“Can’t you get out the way you came in?”
“No, sir. They collapsed the tunnel a ways back in a trap but we outran it. That’s not all. According to the scanner there’s a ton of explosives down here too.”
“Like, they’re researching?” Grant turned and took cover at the corner of the street while the rest of the team took security positions in each direction.
“No, like it’s all wired to blow.” Scott clarified, “There’s a huge line of material running all the way along the wall. It’s probably enough to sever the plateau and send it into the core.”
Grant grew uneasy, looking at the ground beneath his feet which now felt as unstable as the branch of a sapling. “So if we attack them, you think they’d detonate it to save whatever secrets they have from us?”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. I’m trying to find the kill switch but no luck yet. It’s hard enough seeing the charges, much less wires attached to them. What do you want to do?”
The commander sorted through the pile of new revelations. “Keep looking, anything you can do. If you need us to dig around, tell me. We’ll pull back to the top and stay low. Maybe if we keep most of the guys out of sight it won’t scare them into blowing it.”
“Copy that, sir.”
Grant turned back as his soldiers retreated up the incline to the dizzyingly tall wall of stone, secure in the plan until the Cygnan patrol to his left opened fire.
28
The waning star grew dim as it sank close to the western horizon and Sergeant Mason looked out ahead at the remains of the once proud battleship, now looking more like a rotting, beached whale than a great instrument of power. The broken vessel still towered above the landscape, dwarfing any natural or artificial object in sight, while its wings were twisted in the dirt and the remaining engines sputtered and emanated smoke from their rear vents along with every other punctured surface.
Its leading bay doors were open but there was no movement, nor any sign of survivors. The sergeant checked his screen. There was extensive damage to every major system, two missing engines and no power. While the rest of the fleet had sufficient time to right their ships and pull back from the drop, Sebastian’s obviously started at the lowest support orbit. It was extraordinarily good, or bad luck that it was Sebastian who went down. Had the attack held off another twenty minutes, it would have been another ship on the block for the brief flyover. Had it been Wright, they would have undoubtedly lost the Flagstaff too.
“Alright first company, give me perimeter security.” He ordered the leading half of his battalion, “Second, let’s get closer and find a way inside. Keep an eye open for any survivors.”
He looked up at the leading edge of the ship, towering high above them. The mass driver still protruded but was bent and misshapen from the impact while the main landing bay had entrances above and below. Mason didn’t know how exactly they would get on board. He hoped the loading platforms had been lowered enough for the tanks to bridge the gap between steel and sand. Otherwise, they’d be facing a march of multiple kilometers into the ship, just to gather survivors and trudge them back out.
As they got closer, he got a better angle and saw the leading bay was indeed open to the ground to the front. Although misshapen, it still appeared to be intact and with any luck maintained enough structural integrity to hold their tanks aloft.
“Second company, forward carefully. One at a time goes up the ramp.” He instructed and held on to his seat as the tank hit the edge of the loading platform and climbed up inside the Patriot’s expansive hull. Clusters of dark spots, nothing more than ants at their distance, appeared at the end of the space. At least there were some survivors.
The vehicle approached and Mason could see several of the figures jumping and waving in his direction while a number of others were still lying motionless on the ground. “Get close but don’t hit any of them.” he advised the driver and hopped down to the back of the vehicle.
He cycled through the airlock, only to feel an instantaneously searing heat through his suit from the burning atmosphere outside, his first direct encounter with the environment beyond the Lyran tank. Several of the survivors approached him, wearing anything from armor to emergency suits while the wounded soldiers on the ground were set on stretchers and covered with thinly insulated tents.
“What happened down here?” he asked the first soldier who approached.
“From what the captain said we lost our engines and crashed. He ordered us to search for survivors and wait for pickup. Most of the ship is destroyed but we’ve been able to cycle most of the wounded through the clinic for cleaning.” The soldier gestured to the tented stretchers.
“Are they stabilized for transport?”
“Mostly but we don’t have a lot of time.”
Mason looked between the other members of the gathering crowd. “Then don’t stand there, get them loaded up! Where’s the CO?” the others snapped to their feet and started to move the injured soldiers.
“He was up on the command deck earlier but he’s also been helping pull more guys out of the lower levels.”
Mason nodded and headed for the inner hatch. “I want every tank and transport filled, cycle through and get outside to wait for pickup.
The sergeant pushed the hatch aside and realized why the crew had opted to wait in the open bay. Even the few hundred degrees surface temperature was preferable to the hell percolating inside. Smoke hung low in the air, with only a few lone lights to aid his vision. Although it was hard to imagine, it felt hotter on the inside than in the bay.
“Lieutenant!” he called into the open radio channel, “Lieutenant Sebastian! Where are you?”
“Sergeant Mason! I’m down on level eight, port to stern. I’ve got a patrol looking for survivors.”
“Find any?” the sergeant replied, heading for the main staircase and forgoing the non-operational lift.
