by Isaac Hooke
“Bender, we need to go now,” Rade said.
“Almost got it,” Bender said.
The two Sino Koreans were climbing the side of the starship toward the ground.
“Just let go,” Rade shouted at them.
“The pursuing aliens are almost here,” Pyro said from the outer entrance. “What do you want me to do?”
“Damn it,” Rade said. “We need more time.”
“I can try to collapse the opening,” Pyro said. “It will trap us here, but at least we’ll survive. For now.”
“Maybe we can find another way out,” Tahoe said. “This is a volcano, after all. If we can find the central vent, it will lead us all the way to the cone at the top.”
“Ten seconds,” Valjean said.
“Pyro, collapse the entrance,” Rade said. “If you can.”
He glanced at his rearview mirror, and saw Pyro’s mech racing through the tunnel from the entrance. Pyro was inside his mech’s passenger seat, his harness laden with charges—apparently, he had already prepared for this eventuality. He removed the backing from the demolition blocks and tossed them rapidly toward the ceiling; behind him, Rade could see Slicers crowding into the opening.
“Zero seconds,” Valjean said.
Pyro was two-thirds from Rade; Pyro glanced over his shoulder, and apparently decided it was a good time to detonate all the blocks he’d place, because explosions filled the tunnel. Rock fragments pelted Rade’s mech, and Pyro vanished inside the resultant dust cloud.
Rade stepped away from the opening, as did Bender’s mech.
Tahoe and Bender emerged from the other dust cloud and hurried toward Rade.
Pyro emerged from the tunnel behind him, his mech covered in dust.
“Living up to your name, Bro!” Bender told him.
“You haven’t seen nothing yet!” Pyro cackled. He brushed some of it off with his hands, restoring portions of the environment blending hull underneath. Internal vibrators underneath the hull activated to shake off the rest.
Bender loaded into his own mech and Tahoe returned to Rade’s passenger seat. The three mechs continued to step away from both debris clouds, alternately targeting either one with their stingrays and 5-ways.
Meanwhile, the two Sino Koreans joined them, and similarly aimed at the dust clouds. They backed away with Rade and the Falcons.
“You know, there’s not much point in aiming our weapons into the collapses like this,” Bender said. “Considering, we’ll just charge them.”
“Good point,” Rade said, swiveling his weapons away. “It was just instinctive. Retreat to the ship.”
The six of them hurried toward the ship, and pressed their backs against it: for what good that would do. If any of the aliens escaped the collapses, perhaps the party could climb the stalactite the Sino Koreans had been using, and hang there for a while before deciding what to do next. It was the only option Rade could think of for the time being.
But as the dust began to clear, it became clear that no aliens had escaped the collapse. The three in the cavern were thoroughly pinned beneath that particular cave in, with no parts of them visible in the pile of stone. As for the entrance tunnel, it was thoroughly clogged.
“Well, that bought us some time,” Rade said.
“Though we’re still trapped,” Tahoe reminded him.
“Yes,” Rade said. He turned toward the Sino Koreans. “It’s time to introduce ourselves to our new friends.”
9
Rade studied the two Sino Koreans. Two women, judging from the feminine features he saw behind the faceplates. Then again, he had to be careful judging jumpsuit faces, since a lot of men could appear feminine or androgynous when you didn’t have the rest of the body to complete the entire picture. Also, they may have been using holo projectors to hide their true appearances.
“I am Corporal Yuan Jiang,” one of them said, via her translator.
“Yes,” Rade said. “I heard that on the distress call. What’s your unit?”
“I’d rather not say,” Jiang said.
Rade shrugged, and glanced at the apparent subordinate beside her. “And you are?”
“Lance Corporal Chow,” she said.
“All right,” Rade said. “I’m Chief Galaal, of Alpha Platoon, MOTH Team Seven. This is Cyclone on my back, and Bender and Pyro in their respective mechs. We’re here to get you out.”
