Different Paths (36 page)

Seeing his chance, he sent a secure com-link
message to Officer Ernspiker.

Ernspiker answered, “Yes El-tee? What can I do for
you?”

“Pardon the intrusion Officer Ernspiker but I
noticed that you were involved in a recent raid at the Safehouse down near the
airport.”

“Yes sir…that was me. I was on the breaching
team.”

Kristopher paused. He didn’t exactly know how to
phrase the question he really wanted to ask so he decided to ask a general
question and see what came up.

“On that mission, your objective was to neutralize
Spartan and now, I might be asking you to assist him. Is this going to be a
problem?”

“Negative sir, I’ve been on the force long enough
to understand how mission objectives change.” Ernspiker shifted his body
slightly and pointed over his shoulder at another officer. “Now, if I can just
keep Sponge Bob from shooting me this time, it will be all good.”

Even though Spurgeon wasn’t in their conversation,
he must’ve realized what they were discussing because he blurted out on the
team wide comlink. “It was an accident! How many times do I have ta apologize?”

Realizing that their conversation was now team
wide, Kristopher switched channels. “So you know that you’re a clone?”

“Hell yes! I chose the full memory restore option
just in case my death was caused by something I did. Of course, I didn’t expect
to be shot in the head by a friend.”

“It was an accident!”

It was obvious that Buchannan was laughing when he
added, “The whole force has been talking about it for the last few days.”

Before anyone could say anything else, Sgt.
Hamilton barked. “At ease people! We have a job to do and we’re thirty seconds
out. Look sharp!”

Kristopher saw that they were approaching their
destination and brought his R-Gun to his shoulder and mentally prepared himself
to follow his team into the unknown.

The elevator doors opened and the six police
officers rushed into danger.

Chapter 31

Retired Staff Sgt. Scott DeJarnette was in
hog-heaven. Seeing the Master Chief’s signal turn green, he began his entry.

Blowing the crater charge, he fell through to the
floor below him. It was a hallway full of people. Judging from their suits, he
guessed lawyers. Seeing them run away in full panic mode made him smile even
more. To him, lawyers were at the very bottom of the ladder in human evolution,
just barely above politicians.

Setting and blowing his next charge, DJ continued
this process until he was falling through the last barricade to his designated
coordinates. Having never used this breaching method before, the Marine was
slower than the deadly Spec Ops warrior turned bounty hunter but still faster
than the Galactic Marshals posted outside the Grand Rotunda. His HAVOC-V suit
began to identify tangos and display them on his HUD. There were twenty-seven
red circles, eight orange and twelve yellow in the overly large foyer he landed
in. Luckily, the majority of the red tangos were clustered in one area at the
far end of the hall.

Landing heavily, large cracks formed in the tile
floor as the stone and metal rubble filled the foyer.

DJ engaged his external speakers and shouted,
“Coalition Marines! Non-combatants hit the floor!”

Without waiting for an answer, DJ lifted his left
arm in a sweeping motion which encompassed the entire room while he fired off a
series of puck-like objects. Three seconds later, the flash-bangs began to go
off. Not all at once but in the same order he fired them. The resulting
explosions of light and sound rolled across the room knocking people down and
blowing out every single window on the level.

This bought the Marine enough time to move the
fifty feet to the only entrance to the auditorium.

Knowing he only had seconds until he was under
assault, DJ kicked the only Marshall that was in his path. The Praetorian went
flying across the room and crashed into the wall with a resounding thud.
Reaching the doorway, he dropped the bag he had been carrying slung over his
shoulder. Pulling out four black metal posts that were about three feet tall,
each capped on both ends with a silver ball, he set them down in a semi-circle
pattern; one on each side of the door and two in the middle. Powering them up,
the portable shield generators filled the space in between the posts with a
blue-white light which crackled with energy.

Sporadic blaster fire began bouncing off his
energy barricade as the Praetorians slowly regained their senses.

DJ grinned and squatted down behind his barrier
which protected the lower portions of his armor. Pointing his Typhoon Series 10
Gatling Gun at the offending Marshals, DJ squeezed the trigger.

