The door back in the antechamber whooshed open; Chhun heard it through the sensitive speakers built into his helmet. He raised his blaster rifle at the ready and stepped out of the line of sight from the open doorway connecting the chamber to the dispatch room. Whoever it was would have to enter the room all the way before they caught a glimpse of the Dark Ops warrior.
Two Gomarii entered, a prisoner being carried between them. Chhun didn’t hesitate. He sent two blaster bolts from his NK-4 into their skulls—one apiece. A teal spray of brains and blood showered the prisoner, who stared in disbelief at Chhun.
It was Major Owens.
The major stared at the legionnaire before him, squinting through the pulpy gore as though it would somehow allow him to see the man behind the bucket. “Cohen?”
Chhun nodded. “Yes, sir. Commander Keller sent us to rescue you.”
Owens looked down at the two dead Gomarii. “Well… good job.”
“Sir, I heard something about other legionnaires down here?”
Owens furrowed his brow. “It’s true. Place is a mess with leejes that got a raw deal, same as me. Worse. It’s bad, Chhun.”
“Orders, sir?”
“Right now we have to shut down the auto-turrets around the tunnels or there aren’t going to be any legionnaires left alive down here.”
***
Masters and Pike moved quickly through the southern tunnels. The lighting was almost non-existent, and thus far they hadn’t seen a soul. There was some sort of prison riot happening where Bear and Fish were stationed, but nothing of the sort here. They seemed to be far away from the action.
“I dunno, man,” Masters said over his direct L-comm link to Pike, his partner for the op. “I think we picked the wrong door. Maybe these tunnels are abandoned?”
“Could be,” agreed Pike. “Except for Lao Pak’s buddy. He’s probably still down here somewhere.”
“Yeah, well… I kinda just want to rescue Major Owens and get out of here.”
The pair moved farther down their chosen mining shaft. As they walked, they passed a mechanical whirring above them.
“You see that back there?” Pike asked.
“Sure did. Fully automated N-50 blaster turrets,” Masters answered. “Those’ll make your day. Crowd control?”
“Maybe if the crowd is an army of koobs.”
“Yeah, seems like overkill for a bunch of prisoners.”
They reached a fork in the tunnels, and Masters pointed at the left-most shaft. As they turned the corner, they saw the bouncing light of an ultrabeam ahead of them in the distance. They picked up their pace, seeking to catch up with whoever it was.
The tunnel opened into a massive cavern where some kind of excavation had been taking place. Heavy-duty equipment sat unused beside a deep hole at least thirty meters across. The place looked abandoned except for the lone Gomarii peering across the hole. Perhaps looking for the runaway.
“Just one,” noted Masters. “I’ve got him.”
He unsheathed his knife, a fixed blade of impervisteel with a gut hook and a custom grip fitted to his hand. Masters loved the thing. Quietly, in a low crouch, he stalked toward the unwitting guard. His every footstep was carefully placed, and the legionnaire was at that moment the galaxy’s apex predator, closing in on the kill.
As he came up behind the Gomarii, still crouching low, Masters appreciated how tall the species was. They were solidly built, with a domineering posture, but also with a physique that suggested no lack of dexterity. If there was such as a thing as an ideal slaver, the Gomarii might well be it.
The difference in height wasn’t so much that Masters would have to jump to drive his blade into the Gomarii’s neck, but he’d be plunging the weapon in using only the strength of his arm and shoulder. He could try to bring the slaver down to a knee with a well-placed kick, but that would provide the opportunity for the guard to scream. So he decided to make the cut while the Gomarii was in a standing position and trust that Pike, who was covering him with his N-6, would finish the job if it was botched.
The cut was not botched. Masters drove the blade home exactly where he wanted it. The slaver gave a muted gurgle as teal blood, hot and thick to the point of being almost mucus-like, flowed out of the wound. The Gomarii dropped his weapon and fell to his knees, feebly clutching Masters’s arm and hand. The blade was buried down to the hilt. Masters used his newfound leverage to expand the wound, causing still more blood to issue forth as the slaver’s life left its body.
