MissionSRX: Deep Unknown

by Matthew D. White

  “No shit!” Grant snapped. “Stop them!”

  “I can’t!” Scott managed, trying desperately to find a utility that still worked. “They’ve still got me locked out! There’s nothing I can do. I can’t get an override!”

  Grant sighed and clenched his jaw beneath his mask. “Guess we’re on our own. Find him. Find anything alive. I’m going to the bridge.”

  Scott exhaled hard and tried to assemble his thoughts. If they were already on the move, he’d have to find a hardware reset or pull power directly to get them to stop. He checked the panel and saw they were only going to be in hyperspace for a few minutes. That trip wouldn’t be worth the risk.

  “Scott, I need the lift,” the commander announced.

  He searched through the log and typed in the commands to activate and lock the lifts open. “That works. Can I give you the doors too? I don’t want to risk us getting locked out.”

  “Go for it. Anything on the bridge?”

  “No, it just locked me out of their cameras,” Scott reported and entered the next command. With a rolling series of clicks and snaps, the lifts around the ship came back to life as well as the hard and vaporous doors. “Hatches and elevators should be working now. For more than that I need to get to the hardware override.”

  Grant hopped onto the lift and let it take him halfway to the command deck. “Where is the override you keep talking about?”

  “From what I can tell, it should be down by the control center in front of the primary power plant. There’s a computer system that handles the bulk of the information distribution, but there are over a hundred supporting sites elsewhere in the ship in case it gets damaged. You could take out three quarters of them and the ship could still function.”

  “That really does me no good,” Grant muttered as he continued scanning his surroundings on the ascent.

  Static blared over the radio channel. “Is someone there?”

  Grant paused and checked his surroundings. “Copy that. Identify yourself.”

  “Staff Sergeant Allen, former Mars Alpha security team lead. Is that you, Commander Grant?”

  “Sergeant Allen!” Grant hadn’t taken notice of where his former ground team was currently spread. “Good to find you.”

  “What the hell happened to us?”

  “It’s a long story but the ship was compromised. I’ve got to set it straight, but I don’t know what we’re up against yet. Where are you?”

  “Down in the bottom deck. We’ve been sealed in the armory all damn day. The doors finally opened so we got out while we could.”

  “Are there any other defenders? Anyone on the ship besides the command crew?”

  “The bulk of Major Kael’s forces are stationed on the central floor plus gunners and support crew members.”

  “I need you to gather them up and make sure we’ve got a secured and unified force if this goes south,” Grant said, snapping his weapon up to check the ramp above him. It’d be a long trek on foot but it was worth it to try and keep the element of surprise.

  “Can do. We’ll set up in the crew quarters behind the main bay.”

  Grant continued up until he hooked around the last turn before the command deck. Unlike the other floors, the normally white surfaces were splattered and streaked with blood. Before reaching the bridge, he checked the side rooms which were also decorated with thick, dried blood.

  “Scott, door check. Open the alcoves behind the bridge.” Grant waited only a second before the door evaporated.

  Lieutenant Rans was passed out in the corner with an open medical bag spread across the floor. A thick bandage applying direct pressure to the gunshot hole in her leg was in place, obviously self-applied during the battle. An activated autoinjector was on the floor beside an outstretched hand. She awoke as he approached but recognized the commander before she otherwise reacted.

  “Are you alright?” he asked, scanning the room for any other threats.

  Rans nodded, a mixed look of terror and anger on her face. “I think so. At least I stopped the bleeding. Are you sick?” She stared daggers into his face.

  “I don’t think so. Why?”

  “Let me see your face,” Rans demanded with a mixed look of fear and pain on her face.

  Grant released the clasp on his helmet and pulled the shield back. Rans checked both his eyes before she leaned her head back in relief. “You have to stop him.”

  “Kael?”

  “Yes. It was all him. Or not. Something happened to him. His eyes were stained.”

  “Where is he? Is he still on the bridge?”

  “I think so, but he’s had me locked in here.”

  “Will you be alright to stay here? I have to stop him, but you can take a lift to the landing bay. The ground team will be able to meet you there. Otherwise I’ll get you on the way out.”

  “I think I can wait. Don’t take too long; I’ll need a doc before this gets infected.”

  “Okay, hang on.” Grant left the ship’s commanding officer and crossed the wide hallway to the command deck, following the trail of bloody footprints on the floor.

  18

  The Flagstaff slammed hard out of the warp and back into real space above Earth. Burning wrecks instantly tumbled by on all sides. Fox held onto his control station and slammed down on the broadcast transmitter.

  “U.S.C. Lexington, this is Commander Gordon Fox of the U.S.C. Flagstaff reporting as ordered!” he called out and watched his screen fill with a long line of human battleships, creating an expansive line of assault in front of the Lexington station. They faced off against an equally impressive line of Cygnan ships far off in the cover of darkness.

  In the silence of the moment, Fox felt one thought creep in, “If less than a quarter of the alien battle group had made it this far, the full force would have given Earth the finishing blow in one simple operation. Without Grant’s op, it would have been the end.” Before he could go further, a response came back.

