by Troy Osgood
Probably worse. Instead of inches, they were feet shorter than humans.
Fortin, at point, paused at the lower level door. He looked up for the okay from Harrow. Given, Fortin moved to the right of the door where the pad was located. Carleton took his spot to the left of the door, where it would slide into the wall. Tapping the pad, we all waited for the door to open.
It opened at normal speed but felt very slow.
The door slid into the wall and Fortin locked that way. Carleton pivoted around the jamb and into the opening. He was crouched low, weapon to his shoulder, eyes scanning what he could see. We saw lights coming in through the opening and that was it. Carleton took a step forward.
He flew backwards, slamming against the far wall. Smoke rose from the blaster mark on his chest armor. More shots hit the door jamb, head and the floor around the opening. They were pinning us inside.
I glanced at Carleton’s status in my heads up display. Still alive. Just unconscious.
Not for long if we couldn’t move him.
One of those blasts would hit in and the way he was crumpled up, chances were good it would be where he wasn’t armored up.
“Four of them,” Harrow said. She was staring at the wall from her position on the stairs just behind me. Must have been scrolling through Carleton’s helmet cam images.
Random patrol that got lucky? I doubted it. There had been no surprise from Carleton, no body language to suggest the Tiat attackers had appeared from around a corner or anything. He was just shot. That meant they were already in position and waiting.
“Ambush,” I said. “We must have tripped an alarm.”
Harrow looked like she wanted to argue but backed down.
“Agreed,” she said. “We need to get out of this stairwell. Time’s wasting.”
She didn’t need to remind anyone of that. We all had a ticking clock in our heads.
The problem was that there was only one way to go and no good way of getting through it.
Or was there?
I looked up the stairwell at where the floor and ceiling would be in the hall beyond. Last time in this facility, or the first one here, there was some duct work that ran in a cavity space between the ceiling and floor. In Terran facilities there wasn’t enough space to crawl, but in the Tiat one there had been.
Our ceilings were fairly weak, the Tiat’s had been strong made of the same metal as the walls. I’d seen the ceilings above and they were like I remembered.
Would there still be a cavity?
It was worth a try.
Harrow agreed.
*****
Fortin and Gilbert, now on the side of the door where Carleton had been, provided cover fire out the door when they could. Alternating, waiting for pauses between the continuous fire of the Tiat. We’d managed to drag Carleton out of the way during Fortin and Gilberts fire.
Treuto and Sweet stood against the wall facing me, Sweet with his hands cupped. I placed a foot in the cup and he lifted. I used my hand on his head to help balance until I was level with Treuto and stepped on the Europans shoulder. One was a little taller than the other, but it worked good enough to support me.
Holding the torch that Sweet had brought, I started cutting a large hole in the wall, hoping I was above the ceiling. The walls were a hard metal, the torch having a hard time.
I was regretting my plan.
But it was my plan so I was the one that would do it.
A minute or two later, after what felt like an hour, I had the four sides cut. The wall finish material proved to be pretty thick. A sheet of metal attached to some kind of structure. Enough space for me to work my way through. The hole I made opened into the cavity space, just like I remembered. I could see the floor above, the structure it rested on and about two feet of space before the ceiling. There were numerous ducts, tubes and squares, along with wires, running everywhere.
Just like I remembered.
Leaning into the hole as far as I could, I pushed against the ceiling. Awkward angle, I couldn’t put my full strength into it, but it felt strong enough. Would have to hope it held.
With a final boost, I crawled into the space. Spreading out as much as I could, distributing the weight as evenly as possible, I started working my way through the cavity.
I’d reviewed Carleton’s helmet cam video and had a rough idea of where the Tiat soldiers were positioned.
We knew there were four. Had more shown up? That was the risk.
I had to remember to keep my mouth shut next time I had a brilliant plan.
A slow foot by a slow foot I made my way down. The cavity was dark and I had to switch on my helmet’s light. The ducts ran straight, avoiding the corridor, which made some sense. I could hear the noise of blasters, both sides, coming from below.
Ten feet, twenty feet. Twenty five and I was where I needed to be.
I hoped.
I didn’t need to be right on top of the Tiat but I needed to be behind them.
It was awkward holding the torch with one hand but I needed to be quick. When the piece of the hard ceiling dropped, the Tiat would react. I needed to be quicker. Hitting the activation switch with my left thumb, I held my hand over where the hole was cutting.
I moved the torch slow, not wanting to make noise or much light. I figured the Tiat weren’t hearing it or they’d be firing into the ceiling. No shots, I had to be safe enough for now.
Watching the cut line carefully, I followed the bright light as it sliced through the metal of the ceiling. The front got closer to the end and I held my left hand up, just above the soon-to-be-hole. I could feel the heat, even through my gloves.
There was a snap and the small slightly oblong circle of metal ceiling dropped to the ground. I couldn’t hear the noise it made over the sound of blaster fire and I didn’t hesitate. My left hand lowered, I released the button my thumb was holding down, and the plasma grenade fell through the hole.