Masters removed his blade and cleaned it on the Gomarii’s clothing. He caught motion at his feet, and looked down to see that he’d severed a couple of tendrils, and they now writhed in the pooling blood.
“Dude,” he said to Pike.
“Savage,” came the reply. “KTF.” After a pause, “Look around us, Masters. This place is empty. Like… abandoned. All this equipment… someone got out of here in a hurry.”
Masters surveyed the cavernous area. He was by no means an expert on industrial mining equipment, but what was down here looked old. Really old. It was covered in a thick layer of dust that muted every color painted on the machines. There were more digging machines at the bottom of the deep pit, abandoned like the rest. Even stranger was the way all the cab doors on the heavy diggers and loaders had been left open—as though the workers had left the vehicles with such reckless abandon that they couldn’t even be bothered to close the doors behind them.
Masters looked up. More N-50 turrets were everywhere, sweeping all angles.
“There’s no way those are here just for riot control,” said Masters. “Everywhere, in every tunnel?”
“Mm-hm,” agreed Pike. “I don’t like it.”
“Victory Squad!”
Chhun’s voice suddenly bursting over the L-comm gave Masters a fright. “Holy strokes,” he muttered to himself. “I almost wet myself.”
“I’ve secured the command center,” Chhun reported. He sounded joyful, and soon the others understood why. “And I’ve found Major Owens.”
“So we’re out of here?” Pike asked.
“Negative. Rumors of Legion prisoners are confirmed. We’ve got good guys down here.”
Bear came online next. “That explains what Fish and me are seeing on our side of the mines. There’s a major riot going down right now. Bunch of prisoners fighting close-quarters with what looks like every guard in the place. Most of the guards only have whips and clubs, but a few are hanging back with blaster rifles, picking out targets in the crowd.”
“That’s probably the work of the major’s men,” replied Chhun. “He organized the riot as part of an attempt to take control of the mines.”
“I thought some of those guys were fighting pretty well under pressure,” said Fish. “Request permission to break stealth and engage the guards.”
“Hang tight on that,” answered Chhun. “We’re working through the central control system to shut down the auto-turrets. The guards have remote access, and if they start to lose control of the fight, Major Owens believes they’ll use them on the entire prison population. Do you have visual on any turrets?”
“One’s right above us,” said Bear.
“Lots of ’em over here,” Masters said.
“Okay. Once you see them go offline, you are cleared hot to engage.”
“Ooah,” replied several of the leejes.
Masters looked again at the dug-out pit full of abandoned equipment. “Cap, we’ve dusted one Gomarii, but otherwise there’s nothing in the south tunnels. Should we link up with the northwest element to multiply force?”
Before Chhun could respond, a distant, terror-stricken scream echoed from one of the tunnels.
“Hang on,” Pike said. “Just heard evidence of humanoids sounding distressed. Masters and I can check it out, and link up with the rest of you guys if it doesn’t turn out to be anything. Don’t want to leave any leejes to the slavers.”
“Understood,” said Chhun. “Check it out and report back in. Fal
lback point remains the command center.”
“Copy,” said Masters. He looked to Pike. “Well, let’s go spelunking!”
***
The scream only sounded the one time, but Masters and Pike felt confident they had chosen the correct tunnel. They moved in complete darkness, so much so that their night vision no longer worked. Rather than turn on ultrabeams, they relied on their buckets’ radar to let them know when they were too near the walls. Still, the grade of the floor was erratic, and they stumbled more than a few times.
The last auto-turret had been a hundred meters ago. It was still online.
“Don’t see how anyone came through here,” said Masters.
“Yeah, let’s turn on an ultrabeam. See if a little light provides some clues.”
Masters flipped on the light attached to the rail of his blaster rifle. The brilliant light stabbed through the darkness like a column of sheer radiance.
He lit up the surrounding walls. Thick veins of synth were everywhere.