“It seems that there is no way out at the moment…” Jiang said.
“Yes, well, we’ll find a way,” Rade said. “First of all, though, if you’re going to ride with us, I want to make sure we’re clear on the order of command. This is my team, and while you operate with us, you’re under my command. Is that understood?”
Jiang hesitated. Then: “Yes.”
“Good, because though we belong to different nations and military organizations, I outrank you,” Rade said. “All right, then, if you’re going to be on my team, you need to be on our comm band. None of this speaker system crap.”
He created a new band for them all, and sent along the appropriate encryption keys not just to Tahoe, Bender and Pyro, but to Jiang and Chow as well. When they logged into the new band, their dots on the overhead map turned from the red of enemies to the blue of friendlies.
“So now, tell me,” Rade said over the new band. “What happened here Corporal? These creatures, are they yours?”
“Not ours,” Jiang transmitted in reply. “You see, there are many sealed chambers inside the demon vessel. During our last expedition, we opened one such chamber… a cavernous region taking up a good portion of the interior. It was filled with large metal containers stacked one atop the other. The lance corporal and myself were part of the group responsible for escorting two of those containers back to our external base for further investigation. When we arrived, we placed them in separate hangars. Creatures burst from the containers shortly thereafter.”
She shook her head, closing her eyes for a moment. Then she opened them, and continued. “As the fighting became more intense, and it was obvious we were going to lose our whole platoon and other members of the base defense force to these two lone creatures, our lieutenant ordered us to return to the mountain for reinforcements. We arrived to find more of the creatures pouring out from the opening we had drilled into the demon vessel. Thousands of them. They were destroying everything. We tried to help where we could—like you, we hatched a plan to collapse a portion of the cave, but it didn’t work. Our detonations only fissured the ceiling.”
“So, you were the one who caused those fissures,” Rade said.
“Yes,” Jiang said. “I’m just glad your charges were able to finish the job. We also already had demolition bricks in place to seal the tunnel, as you did. A back up measure for just such an occurrence as this, however the remote detonators failed.”
“That’s SK tech for you,” Bender commented. “As trustworthy as an SK herself.”
“Anyway,” Jiang continued, “eventually the two of us were forced to climb the stalactite. A pair of mechs gave us a boost with their jumpjets, and we leaped off of them to latch onto the structure. They were destroyed by the demons when they landed, and a group of them gathered around us, on the starship just below. We thought we were done for: that they were going to use their bodies to form a bridge to the stalactite, but when their brethren began retreating from the cave, most of them lost interest in us. Only three remained behind, and they’ve been harassing us ever since.”
“I’d like to harass you,” Bender said.
“Those three were smashing themselves against your stalactite all that time?” Tahoe asked incredulously.
“Well, no,” Jiang said. “Intermittently. They would throw themselves against the formation, raking it with their claws for several minutes, then grow bored and rest for a while before trying again.”
“How did the colony find that ship in the first place?” Rade pressed.
“Volcanologists,” Jiang told him. “Researching the volcano.”
“Well, I’m sorry you had to lose your platoon,” Rade said. “No one should have to witness such a thing.”
Rade glanced at Pyro’s mech, but the man kept his gaze intent on the twin collapses, as if expecting aliens to emerge at any moment, and acting like he hadn’t heard the comment. The former Bravo member had lost his entire platoon a long time ago.
Jiang was quiet for a moment, and then gazed into the distance.
“I watched my friends get ripped apart by these demons,” Jiang said. “I want to kill them all.”
“Personally, I don’t want to kill them all,” Chow said. “Just as many as I can.”
“I think I like these two,” Bender said. “We’re going to get along just fine.”
“So, any idea on how we reach the surface from here?” Rade asked. “All volcanos have a central vent. Is there some passage we can take to reach it?”
“From here, you can’t,” Jiang said. “If there was a passage to the central vent, this tunnel would have been flooded with hardened magma many years ago.”
