“Where are you right now, Liz?” Gina said heading for the shaft. “You up top?”
“No, I’m at the bottom of the stairwell. We’re just about to break into the clear.”
“Good. I’m coming down. I need you to keep everyone there with you. No exceptions.”
“Whatever for?” Liz said, sounding puzzled.
“I’ll explain when I get there. While you wait, start thinking about a way to make yourselves more comfortable down there.”
“What’s wrong? Has something happened?”
“You might say,” Gina agreed as she reached the crane and ordered the driver to lower her down in the bucket. “I’m coming down now. Meet me.”
“All right, but we’re so close to breaking through.”
“Don’t stop the work. You might need to stay down there a while and you’ll need the space.”
“But... what the hell has happened?”
“I’m nearly down. I’ll fill you in.”
Liz was waiting for her when the bucket stopped at the level where the work was ongoing. They had dug out a hundred and thirty feet or more of rubble and Gina could see what Liz meant about breaking through. There wasn’t much stopping them advancing to the next landing. Liz offered a hand to help steady her, but she didn’t need the help. She bent her knees and then straightened explosively, bouncing out of the bucket as if her legs had turned into springs. Liz applauded.
“Nice landing,” Liz said. “What’s the urgency?”
Gina explained. Liz stopped smiling and her face turned grim. She looked back toward her people still working unaware that anything was wrong, and then back to Gina.
“We can’t stay down here—”
“You have to!”
“Hear me out,” Liz said in a placating voice. “We can’t stay down here without supplies from the camp. Eighteen hours from now, our suits will run out of power and air.”
Shit. She had just been thinking about supplies, but she hadn’t thought about power for the suits. Food, water, air, and power; those four things above all were needed. She had to make a run to the camp.
“I’ll tell Eric,” Gina said. “We’ll get you what you need. You have eighteen hours to burrow down to somewhere you can call home for a few days. Can you tap into the emergency lighting down here for power?”
Liz nodded. “Bring me a water purifier and a way to recharge the suits, and we can last a few weeks, but how do we get home?”
“I’m working on it,” Gina said grimly. She left Liz to her work and contacted Eric to tell him what she’d said. “... Liz says she can hold out weeks with those supplies.”
“Already on it,” Eric said. I’m loading up now with most of that stuff. Didn’t think about the purifier. I’ll add it.”
“You need help?”
“Yes, but don’t come here. We can’t afford to lose us both if the raiders decide to blow away the camp. We’ll do this in shifts. I’ll let you know when to make your run.”
“Okay, Eric, be careful.”
“Careful is my middle name,” Eric said.
She snorted. “Sure it is.”
Gina climbed atop the rubble that had already filled the bucket and contacted the crane driver to hoist her up. She wanted to get back to her shuttle so that she would be ready to fly the moment Eric called. The bucket lifted clear of the shaft, and she jumped out before the crane driver could stop his lift. She raised a hand to him in thanks and pushed herself into a run.
Her APC was waiting.
When she reached the shuttle, she parked the APC in the shadow of a wrecked building. She wasn’t planning for failure, but should she be shot down, Eric could still use her APC and all it contained. She ran her pe-flight checks and waited for Eric’s call with her eyes nailed to her sensors looking for trouble. She was still looking when Eric called her.
“I’m lifting now,” Eric said. “Make your run.”
“On my way. Any sign of the bad guys?”
“Not yet. We might have to go looking for them. I’ll have to think about that. We can’t leave Liz and her people unprotected.”
Gina scowled. She knew he would order her to stay with the engineers, she just knew it, but he was right too. There were only two of them. She lifted off and flew the shuttle to the base camp, but didn’t see Eric on the way. He was flying cagey, using a different route and not one direct to alpha site. She reminded herself to do the same on the way back. She kept her altitude down, dodging terrain and using it to stay out of sight, though if the raiders remained in orbit and took their time, they could easily track her. She hoped they were too impatient for that. It was all she could do.
