by Richard Fox
“I’m taking a team to flank them,” Hale told Marie as he landed.
Jerry came off the ladder a second later, stepping around his father, clearing the way for Henderson to come down. He put his hand on the hatch and turned to his father. “You know this is going to put us behind their lines.”
“That’s the idea.”
“Who was that?” Marie asked. “Is that Jerry?”
Hale grimaced, giving his son a worried look.
“Jerry Francois Hale, I swear to God, you get the hell out of there! You’re too young to—Ken! I can’t believe you’ve got our son with you.”
“Mom!” Jerry interrupted. “It wasn’t Dad. He didn’t have anything to do with it. I got the armor and stuff on my own. I can do this. I can fight.”
“You will do no such thing, young m—”
“Marie, we don’t have time for this,” Hale said. “Send a team to secure the data cores. Pull them out, get them off the ship, whatever you have to do. We can’t lose that tech. If we can’t hold Terra Nova, then the Crucible is our only way back to Earth.”
Hale terminated the link, then pushed open the hatch, revealing a long maintenance corridor. “This will take us to another access shaft that will bring us up behind their lines. If we can flank them, hopefully we can knock them off-balance enough to overtake them.”
They were too tall in their powered armor and had to bend over as they made their way to the far end. Hale took the lead, the weight of the carbine in his hand and adrenaline singing through his veins making him feel like a much younger man.
“You don’t think they’ll be ready for something like that?” Jerry asked.
Hale paused outside another hatch, armored gauntlet on the handle. “If these alien doughboys are anything like the ones I fought with during the Ember War, I’d bet not. They weren’t known for improvising on the battlefield.”
Hale opened the hatch and locked his carbine onto his back, then started climbing the ladder. When he was about halfway up, the hatch above him opened and a Netherguard looked down at him.
“Ah, shit,” Hale muttered, reaching for his carbine.
The alien jumped into the shaft, grabbing the ladder, and slid toward Hale. Forgetting the rifle, Hale swung around the ladder, reaching the other side as the alien dropped into the space he’d just occupied. It roared, reaching around the ladder for him.
Hale punched through the ladder rungs, connecting with the alien’s pelvis. The powerful blow knocked the alien free and sent it crashing into the shaft’s wall. It screamed as it fell, landing at the base of the ladder with a crunch.
A second doughboy appeared and dropped out of the hatch, not even bothering to grab hold of the ladder. Hale cursed but didn’t have enough time to dodge the attack. The doughboy crashed into him, knocking him back, his hands losing their grip on the ladder. He felt weightless for a moment, then a jarring pain shot through his leg as his foot caught on something, jerking him to a stop.
The alien continued to the deck, landing on its back next to its companion. Henderson shouted, firing off several rounds into the upper hatch.
Hale pulled himself upright as a third alien tried to enter the shaft. A barrage of gunshots echoed up the shaft and the alien jerked as several bullets slammed home. It landed on the deck, its top half hanging out into the open shaft. Blood dripped down and spattered against Hale’s helmet.
“Cover me!” Hale shouted, scrambling upward.
As he neared the hatch, he removed a grenade from a pouch on his chest and pulled the safety pin. He let the arming level fly, then counted to three, letting some time cook off before heaving it through the opening.
The explosion sent a wave of dust and debris into the shaft, overpressure from the blast knocking the body through the hatch. Hale cursed, swinging to the side to avoid the falling corpse.
“Let’s go!” Hale called down to his men, pulling his carbine and climbing through the hatch. He rolled onto the deck, coming up to a knee, weapon up and looking for targets.
Three Netherguard lay dead on the floor. One was missing its entire lower half, while another was missing only an arm. The third was a small pile of flesh and armor in the center of the blast marks where the grenade had detonated.
A fourth was crawling away from the devastation, trailing green blood from a severed leg. Hale took aim and fired, the round slamming into the back of the alien’s skull, dropping it to the deck.