  “Fox? Is that you? Gaddamn it’s good to hear your voice!” General Raley’s voice found its way back across from the station.

  “Yes sir! First thing, Lieutenant Wright is following me in an alien battleship. We’re in communication. DO NOT ENGAGE HIM!”

  “Done. That’s not the worst thing I’ve heard today. It’s about time you get back!”

  “Same to you, sir; where do you need us?”

  “Cut hard to Y-Z and set up to flank them. We can’t hold them to do it on our own.”

  “Copy. Moving.” Fox confirmed and built a flight path for the ship to follow. Seconds later Wright’s Patriot slid out of the dark to an intense squabbling from the other battleships.

  “How we doing?” Wright’s introduction was brief.

  “Been better. Follow me to flank them and get an angle to engage with the mass driver.”

  “Will do.”

  “Is that your ship?” Raley asked in a stunned voice. The Patriot dwarfed every ship in orbit to include the Lexington itself.

  “Yes sir. We had more but this will have to do.”

  “Definitely appreciated. It’ll be enough.”

  ***

  Commander Prime Jefferson Grant scanned across the bridge to see a single dark figure standing alone towards the front, observing the wide field of nothing beyond the leading glass screen. The only other object amiss was the black obelisk barely fifteen centimeters tall sitting on the console. He kept an eye on the figure as he moved towards the artifact.

  “I wouldn’t touch that.” Kael said, turning back towards the commander, “We’re still in the warp. Who knows where we’ll end up if you pull it now?”

  Grant trained his rifle on the major as he approached without wavering with a steel gaze welded to his face. Kael had his hands clasped behind his back like a confident, conquering general but did not appear to be carrying his primary weapon. His sidearm was still secured in the holster to his side.

  “What did you do?”

  “I did my part to right t
he universe.” Kael said, turning and lifting back his face shield to reveal a rotting complexion while his eyes still looked to be filled with swirling red and black ink.

  “What the hell happened to you?” Grant demanded.

  “Enlightenment! I’ve been shown the way. You’ve been lied to at every turn, we all have, but this is where that changes!”

  Grant flexed his grip on the rifle but didn’t drop the muzzle. “Explain yourself.”

  “The Cygnans are the saviors of the universe, not the Lyrans and certainly not humanity. Your little friend Omega is the worst offender of them all!”

  “No one is perfect. Even he admitted that.”

  “The Lyrans slaughtered half the cluster before the Cygnans put them in their place!” Kael roared. “The second they couldn’t subjugate a species, what did they do? Run and hide until we showed up. Then they stuck us on the front lines to un-fuck the nasty can of worms they opened!”

  The commander didn’t flinch nor otherwise respond so Kael continued.

  “Why do you think we can understand them? That they can understand us? So that your miner regrew legs and you have a new heart? Their doctors don’t intuitively understand alien physiology that well; they did it by killing off a quarter of your crew through trial and fucking error!” Kael added with artistic flair, “What was their great assistance today? Huh? Five ships and some hyperspace gates?”

  “It would have been plenty if not for you.”

  “Yup, and we would have been sitting pretty until we regrouped at Earth and they disabled their ships remotely, sent the rest of the fleet straight through the gate and finished us right the hell off! You don’t think they have a plan for us too? Why do you think the Cygnans knew we were coming? Because the Lyran probes told them!”

  “That’s enough!” Grant shouted, “You just killed off half the damn crew by yourself!”

  “Like you’re a saint!” Kael said, becoming more animated. “You just don’t understand. To be a killer is to be killed, to perish, again and again, every day of your rotten life. With each pull of the trigger another corner of your soul withers, until you lose all ability to feel because it hurts to consider. It's not pretty, it's not poetic but you know exactly what I mean. If you’re lucky, you think you’ll save the world, save yourself and have your revenge. How’s that worked out so far? You’ve become obsessed and damned beyond recognition or repair. Cold and condemned, it’s your saving grace and yet your poison.” The major coughed hard, splattering blood across the floor before him, “You are too late. There's nothing you can do to me now that I haven't already done for myself."

  Kael beheld the darkness, contemplating his own words, as if they were out of place and his subconscious was trying to make sense of it all. Grant kept his rifle trained, stone still.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t yet reached your level of a crazed butcher, but it’s only a matter of time. The Cygnans will cleanse the Earth and will remove the stain of the Lyran legacy. Finally there will be order once more.”

  With a jolt, the Patriot slipped out of hyperspace and back into the familiar star field of the galaxy. Straight ahead of their Lyran vessel floated a massive Cygnan battleship easily five times their mass.

  “Our masters are here,” Kael mused.

  “So what’s your game?”

  “They will come aboard and remove the rest of your defenders. I will give them all the details of Earth’s defenses as well as a full accounting of the Lyran armada. There will be no stopping them.” The major lamented and turned to face the Cygnan dreadnought. “And at last, there will be permanence to the universe.”

  Not waiting another second, Grant flicked his trigger and drove a round into Kael’s left shoulder, denting his armor and knocking the man from his feet. In the same movement, he pivoted to a knee and put another shot through the black alien device on top of the console before turning back to the heaving officer struggling to his feet.

  “You shot me in the back!”

