Star Force: Evasion (Wayward Trilogy Book 2)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  “Say what’s on your mind,” Rammak pressed, sensing something was amiss.

  “I’m not used to being underground like this.”

  “We traveled underground a lot on Mace.”

  “Through rock. Getting blasted by those ships while pinned down here is bad enough, but to get flooded out with no way to get to the surface…”

  “You’re feeling confined.”

  “Aren’t you?” she bit back a little more than she’d intended.

  “Better than fighting the Zen’zat and knowing you’re going to lose. This way we still have a chance.”

  “Until the water gets here.”

  “The doors will stop it.”

  “But they can do it again anywhere we go, right?”

  “Possibly, but they have to know where the tunnels are.”

  “And the water will tell them.”

  “Only if it branches out beyond the tunnel. The miners do something to the ice around the tunnel to keep us from being detected so easily, plus our armor masks sensors too. Ice isn’t as dense as rock, but there’s enough of it over us to keep us hidden this far down.”

  “Then how can they see the water?”

  “The water isn’t wearing armor. How tired are you?”

  “The treadmills are booked for the next day and a half.”

  “So we go into one of the outgoing tunnels and do some sprints getting you better acclimated to the low gravity. It may not be the surface but it’ll help clear up some of your claustrophobia.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Fear of being pinned down.”

  “Are you saying there’s no danger and I’m just being stupid?”

  “You’re feeling an opponent you can’t strike back at and that inability is making you irritable and unstable.”

  “Sorry,” Esna said, apologizing for her tone.

  “You’re still a newb, and considering that fact you’re handling everything fairly well, but if you don’t get some relief the pressure will continue to build inside your mind until you explode or crumble, neither of which I can allow. Put on your cold gear, but leave your armor with me,” Rammak said, picking up the cube with a single hand.

  “No armor, are you nuts? It’s freezing out there.”

  “Which is why you’ll be running hard sprints and taking your rest inside the shield. Best way to deal with claustrophobia is getting as much air to your skin as possible.”

  “There’s no way I’m going out there naked.”

  Rammak hissed a little laugh, still trying to be quiet. “That would be reckless.”

  “Glad we agree on that,” Esna said, pulling her shoes back on and walking with him to an equipment room where she found a pair of thin, insulated sweats that she pulled on over her uniform along with a set of gloves, matching socks, and a hat that left her face the only skin exposed, but without her armor she felt next to naked when Rammak opened the doors on the far side of the base and set her armor cube down just inside. He then stepped through the shield and pointed beside him, then further down the empty tunnel.

  “Run to me, stop, pivot, and sprint back here ending inside the shield.”

  “This is so stupid.”

  “Then why are you smiling?” he asked as he took off running oddly down the tunnel in the low gravity.

  “Am I?” she said to herself as she stretched out her muscles a bit and looked down the tunnel. As much as she didn’t want to face the cold it would feel good to get away from everyone else for a little bit…so long as the ice didn’t come crushing down on her or a wave of water rushed down the tunnel.

  But this tunnel was blocked from the other by the outpost, supposedly. The fissures on the other side were not present here, probably because the base stopped the concussion wave from continuing on. Everything before her was smooth, clean tunnel and she was starting to think Rammak was right about this…until she stepped through the shield into the frigid air and her face started to instantly numb up.

  She groaned and rattled off a string of mental curses as she took off awkwardly sprinting the best she could in the low gravity, bouncing off the ceiling at first before doing a somersault midair to right herself.

  The fact that she was able to pull that off cheered her up a bit, then after that point her mind shifted into workout mode focusing on getting to Rammak and back to the warm air before she became a chunk of ice herself.

  11

  July 3, 4812

  Orlero System (Devastation Zone)

  Tauntaun

  Over the past two days some 32 more evacuees had been recovered from the tunnel, some of which were half dead when they dragged themselves up to the shallow water that was leeching out from ice blocks closer to the base and which the miners had contained with a low ice wall in the tunnel as they worked to dig a new one parallel to it so they could backtrack and look for more survivors without having to worry about the water. They were including diffusion material in the ice walls as they moved along with compacting the removed ice into them and making the structure as hard as stone.

  Rammak had left Esna in the outpost as he and several other Commandos were called out to help with recovery, but they left a trail of transmitters via pylons and suits of armor that allowed all of them to stay in contact and see what the others saw via the battlemap. That meant Esna, camping out in a corner of the outpost on top of a storage crate, could watch Rammak’s helmet telemetry on her own HUD as he ran down one of the freshly cut tunnels and up to a digging machine that was boring into the sidewall.

  When he got there Esna could see that they were cutting sideways into what was the old tunnel where a battlemap icon was. It was transmitting on a low signal, not enough to give it away on the surface, but enough to punch down the tunnel and let someone know that the Archon was there. The miners had cut the side tunnel up even to the icon and were now boring as close as they could when the signal from the Archon increased in strength and a new battlemap link was established.

