Prime Alpha (Planetary Powers Book 1)

by Joshua Boring

  Nathen pointed to a heavily pocked area five acres at the bottom of the hill on the other side of the red circle. “This is where the War Hive elements are reported to be hiding. Since they’re in trenches, we can’t gauge their strength from these photos. We’ll have to scout them out from...”

  Nathen scanned the map with his eyes until he found what he was looking for.

  “...Here.”

  Nathen put his finger down on what looked like a gray cluster of misprints on the map. Helen’s helmet rose as she looked up at Nathen.

  “What's that?”

  “It’s what’s left after a meteor shower. At least, I think it is. Some sort of major space rock bombardment hit this system, probably, and this moon caught a lot of it. This cluster is nowhere near a mountain, so it’s probably not a rockslide. Either way, it’ll provide good cover for scouting out whatever’s lurking out there.”

  The commander glanced up at the sky and folded the map with a sigh, handing it back to Phillip.

  “We have a directive. Someone tell Sharps and Fiend we’re moving out.”

  Kyler and Doc headed out through the trees to retrieve their teammates. Nathen turned to Helen.

  “Bayonet, I want you to take Sharps and head for that meteor cluster. He’ll be able to scope things out for you. Once you’re done, set up the Meteor, point it at the crater and then head for the rally point at a quarter click from the North edge of the crater. We’ll wait for you there. Got it?”

  Helen slammed back the hammer on her Coyote. “One hundred percent.”

  Nathen saluted her. “Get to it, then.”

  Helen turned around just as Kyler and Doc returned with Trent and Jonathan. Nathen motioned to the sniper, directing his finger toward Helen.

  “Sharps, you’re with Bayonet.”

  Trent nodded silent agreement and the two trudged off through pits. Nathen turned to Jonathan next.

  “Fiend, I want you to scout ahead of us. Review the map with Phillip and head out.”

  Jonathan rested his Coyote on his shoulder and walked over to Phillip, who unfolded the map and began pointing things out to Jonathan. Finally, Nathen turned to Calico.

  “How’re you doing?”

  Calico’s shoulders rose and dropped back down in a sigh. “I'm, fine.”

  He wasn't convinced. “You sure?”

  “I didn't vomit. I just needed a second to walk it off. I’m good now.”

  Nathen listened, then accepted her words. “If you’re sure, then. Just remember. Be prepared, but don't be ready.”

  He turned back to Phillip to find Jonathan already gone.

  “He's fast,” remarked Nathen. “The hunt is on, Alpha’s. Doc, you take point. Be careful what you shoot. Fiend is out there somewhere. Buckshot, rearguard. Single file, soldiers. Let’s try and make this as hard as possible for anyone who might be tracking us.” Nathen pointed a finger through the trees. “Let’s go.”

  And they were gone.

  Chapter 18

  Trenton Baxter lay flat, staring down the scope of his Greylance with the steely glare of a raptor. Before him a field of barren rock and gritty sand stretched to the horizon, covered by thin wisps of steam. Trent's forest brown armor merged with the darker shadow of the jagged slab jutting out of the earth. Several steps back, further in the shadows Helen’s purple armor glowed dimly. To their left, the bright sunlight hitting the crater cast a dark shadow. Even in the sharp contrast the two Elite Stellar Commandos could see the reinforced tank bunkers, built into the side of the crater, ready to unleash their cellbores with a flick of an armored shutter. To their great discomfort, some of those shutters were positioned directly at the commandos. Straight ahead, out in the middle of the bloodied and battered no-man's land, the jagged teeth of the rock shower sat as an island. The sniper panned over the distant rocks, finger off the trigger, as he searched for the slightest sign of movement. Trent frowned as he scanned the formation.

  “Negative contact,” he muttered. “I don't see anything in there...”

  Helen, unable to see what Trent was seeing, sat on her haunches and balanced herself hunched over on her fists.

  “We're still on the Yew side,” she said, glancing over her shoulder, back along the cracked ditches they'd come through. “They probably have something facing the trenches, away from us...”

