Incursion

by Paul Teague

  “It’s like a shopping mall for commandos,” said Ten as he slung his rifle and pulled the new weapon from the crate. “I like this one,” he said as he searched for the right ammunition.

  Jackson stood guard at the door, peering suspiciously into the corridor as Ten and Gray systematically ransacked the armoury. Ten loaded his new toy and slung a bag of ammunition over his shoulder.

  Gray had found a multi-barrelled machine gun with a matching pack of ammunition and a heavy-duty belt feed. She tossed her rifle to Jackson and slid the pack onto her back. The gun was weighted for easy carrying, and it clicked ominously when she armed it.

  “You look ridiculous,” said Jackson. “Do you even know how to use that thing?”

  “I guess we’ll find out,” said Gray, “and if it all goes wrong, you’ll just have to save me, right?”

  “Time to go, kids,” said Ten.

  “That way, I think,” said Gray, turning away from the hangar and heading deeper into the Sphere.

  The corridor ended at a T-junction. To the left and right, the corridor stretched into the distance. Ahead, a door blocked their progress.

  “It’s got to be that way,” said Ten, nodding at the door.

  Gray stood to one side, and Jackson stepped forward, muttering something about traps as he peered at the control panel.

  “Easy,” he said as he tapped the panel and the door slid open. He stepped through the doorway into the dimly-lit chamber beyond, then swore as his HUD adjusted to the light and showed him what the room contained.

  “Mech pods,” said Ten quietly, “hundreds of them.”

  Then an alarm sounded, and the pods began to light up and open as the Mechs awakened.

  “Bollocks,” said Ten. “I think they’re onto us.”

  23

  “Hey, Davies, how does it feel to be stranded in space?” said Conway.

  “I’ve been abandoned in worse places,” said Davis, calm and focussed. “How long until that portal opens again? It’s beginning to get a bit quiet out here. I mean, not that I don’t appreciate the conversation, but it would be nice to have my other pals back.”

  “Could we make it to Kingdom 10?”

  “Good question,” said Davies, running the figures in his HUD. “Hmm, sort of. Probably.”

  “Probably?”

  “It’s fifty thousand kilometres, or thereabouts. If we load into your Raptor, point it in the right direction and burn half the fuel, we’ll hit maybe two thousand kilometres per hour. We have oxygen for about fourteen hours.”

  “So our corpses would get to Kingdom 10,” summarised Conway.

  “Most likely we’d miss by a few kilometres and vanish into space, or get caught in the planet’s gravity and burn up before crashing into the surface.”

  “You’re all joy today, Davies.”

  “Better hope the portal reopens, or Kingdom 10 can send a shuttle.”

  They hung in space for a few moments, staring at the view. Then Davies shrugged and decided that he might as well get on with the work. “Okay, I’m going to run a test to Kingdom 10,” he said. “If this works, I’ll eat my hat.”

  Conway was close by in her Raptor, ready to carry Davies to safety when the portal opened again. He was tethered to the framework of the old shuttle they’d used for their previous test. As a temporary solution, it wasn’t the worst satellite ever launched, and it would be worth it if it enabled the planned signal hop.

  “Nothing from Vengeance,” muttered Conway, not that she expected there to be. Vengeance was thousands of light-years away, stranded and unable to help. “I wish the freakin’ portal would open again. Those Mechs were formidable.”

  “Marine Davies to Kingdom 10, this is Vengeance crew calling Kingdom 10.”

  A mess of scrambled static came over the speaker, but nobody answered.

  “Keep trying, DD. They might be distracted, and I bet they don’t get a lot of callers at a shitty outpost like that.”

  “I’m going to push the booster unit a bit harder,” said Davies, digging through the menus in his HUD. “It might cause it to fail, but I may as well give it a good thrashing since the bloody thing isn’t working anyway. Marine Davies to Kingdom 10, is anybody receiving this?”

  More scrambled noises, but nothing that sounded like speech.

  “So what do we do if we can’t make this work?” asked Conway. Davies was silent for a moment as he thought through the implications.

