by Korza, Jay
“Do it.” Daria then turned to everyone else. “Snake, Davies, you two are point team. Hood and I will protect Bloom. Bloom needs to survive if we’re going to crack this egg.”
Snake gestured to Davies, who came up alongside him. Together, they agreed on the best way to defend the hallway.
Bloom had set mini-grenade launchers on each crate and two on the sled. One was now destroyed, along with the crate it had been on. He decided to use the one on the other crate to launch the grenade.
It landed between the two closest sentries and detonated. Although they could hear the explosion two hundred meters away, the hallway didn’t rock nearly as much as when the booby trap trip mine had gone off. That made Daria wonder just how much explosives those booby traps had in them. Daria watched the scene unfold as it played out across her visor.
The grenade launched from the crate and landed between the two lead sentries. They continued forward without even seeming to care. When the grenade exploded, fragments bounced off shields that shimmered just a few centimeters from the exterior plating of the droids. They stopped, warbled something to one another, and then the lead droid opened fire on the crate where the grenade had come from. The plasma weapon shredded the crate and the launcher that was on it.
“I guess they didn’t like that”, Bloom said as he repositioned the sled for a better view of the sentries.
Daria wondered how much firepower it would take to destroy the droids. She then realized that they had completely ignored the air sled. She also remembered that the aliens’ personal shield was susceptible to low-energy attacks and you could get inside them with a knife or sword.
“Bloom, how long until they get here?” Daria looked over at him.
“If they maintain speed, I calculate ten minutes.”
Daria made her decision. “Get that sled back here.” She turned to look down the corridor and added, “Snake, bring me your claymores. Davies, get the thermal blanket out.”
Bloom looked up at Daria. “I know what you’re thinking, Doc, and I don’t like it. Just because they’ve ignored the sled so far doesn’t mean that they will continue to ignore it with you on it. Even if the thermal signal is hidden by the blanket, they may have other ways to detect you. And lastly, how are you going to plant those mines without exposing yourself?”
“Quickly,” Daria responded. “Besides, it’s our best hope. We almost couldn’t take down just one alien with a personal shield. I don’t think we’ll be able to beat five shields. And there’s no time to set up some sort of automated deployment method from the sled.”
“Maybe not fully automated in a high-tech sense,” Snake offered, “but we could go back to the basics and adapt and overcome.”
It took Snake about three minutes, after the sled arrived, to jury-rig the mines to it. Using 550 cord, he strung each mine to the right rail of the sled, where they hung about one foot from the bottom of the sled. A pull-knot secured each mine to the rail and would allow Daria to release them from underneath the cover of the thermal blanket. This would hopefully hide her presence from the droids.
Snake finished and then gave final instructions to Daria. “When the mine gets a mag-lock on the droid, the indicator in your visor for that mine will go green, showing that it has successfully attached itself and is armed. At that point, release the 550 cord for that mine and move on to the next one. Bloom will control the sled and guide the placement of the mines so you don’t have to fumble with more than one thing at a time.”
“As soon as the mines are set, hold on tight because I’m going to move that sled away from the blast area real fast.” Bloom had already decided that the safest place for Daria would be around a corner and in an alcove where the droids had come from.
Davies finished tucking the blanket around Daria and Bloom sent her off down the corridor. The droids were very close now. As the sled approached, they took no notice of it.
Bloom positioned the first mine and slowly moved the sled closer to the target. The light went green in Daria’s visor, indicating the mine was set and armed. She released the cord and moved on to the next droid.
As the sled reached the second droid, the first seemed to realize that maybe it should investigate the object stuck to its back. The droid knew that the automated delivery sled had passed by and dropped something, but those sleds were always dropping things. That was the difference between the sled and the droid: the semi self-aware sentry droids took pride in their work. The droid tried to ignore the sled as it continued down the hall and drop more of its cargo. The droid stopped in the hallway and tried to grab the mine on its back. The droid was not built for its arm to articulate in that manner and it was akin to watching a person attempt to scratch that spot between their shoulder blades that no one can quite reach.
When the droid realized that he couldn’t reach it, he warbled something to the number two droid. Daria had just finished planting the second mine when he went to help the number one droid.
Number two tried to pull the mine from number one’s back but the mag-lock was too strong. He warbled something to number one and then extended a probe to the mine from a compartment in his chest.
Daria just finished planting mine number three when number two droid warbled something excitedly to number one.
“I think they’re on to us”, Bloom said as he positioned Daria for the fourth mine.
The fourth mine was just about to attach itself when the droid shot forward away from the sled. At the same time, the fifth droid shot a plasma bolt into the underside of the sled, causing Daria to pull the knot free and drop the mine to the ground.
The sled flew forward as Bloom tried to get Daria out of harms’ way. By luck alone, the fifth mine swung and slapped against the fourth droid, stuck, and armed itself. Daria wasn’t ready for this so she hadn’t released the mine from the sled’s railing. The sled jerked as the cord went taut and almost threw Daria off as it bucked. She quickly reached back and released the cord, allowing the sled to lurch forward in a less than controlled manner and bounced off one wall before Bloom could regain control.
