Old Guy and the Planet of Eternal Night (An Old Guy/Cybertank Adventure Book 6)

by Timothy J. Gawne

  Also just fine, general. So far no enemy action. Perhaps we have surprised and outpaced any hostiles.

  “That is possible. We have not done anything like this in a long time. Some of the worst of the monsters are ponderous, or take a while to wake up. However, I would not get too confident. There are things on this planet that can catch us.”

  I still think that I should switch to active sensors. Even without remotes I could scan to 100 kilometers out with a sensor mast at full extension.

  “Yes, but that would tell everything across half the planet what we are and where we are going. No, for now we keep emissions discipline.”

  An hour passed uneventfully, then another. Suddenly one of the scout troopers sounded the alarm. “Five Meiboms detected, range 20 kilometers, 10 degrees to the right of our course. Orders?”

  I can take these, general. Command your troops in that sector to move to the flanks and clear me a firing path. Oh, and tell them to set their optics to shielded mode.

  “Very well, Old Guy. They are all yours.”

  The armored suits to the front smoothly shifted to the flanks, and I activated my short-range targeting radars at minimal power. Yup, five Meiboms all in line abreast advancing on my position. But now I have a big gun.

  Now so far my enemies on this planet have only seen my secondaries. If I use my main gun, well, my enemies will know what I am really capable of. In theory I should hold back. But fuck it, never toy with an enemy, if you are going to kill something just do it.

  I target the Meibom in the middle. A solid beam of incandescent plasma spears out of my main turret and intersects the hideous creature which explodes into a fine mist. The beam lights up everything to the horizon, and even the dark overhanging clouds briefly glow a lurid orange. Four more shots, and the Meiboms are all gone.

  Some of the armored suits cheer. General Trellen contacts me: “Very nice shooting, Old Guy. As you can imagine, everything now knows where we are. The going is likely to get harder from here on.”

  Understood, General. Suggest switching to active scanning?

  “No, not yet. Your fire would have given an enemy a location, but not a bearing or a speed. Hold off on the active sensors, for now.”

  Acknowledged.

  Another four hours passed – halfway there. The steady clatter of my treads, the rhythm of my gracefully running escorts, was almost relaxing. Then, another alarm, this time from an escort on my left flank. “It’s dragon bats, incoming, looks like a major swarm!”

  Trellen had warned me about this. “Dragon bats” are flying reptilian creatures, each with a sac of 10 kilograms of a very nasty hyper-acid. Individually they are not very powerful or smart, but if they attack en masse – which is what they always do – they can overwhelm even powerful forces.

  I use my main weapon at wide dispersal and sweep hundreds from the sky at once. My secondaries and point-defense weapons account for hundreds more. The troopers also put up a decent amount of firepower, and we exterminate the swarm. I myself suffer only superficial splatter damage from some near misses, but six of the suits of powered armor had been solidly struck and dissolved into scrap. The survivors checked that their fallen brethren were beyond repair, saluted their corpses, and continued on. This lot is disciplined, I will grant them that.

  I regret the loss of your men, General. They fought well.

  “Indeed they did,” said Trellen. “Their deeds will be inscribed into the book of honor, and the memory of their sacrifices will never be forgotten for as long as any of us still live.”

  You are all really into this honor thing, aren’t you?

  “And you are not? You would desert a comrade in need, refuse to risk yourself to defend your brethren, flee in the face of an enemy, really?”

  No of course not. I just don’t boast about it, is all.

  “If false modesty suits you, then by all means. Yet my men and I are honorable, and we see no reason to be shy about it.”

  Well. That shut me up.

  We continue on our course. We eat up the kilometers, and presently I begin to detect the faint wash of the human-like electromagnetic signals.

  General Trellen. I believe that we are closing on our objective. I am picking up trace signals.

  “I’m not detecting anything,” said Trellen, “but then your sensors are more sensitive than mine. Be warned that if this is a trap, it could get very violent very fast. There might be a Grendel, or a demi-god, or one of the things that we have no names for because nobody has yet survived an encounter to tell us.”