  And then there was a voice from the darkness.

  “Kingdom 10 to Vengeance crew, authenticate, please.”

  At last, they’d made contact.

  Davies pinged his authentication code to Kingdom 10 and relaxed.

  “It’s good to talk, Marine,” said Kingdom 10. “We lost comms with Vengeance, are you all good out there?”

  “Negative, Kingdom 10. The portal has closed, and we encountered a formidable enemy. Vengeance is stuck on the other side of the portal, requesting immediate help and backup to contain the enemy.”

  “What’s your plan, Davies? We can’t risk another mistake like Colossus.”

  “I want to rig this signal for data transfer,” said Davies. “If we can pull the archived Marine mind states from Vengeance, you’ll be able to deploy them to clones and begin building an assault force. All we need is old enough ships to send back across the portal. Doesn't have to be anything fancy.”

  “We can accept mind states,” said Kingdom 10, “but our cloning facilities aren’t yet online, and we don’t have any stock.”

  “Shit. I thought Colossus delivered new equipment?”

  “She did, but it takes time to install. Even if it were all running, we have only enough supplies for a dozen clones. After that, we need to await deliveries.”

  “What about ships?” said Davies, although he already had a pretty good idea of the answer.

  “On their way,” said Kingdom 10 without offering any details at all, “but the Admiralty insists they’re to stop anything crossing the portal, not to provide assistance on the other side.”

  “We’re abandoning Vengeance? After all they’ve done?”

  “Careful, Marine. Vengeance is unique, there aren’t many like her now, but she’ll have to manage on her own.”

  “Then Vengeance had better still be in one piece when the portal reopens,” said Conway angrily, “because she’s all that stands between Kingdom 10 and obliteration.”

  In the bay, Fernandez, Kearney and Mason waited in the dark with their hostage.

  “Bridge, this is Fernandez. The lights have gone out in Bay Seven. Bridge?”

  “The Mechs are trying to hack our power and security controls,” said Stansfield. “Hold tight, we’re re-routing at the moment.”

  They waited, and then a number of lamps came back on, casting a dim light across the bay.

  “That’s as good as it gets, Lieutenant,” said Stansfield. “Do you have a captive?”

  “Ay, sir,” said Fernandez, “we’re heading to the medbay and workshops on deck two now.”

  “Be aware that decks five and four are held by the Mechs with little to no ongoing resistance. Fighting is fierce on deck three, but we still hold decks two and one.”

  “Roger,” said Fernandez, “understood. Fernandez out.” He turned to Kearney and Mason. “You heard that?”

  “We’re on deck six, right?” said Kearney.

  Fernandez nodded, his helmet exaggerating the gesture.

  “So we just fight our way through three enemy-held floors, dragging a captive, so that you can take it apart and work out what makes it tick?” said Mason.

  Fernandez nodded again.

  “What a day to be alive,” said Mason with a sigh. “Better just to get on with it, then,” he said, hefting his rifle. “Besides, I’m getting sick of this fucking bay.”

  “Commander Vernon, an update, please,” said Stansfield, his voice dominating the bridge.

  “All bays are completely overrun, but the flow of new Mechs has stopped
. Can’t tell if they’ve despatched their full force or if they just think they have enough to do the job,” said Vernon with a grudging respect.

  “Decks four and five are mostly quiet, as far as we can tell. None of our people left alive, or at least active, on those decks. We have maybe ten minutes before we lose deck three. We’re organising a retreat and placing traps on deck two as we concentrate our efforts on protecting deck one and the bridge.”

  “Any sign of that portal opening yet?” Stansfield asked, seeking a chink of light in their current darkness.

  “No movement, sir. We’re outside the regular activation cycle. It looks like the Mechs don’t want to give us a way to get out of here.”

  “How about Marine X and Hunter? Any updates, Mr Staunch?”

  “Negative, sir. Complete radio silence after we lost their signal, no way to know where they are or what they’re doing.”

