O’Hare looked among the covered faces. “I think that’s it.”
Grant ground his teeth in anger once again. “All aboard. We’re going up.” He growled, seemingly oblivious to the growing vibrations under their feet.
Another shot hissed above his head. Grant looked down the street to see a gathering of the small aliens dressed in thin grey suits, firing weapons that obviously didn’t fit their miniscule frames. He ducked but otherwise paid them little heed.
Looking back, Scott started frantically digging through the stacks of strange cases and crates they had scavenged. “Where is it? Gaddammit all!” he muttered, throwing pieces of alien equipment aside.
“What’s wrong? What’d you lose?”
“The scanner. It’s not here.”
“What do you mean? Where is it?”
“I-I don’t know! I had it with me the whole time.” The engineer was nearing hysterics, “There’s nothing here close to being as important as it is. It’s got all the data from the entire complex!”
Grant comprehended the gravity of the problem but tried to maintain a steady front to keep Scott from completely shutting down, even as the rest of the soldiers engaged the aliens around them in a deafening hail of gunfire. “Calm down. Think. Where could you have lost it? We can go find it.”
Mimicking the commander’s tone, Scott knelt down, paused and carefully walked through his steps. “Down the hill, two blocks to the right. I got into a fight with one of them, it tore the strap. The last building I went to, the strap finally broke off. I thought it just snagged my shoulder but it must have fallen off there.”
“Okay, how much time do we have?”
“Maybe a few minutes before the magma rises or the bombs detonate.”
“Do you have the trigger?”
Scott held up the radio transmitter. “The red button. It’s already got the code stored.”
Grant grabbed the device and yanked it from his hand. “Get out. I’ll take care of this,” he ordered, hit the control on the lift and jumped clear as the platform lifted up from the ground.
“What are you doing?” Scott yelled, scrambling to his feet to stop the commander but he was already beyond an arm’s reach. He fumbled for the controls, hoping to find an override until Sergeant O’Hare grabbed his armor and pulled him back.
“Don’t turn it around! If we’re down here when the bombs go it’s all for nothing.”
“He’s got no way out!”
***
Grant hit the ground with the transmitter in his left hand and his rifle already leveled down the street. He dropped three of the closest aliens before breaking into a dash and sliding into the shadows behind the nearest solid structure. He focused on Scott’s last words. One street over, two blocks down the hill to the right.
He stumbled as the ground swelled again from the surging magma below, looking desperately between the stone hovels for any that had been breached. How he was going to escape? Not a clue. He would worry about that later. As long as Scott and the bulk of the equipment were secured they at least had something to show for the operation.
Rounding a corner, he saw several scattered Cygnan corpses but no packages like the one Scott had been carrying. How far down did he say? Was he mistaken? Grant asked himself, checking the entrances to the buildings around the intersection.
Farther down the street to his left, the remnants of the alien militia followed his advance. Grant fired back to hold them at bay and ducked through another stone lab. He heard more shots come through the door behind him and cut the corner tight to the right, staying low enough to protect his head from the metal projectiles.
The building had already been ransacked, with half the cases already ripped away or dumped open. Grant checked the rear entrance, saw it was clear and sprinted down another terraced level. He saw another open door to the left so he moved to investigate it farther. At the corner he saw a torn strap hanging on the frame and attached to a small black case.
He hadn’t seen the scanner up close before but he picked it up and looked the object over. It had a small screen which displayed a map of the facility along with a number of alien symbols spread around it. Grant figured it was what Scott was looking for. Now what? He asked himself.
Grant scanned the map and quickly found his position, the elevator and then scanned back to the side tunnel Scott had taken down. As the engineer had mentioned, it was completely collapsed, showing a jumbled mess of vector surfaces. That wasn’t going to work.
Closer in, he still saw another dozen red biological signals of the aliens running along the road across from his position. Farther down the hill, the street grew steeper and the first of the magma flow had cleared the edge of the plate and was slowly moving up. Grant scanned across the map one more time, hoping to find another elevator, passage, shaft or anything resembling a hole in the wall that might lead back to the surface.
A small mark caught his attention on the far corner of the facility. Zooming in, he saw there was a matching tunnel to the one Scott and O’Hare had snaked down earlier. Grant shook his head, attempting to focus. The alien force had spread out across a third of the hill and was quickly descending on the building he was hiding behind. He checked the radio transmitter and saw the red button was still illuminated. At least he had an out if he became surrounded.
There was only one avenue open. Grant tossed his rifle behind his back, tucked the scanner under his left arm, drew his pistol and sprinted closer towards the rising, glowing mass of magma. Rather than try to break through with a stand-up fight, he opted to fall back and make an end run around their position. He dashed to the last line of buildings that had yet to succumb to the flow and prepared to breach the closest door.
When he was only a few steps away from the building, the ground shifted again. Grant fell back and pushed himself away from the structure as cracks spread across the stone, nearly collapsing before him. Looking to the side, he saw the molten rock rush within two meters from his feet and jumped straight from the ground to the low wall still standing beside the falling building.