  Shortly the Lesser Redoubt comes into view. It is quite similar to the main Fortress, but smaller, just a kilometer on a side. As expected, it glows brightly in the infrared; The geothermal power systems must still be working. I can sense the faint wash of signals from electric motors and power relays, but otherwise it shows no signs of life.

  General Trellen hails the structure, but receives no reply. The Lesser Redoubt appears undamaged, and all of the external doors are sealed. I try probing the structure with my own active sensors, but detect nothing other than the operation of basic machinery.

  One of the armored suits scales the side of the Lesser Redoubt using retractable alloy claws in his hands and feet. He finds a smaller and less well-armored door on a terrace about 400 meters up, and forces it open. We wait patiently, and eventually one of the large ground-level doors cycles open. The suit had made his way down, and operated the controls from the inside.

  “The structure looks to be in perfect condition,” said the suit, “I saw no sign of combat. And no sign of biological humans.”

  Half of the armored suits enter and begin searching the structure, while the others spread out in a perimeter outside with my main hull. By this time I had managed to use my internal machining systems to cobble together a light remote. It’s not much, just an unarmored four-wheel dune buggy with a single light manipulator arm and a small slugthrower, but it’s something, and I use it to tag along with the suits exploring the Lesser Redoubt.

  The internal rooms are similar in style to those in the main fortress, although they are smaller, and while clean, they are simpler and less ornate.

  Nowhere do I encounter signs of combat – nor of humans either.

  General Trellen. It may be that these people did manage to build a spaceship after all, and left this planet.

  “No, I do not believe that to be the case,” said Trellen. “Take your little wheeled vehicle and join me on subfloor 01.”

  I drive my little buggy into a service elevator, and emerge onto subfloor 01. It’s a single massive hangar, fully the width of the building. Parked right in the middle is a super-heavy lifting shuttle.

  It’s an ugly slab of a vehicle, 300 meters long and 150 meters wide, supported by a veritable forest of landing wheels. The edges are lined with fusion thrusters, and there is a single enormous cargo door at the back that has been extended down into a ramp. It’s big enough that it could easily haul four of my main hulls into orbit at one time.

  Trellen joins me in the hangar. “It does not appear to have been used.”

  No it does not. If the humans had left this world, they would have been unlikely to abandon such a major investment.

  “I agree,” said Trellen. He waved my buggy towards the open cargo door. “Shall we explore further?”

  I drive up into the shuttle. The main bay is capacious, with a metal deck and walls studded with recessed load hooks. The main bay is open to vacuum, with only a few small pressurized sections for the human crew. This was a craft purpose-built to bring large loads directly into orbit, with limited range. We head forwards into the central cockpit – I try activating one of the screens with a manipulator arm, and to my surprise it responds.

  “Could you pilot this ship?” asked Trellen.

  In theory. The control systems are not much changed from the standard human designs of the period of the Greater Exodus, which are extensively covered in my databases. However, space systems are
nothing if not twitchy. No matter how well preserved it appears to be I would never take something like this up without a thorough check and refurbishment. Even if I had the resources, that would take weeks. More like months, with what I have to work with now. And there is the issue of where we would fly and why – we might just get out of the atmosphere and get swatted down like before.

  “Agreed,” said Trellen. “I was just curious if you could. I would suggest that you see if you can get the shuttle spaceworthy, while my men and I continue to search the structure.”

  Are you actually planning on flying it?

  “Not really,” said Trellen. “However, even if we don’t go into space, perhaps we could fly it to the main fortress for resources, or to retreat, or as a decoy. It’s always good to have options.”

  If it’s been sitting here for a long time, it’s subsystems might have decayed beyond easy repair. But I will see what I can do.

  I continued to poke at the control systems with my little buggy’s manipulators, and General Trellen left to supervise his troops. Periodically he would send me reports from his fellow armored suits as they searched more and more of the structure. At a cubic kilometer it had less than 1% of the volume of the main Fortress, but you can still hide an awful lot in a cubic kilometer.

