Beneath one of the disabled ships Ben squatted by the shattered engine cowling for a moment, sheltering from the sun. At the edge of his vision, something moved; as he turned, an animal net flew towards him through the air. Tollean guards ran forward and pinned him as he collapsed under the weight of the netting, then constrained his wrists with shackles, removed the mesh and marched him away.
The prisoner dealt with, Brask stood on the administration-building forecourt and caste his eyes around the compound. The capture had been all too easy.
The captive wore the black uniform of the humans who once occupied this outpost, and looked to be working on one of the ships on the tarmac when Brask and his men arrived, perhaps in an attempt to make the thing space worthy. The animal had been standing in the same spot when first detected by the flyover. Brask decided to report it to coordinator Koll upon returning to base.
The animal's face seemed familiar, but all these creatures looked the same. He was satisfied this, like the one back at the compound, was a survivor from the invasion, undiscovered until caught by the new, silent drone.
Brask ran his eyes over the surrounding structures. An early morning flyover detected only a single heat signature on the base, and he was confident the human was alone. A search of the buildings was pointless, and he wanted to escape this hellish sun and return to his cool, cosy barracks as quickly as possible. Still, Koll would ask, so he would make a quick inspection.
He ignored the corner hanger and the ordinance bunker. On Koll's orders, he had secured them months ago, and from a distance they appeared to be undisturbed. Not intending to make anything more than a cursory check, he began to walk a quick circuit of the compound.
Ten minutes later, Echo stood by the entrance gate as a cloud of dust disappeared in the direction of the town. With the aliens' attention on Ben, she had run down the reservoir track and across to the maintenance hangar to retrieve one of the laser rifles. With her newly acquired skill with the weapon, she had been positive she could deal with the soldiers, given the advantage of surprise. She was too late!
Her man was gone, again. The realization numbed her mind. How could she have been so stupid, she wondered. It was her job to keep guard while he worked.
The monsters had waltzed in and captured him much too easily, and she cursed herself for failing to prevent it. Squatting on her haunches in the roadway, she stared towards the fading dust cloud, furious at her own lack of forethought after having been so hard on her companion for the same weakness.
As the reality of the situation materialized, she thought back to what Ben had said the previous night, and a sense of resolve began to grow in her mind. She would go after her man. She needed him, and determined to rescue him or die in the process.
Until now, nothing had seemed worth endangering her life. As a child she was always been protected by her father, and she dealt with the initial attack on the colony by going into hiding and concentrating on staying alive. Before Ben's arrival, she had never needed to stand up for what she believed in, or wanted.
The idea of fighting for anything or anybody other than herself had never occurred to her before, but now she would do exactly that. As far as she knew he loved her, and she was sure she loved him. Perhaps after all, the needs of another human being could supersede one’s own safety; risking everything for Ben no longer seemed ridiculous.
For now at least, he was the most important factor of her existence, and she did not intend to lose him without a fight. Her only doubt was whether he would be dead before she reached him. It was unlikely: It seemed illogical for the aliens to capture him alive, then take him back to their base and kill him. Then again, they did not always behave logically.
On her feet once more, she ran back to the service buildings. An old, still working, military vehicle sat in one of the ruined garages. Ben had resurrected it to carry gear around the depot, and it would function well enough for her to return to the mine and rescue her man, again.
First, she checked the courier ship. Ben assured her it was space-worthy, and a quick visual inspection confirmed this. The engine pods were closed, the exterior of the vessel appearing complete and functional. In the cabin, the control console was sealed, so Echo assumed the re-wiring was finished. Not that she would know, either way.
She could not operate a spacecraft, but, having watched Ben in the past, she knew how to mimic his actions to power up the console. A few flicks of the array of switches on the overhead lit up the instrumentation. Fuel readouts showed the hydrogen tanks full, the reactor functioning and the ship's battery banks at maximum charge.
After several minutes attempting to decipher the mass of data on the screen, she decided the life support and computer systems were all functional. With no sure way of knowing, she trusted Ben. If he said they worked, they did.
Echo opened the hangar doors. The ship sat inside, ready to roll out under power at a moments notice. “Now all you have to do is take off,” she said. “But not yet.”
Over the next few hours, she prepared the old vehicle and loaded the recharged laser weapons and the crate of explosive mines from the ordinance store. When she climbed aboard and turned the ignition key, the sun was already low over the surrounding hills.
That the rusted old machine could travel the coastal track unscathed was doubtful, but Echo determined to keep going as long as she could before abandoning it. The journey involved driving without lights, but with both moons up, and one of them full, she hoped the light would be adequate if she took care.
“Ok, bastards,” she cursed under her breath. “Prepare yourselves. Here I come!”
Chapter 13
Echo scrambled up the embankment behind the maintenance hangar at the mine airstrip, and peered into the growing gloom.
After a long, terrifying drive the previous night, she had arrived in the early hours of the morning. Familiar with the state of the road and its worst sections from travelling the same route several times in the past, she reached her destination without serious incident, and hid the vehicle in the dunes below the settlement. Through the day, she hid in one of the houses, intending to carry out the rescue under the cover of darkness. As nighttime fell once more she approached the airfield through the forest.
