by B. V. Larson
He laughed. “All of that is coming and more. You didn’t catch them today, but rebels still exist. You see, as I explained, the rebels can’t beat Earth fairly—but if your fleets are involved in a border war… the math tips, you see.”
Right then, the cell door creaked open. A hog-like crewman poked his head inside. “Say, are you guys going to take all day—holy shit!”
Armel shot him. He was a pretty good shot with my pistol, I have to say that.
Then, while I was watching the hog die on the deck, Armel shot me too, in the back of the head.
-41-
I was revived an hour or two later. Winslade was standing there waiting, looking as angry as a plucked owl.
“McGill?” he asked. “What the hell happened?”
“Aren’t there any recordings of what went on in that cell?”
He rolled his eyes. “No. That would defeat the point of a ‘private’ room, which is what I requested.”
“Oh, I get it. Well sir, I think old Armel is one tricky bastard. He got hold of your pistol, see—”
“It was your weapon they found in his hand.”
“Really? My mistake. Anyway, he shot you, then bragged a bit about how he was going to burn the Earth down to bedrock, then he shot me as well.”
Winslade licked his lips. His hair was kind of drippy, indicating he hadn’t been out of the oven for long himself. “That’s it? That’s all you have to say for yourself? You aided and abetted his escape, Centurion.”
“He got away?”
“No, of course not. He was killed in that chair. But I just checked the datacore. They can’t revive Armel again. Therefore, he has effectively escaped us.”
“Really? Damnation. That man is as slippery as an eel in an oil-slick.”
Winslade shook his head in disgust. A few greasy drops sprinkled the place. “Useless. You’re absolutely useless.”
He turned away and marched out of the chamber.
“Sir?” I called after him. “Where are you headed next?”
“Back to Drusus. That infernal meeting is still in progress.”
“Seriously?”
I followed him out of the revival chamber, hopping on one foot while I was struggling to dress myself. By the time we reached the meeting room, we both looked half-way presentable.
After a few polite knocks, Drusus himself opened the door. He waved us inside.
“Back so soon? Excellent.”
“Uh… why excellent, sir?” I asked.
Drusus frowned. “Because you wouldn’t dare come back here without having critical information gained from the prisoner—right?”
Winslade and I glanced at one another. Deciding that most of this was my fault, I decided to fess up and talk first. I explained how Armel pretty much admitted that he’d set things up, and then he’d gotten ahold of a weapon and shot us both.
Drusus’ hands were on his hips. “Who’s weapon?”
“That would be mine, sir.”
He shook his head at me and returned to the conference table. “It doesn’t matter now, anyway. We have to assume the Skay border guards are converging on our position. According to our best estimates, they’re only about half as fast as Dominus herself.”
I brightened. “That’s the best news I’ve heard all day.”
“It would be,” Drusus admitted, “if we were trying to run—but we aren’t. We’ve got maybe ten days here at Green World before we have to take flight. We’re going to spend that time as wisely as possible.”
“How can we spend time wisely with no target?” Winslade asked.
“Something has come up,” Drusus said. “We’ve got a lead. It’s all centered on McGill’s travel data. McGill? Remember that island you found when you first teleported out here?”
“You mean the one with the Wur lab on it? Where Natasha died?”
“Who? Oh yes, I guess that’s right. Anyway, we’ve been checking everything you gave us. Didn’t you find it odd that Abigail arrived so quickly to capture you on that distant island? Didn’t you say that you flew for hours afterward to get back to the other island?”
“Uh…” I said, giving myself a scratch. “I’m not really sure about those details, as I was knocked out for a goodly part of the time.”
“I see. Well, it doesn’t matter. We found the Wur laboratory island, scanned it, and discovered heavy equipment operating in the tunnels underneath.”
Winslade stepped back into the conversation. “What kind of heavy equipment?”
“Power generators, mostly. They have to be powering something, and I’m sending a full cohort down there to find out what it is. McGill, Graves is loading your unit along with the others onto a lifter right now. Would you like to accompany him?”
I smiled. “I damn-well insist on it, sir. I don’t want Leeson running my unit into the ground without me.”
“Very well. Move out, soldier.”
I turned on my heel and marched out of the place. By the time I was in the open passages, I was trotting, and when I got down to Red Deck where the lifters were launched from, I heard engines rumbling. I stepped it up, moving at a dead run.
As it turned out, I barely made it aboard in time. The big ramp was pulled in and the doors shut, almost taking my heels off.
I didn’t have time to find my unit before the ship began slewing and accelerating at an angle. I found myself hanging onto the metal rings they put on the back of every seat just to keep from dashing my brains out on the roof of the ship.
“Is that McGill?” a familiar voice spoke up. “By damn, it is him. Sit down and stop showing off, Centurion.”
It was the British accent of one Centurion Manfred. Traveling hand over hand along the seats, I stomped on a lot of toes and crushed a few fingers before I reached him.
Manfred glanced to his left. “Veteran Buxton? Do you mind moving on down the line a bit?”
Buxton looked startled, but then he nodded because he didn’t have any other choice. He left the seat next to Manfred and worked his way laboriously to another empty seat about ten meters down.