  Through it Esna could see from the Archon’s perspective, with the other tunnel almost completely filled with water that was seeping through the cracks ahead in a cave-in that was blocking the Archon’s path. He couldn’t get through, or at least not yet, for there looked to be a lot of cutting/melting already done through a mini-tunnel in the debris.

  When the digging machine got within a few inches of the sidewall it stopped and drilled a few pylons into the flanking ice that established a containment energy shield to keep the water from spilling through. The digger then pushed through the field and melted away the remaining ice as a doorway opened from the Archon’s point of view that Esna flipped away from back to Rammak’s helmet telemetry.

  The Archon swam into the air and fell to the ground, his wet armored hands and knees freezing on contact and the rest of his body frosting over as the cold air hit him. He stayed on the ground until another Commando knelt and offered him a flask containing foodcubes, water that wasn’t freezing, and a bit of ambrosia, but the Archon broke free of the ice and waved it off.

  “There are others still alive behind me holding position as long as they can,” Esna heard him say as a new waypoint showed up on the battlemap. “Get them out, now.”

  “How many?” a Protovic Commando asked.

  “8, one of which was dead an hour ago. They’re in an air pocket. You have to swim to them through the hole I bored.”

  “We can do better than that,” the mining tech answered as she mounted the digger. “Stand aside.”

  Rammak stepped forward and offered the Archon his lower left arm, but instead of helping him stand the Calavari picked him up entirely, cradling the smaller warrior in all four arms in front of him as he walked back into the newly bored tunnel and took off running.

  “We need a speeder here now,” Rammak said over the comm back to the outpost, “and a medic.”

  “On the way,” another person in the outpost answered, and Esna really wanted to run to the garage and jump on, but Rammak had told
her she needed to stay here and she wasn’t going to risk getting in the way.

  A minute later there was a new signal on the battlemap zipping off down the original tunnel at high speed and heading the 18 miles back to where Rammak was bringing the Archon towards them as fast as possible. Rather than watching him run, Esna switched to the tech’s point of view just as the digger passed through the energy shield and hit the water…then somehow moved it aside and froze it instantly into a new wall.

  It moved slowly as it turned to align itself with the mostly flooded tunnel, then Esna saw the path ahead where the Archon had broken through. The digger followed that path, expanding upon it but not clearing out the entire tunnel width. Just enough to get the machine through and create an ice tube that was sucking air back from the point of entry and keeping it separate from the rest of the flooding.

  Esna watched in wonder as the digger pushed forward, eating away ice like magic and moving it where it wanted. She didn’t know how it was doing that, but it was working. What shocked the Human more was how far the Archon had come, busting through many blocks and narrow points where the ice walls were thickening from the water. In fact some of the man-sized holes that the Archon had come through were now down to only a foot or so in diameter, meaning that if the digger wasn’t here the Commandos wouldn’t have been able to swim through without cutting their way past somehow.

  The digger had no trouble with it at all and Esna saw it make steady progress all the way up until a few more weak signals appeared, then they grew strong enough in response that Esna could suddenly see inside a dome above the tunnel where ice had fallen down from. It looked like there had been some additional digging to expand it, but inside there were armored bodies frozen to the ice walls in some cases, though all had their legs in the water and were moving them slowly to keep it from freezing over.

  When the digger got close a few of the armored suits began to move, but the rest stayed still as statues until an ice tube formed in the water below their feet and moved further up the tunnel. The slow water flow there suddenly cut off as an ice wall formed, then the water at their feet dropped suddenly as if it was drying up and the ice below it disappeared revealing the digger as it pushed forward and out of the way, burying itself in an ice tunnel offshoot ahead.

  Esna switched to one of the Commandos coming through the tunnel and saw as she got underneath the makeshift survival dome and began yanking people off their frozen perches. Three were showing as dead on the battlemap, and the others all had bio-readings in the red, meaning they were close to dead.

  There were 6 Commandos and 3 Mechwarriors, the latter of which had different armor that looked more like envirosuits. Esna found an identifier in the battlemap data that said it was ‘light armor’ and she guessed that made sense, but none of them had packs on. Did that mean they’d had no food since the base attack? Were they starving to death or was it from the cold?

  The biodata probably said that, but she couldn’t understand most of it. All she could understand was the bad shape they were in and the dead state of the others.

  The rescue team didn’t waste any time, grabbing and dragging all of them down into the smaller ice tube and sliding them from person to person until they were back at the main tunnel. Those that could move did so slowly, then the medtech got to them as the speeder was long gone, zipping back through the tunnel towards the outpost with the Archon onboard. Esna hadn’t noticed, but another speeder had already been sent out and the two were about to pass.

  She flipped over to their point of view and saw each reduce their energy buffers enough to hug one side wall as they slowed down greatly, then slipped by with only inches to spare before accelerating again.

  “Tight,” she commented, switching back to the rescue team and seeing the bodies, both alive and dead, sprawled out as the medtech attended to them. He opened their helmets briefly, putting things on their necks or in their mouths, then sealing them off from the cold again within seconds. He even worked on the dead, and Esna was both amazed and glad to see two life signs return.

