Marathon: The Complete Series (Books 1-9) (Complete Series Box Sets), page 2
part #1 of Marathon Series
“Dallas always gets to make the biggest mess,” Bing complained. “It isn’t fair.”
“Well, when you get your ass shot off, you can get prosthetics like him and then you can make a bigger mess, too.”
Bing laughed again, and both he and Eckhart peered into the breach. A thirty-foot drop gave them a view into the compound’s basement.
Just as Dallas had said, a whole crowd of armed mercenaries stood around what looked like a giant wall of solid Crionium, the same metal as Dallas’ body armor. These men paced back and forth in the cavernous basement. The commotion from upstairs had definitely alerted them that something was going down. They conversed in rapid murmurs while they checked their weapons, gathered more of them, and rearranged their formation again and again.
“Do we send them a little Halfanite care package?” Bing whispered. “It turns out I have a few right here that need a home.”
“Wait for it.”
At Eckhart’s word, another withering thud hit the building’s other side. He knew that sound only too well.
The building shuddered on its foundation, and then the front side of the cavern imploded in a shower of broken concrete. Screams pierced the noise.
A cloud of dust rippled into the cavern, followed closely by a shaft of blinding sunshine. Dallas stormed in, shooting everything before him with his plasma guns. Alice darted around him and popped off dozens of rifle shots.
“Go!” Eckhart ordered.
He and Bing lobbed their Halfanite into the cavern and jumped. Eckhart only threw two blocks that sailed apart and exploded amongst the mercenaries.
Bing threw six at once, and the cavern descended into chaos. Eckhart landed in smoke and dust, and the sunbeams reduced visibility even more. The dust scattered the light and created a blazing white screen that prevented him from seeing anything.
Gunshots rocked the basement. Plasma eruptions came from Eckhart’s right. Rifles blazed on the left. The different sounds told Eckhart where the two sides were.
“Dallas!” he yelled.
Alice grabbed him from the other side. “This way!”
She propelled him through the smoke, and he followed her guiding hands. She parked him in a murky corner. Her metallic, rasping voice reached into his ear through her mask. “Plant them here!”
Smoke stung his eyes. He clamped them shut and worked by feel alone. She straightened up and fired into the murk while he scrambled to pull more Halfanite from Bing’s backpack.
He put his life in Alice’s hands and turned his back to the battle. He had to get into this vault. More explosions crashed from all sides. Eckhart could just picture Bing dancing through the cavern, doing as much damage as possible.
Eckhart jammed the primers into four blocks and smacked them against the vault. Alice grabbed him again. “Not there! Over here—the door is weaker here!”
She helped him rip the blocks off and replace them where she’d said. He was fumbling blind, but she didn’t have that problem.
They moved the blocks, and she yanked him aside. She activated the timers and threw Eckhart onto the floor. She dove in front of him, flipped onto her side, and sprayed her rifle into the smoke.
The blocks blasted outward, and more screams set Eckhart’s hair on end. He jumped to his feet and checked himself when a looming figure darkened the basement.
Eckhart grabbed his rifle to defend himself, but he relaxed when Dallas clomped out of the mayhem. His guns rotated from side to side, spouting plasma. He turned right and left, picking off any mercenaries that dared to show themselves.
Eckhart couldn’t wait any longer. He groped back to the hole blown in the vault. Alice and Dallas pivoted in front of him and pointed their guns outward to protect him. He would never get a better opportunity.
He dove through the gap and somersaulted into a massive vault lined with shelves. Crates of rations and ammunition, pallets of printed money, the small black velvet boxes of precious gems…everywhere he looked, Eckhart saw treasure he would give anything to lay his hands on.
He had to concentrate. He’d mounted this assault for one thing, and he wouldn’t be able to carry all this swag back to the Marathon anyway.
He raced down the aisles, searching everywhere. The object he wanted wouldn’t be lying around on one of these shelves in plain sight.
