by Aer-ki Jyr
Rafa saw daylight…or more accurately orange fire light on the other side of a thin wall of debris. Without internal illumination the blast site was more or less dark, with bits of light filtering in from access corridors and, in this case, some type of fire. Rafa pushed his way through the debris, forming a hole large enough to worm his way through and into a small opening where the junk wasn’t so thick. On his left was what looked like a major structural support that hadn’t been toppled by the blast. The debris was stretched out on either side of it like snowdrifts in the approximate location Paul had given him for Jason’s location.
Rafa looked around, then focused his attention to the right using some deductive reasoning. If the blast had come from the left then it would have knocked everything to…
His adrenaline spiked as he saw a smooth piece of semi-glossy armor buried in the wall of debris, prompting him to jump into the pile and start peeling pieces off. When he had Jason’s right thigh exposed he pulled out some type of pipe segment that retained some sort of light colored goo, which resulted in even more debris falling down and covering the silver armor.
“Damn it,” he said, digging his way back through and making only minimal headway. For every three pieces he pulled out two more came sliding down the mount to replace them. Frustrated and worried for his friend he pushed his back against the side of the pile and began digging out the pieces by his legs, bracing the falling debris against his own body. Soon the armored thigh reappeared, dented extensively from the crushing impact that had buried it.
He wanted to ask for help, but knew the others needed finding just as bad so he concentrated on shielding Jason’s body with his own while he pulled off piece after piece from the Archon’s chest.
“Morgan, get in here,” he finally said over the comm. “I’ve found him but I’m stuck.”
Within 20 seconds the debris pile to his right shook then reformed as Morgan forced her way through, then the ranger began reaching down and pulling pieces of debris off the other side of Jason as she too leaned into the larger pile, forcing it back off his head.
“Oh shit,” she whispered, seeing his crumpled helmet appear as she reached in and pried up some more debris. Balancing on her right foot she lifted her left up, then planted it on his abdomen and pushed down hard, desperately hoping she wasn’t killing him with the effort. The more flexible region of his armor impacted and her foot caught the lip of his cod piece. She pushed hard against it and Jason’s torso extracted itself from the cavity the two Archons had bodily created.
Morgan reached down and arched herself over Jason’s head, letting the debris fall down on her while Rafa pulled out. It buried her almost completely, but left Jason loose underneath her abdomen. Rafa stepped back and grabbed his feet, then yanked hard to pull him out, dragging several long pieces of debris with him.
“Clear,” he said, pushing away junk from the floor so he could lay his friend out flat.
Morgan rose up underneath the debris pile and twisted her way out, ignoring the sheer weight of the stack as she too came over and examined Jason, whose armor was a mangled mess.
“His arm is misplaced,” Rafa noted, seeing it bent back at an impossible angle at the shoulder.
“Get his helmet off,” Morgan said, trying to pry up the neck connections. She got one to release, but had to break the other to get the bottom portion off…but it still wouldn’t come clear of his head, for it had been dented so much it now held his skull in a vice-like grip.
Rafa slid his fingers under the now open neck and gestured for Morgan to do the same on the opposite side.
“Three, two, one, pull,” he said, yanking hard and finding the helmet material too strong to budge.
Morgan raised her right foot up and held it in the air above Jason’s head. Rafa brought his left up and touched their boots together heel to heel and tried again using the extra leverage. With a snap his helmet’s faceplate broke along the left side, with the crack extending up a few inches to the top. The two sides peeled back an inch, but it was enough to slide off his head.
“Paul,” Morgan said into her comm. “Grab the regenerator and get your ass over here. Jason’s breathing, but he’s got a massive head wound and a broken arm, minimum.”
“Coming,” Paul said, running out of the nexus so fast he didn’t even bother to power it down. He raced through the battleship over to the med bay and removed the piece of V’kit’no’sat tech from secured storage, then hopped into a shuttle and piloted it over to the jumpship himself, wearing nothing but his casual uniform.
He was met at the entrance by a Knight that led him into their base of operations, then handed the regenerator over to a trio of Archons that ran off to deliver it to the recovery site while Paul hastily pulled on a generic set of adept armor on hand to replace components from the others lost in battle. With the pieces assembled it was slightly larger on him at the torso than usual but he didn’t care. He grabbed a plasma rifle then headed off with another waiting Archon who led him through the contended zone and over to the blast site where the other Archons on Jason’s team were laid out on the ground receiving medical treatment.
They were surrounded by more than a dozen Archons and six Knights, ensuring that no lizards would be able to take advantage of the situation.
“Report,” he said to a medtech that was also wearing a suit of armor obviously not designed for the man’s small size. He had the helmet and gloves removed and was applying prefabricated patches to Olsen’s bare chest that appeared to have been crushed on the left side and was covered in bruises. Off to his left he saw the regenerator on a female Archon he didn’t recognize, given that her armor, now completely peeled off her body and laying at her side, didn’t have its comm system functional enough to give him an ID tag.
“I’m sorry, Jason had to wait. She was dead when we pulled her out and I had to try. It brought her back just a minute ago and I don’t know how to deactivate it until it finishes healing her…nor do I think we should try just yet.”
