MissionSRX: Deep Unknown

by Matthew D. White

  He froze. It wasn’t Lyran. Maybe it would still worked if it was sealed in the bay. “Keep trying!” Fox ordered and sprinted back out, “Open the bay! I’ve got another idea.”

  ***

  The metal wall grew tall above Grant’s leading tank as they passed into the shadow of the cliff. “HOLD ON!” he yelled as the bared down on the perforated metal doors and smashed through at full speed, sending debris flying in all directions in a dark cloud of smoke.

  Rolling into the cavern, the driver kept his speed until he could identify the wall ahead through the darkness. “Fangs out!” Grant shouted, “Hose it all down!”

  Guns on every protrusion around the tank’s exterior spat high-velocity fire and lead in all directions, blanketing every surface with wave upon wave of supersonic death and destruction. All of the random scattered equipment, crates and machinery in the way quickly vaporized under the unrelenting hail of fire.

  Ahead, the commander could see the dim outline of another hatch leading farther underground. “Right there!” he pointed and grabbed his rifle. “Ground team! Ready to deploy!” he ordered and dashed to the exit, “Get our comms back!” He added over his shoulder while leaping from the top stair tread.

  They cycled outside, deaf and blind to the world above and in the moment not caring one way or another. Without pause, Grant led his squad around the halted tank to the airlock and what he assumed was the entrance to the base below. “Blow it!” he ordered and stood at the ready while his team fanned out and dropped a charge across the forged vault door.

  He detonated the explosives only moments after the team cleared. With a rush of exchanging air, the door ruptured and swung aside. Grant looked back as he heard the crack of a gun and the consolidated shouting of the soldiers at the front.

  “Contact front! Contact front!” The leader shouted as a burst of weapons fire ricocheted down the dark corridor before them.

  “Take cover!” Grant yelled back, walking towards the sporadic exchange, “Flash going out!” he added and removed a small metal cylinder from his chest before pitching it down the hallway. The blinding explosion that followed was visible from the surface and Grant took the initiative to lead the squad deeper down into the station.

  ***

  Fox sprinted down the long connecting bridge and into the upper passage of the Flagstaff, aiming straight for the bridge. Rounding the last corner, he came face to face with the watch crew. “Break’s over!” He ordered the team, “Warm it up! We’re punching out of here!”

  The pilot reacted with fluid precision as the command sunk in. “Copy that, sir. What’s the mission?”

  “Anywhere but here! Get me engines, ground weapons and sensors. NOW!”

  The commander heard a distant rumble as the engines ignited and the loading platforms disconnected. Ahead, the bay doors were still shut.

  “Sir, we’re running out of room.”

  “Forward!” the command was simple but all the officer could coordinate to speech. His palms grew cold as he waited on Wright to override the system. As the meters ran down, a sliver of light appeared across the seam.

  “We’re cutting it close!” The pilot reported but stayed the course, aiming for the beam of light and nothing more.

  The Flagstaff hit the door hard, brushing it aside with a sickening scrape and slipped into the rush of atmospheric plasma building around the accelerating spacecraft. The Patriot was dead in the water, sailing upside down and backwards, being pulled down from the safety of their orbit. On the Flagstaff’s display a second Patriot sailed lifelessly above them with the finesse of a falling brick. Similarly at a lower altitude, the other was picking up speed, engulfed in a growing sphere of fire.

  “The guys upstairs just said there’s a site outside the complex we didn’t hit! Find it and drop everything we’ve got on top of it!” Fox ordered as the pilot struggled to right the tumbling battleship as it careened down through the sky.

  With the help of an array of positioning thrusters, he pulled the human battleship back to a stable orientation and fought to decelerate before they risked getting any closer to the ground.

  As the ship barreled down, now under control, the pilot maneuvered straight to the isolated alien facility. “We’re about forty seconds out.” He reported to the commander.

  “Perfect.” Fox remarked, watching a building swirl of dust and gas fly across their screen outside, “Get the cannons armed.”

  ***

  Several kilometers closer to the surface, a fireball streaked high above the barren landscape. Since losing control of every operational surface and system on the craft and tumbling about in the ever-changing gravity fields, Lieutenant Sebastian prepared for the end. Although attempting to portray a calm façade to the rest of his crew, the truth was he hadn’t been as scared since leaving Earth for their galactic adventure.

  “Nothing’s responding!”

  “I don’t care! Keep trying! Anything you can think of!” he shouted over to his pilot. Scanning out the front screen as the ship tumbled again, he briefly saw through the wall of plasma enough to make out the greenish surface of the planet below. For the first time, over a fleeting second, he was able to discern several major features, down to a mountain range slicing across the ground. It wouldn’t be much longer and they’d be seeing more than that.

  ***

  “One more room.” Scott whispered to Sergeant O’Hare as the team of soldiers forced their way deeper underground. “I think that’s the source of the interference.”

  “Any movement?”

  “Yes.” Scott confirmed and stared at the tiny screen. “I’d say at least eight.”

  “Good.” O’Hare placed another explosive on the airlock door ahead of them and pulled the pin on another flash grenade. The door vaporized, knocking Scott from his feet as the sergeant tossed the grenade through the ring of fire.

