Duncan Pryde Series

Chapter 1

Duncan Pryde breached the surface of the water in the bay to see the moonlight glinting off the waves tops as he looked toward the shore.

He had swum the distance underwater using a rebreather so as not to give his position away with bubbles from a scuba tank breaking the surface. Now he was able to touch bottom as he remained where he was to survey the area before moving in.

The refinery was quite plainly visible even at this time of night, close to midnight, because of the lights illuminating the huge silos that reached up to the sky as if demanding someone take notice of them, crying out for attention. Which was strange considering their purpose, which was to store vast amounts of the narcotic known simply as Dust. You would have thought that an enterprise of this nature would want to be kept a secret, or at least to have more stringent security than what he was witnessing.

Duncan was an agent of the Ministry of Intelligence; it was the government agency that ran intelligence gathering within the Coalition Of Planets. The section he worked for was MI7, which was classified as SecOps, or Security Operations. This had a broad scope of operations and most of the time they dealt with covert operations such as this one. They had been alerted to this operation by an informant who wanted to remain anonymous but also wanted to get out from under the clutches of the criminal organisation running this endeavour, hence his presence here. He had been sent to investigate and, if the intel given to them proved to be correct, he was to shut it down.

Taking out a scanner from his belt, he aimed it at the silos. Within a short time, he had readings from them. Inside each silo was a huge amount of the narcotic. The chemical analysis conducted by the sensors proved the intel to be correct.

It was time to move on to the next phase of this operation.

He swam ashore silently and walked up the narrow beach to the promenade wall that surrounded the facility.

Looking both ways, he couldn’t see anyone nearby. Guards patrolled this wall periodically, but at the moment they weren’t anywhere in sight. Climbing over the wall, he kept low as he assessed which direction he would need to go.

He was wearing a wetsuit that also doubled as a stealth suit. The material it was made from refracted light so that anyone looking directly at him would see a dead spot, as light was bent around him. As long as he remained absolutely still, he would be invisible to the n***d eye.

The silos were visible from the wall and he walked over to the fence surrounding the area. A quick scan with the small device told him the fence was not powered in anyway. From another pouch on his belt, he took a small laser cutter and proceeded to cut a hole into the mesh fence large enough for him to get through. Once inside, he ran over to the nearest silo. Each of the three silos stood over three hundred feet high and was at least a hundred and fifty feet in diameter. They could hold millions of tons of Dust inside. Taking out a small round disc device, he placed it at the base of the first silo and pressed a touch screen, which activated the timer. An LED visual showed the timer ready to start counting down, which would begin as soon as the last device was set. He then repeated this action with the other two.

The bombs he’d placed there would destroy them and all the contents inside, curtailing the criminal group"s ability to supply the narcotic to this sector.

As he set the last device, he saw the countdown begin. He had four minutes to get to a safe distance or be killed in the blast.

He ran for the fence and went through it and sprinted for the promenade wall. As he reached it, he became aware of two figures converging on him.

Guards, they had come as part of their routine patrol and were about to see him. Having no time to stop, he continued toward the wall. His stealth suit wouldn’t matter now as he was moving too fast for it to be of any use. At the wall he heard one of them shout a challenge to him, ordering him to stop and surrender. He had no intention of following that particular order or any others they might issue as he leaped onto the wall, then vaulted over it to the beach beyond.

Inside his wet suit was a sidearm he’d brought with him, just in case. It was a Walther Q9 fitted with a suppressor—a standard sidearm for the MI7. As he landed on the beach, he withdrew the weapon, turned and aimed at where the guards would appear. As soon as he saw the two of them, he fired. Four shots, two double taps each, all of them making no more noise than a slight coughing sound. Each guard’s head exploded in a red mist as the bullets struck their target.

Turning, Pryde ran for the jetty he had seen on his approach. Tied to the end was a small boat, sleek and trim; it appeared to be a fast speedboat. He ran down to the jetty and jumped aboard. He released the tether holding the boat in place, then started the engine. A deep throaty growl affirmed his suspicion and he steered it away out into the open sea.

He hadn’t gone far when he heard the sound of two other engines on the water from somewhere behind him. A glance over his shoulder told him everything he needed to know. Two other fast boats had appeared from around a curve in the coastline and they were headed after him.

“Things are about to get interesting,” he thought.

“Things are about to get interesting,” To make matters worse, an aircraft appeared in the night sky, lights blazing as it too chased after him. A spotlight lanced through the dark sky, spearing him in its brilliance, showing the two chasing boats exactly where he was.

“Brilliant,” he thought.

“Brilliant,” He couldn’t quite see what the aircraft was through the intensity of the light shining down on him but he suspected it was an old Sikorsky chopper fitted out with the searchlight and possibly a weapons rack slung on either side of the pilot’s cabin. Which meant, if the chasing boats didn’t get him, they could blow him out of the water. Seeing as how they hadn’t done that so far meant they wanted him alive, probably to see who he was and what he was doing here. His internal clock told him the second part of that question would be answered momentarily.