“Why would they leave this behind?” asked Pike. “Or maybe it’s like this everywhere?”
“I dunno, man,” Masters said. “Bet it’s not good. I have a bad feeling about this.”
He swept his light to shine farther down the shaft. It revealed two things. First, not far ahead, the tunnel bent left, and it changed. Up to this point, the tunnels they had traveled all had the same distinctive pattern—rounded with a flat floor—and the walls had the familiar markings of a drilling machine. But where those markings stopped, at the leftward bend, the tunnel continued—except it was almost three times larger, and perfectly round. Crumbled sandstone lay around the point of transition.
Masters saw all this. Processed it. But it wasn’t what held his attention.
“Is that blood?” asked Pike.
That was the second thing. Distinctive splash patterns of red, still wet and shimmering in the light of the ultrabeam, were sprinkled all over the tunnel floor. “That explains the scream.”
“Let’s check it out,” said Pike, activating the ultrabeam he kept attached to his bucket.
The two legionnaires crept farther down the tunnel. They saw more of the same bloodstains as they turned and entered the larger shaft. Pike shone his light down the tunnel, revealing several more of the round tunnels intersecting the one they now stood in. It looked like the start of a complex underground maze, a dizzying dungeon crawl from a fantasy game come to life. As Pike swept his light around, it illuminated a small black object lying about ten meters straight ahead.
“Okay,” Masters said. “One scream. Lots of blood. Probably a dead human. Not much we can do here. I say we head back to the others.”
Chhun barged into their headspace, announcing over L-comm, “Auto-turrets are down. You are cleared hot.”
“Ooah,” answered Bear, and the staccato clatter of blaster fire erupted over the comm.
Masters lowered his volume. “That settles it. Let’s go give ’em a hand.”
Pike was stepping slowly toward the object on the floor. “Yeah,” he said, but didn’t stop. “I just wanna know what that thing is first. It’ll drive me nuts if I leave it without knowing what it is. Some kinda pouch?”
Reluctantly, Masters followed Pike to the object. It was indeed a pouch, stained by more blood, this time the teal of Gomarii.
Pike opened the pouch and looked inside. “Full of synth.”
He attached the pouch to his belt.
Masters shined his light on the floor ahead of them. “Dude. Look.”
Only two meters away was a single boot, surrounded by still more human blood.
“That’s the boot Cap saw on the holofeed,” Masters said, even as Pike walked toward it. Masters held out a hand after him, as if to stop his progress. “Hey, we should get—”
Master didn’t finish his sentence. He watched in horror as an enormous creature appeared right next to Pike, emerging from one of the connecting tunnels. The beast was nearly as large as the tunnel itself. It was scaled and woolly, with three rows of nine glossy black eyes. It opened its mouth wide, revealing countless arcs of dagger-like teeth.
Pike was almost frozen in place. Then he came to his senses, raised his rifle, and sent a burst of blaster fire into the thing.
“Pike!” Masters fired as well, adding his shots to Pike’s, all of them blistering, burning, and chunking away pieces of the beast’s open maw.
Surely it hurt, but not enough.
The creature bit down on Pike, nearly engulfing the legionnaire entirely. The jaws clamped together with a deafening snap, and the monster reared back like a bird gulping down a fish. All that remained of Pike—on the outside—were his legs, severed just below the knees, armor and all.
“Sket!” shouted Masters. He turned into the nearest opening and ran.
He could hear the beast lumbering behind him at a horrible pace, covering far more ground than Masters with every stride. It would take a pure sprint—sheer speed and determination—to get the fittest legionnaire in Victory Squad to safety.
Masters ran until he felt as though his heart was beating inside his throat. His bucket showed him his heart rate, along with a warning about optimal beats per minute and a message that it was increasing the flow of oxygen to assist him. He was thankful for that.