Grant took a second to catch his balance as the surge of magma hit the right of the wall. He moved as quickly as he could, using the pistol and scanner in his outstretched hands for balance. A shot impacted the crumbling building wall beside him and looking back, saw the first of the aliens round the far corner into his line of vision. The next round came closer. Still moving forward, Grant sunk lower, nearly losing his balance at the edge before jumping back to the ground and sprinting on between the next two abandoned structures, additional projectiles ricocheting off the walls around him.
Pressing his back into an indented doorframe, Grant checked the scanner one more time. The next intersection was the last major open area he’d need to clear before he could take side streets all the way back. Unfortunately, it was also crawling with the smaller aliens. He took a deep breath and rounded the corner, firing trio of bullets into the closest approaching creature, merely a few meters away and cleared the street, firing randomly to suppress the targets farther away.
The next road to the right was clear. Grant could see the entire way unobstructed to the stone face at the top of the hill. He crouched, reloaded the pistol and sprinted up the steep slope before his pursuers caught up.
The hill grew steeper between the terraced levels and the commander stumbled under the load and fatigue of the exercise. He didn’t allow himself to consider failure, not when he saw the goal so close but yet so far away. The milled stone ground away beneath his feet with every step, echoing each painful reverberation through his joints.
He passed five more rows of the stone structures before he found himself at the top of the base across from the line of squared-off boxes holding the explosives. To the right was an extremely steep ramp leading up to the tunnel just a few steps from the edge of the plate. He took the detour to the side, carefully approached the sheer cliff face and looked down into the glowing field of molten rock now covering the
lowest layers of the plate. It gave him a brief feeling of vertigo but at the same time caged his estimation for how powerful the bombs would have to be to destabilize the plate.
Grant heard a crackle through his helmet, as if he had been shuffling across the stone floor. He turned and saw one of the gray creatures within an arm’s length away, having snuck around the closest building in an attempted ambush. In its hand was a small, dark device similar to the one Othello had recovered before. Seeing it had been found out, the alien launched itself towards Grant, slashing with the minute object at his abdomen.
The commander reacted without hesitation, stepped to the side and slapped the weapon from his foe’s hand with the side of his pistol before turning and planting a kick at its waist and sending it into the dirt. It thrashed with its long arms to find the box again but Grant reached down and grabbed it by the back of its neck. Pulling away, he used the substantial leverage provided by the suit to heave the tiny body off the peninsula and into the fiery abyss.
He didn’t pause to watch the impact but instead only recovered the alien’s weapon, sprinted towards the steps, leapt up the barrier and dove into the concealing security of the tiny passage. More shots again pinged into the walls as he entered, the aliens having adjusted to his plan. Grant ran straight and picked up the detonator, trying to decide what the safe distance was to fire it.
Following up another incline, Grant saw the silver glint of an airlock ahead. He hoped that the other side would be an elevator but if not, it’d at least be a safe minimal distance from the charges. He passed through the first hatch and hit the retransmit key on his radiofrequency controller. He only saw the briefest flash of bright white light as it disappeared behind the closing metal door. The explosives triggered in rapid succession, shearing the lowest layer of the tectonic plate away, the rest splitting and crumbling from the sudden overwhelming weight. The remains of the Cygnan base, its denizens and its secrets perished together in the searing core of the planet without a trace remaining.
31
The rings of light slowed down until the lift came to rest in the upper station the team had left hours before. Surrounding the room from the shadows were another thirty human soldiers, apparently waiting their arrival. Scott walked forward to meet the one who stood closest to the base.
“Scott Ryan!” Sergeant Mason exclaimed, quickly recognizing the engineer and shaking his hand. “We hoped you’d turn up.” He looked among the dimly veiled faces of the rest of the team. “Where is Commander Grant?” his voice grew solemn.
“He… He’s not here.” Scott managed.
“What? Is he alive? We have to go find him. What’s down there? Where’d you leave him?”
“There’s a huge base down there. I scanned it locally but dropped the box. Grant went back to look for it.”
“And you didn’t stay to help him?”
Scott shook his head. “No. He sent us up, said it’d be too dangerous. The whole place was wired to blow in case of intrusion.”
“So now what?” Mason asked the engineer, at the edge of the rhetorical.
Looking between the unseeing faces of the armored soldiers, Scott felt a sense of crushing defeat swell in his heart. “Can you help us load all this up? We still have a ride to catch, right?”
“Yes. Commander Fox is determined to wait on any survivors but we can get this out.” He replied while multiple soldiers broke formation and picked up armloads of the Cygnan equipment before making for the blown-out exit hatch. “And you?”
“I want to look through the rest of the base and see if there’s another way to get out. I’m not going to leave him like this.”
Mason nodded. “We’ll see what we can do. We’ve had one of the big scanners running but it didn’t reach all the way to the core.”
“What?”
“We brought a few scanning boxes with us a few hours ago once most of the upper base was clear. It’s been running nonstop.”
“Where? Show me. Maybe it’ll be enough.”
