by Don Foxe
“Tell him to meet me in the cave in forty-five minutes.”
“He wants to know how you will get there, and how will he know it’s you?” Storm relayed the questions, wondering the same thing.
“I’m gliding in,” Coop said. “And how many humans does he expect to show up in that particular cave in forty-five minutes?”
As Demon approached the northern Crown, Coop removed a black and grey wind-suit from storage. While pulling it over his BDU, Elie approached. “I’m the better free flyer,” she reminded him.
“That is why I go first,” Coop replied. “There’s another suit. I expect you to monitor my flight. If I screw it, you’re up. Learn from my mistakes.”
“What do you expect to accomplish?” she asked. “One human surrounded by 10,000 Zenge.”
“Ground spotter,” Coop said. “Just like during the wars. Ranger on the ground calling in the airstrikes, determining effect, and redirecting weapons as needed. We could go in hot, fire on the Zenge, and have no idea how effective we are, even with scanners. This way, I call the shots, you take them out. We create a path to get the others out.”
“Mags, put us 20,000-feet over, and five miles west of the cave’s location,” Coop yelled to the co-pilot. He grabbed his flight helmet, checked optics and communications. He collected a bail-out oxygen tank, and then told Elie, “Once Demon is in place, drop the rear cargo hatch.”
Coop left the galley, entered the cargo hold at the rear of the ship, made sure the hatch between sealed. When the red light above the hatch turned amber, he prepared for the rush of wind following the ramp opening. Once the ramp fully lowered, and the light turned green, he ran out, off the ramp, and into a black sky filled with heavy clouds.
The helmet’s night-vision provided speed, direction, and even a pictograph of him, relative to the mountains below. A red target spot indicated the cave entrance, a ten-foot by ten-foot opening on the southern slope of a steep mountain. To prevent freezing, the wind-suit provided heat. The bail-out tank provided oxygen. He provided the strength to manipulate his body, and the wings under his arms, and cloth between his legs to ride on thermals created by the mountains. That, and steer a course to the red bull’s eye. The free flight required ten minutes to reach the cordillera, and another three minutes to place him on a collision course with the mountain.
Coop flew along the prominence. Though within a few feet, the wash of night obscured the normal world, leaving only his readings to assure him a mountain rose only feet from his left shoulder. At his current speed, not seeing rocks and ice flying by help keep his attention on the task at hand.
Timing his descent with the helmet display, and trusting the information, he began an air brake by opening his body, and tilting backward. Seconds before the point when the pictograph and the red dot would merge, he twisted to face the mountainside, and splayed fully, cutting as much airspeed as possible. Next he pulled his legs in, tucked, half-rolled and dropped toward the rock wall.
His feet hit like jackhammers, tossing him head over heels down a sandy corridor. He hit the cave entrance from 20,000-feet, and five miles away, in the dead of night. Alive and whole, on his back, pumping arms and legs, shouting to the world, and to Storm on his com channel, he arrived in one piece.
A bright light pinned him to the floor, and a male voice asked, “Captain Cooper? Are you having a seizure?”
CHAPTER 25
Following a short introduction, Sky’s brother, ASparquila, led Coop to a locked hatch.
“It covers a descent. There are rungs,” The Fell said. Cooper removed the wind-suit, placing it beside the cover. ASparquila unlocked the hatch. The ladder took them twenty feet down, to a tunnel where a motorized sled sat on rails. The three-mile trip to the fortified bunker lasted fifteen minutes. While not fast, the twists, turns, ups and downs, made it exciting.
Reaching the interior bunker, ASparquila entered a pass code at a panel adjacent a door. The thick barrier opened into a bare room constructed with the alien equivalent of concrete walls. The Fellen entered a code at another locked door. It opened to reveal a sweeping chamber. Coop followed ASparquila, and found two additional Fellen, a male and a female, waiting with shoulder-fire laser rifles. Up.
To the attractive female he said, “You must be related to ASkiilamentrae. I’m Captain Cooper. AStermalanlan mentioned I might be visiting.”
The two lowered their weapons, and both smiled, tiny fangs showing.
