Enemy One (Epic Book 5) Read online

  ENEMY ONE

  Lee Stephen

  Stone Aside Publishing, L.L.C.

  Contents

  Chapter 0

  PART I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  PART II

  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

  PART III

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  PART IV

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Acknowledgements

  About The Author

  EXPERIENCE EPIC LIKE NEVER BEFORE

  AUDIO BOOK–Narrated by Patrick Quance

  STARRING

  Stewart Cummings

  Michael Paladine

  Joshua Samson

  Robin Egerton

  Rick Tamblyn

  Jake Eberle

  Elisa Eliot

  Paul Bellantoni

  Rick Simmonds

  Charlie James

  Charles Lipper

  Steve Bailey

  Brian Fish

  Jesse Cox

  Gabriel Wolf

  Al Wood

  Jake Eastman

  Ellen Sowney

  Holly Larkey

  Kevin Frazier

  Chetachi Egwu

  Wendy Podgursky

  Xander Mobus

  Roosevelt Sims

  Billy Sage

  Available on all Major Audiobook Retailers

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  Dedicated to

  You, reading this.

  For your unwavering support.

  For your enduring patience.

  For supporting me when I needed it most.

  It’s good to be back.

  0

  Friday, March 16th, 0012 NE

  1722 hours

  Philadelphia, USA

  THEY WENT IN as a six-man team. It was a simple operation: neutralize the enemy. The same as always. Or at least the same as the one other time they’d done it.

  Mark wiped his sweaty hands on his pants as he waited. With hazel eyes staring ahead from his crouched position behind cover, he waited to hear his signal over the comm. It was certain to come—things were designed that way. It was only a matter of when.

  When.

  “Man down!”

  Mark’s eyes widened. He sucked in a breath. He dashed from cover.

  “Two down! Two down! Henderson is down!”

  Mark slid behind a column, his heart racing. “Veck,” he cursed before lifting his comm. “I’m in Block-2A! I’m only seeing one down on my tracker!”

  The voice on the other end was frantic. “4C! 4C! Tyson is in 4C! You should know that.”

  “I know, I’m—” He inhaled again. “Just go,” he whispered, wheezing off-comm. Swinging around the column, he raised his M-19 and bolted forward.

  The grid was a four-by-four arena—sixteen blocks filled with columns, barricades, and corridors. The blocks themselves were over eight thousand square feet, giving the entire grid a size roughly equivalent to an American football field. It was one of several such complexes on the grounds of Philadelphia Academy. Each grid block could be arranged in numerous ways with numerous impediments, giving every training class that entered it a completely customized experience. This was Mark’s second time setting foot inside its twisted walls.

  Leaping over a fallen column, Mark stumbled, regained his footing, then scurried behind an automobile-sized barricade just in time to avoid a splattering of yellow from the paintball equivalent of an E-35 assault rifle. Tucking his knees in to hide himself, he said, gasping, “I have enemy contact!”

  “We all have enemy contact. Get over here!” the voice on the other side answered him.

  Dashing around the protected side of the barricade, Mark ran full speed, sliding under a raised column to emerge on the other side. Ahead, one of his teammates appeared from around a wall corner to provide cover fire. Yellow globs of paint burst against the walls as Mark scrambled to safety around the corner. There, leaning against the wall, arms folded across his chest in disgust, was his so-called injured teammate, Jason Martinez. Across from Jason, doubled over on the floor in all of its critically-injured glory, was the actual wounded party—a life-size mannequin complete with full combat armor and polymer skin. And a lot of blood.

  “Holy crap,” Mark said, the words blurting out the moment he saw the dummy.

  “Not exactly what I was hoping to hear from my medic,” said Jason stoically.

  Kneeling down next to the dummy, Mark opened his medical kit on the floor. His hands were shaking, his heart pounding. Detaching the portion of the dummy’s chest plate that was damaged, he tossed it to the floor. When he ripped open the dummy’s under-armor, the scope of the wound came into view. A scorched hole was bored through the right side of the dummy’s chest. Polymers and faux muscles had melted together in an odorous heap meant to mimic the real thing.

  Swallowing, Mark activated the analyzer in his helmet. Several seconds later, the results appeared as an overlay in his visor. Category-3 Plasma. R. Lung collapse. A reticle highlighted the damaged area.

  A right lung collapse. That would require chest decompression. His training hadn’t gotten that far.

  The same voice that’d called for Mark earlier over the comm called again. “Henderson is critting! I repeat, Henderson is critting!” At the same time, an exchange of gunfire erupted from Mark’s comrade by the corner and their assailants farther down.