Aiming his pistol at the spotlight, he fired three shots, taking out the bright light, plunging him and the boat back into the sheer darkness of the inky black night.

Bullets zinged past his head as the chasing boats opened fire on him. It was clear by how they were missing deliberately that these were nothing more than warning shots. That would change soon enough when it became fully clear that he was not going to stop.

Swerving his boat to give them something harder to hit, he saw bullets strike the water as their shots went wide of the mark.

Knowing their warnings were falling on deaf ears, those chasing him tightened up their aim and bullets began to hit the back of his boat, sending up splinters from where the shells hit the woodwork of the boat.

Because he was moving in a zig-zagging pattern, he was giving the others more of a chance to catch him up. Before long, he had a boat coming up on him on either side.

He felt the thud as the nearest boat slammed into the rear of his, which rocked when two men jumped aboard.

Duncan turned to face this new challenge. He had to evict them if he wanted to get to his exfil position. The first man came at him, snarling through gritted teeth, only to have them smashed when Duncan struck him in the face with the butt of his pistol. Blood and shattered teeth sprayed out in a red mess as both his hands went up, instinctively to cover his face. A foot in his chest sent him sprawling back to collide with his colleague, and they both fell to the deck. Duncan finished them both off with a coup de grace, splattering their brains over the deck below them.

Returning to the controls, Duncan sped away from the boat at his rear only to have the other ram him from the starboard side. The collision sent him off his feet momentarily. He struggled to his feet, clawing his way off the deck, pistol still in his hand. Seeing another boarder climbing over the rails near the collision point, Duncan raised his pistol and shot the man in the face. The man following him screamed out in shock and pain as the bullet passed through the head of the man in front to graze the side of his face too.

Duncan was on his feet by this time and he grabbed the dead man at the rails by his shirt front and pulled him into the boat, then shot the man behind him as he too was climbing aboard. The bullet took out the top of his head in a red jet of gore that would stain the water beyond for several feet before dissipating in the moving current. The dead man fell back into his own boat, preventing anyone else from following.

Duncan steered his boat away from the other two as they came to terms with the chaos he"d caused, which had caught them all flat footed. Using this confusion, he opened the gap between them even wider.

As he cleared his path away from the other boats momentarily, he breathed easier for a second only. Large calibre shells tore up the prow of his boat as the chopper above opened fire on him.

As he was just thinking about how to deal with this new development, the silos exploded. The night sky was lit up in a display any firework supplier would be proud of. Flames flew high into the air, throwing debris outward, scattering shards and flaming debris over an area that covered the entire facility. The fireball reached as high as a skyscraper and covered an area at least as large as two football fields placed end to end.

Nothing close to this cataclysm would survive; buildings that stood next to them were flattened in seconds as the shockwave tore through them. Flames spread out as the flaming debris landed, catching fire with everything it touched.

From out at sea, all eyes naturally turned to view this spectacle, giving Duncan those extra precious seconds to escape.

Before moving off, he turned his pistol to the chopper and fired at the cabin. He smiled as he saw his shots strike the pilot as he slumped over the controls, dead. This sent the aircraft into a spiral towards the surface of the water it would be unable to return from.

Duncan then set course for his exfil location because he knew the boats would forget about their pursuit of him in favour of returning to shore to see what they could do to salvage anything from the blast. Their friends and comrades were in that blast and they would do what they could to help, and all thoughts of him were lost in the shock of seeing the explosion.

Seeing the other two boats turn back, he continued on to where he needed to be. Alone now in the vast sea, he checked his coordinates on his wrist pad. When he was in the correct location, he switched off the engine, replaced his pistol inside his wetsuit, then vaulted over the side of the boat into the water. With his rebreather firmly back in place between his teeth, he dived for the bottom.

His arms stroked as his legs kicked, powering him deeper into the dark depths of the sea until he saw lights flickering in the distance.

His ride had arrived.

A ship had held position off the coast waiting for his arrival. He headed for it, entering through one of the three escape hatches—one fore, one amidships and the one he used, aft.

As the water left the hatch and the door opened, he entered the sub.

“Okay ship, take us home,” he said. The ship he had entered was a small starship that was run by an AI. This entire operation was a covert black op, so the fewer people who knew about it, the better for everyone.

Stripping off his wetsuit, Duncan got dressed in his normal clothes, a shirt, cargo pants and soft leather boots before returning to the flight deck. As he sat down in the command chair, he saw the water far below as the AI steered him high into the air toward the upper atmosphere and the space beyond.

“A message came in for you from Terra II,” the ship said.

“Okay, play it for me please,” he replied. There was no need for privacy here; he was the only human on board.

He recognised the voice as soon as the message began playing, but the content of it hit him harder than anything he had experienced before. Seven words ripped his entire world apart.

“Your parents have died, I’m so sorry,” the voice said. It was the voice of William Chambers, the man who had sent him on this mission, his immediate superior in the MI7.

Once the message had been consigned to his memory, he said, “Ship, set course for Terra II.”