He reached the back wall without finding what he was looking for. A smooth stretch of brand-new Crionium covered the back wall, with no shelves in front of it. This had to be it.
“Alice!” he bellowed over his shoulder, and she sprang through the hole. “The safe must be here. Can you see it?”
She scanned over the surface and pointed to a corner by the floor. “There.”
He pushed her away. “Go replace Dallas. Send him in here.”
She raced back to the breach. The noise of explosions and gunfire diminished outside, but that didn’t give Eckhart a warm, fuzzy feeling. The Jackal Clan would only be gathering their forces for another assault somewhere else.
Dallas approached, and Eckhart pointed to the spot Alice had indicated. “Can you open it without killing us all?”
“I’ll give it a whirl.”
Dallas knelt next to the corner where it met the other wall. He pointed his assault gun at the corner, and the plasma ejection port slotted back into his prosthetic arm. A different attachment rotated out of a separate chamber in his armor, and a thick red laser erupted from the lens.
Dallas started cutting through the thick metal. It took a lot longer than Eckhart liked, and he started to fidget.
He jumped and swung his rifle up when someone hopped into the vault, but it was only Bing. “The dipshits are retreating. Alice is scouting the compound to find out where they are.”
“Go over there and arm yourself with everything you can carry,” Eckhart told him. “Take some of those rocket launchers and bring over some of that Halfanite.”
Bing plunged into the supplies and brought back his backpack, bulging with so much Halfanite that Eckhart almost told him to put some of it back. He changed his mind when Dallas’ laser shut off. He had sliced out a square section of the wall, but it was barely larger than a slice of bread.
Dallas dug his mechanical fingers around the margins and lifted down the section. He laid it on the floor and a bunch of wires trailed from its back. “Battery grenades,” he whispered. “The buffoons rigged up tripwires to blow the payload if anyone tampered with the safe. They could have wiped out half the damn planet.”
“Does the payload have any other protections?”
“Only that it’s too small for me to get my hand inside.” Dallas stood up. “You take it.”
Eckhart knelt in Dallas’ old place and peered into the gap. A brilliant egg-sized crystal glowed blood-red in the darkness. A shining flicker pulsed inside the stone like a living thing.
Eckhart’s scalp prickled. The stone cast some mystical spell on him. He could kneel here and stare at it forever.
Just then, Alice’s face appeared in the breach behind his back. “They’re moving in! It’s time to roll!”
Eckhart shot his hand into the hole and seized the stone. What did he expect? He thought a stone as powerful as this would burn him, or that his arm would fall off if he touched it. He thought it would have some kind of shielding to protect everyone from its power.
His arm didn’t fall off. His fingers closed around it and he ripped it out of the hole. Dallas and Bing spun around and aimed their weapons toward the breach, but Alice wasn’t there anymore.
Eckhart grabbed Bing’s backpack, now overflowing with Halfanite. He slung the strap over one shoulder and stuffed the crystal into his pocket.
He crammed a primer into a block of Halfanite as the three friends raced out of the vault. Alice stood guard, but Eckhart didn’t see any mercenaries. “Where are they?”
A catastrophic kaboom answered that question for him. It hit the roof, and the whole compound caved in on top of their heads.
Dallas dove for his comrades and extended both arms over their heads. Eckhart, Bing, and Alice huddled close to him and plunged for the only exit.
3
The dust had settled while the friends were inside the vault. Now Eckhart could see the giant gaping maw that Dallas had blasted in the building’s side.
The friends clambered over dead mercenaries and shattered debris into the blinding sunshine. Eckhart squinted westward toward the town, where the Marathon would pick them up.
The moment he turned his head, a whistle made him spin around. Dallas barely stepped into the rocket’s path, and took the shot square in the chest to stop it from wiping out the whole crew.
“What the hell are they doing?” Bing shrieked. “Why are they shooting rockets at us? Are they trying to destroy the crystal?”
Eckhart grabbed him and Alice. “Go! Move!”