Jerry and Henderson appeared a second later, joining Hale next to a stack of cargo crates. Across the bay, another group of aliens were hunkered down behind a barricade, exchanging fire with the ship’s militia on the other side of some partially opened doors, either unaware or unconcerned that their comrades had been killed.
Henderson raised his gauss carbine to fire, but Hale put a hand on the barrel, shaking his head. “No, wait. They’re focused on the militia; we need to get to the omnium.” He nodded to the jagged hole bored out of the bay’s wall. “I’ll take point. Jerry, you follow. Henderson, you cover us. Hold this position; if it looks like the militia is getting overrun, you can engage, otherwise, keep out of sight. Jerry, you ready?”
Jerry didn’t answer. He was staring at the mess of alien corpses littering the deck around them. Hale put a hand on his son’s shoulder. “Jerry?”
Turning away from the bodies, Hale could see his son’s face had gone slightly green. “You okay?”
Jerry swallowed hard, then nodded. “Yeah. I’m okay.”
“Good,” Hale said. “Cause we’re not done yet.”
Hale glanced back at the group of doughboys across the bay, making sure their attention was still focused on the militia, then dashed for the breach. When he reached the hole, he checked again, then waved his son forward.
The secure bay beyond was a maze of large cargo containers, all taller than either man, even in powered armor. Hale led the way through the maze, carbine up, ready to mow down anything in his path.
As they neared the center of the bay, Hale took another corner, coming face to face with three alien doughboys. Without thinking, he lashed out with a gauntleted fist, connecting hard with the alien’s torso, knocking it off its feet. The other two reacted slowly to his attack. He twisted sideways as one made a grab for him, twitching its wrist as he moved. A ten-inch blade snapped from its housing on Hale’s forearm as he threw an upper cut, driving the blade deep into the alien’s chin.
The third alien leveled a rifle at Hale and fired. The bullet whacked against Hale’s torso and bounced off the armor, but the hit knocked Hale back. Hale went to a knee, his knife arm to one side, the blade still stuck in the doughboy’s skull. He groaned and dropped to a knee, feeling like he’d been hit by a truck. His diaphragm spasmed, refusing to help him breathe. Before he could get to his feet, the Netherguard lunged for him, hands reaching for his throat. Hale knocked the hands away, then jabbed his elbow into the doughboy’s sternum. The muscles built into his armor turned the hit into a piston strike and the Netherguard jerked forward. Hale grabbed it by the shoulder and slammed his helmet into the monster’s ugly face.
It grunted as green blood smeared across Hale’s visor. He caught a glimpse of Jerry stepping up behind the alien, his rifle raised like a club. Jerry brought the rifle down hard, striking the alien just below the shoulders. It snarled and swung an arm back, knocking Jerry to the ground.
Hale finally got his blade free from the Netherguard’s skull and planted the soles of his boots against the container behind him, then activated his anti-grav thrusters. He launched himself forward and speared the doughboy. They crashed into another container and Hale’s knife pinned his foe against the metal siding.
The alien twitched and then hung still, blood pouring from its face, down Hale’s arm. He pulled the blade free and the alien corpse fell to the deck.
Jerry appeared next to him. “Holy shit.”
“Language,” Hale said, retracting his blade. “You know your weapon shoots bullets, right?” He lo
oked down at the dent in his own armor and felt the beginning of a very ugly welt beneath the impact site.
“I didn’t…I mean…” Jerry looked down at his feet.
“Shoot to kill, son. This isn’t a schoolyard fight.”
They continued on, stopping where two rows of containers ended, the walkway opening to a large open bay. A team of doughboys unloaded crates of omnium from one of the containers, stacking them next to a seven-foot hole cut from the Spirit’s outer hull. A small tube connected the Spirit to one of the alien craft attached to his ship’s hull. Several more Netherguard carried the crates from the stacks outside the breach to their ship.
An alien wearing ornate white armor, strikingly different from the dark matte armor of the other doughboys they’d encountered so far, watched over the operation. A small cluster of antennas extended out from the top of its ivory-colored skull.
“That must be their commander,” Hale said.
