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Ilox Saga 1: Eris Monroe: More Than Human

Page 21

by Bruce Adams


  Arnav Malik watched as the Starlifter, piloted by Kyle Arneson, rose rapidly through the hazy thick atmosphere and disappeared. He carried his gauss assault rifle in the ready position with safeties off. His team was only a dozen meters from the maintenance tunnel that would give them access to the deep mines surrounding Long Junction. His sergeant, Isabella Dulac, was intent on using the Valdren scanning device. She had synchronized up with her neural implants to the device to receive instant feedback. The bulk of his eight squad members were arrayed around him in a half circle. He commanded five men and three women in his squad.

  “Anything?” Lieutenant Commander Malik asked Dulac. She shook her head negatively.

  “Listen up. Garcia, open that airlock. Jackson, Taylor, Sekibo - cover him… Zhang and Barton start a security sweep, I don’t want any alarms tripping or cameras spotting us. Tokushima and Fasjovik – keep eyes and sensors on our six. His squad moved to obey and within a minute, the airlock had cycled open. The combat team sprinted inside the huge airlock and Garcia closed the outer door. Five minutes passed with a constant hiss of air inrushing as pressure was equalized.

  Malik had the plans of the nearby tunnels displayed on his suit’s data projector. “We’ll travel approximately two hundred and fifty meters down this corridor. At that point, there is a side passage intersection from the right. We’ll head down that for five hundred meters. There should be an emergency evac elevator waiting at the end that will take us deeper into the complex. Let’s move!” He started to trot down the sloping tunnel. Exactly as he’d stated, after moving a quarter of a kilometer there was a side tunnel. The squad turned right and began moving with Garcia on point. When the squad came within fifty meters of the elevator, Garcia knew something was wrong and held up his closed fist for everyone to stop. The squad used tactical hand signals to keep their electronic signatures low. The doors to the elevator kept moving to close but were hitting something in the way and then retracting.

  Garcia moved closer and his voice came over the link, “It’s a dead body.” He motioned for the squad to move up. They did so, keeping weapons loose and hot. Malik saw the body - a man wearing a Furnace Mining and Metals uniform. He was lying face down in a pool of congealing blood. He hadn’t been dead more than a few hours. Half of his back was blown out by shrapnel wounds. Arnav turned him over and saw horror. The man’s face was covered with thick grey scales and his eyes seemed wrong somehow.

  “Dulac, care to offer any insights?” said Arnav to his sergeant standing beside him.

  “LC, I don’t know, he looks human not alien…but…those scar lesions…I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s almost segmented like armor…” She checked her Valdren scanner again – it was negative. “Sir, no readings yet…I’m drawing a blank here.”

  “We have a job to do so let’s head down. Blake…Jackson…drag that body out of the elevator.” The two marines did so, smearing the floor with blood in the process. “Let’s take a ride.” Malik was concerned but didn’t show it to his squad. What happened to that guy, he thought. Another problem soon became apparent – the control panel had been hit by shrapnel and was malfunctioning.

  “Isabella, can you get a bypass working?”

  His sergeant nodded and attached the Valdren tech scanner to her tools harness at her waist with a click. She then pulled out an electronics kit from the other side of her tool harness and began attaching sensors to the shattered elevator control panel. Eighteen seconds after working with her tools Sergeant Dulac smiled broadly.

  “Got it,” she breathed. She had been subconsciously holding her breath in the last few seconds.

  “Let’s go all the way down to the bottom level. Be sure and check that damn scanner the whole way. We’ll stop the elevator if you get a hit. Ok people; let’s move like we have a purpose.”

  Malik punched the control panel that would take them two kilometers deep into the mines surrounding Long Junction. The squad traveled down in silence. The only sounds were the normal mechanical noises of the elevator hydraulic traction mechanisms. During the first minute of descent, Garcia decided to play a prank and played elevator music through his helmet speakers. Isabella and Blake laughed and the rest of Omega team snickered.