“He’s a lucky man,” I said, “to find a seat at all on a full lifter.”
“No luck involved. The AA guns took out a few of my men on that cursed island yesterday. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”
“Nope. Not a damned thing.”
He nodded skeptically. “That’s what I thought. Well, McGill, glad to have you aboard. I daresay the rest of your unit will be happy as well.”
“No one more than Adjunct Leeson. He doesn’t like having to play centurion.”
“Right. A smart man. Do you know where we’re headed?”
I told him about the island with the Wur lab on it, and how it seemed rather small for a full invasion force.
He shrugged. “The brass wants to make sure this time. They didn’t like coming up empty on the last raid.”
We rode the lifter down into the atmosphere after that, and there was little time for chit-chat. Within ten minutes the big doors fell open and daylight streamed in.
Instead of charging out the gate with Manfred, I waited for my own people to stream by. When they did, I stood up suddenly and tapped Leeson on the shoulder.
“Huh? What—oh, it’s you, sir!”
After he got over his initial shock, he was all smiles. “The ball is all yours, Centurion.”
“Okay, listen up, unit. The word from Graves is that we’re to exit the lifter last, but we’ve been given a very special task once our boots are firmly on the rocks.”
A general groan went up from the boys, but I chose to ignore their poor morale.
“We’re going to penetrate that lab complex, the one that’s hidden underground. Some of you might remember that the floor is a trick, there’s a chamber underneath. Our sensors show that the chamber is a lot bigger now, with signs of fresh excavation.”
Shaking their heads in resignation, only one woman had the balls to question our fates. “Sir?” Natasha said. �
�I remember this place… how did we ever end up back here?”
I threw my hands up. “I don’t know. We never did investigate it thoroughly.”
“Hey Natasha,” Carlos said to her. “Maybe we’ll find your skeleton down there in that slime pit. I’m not sure if the Wur are really into cleaning up their messes, you know?”
“Shut up, Ortiz,” Moller ordered, coming to Natasha’s defense.
Natasha herself looked upset. This was, after all, a spot where she’d been left for dead a long time back during the Home World campaign. She couldn’t have good memories of the place.
At last, all the other units were off the lifter. It turned out we didn’t have a full cohort’s strength. Some of the units had been left behind, as they’d suffered too many casualties. As a result, Graves deployed five units before ours stepped out under the light green sky near the dark green sea, blinking and looking around.
The other units had deployed along the beach area. One was surrounding the lab facility. They had a hundred gun barrels aimed at the relatively dinky structure. It was as if they thought a thousand monsters were going to charge out at them.
“I remember this place well,” Harris complained. “Too well. We lost some good people here when we started doing all those bullshit teleport missions.”
“Take heart, Adjunct,” I told him. “We’re here for real now. No twisting a dial and popping away this time.”
I sent in Barton and her lights, letting them scout. She poked her way into the door, which hung in a dark doorway like a loose tooth.
A dozen soldiers moved inside. I could see their suit-lights flashing everywhere at once. They were looking for the enemy—any enemy—but the found nothing.
Becoming annoyed, I entered after them and ordered them all to hug the walls. They did so readily enough, and I activated the system that opened a big hole in the floor. The floor, in fact, almost disappeared.
One light trooper girl was caught by surprise. She dropped into the darkness with a squeak of dismay.
“She’s all right,” I told the others. “It’s not all that far down. No biggie if you don’t break a leg or anything.”
Soon, we had lines cast down to the bottom. I descended with Barton’s lights, who were as skittish as a herd of cats in a shower stall.
“Come on everyone, get down here. Relay my video to Graves, will you Kivi? Natasha, why don’t I have drones telling me what I’m getting into?”
“I’ve been trying to send them ahead, sir, but they keep dying.”
“Dying? What are you talking about?”
She came near and picked one off the wet stone floor. It was as dead as a doornail.
“See? No power. No juice. I think there’s some kind of field active down here, a light EMP effect that’s killing them.”
“Huh… it’s not dangerous, is it?”
“Not to humans, or our shielded gear. Not that I can tell, anyway.”
“Okay, Harris? Get your heavies down here.”
He’d been listening in on the radio, of course, but staying real quiet. Now that I mentioned him directly, he finally spoke up.
“Don’t you think it would be best if the lights thoroughly scouted the basement first, sir? It could be hard to haul a heavy trooper out of this hole if—”
“Get down here, Harris. That’s an order.”
He muttered bad words under his breath as he lowered himself and his platoon of armored men into the dank chamber with the rest of us. I left Leeson’s troops up topside in reserve.
“Okay, Barton, look into every nook and cranny. Kivi and Natasha, you’ve got the ball. Find something interesting for me.”
They spread out and began scanning every meter of the place. Everyone was tense and the walls were constantly splashed with bright lights. There was no lighting down here, other than what we’d brought with us.
At last, Barton called out. “I’ve found something here, sir. It looks like an exit. This slanted pathway was cut through the rock at a downward slant.”
“Where does it lead?”