Hours later she landed at the base and powered down the shuttle, her eyes never straying far from the shuttle’s sensors. She grabbed her rifle before debarking. It was the first time she had thought to need it here. Better safe than dead, she muttered under her breath as she hurried toward dome three. Number three contained all their supplies and the power plant. Eric had left the anti-grav palette loader in the entrance rather than park it properly. Signs of his hurried use of it were obvious. Crates and boxes had been stacked haphazardly where he had burrowed into the stacks for a particular item. One or two had toppled and broken open. Gina shook her head at the mess, but she would be making things worse in short order she had no doubt.
She grabbed the control handle and guided the loader toward the back of the stacks. She knew where everything was. Her database had a full inventory. She parked the loader and put her rifle aside on one of the crates. Her first priority was power packs and filters for the suits. The suit PLSS used a rechargeable power pack, but they had to be removed for charging. That meant every person would need a spare. They couldn’t remove their suits to recharge them over night.
She hurried along the stacks and found the crates she needed. There were a dozen power packs to a crate. She needed three. They were heavy and unwieldy, but she managed to drag them out one at a time and muscle them back to the loader. Vipers were strong, but the crates were too bulky to get a good grip. She managed and added cartons of filters before guiding the loader back to the shuttle to unload. She soon fell into a rhythm of loading and unloading. Power, and filters, water filtration and purifiers all went into the shuttle. Next she grabbed a couple of the portable generators. She knew Liz had some on site, but didn’t doubt more would be welcome. Her eyes fell upon a big crate marked Autochef 1off—Handle with care—Fragile! This way up! and decided to get it next. She unloaded and headed back to the dome.
She struggled and cursed trying to get one corner of the crate onto the loader so she could slide the autochef on. It was really heavy and every time she pushed the crate the loader slid away. She glared at the thing and realised she needed to wedge the loader against something. She chose some of the crates to block it in and was finally able to get the huge crate balanced on the loader. She brought the anti-grav up to full and walking backwards, she guided the loader out of the dome.
The explosion at her back threw her forward, slamming her chest into the loader’s guide handle and blasting the air from her lungs. The force was so great that she folded over the handle and slammed face first into the crate. She didn’t feel the pain, or hear the loss of air pressure in the suit as her visor shattered. She didn’t know that the raider had made a lucky shot and hit her suit’s power pack in the PLSS on her back. The violent detonation and resultant damage had sent her instantly into hibernation and the little death.
Automatic shutdown cycle complete.
Activate beacon... done.
Beacon transmitting.
>_ Diagnostics: Critical spinal injury, communications failure, TacNet offline, lung capacity compromised, critical blood loss. Unit unfit for duty.
>_ IMS: Repairs in progress. Attempting lung inflation... failed. Repairs in progress.
>_ Diagnostics: Environmental health warning... atmosphere toxic, temperature -32°, lung capacity degraded. Warning... high risk of unit termi
nation. Recommend immediate hospitalisation.
>_ IMS: Repairs in progress.
>_ Diagnostics: Main power failure. Warning... high risk of unit termination. Recommend immediate hospitalisation.
>_ IMS: Resource warning. Unable to repair main power. Lung inflation complete. Lung capacity 63%. Emergency reactivation advised. Hospitalisation at earliest opportunity advised.
>_ Diagnostics: Main power failure. Warning... unit termination imminent.
Emergency reactivation approved.
Initialise reboot sequence...
Activate combat mode... done.
>_ IMS: Resource warning, unable to repair main power. Hospitalisation advised. Warning IMS failure.
Fault logged. Continue reboot sequence.
TRS... done.
Sensors... done.
Targeting... done.
Communications... failed to initialise.
Retry/Abort? >_
Retry/Abort? >_
Retry/Abort? >_
Fault logged. Continue reboot sequence...
Infonet... service not available.
TacNet... failed to initialise.
Retry/Abort? >_
Retry/Abort? >_
Retry/Abort? >_
Fault logged. Continue reboot sequence...