Rade frowned, and then gazed at his overhead map. “Can we blast a hole somewhere, maybe?”
Rade didn’t think they had enough demolition blocks to dig deep enough, given what he was seeing on that map. The different vents of the volcano were displayed, courtesy of intel the United Systems had gathered from their mole, so he could see the cavern in relation to the rest of the magma chambers.
“No, the walls are too thick here,” Jiang said, confirming his thoughts.
“Valjean, can you give me a complete picture of the ship?” Rade said. “Calculating the shape of the buried portion, based on the exposed sections that are visible? And then overlay it on my map?”
Valjean did so.
Rade transmitted the data to Jiang. “Does this match up to your own estimates of the vessel’s full shape, based on the expeditions to the interior performed by yourself and your colleagues?”
Jiang seemed hesitant to accept the data, perhaps worried about viruses, but finally the “transmitting” prompt disappeared from Rade’s HUD.
“It’s close,” Jiang agreed.
“All right then,” Rade said. “Based on the ship’s position, and the shape of its hull… it looks to me like some of the buried sections pass very close to the central vent. In fact, a good portion of the ship is essentially adjoining it.”
“Yes, you’re right,” Jiang agreed.
“So, if we enter the ship, and travel to that area, we can cut our way through the hull, and out to the central vent,” Rade said.
“The hull can be cut, yes,” Jiang said. “We originally used laser cutters to break through the hull, and to remove other seals we encountered in the interior along the way. Do you have them?”
“We have plasma bolts,” Rade said. “Just as good.”
“Yes,” Jiang said.
“You know, it’s kind of funny,” Tahoe said. “We can cut through their ship, and yet our weapons do no damage to the aliens themselves.”
“Blame it on biology,” Bender said. “But you know, what the aliens really need to do is take a few thousand of them, lop off their heads, and sew the bodies to the hull. That’s the way to go. Organic hull armor.”
“Yeah, I can see them doing that real soon,” Pyro said.
“You should know,” Jiang interrupted. “To reach the proposed section near the central vent, we’ll have to pass through the compartment that holds the hundreds of metal containers, along with several other unexplored areas.”
“Sweet!” Bender said. “We get to explore that tin bucket after all! I knew I’d get my way!”
“Not that it’s going to help you…” Pyro said. “We’re not sightseeing.”
“Oh yes we are, Bro!” Bender said.
“Pyro’s right,” Rade said. “This is going to be a fast, in and out operation. We get to that target site, we drill through, we get out.”
“It always sounds easy on digital paper, doesn’t it?” Tahoe commented.
“All right, let’s see what we’re up against,” Rade said.
He guided the team to the mangled, can-shaped passageway that lay smashed on the cave floor next to the starship. Rade ripped the crumpled metal aside with his mech, revealing a trampled plug next to the hole the SKs had drilled into the starship, a plug no doubt forced free by the outflow of aliens.
He gazed inside, seeing a tall, ribbed passageway.
“Looks big enough to fit a mech,” Tahoe commented.
“Or a Slicer,” Bender said.
“Both,” Rade agreed. “Jiang, Chow, hitch a ride with Bender and Pyro.”
“Well hello sweet thing,” Bender told Jiang as she approached him. “I’m Bender. And I’m going to bend your reality like it’s never been bent before, baby.”
“Go fuck yourself?” Jiang said.
“Ooo!” Bender said. “She sounds so sweet when she swears! And she’s got spunk. I like it. Yo baby, you’re going to ride me! This is just the beginning of a long and fruitful intimate relationship.”
He turned around and offered his passenger seat to her.
“I believe I’ll ride with this one,” Jiang said, moving toward Pyro’s Falcon instead.
“Hey, I feel slighted now,” Bender said. “You don’t want me to feel slighted.”
But Jiang ignored him and clambered into Pyro’s passenger seat.
“Bitch,” Bender said softly.