“I am ASillamentrae, ASkiilamentrae’s mother,” the female said. “This is her father, ASpatric. Welcome to Fell, Captain Cooper. I wish a more peaceful purpose brought you to us.”
“Sky,” Coop spoke to his translator bracelet, opening a private communication channel. “I’m giving my bracelet to your mother."
He handed the devise to the woman, as her daughter said, “Mother. Are you there?”
ASparquila, and ASpatric wore translator rings. Coop did not require his bracelet for the three to talk.
“Any more people here with you?” he asked.
“Only the three of us,” Asparquila said. “When the Zenge began advancing toward the bunker, I decided to send everyone out. I stayed to lock it down.”
ASpatric, a tall, thin Fellen, with grey in his auburn hair, took up the story. “When I realized the nature of the invasion, I decided the lab offered the safest place on Fell. ASillamentrae, our two youngest daughters, and I loaded supplies into our landrider. On the way here, a Zenge aircraft attacked. The landrider crashed. We escaped into a forest. Unfortunately, I tripped, and fell into a ravine. ASillamentrae came after me, while our two girls ran along the crest, looking for a way for us to climb out. A Zenge patrol captured them.”
ASpatric, visibly upset by the retelling of his story, continued. “We could not get up the steep slope to help them. When we finally found a way out, we did not know which way they had gone. I repaired the landrider. It took two weeks to reach the Crown. We abandoned the rider to evade tracking. We walked another week to reach the bunker.”
“They looked nearly dead when they knocked on the front door.” ASparquila finished. “They did not call me, fearful of revealing the lab’s location. This happened months ago.”
“Since the invasion, I have been monitoring communications, and waiting. Four weeks ago Zenge patrols began moving nearer. That is when I ordered the others to escape. We keep our personal transportation vehicles away from the labs, to help prevent discovery. They hiked south, to the hidden garage, and then scattered. Two weeks ago the Zenge showed up and began trying to batter down the doors.”
The young Fellen, taller than Cooper, but thinner, with Sky’s eyes and his father’s high forehead, led the human to a desk on the far side of the hangar-sized workshop. They meandered around or between dozens of tables and workbenches. All work spaces cleared of clutter. He tapped the desk top. A flick of fingers, a swipe, and a circular rub in the air with the heel of his palm brought up an image.
Several hundred tents comprised the Zenge encampment. Land vehicles sat parked behind the level area used for staging assaults on the bunker. With no fear of a counter-attack, those not engaged with a task, slept in their tents. Vapor-like lights on tall stands lit the front doors of the bunker.
“They do not like operating at night,” ASparquila told him. “From daylight until dusk, they either try to break in, or roam the mountainside looking for other ways to access the bunker. When it begins to get dark, they settle in. Due to their cold blood, they require the warmth of the tents and heaters.”
“How many hours until sunrise?” Coop asked.
“Six. Because of the surrounding mountains, it arrives slowly.”
“What is so important you cannot let the Zenge have it?” Cooper asked.
“Mostly technology for advanced communications. There are notes on experimental systems designed to transmit audio, video, or data signals great distances in short amounts of time. We developed scanner improvements to allow us to hear inside another spaceship. Not only pick
up electronic communications, but actually hear their conversations. There is a sonic blaster prototype. We develop unbreakable encryption devices, and devices capable of solving any encryption. I generated specs for a miniaturized universal translator for implantation beneath the skin. Plus a dozen other side projects the technicians and engineers play with during their spare time.”
“What happens if they break down the doors?”
“There is a self destruct. There are enough explosives within the walls of this cavern to bring the mountain down,” ASparquila informed him.
“Do we have to cart equipment and gear out of here to save it, or do you have your designs, specs, and experiments stored?”
In reply, the Fellen reached under the desk and extracted a metallic box the size of a large briefcase. He opened it. Inside, placed in foam forms, rested two dozen memory sticks.
“Everything we have worked on for the past one hundred years are on these sticks” he told Coop. “I should have escaped with them before the Zenge arrived, but my parents were not ready for another hard journey. I also believed we were shielded here, by natural and artificial means. The bunker should have remained undetected.”