“A few but it’s getting harder. If anyone got to a mask or suit in time they fared okay but we lost a lot of them down here from the atmospheric loss.”
“I’ve got Fourth Battalion on station to load up everyone you’ve got left. They’ll be sending another Patriot to load us up outside.”
“Thank you. I had them rally in the bay so we could be found easier. These ships don’t do anything without power.”
Mason continued down the stairs, at each level coming face to face with a line of deceased crew members, some covered but most not, all with half-melted skin and faces twisted in terror. Another floor down and he ran into the Lieutenant, dragging another body from the darkened depths of the ship.
Being so far down in the fuselage, Mason began to see where the impact had taken its effect. Walls were bent and crunched in like they had been in a vehicle collision while the floors were buckled with the occasional support member broken and protruding through. He decided it’d be a miracle to find anyone alive in such a place.
***
The last shot snapped into the pole only a few centimeters above Grant’s head, causing him to duck the blast before returning fire as the squad of Cygnans moving to his right in an attempt to flank them. Three of his soldiers already lay dead in the intersection but he forced away the visual and focused on the survival of the rest. They had to move. He knew staying in the open was suicide and it would only be a matter of time before they were surrounded.
“Scott!” he called out over the echoing exchange of gunfire, “What’s in the building behind us?” he asked, eyeing a secure-looking structure across the road.
“There’s no movement. Medium contents and some equipment but that’s it.”
Grant fell back and took a position on the corner of the structure. Keeping his rifle leveled towards his adversaries, he drew his pistol and with one shot blew the small lock into insignificant fragments. He turned, kicked it open and scanned the interior. “Fall back inside!” he ordered the team and provided covering fire while several more Cygnans attempted to chase his forward fire te
am back up the stone hill.
Pulling back, a shot caught him in the arm and knocked him from his feet. The commander tumbled to the ground, disoriented but immediately looked for the wound. The black capsule had lodged between two armored plates where his arm met his shoulder and he carefully pulled it free, well aware of its deadly power. For the first time, he saw the tip was comprised of a small metallic point backed up by a tiny, clear glass bulb. A centimeter to either side and it would have been the end of him.
He dropped the metallic sliver into an empty magazine and replaced it in a spare slot on his belt. The rest of his surviving team rushed through the door before any more were caught in the open. “We’re inside.” He announced to Scott, “How’s it look out there?”
“I count upwards of thirty-five coming at you from both lower streets and laterally from the left.”
“We can’t get pinned down in here. Did you find your detonator yet?”
“I’ve got a candidate about forty meters away. I’ll sneak down and see if it’s what I’m looking for.”
“Good. We’ll keep their attention.” Grant replied and kicked the door in front of him open hard enough so it swung out and back on a rotary hinge mounted in the base. In the time it took to cycle, he tagged two more Cygnans on their approach.
***
From the corner of the cave, Scott watched the signals converge on the building that the commander had fallen back to. He heard the echo of gunfire continue and looked back to Sergeant O’Hare who kept a rifle up on the scene below.
“I think I found the detonator. We need to make a run for it.”
“Alright.” O’Hare dropped his weapon, “I don’t think they know we’re here. Let’s make it quick.”
Together Scott and the trio of soldiers carefully followed the stone ramp down from the side entrance and dropped off the side once they were down to a two meter drop. Scott led them back along the rock face and to a long series of objects that resembled large stone sarcophaguses that stretched from their position all the way to the end of the platform. He compared their advance to his scanner and stopped at the fifth unit. From the outside it looked like the rest.
Opening a small metal panel to the side, he saw what he had anticipated: a large bundle of fibers passing up from the ground and attached to a carrier board leading to the inside of the explosive case. Scott set about determining the functionality of the fibers and cables which he hoped would lead him to the ignition switch.
***
Lieutenant Wright carefully dropped the lower loading plank on his Patriot, giving extra care to keep the vessel aloft and steady as the first wave of tanks rolled back onboard. As they drove back under the cover of the working battleship’s atmospheric shields, he watched the survivors bound out on the security monitors, breathing deep for the first time in hours after being stranded on the wreck. Lines of injured soldiers followed, some on crutches but most in protected stretchers.
His spare forces joined the refugees as well, helping them before they returned for their next payload. As they finished, the tank drivers wasted no time, simply turning and heading out the second the last of their passengers were clear. With their dwindling fleet, he didn’t know what their next play would be, nor did he have a burning interest to find out. It didn’t help that the ground assault had been as large a cluster as the fight in the air.
“Medical officers on standby?” he asked his operations officer.
“Yes, sir. The clinic just reported FMC and received their first patient.”
***
The picture on the Flagstaff’s central scope was starting to stabilize, although there were still pieces missing. Commander Fox continued to scan their sectors, looking for any sign of their missing forces or undetected alien installations.