“Where’s Jason?”
“Where they dug him out,” Greg said, pointing back over his shoulder. “Do you know how to override that thing?”
“Yes,” Paul said, taking a knee next to her and examining the device that had its metallic tentacles wrapped around her bloody and naked body. They extended everywhere from her head down to her toes as the miracle machine raced to repair multiple injuries. Paul could see her skin moving beneath it as the tissue regenerated over several puncture wounds.
He knew he had to wait a bit longer and glanced over at the others. “What about them?”
“I’ve got them all sedated,” the medic explained. “A few broken bones along with blunt force trauma across multiple organs. Two spinal tweaks and one snap. Their armor saved them, but they got twisted and knocked around inside it something fierce.”
“Do we have them all?”
“Yes,” Greg answered, looking down at his fellow trailblazer. “I assume all this was from a det pack. If they’re going to start going kamikaze we’re going to have to pull back and work out a new strategy.”
“It wasn’t,” Paul said, his eyes back on the woman who he now recognized as Kira-1301. “I was online with Jason when it happened. They encountered a new version of lizard guarding the entrance. I think it was an elite demolition squad sent out to destroy something they didn’t want us to find. He was giving me a tour of the place when he stumbled across the device, figured out it was bomb counting down, and ran away with a few seconds left. They didn’t get far enough.”
“We’re losing him!” Morgan’s voice yelled through the comm.
Paul looked down at Kira’s bloody face. “Hold on,” he said, touching a series of tiny crystals on the device that retracted the rivulets of metal, suddenly made liquid again, back into a long cylindrical device that he passed up to Greg.
“What do you think?” Paul asked the medic as Greg ran off into the debris field.
The man studied her intently,
then slowly nodded. “She’s stable…and numb. I don’t know for how long. Do you?” he asked, not having any prior experience with the highly secretive devices.
“Go ahead and sedate her. The stun effect numbs the pain but doesn’t render the user unconscious.”
The medic pulled a small vile out of his briefcase-like kit as Paul stood up and walked past the others Archons, giving them a good four second inspection each before following Greg into the maze of debris. By the time he worked his way through to the fire lit location he saw Jason, equally stripped of armor and clothes, wrapped up in the metallic tendrils of the device as he slowly convulsed.
He didn’t say anything, but he did push his way forward and knelt down next to his friend, his gut wrenching with each tremor in Jason’s body. They continued on for a long time, slowly diminishing in amplitude until he at last lay still and a few of the tendrils on his head liquefied and repositioned down around his neck until they touched the base of his spine.
“Is that fire going to be a problem?” Paul asked in a whisper.
“Not at the moment,” Morgan said, not taking her eyes off Jason. The small pocket in the debris field was cramped with the four trailblazers crowded around their friend, so Rafa decided to give them some more space.
“I’ll get the others back to the Excalibur,” he offered, sliding past Paul to get to the small opening that they’d crawled through.
“I’m going to scout out the area,” Greg said, following him. “Make sure the lizards keep their distance. Let me know when you move him.”
Paul nodded as Greg left him and Morgan to watch over Jason as the V’kit’no’sat technology worked to repair his broken body.
“What were they protecting?” she asked him.
“I don’t know. He didn’t have much time to look around before it blew.”
“The new lizards?”
“Thicker, with retractable forearm blades. Body guards I’d guess. He said they came at them hand to hand, and I get the feeling they were sent out to insure this mission succeeded by their commander.”
“It must have been something big, because there were lots of opportunities on Corneria to put these new ones into play.”
“They always seem to be holding back on us. Think we hit a nerve this time. How do you suggest we proceed from here?”
“With their penchant for explosives? If they were being devious about it we’d be in a world of hurt and I’d suggest a different tac, but aside from this they haven’t blown anything up and you pointed out that this was designed to deny us something, not to kill us, though I’m sure they would welcome the collateral damage. Bottom line, we keep doing what we’re doing. Press forward and keep on them. If we give them time to think or settle in to a proper defense line then we’ll have problems.”
“You’re not worried about this happening again?”
“I’m worried about what they could do, but they don’t seem to be that smart. So no, I think we can still handle them in close quarters. A lot of them have been unarmed and unarmored. I don’t think they’re set up to handle an internal engagement like this. Most of their combat troops are probably down on the planet.”
“Or the ones here were grown with a different purpose in mind,” Paul commented. “Be careful.”
Morgan laid an armored hand on his shoulder. “If they start to get smart we’ll see it and pull back, but as long as they’re fighting dumb we need to take this ship while we’ve got the opportunity.”
A sharp pop from Jason’s body as a bone was set in place made both of them jump, then Paul looked around at the unstable chamber where they stood and the bits of fire visible through the gaps in the debris behind them, realizing how close he’d just come to losing his best friend.
