“Yes. The flesh parts look like Ghasts.”
He had an idea why that might be. It was only an educated guess and he didn’t want to share it for the moment, since the ramifications weren’t something he wanted the others to dwell on.
The shuttle ride was a short one. The craft’s engines had a peculiar buzzing note to them, which Blake was curious about. The buzz increased in volume and they felt a gentle thump.
“Touch down,” said Blake. He caught Pointer’s eye. “Keep it steady, Lieutenant.”
She attempted a smile and didn’t answer.
The shuttle had a rear door. This door hissed to indicate its seal was broken and it fell smoothly away from the hull, revealing the light of early morning outside. Blake squinted – there were six Vraxar waiting, standing in pairs at the bottom of the exit ramp.
“Come,” said one.
When the Determinant crashed, Blake and the other two had been able to don suits and grab themselves a rifle each. When they emerged from the wreckage and found themselves facing numerous armed opponents as well as the vicious-looking nose cannon of the shuttle, it hadn’t been a difficult choice to throw their rifles down and surrender. Therefore, they had nothing with which to offer resistance.
“We’re coming,” said Blake.
He stood and walked towards the ramp, his footsteps making the grate thrum. Behind, Pointer and Rivera did likewise, following out through the rear exit of the shuttle.
At the bottom of the ramp, Blake took everything in. They were on the Tillos base. Mountains of heat-blackened ruins stretched as far as the eye could see, some still alight though the fires were dwindling. The shuttle was on what might have once been a parking area for the installation’s pool of transport vehicles. There were craters here and there, the size of which suggested they were caused by something launched from orbit.
Nearby, untouched amongst the rubble was a near-intact building. This building was four stories tall and slab-sided. A wide flight of steps led upwards to the main doors, flanked by flags representing each of the different worlds in the Confederation. He couldn’t help but notice the flags for Roban and Liventor still fluttering amongst the others. There was a sign at the bottom of the steps. Central Command Building.
The Vraxar had reinforced the building – dozens of them were standing motionless around the perimeter and Blake counted six weapons batteries of a type he was unfamiliar with. Their likely function could be gleaned from their features. Two had multiple, slowly-rotating barrels protruding, whilst others were launchers of some sort. They weren’t enough to knock out a fleet warship, though they would bring down most shuttles easily enough.
“Follow,” said the Vraxar soldier closest. The voice was flat and synthesised, the alien’s lips not quite moving in synch with the word.
This was the closest Blake had been to one of the aliens. He allowed himself the briefest of moments to study this new enemy. It was seven feet tall and bipedal, walking on legs reinforced with implanted alloy bars. The pelvis on this Vraxar was largely metal, which made Blake wonder if the original flesh had been blown away by some kind of weapon and then patched up with armour plates. The alloy covering its shoulders was pitted and scraped, as though it had seen a thousand engagements and come through them all.
While the metal had suffered, the Vraxar’s flesh had also deteriorated, becoming a pallid, sickly grey with hints of yellow. It made Blake think of science’s imperfect efforts to sustain flesh long beyond the time the cells should have withered and died. He looked into the yellow eyes and saw nothing in there he could relate to. With the Ghasts, there was an appreciation of their own lives – different to how a human would perceive it but identifiable nonetheless. This alien knew nothing beyond existence, perhaps long after it should have rotted and crumbled into dust. Hints of the odours he’d noticed on the shuttle wafted from it and Blake wrinkled his nose.
“There aren’t many of them when you think about it,” whispered Pointer. “This is a big base.”
Her voice wasn’t low enough.
“Your forces are defeated,” said one of the Vraxar without triumph. “Some of us have returned to the Hannixar. Others are elsewhere.”
Blake wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that. “Where elsewhere?”
The alien was either unaccustomed to the idea of secrecy or it simply didn’t care. “We have discovered an additional area of the base which interests us.”
“Where?” Blake persisted.
None of their escort provided an answer.
“Come,” said one.
Four of the Vraxar moved off towards the Central Command Building. Blake was half-expecting them to be synchronised and move with perfect timing. They were close, but not perfect. Their gait was somehow ungainly, yet without the variation found in creatures made entirely of flesh. The final two Vraxar waited for their prisoners to follow and then came afterwards.
“What do you want here?” asked Blake, unsure to whom he should direct his question.
The Vraxar didn’t answer.
“Why have you attacked our base?”
“Life brings us,” said one of the soldiers.
“What do you mean?”
None of their escort would answer further questions and Blake gave up trying. He didn’t particularly want to anger them. Without a point of reference, he had no idea if they would tolerate his curiosity or simply shoot him to stop him talking. One thing was certain – there was something distinctly menacing about the Vraxar’s words.
They were led up the steps. The main doors had been smashed open by something heavy and they lay twisted and broken in the foyer of the CCB. Blake hadn’t been to this specific building before, but he’d seen plenty like it. There were rows of security desks at the front, whilst the inner part of the building was protected by thick doors – all open - which in normal circumstances would only allow personnel with the highest clearance to go through. Standard-issue Space Corps carpet tiles covered the floor, surprisingly unmarked by the Vraxar incursion.