Initiate emergency reactivation...
Gina awoke to agony, but she didn’t scream. The burning pain in her back warranted it, my god did it, but she was in such bad shape she couldn’t scream. She was gagging on blood and the air was foul. She coughed trying to clear the blood from her lungs and that helped a little. She was shivering with cold, ice had formed on her eyelashes and her face burned with it. Frostbite was in her immediate future, she realised.
She groaned trying to think. Her internal display was awash in warnings and system failures. She shook with cold and shock. Main power failure? What the hell did that mean? Why wasn’t she dead then? She puzzled over that and realised her systems were barely running on backup power. All of them, and she didn’t have much time. Her log told the tale. She was dying. IMS was offline due to low resources, and without it she couldn’t repair main power. She needed shipboard medical or a full blown hospital, but she was shit out of luck there.
She needed her supplements, but they were in the APC, the APC she hadn’t brought with her. She frantically tried to think of something and realised how rattled she was. Dome three was barely a hundred metres away and there would be crates of what she needed in there. She had to get them. It was her only chance.
Main power failure. Warning... unit termination imminent.
“Yeah, yeah. Everyone’s a critic,” she mumbled and coughed. The burning in her throat and nose was getting worse without IMS to keep pace with the accumulating damage. She tried to rise and realised things were worse than she’d realised. “I’m dead,” she said flatly and knew it was true.
She was paralysed below the waist.
She didn’t panic. There was nothing but regret running through her thoughts for a few minutes. She managed to roll onto her back and hissed as the snow touched her burns through the suit. Her PLSS had exploded and was completely gone, as was most of her suit back there. Bare skin, burned and ruined, contacted the ice and sensation quickly fled. That was a blessing. Her thoughts began to clear and she checked her sensors. She should have done that first thing, but under the circumstances it was a miracle she was even alive let alone tracking enough to think of the tactical situation.
Her processor had brought her back online because she would have died without waking if it hadn’t. The fact she would die anyway, and in agony, didn’t matter to it. Her survival for as long as possible was all it cared about and it had been out of options. She would have died in hibernation, so it woke her. Simple logic.
Sensors... right. She had been about to check her sensors hadn’t she? She barely had power for this, but what the hell. She wanted to know what was happening. Maybe Eric was on his way. Her sensors revealed another story, and rage filled her thoughts. She actually snarled at what her sensors reported to her. Four red icons were moving around in the residential dome, and a small lander was parked next to her cargo shuttle. Her PLSS hadn’t just failed, it had been helped along. Stupid to have assumed it in the first place, and she cursed herself. One or more of those red icons had shot her in the back hitting the power pack in her PLSS.
That had to be it.
Her thoughts flashed to her rifle sitting atop the crate in dome three. She rolled onto her front and started dragging herself toward the dome. She was leaving a trail in the snow a five year old could follow, but she had no choice. Coughing and gasping at the foul crap she was forced to breathe, she dragged her useless body up the cargo ramp and into the dome. Inside, she headed for the crate with her rifle on top. It was stupid, but she felt much better with it in her hands. She was still dying, and her priority should have been supplies for her IMS, but she had ignored common sense and armed herself instead.
Main power failure. Warning... unit termination imminent.
Gina dragged herself to the stacks, and then deeper between them until she found the small cluster of crates and boxes set aside for viper use. The snakehead stencilled on the sides together with code numbers that matched those in her database for supplements, ammo, etc, advised her which ones she needed. She used the butt of her rifle to smash her way in. Cans and bottles rained down upon and around her.
Main power failure. Warning... unit termination imminent.
Propped sitting against the palettes, Gina grabbed the first can within reach. She shook it half-heartedly and coughed. She spat redly and eyed the lump on the floor. Was that a piece of lung rotted by the toxic air? Didn’t matter. She popped the top off the can and chugged her smoothie. It didn’t taste as disgusting as she expected. Maybe she was craving this crap because her body knew she needed it? Nah, probably the air had messed with her taste buds.