  I managed to make direct access between the shuttle controls and my main hull, and the work went faster. I got a call from General Trellen on the short-range comms.

  “Hello, Old Guy. Can you give me a report on the shuttle?”

  The shuttle is in very good shape. The volatiles had all been hermetically sealed, the hoses made of long-lasting polymers and filled with inert gases… Frankly I find it suspicious. If something is too good to be true, it usually is…

  “Yes,” said General Trellen. “Nevertheless, it is untoward to look a gift donkey in the mouth. My aphorism cancels yours, leaving us to just do the best with what we have.”

  OK then. I could probably get it flying today, though I would really like another month to run full systems diagnostics and stress tests. But I will keep working on it.

  “Very good,” said Trellen. “In the meantime, do the databanks of this space ship contain any information on the fate of the humans here?”

  Good question – it’s part of what I have been trying to figure out. The logs suggest active construction up until not quite a century ago, after which there are only routine automatic status updates. There are no personal messages or any other data though – this is a very limited control system, designed only to take the shuttle up and down. I’ll keep looking, but I don’t think we are going to learn much here.

  The suits continued to explore for several days. I wondered how the shuttle was supposed to get out of the sub-basement, but then I found the controls that would allow an entire wall to fold down onto a ramp leading up to a flat landing area near the redoubt. It was an efficient and cleverly engineered system.

  Then Trellen received an urgent message from one of the scout suits that was standing watch outside on the top of the Redoubt.

  “General, sir. We have a contact back along our inbound track. I estimate 30 kilometers range, and closing.”

  “Can you identify?” asked Trellen.

  “Not absolutely, sir. But I think it’s… Behemoth.”

  Trellen muttered a low curse – and that was the only time that I ever heard the man say anything that was not polite and measured. “We are in trouble. Old Guy, see if you can finish prepping this shuttle, just in case. I’m ordering all of my men to leave the structure and begin organizing a defense. I don’t know how your main hull works, but if you need to warm up or anything in order to achieve full combat power, you should start doing that now.”

  What is Behemoth?

  “Do you recall that some of the monsters on this world are not well characterized because everyone that they encounter dies?”

  Yes.

  “Well, this is one of those monsters.”

  Don’t you mean a Behemoth? Are you sure there is only one?

  “Thankfully we have no evidence of more than one. And Behemoth without the a has a certain biblical connotation.”

  We assembled on the surface facing the oncoming Behemoth (although ever the careful field commander, General Trellen still kept a sizeable scouting force in the other directions as well). The scout trooper on the top of the Redoubt forwarded me his video feed: Behemoth looked like a small mountain made of light. It was moving towards us, how I could not tell, but making a steady ten kilometers per hour.

  I moved my main hull to a forward position, and elevated a sensor mast to its full 100-meter height so that I could view Behemoth directly. In higher resolution it looked like a mass of tree roots made of inwardly-growing crystal. These twisted and grew around each other like a decade of forest growth compressed into minutes. I raised General Trellen on his channel.

  Any actionable intelligence on this – um – thing?

  “No. Other than it is highly advisable to avoid it.”

  We would appear to be faster. We could run away. Unless you think that is, well, dishonorable.

  Trellen appeared to stroke his chin with his heavy metal fingers. It still surprises me jut how human these suits’ gestures are. “Dishonorable? Not if there’s nobody left to defend here. Although I would hate to lose these resources, and there may yet be intelligence buried here if we but look long enough.”

  How about I try shooting it? And if that doesn’t work, then we run away.

  Trellen chuckled. “Yes, by all means, take a shot with your main weapon. If it’s tough enough to stand up to that, then we quit the field. You may fire when you are ready, Old Guy.”

  I drove forwards until I had line of sight to the target, and fired. As before, the line of plasma lit of the surrounding terrain and sky. It speared into the center of the glowing mass of Behemoth, and the super-heated plasma beam… disappeared.