*   *   *   *   *

Jay tried to wait the entire minute but failed
miserably.

Even with numerous floors in between them, he heard
and felt his friends’ entries. Following the plan, with the exception of the
timing, the Master Chief began blowing his way through the floors until he was
inside the auditorium of the Grand Rotunda. Since his entry was planned to be
slightly covert, his fall was less than twenty feet as he landed on the top
balcony, three floors above the battle raging below.

Moving to the edge, Jay involuntarily grimaced as
the Praetorians fired their disruptors, hitting his friend. His first instinct
was to help. He wanted so badly to shoot the Marshals but Iaido had been
adamant; no shooting unless the General’s life was in jeopardy. He was to be
overwatch and only act in defense of the President’s life.

Pulling out his Keres RG50 Sniper Rifle, Jay lay
down and placed his deadly rifle on the bipod to help steady it. As he powered
up the powerful railgun, he watched as his suit immediately interfaced with the
enhanced optical scope mounted on the rifle. As he looked through the scope,
his HUD reflected the movement and the target reticule popped up with
corresponding data such as percentages of a kill shot and remaining ammo. With
a flick of his eye and a simple thought, Jay engaged the inertial dampeners and
doubled his mass. He knew from past use that the Keres had one hell of a kick.

Jay couldn’t help but reflect how the makers of
the Keres RG50 Sniper Rifle had chosen such an appropriate name for such a
deadly weapon.

Keres, the ancient Greek spirit of death,
sometimes translated as violent death. Technically, Keres meant ‘choice’ as in
the chooser of the slain. In Greek literature they were very similar to the
Norse mythos deities known as the Valkyries, beneficial spirits who hovered
over the battlefield waiting on the chance to choose who died. And here he was,
posted up; ready to choose who lived and who died…just like the spirits of old.

Silently Jay watched as Iaido tossed the General
to safety behind a nearby desk but took several hit from the Praetorian’s
disruptors for his actions.

He reflexively scanned his HUD for any new tangos.
There was nothing, except a faint echo nearby. With a flick of his eye, he
shifted the ARC suit radar from passive to active. Every suit had the ability
to actively scan in a fifty yard radius. Rarely did any of the SPEC OPS soldiers
use this function since it would almost immediately give away their position
but there was something strange about the echo and Jay thought it worth the
risk.

Jay kept one eye on the ongoing battle below him
and the other on the radar. Nothing unexpected came back in the first few
seconds. He was about to switch back to passive scanning when proximity alarms
went off in his suit and a large echo that was vaguely man-sized appeared right
on top of him.

Jay’s combat instincts kicked in. He quickly
rolled to his right and tried to bring his Graver Mk7 pistol to bear on the
tango knowing the whole time that he would be too late.

He didn’t make it.

There was a flash of intense pain and the mental
image of his left hand, still clutching his pistol, flying through the air. His
ARC suit immediately sealed the wound with clotting agents and using advance
biometrics technologies turned off the pain receptors in his left arm. All that
took less than a second, he still had another hand and an enemy over top of him
but Jay paused in his attack instead of grabbing his old reliable shotgun.

It wasn’t pain or fear or shock but wonderment at
the black shadowy form hovering over him which actually caused the Master Chief
to pause.

Jay’s analytical mind immediately slipped into
overdrive to try and understand what he was looking at. He could tell that it
was a man but his face and body seemed to be cloaked in black smoke. Jay tried
to peer through the haze to get a better view of the creature overtop him.

That was right up until the shadowy figure plunged
a silver sword through his armor and into his gut.

Then all he knew was pain.

Chapter 32

Iaido quickly scanned the entire Rotunda.

There were only the four of them in sight, the
General, the Galactic Marshal, Aeneas’ clone and himself. Of course, that was
ignoring the fact of the politician huddling behind the podium or two media
people toward the back of the room or his friend in the overwatch position
which he hoped was still a secret from the Praetorians.