I asked. Walking to her position with Natasha in tow, we examined the find. A round set of heavy pressure doors had opened at a touch, and beyond that…
“Holy moly,” I said, looking down into a pool of lapping water. “Is that the bottom of the ocean? Is that what I’m looking at, here?”
We were down pretty far, about a hundred meters at this point, and it looked like a shaft filled with water led slanted down to a second door.
“Two hatches, one at either end of a water-filled tunnel,” Natasha said. “It has to be an airlock that leads to the open sea.”
“What did these Wur freaks do?” Harris demanded. “Just walk in and out of here along the seabed?”
“That’s what it looks like,” Natasha said. She walked into the dark water and let it lap over her boots. “But there’s something strange about this tunnel. It goes down into the water at about a thirty degree angle, but there’s an energy field involved here. Something strong. That’s what interrupted my buzzers.”
Harris had his lips pulled back to expose his gums and his big teeth. His expression was one of alarm and anger mixed together.
“Huh…” I said, not liking this anymore than Harris did. “Okay, I need a volunteer to go down into this here water-tunnel, to see what’s what.”
Everyone around me averted their eyes. Every rock and grain of sand was more interesting than I was right now.
“What about the ghosts?” Harris asked.
“Are you guys shitting me?” a voice asked. I turned around and realized it was Cooper. He was in his stealth suit, and I’d almost forgotten he was sneaking around down here.
“Your offer is accepted, Cooper. Get down there and do some scouting.”
“Sir?” Natasha said as Cooper sloshed out into the bubbling seawater. He was cursing something awful with every step. “Cooper isn’t wearing any armor. The pressure out there—even at a hundred meters—it could kill a man.”
“Then he shouldn’t have smarted off. Proceed, Cooper. And turn your stealth suit off so we can at least find your body afterward.”
He removed his stealth mesh and stood there, looking kind of skinny and unhappy. “You’re always thinking of the little guy, Centurion. Thank you, sir.”
“Anytime. Get moving.”
We all watched as he first walked, then waded into the water. Pretty soon, it was up to his neck—then he was gone.
He could breathe, of course, as he was wearing a spacesuit. Switching to a vid feed, I watched as he kept on going. Oddly enough, he didn’t switch to swimming after the first dozen steps. Once the water went over his head, I’d kind of expected him to start floating—but he didn’t.
“Odd…” Natasha said. She was watching the action as closely as I was. “He’s not experiencing as much buoyancy as he should.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“It’s weird. It has to be the field I detected.”
“Uh-huh. Keep walking Cooper! I didn’t say you should turn around yet.”
Naturally, Cooper had been listening in. He sloshed forward, making kind of slow-motion steps. Soon, he was beyond the shaft, or tunnel, or cave—whatever it was that led down into the deeps. He was out in the open, walking on the bottom of the sea.
He found the second door, and he opened it. That caused a stir, as we expected the seawater to rush in. The whole point of underwater airlocks was to only open one door at a time—but nothing happened.
“The water isn’t surging up here like it should,” Natasha said.
Cooper reported back via radio. “It’s strange out here, Centurion. There are some metal lines under my boots. They look like two rails—like old-fashioned train tracks, you know?”
“I can see them through your tapper feed. Keep going.”
Cooper walked along down the middle of the tracks. “It goes a long, long way ahead. I can see a hundred meters or more into the water. The tracks are straight,
and they go down steeply.”
“Keep going.”
“Sir, it’s already going to be work to get back to the—”
“You should have stretched out your legs and eaten a hearty breakfast, Cooper! Keep walking, or I’ll come down there and kick you in the butt.”
Cooper grumbled, but he kept moving. This was, after all, the exact reason why every unit had scouts like him. We needed recon, and he was it.
Naturally, it was a stone-cold fact that ghost specialists tended to die at a higher rate than most, but that just came with the job. No one else got to stand around in stealth suits gawking during battles. Sometimes, a military man just had to take the good with the bad while serving in any combat role.
Things went badly when he reached the two hundred meter mark. The water was pretty clear, and we could still make out the dim outline of his figure in the dark sea.
But something happened. Suddenly, his name went red inside my officers’ helmet, which displayed troop status.
Harris saw it, too. “Shit. He’s gone.”
Leeson walked up and cackled behind me. He’d brought his specialists down to mill around with the rest of us in the underground chamber. “He was as good as dead as soon as you sent him in, Centurion.”
“You want to go down there next?”
“Hell, no!” Leeson said, and he quickly retreated.
I contacted Graves then, and I made my report. I sent along videos and all the data my techs had gathered.
“Very interesting... Where do you think that shaft under the ocean goes to, McGill?”
“Uh… it’s not exactly a shaft, sir. It’s more of a pathway. A trail that leads to the bottom of the ocean.”
“How come no one has ever found it before?”
I thought about the various expeditions we’d sent to this island in the past. We’d never done a detailed survey of the place. “Sir, we only just found out where in the cosmos Green World was in the last month or two.”
“That’s true… okay, you’ve got my curiosity up. Good work. Keep going, McGill.”
“Uh…”
I’d been thinking this experiment was over and done with. I was planning on returning to the lifter and pretending a bad day had been a good one. Graves clearly had other ideas.