooding the valley.

  She turned to flee, but some enormous object crashed down behind her with such force that she was flung forward, falling headfirst into the water. Samantha tasted the muddy water and shot to her feet as a new sound ripped the air. A guttural, industrial sound reverberated. The kind of thing a blowtorch or a commercial furnace makes upon being started up for the first time in a very long while.

  She turned to find a towering figure rising up out of the water at the lip of the horizon, piercing the murky sky. The thing was so large she thought it might be a building, a skyscraper that she’d failed to notice before. She chuckled at the absurdity of this. Who the heck would put a building out in this wasteland?

  The building shunted to the left and then metallic poles, what looked like titanic outriggers on a canoe, jutted out of its sides. The outriggers dangled at impossible angles and then they speared into the water. The thing began shaking itself like a wet dog. Then the building began lumbering, crashing through the water and Samantha saw that it wasn’t a building at all, but something else … some Syndicate construct, a mechanized machine, what looked like some demonic, industrial sculpture brought to life. The thing was largely, if not completely, mechanical, but its movement and appearance made it look somehow … bestial.

  The thing spider-stepped forward, and Samantha observed its core, what looked like a metal thorax that was sleek and gray and cylindrical, suspended on its outrigger-like legs. At the apex of the thorax was a turret the back of which expelled bursts of greenish gas as the thing bounded menacingly through the water with surprising agility. Just above the outrigger-legs emerged a pair of whip-like arms that resembled enormous strands of oversized, metal conduit. The arms swept down over the water, the ends containing what looked to Samantha like circular sensors that glowed red. The construct, what Samantha could now see was indeed a twenty-story, mechanized search and destroy drone, continued to swing its arms, looking for any hint of life.

  A mix of fury and fear in her eyes, Samantha turned her back on the drone, the water still rising. Her pulse was racing, but she wasn’t panicking. Not yet at least. The drone loosed a cry that sounded like a symphony of jackhammers pistoning the ground all at once. Samantha sloshed forward, feeling the curling wakes left by the construct as it plowed through the water behind her. She was pushed forward by the wake, falling, swimming, fighting to reach what was still left of the rapidly vanishing shoreline and then—

  A shadow passed over her like an eclipse.

  The outline of the construct approaching from behind. It was so large it turned what was likely early morning into twilight.

  The heat from the construct was like an oven, causing steam to rise up from the water all around her. She swiveled to see that the drone had stopped.

  It had lowered its turret down on a flexible, metal ringlet, and she could see the thing’s smooth snout. One of its arms swung around, snake-like, and Samantha examined its end. Instead of a sensor, she was horrified to see a disc studded with metal teeth. The mighty disc whirred to life, lowering slowly toward her, even as the machine paused. It seemed to be appraising her!

  Samantha, summoning her last ounce of courage, pointed and screamed at the drone, “If you want me, come and get me!”

  The construct plunged forward. Standing there in the shadow of the metal monster, Samantha continued to scream and hurl insults. If she was going down, she would do so on her own terms. But her brave words were belied by her body language. She was scared now, her face knotted up in agony an
d defiance. Sucking a breath through her teeth, she raised her arms and closed her eyes and tried to will some of the magic Hadrian had showed her back into the world. The spinning disc didn’t stop and nothing, aside from fury and fear, emanated from Samantha who stood, rooted in place. She opened her eyes at the instant that the metal teeth scythed toward her on the spinning disc and—

  WHUNK!

  Flashed past, directly over her head.

  Slamming into something behind Samantha!

  There was a cloud of friction sparks, Samantha was cowering, but still able to see the disc glance off the leg of something else, an enormous form that was descending from the sky like a puppet on a string. The thing, and she assumed it was another machine or construct, was so immense that it was impossible to estimate its size. All she could see was one titanic leg falling down—

  BOOM!

  With sufficient force to disperse the water all around her until she could see dry land once again. Another leg slammed down and the thing from the sky strode forward, each step like an earthquake. She sensed that whatever this second beast was, it was no ally of the Syndicate drone.

  She soon found herself sandwiched between the behemoths, and the Syndicate drone reared up and charged forward. The machine leaped over Samantha and drove itself into the leg of the second drone with the force of a wrecking ball.

  The two machines began battling as Samantha looked on. But the Syndicate drone was no match for the larger machine that plucked it up with two mighty pincers and tore it apart. Samantha covered her head as the detritus from the gutted drone splashed down all around her. Then a triumphant howl emanated from the monstrous thing from the sky, a sound so loud that it blew out her eardrums. Blood geysered from the piping of her nose as—

  “AGHHHH!” Samantha woke from this vision with a terrible start, screaming, lacquered with fear sweat. She rolled over, gasping for breath, peering up to see Luke and Calee gaping down at her. Their foreheads were creased with worry. Luke moved over and knelt beside her, taking her wrist in his hand.

  “I saw one of them,” Samantha said. “It was huge … it was like a building that had sprouted legs.”

  “It was a nightmare,” Luke said, mustering a smile.

  Samantha leaned back and clasped her hands around her knees. She began rocking back and forth, just like she’d always done to self-soothe when she was a child. She’d read a book a year earlier about native people, about something called “dreamtime” or “time out of time.” A semi-mythical experience of encountering, in the present, an out of time past, a feeling of the past colliding with the future, everything happening all at once.

  She knew it was no true dream.

  A quake rumbled through her small frame. She felt a burning in her arms, which were still splotched red, and smelled the odor of burning matches. Her pupils contracted and everything seemed to spring into focus. It was as if the doors of perception had been heaved open, so many disordered thoughts assaulted Samantha all at once.