The tunnels twisted and turned, but try as he might, Masters was unable to shake the creature. Worse still, he had no idea where he was going. He wanted to call in over L-comm, but he was expending every ounce of energy on flight, to where it felt he had nothing left for communication, not even a tongue-toggle to indicate that he was in trouble.
He was running, quite literally, for his life.
Blessedly, the tunnel he was tearing down opened directly into the base of the pit full of abandoned machinery. At least now Masters knew what all those auto-turrets were there for. He sprinted among the diggers and loaders, not daring to look behind him. The sound of the heavy machines screeching and slamming around behind him told him all he needed to know. This monster was intent on making Masters his next meal.
At least his bucket now had enough light to give him night vision again.
Masters made straight for the ramp that wound its way out of the pit. Perhaps if he led the creature to the dead Gomarii, it would pause to snack on the corpse, allowing Masters to put some distance between himself and his pursuer. Maybe he could even find a place to hide. Because he surely couldn’t run like this forever.
The dead Gomarii was right where he’d left it. Masters leaped over it, hoping that his ploy would work.
The beast didn’t so much as slow down to investigate. Instead it let out a terrible roar.
Okay, thought Masters, not a scavenger. Or maybe it keys in on warmth down here in the dark?
Masters ran toward the fallback point, toward the prison hellhole that now felt like the height of civilization and safety compared to the tunnels behind him. There was more light this way, and that provided some comfort for Masters after witnessing horrors in the darkness.
To his surprise, a pair of guards, one human and one Gomarii, came toward him from the opposite direction. Each carried a weapon, but they were running with all their might. Both looked shocked to see the legionnaire running directly toward them, and those looks turned to horror when they saw what was behind him.
Without breaking stride, Masters raised his rifle and shot the human guard in the leg, dropping him to the ground.
You only have to outrun the other prey.
The Gomarii made no objection, and it turned and started to run in the opposite direction.
As Masters chased after the Gomarii, he hazarded a quick look behind him. The Republic guard was in mid-scream, holding up his arm in a vain attempt to ward off the monster’s open jaws. Masters turned away before he could see the man’s fate, but he heard the loud snapping of the jaws all the same. The beast roared in victory and resumed its pursuit.
Masters was nearly alongside the Gomarii when he saw in the dist
ance up ahead a motley band of prisoners, all of them armed with blaster rifles. This must be what the guards had been running from.
Clearly, judging by the eagerness with which the Gomarii ran toward them, they were no longer the slaver’s biggest concern.
Masters grabbed the Gomarii by the shoulder, yanked him backward, and moved nimbly past him. Behind him, he heard the Gomarii stumble and hit the ground, the creature’s next snack.
“Move!” Masters shouted at the stunned crowd before him, waving his arms. “Get going!”
“Masters,” Chhun said over L-comm. “What’s going on?”
“Pike’s dead!” Masters said. “And there’s a kelhorned monster chasing me!”
Masters heard Chhun ask him something. His mind couldn’t process what. He glanced back and saw that the creature had slowed down. It was still chasing him, but not with the same speed. It seemed to have become tentative after eating the Gomarii, snuffling and looking around. As though it expected something. Probably the sting of the N-50s.
The central command and its docking pad were in sight, maybe a half click away. Judging by the blaster fire, there was some kind of last stand going on around there. The rioters who had been chasing the guards were in full retreat, running from the monster. Masters was right in the middle of them, making his way to the front of the pack.
“That… thing I see on the holocams… it killed Pike?” Chhun asked.
“Roger,” panted Masters. “You gotta turn on the auto-turrets. That’s what they’re for—this thing!”
“We can’t,” Chhun said, his voice full of concern. “The guards already made an attempt to turn the turrets on the prisoners, even though they can see that the machines have been turned off. The minute that green light turns back on, they’ll do it. And that’s the end of this insurrection, and every prisoner and leej in this place.”
“No, it’s fine,” Masters said. “It’s not like I’m about to be eaten alive or anything. And come to think of it… it’ll be nice to see Pike again.”
Prisoners of Darkness Page 22