  “Contact,” Trent said, suddenly. Helen looked back and ducked lower, but couldn't see anything from far away. Trent rolled onto his side and handed a pair of long-range specs up to Helen. “Third rock from the boulder. Flog.”

  Helen took the specs and pressed them up to her helmet. The Genesis helmet absorbed the spec's optic data and helped bring it to Helen's eyes. She panned about until she caught a fleeting glimpse of something moving between the boulders. It took her a second, balanced delicately on her toes, to get a decent view of the alien.

  The small Yew was dressed in tight battle armor, moving steadily on all fours. The slim uniform hugged its rodent-like profile, except for its front sleeves which had been deliberately peeled back to its elbows. As small and low to the ground as it was, its armor had to be worn tightly, since any looseness could be easily tripped on or snagged. It had a standard issue Yew cell blaster at its side, powered down, though the faded paint on the triangular muzzle indicated it had been discharged plenty in low atmosphere. The Flog navigated the rocks and boulders with the natural gait of a being well accustomed to uneven terrain, back bending and curving before springing back into shape and propelling it up a rock or down a short jump. Finally it used its thin but tough hands to pull itself up onto a boulder where it took a moment to sit, pull its mask vent off, and fiddle with its water flask. On a planet such as this, where even breathable air was in short supply, a sentient being simply couldn't go without water for very long.

  “He looks lonely,” remarked Trent, no doubt training his sights on the Flog's center mass.

  “Yeah,” Helen said with a wry smirk. “I'll bet his friends are having a pleasant little picnic just over that big rock.”

  Trent's smooth helmet turned up toward her. “Shall we surprise them?”

  Helen lowered the specs and placed them on the ground next to Trent. “I don't know. You think Knight would be disappointed if we got first blood?”

  “By now I expect him to have painted the valley red,” Trent said, reaching down and snapping open a chest pocket on his double shoulder holster, merged into his chest alloy. “One subsonic round to the head, body drops into the gully there, out of sight of the crater. Split second; no one misses him.”

  “Then we've just got to create some company for him in that ditch,” Helen added.

  “There's still an issue,” Trent said as he pulled a low-charge silent shell and levered the bolt of his rifle open. “That's at least a thirty-yard dash. Even if no one notices the shot, it'll be hard to miss us when we break cover. I don't want to be the one to break it to the commander that we blew the surprise.” Trent switched out his normal high powered sniper round for the subsonic round and locked the bolt into place. “Best bet, I say we go camo, get down and crawl. Maybe take the time to tie together some moss, like what we see out there, to cover our backs and hide the gear. It'll take about an hour, maybe half that if we hurry, but it’s the only...”

  Trent tapered off as he noticed Helen wasn't listening. The woman was still perched, staring out across the field at the rocks. The sniper glanced awkwardly over his shoulder.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Helen snapped out of it and looked down. “Hmm? Oh. Do you feel that?”

  Trent frowned, not that Helen could see it. “No.”

  “Feels like someone’s breathing in my ear,” Helen said, shaking her head. She paused, thoughtfully, staring out over the field. The field of bomb-shattered earth. Helen snapped her fingers. “I got it.”

  Trent looked over his shoulder at the co-commander. Helen placed a hand to the ground and slowly curled her nano-skinned fingers into the gravely sand
.

  “Cravac... is breathing.”

  Trent looked back out across the rough field and paused, taking it in. About fifteen meters away from their cover, a layer of gas was building over the ground. Then something clicked in the sniper's mind.

  “The planet is about to emit gas through a steam vent,” he said, noting the gently swirling mists over the ground. “Morning temperature must be rising, changing the lung cycle. You think we'll have enough cover?”

  “It’s worth a shot,” Helen said as somewhere out in the field a hiss of pressure sounded. “Give me the Meteor. It’s going to be a hard dash, and you'll just slow me down.”

  Trent snapped out of the armored pack and Helen pulled it off his back as the sniper started propping small stones together to serve as a shooting stand. Across the field, the Flog sitting on the boulder stretched its rodent back legs, curling in its tail as it took a fresh breath from its mask vent. Helen placed her Coyote down as she shrugged off the rocket pack she was carrying for Nathen. She swapped it with the armored backpack Trent had been carrying, buckling and tightening it so it wouldn't jostle when she ran. Off to their right, about a hundred meters, a cloud of vapor rose out of the ground with a hollow gasp.