  “Garcia, shut that shit off,” Malik quietly ordered. As the music died out, the car accelerated downward and Malik once again displayed plans on his suit’s data projector. “After exiting this car, we’ll head south to the right for one hundred meters. That should get us to a large cavern where they store their mining MEKS. I’ll keep these maps synced to your helmet HUD’s. Keep weapons at the ready. Blake - I want you on point.” For the remainder of the short journey no one said anything further. After four minutes and ten seconds, the elevator car slowed and smoothly came to a halt. The indicator above the door displayed Level thirty-nine. The squad was two thousand one hundred and eighty meters below the surface of the planet. The doors opened and the squad exited the elevator car with gauss assault rifles at the ready.

  They began leapfrogging each other down the long corridor. Four squad-mates would slowly advance while the rear five prepared for covering fire if needed. Continuing this tactic Ryan Blake reached an elevated metallic platform - stairs descended downwards to the west and east. The rest of the squad was ten meters behind the front four. There were massive MEKS blocking most of their view.

  “I’m picking up sounds of weapons fire…relaying,” came Blake’s deep bass over the link. Through helmet links everyone in the squad heard the distinctive droning buzz of capacitors charging from pulsed laser fire and the staccato vrrip vvrip vvrip of gauss flechette rounds discharging. There were no visuals, just audio.

  “Can you see where the fighting is taking place?” questioned Arnav.

  “Negative, I need to move up further.”

  Arnav Malik used hand signals to direct the entire squad to where they could see what was happening. The area opened up before them into a huge cavern at least thirty-five meters high and two hundred meters across. Huge mining MEKS with gigantic fusion cutters and drill-bit boring heads were parked in neat rows in front of them. There were at least four of the giant robotic drilling machines – but they were inactive and still. Modular prefabricated living containers were also located in the cavern and were stacked together five units high. A series of ramps and stairs led to each level. At the other end of the cavern were two large rough hewn mining tunnels twenty meters wide and ten meters tall. Each tunnel angled away from one another at sixty degrees of divergence. At the base of each tunnel several dozen Alliance soldiers together with a few scattered Vortex mercenaries were firing into an onrushing mass of sentients that had charged out from the depths of the mine. Something is definitely wrong with this picture, thought Malik.

  “Holy shit, we’ve stumbled into a warzone!” Isabella shouted.

  “There must be thousands of them!” roared Ted Garcia. As they watched, a hundred or so Alliance and Vortex soldiers were swallowed up by the rush of sentients. Using helmet optics, Arnav zoomed in to get a closer look. All of the people attacking from the tunnel looked the same as the dead man they’d found in the elevator – covered in gray scales and with distorted bulging bug-like eyes. Lieutenant Commander Malik had to make a snap decision.

  “We’re getting the hell out of here! Dulac, check that Valdren scanner one more time and take a reading!”

  As Isabella shouldered her assault rifle she detached her Valdren scanner from her waist and began using it; holding it in two hands and quickly turning it in an arc in front of her. At that moment she heard a noise above and to the left of her position. Startled, the squad looked in that direction and saw at least five of the human creatures moving head down against the raw rock face of the wall. They were descending like insects…clinging to the surface of the rough hewn wall. One of them leaped straight onto Isabella, a distance of eight meters and knocked her down. The Valdren tracking device she had been holding was sent skidding and fell off the edge of the platform
with a clatter. Garcia, the closest soldier to her position, reached down to pull the thing off of her – as he did so it turned its head in a way that was impossible for humans and made a hiss followed by an inhuman clacking noise.

  “What the fuck! Man, these things aren’t human!” Garcia was disgusted as he attempted to pull the creature off her…it was much stronger than it looked. Isabella was being crushed by the thing and she struggled to break its grip.

  “Get it off me! Get it off!” shouted Dulac, struggling to break free as it had pinned her against the metallic grating of the platform. The thing was regurgitating volumes of smoking vomitous chunks on her combat suit. Smoke arose where it touched her armor.

