"Tough galaxy," agreed Boss Aiken. The three marines continued in silence as they moved group after group up the lift. Each time they loaded the platform, Boss Aiken looked nervously at his chronometer, and then over at the Basin gate, which still remained open.
"Hyst, it’s been four hours since we left the Basin and an hour since we’ve been back through the gate," Boss Aiken stated while the last platform of refugees made its way towards the breach, "I can't have viable military resources placed at risk any longer. I am already going to be called to face a board of inquiry for holding the gate open for the hour I've allowed. We have to seal it up and exfil."
"There are still easily another ten loads of non-combatants who need the lift," added Virginia, "Then at least four trips for Tango Platoon, cor-sec, and our gear."
"All of that can be done after the gate is sealed," Boss Aiken responded, and he looked as if he was going to say more when the low throated growl of the chain gun filled the chamber.
All eyes went to the gate and spillway directly in front of where the marines had constructed a hasty fighting position using their last scraps of flak board, metal sheeting, and the chain gun mounted on a hand-welded tripod.
Boss Marsters had requisitioned the chain gun from a fellow Boss in Delta Platoon, who had liberated it from one of the precious few cor-sec assault vehicles that had once patrolled the elite districts.
The Vorhold masters had intended for the handful of gun-trucks to deter any threat of civil unrest in the elite districts. They had performed admirably, but had now been cannibalized by the salvage marines. Delta Platoon had been pulled from downspire work and was being sent to scrap the small orbital station once used as a customs holding facility. With Delta Platoon going on a void mission they had little need of the chain gun, and the Boss was happy to send it downspire to help an old friend and comrade.
Since Tango Platoon had to leave the gate open behind them as they pushed into the Basin to rig the pylons for detonation, Boss Marsters wanted more than a cadre of cor-sec troopers with pistols to watch his back. After the three hour forced march back through the gate, Boss Aiken had relieved the cor-sec troopers of their duties and assigned them to crowd control.
Harold, the only rated heavy gunner left in Tango, was spitting rounds through the gate as Bianca fed the ammo belt and kept it moving smoothly.
"Marr, report!" shouted Boss Aiken as he and the other marines rushed toward the spillway, "Tillman and Holland, I want you working the lift, keep those people in order and shoot anyone who causes trouble."
"Reapers downrange!" shouted Harold in between bursts of fire.
Boss Aiken, Patrick Baen, and Samuel arrived at the spillway gun nest and took up firing positions on either side of Harold and Bianca as they scanned for enemies.
What greeted their sight was at once inspirational and terrifying to behold. Several flares burned in the half-light of the Basin on the other end of the tunnel entrance, and the marines could see much of the partially submerged concrete flood chamber and support structure that divided the sluice pits of the interior and the Basin gate which they now guarded.
Slogging through the eighteen inches of liquid sewage, as fast as he could, was Boss Wynn Marsters, his shoulders weighed down with the armored body of Ben Takeda and from what Samuel could see, his best friend hung like dead weight. Wynn's helmet had been burned, presumably by one of the slime rounds, which explained why no hailing had sounded on the com-bead.
In one hand he held Vol's heavy pistol, apparently loaded with micro-flare rounds, which he periodically fired in different directions in what seemed to be an attempt to light up the chamber. The projectiles would embed themselves into the concrete support beams or the low ceiling and spit bright red flame and light for a few seconds before burning down to a dull glow that provided more ambient light for the area.
Samuel had seen Vol load those rounds before, though he'd never seen the ganger load the entire gun that way.
Next to him ran Boss Ulanti, helmet missing, but with her emergency re-breather strapped on. Slung across her shoulders was an unconscious Jada Sek. The armor of both women was gone and they were dressed in only the matte black body gloves Reapers wore beneath it.
As much of a relief as it was to see the four marines rushing towards the gate, the horror and revulsion that swept through the marines in the gun nest at the sight of what was behind their comrades robbed them of that relief. Thanks to the flare rounds, the chamber was partially illuminated in a dull red glow. From the darkness of the chamber beyond, a veritable wall of writhing giant bone worms had emerged. There were dozens of them slithering and thrashing through the water as they pursued the fleeing marines.