“What’s that?” Jerry asked, pointing to a waist-high device sitting on the deck next to the alien commander. Several wires and cables ran out from it to the wall of the bay where metal couplings had been jammed into the bulkhead.
“They cut into the hard lines,” Hale said. “That’s why we don’t have any control over the ship in here. We take that out and our job gets a lot easier.” He pulled a grenade from his pouch and removed the pin. “Listen, I’ll—”
Loud shouting from the maze of containers behind them pulled Hale’s attention away from the breach point. Gunshots broke out and Hale felt a round slam into his back, spinning him around and out into the open bay. Another round connected with his chest, the impact knocking him to the ground. He hit hard, losing his grip on the grenade. It rolled across the deck, stopping mere feet away from his head.
“Dad!” Jerry leapt to his feet, charging forward.
“Jerry, no!”
Jerry jumped over his father and kicked the grenade, sending it flying through the air toward the hole in the hull. The commander turned as the grenade sailed past him, bouncing on the deck toward the far wall. The workers stopped as their commander shouted a warning, just as the grenade exploded.
The commander’s body was torn apart and several of the workers went flying. Shrapnel from the grenade ripped through the boarding tunnel and the Spirit’s atmosphere rushed through the gaps. Hale watched as the tube disintegrated.
The cargo bay transformed into a maelstrom. Air howled as it rushed past Hale, taking bodies and debris from the explosion into the void.
Hale twisted on his back just in time to see Jerry’s feet get pulled out from under him. He crashed to the deck and scrambled to find a handhold as he was blown toward open space. Hale pushed off the deck, flashing his boots to give him a boost of speed. He caught Jerry as the torrent of air lifted him off the deck.
“Hang on!”
Hale twisted, brought his boots down, and activated the magnetic clamps. The boots pulled both men to the deck, where they slid several feet before the clamps finally stopped them, mere feet from the breach.
An emergency forcefield flared to life, filling the gaping hole in the bulkhead. The void’s pull on them vanished and an eerie silence fell over the bay.
Hale sat up and looked through the breach. The assault craft tumbled away, trailing the boarding tube like a streamer. Despite the alien bodies and wrecked ship twisting and spinning away from the Spirit, it appeared strangely calm out there.
After watching the devastation for another moment, Hale turned to his son. “I thought I taught you how to use these things.” He kicked one of Jerry’s boots.
Jerry flipped his visor up, taking quick, short breaths. “You did… it was never like this at Scouts.”
“Training never is.”
Hale got to his feet. The Netherguard device used to override the ship’s controls was a smoking mess, but still connected to the Spirit’s bulkhead and functioning. Two of the cables were severed, bleeding sparks.
Jerry put his hands on his hips.
“We should get a tech or a xenolinguist to—”
Hale ripped the rest of the cables free, ignoring the spikes of pain as electricity arced up and down his arms. Lights on the device flickered for a moment, then faded all together.
Hale’s IR buzz. “Ken?” Marie said. “Ken, I don’t know what happened, but their intrusion into the cores just went down and we’re getting several reports of an explosion in Bay 2. Are you okay? Where’s Jerry?”
“We’re fine. Finish securing the ship’s core. They’re not wearing void suits. If you have system access again, vent every deck those bastards are on.”
“I can’t,” Marie said. “Whatever they used to override our control systems locked out the emergency airlocks. We start venting and we’ll start running out of air pretty quick.”
“How many are left?”
“I’m getting reports of fighting in the manufactory decks, but a lot of groups have already been pushed back.”
“Okay,” Hale said. “I’m on my way.”
Chapter 15
When the chimes sounded signaling shift change, Carson and her two Pathfinders followed the Danielle woman out of the work area. She grimaced at every step, even with two of her co-workers helping her along. She looked back over her shoulder several times during the journey through the mountain, as if to reassure herself that Carson was still there, despite not being able to see the team.
The human prisoners kept to themselves, only rarely speaking to one another, and always with low voices and heads down. The Pathfinders followed just behind the crowd, pushing closer to the prisoners as they passed Netherguard patrols, which had seemed to increase now that they’d captured her team.