  Um. General Trellen. Shooting this Behemoth thing did not yield the expected results. It must have an energy absorbing field, but I have no data on this and I don’t know how to defeat it. Running away is looking like the better option.

  “Agreed,” said Trellen. “However, the Knights of The Fortress never run away. We execute tactical withdrawals, or perform retrograde operations if we’re feeling wordy. But run away? Never.”

  I was about to make a really pithy and clever riposte to this statement, but Behemoth sunk into the ground and disappeared.

  Trellen did not hesitate. “RUN!” he bellowed.

  The armored suits scattered from their positions, and I drove off at an angle, and a good thing too. Faster than I would have thought possible, Behemoth erupted up from the ground right where we had been. The twisted glowing vines thrashed and whipped. They snagged an armored suit and tore him to pieces.

  I tried shooting the vines with my secondary plasma cannons, but as before, Behemoth was immune to energy weapons. Railguns and slugthrowers had a decent effect, fortunately, but I was not currently well equipped with these.

  Behemoth had us surrounded, and could erupt out of new areas of the ground at a speed faster than our best. Perhaps my first shot had energized it, or maybe it had been holding back. Regardless, running away no longer seemed to be an option.

  General Trellen. We seem to be losing.

  “We are at a disadvantage, agreed,” said Trellen, “but it’s too early to say that we’re losing. I want you to activate the shuttle and drive it out onto the landing pad.”

  But…

  “No questions! Just do it.”

  With only the one enemy, I dropped some of my long-term strategy routines so I could max out my processors and increase my cycle rate. To a human it would have felt like time slowing, like when adrenaline kicks in, except that in this state I can feel the nanoseconds.

  General Trellen joins his men in beating back the tendrils of Behemoth, but two more suits are lost. I begin to open the outer doors to the enormous hangar under the Redoubt. They swin
g open with the slowness of anything that big. I power up the shuttle, and using minimal thrust I begin to move it forwards. The shuttle should be moved using ground tractors but I can’t access them – even at the lowest settings the thrusters tear up the inside of the hangar, and quickly fill it with smoke.

  My main hull is having some success with my limited supply of railguns, but overall we are still on the back foot, as they say. Another armored suit goes down. A tendril of Behemoth rips one of my secondary armaments clear off my hull, but I drive back over it and shatter it. In spots the armored suits engage the tendrils in hand-to-hand combat – which, to my surprise, works quite well against this enemy. But not well enough.

  The shuttle pokes its nose out of the underground hangar, singed and smoked but otherwise undamaged.

  Trellen yells at me: “Old Guy! Drop the rear loading door of the shuttle, drive into it, fly away, and get help. We’ll cover you here.”

  I am not leaving you behind.

  “Don’t be dense,” said Trellen. “My men cannot fly this shuttle, and you can. We will cover you, and then fall back to The Fortress after you have left. Find your people, and bring reinforcements.”

  The enemy might still be out there. I might be shot out of the sky the moment that I clear the atmosphere.

  “I know,” said Trellen. “That is why what you are going to do is brave, and not craven. If nothing else you will provide a needed distraction and draw fire. Now get your treads in motion while there is still time!”

  I drop the rear ramp of the shuttle. A large portion of Behemoth heads towards it: I have to accelerate the shuttle to keep it out of range. The shuttle is passing 100 kilometers per hour – I push my main hull to the limits, I smash through several major tendrils of Behemoth and close on the shuttle. The shuttle is hitting 140 kilometers per hour and Behemoth is close behind – I near the ramp, and barely manage to make it onto the shuttle, although the ramp is badly torn in the process. Fortunately the craft doesn’t need airtight integrity.

  The shuttle is just barely making it into the air, with a few sickly glowing tendrils of Behemoth reaching out, so close, they almost touch the shuttle…almost… and then the shuttle is finally too fast and too high, Behemoth falls away, and I am arcing away from the surface.