  She thought of things she had no earthly reason to consider: the basis for the rise and fall of civilizations, Fermi’s paradox, the reasons why prior to the invasion, there had been no confirmed contact with any other, intelligent life. At that moment, and immediately after her vision, it all made sense. In a universe that was billions of years old with solar systems separated by space and time, there had likely been other intelligent life. Other civilizations had indeed emerged, developed, and blossomed, only to be snuffed out by the same thing that Hadrian had warned her about. What was it?

  Destroyer of worlds, a voice cooed in her ear. The very same thing that had descended from the sky in her vision and eviscerated the Syndicate drone as if it was a child’s plaything.

  The dust had fallen figuratively from her eyes. Whatever that dark force was, it was coming again. She could feel it in her marrow.

  She stopped rocking and her eyes swung up to Luke and Calee.

  “The Syndicate – it – I don’t think they’re the enemy,” she gasped.

  2

  Before Luke and Calee could react, there came a loud knock at the door. Samantha turned and the door burst open to reveal four burly resistance fighters. Three of them held rifles, the fourth clutched an old-school Taser gun.

  The resistance fighters whispered to each other and pointed and then tromped toward Samantha. When Luke rose and ran to protect Samantha, he was dropped with a shot from the Taser gun. He fell to the ground, writhing, as Calee shrieked and was met by the barrel of a gun.

  “It’s okay,” Samantha said, waving Calee off. “I’ll go quietly.”

  Samantha’s bindings were cut. They grabbed her, hauled her through the blast door and then marched her down a narrow inlet that meandered between the silo’s primary corridors. She fought off thoughts of her vision, focusing instead on the fact that her hands were free. Surreptitiously, she began wriggling her fingers, focusing her mind’s eye, trying to muster up the stored energy she’d been able to unleash back in the grocery store.

  “Okay, so let’s get the weirdness over with. What have you guys got planned for me?” Samantha asked.

  One of the guards, a bald shit-kicker cloaked in urban camouflage, grabbed her shoulders and turned her around.

  “We were told not to speak with you,” the fighter said.

  “Good to see you’re following orders,” Samantha replied.

  “Don’t listen to her,” another fighter said. “You know what Xan told us.”

  Samantha frowned. “What’d she tell you?”

  “That you’re one of them. That you’re an alien,” answered the fighter, some trepidation in his voice.

  Samantha thought about this. Then she leaned into the fighter as if readying to whisper a secret to him. “You know what?” she asked. “Xan’s right. I’ve been sent down from the skies in the form of the young, yet surprisingly hip and very cool chick that you see before you. I’ve come to teach you all a lesson!”

  The fighters traded looks and then Samantha cackled devilishly and threw out her arms as if casting a spell. The fighters flinched, stepping back and that’s when Samantha struck. She punted the closest fighter as hard as she could in the groin.

  The fighter timbered to his knees and, in the confusion, Samantha darted back and dashed off down through the silo’s cramped hallways. She dodged right, then hooked a left as a siren sounded from behind.

  Grabbing the railings on a staircase, she pulled herself up onto a catwalk and leaped forward. Her mind was in overdrive, trying to simultaneously consider all avenues of escape while avoiding detection. What was the plan? She’d find a way up to the surface and then take off and hide and wait for her mother to arrive. But what if she didn’t make it back? What if something had gone wrong? What if Quinn and the others had arrived only to be confronted by the other resistance fighters? Xan was certainly a rat, but was she capable of that? Would she actually try and murder her mother and the other Marines? Dark thoughts swirled as Samantha hurried forward down the catwalk.

  Twenty paces later, she’d dipped into an alcove filled with supplies and closed her eyes, trying once again to duplicate the feats she’d seen with Hadrian. C’mon, she growled to herself! You did it once, you can do it again! For a moment, some primal switch deep inside her was flipped and the faces of Xan and the resistance fighters who imprisoned her took on the appearances of other people. A pack of cooler kids from back in school. The ones who’d tormented her for looking and acting different. The girls with trendy names like Emerson and Hudson, who didn’t care for the style of her hair or the cut of her clothes, or the fact that she didn’t have a father. She had visions of being locked in a trance-like state, able to summon up enough energy to teach them and Xan, and all the others who looked down on her with disdain, a lesson.

  Hands in front of her face, she scrunched up her nose and pumped her fingers, waiting for something, anything, to happen and then it did! Something, some … thing fluttered in the semi-darkness. Samantha angled u
p a hand and a previously unseen plastic water bottle rolled into view and began quivering. Yes, she’d moved it! She twisted her wrist and the bottle seemed to move again. Footfalls echoed somewhere out beyond her hiding spot and Samantha, emboldened by the movement of the water bottle, decided it was time to confront her pursuers. She was ready to deal with them.

  Smiling, she stepped out of the alcove and spotted a half-dozen resistance fighters glaring at her from the other end of the catwalk.

  “Stop where you are!” she shouted in her deepest, most authoritative voice. “If you take another step I’ll punish you!”

  The fighters looked at each other and then they moved forward.

  Samantha threw out her hands. “TAKE THAT!” she screamed.

  She’d expected flashes of light and impressive booms and the echo of thunder and then the fighters would fall down before her! That, or at the very least, they’d scream like little girls and run away.

  But … nothing happened.

  Not a friggin’ thing.

  “Crap,” Samantha said. She stared at her hands. She whipped them out again and closed her eyes and concentrated so hard she thought she was going to get a migraine.