by Marc Stevens
She was correct. I was never known for stepping over a steaming pile when I could land both feet right in it.
“You seem rather jubilant after talking to Sael,” I said. “That doesn’t happen very often.”
“The council wants me back under their command. They have offered me the rank of Senior Operative and a free hand in decisions that would normally require their stamp of approval.”
I stopped dead in my tracks and slowly turned to her. “What did you say?”
“I would think about it.”
I grimaced and started rubbing my temples. It sounded like one of those routines where we took a step forward, only to find we had to take three back. Tria interpreted my reaction for what it was. She put her hand on my shoulder and pulled me close.
“I have generated considerable enthusiasm among the leadership of my people to again obtain Prule artifacts. We did, after all, destroy their entire collection,” she reminded me. “I am laying the foundation for future concessions from the council. There will come a time when they will offer us whatever we want in exchange for continued access to discoveries.”
Once upon a time, I heard those very same words from the Operative. They didn’t bear fruit then, and I doubted if they would now. I wasn’t happy about some of the decisions Tria was making. It may have had something to do with me not being in on the discussion. We had to go through a lot of bullshit to get her away from being manipulated by the council. Now it seemed like she was intentionally putting herself back in that position. The look I was giving her gave away the consternation I felt. She embraced me and kissed me lightly on the lips. Her smile never wavered.
“Nathan, in the time that you have known me, how many times have I made decisions that we have not benefited from?”
“Well, I could probably name ...”
“For the sake of this conversation, let’s leave our combat engagements out of the equation!”
It was my turn to smile. I was pretty sure she was done playing games. Whatever she was up to had to be good, or she wouldn’t be this exultant.
“I would be interested in hearing everything that was said.”
“I told Sael we found an ancient debris field around a planetoid in uncharted space. We were considering the sale of the salvage rights, and they would go to the highest bidder. I told her to let us know if she wanted to submit an offer. She stated she would pass the information on to the appropriate people. With that said, it seemed reasonable to tell her while surveying the wreckage we were attacked from the surface of the planet. When she asked who was behind the attack, I told her evidence suggested there were active Prule units on the planet’s surface. I might have also thrown out the theory that the planet was once a Prule base of operations in this galaxy and the salvage was the wreckage from the attack on the base. Sael being Sael demanded I turn over the coordinates. I, of course, refused without consulting you first but did go on to say the salvage would take years to remove once we sanitized the planet. I ended the transmission and was going to consult with you on my actions. Sael commed me back on my IST minutes later and started making offers, the results of which I have already stated.”
“Are you really considering being a pawn of the council again?”
Tria frowned. It indicated to me I might have hurt her feelings. I guess I could have worded it differently but was still a little pissed for being left out of a command-level decision. Relationships were full of give and take. Commanders to subordinates, not so much. Her frown eased, and she shook her head.
“Not in a million solar rotations, but Sael does not need to know that. She is not the only one capable of subterfuge.”
“You didn’t leave us much time to take a look around before Sael shows up and starts stepping on my toes.”
“I am going to use an Earth phrase that you have used on more than one occasion. I think this is the appropriate time to repeat it: We have more than enough time to find out if we are biting off more than we can chew.”
23
When we got to the ready room, Coonts and Klutch were already wearing their suit liners and inspecting their weapons. Xul was wearing his Zaen armor and met Tria and me at the door.
“Commander, all battle suits are at full munitions capacity, and Justice has filled the reservoirs with weaponized nanites,” Xul reported. “They are preprogramed to the same parameters as our last mission. Justice has briefed me on the target area, and it will be necessary to use the shuttle for the insertion. He has selected an equal loadout of nanite and antimatter missiles for the launcher magazines and topped off the expendable ordnance. I will be in Eagle One prepping for departure. If you need me, I will be going over my checklists.”
The little Grawl was another fine example of what his people were capable of being. He was now fulfilling several different duties. What started out as the Legacy’s science officer turned into a combat pilot position out of necessity. He willingly filled the spot and had already proven he could handle whatever was thrown at him.
“Carry on, Xul,” I said, giving him a smile and a thumbs up. “We will be boarding shortly.”
We suited up and checked one another’s kit for anything that might possibly indicate a problem. The front of Klutch’s armor had a hardened bell around the portal device’s projector. Justice had made it a permanent fixture on his armor. I rapped on the bell and gave it a couple of hard tugs. It wasn’t going anywhere unless the Troop Master had his suit systems release it. Up in the top of my HUD, I had three green bars indicating the status of my teammates. We were good to go.
Justice put the target area video on my helmet HUD. He highlighted the insertion area. It was on the opposite side of a massive crater that was more than two miles across and easily that deep. The crater wall was the reason we would be using the shuttle for the insertion. It rose up to a height of twelve-hundred feet and obscured what Justice had determined was the tunnel entrance to the facility. The scan returns showed nothing usable aside from unusual density readings spread out over a large area. If the weapon that had made the crater would have hit two thousand yards to the south, we would not have a reason to look around.
