Mitch pulled into the driveway, right up to the front entry, and slammed the big car into park. The team dismounted the vehicle in a smooth flow, the result of hours of practice. Everyone wore body armor and carried a long arm, in addition to their issued pistols.
Mitch, Jay, Alice, and myself had 5.56mm HK416 rifles, Chana had an HK MP5/10A3 submachine gun in 10mm, and Seth carried a Scattergun Technologies variant of the Remington 870 pump 12 gauge shotgun. We were, in short, loaded for bear, or, in this case, alien.
Mitch led Alice and Seth toward the big main house while Chana, Jay, and I moved around the back and followed the gravel path leading to the studio. All of my senses were alert and on edge, biological and nano both.
Behind us, I heard Mitch at the front door, Juliet’s voice raised in argument, her mother sounding equally outraged. Ahead of us, the silent studio building loomed, sinister despite its clean, modern lines and expensive exterior landscape lighting. I moved left, circling the outside, while Chana and Jay spread out across the front, weapons ready. There wasn’t a single sound as I moved, not even insect and night bird sounds, which effectively elevated my paranoia to new levels.
Moving up close to the walls, I could hear a soft hum from something inside, probably a small refrigerator, and the shrill sound of ultrasonic motion detectors. My nanites picked up multiple electromagnetic fields, mostly human normal, but there was a trace of something more as I moved up to the big custom basement bulkhead doors. It was a frequency I couldn’t identify.
I’ve been around the new Omega drones enough, plus a few hours ago I had been exposed to multiple Vorsook technologies. This was kinda like that, but also not. I also smelled something dry and acrid, a sharpish odor that was unfamiliar, yet familiar. Then it came to me—thyme. It smelled like the herb thyme, at least a little. And then there was the odor of dog. Mastiff was closest maybe, but again different.
Gently, ever so gently, I put a hand on the bulkhead. It was a clamshell design, the kind that lifted straight up in one big piece. Hooking my gloved left hand under the edge of the door, I gently applied pressure in a straight upward lift. It didn’t move, didn’t wiggle. Locked.
Cautiously, I moved away.
Everything about this put me even further on edge, if that was possible. These aliens were, according to Omega and Nika, mental giants but not that formidable physically. Nika said they were pretty fast, but not strong, not robust, and certainly not invulnerable like the guards. We had killed the unkillable men in black and destroyed the UFO. Well, actually, Declan, Omega, Draco, and… yeah, credit where credit is due… Stacia had done that. But the point was the Vorsook had lost a serious set of weapons.
And it knew we were coming—it had roused the whole neighborhood against us. No way was it unprotected. No way was it unprepared. The building in front of me was waiting, poised like a trapdoor spider, ready for its prey.
The soft sound of something moving fast through the air Dopplered toward me, my reflexes bringing my rifle to bear before my brain recognized the sound as an Omega drone, approaching from behind.
A black orb the size of a softball shot into the space above the art studio, then slammed to an instant stop, directly over the building. Immediately, I heard a shuffling sound inside, something moving, just a little. It came from below ground level and it ceased almost as soon as I heard it. I froze, listening, but it didn’t come again.
Continuing my sweep, I circled around to the front and slipped in next to Agent Jay. Chana was twenty-five feet away but she moved over to hear my report.
“Something in the basement. Omega has a little drone overhead and I smell dog. Bulkhead is locked.”
“Werewolf?” Jay asked.
“Nope. Dog. Mastiff maybe, but maybe not.”
Sounds of footsteps on gravel brought me around to spot Mitch, Alice, and Seth moving toward us along the path. They looked a little freaked out.
“Are those two in the house secure?” Jay asked.
“Yes, although Juliet got pretty feisty. Jabbed Mitch with a pen. She’s all trussed up now though,” Alice said.
“You good, Agent Allen?” Jay asked.
He swiveled his head, met her gaze for a moment, then nodded. “Minimal wound,” he said, holding out his left hand, which had a Band-Aid over the back of it. Agent Jay nodded, then returned her gaze to the studio.
I studied Mitch, my intuition telling me he wasn’t as okay as he claimed. He noticed me watching him, turned his head, and gave me a nod. I nodded back, but I couldn’t shake the feeling he wasn’t one hundred percent. His motions were a bit off, like he was in pain but didn’t want us to know it. Maybe Juliet hit a nerve cluster in his hand. Maybe it hurt a lot more than he was letting on.
