by Aer-ki Jyr
The Archon slithered out into some type of maintenance area underneath a shelf. There were several indicator lights in the room, but otherwise it was dark. Having had his eyes already adjusted to the diminished light it appeared well lit with sufficient floor space for extra-collegiate maneuvers if you were willing to crawl this far in.
David stood up, brushed himself off, then knelt back down to inspect the panel he’d popped loose. As his nose as told him, it had been recently resealed with the adhesive and fastening pins…which he’d managed to pry loose and were now sticking out the back side of the panel and keeping it slightly ajar.
Looking around as best he could in the dim lights that stood out like colored stars, he got the feeling that he’d worked his way into a machinist’s closet that doubled as a computer core for the building. There was one door to the left, which he gently brushed the handle of and by which determined it was locked…then his nose started to pick up another scent, one that was familiar.
He dropped back down to the floor and started feeling his way across the soft carpet, finding yet another reason why the love birds might have found their way in here. As the smell got stronger his hand brushed across a charred section of the floor, barely larger than the face of the watch David wore, but by the feel and smell of it he knew it was a plasma burn, one that’d probably been stamped out as soon as it’d hit.
He put his nose down to it, also noting the smell of cleaning fluid, as if the carpet had recently been shampooed. If the two students had come through the ghost region of the building and into this secluded hideaway, been discovered and shot on sight, then there was probably a measure of blood on the carpet that had to be washed out, no matter how much their wounds would have been cauterized on contact.
David had seen and smelled enough, and with the door locked couldn’t go any further without getting blunt with whatever might be on the other side…and if he was going to do that he’d need his armor if plasma pistols were floating around.
He pried up the panel and slid back through, then pulled it closed as much as possible, with the adhesive sealing catching more than he’d hoped it would. The tiny crack of light was almost invisible, but he figured that was because his eyes had adjusted to the lights in the closet. Hoping the panel would avoid scrutiny before he could get back, David climbed up in the dark to the platform and walked his way across, then came around the ‘L’ cautiously listening for sounds of contact before poking his head around the corner.
The girl was there, leaning against the wall and looking at her phone, and from the light it produced along with the bits coming in through the foliage on the other side he could see she was crying.
“All clear?” he whispered.
She jerked at the sound of his voice, then slumped back against the wall dejectedly as she swiped away the tears. “Yes.”
David walked out and over to her, which was when he noticed the strap on her shoulder was broken.
“You heard?”
“No I didn’t,” he said, frowning. “What did he do?”
“More than I wanted,” she said, sniffling at a tear-induced runny nose. “How could you not hear?”
“I was exploring the architecture. Are you hurt?”
“Well, he was exploring my architecture and wasn’t too gentle about it. Sorry, but I’m not in the mood anymore. Maybe another day.”
David caught her head in his right hand and kissed her on the forehead. “Would you like me to walk you back to your dorm?”
“Just walk?” she asked skittishly.
“Just walk,” he promised.
“Yeah, sure…why not,” she said, putting her phone away and grabbing his hand. A step toward the path she stopped and looked up at him. “Wait, what about your girl?”
“Let me worry about that,” David said, nudging her forward. She led him along the short trail between wall and shrubbery and out into the light by the restrooms, then dragged him by the hand across the room, down the stairs, and out into the night air. He matched her pace, which slowed once they were outside, and escorted her back to her dorm…then called for pickup and headed back to the spaceport where he put out a call for two other members of Green Team to join him in Phoenix.
5
May 20, 2405
Solar System
Earth
With the stealthed mantis hovering above the cloud layer over Manning College in the moonlight at 3 am, invisible to both radar and prying eyes below, David watched Nathan-937 and Assad-501 step off the deployed boarding ramp and drop down through the clouds. He waited a moment, seeing their ID tags continuing downward on his HUD, then he walked off the edge and fell through the water vapor, emerging on the much darker underside and tapping the chest controls of his jump pack to slow his descent.
The other two Archons bottomed out below him in tandem then walked apart to give him room to land, coming down gently on the rooftop of the college’s loading dock on the back side of the cafeteria complex. The three of them spread out and knelt down, with Nathan crawling up towards the door side edge where he could keep watch.
Then they waited, silently, for the better part of half an hour before a pair of semi-trailers rolled into the parking lot and the garage door opened, retracting up into the ceiling to allow them inside. Nathan gave a quick hand gesture behind him and the other two Archons moved up with David crawling to the right and positioning himself behind the wireless security camera covering the parking lot.
The first of the 12-wheeled trucks pulled in underneath them, with a short gap to the second. When its cab crossed underneath their position David twisted the camera out of alignment and the other two Archons rolled off and onto the top of the cargo canister as it passed by. David waited a few seconds until the second truck disappeared from view and he heard the doors lowering before he slid his legs over the edge of the roof and dropped to the ground, not bothering to use his jump pack.
