by Aer-ki Jyr
When the doors parted the bay master saluted sharply at the three armored Archons. “Your stealth pods are fully fueled, and the auxiliary equipment you requested is loaded inside, as are the extra O2 tanks.”
“Do you have a comlink to the bridge?” Rafa asked through his armor’s external speakers.
“We do. Everything is set and waiting for your order to go. Just flash the ready lights and we’ll get you moving.”
Rafa nodded his red helmeted head and pulled himself into the nearby airlock via ceiling handholds, then cycling through into the airless portion of the SR’s hangar bay. Inside were an assortment of small craft, the larger of which were docked to internal airlocks, but three black ‘kites’ were sitting just inside the outer doors tethered to extendable pylons coming up out of the ‘floor.’
Rafa pushed off the airlock rim and flew across the bay, catching a hand on the corner of a shuttle and redirecting himself toward the nearest kite. He caught himself against the dark black hull with his hands, stalling his momentum, then climbed around to the access port and opened the stealth pod up.
Inside was a long chamber slightly bigger than his body that ran fore to aft behind a pointed nose cone. The sides of the pod angled out into stubby wings, making the whole apparatus look like a gigantic black diamond…that had been squashed. Jason had said the things looked like something Batman would build, and Rafa had to admit that he had a point, after which he wondered if Paul and Roger had designed them with that homage in mind.
Taryn came flying across the bay next, grabbing her pod and climbing inside feet first. Rafa stayed outside and examined the contents by poking his head inside. As the bay master had said, the equipment packs and oxygen tanks were already stowed inside, placed into niches with fastening clamps keeping them clear of the body cavity that he was going to ride inside.
“Cozy,” Morgan commented as she joined the pair and looked inside. “Either of you ever used these things?”
“Nope,” Taryn answered, already going through the power up sequence.
“Not in the field,” Rafa answered, sliding his feet inside, “but I did get to play around with one of the prototypes.”
“How do they fly?”
“Like a rock.”
“That’s reassuring,” Morgan commented, sliding inside and sealing the hatch over her head. The interior of the pod had several running lights and illuminated switches, but otherwise was dark.
Her navigation displays and controls were directly in front of her downward facing position, with the top of her head bumping up against the nosecone of the ‘bat.’ Reaching down, she located the pod’s oxygen feed and plugged it into her armor’s port, having to wiggle her arm around to reach the back of her neck in the claustrophobic confines.
The pod’s oxygen would last her several days, if need be, but the extra oxygen tanks clustered around her feet were for her use after they reached their target, in order to supplement her armor’s limited supply. Also clustered around her legs was an assortment of equipment, including food and water rations, a stinger rifle, pistol, stun stick, backpack of technical gear, and a second pack of odds and ends, including an ample supply of ambrosia doses, though she doubted she was going to need much with all this inactivity.
“Everybody set?” Rafa’s voice asked over her comm.
“Just,” Morgan said as her final prep sequence came back in the clear.
“Been waiting on you,” Taryn echoed.
Rafa flipped the ready switch in his pod, which transmitted the all clear signal back to the control room.
“Standby,” the bay master said to himself, floating over to another panel to relay the go order to the ship’s pilot.
Suddenly there was an acceleration burst from the ship’s engines, felt by the Archons in the pods as the SR accelerated towards the distant asteroid base, building some momentum before launch to save the pods some fuel.
After sufficient speed had been achieved, the bay master opened the forward doors and remotely detached the tethers holding them in place. Another ready light illuminated inside Morgan’s pod, indicating that she was now free to accelerate out of the bay.
“Taryn,” Rafa prompted.
“Taking the lead,” she said as her pod’s wingtip engines flared to life and slowly carried her out of the bay, cutting off a few meters outside.
Morgan followed next, with Rafa coming out last and joining the pair, drifting left and matching Taryn’s speed as close as possible. The acolyte did likewise to the right and the trio floated forward and clear of the ship a few inches per second.
In their rear view camera displays the SR tilted its giant hammerhead up in a slow arc until the engine compartment came around to a 90 degree angle, then it thrusted lightly, rising up above the trajectory of the pods before completing its flip and firing up its engines again, thrusting back the way it had come and away from the target as the pods continued to coast forward, passing out of radar and visible contact within a few kilometers due to their stealth plating.
“I’m thinking of a number,” Taryn teased, referencing the long wait they had in store.
“Oh don’t start that,” Morgan said, remembering back to the silly game some of them had played during their basic training. “It was annoying enough the first time.”
Morgan heard Taryn snickering over the comm, but otherwise she didn’t respond.
“Everybody got a nav fix?” Rafa asked.
“I’m showing a bit of drift, but nothing we can’t fix on arrival,” Taryn reported.
“Same here,” Rafa said. “We’ll try a correction when we get past the halfway point, there’s no way we can finesse it from this range without overcompensating.”
“Agreed,” Morgan said, studying her numbers.
“Alright, sit tight and coast unless you get farther than 50 meters off Taryn. Taryn, you can go ahead and take a nap.”