  “Like you said,” Grant stood back up and walked closer to the major, flipping back his face shield, “I’m no saint. By the way, you might want to check this out.” he added, pointing out the window.

  The lights above flickered and dimmed momentarily in front of a rising sound like a charging battery. Far before them on the deck, the leading cannon crackled with the energy of hundreds of millions of volts.

  “What did you do?” Kael yelled and struggled to get to his feet but Grant planted a firm kick to his chest, keeping him pinned on the ground.

  “Taking care of your little Reich. Enjoy.”

  The mass driver of the Patriot threw a projectile across at the unsuspecting alien ship which struck at full force and drilled clear through without slowing. The dreadnought tore and peeled apart at the skin, throwing gas and fire silently into the night sky. Explosions ricocheted down the filaments of metal, leaving the corpse to burn out as it expended whatever fuel still remained within.

  “Thank you, Mr. Ryan.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Scott’s voice came back loudly over the Patriot’s open radio channel.

  “You just doomed us all!” Kael rolled back, drawing his pistol and firing into Grant’s chest.

  The commander’s suit registered the blast and automatically dropped the shield across his face. He marched forward, undeterred by the stream of underpowered gunfire before he got within barely a meter of the major.

  Kael fired once more, the bullet again glancing harmlessly off Grant’s helmet. The commander cracked his neck back to the front and saw the slide on the weapon extended.

  “Here,” he said and tossed his rifle into the major’s lap.

  Kael instinctively dropped the pistol and grabbed for the rifle and barely saw his opponent reach for a strangely-painted tomahawk and drive it straight down into the side of his throat.

  The major dropped like a stone from the hit as the commander wrenched the blade away along with a surging torrent of blood.

  “It’s no matter” Kael sputtered through the fluid leaking from his mouth. “You are lost and we shall prevail.”

  Grant brought the blade down again, spear point first into Kael’s opposing shoulder and kicked him off to fall flat on the ground. His head bounced off the metal underlayment without a secondary move and the commander saw death melt into his eyes.

  He looked up to see dozens of tiny signatures being expelled from the Cygnan ship. Escape pods or shuttles, one way or another the survivors were coming. Cursing to himself, Grant pulled himself away from the macabre scenario, retrieved his weapons and sprinted off the bridge. “Heads up! We’re about to have company!”

  Outside, Rans had made it only a few meters from the doorway before collapsing on the hall floor. Grant wrapped her arm around his shoulder and lifted her to her feet. “Come on; we’ve got to go!” he yelled out and together they stumbled to the waiting elevator platform.

  “Shuttles inbound! All stations prepare to intercept!” Grant called into the open radio channel then turned to Rans, “You had a medic in the bay, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Good. I’m taking you there to get patched up. We need to keep these things off.”

  “Commander, we’ve got a problem up here!” an unknown voice came through the intercom.

  “What now?”

  “That’s my main gunner.”

  “All of the guns are offline. We can’t defend anything from here.”

  Grant let his head roll back and bounce off the wall in frustration. “Scott, we’ve got another problem, the cannons are still offline!”

  “Umm yes, that’s correct.” Scott confirmed. “Everything other than the mass driver is disabled.”

  “Then you need to get it re-enabled before those bastards show up!”

  Scott hopped up from his seat at the probe’s console. He hadn’t considered that. “I’m on my way!” he grabbed his rifle and dashed down the leading hallway. He just hoped he could find the hardware terminal at the
rear of the ship in time.

  He passed the forward ramp he had taken before as a surging roar of noise emanated above, driving a searing wall of smoke and dirt down through the passage. Scott fell to his knees and scrambled up, not wanting to stop and ponder the fact that the Cygnans had just crash-landed their first shuttle full of deformed freaks set to melt the skin from their bones.

  Dropping down another level, Scott landed on a service platform and mashed the control, driving it straight back towards the core of the ship.

  ***

  From the flight clinic, Grant heard the explosion just as clearly. He looked between Rans and the medical officer. “You got her?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Stay here and seal the door.” Grant left and wound his way back out. “Sergeant Allen, we’ve got a landing in the central bay. Where are you?”

  “Sir, base level support hangar, port side. We’ve got a landing here too. Sergeant Mason’s across from us. He’s got another that just came in on starboard!”

  Grant felt a pang of fear as he snuck around the corner of the central landing bay. Three Cygnan shuttles had already piled into the space with a line of the aliens dressed in massive black armor already streaming off, making for every exit.

  “I’m gonna need some help up here. They’ve already got three ships in the damn bay!” he said, still planted behind the corner.

  “Sorry, sir; no can do. If we pull back now we’ll give them the ship.”

  The commander ground his teeth. He wanted to pull authority, but he knew the sergeant wouldn’t defy him without good reason. “Scott, how are we doing on the weapons?”

  “I’m almost there. Give me one more minute!”

  Random shots impacted the walls around the commander, causing him to duck farther back. He hit the control to summon the hatch without a response. “Actually, is there any way you can seal off the main landing bay first?”

  “Why? I just forced them open!”

  “Because we’ve got Cygnans landing on the deck and we’re gonna be overrun in about thirty seconds!”