I rolled away from the hole as far as I could.
The blast was loud, the ceiling beneath me buckling. A great concussive noise and impact. The hole I’d cut enlarged, pieces of ceiling splitting. Cracks formed around me and I could have sworn there was a leaning to the ceiling now. The firing below stopped, that of the Tiat, but the return fire from the 2Es Spec Ops continued. It came closer, the two blasters joined by a third and a fourth.
Twisting myself around I started working my way back to the hole into the stairwell.
*****
The plasma grenade had made a mess of the corridor, all three legs. We’d come onto a straight run out of the stairwell door that ended in a longer ‘T’ intersection. Doors were off all three corridors. The walls had buckled, dented and cracked. There were black burn marks across the smooth and polished metal.
Four Tiat lay on the ground. Two bore burn marks from the grenade, the other two dead from blaster shots. I recognized the burn mark and hole that 2E rifles made in Tiat bodies.
Not one of my more marketable skills, recognizing the burn marks left by different weapons.
Fortin was down one hallway, tight against the wall. Gilbert was down the other.
Carleton was hobbling in the rear. Treuto and Sweet were clearing rooms with Harrow reviewing the contents behind them.
None had waited for me to exit the ceiling cavity or offer to help me down.
I was starting to wonder where the rest of the Tiat were. There had to be more.
There had to be more soldiers and where were the scientists? Tiat eggheads were almost as dangerous as the soldiers so we had to worry about them as well.
Were they all holed up somewhere? Had someone called in reinforcements?
Hopefully the Tiat didn’t keep a capital ship in the system.
Our scans hadn’t shown anything but there were a lot of places to hide in a solar system, especially a large one, and scanners weren’t all that reliable.
“Look like offices,” Harrow said. She had a collection of small devices in her hand. They look
ed like parts to a computer. Data drives? “I can’t read Tiat, can you?” That was directed at me.
I shook my head. Not a language I had ever bothered to learn.
No guards had come to bother us yet so Harrow directed Sweet and Treuto to start with the rooms across the hall. That should be the first of the labs, I thought, working the layout in my head. It would make sense that the stairs would lead to the offices first before the labs. One of the halls would lead to facilities like a break room and locker room, maybe a barracks, and the other would lead to the labs.
50/50 odds either direction.
Sweet worked the door and it slid open. He entered, followed by Treuto. Looking straight in, we could see they were in a large airlock. The walls were some kind of see-through material. Not glass but the Tiat equivalent. The inner door opened and a cloud of gas or something billowed out the door.
Everyone held still.
“Safe,” Sweet called out as his helmet’s system ran a quick biohazard check.
He stepped into the room along with Treuto. Lights automatically came on. I couldn’t see much but the room looked large.
“Clear,” Sweet said a couple minutes later. He was still inside the room, Treuto near the door. “Better get in here boss.”
Harrow walked forward, motioning at me to follow.
I felt the temperature drop even through my biosuit as we walked through the airlock. That’s what the cloud was, frost as the warmer air met the colder coming from the room. It was freezing in the space.
It was an operating theater. Examination tables lined the walls, each with a collection of different equipment next to them. There were saws of various sizes and shapes. One had weird tubes connected to a pump. Another group looked like scanners. The sizes and shapes were varied, which made me think they weren’t meant for Tiats.
Against the back wall were five cubes. Made of that clear material, each was about fifteen feet by fifteen feet. There was a single door leading into each. Harrow was standing in front of the middle one, Sweet walking around and recording everything with his helmet cam. I walked over next to Harrow. I couldn’t see what her expression was but I could imagine because chances are that it matched mine.
Inside the glass cube was another examination table, this one at an angle. Strapped to the table was a body. Not human but that sized. Green skinned. Male. Naked.
Dead.
A Dyer.
Tubes ran from the Dyer’s arms to machines mounted to the floor.
“What the hell,” I said.
Harrow moved left, I moved right.
The other two glass boxes held a female Thesan and a male Engyn.
Both were naked with tubes attached to them.
Both were dead.
Harrow and Sweet were both at the far end. I headed that way, avoiding looking at the Dyer. I was starting to have an idea of just what was happening in this facility. The next two boxes held a dead and naked Serit and a dead and naked Human.
“Please tell me this isn’t what I think it is,” Sweet said. He sounded scared, or at least worried. Which coming from such a big guy was a little disconcerting.
I shared his worry.
Harrow looked at me, wanting confirmation but not wanting to say it aloud.
So I did.
“They’re developing bioweapons.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
A Human, Dyer, Thesan, Engyn and a Serit.
I really wanted it to be the start to a bad joke but it wasn’t.
My race and the closest allies to our people.
Basically the Tiat’s biggest enemies.
*****
Each of the clear cubes was a lab. Each had their own air supply, I could see the ducts above leading from the ceiling to the cubes. The tables were the same, sized for each race. The banks of monitors and tubes, all the same.