  The white burst refracted off the layer of black smoke from the breaching charge and O’Hare charged in, followed by the pair of soldiers behind him. Scott dove in last, covering the right corner as he was expected to and pushed through a torrential hail and exchange of gunfire. Without hesitating, he dropped a twisting line of belt-fed rounds through the few aliens unlucky enough to scramble for an exit in his field of view.

  He continued to cover his side while O’Hare and the others finished with the rest of the room. The instant the sergeant called the room clear, Scott dropped his rifle and recovered the scanner, attempting to make sense of the barrage of signals permeating the air.

  “What now?” O’Hare asked, checking the bodies of the Cygnans for movement. One flinched as he stepped on it so he responded with a single shot to the head. The extracted pistol cartridge pinged off the ground.

  “There’s a ton of interference I’m not familiar with. We have to disable whatever they’re using. It’s got to be controlling all of this.”

  ***

  “Found them!” The defensive systems officer onboard the Flagstaff reported back to Commander Fox. “We’ve got the source of the signal!”

  “Hit it!” Fox ordered, “I want an anti-radiation missile right on top of it!”

  With the press of one button, their gunner sent three long-range munitions slicing out from the battleship and cutting through the atmosphere. They wrapped around the curvature of the planet to their defenseless target, quickly picking up speed with the aid of the increasing gravitational field. The first deflected from the target, a small, isolated cluster of antennas far away from the perimeter of the base but the remaining two slammed home, instantly turning the miniscule station to glass and dust.

  ***

  The swirling gravity field immediately righted itself and Lieutenant Sebastian found himself once more being pulled down into his command seat.

  “Controls are back!” the pilot announced as he attempted to right the ship for the hundredth time. For the first time the vessel responded in kind, righting itself against the pulling gravity field and dumping all avail
able power to recharge the depleted shields.

  They corrected but Sebastian could tell it want enough. The plasma buildup dwindled on the glass and he saw the ground rushing up below them. His eyes grew wider as he watched the glimmer of a small rocky hill approach from the front but high enough to hit the lower starboard engine.

  Like any supersonic platform getting clipped by a stationary object, the Patriot lost whatever control it had regained and slammed straight into the ground. The shockwave ripped the opposite engine off as well and traveled through the structure, knocking every standing crew member from their feet. Their lower levels took the full impact and collapsed as the wings failed, crumpling up into the fuselage of the ship and burying the unfortunately located crew members alive.

  On the command deck, Sebastian grabbed for whatever he could reach to keep himself from being tossed aside as well. Another low ridge struck the starboard side of the ship, catching the wing once more and spinning the remaining wreck like a top. Through the deafening grinding of the plain below, the Lyran battleship slowly slid to a halt.

  The lieutenant’s heart was racing as fast as the warnings on his console blared. It took only a moment to interpret what he was reading and hearing. Hull Breach. Atmospheric Leak.

  “We’ve got a hull rupture! Masks on! Masks on! He yelled to the crew and fumbled for the glass and rubber device beneath his seat. The pilot shook himself out of the trance of trying to land the vessel and looked to his own as well. “Make the announcement to the rest of the ship! Anyone left, get your masks on!” Sebastian called out again, getting to his feet and tightly pulling the straps across his scalp. If anyone on his ship had just survived their crash from orbit, he didn’t want to lose them from exposure.

  Power to the bridge died off, leaving only the red strobes in the corners to guide their actions. With no central generation, every terminal flickered before going blank as the operators tried to log the last of their commands.

  “Any idea on the damage?” Sebastian asked the room at large to deafening silence before his ringing ears.

  “Unknown,” One of the officers spoke up after an uncomfortable delay, “Last logged event were fires breaking out around the ship.”

  Sebastian nodded, “Then get on the mobile radios. Let everyone know we’re staging in the main landing bay. Keep trying to get anything powered up so the fleet can find us.”

  ***

  The door blew like the last, revealing another steeply graded passage leading farther under the range. Commander Grant led his team of soldiers forward once more and secured another fifty meters of the alien base. They had already cleared half a dozen similar rooms along the way, all like circular pods connected by short, cylindrical tubes. Armed resistance was minimal but they still managed to fatally tag two of his men.

  With a burst of static, Grant’s radio came alive for the first time in minutes. He held the team back while he tried to follow the furious conversation between Fox and the other ships’ captains.

  “Slow down!” he broke in above the other voices, cutting off the uncorrelated exchange, “What the hell just happened?”

  “Grant!” Fox exclaimed first, “Thank God you’re alright. We just got jammed out by a signal from the ground that disabled the Patriots.”

  “Disabled?”

  “Yes, like Kael did with his tchotchke except they hit us while in orbit from the surface. I bailed out with the Flagstaff in time to kill it but it still was enough to take Sebastian’s down.”

  “Sebastian’s Patriot crashed?”

  “I’m afraid so; about a hundred twenty klicks east of your position. Although we were only able to get a track on them for the last few seconds it looks like they had enough time to right themselves before they hit.”