He landed hard on his feet, but thousands of hours in high gravity training had strengthened his legs to the point where they didn’t buckle, merely dropping him into a recovery crouch before darting underneath the half-lowered door as flashes of pink lit up the interior just before it locked down and cut off the view from the outside.
David pulled out his stun gun from the rack on his back and ran down the gap in between the two trucks just as the driver of the second one was getting out in a panic. The Archon fired his own pink energy blast in a blur that spread out into a cone nearly half a meter wide by the time it hit the driver, dropping him to the ground unconscious as David hopped over him and pulled the door closed so he could pass through the narrow gap between trucks and up to the front where Nathan and Assad were sweeping around from both sides.
The three quickly downed all personnel in the garage and checked them for weapons, finding none.
“Trucks,” David ordered as he moved off into the loading area opposite the doors. In between the two was a large open parking area with hover lifters racked up on the western wall, one of which was already detached and floating knee height above the floor with the handle dragging on the ground next to an unconscious worker.
Further up along that wall was a ramp that led to an elevated walkway that led back into the loading area, with a symmetrical version on the eastern side, no doubt with one being for entry and the other for departure as the offloading crews would cycle through their rounds offloading the cargo into the rooms that David was now about to start checking.
He held his stun gun in his left hand, aware that he only had 11 more shots left before it was drained of charge. The weapon was a power hog and the Archons preferred using stingers, both for the higher number of rounds they could fire and the increased accuracy, for the stun guns’ energy didn’t flow in a packet or streak, nor did it even dissipate like plasma. Instead, the energy constantly wanted to expand, meaning the moment it left the muzzle of the weapon it had a cone-shaped effect that only made it effective at short range.
That energy
was itself invisible and the same used in the stingers, but they had a physical object for the energy to cling to and thus could fire at greater ranges. The stun energy was so repulsive upon itself that a second type of energy had to be added to the discharge for it to cling to, which is what gave the weaponsfire the pink flash.
Very few Archons used the weapons, and even the Regulars usually preferred stingers, save for those who had difficulty aiming. The energy-laced paintballs took some skill to operate, which the Archons and many others preferred, while the stun guns’ spraying capability made them more of a rookie weapon. However, there was one major advantage to the weapons aside from the coolness of a pure energy discharge…they didn’t leave behind any trace of weaponsfire.
Plasma weapons left burn marks, as did lachars to a lesser extent. For this mission, Green Team was operating on non-lethal protocols until they understood what the threat level was, which meant either stingers or stun guns, and stingers left behind paint. Star Force didn’t have legal authority to operate inside the United States and most other countries, so this mission had to be covert, leaving behind no direct evidence that could link them to the site.
Hacking into the campus’s systems had told them where the security cameras were, as well as the lack of cameras inside the loading garage, not to mention the blueprints of the facility, including the storage room that David had found previously and was now coming up on down a narrow side hallway.
It was locked, as before, but the Archon pulled out a small object from a pouch on the small of his back and set it over the swipe card slot. A few moments later the door clicked open and David flicked on an interior light, clearly seeing the burn mark on the floor where he had felt it out before. He had a quick look around the room then put his back to the wall and looked out, trying to work through what might have happened and where a plasma-armed individual might have come from.
Stepping back outside there were two doors on either side of the narrow hallway that led to the wider cargo-access tunnel that ran straight into a warehouse. David checked all four doors, finding them unlocked and leading to more small-scale storage, mostly for maintenance and cleaning purposes. Nothing there jumped out at him, so he moved on down the hall and headed left, bringing him to the warehouse area that contained crates of supply in the center with a ring of refrigeration units around the perimeter for the foodstuffs that couldn’t survive room temperature.
“Got something,” Assad reported over the comm.
“What?” David asked as he turned around and hurried back.
“One of these things does not look like the others,” the Archon said in a sarcastic voice as David came back into the garage area and saw both Archon tags located behind the leftmost truck. In fact, one looked to be up inside the back of it.
David ran around the back and hopped up inside while Nathan stayed on the deck below, finding the truck only partially loaded with food supplies…until he leaned against one of the boxes and felt something much heavier inside. He was about to open a box when Assad pointed him towards something over behind the nearest boxes and obscured from direct view.
Peeking up, David saw the top of a large device half buried in boxes.
“Industrial laser,” Assad told him, already having had a closer look. “Not exactly what you need for making breakfast.”
“Aines Corp?”
Assad’s helmeted head paused a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, it is.”
“It was listed as damaged and scrapped less than a month ago,” David explained. “A lot of things have been going missing from various corporations, and this was one on Davis’s list.”
“Where were they planning to take it?” Nathan asked, still keeping an eye out behind the trucks.
“Either they’re storing it here to transport elsewhere later, or they’ve got subsurface tunnels, and I’d bet on the latter. See what you can find,” David said, then looked at Assad. “You find anything else back there?”
“Only crawled back halfway, and we still have the other truck to look at.”