The Vraxar knew exactly where they were going. They crossed the floor and went through one of the doorways, which led into what appeared to be a main corridor running through the centre of the CCB. There were others here. They didn’t actively patrol and stood in groups of two or four, holding their hand cannons at the ready. At no point did the aliens exchange words with each other, nor in any way acknowledge the presence of their fellows – it was as though they had no empathy whatsoever and the existence of other beings was completely unimportant.
The smell was stronger in this corridor and Blake found that prolonged exposure did not result in him become accustomed to it. He looked sideways at Pointer and saw she was breathing through her mouth. Rivera padded along a few paces back and Blake couldn’t bring himself to check on his lieutenant.
They came to a staircase, which led up and down. The Vraxar headed downwards and they descended to the first underground level. The steps continued deeper, though their destination apparently didn’t lie that way.
It was poorly-lit here and the emergency lighting had partially malfunctioned, making alternate strips turn off and then on. The effect was disconcerting.
The temperature was also much colder than Blake had expected. His suit was proof against the harshest of conditions on the coldest of worlds. Even so, the chill air brushed against the skin of his face and he shivered.
The Vraxar stopped suddenly, next to an open doorway. Blake caught the words on a sign above. Secondary Data Repository Access Area – Restricted Personnel Only.
“You will go into this room,” said one of the aliens, stepping aside and motioning with its gun.
Blake went first, followed by Pointer and Rivera. The Vraxar allowed them time to enter and then also entered the room.
The repository access area wasn’t a huge room – ten or twelve metres to each side. A drab metal cylinder with a four-metre diameter ran from the centre of a complicated-looking, circular bank of consoles
in the middle of the room. He’d seen the like before – this was the storage unit for the whole of the Tillos base. Except it wouldn’t just contain data specific to the base, it might well contain vast amounts of information on almost anything to be found within the Confederation. The Space Corps liked the comfort of multi-layered redundancy and when storage space was abundant, information tended to be copied to wherever it would fit.
Before he could spend much time wondering about it, Blake saw something new. There was another group of Vraxar in the room, standing halfway around the central pillar and with a large cube on the tiled floor next to them. There were several display screens on the device, and they showed the alien script Blake had seen on the shuttle.
These new Vraxar were different – they were smaller than the soldiers and did not look like Ghasts. One of them approached the three captives.
This Vraxar was hardly six feet tall and spindly. Its legs were organic – with paper-thin and decaying yellow-brown flesh which was hardly enough to conceal the yellow bones underneath. These limbs were partially encased in metal and this seemed to be the only thing strong enough to keep the alien from toppling over. Its torso was long and it ribcage was narrow. Bands of metal wrapped around, climbing up and covering the creature’s shoulders. Its skull was mostly of metal, though its face was not – it had sharp, cruel features, with a thin nose and lips. Whatever eyes had once been in the sockets were now prosthetic – copies poorly made to mimic the originals. It stank and Blake retched when it came close.
“You will be killed if you fight,” said one of the Vraxar soldiers. “There will be no additional warning.”
The smaller Vraxar stood in front of them for a moment, its glassy brown eyes studying them. Blake had no idea what it wanted and was absolutely sure he didn’t want to find out. Pointer was next to him. She stared directly ahead as though her mind was hiding behind mental walls she’d created to block out everything around her.
The Vraxar came closer to Blake. Its mouth opened in something that may have been an attempt at a smile. The alien had yellow teeth, some of them blackened and decaying. There was a sense of age about it – even more so than from the Vraxar soldier he’d studied outside. Blake couldn’t shake the feeling this one had lived a hundred times longer than he had.
“How do we access this cylinder?” asked the alien. Its voice had a sibilant edge to it, mixed with the same synthesised tones of the others.
“I don’t know,” said Blake. “I don’t work here.”
“You came down on a warship. That means you know.”
Blake struggled to make the logical connection. It sounded like the Vraxar had pulled some details about humanity which made them believe officers on a spaceship had a way of accessing whatever they liked. In truth, he had the clearance to access most things, except he wasn’t about to give that away.
“It’s offline. There’s no power.”
“You have authorisation to bring it online.”
“If it’s offline, it’s gone,” said Blake. “You can’t access it anymore, no matter what you do.”
“I don’t like that answer.”
“It’s the only answer I have.”
The Vraxar smiled again and its stench reached into Blake’s nose. He coughed.
“I am rotting and my power source is failing,” said the Vraxar. “I have seen a thousand years and as each additional one passes, the decay of my flesh advances. Not all flesh is equal when it comes to the rate at which it deteriorates, though I do not expect you to encounter one of our elders. For us, conquest brings renewal. I might not live to witness the extinction of the race after yours, but humanity will join us before I perish.”
“What happened to the Estral?” asked Blake, stalling for time by asking the first question that jumped into his head.
“Like those before them, the Estral succumbed. Their strength has become ours, along with their power. The same will happen to your race soon.”
“Not if you’re relying on data from that storage cylinder to find us,” said Blake, wondering at the Vraxar’s odd use of the words strength and power in the same sentence.