Over the sound of the chain gun there was a keening sound that made Samuel sick to his stomach. As the sound moved up and down the octave scale the marine realized that it was an artificial sound. He could see that, as insane as it seemed, the worms seemed to move and undulate in time to the keening sound.
There was little doubt in his mind that there were Stalkers somewhere back there, just behind the light, driving and guiding the herd of frenzied worms.
Harold and his chain gun were positioned perhaps twenty inches above the chamber, thanks to the spillway architecture compared to the flood chamber, and that provided him with just enough elevation to fire his weapon over the heads the fleeing marines and into the mass of attacking worms.
"Patrick, you're with me! That gate has to close before the worms break through or everyone dies!" ordered Boss Aiken as he hefted his service pistol and rushed out from behind the gun nest. "Hyst and Kade, I want you across the way, when Harold's line of fire is impeded by the door I want you to provide cover fire and pull our people through if they reach us in time!"
"Boss, this chain gun won't last long without a jam if I don't have a loader to keep it clear!" Harold yelled in between deafening bursts of the weapon, sending barrages of high velocity rounds tearing through the writhing mass of deadly worms as they gained more and more ground on the weary marines who ran before them.
"You won't have much time, anyway!" Boss Aiken snapped and with that he and Patrick sprinted towards the gate to begin closing it while Samuel and Bianca backed out of the nest and made for the other side.
Harold snarled in frustration as he continued to burst fire and tear apart the hostile creatures that pressed onwards heedless of the grievous damage he was doing to them.
Boss Aiken and Patrick positioned themselves next to the door and waited, giving the fleeing marines as much time as they could to reach the other side of the gate. Samuel dared not lean in too far for fear of friendly fire from the chain gun. He could tell that they were drawing near as he began to hear the desperate splashing as the escaping marines struggled through a foot and a half of water.
Samuel could also hear the inhuman grating noise of the worms as they slammed their heads into the tunnel floor, presumably only narrowly missing their prey. Seconds later Harold's chain gun jammed and the big marine cursed as he stepped back and kicked the gun in an attempt to clear the action.
Boss Aiken nodded gravely and he and Samuel began pushing against the door with all of his might. The door began inching closed, groaning as the rusted hinges fought against their combined strength. Without Harold's fire as a risk, both Samuel and Bianca turned the corner and pointed their sidearms down the tunnel. The worms were closing in on the marines as they struggled through the water. Samuel watched with dread as a worm attempted to impale Boss Ulanti with its armored head, only narrowly missing the squad leader and burying its head in the metal tunnel wall.
Samuel and Bianca opened fire, their bullets whizzing over the heads of Boss Marsters and Ulanti and into the tangle of worms that had all but plugged the tunnel from top to bottom. Boss Marsters slipped through the gate and was followed by Boss Ulanti. Samuel emptied his sidearm and as Bianca fired her last round the marine grabbed her around the waist and pulled her back on top of him as they fell away
from the closing gate.
Boss Aiken and Patrick slammed the door against the mass of worms trying to force their way through, one of them even managing to get its head through the gap. Harold slammed himself against the door, the force of his impact decapitating the worm and giving Patrick a chance to crank the wheel which locked the gate in place.
With the gate firmly shut and the worms held at bay, at least for the time being, Samuel risked a glance at Boss Marsters and the other marines realizing belatedly, that the rescue had not been without sacrifice.
Glaringly absent were George Tuck and Vol, and worse still, to Samuel’s horrified gaze was the mangled and corroded mess that was the front of Ben’s helmet, a gaping crater where his lower jaw should have been.
COLLATERAL DAMAGE
When the bombs planted in deepspire detonated, Samuel and Jada could feel the rumble as the pylons were blown out even from the high rise balcony of the medical center. The two marines watched as the great FORGE ALPHA shook violently and then suddenly collapsed into the sinkhole that formed at the edges of the complex and rapidly swallowed the entire quadrant of upspire.