“Commander, I have included some extra equipment in your battle suit’s inventory,” Justice informed me. “The strike team will be carrying the extra equipment as well. You now have six communication drones that should allow continuous comms with the Legacy, as long as there is unobstructed signal continuity. I can track your progress through the facility. It is advisable to place them in strategic locations along your route. I have also created a data capture device designed to penetrate Prule processing units like those found imbedded in the Hivemind’s biomass. You and Tria will each have one. It is still an experimental device, but if the opportunity should present itself, place it on anything you determine to be a Prule computer system. The longer it is in contact with the processor, the greater the chance to collect valuable information. If for some reason you fail to collect it, the internal clock will release weaponized nanites to neutralize the device along with the processor it is in contact with.
“The final addition to your loadout is two antimatter charges. Their destructive power is equal to four of your launcher tube’s full-yield munitions. They have tamperproof ignition systems that interphase with your HUD. I have included a menu that should cover most any deployment scenario, and they can stick to any surface once activated. You should use extreme caution if you decide to deploy them.”
It was nice to know that we now had the option of doing some major damage to the facility without bombarding it from space. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. If there was something we did not want to fall into anyone else’s hands, we could now blow it up without expending launcher munitions. It gave us the option of proclaiming our innocence to any interested parties. Justice was still wargaming a hundred steps ahead of me.
“Thanks, Justice,” I said. “You know how much I like new toys to play with.”
That
comment got me the stink eye from my crewmates. There had been a few times when my propensity for mayhem had proven to be just as dangerous to them as it was to the enemy. I shrugged and smiled back at them. Justice put the latest scans of the insertion point up on the hangar wall so we could all take a final look before we departed. There was just enough room for the shuttle to fly in between the crater wall and the mountainside the tunnel entrance was located on. It may have been easier to jump in, but Justice nixed the idea. If we were subjected to another surprise attack, the shuttle’s shields might be our only salvation. Xul had Justice’s subsystem preset all the Eagle’s heavy weapons for a retaliatory snapshot in case the worst came to pass. At the very least, it would slow any follow-up shots long enough for us to get clear of the area. If need be, Justice was on the other side of the crater wall and would turn the site into another pothole. I felt we had our asses covered and couldn’t think of anything else we needed to do. We boarded the shuttle, and Justice pushed us out into the void.
Xul had the shuttle cloaked and flew low over the tortured landscape. We had to make a couple pop-up maneuvers to clear the ridges between us and the ravine that would take us to the cave entrance. Each time we gained altitude, we got better scan returns of the ground below. It was desolate and without life or visible power sources. It was disheartening to see this much destruction and know the planet was still occupied by hostile forces. It painted a grim picture for those who came here to defeat the Prule.
“We will be over the target in thirty seconds, Commander!” Xul called out to us.
We stood up and made our way to the shuttle’s hatch. Klutch took the front position. He had his plasma caster up and ready with Tria and me behind him. Coonts rapped on the back of my armor, letting me know he was in position and ready. It was a rough ride at the speed Xul was flying, so we locked our boots to the deck, waiting for him to pop the hatch. When he finally did, it was to a dark, featureless rip in the ground. Our no-light sensors showed us the remains of a huge landslide caused by the crater wall heaving up from the surrounding terrain. There was evidence of large machinery and possibly weapons buried all along its leading edge. The entrance was nothing more than a three-foot by four-foot hole that had not been completely buried by the onrushing ground. There was no evidence of activity around it. The soil was pulverized and loose, showing no signs of being disturbed.
Klutch used his armored boots to push the soil into the hole until he had an opening big enough to accept his large dimensions. The rest of us had formed a semicircle around him with our weapons pointing outward. He disappeared into the hole. What sounded something like a whoop came over our group comms.
“Klutch! What the hell was that?”
“Nothing, Commander,” Klutch replied. “That first step is what you would describe as a doozy. I have no movement, and the tunnel looks clear. It drops off in the distance, so I am unable to tell what is farther down.”
Tria went down next with me right after her. Klutch was right. It wasn’t so much of a step as it was a fall. The tunnel was over one hundred feet tall, and the landslide had filled the entrance all the way to the top. I slid almost straight down the rocky slope, looking for Tria below me. I hit the bottom and rolled. I heard a clipped laugh on my private comms and looked up to see Tria. She had made the decision to use her suit’s gravity drive to suspend her above the floor and avoid the haphazard slide altogether. I was going to give her some stupid reason for not doing the same, but Coonts came rolling into me. He started swearing at Klutch for not being more specific on the nature of the fall.