7
October 18, 2264
Epsilon Eridani System
Lizard Jumpship
Morgan tossed her spent rifle aside and grabbed one of the forearm blades of the ‘mauler’ lizard as it jumped on her, falling backwards and kicking it over her head while holding on. It flipped over in midair, then came crashing down on the bridge floor on its back. Before it could move Morgan’s green armored fist appeared over its face and came down with crushing force on its neck, then she reached out and tripped another that was rushing the Archon team that had just fought through over 400 lizards as they pushed their way into the central region of the jumpship.
Morgan rolled over on top of the one she’d tripped, wrapped it up in a hug and pulled it over with her as she continued to roll through a second rotation. On the third the mauler’s neck snapped and she came back up to her feet, taking a plasma blast to the shoulder.
Her eyes darted around the narrow bridge to find the shooter as several dozen maulers, all unarmed and attacking the Archons hand to hand, swarmed toward the bridge entrance trying to drive them back out into the killing field that was a promenade one deck below down a double staircase. She spotted a lizard in the back, neither their normal troops nor the mauler variety, standing in the shadows with a rifle aimed her way, waiting through the momentary cycling delay.
Ducking down, Morgan charged forward into one of the maulers as it swiped its arm blade at her uselessly. Had it struck it would have done little more than scrape a small cut across her armor, but it never landed. Her left land caught the lizard’s wrist as she ducked her head and met the thing shoulder to shoulder, forcibly driving it backward and into its cohorts…all the while providing her with some cover as she ground her way forward.
Before long another mauler hit her from the left side and she had to abandon her grip else be knocked over. Ignoring the slashing blades she grabbed hold of one arm on each and swung them around her as she twisted her body, using them as dead weight to knock the others aside as she demonstrated her impressive strength. The moment she let go another plasma blast came here way but she dodged it by dropping down to her knees, then she leapt forward as the other lizards fell into each other like dominoes, stepping on and over two of them as she went after the shooter.
Two more maulers came at her from the side, seemingly intent on preventing her from getting any further into the bridge. Morgan dispatched them quickly enough, but when she looked back over at where the shooter was supposed to be she no longer saw it. Two seconds of further looking and she was hit by another lizard, which she punched in the chest twice before kicking into its midsection and knocking it to the ground. Behind her the other Archons, some still with ammo, were systematically killing both those attacking them and the ones Morgan was knocking down. Returning to help them clear out the remaining few she momentarily let the shooter go.
“Did I see a shot fired?” San asked after the last of the lizards in the immediate area were down.
“Yeah, but it ran off,” Morgan said, glancing down both side sections of the T-shaped bridge. Where they were standing and where the maulers had fallen was a long, elevated walkway with sunken control stations on either side. It dead ended at the top of the ‘T’ where there were a few auxiliary platforms rising up a meter or so higher. The walkway split from there going right and left, stretching out behind walls with additional sunken stations lining both sides. Which one it had fled down she didn’t know, but there were exits at the end of both. “Secure all three exits.”
On her order the 9 Archons split up, two each going to the exits while the remaining trio stayed and began policing the bodies as Morgan searched frantically for any more of the lizards’ explosive devices. As hard as they’d fought to keep them out of the bridge she wondered if they hadn’t planted one of the devices as a backup to keep it out of their hands, especially since the maulers had been present. They’d been seen only four times, two of which had been during the planting of explosives, the second of which had failed to detonate when Greg’s team had gotten the drop on the demolition group before they could arm the device.
The other two instances had been in a power and computer core…both of which were necessary for the continued function of a s
ignificant portion of the jumpship and therefore probably not candidates for destruction in the lizards’ eyes. Upon closer inspection the operational access in both areas had been extremely limited, meaning that the maulers just weren’t sent to blow things up, but to lock out the Humans from having access to critical systems as Star Force pushed further and further into lizard-held territory inside the jumpship.
As she heard the ‘all clear’ checks from each group Morgan searched every nook and cranny on the bridge trying to find one of their explosive devices but her search came up clean, so on a hunch she hopped over the walkway railing and dropped down into one of the tail-hole lizard seats and tried to bring up an operating menu as the techs had taught her to do over the last few days. They hadn’t learned to read the lizard language yet, but certain computer functions didn’t require full understanding, only memorization.
Morgan frowned inside her helmet, then opened a comm channel to Paul. “Bridge secured, no explosives found, but they locked out the equipment again. We’re not going to get any use out of it, so I don’t see a point in risking any of the techs by moving them up before we clear out this sector.”
“Nothing is working?” Paul asked.
“I’ve only checked one station, but we had to fight through maulers, so I’m pretty sure they locked everything down. We’ll make a thorough check. Get Greg and Rafa’s teams moving up.”
“They’re already in motion.”
“I also think I saw a new lizard variant. It got away during the fighting.”
“Describe it.”
“Thin like their line troops, but with a narrower head angling up to a point. It shot at me from range then took off while we were cleaning up the maulers.”
“Three down, eight to go,” Paul said, referencing the breakthrough they’d had with the genetic nodules they’d recovered from the captured northern base. After cracking them open and studying the basic genetic material inside they’d identified 11 distinct varieties of lizard, though there was some speculation as if that was the full extent of their race’s subdivisions or merely those that were allotted for use by their expeditionary forces.