Buildings that had been stripped down to bare concrete collapsed inwards upon themselves and the weight piled on as more and more of the superstructure came apart. It was an awe inspiring display of demolition skill by the engineer corps, to so expertly calculate the pyro loads, angles of descent, and relative weight of the area to be collapsed. Not a single building that wasn’t on the demo list was harmed. Once the site was given a full day and night cycle to settle, the support crews, with Reaper foremen and security details, would bring in the giant salvage cranes.
Using powerful magnets they would pull up the scrap metal and prep it for transport. The prize pieces were, in fact, the support pylons. They were so large that the pylons would be carefully lifted from the rubble and cut while still protruding from the sinkhole. As each pylon was cut into manageable sections they would be hauled to a staging area for holding. It would take several trips with more than one scrap barge to move all of the material off world.
There would be enough raw metal from just one of the pylons salvaged from underneath FORGE ALPHA to build several ships the size of the lumbering Reaper tug. The fact that the forge had been supported by four of them meant that just the salvaged pylons would be enough metal to build an entire fleet of ships.
There was not a doubt in Samuel's mind that Grotto would reconcile as an acceptable expenditure, the cost of the lives and bullets of the handful of Reapers and several score cor-sec troopers that were spent in penetrating the Basin to cut the pylons and prep them for salvage.
There were hundreds of other, smaller pylons spread throughout the city, and in due time all of those would be taken as well. Reaper Command had deemed it prudent to salvage the city one quadrant at a time once the surface had been stripped and it was time to collapse the hollowed out upspire.
Much of this, Samuel suspected, had to do with the intel Tango Platoon had gathered with regards to the presence of the bone worms and Stalkers. Despite the detonations and subsequent collapse, it was highly likely that some Stalkers and worms survived, so Reaper security details, with cor-sec support, were on duty at all hours while the looting of Vorhold continued.
"There's no way the collapse wiped out those monsters," said Jada in a small voice as she stared unblinking at the gigantic hole in the ground. "We'll be fighting them tooth and nail until Grotto finally decides to abandon the site. They'll be here haunting the ruins long after we've run out of things to salvage."
"Plenty of Vorhold people who chose the red list over the life-bond will also be here," agreed Samuel. He folded his arms in front of himself and watched the first of the cranes approach the new work site. "And eventually pirates, smugglers, pioneers, and every other kind of red list scavenger will find their way here. Maybe now that there's nothing valuable remaining, this planet will be abandoned by the corporations and re-settled by the red list."
"At least until they discover some other kind of resource that's buried here, like back on Tetra Prime," said Jada as she continued to stare at the growing plume of dust and smoke from the collapse. "Even if it’s a decade or a century from now, eventually someone like us will be back to pick the bones clean one more time, and when they dig up that hole they'll get what they deserve."
"Jada, before the Boss found you, what happened down there? What did you see?" asked Samuel in a quiet tone as he laid his hand gently on her shoulder, only to have it shrugged off as she turned away from both Samuel and the window so that she would walk over to Ben's unconscious form.
"It was the bottom of the world, Prybar," Jada whispered as she looked down at the wounded marine, "Where the sins from our way of life sink down to pool and fester."
Samuel remained silent and watched as Jada moved her hands delicately over the outlines of Ben's new face.
The marine had sustained a grievous wound, though Boss Marsters had not witnessed exactly how it had happened. From what the field surgeons had told Samuel it seemed as if Ben's jaw had been sheared from his body with a semi-sharp blade and a tremendous amount of force, which lined up with what Samuel had seen the bone worms capable of doing.
Despite the gore and mess, it was the force of the blow that had made the cut somewhat clean and prevented any tearing of Ben's windpipe. With Boss Marster's approval, the surgeons had cleaned the marine up provided Ben Takeda with an apparatus that most marines called 'the grim'.
