The Omega Sanction, Andrew Scorah [books to read romance .txt] 📗

his gun hand, the other pushing at his face, fingers clawing at his eyes.

With his free hand, he hit the man with his palm. Short and sharp to the temple.

The man grunted.

Pumped full of adrenaline and fear he showed no other reaction.

Bane grabbed the clawing hand and twisted it away from his face.

He shot his head forward, butting the man.

He fell backwards. Bane wrenched his gun hand free. He squeezed the trigger, shooting the man in the stomach. Grabbing the trooper by the front of his tunic, he hurled him over the railing. The man screamed all the way down.

Bane ran over to the control station. Confused at the array of buttons and switches, he pushed a lever forward. A grinding sound came from down below. He ran over to the railing, looking over he saw the plane turning, firing at the troops. The elevator slowly began to rise. There was something wrong though. The roof door remained firmly shut. Bane dashed back to the control panel, and began flipping switches, pressing buttons. Hoping for the best.

Finally he had it. The doorway in the ceiling, with a grinding of gears, separated in the middle. Began to open up.

Bane wiped the sweat away from his forehead. And with his heart thumping in his chest he crossed to the railing. He hated heights but knew coming up here he would have to confront that fear if he was to return to the others.

When he had first scanned the gantry he saw an electrical cable angling down across the room, disappearing into the wall on the opposite side of the vast chamber. The cable passed the edge of the elevator. With a little luck and timing, he would be able to reach the platform.

Bane removed a webbing belt from one of the dead men, and climbed over the rail.

 

The elevator had now risen above the sight line of those below. Cyclops continued to hover.

"How's Bane gonna get back to us now?" Kukri asked.

"He's on his own now, he's resourceful though, he'll find away," Morgan looked up at the gantry, some twenty feet above them.

The others did the same.

They all saw Bane launch himself into the air. The belt he was holding caught the cable. He zipped down through the air. Staat troops had spotted him, and were firing. Bullets sizzled through the air, missing him by inches.

Son of a bitch, Morgan thought.

When Bane drew level with them, he flipped himself sideways off the cable. Tucking himself into a ball, he landed, rolling to his feet like some crazed Circus performer.

"Anybody miss me?" He stood there, a broad grin on his face.

"No showboating, you're not American," Trotsky laughed.

"Heads up, people we're not out of this yet."

They all looked up towards the black maw they were about to vanish into. There was no telling how far up the shaft went as no lights lit the way. Soon the darkness ate them up, they were blind except for the light given off by the Aurora's VTOL thrusters, and the dim glow from the cockpit.

The platform under their feet shuddered, coming to a jarring stop.

"What now?" Hypo's voice floated out of the darkness.

"Of course," Morgan said, "the platform only goes as far as into the ceiling then somehow it's picked up by a cabling system that pulls it to the surface."

"That means the Staat schmucks can lower us back down," Trotsky said what they were all thinking.

They all felt it.

The elevator began to descend.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWO

Chapter 17

 

The vault door fell away, crashing to the floor with a resounding boom, revealing a short corridor which terminated in another door like the one they had broken through. Fairfax jumped despite himself. He had been brought up from the cells after being dressed in an orange jumpsuit, a collar placed around his neck was attached to a metal chain. They had made him walk on all fours like a dog. At first, he refused until they shot one of the other prisoners.

Tears of frustration built up behind his eyes. He forced them back. Not willing to show his captors they had beaten him.

He sat back on his haunches watching Koenig speak to the large crowd assembled before him. Ever present Bad Willy by his side, and another man, Fairfax had not seen before, holding a metal case. Two men in white lab coats stood to one side of the twenty strong group of special combat troops Koenig had called his advance team. Both men were shackled hand and foot.

Koenig was speaking German, but Fairfax had acquired a working knowledge of the language from when he had been stationed in Berlin. Koenig was giving a rabble rousing speech about standing on the brink of the golden age of the Fourth Reich. A new Aryan empire, the likes of which the world had never seen. ‘The forces of capitalism, Jewry and Marxist/communist will be swept away under the boots of volkisch, ordinary folk. We will give back power to the ordinary citizen on the street, as long as they stand under our banner.’ When they possessed the 'Ultimate Solution Device', the world would tremble in fear at their feet. All the work of their ancestors would come to fruition, and finally they could step out of the shadows to take their rightful place as masters of a world created in their own image.

A chorus of Heil Koenig echoed around the corridor at the end of his speech.

Koenig turned to Fairfax.

"This second door, any surprises I should know about?"

Fairfax smiled despite his situation, so, the man had gaps in his knowledge.

"Try it and find out." He was not quite beaten it seemed.

"Colonel, why do you still play fast and loose with your men," he smiled, a father to a wayward child, the smile fell away, "you want more blood on your hands?"

Fairfax sighed.

"The code is 368345a press enter then reverse the sequence but enter b instead of a and zx at the end."