“It is no matter. If necessary, we will break the cylinder down and find what it contains. It would be preferable if we did not have to wait. It is a shame for us that the other installations on this planet all feed their data into this central array, otherwise we might already have what we need. You will tell me the location of your other worlds.”
Blake forced himself to laugh. “I don’t know the coordinates! They are strings containing many digits. We rely on our navigational computers to take us from place to place – there is no need for anyone to commit anything to memory.”
The Vraxar nodded as if in acceptance. Then, before Blake could react, a pair of hands grabbed his arms. The hands were strong and he was unable to break free.
“Stand still or be killed,” said the smaller Vraxar, its voice still completely devoid of emotion. It lifted one of its arms and revealed a silver tube in one of its long-fingered hands. “The contents of this syringe will ensure you speak the truth.”
With that it made a stabbing motion, aiming the needle end of the syringe at Blake’s chest. The material of the spacesuit was exceptionally strong, but it wasn’t designed to stop piercing weapons as sharp and hard as the needle. The cold metal crunched between Blake’s ribs and entered his heart. The pain was excruciating and he shouted out with the agony of it.
Chapter Twenty
“Are we going to wait here for them to return, Lieutenant?” asked Larry Keller. “It sounds as if that underground bunker is going to be a lot safer than sitting around under this piece of concrete.”
“I can’t move very fast, Larry. I won’t be able to shoot straight if I have to hop towards the enemy.”
“Yeah, ha ha,” he said. “Seriously, though – we’re not exactly in the best place here, are we? What if this stuff above us comes crashing down?”
“Sergeant McKinney knows where we are. He’ll come back for us. I can see it in his face – he’s a good man.”
They both heard the noise at the same time – the scuffing footsteps of someone coming from the entrance McKinney and his men had recently gone through. Cruz lifted her gauss pistol and aimed it at the opening, in case one of the Vraxar had found a way past the soldiers. It wasn’t an alien, but the person who came through was almost as unwelcome.
“Lieutenant Reynolds,” said Cruz. “You made it out.”
Reynolds looked at her, his eyes gleaming in the faint light. “I got away. I lost Nelson and Akachi. Poor bastards got shot. There was nothing I could do for them.”
Cruz couldn’t bring herself to think about the dead civilians – not yet. “We pulled the last core. Larry and I found it – the Vraxar won’t be able to get through our encryption now.”
“That’s excellent work, Lieutenant! If there was anyone who could get it done, I knew it would be you.”
There were many unanswered questions, not least of which being Reynolds’ decision to go in the wrong direction when they were looking for the processing room. It wasn’t the time. “Thank you,” she said.
“I met Sergeant McKinney. He said you got hurt.”
“I broke an ankle on the way out.”
“The sergeant said there was an underground bunker. He said I should help you get there.”
“We’ll be exposed if we try to make it with me limping.”
“He told me he planned to meet you there instead of coming this way again.”
Cruz was surprised. “Really? He must have changed his mind.”
“Maybe we should give it a try, Lieutenant,” said Keller. “The way I see it, there could be replicators running off the backup power. If Sergeant McKinney doesn’t make it, we’ll be stuck here without food or water. And when it comes to it, there’s a big old warship under the ground. One way or another, the Space Corps is going to want it back. When they come, we’ll be there waiting for them.”
Cruz made her mind up. “Come on, then. Let’s get moving,” she said. “That painkiller is still working its magic, so I guess now is as good a time as any.”
With Keller’s assistance, she got to her feet and slung her gauss rifle over her back. The break in her ankle felt like a bad one and the bones grated together. The sensation was distant and remote – without the painkiller, she could only imagine how unpleasant it would be.
Soon, she was limping alongside the pile of rubble, with her arm around Keller’s shoulder. Lieutenant Reynolds didn’t offer to help and Cruz was happy he was so lazy – she couldn’t stomach the thought of him touching her.
They kept vigilant, eyes scanning the skies for enemy shuttles and the ground for patrols. Cruz kept her gauss pistol ready and Reynolds did likewise. There was a wind blowing and it carried smoke in thick, unpredictable clouds across the ruins of the base. It clung to the insides of their lungs and left a layer of soot on whatever parts of their bodies it touched.
The broken buildings seemed to have a life of their own and they shifted constantly, huge chunks of concrete scraping and screeching as they settled. Smaller pieces clattered down from above, occasionally bouncing across their paths. The noises made them jumpy, in case they heralded the approach of Vraxar soldiers.
“Getting into a rhythm,” said Keller as their speed increased.
“We’re doing okay, Larry.”
To Cruz’s relief, they reached the ramp leading to the underground bunker without having to fire a shot. The slope cut out the wind and the effects of the smoke were lessened.
“There it is – Section D entrance,” said Keller. “Right where Sergeant McKinney said it would be.”
“Do either of you two know what’s inside?” Cruz asked.
“Nope,” said Keller.
“I’ve done a couple of stints down here,” said Reynolds. “What’s the plan, Lieutenant?”
“There’s a weapons room at the bottom.”
“I think I know the place,” said Reynolds. “There used to be a replicator for the guards’ station. I assume it’s still there. Whether it’s operational or not is another matter. Want to head that way?”
Negation Force (Obsidiar Fleet Book 1) Page 17