“No Fellen would ever disclose the location of our laboratories,” ASillamentrae said, rejoining them, handing Coop his communicator/translator bracelet. “The labs are the life-blood of Fell. Our society survives and thrives because of the work done in these locations.”
“If you were about to see your daughters raped, slaughtered, and eaten by a couple of giant lizards, at what point would you give up the location of a fortified bunker? If you did keep quiet the first time, how many times would you have to see it happen before you broke. If it were you about to become a meal for these creatures, would you trade information for a quick death?” Coop took no pleasure in rattling the sensibilities of the Fellen, but needed to divest them of the notion people acted in war as they acted in peace.
“Can you delay the self destruct? Is it on a timer, or will it automatically blow when the front doors are breached?” he asked the engineer.
“It’s autonomic now, but I can set a timer, or a remote detonator,” he answered.
“Sky, you listening?”
“We have you on speaker, Coop. Elie wants to know when to start shooting?” Sky’s voice came through surprisingly clear via the bracelet speakers. Storm had assured him the Zenge would not detect the private channel communications. Assurances made before discovering the Mischene commanded the invasion forces. Mischene employed Fellen technology on their battleships. Coms might be less secure than initially believed.
“Scrap the shooting gallery. Too many, and too spread out. We don’t need to remove equipment, just extricate the family, and a case of memory sticks. Elie?”
“I’m here.”
“Do you keep a gravity sled?” he asked.
Gravity sleds aided transport of materials. The simple platforms used anti-gravity mercury gyroscopes, allowing them to hover. Heavy items needing delivery, or removal from a ship, could be loaded onto a grav-sled, then pushed or pulled directly to or from a cargo bay. They effectively handled limited loads across limited distances. A single person could push a fully loaded sled with ease.
“I do. Do I want to know why you ask?”
“Back to you in a minute.” He turned to ASparquila. “You can remote detonate the explosives. Can you remote open the bunker doors?”
“I would need to rig a receiver to the driver. It would unlock and open the blast-doors a bit, but not fully.”
“Please do that now,” Coop ordered. “Team, we have a change in plans. Listen up.”
CHAPTER 26
With two hours of darkness remaining, Coop and the three Fellen stood at the mouth of the cave. Demon waited one mile away, hovering below the tops of the mountains. Coop wore his helmet, but not the wind-suit. The optics provided a clear image of the Zenge camp, three miles to his east, and a couple of thousand feet below. He could not discern individual lifeforms, but could see the layout.
“Storm?” Coop used the private channel to communicate with Demon’s crew, hoping the added layer of encryption made detection less likely.
“Copy, Coop. Elie says let her know what and when.”
“Sync your com-tac monitor with my visor display,” Coop instructed her. “In one minute, ASparquila will pop the front bunker doors. We left a lot of lights burning. A sentry should see them open.”
At the count, Coop nodded to the Fellen, who tapped a button on a hand-held remote. Miles away, the doors to the bunker parted. Coop’s visor displayed a line of light, twenty-feet vertical, in the middle of the mountain’s facade.
Within minutes of the doors parting, thousands of Zenge warriors approached the wall. Someone finally finished opening the bunker doors, and they entered the lab by the scores.
Coop observed light refractions from laser weapons fired within the bunker.
“No one home, boys,” he said aloud. “But go ahead and fire away. Maybe you’ll kill a few of your own."
To Storm, he said, “Have Elie begin her descent, and prep the ramp.”
“On the way,” Storm replied. “Mags and Sky are in the cargo bay.”
“ASparquila, you have the honor.”
The Fellen engineer keyed the remote, and tons of explosives detonated.
A few hundred Zenge died from a combination of the explosive concussions, and the walls and ceilings caving onto them. The blast funneled out the entrance. Another thousand queued, died from the flames and intense heat.
Coop removed his helmet after watching the encampment tents and vehicles begin to blaze. While the distraction kept the Zenge and Mischene focused on their immediate problem, Elie brought Demon down the side of the mountain. The rear of the spaceship faced the precipice, the cargo ramp deployed. Ten feet of space from the end of the ramp to the mouth of the cave. As near as the pilot could safely hover the ship.