  “You got this, man,” said Jason, arms still folded.

  Scooping a handful of burn gel, Mark applied it feverishly to the plasma-cauterized wound. With his other hand, he grabbed a chest dart. “Can Henderson be moved?” he asked through his helmet comm. His voice shook.

  “Negative!”

  Feeling with both hands, Mark positioned the dart above the dummy’s chest. “Three, two, one,” he whispered before jabbing the dart into place. Immediately, his helmet analyzer flashed red.

  Pulmonary artery damaged.

  He froze.

  Along the wall, Jason crouched to observe.

  Mark’s breathing intensified as he stared at the chest dart. His hands red with artificial blood, he wrapped his fingers around it. He pulled it out.

  After a burst of paintball fire, the soldier covering Mark knelt down. “Got ’em off our backs. How’s it going?”

  “He’s working through it,” said Jason.

  A new message flashed across his visor screen, accompanied by the faint sound of a flat-line. Injuries terminal.

  The dummy was a goner.

  Shaking his head, Mark stammered, “I can’t do anything. He’s dead. I—I can’t.”

&nb
sp; Jason watched motionlessly, his fist propped against his mouth. Finally, he spoke. “All right, move on to Henderson.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Mark as he zipped up the med kit. He was on the comm a moment later. “I’m coming! What’s Henderson’s status?” he asked as confidently as possible. He hopped up to begin his run to the second target.

  “Nonresponsive,” the voice on the other end answered.

  This was Mark’s second live-action exercise since enrolling in EDEN Academy as a combat medic. His entire first semester at Philadelphia had been spent reading textbooks and listening to lectures—learning the basics of equipment and weapons handling. Semester number two was geared more toward practical application and medic-specific training. Like most teenagers, Mark had zero medical training prior to enrolling. He was a “from the ground up” project in every sense of the word. The basics were coming.

  But this was not basic.

  Chest needle decompression was an advanced skill, one that no cadet could be realistically expected to perform after essentially reading about it in books. Beyond basic plasma burn treatment and the use of the V-Doc, the visor-integrated medical analyzer, a relatively new device in EDEN’s equipment arsenal, Mark knew as much about human anatomy as the next guy on the street—and probably less, considering his age. That was why the combat medic program lasted two years. And Mark was smack dab in the middle of his first. There was a lot to take in.

  Mark had been warned by combat medic cadets before him that there’d be a “system shock” exercise sometime during his second semester, designed to hit home just how seriously a medic-in-training had to take his or her studies. He’d mistakenly thought that his first live-action exercise the week prior had been it. But this exercise left no question. The other players in the exercise were cadets just like him, though from other programs and in later semesters. Even among rookies, Mark was the least experienced.

  He was in mid-leap over a barricade leading into the next grid when the complex’s klaxons rang out, accompanied by the flashing of red beacons on the ceiling of each grid block. Slowing to an awkward, cloppity-clop stop, Mark sank to his knees, bent forward, and placed his hands atop his head. The exercise was over in mid-execution.

  The comm crackled as Jason spoke. “They didn’t even let us finish?”

  Exhaling slowly, Mark pulled off his helmet. Running a hand through his sweaty brown hair, he stared ahead, devoid of emotion.

  “Mark Remington, report to the green room immediately,” said a voice over the complex’s speaker system.

  His eyes widening, Mark looked up then back with an open mouth. Before he could say anything—not that he would have—Jason spoke aloud to the voice.

  “Hey, this was on me! I told him what to do!”

  The voice on the speaker repeated. “Mark Remington, report to the green room immediately.”

  His own words shaking, Mark said, “Yes, sir!” as loud as he could. Grabbing his helmet, he ran full speed in the direction of the grid entrance.

  Jason was trotting there, too, at a pace slow enough to allow Mark to catch up. “Mark,” the fourth-semester soldier-in-training said to him, “I’m gonna tell ’em this was on me. Don’t worry.”

  Within seconds, they were approaching the entrance. Ahead, a pair of EDEN officials awaited. Gabriel Woods, the instructor in charge of the exercise team, stood with them. The well-built black man looked gut-punched.

  One of the officials spoke before Mark or Jason could. His eyes were solely on the cadet combat medic. “Mark Remington?”

  Mark huffed as he drew to a stop and came to attention. “Yes, sir.”

  “Is your brother Scott James Remington?”

  Confusion hit Mark’s face, followed immediately by panic. Beside him, Jason blinked. “Yes, sir,” Mark said breathlessly.

  The officials swapped a glance before the second one addressed him. “We need you to come with us.”

  “Is he okay?” asked Mark without pause.