  Trent drew a bead on the Flog. “You sure about this, Helenade?”

  Helen picked up her Coyote and drew the strap over her shoulder, letting the assault rifle hang low to her hip so she could carry it close to her center.

  “Yes,” she said, stretching a leg out behind her in a starting position. “And don't call me Helenade.”

  Trent let his finger touch the trigger. “Sorry.”

  Helen reached down and gently gripped Trent's ankle so not to disrupt his aim. “Fire on my signal.”

  They waited. Several moments passed, where the field continued to release gassy fog in low-pressured geysers. Steamy air rolled over the commando's cover, enveloping them, but not their vision, which seemed to only focus more clearly the thicker the air got. Soon, the air was misty as the planet's natural lung effect ran its mid-day course. Then, Helen squeezed Trent's ankle.

  Chink.

  On the other end of the foggy field, a small shape toppled over and flopped into a ditch. There was a gasp of air next to the prone sniper as Helen shot into motion, plunging into the misty gasses. Trent cocked back the bolt and ejected the empty shell casing into his hand, tucking it away. He looked up to watch the co-commander go, tracking her purple aura effortlessly through the thickening gasses. The sniper reloaded his empty chamber, snuggled down next to his scope, and waited.

  Across the field, Helen came to a stop in the boulder den, skidding in the gritty sand and gravel. She found the body of the Flog almost instantly and dragged it by the tail under a low overhang, noting the perfect “third eye” hole Trent's silenced round had created. She took a knee and cradled her Coyote in the crook of her arm, keeping an ear out for any other Yew in the rocks. The gassy mists only enveloped the perimeter of the rock den, so Helen would have to be careful when she moved further.

  The Monenite warrior reached behind her back and withdrew a silencer for the Coyote out of her utility belt. She snapped it on, then went through the same process with her pistol. She tossed her now-silenced Denchura II into her left hand and stood. She left her Coyote hanging from her shoulder, halfway to her hip. Placing her pistol hand braced under her rifle's barrel, Helen moved into the den, prowling at a confident pace. With her Coyote pointed forward and her pistol pointed sideways, all she had to do was rotate a few degrees to bring a gun to bear on any target within her peripheral range of vision.

  Her first victim never saw her. A single Flog was sitting relaxed on the ground midway through the rock den, stripping and cleaning its cell blaster to pass the time. Helen put a round through its head before it had time to look up. The rifle bullet passed clean through its skull and buried itself somewhere in the ground. She kicked the half-assembled cell blaster away and moved on.

  At best, Helen had expected to find a skeleton crew in the rock den; five at most. She found twice that many. Aside from the two taking dirt naps already, Helen found eight more Flogs on the far side of the den, facing the War Hive trenches several acres away. It looked like the small Yew had dug themselves basic fortifications with their spade-like entrenching tools and braced it up with some flimsy barricades. Flogs served as the backbone of the Yew's combat engineers, which arose from the race's long history of architecture and engineering. When given the time, the Flog's training led it to bury itself under as much protection as it could manage. Still, these guys didn't look like they planned on staying, since they weren't digging deeper.

  From her hidden position behind them, Helen identified four of her foe as a light gunner team, sitting behind a pair of slugfest machine guns. Unlike the cell blasters and their energy bolt delivery system, slugfests fired basic shells impregnated with a small energy capsule to give it just a little extra kick. It was a form of weaponry modified by the Flog’s, respectively. The light machine guns were nothing compared with the Yew Alliance's Grade-A stolen technology, but they were cheap and easily operated by the smaller races in the Alliance. The other four Flogs were just engineers, operating the surveillance gear to spy on the Insectoids.