  That must have been a regenerator at a work. Being able to bring someone back from the dead was pure magic as far as she was concerned, but apparently the magic wouldn’t work on the third individual, a mechwarrior that she assumed had been the first one to die. Apparently there was a time constraint on reviving and this one hadn’t been gotten to in time.

  Esna switched off the HUD piggyback and returned to her normal helmet view, hopping off the crate and moving to the tunnel doors where the speeder was about to arrive. A few other people were there but she was able to squeeze through them to see the Archon come in. He stumbled off but managed to stay on his feet as the speeder was moved through the outpost interior and back to the garage, then his golden Titan armor retracted from his body in a flow of material that didn’t turn into a cube or boots, but rather a vest that the Archon dumped to the side as his pale, withered face looked around.

  He didn’t say anything, but after a few seconds got his footing and walked further into the outpost with Esna and everyone else making way for him. The others let him go but she trailed from a respectful distance, seeing him go straight to the foodstuffs and collect a pile of them that he then sat on a table where he visibly sagged into a chair and cradled his head with one hand as he telekinetically undid the wrapper.

  He ate unmoving, flying the food and even water into his mouth. Esna didn’t know if he was in shock or too tired to move, but he didn’t look right. Not at all. But at least he was still alive, both for his sake and theirs, for now in addition to the Commandos they had an Archon to take the lead, and if their reputation was even partially deserved Esna’s evacuation group now had an even better chance of survival.

  Over the next few days a few more personnel would be recovered from the flooded tunnel, most of whom were dead, but there were three more survivors and the rescue teams didn’t stop searching until they reached full submersion, after which the digger moved into the flooded tunnel and more easily covered ground, melting rather than freezing as it backtracked as far as it could. When it got to the newly frozen lake they turned around, knowing that anything out there had either been obliterated in the blasts or cut off on the other side of them.

  But on the way back the digger picked up a warning via the battlemap markers that it was collecting as they pulled out for the last time. Further up the partially submerged tunnel there were people boring down from the surface along one of the fissures. One of the V’kit’no’sat warships had descended and parked in a hover seen on one of the surface cameras and was firing a cutting beam down to where the water was seeping out of the hidden tunnel.

  As soon as they got word of that the digger, already back in the newer tunnel, accelerated as fast as it could, not bothering to stop and pick up the mobile relays. Fortunately the cutting beam didn’t sever the tunnel, but it did knock out the inner wall and forced the mining tech to stop and cut through it. The big beam was no longer active, but there was now a shaft down through the ice that ended in what had been a fissure and was now a narrow crater filling up with the melted ice with the flow now coming in from both directions.

  Some of that was flooding into the dry tunnel, but it no longer mattered. The Commando with the tech knew was what coming, and they barely got through the blockage and back into the small river that was flowing down it when a section behind them blew out. They were already accelerating down the tunnel, but not so far ahead that the Commando couldn’t turn around and see the Zen’zat start coming through the breach and into their tunnel. One of them even got a few shots off that hit the rear of the digger, but the shield matrix there that was meant to cut through the ice was robust enough to absorb them.

  “Zen’zat in the tunnels,” the Commando reported back through the links to the outpost. “Recommend we evac now before that ship decides to start shooting more holes in the ice.”

  “Already underway,” the Archon answered. “Get your asses back here ASAP.”


  The first to leave the outpost via speeder were the techs who were taking as much portable gear and supplies with them as they could up the line…but in three different directions. With the impending threat of another orbital attack guessing to their position they couldn’t take the chance of keeping 283 people together in such a confined space. Esna was staying with Rammak, but after talking it through with each other and a bit of arguing, the Archon had made the decision to keep both of them with him. That meant they’d be staying at the outpost until all the others were out then heading up one of the two branches that only had a small advance team preceding them.

  The idea was to seal off the other two exits using the diggers and put as much ice in them as possible once those evac teams had split off, then to hold in the outpost and give the Zen’zat as much trouble as they could. So long as they were nearby the warship wouldn’t fire on their position, but if the enemy suddenly retreated the Archon had already told everyone to run like hell.

  But the only way they could get out of here in time was to use the speeders…which were right now ferrying people in shifts down two of the tunnels, but one of which forked several miles beyond. The third group was taking that fork while the tunnel that led to the surface exit wasn’t going to be used.

  There were supposed to be more speeders stashed further down the line but they didn’t have time to go get them. They had to get the outpost cleared as quickly as possible while preserving as much in the way of supplies as they could, though a lot was going to have to be left behind.

  As for Esna and Rammak, they were staying with the fighters while all the techs and wounded were being moved out. That pleased both of them coming from the Archon, for they trusted his judgement and Rammak especially wanted a chance for combat…though Esna could tell he was still worried about her. They didn’t discuss it further, but she assumed that being in the company of an Archon was the best place Rammak thought she could be, especially considering that she wasn’t going to be doing any fighting…just watching and then running with the others while slots on the speeders were going to those that needed to be elsewhere.