  For several seconds, neither official answered. They simply stared at each other, then back at Mark. Finally, the second one replied, the abruptness in his voice fading away. “Son, you just need to come with us.”

  Mark hesitated for a moment, then he stepped forward. As the two officials made their way out of the green room and away from the arena, Mark followed behind them.

  Once they’d gone, Jason looked quizzically at Woods. “Sir, what’s going on?”

  The instructor’s gaze followed Mark and the officials until they were out of view. Still facing away from Jason, he answered, “Get back to your last position. Your training’s not done.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Walking up the stairwell next to the green room, Woods returned to the observation deck to join the exercise evaluators who were standing before a large one-way mirror that allowed them to look down upon the grid. But not one of the evaluators was looking in that direction. They were focused on the wall-mounted television and the talking heads vehemently discussing the soldier whose photo was displayed in the center of the screen. And to the word “Terrorist” that was captioned beneath it.

  And to the terrorist’s last name—Remington.

  PART I

  1

  Saturday, March 17th, 0012 NE

  0936 hours

  Six hours after Cairo

  Krasnoyarsk, Russia

  PIVOTING AROUND the cover of the doorframe, Pyotr Alkaev raised his E-35 assault rifle and fired a burst of 5.56x45mm rounds—his last—into the open street toward the police stronghold. Obscured behind sheets of freezing rain, the police officers took cover behind vehicles parked on the opposite end of the street. Shrinking back inside, he looked at one of his Nightman comrades. “Magazine!” Rushing in Pyotr’s direction, the indicated Nightman tossed a fresh magazine at the door. Pyotr snatched it and slammed it into his weapon. From the door corner opposite him and through every window on the building’s face, more Nightmen released volleys of suppression fire.

  This was, by leaps and bounds, the worst situation the nineteen-year-old Pyotr had ever found himself in. With General Thoor and The Machine having fallen to EDEN, every city with a Nightman presence was in open rebellion. The dark warriors were being pushed out by an amalgamation of law enforcement, local militias, and EDEN supplementary units. With the threat of the Terror gone, a full Nightman purge was in effect. No city was purging more fiercely than Krasnoyarsk.

  Like all of the Nightmen around him, Pyotr was a slayer. There had been a fulcrum—the title of designated Nightman leaders—assigned to Pyotr’s building, which was a safe house. Unfortunately, the fulcrum had been among the first to fall in the attack on their location. There were numerous safe houses throughout the city, none of which were staffed by particularly high-ranking Nightman officials, as the need had simply never been there before. Only a few in the city knew the safe houses existed. But when the purge began and the first waves of Nightmen were taken into custody, the disclosure of the safe houses’ locations happened quickly and liberally. Without Thoor to protect them, the Nightmen were in full panic mode. The dangerous gleam of their black armor was gone.

  Pistol fire ricocheted around the frame of the door, forcing Pyotr and one of his companions back. In the same retaliatory burst, one of the slayers in the window fell backward, struck in the head. The police force, growing in size with every minute, moved closer.

  This was not going to last. Pyotr could see the end drawing nearer. An EDEN squad was heading their way from a street to the north, and several helicopters could be heard making their approaches. There was nowhere for them to run, nothing they could do. Decimated and out of ammunition, Pyotr mentally prepared for his imminent capture.

  Then came the booms. Shrinking back instinctively, Pyotr and the slayers watched as heavy cannon fire erupted against the concrete, forcing law enforcement back as a wall of orange streaks lit up the street. An abandoned vehicle parked in the center of the street exploded as gunfire struck it. The sla
yers retreated from the windows.

  By the time Pyotr reoriented himself and looked back to see what had happened, one of his comrades was already looking out of the window. Hovering onto the scene was an old, war-torn Vulture, its nose-mounted cannon blasting at the police officers’ stronghold and forcing them into a temporary, but full, retreat. Whipping his head back to the others in the room, the stunned slayer at the window shouted, “It is a Vulture!” He looked back at the window again as the Vulture’s tail fin came into view. Gasping, he returned to his comrades. “It is the Pariah!”

  * * *

  SCOTT REMINGTON SHOUTED through his mechanized helmet, “Rashid, go! Rodion, go! Feliks, go!” As the troop bay door lowered, whining against its cables, the three Nightmen who’d been a part of the Cairo rescue team readied their assault rifles for disembarking.

  Bullets popped and pinged across the Pariah’s hull. “Taking heavy fire, heavy fire!” Travis pushed the stick forward, sending the Pariah’s nose pitching down. With his other hand, he reached up to adjust thruster control, yanking Tiffany’s handcuffed hand along with it.