First Battalion was secure on the ridge above the base. Second and Third had locked down the main entrance and Fourth was out on casualty retrieval. Terrible as it was, Fox was relieved that Sebastian’s Patriot wasn’t a total loss but it was beginning to be a costly battle.
Privately, he stood by his determination that they should have returned to Omega to rearm and assemble a better plan but he wasn’t about to voice such a concern to the crew. Commander Grant’s disappearance beneath the base and Scott Ryan’s misfortune below the mountain likewise did nothing to instill confidence inside of him.
He hated being so far removed from the operation, far more than he had considered it before. While engaged in deep-space combat, he could still more than likely see everything that was transpiring and react accordingly. All he had now were the scattered radio reports that they guys on the ground kept pushing forward. They kept finding insignificant labs and Grant’s squad went dark ahead of them.
The battle had brought him to a different level of understanding, however. Only the previous day, he had to park his proud and battle-hardened ship, his first vessel of command, into a loading bay for a pony ride, lest they be too slow. At the time, he considered the possibility that having such a ship with them might become an undue burden very quickly and he would have very nearly welcomed the chance to trade it for a piece of Lyran technology.
Today as their enemy remotely disabled their only means of transportation, he rethought that position. At the very least, Omega and his people had underestimated their foes or had given them a critical benefit of the doubt. It scared him to consider the possibility of them dragging a fleet of a million souls against an unknown enemy, only to have their engines die and their air switched off before firing a shot.
They now had extensive collections of data about the makeup of the Cygnan fleet, as long as the Lyrans could decode it. Fox imagined the reaction they’d receive by dropping such a package at Omega’s feet and then changing the tone and demanding what fool designed their ships in such a way that got a third of his crew killed off.
Through all of that, from some corner in his mind, he wondered about the truthfulness of the alien’s declarations. Weeks prior, Scott Ryan had all but called them traitors and accused them of losing crew members and only days ago Grant had to put down Major Kael after he decided that the enterprise as a whole was inverted. He almost wished for the rustic simplicity and ease of political maneuvering back on Earth.
Outside, he watched the gathering darkness taking hold of the landscape, turning the sky a deep yellow and bathing the terrain in red and orange rays from the setting star. Looking back to his scope, he saw the situation had yet to change.
29
After no fewer than forty attempts to measure the alien fiber cables, Scott clipped one that matched the signal profile he had been searching for. Balancing the scanner on the edge of the service panel, he reached for a pair of universal radiofrequency transmitters from his meager bag of remaining equipment. Pinching his eyes shut, Scott snapped the wire, half expecting an explosion and to be instantly face-to-face with his ancestors.
Nothing blew to his amazement so he plugged the two tiny devices to the ends of the cable. He checked the connectivity with the remote he still held on to and got to his feet. With any luck, the device was now inert. Any signal sent remotely to trigger the detonation would be sampled by the transmitter and stored. When they were ready, a remote fob could send the signal instead.
“Commander, we’re all set. I think we’re safe.” He added, and looked to the stone building down the hill, now missing half its upper floor after taking multiple rocket blasts.
“I’ll be the judge of that. How about you get us out of this gaddamn building!”
Scott kept an eye on the structure and moved out into the street but stopped upon seeing a green focused laser beam cut through the dusty air and focus on the barely-standing wall above the commander’s cover. The source was outside of his field of view but it steadily grew brighter until climaxing in a flash that vaporized a two meter hole in the stone.
“You’ve got to get out of there!” Scott yelled over the torrent of screams, curses and random gunfire from the team.
/> “No shit, Einstein! Pick up your gun and help us out!”
The engineer looked to O’Hare. “Can we flank them from the next intersection?”
“Maybe.” The sergeant mused, “We’ll be in the open but it’ll at least get them some breathing room. It’ll be easy enough for them to counter.”
“Let’s do it. They’re not gonna last much longer.”
“Agreed. Moving.”
The four men jogged farther up and two streets over until they were barely forty meters from the enemy’s flank. Each took a position behind a low barrier wall when Scott gave the word.
“We’re in place. Standing by to-”
“Do it!” Grant yelled, again over the still-reverberating gunfire.
“GO HOT!” Scott yelled and burned the rest of the magazine through his SAW, firing into the backs of the gathered squad of alien soldiers. Several burst apart as the bullets struck home while the rest reacted quick enough to dive for cover. One no sooner hopped the barrier before a glint of light flickered by the alien. It stumbled and dropped with a hatchet stuck halfway through its upper thorax.
Trying to keep an eye on his targets as well as the positions of his team members at the building to his left, Scott didn’t notice his ammunition running down until the breach flung open and stuck, steam rising from the barrel.
On his knees behind the low stone block, he sunk back and struggled to pull the last SAW magazine from his armor. His hands shook and had no feeling. The metal box didn’t fit the slot as Scott fumbled with it in the low light. Another incoming round snapped by his head, sending more stone bits flying from the wall. In the shock he dropped the mag into the shadow of the ground.
MissionSRX: Deep Unknown Page 30