  Stansfield sat in his command chair and glared at the small number of monitors that still functioned, almost daring them to give him more bad news. Then he brought up the command screen on his data slate and scrolled to the option that would destroy Vengeance if no other escape were possible.

  He stared at it, unblinking, then flicked it away.

  “Not yet,” he said to himself. “Not quite yet.”

  “Are we nearly there yet?” said Mason as he leaned out to peer down the long corridor. A burst of gunfire caused him to yank his head back in. “Not even close,” he muttered.

  They had made it to deck five, but now they were trapped in a narrow engineering access corridor, with only emergency backup lighting to help them see the enemy. A squad of Mechs was advancing down the corridor, firing on their position and clearing side rooms as they came.

  “Thorough little buggers,” said Mason. Behind him, Fernandez was struggling with the hover lift.

  “It’s not designed for this,” he said, yanking at the controls to get it around a tight corner.

  “Not much we can do,” said Kearney, shouting to make herself heard above a sudden burst of gunfire. “No cover, no help, no way out.”

  A burst of fire tore through the wall above their hiding spot, blasting great holes in the steel.

  “Now would be a great time to be somewhere else,” shouted Mason, firing blindly down the corridor.

  There was a sudden burst of rapid and intensive fire, then silence.

  “Take a look,” said Kearney.

  “Thanks,” muttered Mason sourly. He slid across the floor, power armour scraping at the metal, until he saw a squad of Vengeance Marines coming rapidly down the long corridor.

  “We’re here to support you up to the medbay,” said the sergeant, a dour-sounding man named Weston. He’d scraped together a team of half a dozen Marines from the company that had been deployed across deck three, and had fought his way into the bowels of the ship.

  “The engineering elevators are still operational,” said Weston as his troops fanned out to provide cover as Fernandez manoeuvred the hover lift. “The Mechs don’t seem to have found them yet. Risky, but the fastest way to deck two.”

  Kearney looked at the Marine. His face was bloody, and he was carrying some sort of leg wound.

  “No more suits?” asked Kearney, feeling slightly guilty that this group of unarmoured Marines had been sent to save them.

  “Bullet-proof vests,” said Weston with a sad shake of his head, “and the best helmets money can buy. And we’re low on ammo, so if we could get moving…?”

  The Mechs seemed unstoppable, and they were inflicting heavy casualties on the crew of Vengeance, but it wasn’t all going their way. The Marines looked worn out, but they’d left a trail of Mech corpses everywhere they’d gone, and now they swept the deck again as they backtracked towards the elevators.

  “Linked up with Weston’s squad, now heading for the engineering elevators,” said Kearney as she checked in with Vernon. “Get ready to receive, Commander.”

  “Roger that. Tech and med personnel are standing by.”

  “Come on,” said Weston, waving them on from further down the corridor, where it widened into a chamber big enough to host the engineering elevators that carried heavy equipment between decks.

  Kearney, Mason and Fernandez ran down the corridor to the engineering elevator and squeezed into the small space.

  “You couldn’t have found us a smaller lift?” asked Mason as they crowded in.

  “Go,” said Weston, “but send the lift back down for us. We’ll hold them here if we have to.”

  Kearney looked at Weston, then nodded her thanks and pushed herself into the elevator so that the doors could close behind her.

  It was a tight fit. Fernandez had flipped the hover lift so that the Mech was upright, and they stared at each other as the creature strained to break free from the magnetic field. As the lift began to move upwards, Fernandez studied the Mech.

  “A cyborg,” he said, making notes in his HUD as he began his inspection, “comprised of both custom human-like body parts and what appear to be real human organs, all encased in a vacuum-resistant armoured suit analogous to, but clearly different from, our own power armour.

  “The brain appears to be human and is housed in a transparent container that is mounted in a metal framework that forms the head,” Fernandez went on. “This subject has artificial eyes, but–” he paused to lean across the Mech as the elevator shuddered slowly upwards “–yes, the spine is also encased in a translucent conduit clamped into the back and protected by a metal framework. Two human legs, also encased and supported within an exoskeleton.”