Daria was lucky for the sudden lack of control because it caused the plasma bolt from droid number one to miss her as she deflected off the wall. She yelled into her comlink, “Blow it!! Blow them now!”
Bloom was navigating Daria’s sled around the corner and Snake waited until the last possible second to trigger the charges. Four droids exploded with a brilliant flash and a thunderous clap. Around the corner, Daria was shielded from the heat and shrapnel expelled by the explosion but the overpressure bounced off the corridors and found their way to her and her relative safety.
Daria was thrown from the sled and the last thing she saw was the wall coming at her. She felt as though she were flying at a thousand miles an hour but it seemed to take an hour for her to reach the wall and the blackness that lay beyond.
The fifth sentry droid stood motionless as the debris from his counterparts bounced off his shields. It took him less than a nanosecond to decide that something had gone terribly wrong. Before the shrapnel had even stopped flying through the hallway, he initiated the tunnel lockdown procedure. Because he and his now destroyed patrol had secured everything from the core up to this point, he sealed the corridor at the nearest junction behind him.
It seemed very odd to the droid that a hover sled from the maintenance bay would’ve attacked his patrol. He tapped into the security feed for the hangar bay and found that there were multiple unauthorized life signs from one—no, three—unknown alien races. He did not have the proper security clearance to deploy the automated gas canisters in the hanger, so he notified the main security office of the intrusion. No one answered. Odd. He would have to continue to the hangar by himself and destroy the aliens. Three more nanoseconds had passed and he began rolling down the corridor once more as his four companions continued to disintegrate.
Farther down the hall, it took Snake several thousand times longer than the droid to decide that someth
ing had gone wrong. He couldn’t think as quickly as the droid but fortunately he was fast enough.
“The blankets—everyone wrap up in a thermal blanket. They couldn’t detect Doc underneath it and we’ve got one left coming our way.”
Davies hated not going after Daria right away but he knew it was the best plan. If the last droid was coming their way, then Daria was either already dead or safely hidden from it.
It took almost fifteen minutes for the droid to get a safe distance from the group before they could come out of hiding. The droid was moving much slower now and taking more detailed scans.
As the next ranking member in the group, Snake took over. “Davies and, set up a rear guard in case that thing comes back. Bloom, come with me. We have to recover that unused mine and then find Doc.”
Bloom continued to try to raise Daria but without success. “She’s not dead; her comlink is still being powered by her bioelectricity. Hopefully she just got knocked out from the blast.” Bloom chuckled to himself.
“What’s so funny?” Snake asked.
Bloom shrugged. “Have you ever stopped to think about our perception of life as compared to the ‘normal’ Coalition citizen? I mean, here I am hoping that someone is unconscious. Scan hopes that he won’t lose anymore appendages. And Snyder hoped that his best friend would shoot him in the head to end his suffering. No one back home even has an idea of what’s going on out here.
“Most people are hoping that their kids do well in school, that they aren’t late for dinner, or that their boss doesn’t find out they’re fucking his wife on the side.” Bloom stopped and looked at Snake. “And we’re hoping someone will shoot us in the head if it comes to that.”
“Actually,” Snake smiled, “I’m hoping that I don’t get shot in the head so I can go home and fuck some guy’s boss’s wife.”
“Hey, I’m the funny one.” Bloom could feel his tension slowly easing away again. “Stick to whatever it is you do. By the way, what do you do?”
“I don’t know. Right now, I’m retrieving this mine and then I’m finding Doc.” Snake had finished placing the safeties back in place when Bloom came back from his scout of the hallway.
“This is not good,” Bloom said as he examined the security door that had been brought down in the corridor.
Snake came up behind him. “Can we blow it?”
“Not with anything we have. I can try to override the security code but this is the toughest encryption I’ve encountered yet.” Bloom had been trying without luck the entire time to raise Daria on the comlink. “Doc, come in Daria. Let us know you’re all right.” No response.
“Can you open her channel so we can hear what’s going on?” Snake tried to stay relaxed.
“Yeah, give me a second.” Bloom typed in some command and Daria’s comlink came to life. Bloom and Snake could hear Daria breathing.
“I think she’s unconscious.” Bloom tapped some more commands. “I’m going to activate the feedback loop in her comlink to try to wake her.”
~
Daria thought she could hear voices but she wasn’t sure where they were coming from. The way she felt, she wasn’t sure she could find her head if she needed to, much less the disembodied voices that were going through it. Then she felt it. A small itching on the right side of her head just behind her ear. But the itching changed somehow and it began to build. Soon it was a painful electric shock that made her sit straight up even against her body’s protest.
She immediately heard Bloom in her head once the pain had subsided. “Doc, are you there? Can you hear me?”
“What the hell are you doing, Bloom! Do you really think that I need to be electrocuted so soon after being blown up?” Daria was now able to open her eyes and get an idea of where she was.