  “Open fire!” Arnav Malik began shooting the things crawling on the wall with his gauss assault rifle hitting once, twice…then a third time. As each creature was hit by flechette rounds it would fall off the wall down below the platform fifteen meters to the floor of the cavern. By Malik’s command the entire squad opened up, firing full automatic bursts at the onrushing creatures. Arnav glanced back at the open cavern and saw the horde had overwhelmed the Alliance soldiers. The creatures now fanned out and were coming their way running with a strange loping stride that looked freakish to Arnav’s senses. With the immediate threat of the wall climbing creatures eliminated, Malik shouldered his weapon and helped Garcia. He pulled out his combat knife and began stabbing the creature in the arm to try to get it to release Isabella. He didn’t want to chance blowing it away with his assault rifle or pistol since it was intertwined with her. He had cut the hand joint so badly he severed it. The hand of the creature hung from the stump of its wrist with black blood oozing from the knife wounds. With a short sharp hiss the creature finally let go of Sergeant Dulac and Garcia hurled it away and to the floor. Jessica Taylor finished it off with a quick burst from her assault rifle.

  “Back the way we came – haul ass!” Arnav ordered over his comm link. Firing enfilade against the creatures as soon they came at right angles to their position, the squad managed to drop twenty… but hundreds more kept coming. Private Ryan Blake and Wei Zhang each hurled M120 fragmentation grenades into their midst – the explosions blew a dozen tightly packed and swarming creatures into the air, ripping arms and legs from torsos. The blast wave rocked the soldiers and partially collapsed the metal platform where the grenades had landed. Retreating back into the tunnel Arnav kept trying to raise Arneson.

  “Starlifter, come in. This is Omega. We are in need of immediate evac at entry point coordinates. Do you copy?” His entire squad was two kilometers below the surface and the radio signal was being blocked by trillions of tons of rock.

  “Run for the elevator!” shouted Arnav. He waited as everyone in his crew ran past him. Creatures swarmed up the one remaining platform ramp as others climbed the mangled and blasted remains on the other end. The things were only meters away from him when Arnav began running back through the long corridor to the elevator. Sprinting as fast as he could while encumbered by his heavy durasteel plated combat armor, Arnav finally made it to the elevator car. His entire strike team was waiting for him. The sounds of heavy breathing came through his helmet link. As the elevator doors began closing, four gray scaled hands attempted to keep them from shutting.

  “Garcia, get these doors shut!” Arnav shouted as he leveled his assault rifle at point blank range and pulled the trigger, firing repeatedly. The computer voice from the elevator soothingly called out in a feminine human voice from hidden speakers.

  “Elevator doors are ajar. Please keep hands and feet from the entrance. Thank you.”

  The creature collapsed in a heap. Isabella Dulac’s armor continued to smoke from where the creature had vomited on her. Trygve Fasjovik fired his assault rifle at the second creature holding the doors apart and blew him back out. The elevator car doors finally shut as Matthew Sekibo and Ichiro Tokushima pushed on them. One of the creature’s arms lay twitching on the floor of the elevator. As Arnav Malik punched the shattered controls – the elevator began rising.

  “Isabella – get out of that armor now!” yelled Ryan Blake. Wei Zhang began to help Dulac to remove the armor, unbuckling the connections holding the rigid breastplate in place. Removing the final clamp that held the armor in place, he tossed the smoldering breastplate to the floor. Holes began appearing on the inside of the breastplate.

  “It’s ok, it’s off now,” said Zhang. Isabella rested with her hands on her knees, bent over as she gulped in air. She was wearing a thin polyweave under-shirt and began looking for signs it had been penetrated. Garcia had a medi-kit in his hands and began to look for wounds. He found nothing; her skin was unblemished and untouched.

  “That stuff melted right though durasteel armor plating!” exclaimed Andre Jackson. He was looking over his armor to see if any of the vomitous goo had splashed onto him.

  “Just think what it would have done to her flesh if we hadn’t taken her breastplate off…” said Jessica Taylor with an ashen look on her face.