  He paused as something banged against the roof of the elevator.

  “It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” he said finally.

  “Coming up on deck two,” said Mason. “Why is this thing so bloody slow?”

  “It’s a bloody freight elevator,” snapped an exasperated Fernandez. “Cables and wheels. It doesn’t need to be quick.”

  There was an explosion somewhere in the shaft beneath them, and the entire elevator rocked.

  “How safe is this thing?” said Kearney.

  “It won’t drop, if that’s what you’re asking,” said Fernandez. “Worst case scenario, we get stuck between floors and burned alive by some incendiary device.”

  “Cool, that’s put my mind at rest,” said Kearney.

  “Deck two,” Mason announced. “Hardware, children’s wear, ladies – what the fuck?”

  The elevator had stopped, but the door hadn’t opened.

  “It’s jammed,” said Mason, “help me force it.” He could hear movement on the other side, and moments later, the doors slid slowly open as the Marines heaved.

  “I’m Smith,” said the Marine who was waiting to escort them to the medbay. She and her team were wearing utterly inappropriate combat fatigues and what looked like desert-ready body armour. “Where’s Weston?”

  “Smith and Weston?” asked Kearney with a frown.

  “Make a joke about it, I fucking dare you,” snarled Smith. “Where is he?”

  “Next elevator, or coming up the stairs,” said Mason. “He was guarding our back.”

  “Shit,” said Smith as the sound of gunfire and explosions drifted up the elevator shaft. “Fuck it, we’re not going to hold this deck much longer, but we’ve got you a route to the workshop.”

  “Let’s go,” said Kearney, moving out into the corridor to cover their exit.

  Two Marines flipped the hover lift and ran with the captive Mech to the right-hand side of the corridor. Mason and Fernandez followed as a huge ball of flame rushed up the elevator shaft, turning their previous transportation into an inhospitable inferno.

  “This is it,” Fernandez shouted as they turned a corner toward the workshop. From further down the corridor came the sharp sound of the Marines’ rifles and the heavy crump as the Mechs returned fire. In the workshop, a med-team were waiting with equipment, and a pair of welders stood ready to seal the doors.

  “Get in
here,” shouted Fernandez as he pulled off his helmet and unlocked the gauntlets of his power armour so that he could work. “The Mechs are just around the corner.”

  Kearney looked at Mason, who shrugged and shook his head.

  “Seal the door, Fernandez,” said Kearney from the corridor. “We’ll buy you the time you need to do the job.”

  “Get in here,” yelled Fernandez, “you’ll never survive the firefight.”

  Mason pressed the button to the side of the heavy workshop door and waved at Fernandez as it began to close.

  “Thought we’d never get rid of him,” said Mason as he checked his weapon.

  Then the corridor was quiet, and Mason and Kearney were alone with only the pissed-off Sergeant Smith and her squad of unhappy Marines for company.

  “Time to go to work, troopers,” said Kearney . “Let’s kill some Mechs.”

  24

  “Time to move,” shouted Ten as the Mechs began to stir in their pods.

  “Do you hear that?” said Gray.

  “I see lots of Mechs getting ready to kick our arse. I’m not sure if we have time for a hearing test.”

  “Listen,” insisted Gray. “There’s some kind of pulse sound. It’s running through the sphere. It’s everywhere, like a heartbeat.”

  “Can’t hear anything,” said Jackson.

  “I don’t care,” snapped Ten. “This way, run!”

  “Do you even know where you’re going, Ten?” said Gray as they ran through the huge chamber. All around them the pods were racked to the ceiling, hundreds of them, and it looked like they were all being activated.

  “I haven’t got a freakin’ clue,” admitted Ten, “but we can’t stay here, and it seems to me like we need to get deeper into this thing.”

  Ten skidded to a halt in front of a huge door. Behind them the Mechs were clambering or jumping to the deck and beginning to look for the intruders.

  “Hurry up,” said Gray, hopping nervously from foot to foot as she pointed her gun into the chamber.