“Sleep flying, aye,” she said in her typical high pitched, energetic voice.
Rafa pulled up a card game on his display and started passing time…
5
Four hours later the three stealth pods began quietly decelerating on their tiny chemical thrusters, bleeding off speed as the target asteroid began to grow larger on their display screens. The top of the base was just visible on the underside, but the asteroid’s slow rotation would have it out of view within minutes, giving them the blank backside to make their landing on.
More small puffs of reverse thrust emitted from the wingtips all the way up to the sheer rock wall of the pitted asteroid, then the three ‘bats’ spread apart and flipped up, coming down on the rock belly first, but stopping a few meters short of it, hovering on occasional thruster bursts from the pen-sized attitude adjustment vents spread across the surface of the craft. Keeping close to the perimeter, the three Archons flew around the curve of the asteroid until the top of the base came into view.
“Where do you suggest we park?” Morgan asked sarcastically.
“It won’t matter now, so long as they haven’t noticed our approach. We’ll have to stow them inside later.”
“Then I suggest we get out here and approach on foot.”
“I agree,” Taryn echoed.
“Alright, but remember ‘on foot’ means handheld thrusters out there.”
Rafa micro-thrusted down to the surface of the asteroid and felt a slight vibration as the underside touched…then rebounded back off. He nulled out as much of the motion as he could then popped the hatch. As he climbed out he felt the pod knock against the asteroid again and begin to twist. His body weight was a considerable fraction of the pod’s mass, so every movement he made affected its orientation, and with almost zero gravity coming from the asteroid there was nothing to hold either of them in place.
Deciding to just make do for the moment, Rafa dove back inside the bat-like pod head first and dug into one of the equipment bundles that had been stored around his feet, pulling out a handheld thruster unit and a ‘parking meter,
’ as the designers had affectionately labeled the gun-like device.
Rafa pulled back out with both, then reached back in and toggled the pod’s controls, micro-thrusting it back down to the surface, whereupon he fired the tether gun into the asteroid, imbedding a long metallic piton into the rock, leaving the handle of the device attached to the top with a flexible cord rolled up inside the hilt. Rafa pried the end of the cord with clasp out of the now firmly attached ‘parking meter’ and hooked it to a metallic loop on the nosecone of the pod, then let the stealth craft float on its own accord.
He pulled out the two equipment packs, attaching one to the back of his armor and holding the other in his hand as he lightly pushed off the top of the pod and floated over the surface of the asteroid, using the micro-thruster in his left hand to keep him down as he searched for footholds to propel himself forward on in lieu of liberally using his limited fuel supply.
“How’s everyone doing?” he asked, resisting the urge to turn his head and look, which would result in twisting his body in ways he didn’t want.
“Already ahead of you,” Morgan reported.
“Just off your right, a few meters back,” Taryn said, bringing up the rear.
Rafa looked to his right with his eyes and a bit of a head turn, trying to spot Morgan…then to his surprise found her well ahead of him, making good progress slithering across the ground on her belly.
“Showoff,” Rafa said, picking his steps carefully as Morgan left the other two Archons in the dust.
“Have you done this before?” Taryn asked, dropping to her knees and trying to mimic the acolyte’s low profile.
“Nope, just seemed like the best way. Plenty of finger holds over here.”
“Find the door so the slowpokes can make a straight line for it,” Rafa suggested sarcastically.
“Will do,” Morgan acknowledged, crawling across the surface with her second pack attached just above her butt and flailing like a tail behind her. With quick and precise movements she had her momentum constantly aligned with the curve of the asteroid and avoiding having to use the micro-thruster at all.
When she dipped down into a shallow crater she didn’t fall all the way to the center, skipping over part to maintain a straighter line and grabbed hold of the opposite edge, slithering over the top and into full view of the base that had been build into the side of the asteroid.
Within four seconds she had an airlock spotted and crawled towards it with gear in tow, instinctively looking for defenses, but finding none. The building had two sections from her point of view, one clearly a habitable module with the other larger section appearing to be some sort of garage. The airlock was situated three meters up the wall, giving Morgan the impression that the module had been prefab in design, multileveled, and partially buried inside the asteroid rather than having been built on top of it.
She slowed her crawl as she got up close, then carefully measured a tiny jump, angling up to the airlock handles, which were placed on all four sides of the square door, appearing as squarish loops that were easy to grab hold of.
With her silver glove wrapped around the top handle, Morgan pulled herself to the control panel and examined the controls, recognizing them as a non-Star Force make, but she couldn’t remember the manufacturer and there were no identification markings on the exterior to jog her memory. The key sequence was simple enough, and within 30 seconds she had the sliding door open and pulled herself inside the small cubicle.
“I’m in the airlock,” she reported, shutting the outer door and triggering the cycle. “Follow my beacon.”
“Got it,” Rafa reported after she pressed a small button on her forearm controls. “Be there shortly.”