The plan to save Ben relied heavily on a bag of 'daisy-chain' mines. In the late afternoon she rigged some of the town buildings with charges, a simple distraction to lure as many guards as possible away from the base. The timers would trigger once she was inside the compound, and she prayed the explosions would draw enough of the monsters away to make her task easier.
The tollean ship and aircraft stood on the tarmac ahead. Echo skirted around the edge until level with the parked machines, keeping to the shadows to avoid detection. The larger spaceship sat apart, with the two smaller scouts closer to the administration office.
Most of the field lay in darkness or part shadow, with the same single light bulb, high on a pole, the sole illumination of the area. Crouching by a nearby drum, she raised her crossbow and aimed up at the light. The laser rifle slung on her back and the pistol on her hip were both more accurate, but the flash would raise the attention of the monsters.
The arrow flew true, shattering the bulb. Echo hunched down behind the drum and waited, expecting someone would come to check and with luck, decide it had blown of its own accord. The fixture could not be repaired without a hydraulic platform, and hopefully the guards would leave the work until morning.
A solitary alien stepped from the office and strolled up to the lamp pole, flashed a torch at the shattered glass on the ground, and up at the remains of the broken fitting. He turned and shouted unintelligible words back towards the building as he swept his light in an arc around the immediate vicinity.
Echo held her breath as the beam washed briefly over the spot where the spent arrow lay; the shaft went unseen. Satisfied all was in order the alien returned to his refuge, closing the door behind as he entered.
Score one for me, she th
ought, creeping through the night towards the spacecraft. According to Ben, this ship carried a crew of seven, who in all likelihood would go straight to their posts in an emergency, ready to lift off if necessary. Human crews did that, so perhaps the aliens operated in a similar manner.
Minutes later, several 'daisy chain' mines sat on the undercarriage, hidden in the landing gear bays, their radio triggers dialled to the first number on the control unit. Echo slipped the transmitter into a pocket of her shorts and moved on. Not long after, each of the two scout cars contained a charge inside the engine cowling behind the cab, set to the second frequency.
“Ok,” she said, stealing across the darkened tarmac. “Your turn, bastards”.
Other than the hangars and maintenance sheds, all the structures on the airfield and in the mine yard were 'prefabs', standing above the ground on steel supports. Echo crawled under the office block and secured a trio of mines, set to the same frequency as the spaceship, to the central pillars.
At the crew barracks, she repeated the process, listening to the sounds of footsteps overhead as she worked. Enjoy while you can, she thought, as she scrambled out and vanished into the darkness.
The huge drainage pond, overflowing with years of accumulated rainfall runoff, sat at the back of the strip. A high chain wire fence separated the water from the airfield, and at one point, two massive pipelines ran through a deep trench beneath the barrier. The gap between the twin pipes was sufficient for a body to squeeze through, providing easy access to the compound. Ben took this route during his initial escape; now Echo used it to enter.
Twenty-three separate buildings filled the administration area, mostly storage sheds, workshops, or garages. Of the remainder, the largest were the old assay laboratory, now converted into a research facility by the Tolleani, and the canteen and utilities blocks, both of which now served as barracks.
Echo estimated the number of guards at sixteen, not including the ones already dead at her and Ben's hands. With seven crewmembers from the ship, three scientists and the commandant, she counted twenty-seven aliens in total that might require her attention.
Typical of the Tolleani, few were in sight. A closed sentry box by the exit to the town held one, with a second in a similar post at the gate to the airstrip. A third stood on the veranda of the laboratory, uncomfortable with his forced exposure to an environment he detested.
At the edge of the apron, Echo crouched in shadow, watching and waiting. Twenty-three of the small but powerful 'daisy chain' mines remained in her knapsack from the original thirty-four, and most of these she reserved for the barracks and the lab.
The researchers were still at work, light emanating from the single window of her primary target, the laboratory. The only other buildings of interest to her were the commandant's house, the barracks, the antennae shack and the ordinance store nearer the mine.
Confident no more of the enemy were active in the vicinity, she crept over to the store and fixed a single charge to the rear wall, hoping it would suffice to set off anything inside. Underneath the aerial festooned building Ben blamed for his capture, she fitted several more.
The administration complex was better lit than the airfield. A floodlight sat outside each structure, several of them illuminating the central concourse. Echo approached with extra care, crawling safe from detection beneath the prefabricated structures.
Under the barracks, she attached a string of 'daisy chains' to the floor beams, before moving across to the canteen to repeat the process, setting all the mines in the compound to the third frequency on the radio trigger. The charges would be set off in a strict order to cover her retreat, and these would be the first. The town exploding in flames should cause at least some of the guards to investigate, but she did not intend to take chances.
Using the buildings as cover, she crept up to the airstrip gate. In the security post, the alien guard was half-asleep. From behind a stack of pallets, Echo lobbed gravel at the side of the sentry box to draw him out: she needed this route unguarded for the escape.