“Okay, Caeco has scouted the building. She believes the Vorsook is inside. She also smells a dog or dogs, large breed maybe. So we need to be ready for anything. The bulkhead will be our entry, as we originally planned. It’s secured, so Alice and Caeco will affix door busters at the two points where this model door secures to the stairwell frame. They will back off. Seth and Chana will take up positions on either end of the building, able to watch both front and back while still able to fire safely, as long as they don’t aim straight at the building. Clear?” she directed at Chana and Seth. They affirmed with nods and with quiet vocalizations.
“The remaining four of us will make the entry. I will fire the entry explosives, Caeco will enter first, followed by Alice, myself, and then Mitch last. We go in with weapon lights on, safeties off, fingers off trigger. I will carry the portable circle device. When we locate the alien, Agent Allen and I will transition to Taser units. Jensen and Barrows will overwatch with rifles. We’ll tase the alien, then I’ll toss the circle over it to contain it. If I fail, Caeco is my backup. After that, we clean up and call for Oracle. Questions?”
“Ma’am, Omega has a drone directly over the building. I would like to ask him to send it in with us,” I said.
Immediately the faces around me tightened, micro-expressions instantly telling me they weren’t comfortable with that plan. Jay looked around at the team, eyebrows up.
Mitch suddenly spoke. “We haven’t trained with it, we don’t know how it will react, it doesn’t know how we’ll react. Too many variables.”
Agent Jay nodded. “He’s exactly right. Maybe in the future we can run some drills, but for here and now, it’ll just be this team. Got it?”
“Yes ma’am,” I said. Mitch’s points were all very valid, very solid, but I didn’t feel good about this operation. Having the drone inside with us would be an enormous safety blanket.
“Okay, let’s get this done. Tick tock,” Jay said.
Immediately, Chana and Seth moved to either side of the building, unable to see each other but able to see us as well as the front of the studio. This way they had clear, intersecting fields of fire without endangering each other. Even if they accidentally fired straight into the building, the blueprints we’d seen showed enough interior walls to stop the 10mm pistol rounds and 12 gauge buckshot loads they were using.
As they settled into place, Alice and I moved forward, each pulling a small, prepared detcord charge from Alice’s munitions box. Then we heel-and-toed it across the lawn to the back of the building, each stepping to one side of the clamshell bulkhead. The model installed used two metal rods that extended into the sides of the stairwell when the handle was twisted. We stuck the detcord to the outside of the door above the rods’ locations. Then Alice placed an additional charge on the handle itself while I stuck an oversized version of an auto body technician’s suction cup puller to the top of the door, twisting the handle to the optimum point where I would grab it.
Entry prep work complete, we hustled back to the other two. Then we stacked, me first, Alice second, Jay third, and Mitch fourth. Alice had her left hand on my left shoulder, ready to tap me when Jay tapped her.
I felt a squeeze of the hand on my shoulder, then a three-count of taps. At the third and final tap, the charges went off, all together—loud, the noise sharp and short. Alice slapped her hand again on my shoulder and I started forward, feeling the others moving along behind me while the remainder of my senses concentrated on the area ahead. The smoke was minimal, the charges designed for just that result, and I grabbed the handle I had suctioned to the door, yanking upward as hard as my left hand could pull, my right holding my rifle muzzle aimed at the black opening revealed as the door yawned upward. The weapon light affixed to the forearm of my rifle sent a powerful beam of light down into the Stygian blackness, the lights of my fellow agents shining just as bright to either side of me.
With nothing in sight, I stepped over the threshold and started down the short eight steps. I had to hold myself back, slow my steps down, so that my team could keep up, one of the few things I ever had to really work on in practice. I’m fast, much faster than regular people, and I tend to run toward combat, not away.
But I did it, kept my pace measured, stepping onto the basement floor with Alice directly behind me and the other two behind her.
My beam of light lit up the space ahead, revealing four pairs of gleaming, silver-shiny eyes, each almost three feet off the ground, each attached to a snarling, oversized black dog with slavering metal teeth, standing ten feet in front of us.