I got to my feet as Tria landed next to us. I pulled Coonts up and extracted a comms drone from my fanny pack. I tossed it up the slope, and it took off to the ceiling of the cavern. It hovered at the hole we used to make our entrance. I called to Xul for a comms check. He came right back loud and clear. I told him to go back to the Legacy and wait for us there. I had no idea how long we would be and did not want him sitting up there as a stationary target. He commed back an affirmative, but I could tell he did not like it.
Tria, Coonts, and I got our bearings and located Klutch well down the passage. He was kneeling where the tunnel dropped down a slope. We boosted to his location. He was studying the floor of the tunnel.
“What have you got, Klutch?”
“Commander, unless it was destroyed, there is a very large tracked vehicle around here somewhere. Look at the size of the track marks.”
The tunnel was eighty feet wide, and a set of track marks went down the middle, leaving little room on either side. I could only speculate, but my mind conjured up a huge tank with a gazillion weapons sticking out in all directions. The chill that ran up my spine vanquished the image, and I turned to look down the slope. It leveled off sixty feet below us and continued out of sight. Coonts made an ominous observation.
“Commander, the way the dust and debris were disturbed by the passage of the vehicle indicates the direction it last took. If the vehicle was going out of the passage and to the planet’s surface, the mounds of soil pressed from beneath the tracks would be at the tunnel side of the track. It is plain to see that is not the case. The soil is pushed out on the entrance side, indicating the vehicle went down the passage and not out of it.”
I tried to paint a good picture of the situation. Maybe it was just a big tow truck of some kind that hauled other crap back for repairs. This was, after all, supposed to be a repair facility. Then I started thinking about how many times the Hivemind had misled us. Nope! It was going to be a big ass tank loaded with every weapon the Prule had ever built.
“Coonts, Klutch, you take the right side, and Tria and I will take the left. Use your gravity drives to stay close to the ceiling of the passage. I know cloaking hasn’t helped in the past, but do it anyway. If we see a big tracked weapons platform, we will retreat back up here and make another plan of action.”
My crewmate’s cloaked avatars appeared in my HUD. We boosted to the ceiling and eased our way down. The tunnel went three hundred yards and dropped again. We followed it down another step, and this time it terminated at a huge blast door. If the vehicle was down here, it was somewhere on the other side. I had the access codes and the carrier wave necessary to gain entry. I stood in front of the door and again thought about the Hivemind. It was a backstabbing pile of bio-shit that no doubt wanted us dead. I would love nothing more than to loot this place and go back to the Legacy to rub it in the bio machine’s awareness.
“Klutch, choose a spot on the door and make a hole.”
Tria pulled a comms relay from her kit and tossed it to the top of the tunnel ceiling. It probably was a good idea, but I doubted if we would have comms on the other side of the door.
The Tibor pulled his plasma caster from its clip and checked the charge on the energy pack. The business end glowed a pinkish blue, and we all took a step back.
“Anytime, Troop Master!”
He turned and gave me a toothy grin and hit the button on the portal device. We had a good hole. Tria and I raised our beam weapons and ran through with Coonts right behind us. We spread out and took a knee. Low light was no longer necessary. There was plenty of light on this side of the door, and our audio pickups were assaulted by the din of machinery. It was loud enough we would not have to worry about the small amount of noise we made while moving. Klutch came through behind us and shut down the portal. My HUD notified me we were in an atmosphere. It was high in nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and ozone. It had only a minute amount of oxygen. Breathing it if one of our suits got breached was not a healthy option. The G load went up from point five to a constant two.
Klutch crouched down behind us with his plasma caster up and ready. I wasn’t sure if I was comfortable with it that close to my back but had other things to occupy my mind. The tracked vehicle was indeed a tank, and we were crouched in its shadow. It did not have the number of weapons my imagination had conjured, but the large twin barreled turret mounted on its top was all it probably needed
to do the job it was designed for. I waved us forward, and we scurried underneath its belly. Tria and I had to bend over, but Coonts and Klutch had no problem standing under the mammoth weapon. We could see another tank behind the one we were sheltering under. I wondered if this was the only exit. If it was, they were trapped by the crater wall at the end of the tunnel. More unpleasant thoughts passed through my mind. There was always the possibility they could blast an opening big enough to make it to the surface. I shook my head to clear the crap screwing my concentration. My view from underneath the tank was limited. I could see an open area in the distance. We weren’t going to see what was going on in here if we didn’t get moving.
“Klutch, take point,” I ordered. “Move us to the next vehicle.”
He came forward, and we formed up behind him. The distance to the next tank was about twenty yards. We had no way to tell if someone or something was up on the rear deck of the tank. We would move fast and hope our cloaked battle armor hid us from detection. Klutch went first and looked up at the rear of the tank.
“Commander, it looks clear, but I think I see what could be an open hatch.”
“Tria, you go across to Klutch and cover me and Coonts. We are going to take a look up above.”