Mason led Scott through a maze of corridors, alcoves, rooms filled with the bodies of fallen Cygnan defenders and twisted airlocks wrenched from their hinges. “Up here.” he announced as they entered another room guarded by five human soldiers with the dark crate sitting in the middle of the open floor. “We didn’t want to bring it any farther forward without knowing how much resistance we were going to face.”
“That’s fine.” Scott flipped the screen open and paged through the menus, relieved to have a real interface that he could actually use. The smaller scanner, while easier to carry, was far more difficult to operate on the fly.
The base spread out seemingly endlessly in all directions and for the first time in one picture Scott was able to see the complex nearly in its entirety. The network of halls and rooms reached up multiple levels into the higher terrain above and reached far below but as before, he couldn’t see all the way down the main elevator to the cavernous core below.
In his mind, Scott likened the construction to that of an ant farm, a wide conglomeration of tunnels and alcoves spread out for protection not only from the outside world but from each other. Seeing the sort of signals the scanner had captured, it was likely there was a history of high-energy work performed throughout the base that would have benefited from the relative isolation of the amassed stone. He kept searching.
***
For some reason, the airlocks activated as Grant approached, neither sealing him in nor locking him out. He didn’t know why but in any case he was grateful, especially as the blast had been powerful enough to buckle the two closest hatches inward. Being able to see the distant light of the glowing rock reflect up the passage had been increasingly jarring to him and the commander made haste to put as much distance between him and the surging magma as possible.
Grant checked the scanner again in an effort to find his way but only saw a few scattered passages spreading out around him. The small device was not powerful enough to reach a greater distance. Having no additional guidance, he took the hall to the left and kept following any that appeared to be on an incline.
***
Sergeant Mason changed radio channels in order to catch the Flagstaff outside, “Commander Fox, I’ve got Scott plus eight back from the core. Heavy extra equipment but we’re still waiting on Commander Grant.”
“You’re ‘still waiting on him’?”
“That’s right sir. He had to take an alternate route out that’s off the map but we’re working to locate him now.”
“I was really hoping for some good news by this point in the night.” Fox replied, still pacing the bridge of his ship while looking off into the darkness beyond the main screen. “You will find him, understood?”
“Absolutely.”
Fox sighed. “If nothing else, pack up what you don’t need and we’ll get it onboard. We’ve already got our hands full trying to cram an extra battalion of tanks into the Patriots.”
“Copy that, sir.” Mason switched the channel off and looked back at his engineer. “Are you going to be alright here? I need to make sure everything gets loaded.”
Scott nodded, still leaning over the scanner without glancing up. “Yes. I’ll keep at it.”
He stared intently at the screen for the next hour, paging along every fleeting millimeter of the network, looking for any instrument of hope. Knowing they were running low on time, he found the deepest corridor he could and traced his way there. Standing, he pointed to the soldiers. “Take the scanner back to the surface. I’ll meet you there.
Leaving from opposing hatches, they went their separate ways and Scott followed the map in his head deeper underground. Fuelled with a burning determination, he knew there was no way to give up now, even if he never found his own way back. The floor sloped at thirty degrees and he kept going, hoping to find another elevator that’d save him the dozens of kilometers he’d be facing if he trekked every step down all the way to the core.
***
Grit and gri
me smudged the floor of the Flagstaff’s command deck along the forward wall just behind the view screen not because it had seen as much action as the entrance, but because of Commander Fox’s incessant pacing. For the better part of the evening and night he strode back and forth waiting on the teams still deployed on the ground below. With each pass, he looked longingly out over the smog-covered landscape, illuminated by searchlights from the tanks and ships, wishing for a single opportunity for hope. Nothing. Nothing for hours.
The battle had been costly in time, lives and equipment and although it was Commander Grant’s prerogative that they learn what happened to Major Kael, he wasn’t confident the information gained by a few stacks of parts would be at all worth the sacrifice. Even from one officer to another, there was something different about the soldier-turned-fighter-pilot that was becoming apparent and Fox was growing to understand what set him apart.
He didn’t pretend to know what Omega and the Lyrans had seen back at their fleet and although he didn’t trust their judgment at the time, his mind now hinged on regret. For the first time, Fox knew the loss of the commander would be difficult for the team to bear and he didn’t want to be the one to break the news that they’d need to carry on without him.
Scott Ryan’s recovery was nothing short of a miracle in itself, Fox decided. If it had been anyone else unlucky enough to draw the attention of the battery of towers, they probably wouldn’t have survived. To be honest, once the tower was lit up he didn’t expect to see the engineer or his team alive again. Had Othello ran the decision by him in the first place he likely wouldn’t have gone along. At least they turned up breathing in that maneuver. On top of that, his drawing the towers’ attention likely helped at least a few of the tanks get closer with a reduced threat of incoming fire.
From that perspective they did fairly well, only eight of the ninety-six tanks were destroyed by the Cygnans’ heavy weapons. Thanks to the Lyran countermeasures, only about half the crews of which were lost. As for Sebastian’s lost Patriot, the casualty list was much longer. He tried not to think about it along with his already pressing issues. A burst of static came in over the radio and the commander raised his head in response.
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