Curious to see what was going on outside, the guard opened the door and stepped through, stopping short as a crossbow bolt lodged in his neck. Retrieving the shaft, Echo dragged the body back inside and closed the door to hide it from immediate discovery. One down, she thought, vanishing between the near buildings.
The settlement was set to burn in half an hour, giving her time to string a few mines beneath the commandant’s house. Assuming he would leave the town to his subordinates, she hoped he would meet his end in the same place her father had died.
Last on Echo's list of targets was the laboratory. After their initial capture, Ben and his crew had been confined in a cage inside, and it was logical he would be there again, assuming he still lived.
The solitary guard still stood uncomfortably at the front. Echo did not want to eliminate him yet, for fear of raising an alarm, so rigging the structure with mines would be more difficult. For now, it would suffice to determine Ben's exact location.
A pile of containers lay at the side of the building. As quietly as possible, and mindful of the guard’s presence just around the corner of the building on the veranda, she positioned a small crate near the only window and climbed up.
The interior was a single open space, at the center of which squatted a massive, cylindrical object she took to be the explosive device mentioned by Ben. Only one alien occupied the room, sitting at a desk with his eyes glued to a computer screen. In the corner behind him, Ben sat in a steel-bar cage, the door of which appeared to be fitted with a solid, built in lock.
Damn, Echo swore. Where there's a lock, there must be a key.
Climbing down from her perch, she retreated to a dark corner with a view of the entrance to the lab. The guard maintained his position, unaware of her presence. Echo settled to wait for the first instalment of her impending attack.
It amazed her how little attention the aliens paid to their surroundings. She wondered how these creatures could be winning the war, but then realised the guards in this base might not be the best the Tollean Empire had to offer. Ben believed the Tolleani viewed humans in the same way men saw ants, which Echo now knew to be small hive insects. “How much attention do we give to ants, unless they are bothering us?” he had asked.
The minutes dragged into an eternity as she sat hidden beside an old mine bucket, eyes on the guard. The veranda was well within bowshot, and from her position, she also had a clear line of sight to the front of the commandant’s residence and the guard's quarters.
The nightly rain began, a light drizzle turning the ground to mud but shielding her from detection as the drops pounded a steady drum roll on the metal roofs of the buildings.
Only metres away, the Tolleani stepped back and leaned against the wall of the building, mentally adding rain to his litany of miseries, waiting for the next half hour to pass until his duty shift ended.
Without warning, loud eruptions shattered his contemplation, lighting up the darkness beyond the perimeter fence as flames roared skyward from the center of the old town.
Alerted by the explosions, soldiers flooded on to the concourse. From her vantage point, Echo watched the commandant form ten of his men into a squad, then order one to fetch a vehicle. The old, tinder dry buildings burned like a beacon in the night as the truck rolled through the gate and along the road to the settlement.
Eleven, she thought. Brilliant! That left only five guards remaining, plus three scientists and the space crew. The response was beyond her best hopes, with almost all the soldiers departing and only a handful remaining in the compound. The commandant departed with his men; it was a shame, she thought, as she would have liked a shot at him.
The guard on the laboratory veranda stood motionless, watching his remaining fellows take up positions inside the gate, and cursing at the knowledge his shift would be much longer than expected.
Echo hesitated to shoot him in the back: that was how she took down the alien at the airstrip we
eks ago, but she did not feel sufficiently hard-bitten to repeat the exercise without reservation. The problem dissolved as the tollean moved to return to his position against the wall, spotting her in the shadows as he turned. His final impression was of a young human woman standing beside a nearby mine bucket, pointing a strange device the like of which he had never seen before. He was not aware of the approaching crossbow bolt until it hit him in the center of his forehead.
Echo followed the bolt to the lab entrance, slammed open the door and rushed in. Adrenaline, not unlike she had experienced during the attack on the cabin, flooded through her body, spurring her on to actions she would never have risked before.
The sole alien occupant of the room reacted instantly, leaping from his seat. Recognising her as human and not tollean, he launched himself not at her, nor to cover, but towards a massive open safe not far across the room. Before he could slam it shut, a blast from Echo's laser pistol dropped him to the floor. Within the cage in the corner of the room, Ben jumped to his feet and ran to the bars.
“Over here. Am I glad to see you!”
Echo leaped towards the cage. “Keys? Where are they?”
“In the desk ... top drawer, left side,” Seconds later, she flung the door open, and launched herself into Ben's arms.
“You're alive! I thought they might have done something to you. What about your crew?”
“Gone ... on the cruiser weeks ago, I guess. What were those explosions?”
“I set fire to the town. Half of the monsters jumped on a truck and went down to check it out. This compound is mined too.”
“You did that? Brilliant! They'll be back as soon as they realise no one is down there. What happened to the one outside?”
“Dead!”
“Well done! You better drag him inside. If they spot the body we'll be trapped.”
“We have to leave ... now!”
“No. I have things to do first. Get the guard ... please?”
Solitude's End Page 11