The occupants were interesting. I mean it made sense that the Tiat would develop a weapon that would only work on their enemies and not their allies. The Tiat really didn’t have allies, just acquaintances, but you still wouldn’t want to kill every race in the galaxy. Just the ones that gave you the hardest time and were the biggest threats to expanding the empire.
I couldn’t imagine how difficult making such a weapon would be.
This was the testing chamber. This was where whatever bioweapon they were cooking up was tested.
Which meant the actual production lab was elsewhere.
“Look for anything of value,” Harrow said to Sweet and me. “Computer drives, files, anything.”
There was a note of anxiety to her voice. She was worried. She had every right to be. We had thought the Tiat were developing some new tech or weapon. It was a weapon, but not the kind we thought. This was epic level scary.
Disease was the scariest thing in the galaxy. The hardest thing to control as well. There were so many varied beings in the galaxy, with so many different immune systems, that it was very easy to bring a benign virus from one planet to one where it was lethal. Contamination was a real concern at ports.
Would think that with everyone knowing what a danger it was, there would be more safety measures in place and people would pay attention more. No. That didn’t happen.
But bioweapons were things that the various species did not mess with. It was hard to believe the Tiat would open that box. Too much risk, everyone knew. No matter how well designed your virus, they were still living things and could adapt and evolve.
The three of us tore that place apart.
And found nothing.
“Time?” I asked.
“Not enough,” Harrow replied and motioned for us to go.
Back out in the hall, we regathered and followed Fortin down the left hall. Going for the break room and barracks wouldn’t help us but it was a 50/50 chance either way.
And we still hadn’t come across more guards. Or the lab techs. Where were they holed up?
Probably where the good stuff we wanted was.
*****
“We need to get going,” Fortin said. He was standing at the corner, leaning against the wall and ready to swing around.
There was no noise or anything coming from down the new corridor. At least not yet.
“Not yet,” Harrow said.
I agreed with Fortin. Time was not on our side and we needed to move. But I agreed with Harrow as well.
“The boss is right,” I said. “We need to try to find out what they’ve developed.”
“We need to do it quickly,” he said. “Clock is ticking.”
I did the quick calculations in my head. Assuming the timer started when Fortin placed the transmitters in the machine room, we had twenty minutes before the bombers got here. Twenty minutes to get through the asteroids.
“Where were the bombers launching from,” I asked Harrow.
“Next system over but only a thirty minute hop.”
I did the math in my head, knowing the others were as well. Thirty minutes from reception of the signal to get from the Jeffern system to Unitouro, twenty minutes to get through the asteroids. I assumed the bombers would have hop coordinates that put them pretty close to the belt. Probably another beacon on the ship we had come in on, acting as a hop satellite.
So on the low end, fifty minutes. On the high no more than sixty.
We’d already used up twenty five of those minutes. Halfway to out of time.
“Right,” Fortin said coming to the same conclusion. “Time to move.”
He nodded to Gilbert who was in position behind him. Gilbert grabbed a strap on the back of Fortin’s tact vest.
Leading with his weapon, Fortin turned and leaned out into the corridor. He looked down the hallway, scanning.
“Pull,” he yelled, depressing the trigger on his blaster.
Gilbert yanked hard, pulling Fortin away from the corner just as blaster bolts slammed into floor and corner of the wall. Both soldiers slid back and away from the corner. The metal wall panel was heating up from the repeated blaste
r bolts, burn marks radiating through the material.
“Four, maybe more beyond the next intersection,” Fortin said. “Doors down the right side, the outside wall. Couple more on the left but further down.”
I’d always been good at mapping, able to think in 3D and 2D geometry. Lefts, rights, sizes of the rooms. Somehow I could put them together to create a rough layout of a space. The doors on the left would put those rooms past the large examination room. A shared wall.
Most likely.
More shots slammed into the corner, the far wall, some getting a better angle and forcing us back from the corner. If I was the Tiat in charge I’d be advancing down the hall under the covering fire. Concentrate the fire along one side of the corridor, advance up the other.
That’s what I’d do and I really didn’t have the urge to look to see if I was right.
Looked like Harrow was agreeing with me.
“Back the other way,” she said with a curse.
Sweet in the rear became point. With Treuto, they advanced back the way we had come. Fortin and Gilbert stayed behind, covering our backs. Sweet passed the exam room door, where Harrow and I stopped to wait. Carleton was between our position and Sweet, looking back and forth, ready to cover which side would be needed.
“Contact,” Sweet yelled through the comms and we heard the sound of blasters against metal wall.
“Dammit,” Harrow said, her eyes on the stairwell that would lead back upstairs and the roof.
Where we could escape to.
With mission not fully accomplished.
And if we left now, before the bombers were close, the Tiat could find the beacons and simply turn them off. We couldn’t retreat. I knew it and Harrow knew it.
“Inside,” I told her, pointing at the exam room.
“We’ll be trapped,” she said, looking back into the room.
“I think we can get out,” I said.
“You think?”
“Yeah,” I answered watching as blaster bolts slammed into the walls at either end.
If we stayed here, we’d be dead. The Tiat would take the corners and then just keep firing down the corridor until we were no more.