  Grant kicked the wall beside him, “Gaddammit! How hard is this? These little shits don’t have anything down here!” he paused to calm down. Taking a deep breath, he continued, “I’ll send Fourth Battalion to secure the site. Sergeant Mason’s just guarding the surface with Allen.”

  “Copy that. We’ll keep an eye out for any survivors.”

  The commander gave Mason the order and called back to his tank at the surface. “It’s Grant. Can you hear me?”

  “Yes, sir. The jamming signal’s just subsided and we’ve got the scanners unpacked.”

  “Good. Let me know when you get them working. I want to know how much farther down this place goes.”

  The fire team converged on Grant’s position and they continued farther down the dark tunnel. Every wall, floor and ceiling was stone, as if a boring device had carved the entire facility only to have the critical junctions reinforced with metal airlocks. Even though the walls were still rounded from the construction, the floor was milled flat and etched with hashes for traction every few centimeters.

  Conduit piping was roughly attached above their heads, with small, nonfunctioning lights protruding at regular intervals to either side while other racks carried masses of cables between the landings. Despite all he had seen thus far, there was nothing that the commander saw to indicate a vast research facility was here at all. The small facilities they had cleared out didn’t have a huge number of personnel – their species was another issue – and only a relative handful of defensive forces seemed to be on hand to protect the interior of the station.

  “Commander Grant, we’ve got your position on the scope.” The corporal radioed down from the surface.

  “Excellent. Where the hell are we?”

  “About two klicks below the surface. Most of the alcoves have been cleared by the ground teams already but if you take the next left, it’ll take you to an elevator room in about another hundred meters. I don’t have a clear picture as to where it leads.”

  Blindly taking an elevator in a Cygnan base was among the last things Grant wanted to do but he wasn’t about to fall back and assume victory. “Copy. Taking the next left. If you can, get the scanner closer to keep us on the map.”

  The commander continued down the passage, hooked to the left and entered a wide, open room with a circular platform to the center. The floors were well-worn, as if thousands of feet had trampled upon them over an extended period of years but still there was no sign of any more alien workers or survivors.

  “All clear.” He announced as he finished the initial scan of the room and walked up to the platform. “See anything else?”

  “Negative. It’s empty.”

  The commander looked around one last time. He didn’t see any reason to stick around. “Alright; circle up. We’re going down.”

  The twenty-man team formed up on the elevator and Grant hit the control, subconsciously clenching his teeth in case they were walking into a trap. The lift unhooked and dropped smoothly into the floor and the team found themselves surrounded by another swiftly moving, circular wall of stone. They picked up speed, falling ever deeper beneath the surface and the base above. Grant hadn’t understood why the scanner wasn’t powerful enough to see their destination but he understood now.

  While rings of light illuminated the chamber on the descent, Grant began to see a hint of yellow force its way up around the seal below. The light grew and the wall cut away, dropping them down an acrylic cylinder into a gargantuan cavern, lit from below by a vast sea of churning magma swelling up from the planet’s mantle. A dull murmur grew among the soldiers and Grant cautiously leaned forward to peer into the brink.

  They were gliding down the lift a few hundred meters away from a wide rock wall, which he took to be the edge of the plate they had been fighting over. Below, a glittering collection of structures laid out across a shard of stone that jutted out from the corner larger plate. All around them, the light from the molten stone played with the glimmering glow of an artificial shield which held the ocean of fire at bay.

  Whatever notion Grant had maintained about the base being a forgotten backwater was quickly discarded. Again, he was at a loss as to what to do next. He saw no way that they’d have the manpower
to secure such a wide area by themselves. He still wanted every living thing there dead and whatever science experiments they had come up with stopped, but it was obvious they needed a bigger force. The job had just changed against their favor.

  His team likely only had a shred of surprise left, with news of the ongoing assault on the surface no doubt filtering down so he considered any sneaking around to be nothing more than a fool’s errand. Once they got to the ground and found a stable, defendable area, he had no problem with starting to clear the Cygnans out one way or another. Depending on whether they could lock down single areas at a time, a bite-and-hold strategy might be successful.

  The platform came to a rest at the center of a wide four-way intersection that overlooked a descending hill of earth-colored structures. Without stretching too far, it resembled a terraced suburb all the way from the wall to the edge. As above, the ground was of the same milled stone without any artistic details or ornamentation. The buildings were shaped like wide, low office buildings constructed of similar polished slabs. The commander’s inspection was cut short by a screeching blast of static in his ear.

  “Commander Grant! Commander Grant, is that you?”

  The voice was unmistakable. “It’s me. Scott, is that you? We thought you were dead! Where the hell are you?”

  “Not yet. It got pretty close at the tower. I think they could see the scope from my rifle. We escaped down an access passage in the floor. I’m glad you made it; we’re holed up in a corner overlook and just saw you come down the elevator.”

  The engineer sounded more excited than usual. “What is this place?”

  “It’s got to be the rest of the lab. I’ve been scanning nonstop but I can’t tell what all’s in here. We’ve got eyes on enough armed patrols to keep us pinned down. We were planning to be in for a fight if we tried to rush the elevator you just came down.”