Snake cut in. “Doc, one of the droids got away but the other four are slag. The problem is, some sort of security protocol was activated and this blast door was brought down between us. Bloom says we can’t blow it and he can’t get the protocols to disengage.” He paused. “You’ll have to make it to the core on your own and override the security protocols for the hangar and this door.”
“Of course I will”, Daria quipped. “I never get to do anything the easy way. Bloom, will you be able to walk me through whatever I need to do once I get there?”
“I’m not sure. The core is locked out from all remote access, so I don’t know what you’ll find once you get there.”
“We’ll just have to make do.” Daria’s thoughts were becoming clearer as the seconds passed. “Snake, have you contacted base camp to let them know what’s going on?”
“I can’t. The droid is destroying our communications relay as it goes. I didn’t send anyone back on foot to warn them because there is no way to get back to the hangar without having to engage the droid. I don’t think that we’d win.” Snake was all out of ideas on that one.
“You were right to not send anyone back. They wouldn’t have stood a chance. Set up a defensive position here and I’ll head out to the core.” Daria had just finished performing a medical scan on her head. She pulled the proper medication to help with her concussion out of her kit and administered it. “I’m assuming no one out there needs medical assistance, right?”
“No, you were the only injured.” Bloom was trying to download all of his information into Daria’s visor. “I’m downloading as much of my data into your visor as I can. If we lose contact, then it might be able to help you when you get to the core.”
“I’m ready to head out. I’ll give you five-minute updates. Bloom, can you calculate who will reach their destination first, me or the droid?” Daria was putting her medical gear back and repositioning her load.
Bloom tapped in a few variables into his visor. “It should be you but only by a few minutes. That’s if you’re walking at a regular patrol pace. And based on your current vital signs and medical readout, I wouldn’t suggest that you double-time because you might pass out.”
“I’m the medic here. You let me worry about that. Keep me updated if anything happens.” Daria began jogging down the corridor towards the core.
About twenty minutes and nearly five syncopal episodes later, she was there. Communications with Bloom and Snake had been static-filled at best for the last ten minutes. She hoped that it didn’t get any worse. “Bloom, I’m here. Now what?”
“Te.. me wh.t you .ee” Bloom’s voice was almost completely inaudible.
Daria looked around. “It’s empty. The room is cylindrical in shape, about ten meters in diameter and thirty in height. The walls, floor, and ceiling are smooth with some sort of radiant light source. There are no controls or seams anywhere.”
“Tr. lig..ing ..are and .oving it ov.. the .all” Bloom’s transmission seemed to be getting worse.
“Try what?” Daria hadn’t gotten the whole thing. As she went over the broken words in her head, it became clear. Try lighting a flare and moving it over the walls. The security protocols for the facility might have closed up all of the access panels in the room. The way to make those panels visible was to apply a heat source to them and make them come out of hiding.
Out loud she said, “Lighting flare now. Good idea, Bloom.” She had no way of knowing whether he even heard her praise or that she understood what he said.
She made it about halfway around the cylinder when a panel became visible to her. It was odd, though; instead of being high on the wall, it was down at human level. All of the other controls so far had been at a height that would be suitable for the aliens they had encountered.
There was only one button to press; she did. Nothing happened at first and Daria pondered the ironic anticlimacticness of it all when the door behind her closed. “Those bastards!” she said out loud. It seemed to Daria that they had purposely put the button on the opposite wall so that whoever pushed it wouldn’t have a chance to get back to the door before it closed.
“Bloom, they locked me in. I’m trapped and there are no other buttons to push.�
� This time there wasn’t even static, just complete, dead silence. That meant that her signal was not even leaving the room she was trapped in.
A voice filled the room and Daria’s visor translation program kicked in. It was buffering the translation as the voice spoke so it took a couple of seconds before it showed up on her visor. As the words scrolled across her screen, she suddenly heard Bloom’s voice again. At first, she thought that he had found a way to get his signal through to her. Then she realized that he had integrated his voice with the translation program.
The voice in the room continued, “You have entered a restricted area. If you cannot supply the proper security clearance codes, you will cease to be. State your name, rank, and access code.”
“Oh shit”, was Daria’s response. She didn’t realize that she had said it out loud until Bloom’s program repeated it in the alien language.
The voice in the room seemed to ponder her comment before replying, “Those facilities will not be available to you until you give the proper clearance codes. You have two minutes to comply.”
~
Jockey had finished going over everything in the ship and was comfortable with the flight controls. There wasn’t anything left to do but wait for Daria and her team to get the launch bay doors open. He decided to go over the controls one more time, even though he had promised himself a nap hours ago.
After the pre-flight check, Jockey turned on the scanners to practice switching between the different types of scans he would use during combat. At first, he thought that he must just be more tired than he realized but then he double-checked the reading. It wasn’t a mistake. Jockey ran to the forward hatch. “El-tee, Wilks, we have a contact in the corridor twenty meters and closing. It seems to be a droid of some sort.”
“Jockey, get those weapons warmed up and ready to go. Everyone else take cover inside the ship.” Emily was already halfway up the ramp before she finished giving her order.