Had the others cracked and betrayed them, telling the Netherguards there were more of them in the mountain? Carson banished the thought. No Pathfinder would ever give up his team; that principle was drilled into them from day one of selection.
Sacrifice before dishonor.
Ten minutes later, Danielle turned into a long corridor lined with dark alcoves cut into the rock on either side. Each alcove had heavy metal cell bars, a single small photocell, furnished with a single toilet, and several mats along the wall that served as beds. The women filed into the back and went to their knees. A Netherguard did a head count and slammed the door shut.
Carson looked over the bars: simple wrought iron on hinges bolted into the rocks. She and her Pathfinders could break out easily enough, their suits strong enough to bend the bars.
Instead of dropping her cloak right away, Carson decided to wait, watching to see how the situation progressed. Several people arrived to help the woman and bring her food and water. To Carson’s surprise, the woman from the hydroponic farm arrived a couple minutes later, carrying a small case.
“Chief,” Moretti said. “I need to finish treating her.”
Carson nodded. “Wait for my signal.”
Carson moved slowly along the wall and stopped a few feet from Olivia and Danielle.
“We’re here,” Carson said. “There any cameras? Monitoring?”
Both women’s eyes went wide. Olivia turned to the sound of the voice, eyes darting around through the empty space.
“See,” Olivia said to Danielle. “I told you I wasn’t crazy.”
Danielle raised a hand and called out to the rest of the women in the cell, “Screen.”
The prisoners went to the bars. One dug out a small mirror from the dirt floor and used it to look down the hallways.
Danielle touched the farmer’s arm. “Tell the girls they’re about to get a shock, but to keep their cool.”
Olivia nodded and moved away.
“Don’t suppose you brought something to eat.” Danielle nudged a plate of cold potatoes away from her. “Potatoes, onions, and avocado oil for years. Sometimes it’s onions and potatoes and chunks of avocado on holidays.”
“I’ve got some nutrient paste,” Carson said.
“Oh…yum.” Danielle nod
ded at Olivia. “We’re good.”
Carson, Moretti, and Birch all deactivated their cloaks. Those gathered gasped; more than one teared up.
Carson held up her hands. “Please, I know you’re anxious for answers. I’m here to get you all home. Stay patient.”
Moretti approached, his medical kit already out. He cut off Danielle’s pants leg and ran his gauntlet over an ugly bruise that covered her calf. The medic hit her neck with another hypospray and she relaxed a few seconds later, her shoulders dropping slightly.
“I thought I’d imagined you in the ‘ponics room,” Olivia said. “But you’re really here.” How many ships did you bring? We won the war against the Xaros? You must have…you’re here.”
Carson frowned, surprised by the woman’s question. The first colony had left Earth soon after the loss of an entire fleet in deep space in a battle against an armada of the genocidal alien’s drones. The enemy force en route to Earth was enormous, but humanity managed a narrow victory against the second Xaros invasion, one that left the system’s defenses shattered.
“The Xaros aren’t the issue here, Olivia,” Carson said.
“But how did we win?” Olivia’s bottom lip quivered. “We could have stayed…”
“Providence,” Birch said. “Providence and sacrifice.”
Danielle sat up. “You have a ship? Where is it? You need to blow the hell out of this god-forsaken mountain.”
“I’m all for it,” Carson said, “soon as I get everyone out.” She looked to the cell door and did some quick math as to how many colonists were in those cells.
“I feel a ‘but’ coming.” Danielle winced as Moretti gave her ankle a squeeze.
“We don’t have any ships of the line. The Enduring Spirit is a colonial transport, built to make a jump and coast into planetary orbit with as many people and as much equipment as she can carry. None of our ships are armed.”
“But they sent Pathfinders?” Danielle asked.
“We thought our job here would be a lot more search and rescue for downed shuttles, lost hikers, that sort of thing,” Carson said. “This is search and rescue on a different scale.”