He punched the timer on his block of Halfanite and threw it behind Dallas just in time to see a giant mob of mercenaries charge around the compound from the east.
“Get into town!” he yelled to his people. “Get back to the Marathon!”
Town was being a bit generous, but it was bigger than it had any right to be. A grid of a few dozen pathways lined with the day-to-day businesses that served a small population spread out in the desert that encroached on all sides. It was better cover than anything around the compound.
They all took off running. Eckhart and Bing pitched primed Halfanite behind them. Dallas laid down a punishing carpet of plasma, but the crew barely made it into town before another raft of mercenaries flanked them from the north.
The crew ran around four houses on the outskirts of town. Dallas turned to fire on them, and the enemy pursuing the friends immediately closed the gap.
Dallas wheeled one gun behind the fleeing crew and one toward the north, but he couldn’t drive them all back alone. Eckhart steered him backward onto Main Street, but the mercenaries must have planned based on what they’d seen at the compound.
The foremost pursuers occupied Dallas while another group appeared on a nearby roof. They fired a rocket down at him from above. It smashed into his helmet, and another hit him between the shoulder blades from a different roof. He buckled and went down on one knee.
Eckhart grabbed the hard metal collar behind Dallas’ neck. “Get out of here! Move!”
Dallas lurched to his feet and stumbled after the rest of the crew. He could run as fast as Alice once he faced forward, but that meant he couldn’t shoot as well.
The crew dodged from one building to another. Eckhart changed their direction as often as possible. The mercenaries on the roofs couldn’t keep up, and the Marathon crew started to eke out an advantage.
“Over there!” Eckhart plunged into an alley between a repair shop and a boardinghouse. An empty stretch of desert vanished to the farthest horizon beyond the edge of town.
The crew burst into the open…and stopped.
“Where is it?” Bing asked. “Where’s the Marathon?”
“She should have picked us up right here!” Alice growled. “I’ll kill her if she abandoned us.”
“She didn’t abandon us.” Eckhart whirled on the spot and fired down the alley as the mercenaries charged into view.
Bing scooped another load of Halfanite out of the bag, but Eckhart was already herding his people away. They raced down the line of weathered houses and into another alley.
“Get that little monster on the horn!” Alice snapped.
“She’s already on it.” Dallas halted in the shadows and touched the side of his head. “She took the Marathon into the atmosphere to protect it from the firefight.”
“What firefight?” Alice demanded. “The firefight is all the way over on the other side of town.”
“This way.” Dallas pushed in front of the others. “She’s directing me to another rendezvous point.”
Eckhart ran up behind him. “How far away is it?”
“It’s behind the—” Dallas shot out a hand and snatched Bing by the back of his shirt. He yanked Bing out of sight right before Bing ran onto Main Street. “The mercenaries!”
A punishing barrage of rocket blasts dotted the street in front of the crew. Eckhart pressed his people back into the nearest building and cowered until the worst passed.
“The rendezvous point is across town,” Dallas called over the last crashes. “We have to cross Main Street.”
“That makes it convenient,” Alice grumbled.
“Where are the mercenaries?” Eckhart asked. “Can you see them?”
Dallas rotated his helmet back and forth. “They’re on top of the hotel—at least, some of them are. Three more groups are hidden down the street—one behind the storehouse and one between the harbormaster’s office and the medical clinic. The biggest group is next to the plasma generator. They’re arming to attack as soon as we show ourselves.”
“How do we get out of here?” Bing asked.
“Easy,” Eckhart replied. “We create another diversion.”
“You and your diversions,” Dallas exclaimed. “Does this one involve me taking another rocket to the head?”
Bing patted his big friend’s armored shoulder. “Don’t worry, buddy. It won’t make you any dumber than you already are. You’ve already lost too many brain cells.”
“Who said anything about brain cells? I’m running on Datrium fumes over here.”