  “Anyone else hit?” asked Matt Sekibo. The tall man exuded a calm commanding presence though he seldom spoke.

  “Starlifter, are you receiving? This is Omega squad. We are in need of immediate evac at entry point coordinates. Do you copy?” Arnav tried again to reach Arneson. The emergency elevator was roughly half way back to the top level – in another few minutes it would arrive.

  “Omega, this is Starlifter, I’m reading you. What’s your situation, over?” Kyle Arneson’s static filled voice came through their link as his face displayed on their HUD’s. Arnav breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Starlifter, we require pickup from prior drop-off coordinates. Over.”

  “Omega, roger that. I can be there in forty-five minutes if I kick in the afterburners! I’m doing so now - Starlifter out.”

  “Jessica, can you move?” asked Arnav sincerely. He was worried she had suffered internal injuries. She glanced his way with a worried expression.

  “Yes… I can walk anyway. LC…those things – they used to be human, didn’t they?” She was holding her midriff with her left hand and looked vulnerable without her breastplate armor.

  “I don’t know.” He glanced at the arm lying on the elevator floor. “Garcia, pick up that arm. I want Doctor Xinhao to examine it when we return to the Sparta.” The elevator arrived at the top most level, back where they had started from, with a soft chime. The doors began to open. Ted Garcia picked up the arm and looked at it with disgust.

  “I have to carry this arm the whole way back?” His face betrayed his emotions.

  “Well, at least I don’t want you carrying the whole damn body back,” replied Malik half in jest. “Squad, move out. We’re heading back the way we came. Back to the emergency airlock double time. Anyone see those creatures, blast them to hell.” The combat team moved at a sprint, taking the same path they had used to get to the elevator. It wasn’t long before they came to the airlock.

  “We set up our defenses here. Now we just have to wait for Arneson. Jackson, Blake - set up your bipod gauss rifles five meters from the airlock entrance. Zhang, Barton, Tokushima – take all of the M120’s we have left and put them down the tunnel at fifteen, twenty-five and thirty-five meters. We’ll remote detonate if any of those things come down the tunnel. Fasjovik…launch a drone and position it at one hundred meters distant and keep watching its feed. We have one chance to get this right – everyone get to it!” He looked over his crew as they busied their defenses. He saw Jessica doing nothing.

  “Dulac! Get your ass in gear! There are emergency suits in that airlock – get in there and put one on. Did you forget about the outside atmosphere?” Isabella Dulac snapped out of a haze, looked at her commanding officer and briskly set to work cycling through the airlock. After opening the lockers holding the incident suits, she found there were ten suits in all, with space for fifteen, though five appeared to be missing. Just as she sealed the suit, she heard the distinctive sounds of an M120 grenade exploding. She quickly
took up her assault rifle and exited the airlock back where the squad had made their stand. Having abandoned her combat suit, she couldn’t listen in to the encrypted link frequencies her team-mates were communicating on. Moreover, she had lost her helmet HUD and ability to see through smoke and darkness. Figures were stirring in the distance. More explosions from M120’s partially deafened her and the shockwave knocked her to her knees. Looking up, she saw four of the creatures shambling towards her. Before she could fire, they were cut down by the combined fire from Privates Jackson and Blake with their bipod mounted heavy assault gauss rifles. She would have to hold her fire until she had a clear target through the drifting smoke.

  For fifteen minutes the squad beat back waves of attacking creatures. So many infected were killed that the corpses piled on top of each other, partially blocking the tunnel. The creatures were still coming for them when Lieutenant Commander Malik signaled the squad to leave through the airlock. Arneson had arrived with the Starlifter.

  The last to leave the airlock was Malik, who offered covering fire so his marines could exit cleanly. When the last soldier was gone, he hit the control panel to close the inner door and cycle the outer door open. He had rigged the last two of his M120 grenades to explode on signal from his internal neural comm implant. As he settled into the co-pilots seat to the right of Arneson, he blew the airlock. A fireball was seen on the aft camera as the Starlifter sped away and towards Platinum City.

 

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