Shrugging off the last of his ruined armor, Iaido
readjusted the armband which contained his shield generator and calmly pulled
free the ancient Blade of the Elements. Slowly he made his way around the
podium until he was standing on the floor of the Grand Rotunda.

“Hello brother.”

The clone that was Aeneas rolled his shoulders and
held out an empty hand to the Galactic Marshal standing beside him. Without a
word, the young Praetorian placed a gladius in his hand. Aeneas bent down and
pulled free another sword from the dead marshal at his feet and stepped into
the opening.

“Hello Achilles.”

“I’m confused.”

Aeneas grinned. “Let me guess, Jagger Jax?”

Iaido nodded. “It’s obvious that you used a
molecular realigner on your face to make your features match that of the
criminal.”

Aeneas nodded. “I’ll admit; it’s more painful than
I imagined. But if you figured that out, what’s your question?”

“The real Jagger Jax? What happened to him and was
he really responsible for his crimes?”

“You would ask that.” Aeneas gestured to the
bodies around them. “Even with all this going on, you’re thinking about how
unfair it was that the Major and I framed an innocent man. Well, Jagger Jax
wasn’t innocent. Granted…any of the crimes that he’s been accused of in the
last year weren’t him but me. Of course, if he hadn’t already been on the Most
Wanted list we would’ve picked someone else.”

“So you killed him?”

Aeneas shook his head. “Nope. He was alive the
last time I saw him. But then, those working in the mines of Mercury tend to
die a quick death.”

Iaido nodded. “You realize that all this is
futile? The Major is dead and the FSA has teams sweeping through the city
disarming the bombs.”

Aeneas hesitated for a second before asking, “You
killed the Major?”

“No. He took the coward’s path out and killed
himself.” Iaido saw a brief flash of anger in the eyes of his two opponents and
pressed his advantage. “I guess once a coward, always a coward.”

Anger and rage washed all across the face of the
young Praetorian. “Father was no coward!”

Before Iaido could goad him further, Aeneas tucked
one sword under his arm and placed a calming hand on his younger cousin. “Don’t
let him get to you Tiberius. He’s trying to make you angry. A true warrior
doesn’t get angry. Anger leads to narrow thinking and target fixation. It will
only make you easier to kill.”

Now it was Iaido’s turn to grin. “Very good. I
guess you truly are Aeneas.”

“You had your doubts?”

“Yes. Judging from the ease that I’ve been able to
kill the Major’s pet creations, it had crossed my mind that you were nothing
more than one of his Praetorians made up to look like my brother.”

Aeneas smirked and began twirling the twin gladii
in a complex pattern that Iaido recognized.

It was known as the form of Attica, an aggressive
sword dance from ancient Greece that the Omega handlers had taught them many
years ago. As far as he knew, there was no one outside of the original ten who
knew this particular sword form. In the final move, Aeneas leapt high into the
air and jabbed downward with his twin swords as he landed in a kneeling
position. Both blades bit deep into the marble floor, as a testament to the
cutting power of the deadly weapons and the skill of the wielder.

Aeneas looked up. “Satisfied?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t change the fact that this
can end right here. We don’t have to come to blows.”

“We most certainly do.”

“Why? With the Major dead, you no longer have to
walk this path.”

Aeneas readied his swords. “As long as the General
is alive, we will not rest.”

Stupidly, the President took this moment to pop
his head above the desk and asked, “But why? What have I ever done to you?”

Aeneas and Tiberius shifted their attention toward
the cowering politician but it was the young Praetorian which said, “Father
told us that it was you who was collaborating with the Confederates. It was you
that was selling information to the separatists.”

The President actually stood up in his own
defense. “Preposterous. That is a complete and utter lie.”

Iaido inwardly grinned as he watched the anger
wash over the young Praetorian’s face. The General had been able to rile up the
young soldier with just a few words.

Before Aeneas could calm or prevent him from doing
anything foolish, Tiberius yelled, “Liar!”

As the Praetorian leapt to the attack, the
President tried to dodge back under the cover of the desk but never would’ve
made it in time. However, Iaido intervened.