David pointed him towards the boxes and hopped out the back, heading over to the other truck. He opened it up just in time to have a blue plasma blast rip by over his head.
He ducked down and out of sight on reflex, then came back up and pumped two stun gun shots into the truck without aiming. When his eyes focused enough to spot individuals he pumped another round into the one left standing and held his ground, aiming in at elbow height from the floor of the truck.
A few seconds later the other two Archons came up alongside him and David nodded for Nathan to jump on up while he covered him. The other acolyte’s silver armor levitated its way up with a quick tap of the jump pack all the while holding a stun gun level in the other hand.
“Tangos down,” he reported as he walked in around a few stacks of crates. “I count four,” Nathan said, pulling out the stun stick from the rack on his packless armor’s back and jabbing it into one of the still moving men. He did the same with the others, unsure of how much of a hit they’d taken from David’s weapon.
“They weren’t going into storage,” Assad said, switching to venator and roaming about the garage. The stun guns made enough noise, but not nearly as much as plasma weapons. If someone else was nearby it might have attracted some attention.
“No insignia on the uniforms,” Nathan said as David climbed up into the cargo compartment and stepped over a crate to get to the men. “But this clothing is definitely standardized. These men weren’t meant to see daylight.”
“Hello,” Assad said from a few meters outside, his tag visible on David’s HUD through the left side of the truck out into the middle of the clear area in the hangar.
“Whachya got?” Nathan asked, still stooped over and examining the unconscious men.
“Seam in the floor. I think there’s a hidden lift.”
“That would explain the enclosed loading bay,” David said…then another idea struck him. “I need to check something. Grab that plasma and any others they’ve got,” he said, climbing out the back of the truck and heading up the side ramp. He ran back over to the closet, wondering again why someone would have happened onto the pair of love birds with weapon in hand.
When he got inside he began looking around for some type of switch, pulling out and pushing aside boxes, widgets, and any and all things that were packing the shelves…then he dropped to the floor and looked around low, seeing if there wasn’t something they could have accidentally kicked.
And there it was…on the left side, up underneath the bottom shelf set barely high enough to slide your foot under, was a 2 inch wide toe button. David reached his hand under and tapped up on it, assuming it was usually activated by foot…then the whole far wall disconnected from the closet and pulled back a meter revealing a well-lit hallway to the left.
“Son of a bitch,” David whispered as he got to his feet. Just then a person appeared in the nook, coming out of the hallway, pistol in holster. As soon as he saw the Archon’s armor he drew his weapon but David was faster, jumping forward and grabbing the man’s wrist as they smashed back into the shelves on the moveable wall. David snaked an arm back and grabbed his stun gun from the rack on his back and tucked it into the man’s side as he tried to wiggle free of the Archon’s iron-tight grip.
A quick shot ended his resistance and David untangled himself enough to stand up, then he saw that two steps down the hallway a sharp and narrow staircase descended around curve, heading further underground…along with a large lever imbedded into the wall.
“Trouble?” Assad asked at hearing the weaponsfire.
“Watch the floor,” David said, then he pulled the lever.
“Bingo,” Assad confirmed as a huge section of floor came up on pylons.
“Found a stairway headed down. You two take the lift, assuming that’s what it is?”
“Cargo lift for sure, judging by the size.”
“I caught a guard coming up, so stay sharp.”
“Copy that,” Nathan confirmed as he came out of the truck and joined Assad as the lift finally finished extending up in two parts. First was the pneumatic lifts pushing the floor section up and out of the way, then came a second floor with a short 3-sided fence outlining the perimeter with a control console in the far back corner. The lift assembly locked into place with a snap/hiss then the pair of Archons stepped inside and toggled the ‘down’ button.
Slowly it descended, first past the garage floor, then down through tens of meters of vertical tunnel until a crack of light showed at their feet along with the sound of plasma fire.
Nathan fell to his belly, aiming his weapon through the growing gap just in time to see David pistol whip an opponent off his feet then fire a pink stun blast off at someone else out of view. As he searched for a target to shoot Assad ran forward and slid out of the now two foot gap face first and fell into the large open cavern on his head, rolled into a crude somersault, and came up firing at a pair of uniformed guards, both of which were aiming at David.
Within a few seconds all of the enemy were down and Nathan picked himself up and jumped off the lift before it locked down into place, leaving the threesome in the middle of a high-ceilinged chamber with the far wall open to natural rock that was unlit.
David kicked aside one of the knockoff plasma pistols and walked out onto a rectangular dock reaching into the rocky end of the chamber, seeing a watery tunnel heading off into blackness. Attached to either side of the dock were three boats, two were small skiffs while the third on the left was a long platform, apparently for moving cargo.
“Impressive setup,” Assad commented, walking up beside David and looking down the dark tunnel. “That looks natural.”
“All the better to hide it from geological scans. Looks like Davis was right about them having a hidden base.”