"Good man," he patted Fairfax on the head, "Hans," signals to one of the assembled men. Hans saluted then marched down the corridor and inputted the sequence.

There was an audible hiss. The heavy door swung away from him to reveal the vault beyond. A large room, the size of four football fields, filled with machinery and devices of unknown use, looking like modern art exhibits in some nightmarish Art Gallery. Some stored in high racking systems. Others on the floor like discarded toys.

Koenig led the assemblage into the vault. Fairfax was forced to lope along on all fours. The leash being tugged by one of the jailers who had brought him to Koenig. Without pause, he strode between the equipment, pausing once to look at a chair that wouldn't have looked out of place on the Starship Enterprise.

"What is this used for?"

"It's a thought enhancing machine, once linked to a subject it can materialise his thoughts, especially if the subject has telepathic abilities."

He clapped his hands, like a child who'd been offered a bag of sweets. Fairfax thought.

"Why is it down here? What an excellent device."

"It proved too unstable, led to a lot of trouble at one of our bases near New York."

He nodded his head, stroking the high-back of the chair before moving on. His destination was the double doors to the test chamber at the far end of the vault. Massive – heavy steel frames are lined with copious layers of what looked like insulating or sound-proofing material.

Bad Willy who was walking behind Koenig touched the ear piece in his ear.

"Herr Koenig!"

The man stopped, turned back to his bodyguard.

"What is it?"

"I can't contact my brother, and 6th squadron has caught up with the intruders down in the lower hanger, appears they are only eight strong. My brother though, I'm worried about him."

For the first time since Fairfax had met the mad German he saw his face soften, he put a hand on Bad Willy's shoulder.

"Our people will deal with them, there is no way they can hurt us, go, go find your brother, make sure he's okay."

Bad Willy clicked his heels, and performed a sharp Heil before turning on his heel and walking through the advance squad who parted like the red sea.

Fairfax felt a burst of excitement in the pit of his stomach. All was not lost it seemed. A rescue team, and where there was eight there would be more.

Koenig watched him leave.

He signalled to ten men who were not part of the advance team.

"Set up a defensive perimeter in the corridor outside the vault, nothing must interfere with what we do today."

The men rushed off to carry out Koenig's orders. Fairfax thought some of them looked relieved to be out of their Fuhrers presence.

Without another word they carried on across the vault.

Koenig stopped in front of the door. Turning to face the crowd he rubbed his hands together, and smiled.

"We are on the cusp of something fantastic. Our forefathers could only dream of a day like today. Let us not forget though, if not for the sacrifices they made we would not be here. They gave our mothers and fathers life, raised them in their image so today we could make that image a worldwide reality."

Fairfax thought the man surely liked the sound of his own voice.

"Colonel, the door code if you please?"

He told him, and the German inputted it into the keypad next to the door.

A hiss and the two halves of the massive door rumbled open.

With a reverence normally seen in someone entering a church, Koenig stepped over the threshold, followed by the man with the case.

The jailer and Fairfax followed, then the two scientists and the commander of the advance team and his second in command, the advance team marched in behind them. Four men remained outside to guard the door.

This was the first time that Fairfax had actually been inside. The room was roughly the size of four of the labs upstairs, with a ceiling height of thirty feet.

"Gentlemen I give you Das Glocke," With a theatrical flourish, Koenig held out his hand.

At the far end of the room, suspended from the ceiling was the bell. Fifteen feet tall by ten feet wide. The base hung about nine feet off the floor above a raised platform. Black with a red swastika emblazoned on the side facing them. Chains on either side secured the device to a metal half henge structure. On either side, two huge Tesla coils loomed like the devils fingers.

“Hoffman, the Xerum!”

The man with the case clicked his heels, gave a short nod of his head. He crossed to the bell. Placed the case on the floor before removing a tool from within his tunic, and sliding what looked like a miniature version of airplane passenger stairs alongside the bell. He unscrewed a panel on the side of the bell. Removing three vials filled with a reddish coloured substance from the case, he placed them within the device. Replaced the panel then moved away.

“It is done, Fuhrer Koenig, Der Glocke is fuelled.”

Again Koenig clapped his hands.

“Excellent, fire her up, a test run.”

Hoffman crossed the room to the main control console. Koenig selected four men from the advanced team and without a word led them onto the platform under the bell. He joined Hoffman at the console.

The four men on the platform looked about them. Eyes wild and panicked like an animal in a trap.

“Is this going to hurt?” One of them asked.

Koenig looked at him for a moment. Fairfax thought he was going to throw one of his outbursts.

The room was silent. Waiting.

“Oberst Hoffman, could you provide us with all an explanation on how the device works?”

"Of course, Mein Fuhrer, I shall try to keep it simple though.”

Fairfax pricked up his ears as Hoffman began to speak.

The bell contained two counter-rotating cylinders which are"filled with a mercury-like substance, violet in colour. This metallic liquid was code-named "Xerum 525". When the liquid is activated by