  Though Flogs were comparatively smaller than other races, that didn't mean they weren't dangerous. Anyone else would have hesitated to approach an enemy with eight to one odds. Not Helen. The proud warrior strode right out into the open and stopped on the lip of the trench. She was so quiet that none of the Flogs even looked up, either focused on the distant enemy trenches or wrapped up in idle, alien-tongued conversations in Gralyyk. None realized there were guns trained on their backs. But Helen didn't shoot.

  “Wanna dance?”

  All the Flogs turned at the sound of unfamiliar Basic and saw the violet-armored figure standing over them.

  Then Helen shot them.

  The first four fell without a fight, taking alternating shots left and right from Helen's Coyote/Denchura combination. The silenced weapons whispered in her hands as she dropped into the trench with the Yew, even as the Flogs squealed in panic and scrambled for their weapons. They were all dead before they got even one shot off. Helen clicked the safety on her Denchura and holstered it at her side, rolling over the dog-sized Yew, checking for survivors. There were none.

  Helen knelt down next to one of the dead operators and peered through his equipment. The alien equipment was stationary, yet the image on the vidscreen continued to shift as the scanner searched the distant trench line, automatically. Images of Insectoid silhouettes flashed by, just barely slow enough for Helen to get in frame. Helen waited as the Yew computer isolated and identified the Insectoids in its frame. Each time the vidscreen paused on a silhouette, a colored outline would carve it out of the backdrop and give it a rating. Helen could only read so much Yew Alliance Common—the written language read by all its races—but she could gather the gist of the readings.

  There were many Insectoids. Thousands, by Helen's estimate. Only a few species, though. Many of them were Raspers; the most common—but not the least formidable—shock trooper in the War Hive ranks. Standing erect at five feet tall and sporting two legs, two forearms, and two smaller middle arms, the Rasper was like the War Hive's Swiss army knife. They were good for just about everything. That made it hard to gauge just how dangerous they were on a threat assessment basis. The scanner’s basic intelligence program was doing its best, registering average build, armor, and weapons.

  The scanner isolated a walking Rasper carrying a stack of guns in its arms, highlighted in orange. Another one, shown working a plasma torch over the side of a parked and immobile Mantis tank: orange. Another Rasper, highlighted behind a threatening Swarm MG: colored blue, above orange. Rasper's manning artillery cannons: Purple. Raspers sitting and chewing mulch: Yellow. Mantis tank changing position: Purple. Raspers patrolling with weapons: Orange. Raspers standing at the-

  Suddenly the screen flashed and rapidly zoom
ed out, computer snapping slanted crosshairs about in search. It zoomed back in, and the entire screen flashed green. Maximum threat! The computer carved an outline, picking out the large, black shape lurking in the back. Helen could see it take form on the vidscreen, feature by feature, details etching in. The computer finished, locking the target into the vidscreen. The shadowy figure of mass, muscle and metal didn't move for several seconds. Then, it shifted, and a horned head lifted up, with two glowing, pulsing red eyes.

  It was a Warhead.

  Helen swallowed. She turned away from the vidscreen and started unbuckling the armored pack from her back. She'd seen enough. Even at extreme range from the monster, she felt a chill run up her spine. She'd forgotten. Forgotten what it felt like to look into those eyes...

  Helen propped the backpack up and snapped the latches, breaking the weapon open.

  The Meteor mortar system was robotic and automatic, blocky and folding into a convenient box shape. She snapped the tripod down and locked it into place, then rotated and screwed in the three-foot pipe before locking that into the swivel mount. She powered on the weapon, which whirred as it did an automatic warm up movement test, rotating the slanted pipe ninety degrees left, then one hundred and eighty degrees right. Content it could move freely, the mortar tube lined itself back up in the direction Helen had originally pointed: the crater. Meteor deployed, Helen reached up, touched the side of her head and closed her eyes.

  “Sharps,” she spoke. “Meteor deployed. Test the laser designator.”

  “Copy that,” Trent came back, voice clear. “Designating tank bunker two, from your position.”

  A second passed. Then, without Helen's instruction, the mortar tube whirred to the left fifty degrees. The trap door loading bay snapped open and closed, but without any ammo to show effect. There was a heavy click, and the Meteor issued a bleep of complaint as it detected a failure to fire. Helen touched her temple again.