The remaining Sino Korean loaded into Bender’s seat.
“Don’t even say anything,” Chow warned him.
“Hey, I wasn’t going to make a sound,” Bender said. “Wouldn’t want to risk offending a delicate thing like yourself.”
She leaned forward and shoved her rifle down against the armor above his cockpit.
“Why does it feel like she just shoved a rifle down my pants?” Bender quipped.
“Behave yourselves!” Rade ordered. “That means you, Chow. Withdraw the weapon.”
Chow didn’t obey.
Rade was about to repeat his command, when she retracted the rifle and sat back.
“And you, Bender, I want you to treat these women like honored guests,” Rade warned. “We’re on mission here, not at some space bar.”
“Sorry, Chief,” Rade said. “Been a while since I got to talk to a woman face to face.”
“It shows,” Pyro said.
“Reduce comm node range to bare minimum,” Rade said. “Don’t use LIDAR, or any other active sensing tech.”
Even with those precautions in place, Rade still knew that the noise of their passage, along with the vibrations produced by their footfalls, would potentially give them away.
Nothing we can do about that. Reduce what we can, and deal with what we can’t.
“Pyro, lead the way,” Rade said. “Bender, take drag.”
Rade followed Pyro into the starship. Though he tried to place his feet as softly as possible, he still cringed at the thuds produced by the steps of not just his mech, but the other two. He reminded himself that there was nothing he could do about that.
The walls were smooth and concave, like the inside of a metal ball. Well, except for the ribbed sections, which protruded a quarter meter from the surface at set intervals, running from floor to ceiling along the left and right sides. Those ribs were engraved with shallow horizontal troughs stacked one atop the other, with every fifth glowing a dull green. Overall, the effect was to bathe the interior in a dim emerald glow.
“Where those ribs always glowing like that?” Rade asked.
“No,” Jiang said. “Only when we awakened the demons.”
“So they’re powering up,” Tahoe said.
“Our scientists have theorized that this ship has been buried for thousands, if not millions of years,” Jiang said.
“If that’s true, the inhabitants are awakening to a vastly changed galaxy,” Pyro said. “Their species might even be extinct by now.”
“That’s certainly a possibility,”
Tahoe said. “But they might want to restore their former place in the universe.”
“By enslaving humanity?” Pyro asked.
“Or wiping us out,” Bender added.
“Let’s not go jumping to too many conclusions,” Rade said. “Jiang, can you share whatever map data you have on this vessel?”
He received a share request from her a moment later, and redirected it to Bender for virus scanning.
“Looks clean,” Bender said.
Rade installed the data, and the overhead map filled out, revealing half of the ship. He could see the large, central compartment Jiang had mentioned, where the alien hibernation chambers resided. The section beyond it that lay beneath the central chamber remained dark, unmapped.
“You think we’ll find any aliens still aboard?” Pyro asked.
“There’s a good possibility we will,” Rade told him. “Though I’m not sure they’ll be of the same type.”
“What makes you say that?” Pyro pressed.
“Just a hunch,” Rade said. “These aliens seem like a worker class to me, because none of them wielded any weapons other than their own jaws. And talons.”
“I’d say the ability to spit back plasma beams is a weapon in and of itself!” Bender said.
“True,” Rade said. “But I’m talking something more concrete. Something that can be carried, and fired regardless of whether the creatures have taken any impacts. It just seems like, well, creatures like that wouldn’t be capable of building a starship like this. Not on their own, anyway. I could very well be wrong, though.”
“I’d be careful about judging these creatures based on a few limited encounters,” Valjean said. “What individual entities may lack; the group may make up for. Humans, after all, are extremely weak alone. But when they combine their thoughts, through language, and writing, they’re able to build machines that think, and starships capable of interstellar travel. These aliens may be relying on similar means to enhance their thought processes. And who knows, maybe they all communicate telepathically.”
“Well, I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?” Rade said.
10