“You don’t have to do anything,” Eckhart cut in. “I’ll create the diversion myself.”
The other three jerked around to stare at him. “How?” Alice asked. “Are you going to jump out in front of them and sacrifice yourself?”
“Something like that.”
“Yay!” Bing cheered. “The Marathon is mine! I’ve been waiting twelve years for this.”
Eckhart only laughed. “Don’t celebrate my demise too quickly. Get ready to run when you hear the signal.”
“What signal?” Alice asked.
“You’ll know when you see it.” Eckhart took the backpack out of Bing’s hands.
“Hey! I need those! What am I gonna…?”
Eckhart shoved his rifle into Bing’s grasp. Bing grimaced at it. “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?”
“Throw it at ‘em. Get ready to run.”
“What are you gonna—?”
Eckhart didn’t wait around to answer any more questions. He dashed back down the alley, toward the desert outside of town. He skimmed behind a dozen houses and halted by the plasma generator.
He crouched behind the building and pulled out a single block of Halfanite, trying to steal a glance at the mercenaries while he crammed the primer into the block. This had better work, because the Jackal Clan had a lot more fighters on these streets than he ever expected. Four people couldn’t get away from them, not even when one of them was Dallas Eldridge.
Eckhart pushed the block back into the backpack and adjusted the timer. He set it for its maximum setting and zipped the bag shut, pushing the whole package through a ventilation duct in the generator wall.
The window opened right at ground level, and the backpack fell into the basement. Eckhart sprang to his feet and trotted down a different alley. He took a position out of sight, right in front of where the mercenaries were hiding.
A few rocket launchers poked their snouts into view. They aimed for where Dallas, Bing, and Alice were hiding.
Eckhart raised his hands in a gesture of surrender and strolled onto Main Street. He walked all the way to the middle of town and turned to face the mercenaries.
He thought he heard arguing voices coming from behind him. A few mercenaries glanced out at him and whispered to each other.
He stood still. How much time did he have left? The mercenaries looked out again, and he made his last move. He pulled out the crystal and held it up.
4
Their eyes widened exactly the way he knew they would. Two men stepped into view, heading for him. Maybe they were leaders. Maybe they were just particularly bold.
Whether they wanted to negotiate—unlikely—or just shoot him and take the crystal—very likely—he’d never know.
At that moment, the generator evaporated in a towering pillar of fire and gas. The report ripped through several nearby buildings. For a moment, he worried he’d miscalculated and leveled half the town, but it appeared only the shoddiest buildings fell.
The mercenaries whipped around to stare toward the noise, and as luck would have it, their hiding place was one of the buildings to collapse.
Dallas, Bing, and Alice bolted across the street behind Eckhart even as he staggered backward and streaked away.
With one group of pursuers in disarray, that left two more groups on the ground, and one on the roof.
He stumbled back to where his crew had darted into another alley, but he’d only made it halfway when the mercenaries by the medical clinic made their move.
They flooded into the street from both sides, closing Eckhart in two barrages of gunfire. He couldn’t go forward and he couldn’t go back.
He dodged left, and barely got his arms over his head before he crashed through a plate-glass window. He tumbled into a bar packed with people, but that didn’t stop the mercenaries. They rushed over to the window and fired into the crowd.
Bodies twirled and toppled over Eckhart’s head. Screams rang in his ears, and he plunged between dozens of legs. He scrambled to get away as dozens of shots tore the place apart.
He bumped into a solid barricade. People stepped on him and kicked him in their panic to get out of the bar.
He struggled to stand up and realized that he’d run into the bar itself. He followed it on his hands and knees, heading for the back door. Broken glass and spent shell cartridges littered the floor under his hands.
Eckhart finally reached the exit and rocketed upright. He charged outside and almost got trampled by Dallas.
Dallas grabbed him. “That was spectacular! You’re officially on diversion duty from now on.”
“Go!” Eckhart pushed his three friends ahead of him. “Lead us to the rendezvous point.”