She grabbed a bottle this time. It contained capsules of vitamins and metal salts. They never tasted of anything because they were time lapse capsules designed to dissolve in the stomach. She didn’t think she had time for niceties. She opened the bottle and poured the contents into her mouth. She chewed and forced herself to swallow. My god that had tasted foul. She washed the foul tasting mess down with another smoothie.
Main power failure. Warning... unit termination imminent.
She chugged and chewed and chugged and chewed waiting to die or for some other sign that she wouldn’t.
>_ IMS: Repairs in progress.
Gina was chewing capsules and chugging smoothies, while watching for hostiles approaching. She didn’t notice at first when her IMS came back online, but she did notice when her processor tried to put her back in hibernation! Dumb machine. There were hostiles nearby and ready to follow her trail, and it wanted her to sleep?
No frigging way!
Computer: Abort hibernation.
Hibernation aborted. Warning, hibernation advised. Intervention logged.
Gina sighed. Her processor sounded a little pissy about her daring to intervene. She would have laughed if she didn’t hurt so much. She contemplated forcing IMS to repair her comm immediately, she really wanted to talk to Eric, but she didn’t do it. Main power had to come first. The damage to her spine had taken it out as well as her legs. Hopefully repairing one would give her back the other at the same time.
She chugged another smoothie, discarded the empty on the growing pile and opened another. Sensors warned her of company approaching, but she did nothing but watch. She needed to stay close to her supplies and repairs weren’t far enough along. She chugged two more smoothies, feeling sick now. Too much crap to digest. She raised her rifle and waited for a target.
The first man came in sloppy. He had a pistol raised, but didn’t use the available cover. There was plenty to use, he should really have known better. Her targeting reticule pulsed redly and spun on her display. She forced away a cough and put a single round down range centred
upon the visor of his helmet. He dropped instantly dead. She allowed herself a cough, and opened another bottle of pills.
>_ Diagnostics: Main power online. Critical spinal injury, communications failure, TacNet offline, lung capacity 68%. Unit unfit for duty. Hospitalisation at earliest opportunity advised.
>_ IMS: Repairs in progress.
Ha! It was working. She was out of danger, relatively speaking. If no one killed her, she would be fine given enough time for repairs. She was bloody freezing, and the air was bad, but IMS could keep pace as long as it had the resources. She was sitting on a mountain of what it needed. She was as good as fixed as long as she could hold off the bad guys.
Thinking of them seemed to draw them out. They fired at her wildly and she could do little about it. They didn’t hit her, but the crates and boxes exploded around her, raining their contents all over her. Liquids sprayed and dripped, while she tried to find a target, but they weren’t as stupid as the first one. They exposed only the barrels of their weapons. She switched to her grenade launcher and used one of the three precious HE rounds she had loaded it with. The explosion silenced the incoming fire, but she had missed them. She watched them on sensors regrouping.
A spasm seized her chest and she coughed, but she decided her breathing was much better now. The burning in the back of her throat was still present. She doubted it would quit until she could find another suit.
The shot hit her square on, dead centre in the belly. She grunted and clutched at the wound, wishing for her armour, but she couldn’t wear a suit over it. She hadn’t brought it, and neither had Eric. She returned fire without aiming. Both grenades went wild and blew one of the stacks apart. Debris flew in all directions, but the three red icons still glared balefully on her sensors. The burning boxes quickly extinguished themselves as designed, though they continued to smoulder filling the dome with smoke that streamed out the open loading doors. Anything transported through space had to be fire resistant.
Gina kept her rifle up and aimed into the smoke, though she couldn’t see a damned thing. She switched to infra, but the smouldering crates made it useless. Too many false positives. She switched back and tried zooming in. Maybe at X2 she would catch movement. Nothing. Back at X1 she watched them on sensors, and waited for their next move.
Merkiaari Wars: 03 - Operation Oracle Page 27