Sky and Mags appeared at the back of the storage hold. They pushed the grav-sled out the back, and toward Coop. He grabbed an edge and pulled it into the rock chamber.
“ASillamentrae and ASpatric first,” he said. The two stepped up, onto the sled, and knelt. Coop on one side and ASparquila on the other, they pushed the sled out of the cave entrance, and to waiting hands on board Demon. The grav-sled, with passengers, glided into the cargo bay.
ASparquila followed, with Coop providing the push. The two women caught the front edge, and pulled it into the ship. The Fellen jumped off, and they sent it back to Coop.
He backed into the cave, put his helmet, with the bundled wing-suit inside, on the sled, got a running start, pushing the sled in front of him, and jumped on. Lying prone, he sailed across the divide and into the cargo hold. Mags informed Elie, who closed the ramp, then lifted the ship up and away.
Sky led her family into the galley for a reunion with Storm. Coop joined Elie in the cockpit.
“Do we strafe the mothers now?” She asked, as he strapped in.
“No. Much as I would like nothing better, we are still covert. No one on the planet or above realizes we’re here. I’d like to keep it that way. We have intel, and we have tech. Now we get back to Rys in one piece. There’s a problem there we need to deal with quickly.”
“Canedee,” Elie said aloud.
“Canedee,” Coop echoed. “If the Mischene are helping the Zenge, then he could be a plant.”
“But the Zenge attacked the Star Gazer and then Rys using Mischene battlecruisers they took when they captured Aster Farum 3,” Mags said, standing at the entrance to the cockpit.
“Did they?” Coop asked. “No one established communications with the battlecruisers when they attacked the Star Gazer. Rys blew them the hell away before any contact was made there. We have never been able to get a proper scan of the interior of the ships. We only have Canedee’s account of the attack on Aster Farum 3. We could have been facing Mischene crews every time.”
“Coop,” Sky peeked around Mags.
“We have a favor to ask. A big one. Could you, Elie, and Mags join us?”
“I scouted a deep valley a couple of miles from here earlier,” Elie said. “Let me park Demon in the shadows first.”
It took the experienced pilot ten minutes to relocate the valley she noticed on scans during an earlier pass through the Crown Mountains. Cross-winds necessitated tricky negotiations between the two mountains concealing the valley. The canyon offered plenty of flat space to deploy tripods, and Demon soon settled.
The galley was crowded. Elie and Mags remained in the cockpit. Sky and Storm each took a bunk, where they sat lotus-style. ASparquila sat at the com-tac console, left of the cockpit entrance, leaving the table for Coop, ASpatric, and ASillamentrae.
ASillamentrae, who Sky once told Coop managed the family business that helped create the AS-tribe’s wealth, assumed the lead.
“First, our thanks to you, and your friends [indicating Elie and Mags] for taking care of Sky and Storm. Our thanks, also, for saving the three of us. Eventually the Zenge would have forced a way in, or destroyed the mountain altogether.
“Billions of Fellen are in hiding, dead, or captured. What I am going to ask is selfish, but I am a mother, and selfish is our nature. Will you help us save ASkiilamentrae and ASparquila’s sisters?”
Coop faced the woman, eye to eye. “Sky and Storm mean the world to me . . . to all of us. I would do anything I could to help them, and their family. But there are at least six sites we know of where they might hold your daughters. That’s potential sites located on the surface. They could hold them on a cargo ship in space by now. I’m sorry, but they might be dead. We simply have no way of finding them.”
“But if you could, you would help recover them?” she asked.
“Of course.” His eyes squinted, and he sat back. “You are your tribe’s master negotiator,” he said. “You know where they are.”
ASparquila answered. “My parents gave them finger rings to wear before departing for the Crown. The rings contain locator beacons." He turned to the com-tact monitor. “They are on this continent, at the CHangoria 2 space port." He called up a visual holo-display of the port. “I have hacked into a satellite feed. Do not worry. The Zenge nor the Mischene will discover I am riding the signal." He zoomed in, showing a rough semi-circle of eight Parrian cargo ships on the ground. “They are in the second Cargo ship from the left. Heat scans show 812 warm lifeforms, and six cold-blooded forms, probably Zenge.”