It was a small miracle that the grim was covered by the standard Reaper health plan, and Boss Marsters had opted not to upgrade the device with anything out of the plan. Now, Ben's face had a molded ceramic face mask, with armor plating on the cheeks, chin, and forehead, covering his head from his brow to the base of his neck. The eye holes allowed Ben to use his unaltered sight, and the apparatus was small enough that it still fit inside the standard issue Reaper combat helmet. Once in place, the grim looked like a black skull face grafted to the flesh of his best friend, and more than anything he looked like the Grim Reaper himself, hence the name for the mask.
In his years with the fleet Samuel had only seen one other person wearing a grim, Gannet, from Epsilon Platoon, and Samuel knew it was going to take some getting used to. The grim would assist Ben in breathing and was retro-fitted to allow for a liquid diet, which Ben would be on for the rest of his life.
"I didn't see George die," said Jada suddenly, "Boss Lucinda was already carrying me by then, but I could hear him, roaring as loud as his flamer before they killed him. He was gasping, and then nothing."
"And Vol?" asked Samuel, careful to keep his tone gentle, as if speaking too strongly would spook his comrade and close her back down.
"He found us. Killed the ones who..." Jada whispered before she paused for a moment, then took a deep breath and squared her shoulders, looking once again like the fierce marine that Samuel knew. "He took the fight to them, gave us a chance to make a run for it."
Jada looked as if she wanted to say more. She opened her mouth, closing it again as the duty light on Samuel's belt buzzed and started to flash green. The marine depressed the acknowledgement stud and the light ceased to blink. Jada, still in hospital scrubs, walked over to the marine and gave him a swift hug before stepping back and sitting on the stool next to Ben's bed.
"Duty calls," said Jada as she made herself comfortable and flashed Samuel a weak smile.
"You'd think after the downspire campaign Vorhold could do without Tango Platoon for at least another day," grumbled Samuel, though he half-smiled as he said it. The smile faded as he took one last look at Ben's grim new face. "If I'm not here when he wakes up..."
"I got this, Prybar. Don't worry, I'll ease him into it," Jada said as she brushed her hair out of her face, inadvertently revealing the scarred claw marks on the left side of her face, "This is the job."
Samuel nodded."This is the job."
THE ELLISIAN LINE
Samuel was in the briefing auditor
ium of the Reaper tug, listening to the shift manager make the initial informational reports to accompany the data presented in the briefing packet that had been passed to every marine in attendance. Samuel had already read through the concise information. His mind had wandered back to the near month he’d been able to spend back home after the grueling tour on Vorhold.
The Reaper fleet had been sent back to Baen 6 for a rest and refit period of thirty-five days, which marked only the fifteenth time he had been able to see his family since becoming a Reaper so many years ago.
Sura had been distant, over the years they could not help but grow apart in small ways, though he could tell she was trying her best to make him feel welcome and loved. His son Orion was growing up so fast and the marine did his best to forget his troubles in the warm embrace of his family. However, that warmth soon faded; as such things did, when he and Sura had to face the hard reality of their situation.
Thanks to the extended hazard deployment on Vorhold, Samuel had banked enough of his Reaper pay and hazard bonuses to buy off Sura’s life-bond and as well as his own, which he’d been chipping away at ever since first shipping out. For several days all of their options looked grim, in that it was simply more of the same.
More soldiering for Samuel in the cold dark of space, more time for Sura and Orion alone on Baen 6; both of them knowing the longer Samuel stayed a Reaper the more his chances of survival dwindled. They had learned over the years that there were very few retired Reapers, as nearly ninety percent of them remained trapped in the debt cycle, or simply could find no better work planetside and died on the job.
The Reaper death benefit program, in its own strange and brutal way, provided the marines with an assurance that if they died on the job they left their families, or whomever they chose, with a sizeable lump sum. It was common for marines to think of the benefit as their final sacrifice for those they left planetside, which worked well for Grotto as the hardened veterans represented much in the way of a return on investment.
Dead Worlds (Necrospace Book 2) Page 8