Morgan steadied herself, planting her right foot and left arm against opposite sides of the airlock and disconnecting her second pack, letting it drift free as she gently backed up and placed her foot against the airlock outer door, ready to spring inside.
The air replenishment cycle ran its course and the inner door clicked open, sliding into the wall and opening up the interior to the Archon, who stayed in place as the view contained no troops or personnel. Morgan listened intently, but could detect no trace of any activity. Gently pushing off the back, she hand walked forward, keeping grip points to redirect herself if necessary.
Her head poked out and she scanned the room…finding it empty, but with two exits. One forward and one down.
The acolyte free floated out of the airlock and pulled her equipment pack out with her, fastening it to one of the nearby wall rungs and stashing her handheld micro-thruster back inside.
“I’m in. No contacts. Checking out the rest of the facility.”
“What is it?” Taryn asked over the comm.
“Processing,” Morgan identified immediately, based off the containers lining the walls and two workstations ringing the center floor exit. All had various grades of crushed ore waiting to be refined, by hand it appeared, which made her wonder what exactly they were extracting. She moved forward and looked down into the lower level, surprised to see that the ladder actually extended down several levels.
Reaching back into the pack on her back, Morgan pulled out her stun stick and charged it up, just in case, then sprung down the ladder head first.
The room below was empty, save for a myriad of enclosed equipment pods, but she did spy a hint of movement down the side exit and immediately twisted about and redirected across the room, pulling herself into the next one and coming across a robotic arm grabbing cylinders of ore from a rack and feeding them into some sort of smelter…an active device that she doubted would be left to run on its own if someone wasn’t nearby.
This room was built against a wall, but had a cattycorner exit, suggesting a four square design to each level. Morgan kicked off a bench and into the next room, then hung a left and checked the last quarter, finding it empty as well. She returned to the first room with the ladder and went back up to the first level, swinging around all four of its rooms before coming back down and running into someone coming up the ladder from the third level.
Morgan knocked the woman off her handholds and down the ladder with a stiff forearm, then pinned her on the floor below, belatedly noticing that there was a fourth level beneath them. The woman screamed, and Morgan heard a chorus of voices raise elsewhere in the facility in response.
A swift poke from her stun stick quieted the woman and the Archon moved off in hunter mode, taking down two more men in the other rooms of this level, then a second woman coming up from below. Morgan searched the fourth level, but found it empty, then collected the unconscious people and gathered them together in what appeared to be a small lounge in the upper right quarter of the third level.
“Four captives,” Morgan reported.
“I’m in the airlock now,” Rafa replied. “Were they armed?”
“No, but they did look really surprised.”
“Who are they?”
“Don’t know yet. They’re napping.”
“Uniforms?”
“Nondescript. In fact I don’t see anything here that has any prominent corporate logos.”
“The structure is Exxtron,” Taryn noted. “I can tell by the control panel. They sell to a lot of the anti-Star Force crowd.”
“I’m in,” Rafa reported.
“Third level,” Morgan told him.
“Found the keys to the garage yet?” he asked, still over the comm.
“I did a quick check and didn’t spot any exits save for another airlock up top.”
Rafa caught a glimpse of the moving robotic arm as he passed into the second level and frowned, then scooted off course to have a look at it. On closer inspection he found remote controls for multiple arms, as well as video screen displays that were currently shut off. When he flipped the on switch they showed the interior of the ‘garage’ with multiple large containers and a host of remote equipment, all apparently run from inside this room.
“Think I found the door,” Rafa rep
orted over the comm as Taryn came through the airlock. “There’s an automated system that brings in material through a set of industrial airlocks.”
“Where are they?”
“In the walls. I’m going to try to find the button for the sunroof.”
“You want me back outside?” Taryn asked, coming up behind him in the room.
“Not until we get the loading doors open.”
“There,” she said, pulling herself into a pod-like seat and wrapping her armored legs around the base to keep put. “It’s next to the main control arm.”
She pressed a large button and there was a grinding vibration felt throughout the structure, making the material of the walls audibly protest until it was locked in place and the stars were visible through the roof on Rafa’s display screens over top the cargo canisters.
“Go,” he said simply, with Taryn jumping out of her seat and heading back to the airlock to begin parking their stealth pods inside and out of view of any approaching ships.
“Morgan, see what you can get out of the prisoners. I’m going to start digging through their computer systems.”
“Will do,” she acknowledged, reaching over her shoulder and detaching the pack on her back. She set it aside and pulled out a vile of destunning serum and injected one of the women in the side of her neck. As she fought to regain consciousness Morgan pulled off her helmet and got her first taste of ‘fresh’ air in hours.
When the woman started to blink her eyes open, Morgan snapped her fingers in front of her face to get her to focus. “Name,” she demanded.
“Wha…what?”
“Name,” Morgan repeated, staring at her from less than two feet away, one hand on her shoulder to pin her weightless body against the wall.
“Masterson.”
“Alright, Masterson. I need to know what your mission is here, who you work for, and when the next ship is due to arrive.”