He turned and smiled. “Sergeant Roth! So pleased to see you.” His face quickly turned into a frown after surveying her team. “Is this it? Did MacAdams find you?”
She lowered her head. “No, we found him. We ran into a big group of those things the second we jumped in. Took out the major and several others before we beat them back. We found MacAdams. It looks like he got ambushed along the way, although he took out a lot of them before he went down. Probably saved us from taking another big hit. There’s only twelve of us left.”
“I’m grateful you are here,” Hido said. “General Maxwell will be most pleased.”
“Having trouble with this door?” she said to change the subject.
“Yes, it appears your demo tape is ineffective.”
“We can give this thing a try.” She lifted an intact panel from one of the tripods. “I think it still works.”
***
“General Maxwell to shuttles one and two, do you copy?” He lay flat atop a silo, staring across the battlefield at the hatches on the roof. Good men were dying below him. He shut them out of his mind.
“We hear you, General.”
“I’m lighting up some targets for you. I need you to destroy wherever the hell these freaks are coming from.”
“Understood.”
Having relayed the strike coordinates, he studied the battle on his tac-map.
The reinforced line continued to hold, destroying the attackers by the bushel. Despite the lopsided slaughter, the enemy managed to reduce too many of his men to liquefied flesh. He had a limited number of soldiers, while there didn’t appear to be an end to their horde. He needed to hit them at the source to win.
The shuttles began their attack run.
Trent armed his grenades to detonate two meters from the ground. In rapid succession, he threw down grenade after grenade in a checkered pattern until the magazine of ten ran dry. Explosions clouded the impact zone in smoke. It cleared to reveal a hole in the enemy position.
He slapped another magazine in as his Bearcat companion started firing down. Turning to the sky, he watched the incoming triangular-shaped shuttles approach side by side.
“C’mon, c’mon,” he urged.
Seconds from entering rocket range, movement on top of the dome caught his eye.
A hidden anti-aircraft turret rose to take deadly aim.
Reflexes took over. He launched the entire grenade magazine at the enemy battery, reducing it to smoking ruble.
He grinned wickedly. The tripod doors blossomed into a brilliant cascading series of explosions. Secondary detonation from within the dome signaled a decisive hit.
Trent opened his mouth to congratulate the pilots when he saw one of the shuttles rapidly lose altitude and crash into a fireball.
His quick action had only saved one of them.
Determined as ever to push forward, he rained down more terror onto the enemy below. Without the unending flow of reinforcement, the tripods broke, fleeing for their headquarters.
“Advance,” he ordered. “Kill them while they’re still in the open.”
A mad rush of crazed and enraged soldiers surged forward, overrunning the slower foe. Close-quarters combat took root on the battlefield.
He witnessed a Bearcat knock down a tripod with a punch before pummeling it with his bare hands, balled up into slug-hammers. The center of the oval appeared to be mostly filled with a gel of some kind. With his rage satisfied, the warrior stood, covered in the light pink ooze.
Most soldiers moved too fast to bother with such intimate kills. Their more sensible actions enabled them to capture a vital door that was left open for the retreating defenders.
Trent hurried down the silo to see what they would find inside.
***
“Have you fired it before?” Hido asked Amanda, examining the captured piece of alien technology.
“Yeah, twice. I played around with it a little. All you need to fire it is to cross these wires. But the power seems to be draining. I think that gooey stuff might be a power supply of some type. It’s dripping off, so the beam is getting weaker - I think.”
“Then you’d better try before it’s of no use.”
Amanda called over a survivor from her team to aim the panel as she dealt with the wires. After a few moments of fumbling, she activated the energy weapon, though since it was invincible and sound doesn’t travel in a vacuum, she didn’t know for sure.
Long seconds passed before the metal door testified to the weapon’s effect. It gradually glowed white-hot and slag began to flow down from the target point. A divot formed, then a small hole. Soon the opening was big enough for a Bearcat to stick its head through.
Adjusting the aim, Amanda cut the opening to the floor. It took progressively longer as the weapon lost power. It failed shortly after reaching the floor, but the job was done.
Using her MRG to peek inside, Amanda scouted the compartment. No enemy presented themselves. Hido tossed a smoke grenade in and they entered with extreme caution. She crouched low to dart into the swirling smoke, others following suit.
Sweeping her MRG side to side, she desperately searched for a threat, someone to take her rage, her revenge, out on. Too many of her team had died today to be denied satisfaction. Alas, her search yielded nothing. As the compartment filled with more and more friendlies, she finally conceded and declared, “Clear.” Her weapon dropped to her hip.
“Where is everyone?” Private Hunt asked.
Amanda shouldered her MRG. “High Commander, did your team encounter any actual Kitright? We haven’t seen any, dead or alive.”
He cocked his head to one side. “No, none. Alpha, stay here to secure the bridge. Everyone else, break up into fire teams and search the ship. There has to be a crew.”
***
“Sweetie, give me a combat readiness report,” Trent ordered while the squads lurched into the headquarters through the captured door.
“Thirty-eight effectives remain,” the steady female voice said directly into his brain.
“Wounded?”
“There are no wounded.”
“Good God,” he muttered to himself. “Even against the Bearcats, we had wounded. Sure, they were missing at least one limb, but they lived.”
Sweetie took the remark as a question. “Enemy energy weapon is one hundred percent effective.”
“We have enemy contacts,” Low Commander Oodon called out.
“Juliet, hold this position. I’m going in.”
Sweetie helped Trent’s vision cut through the total darkness of the interior. The Bearcat shuttle strike had taken out the facility’s power. Even the most advanced night vision requires some light to work. To accommodate him, the nano fabric on the helmet glowed slightly red to provide a minimum of illumination while not screaming his position to the enemy. This worked better than thermal vision, which wasn’t reliable in depicting threats.
“Break up into fire teams,” he ordered. “Search this place top to bottom. If you find something that looks important, sit on it.”
“Stay sharp, I think a couple of those things made it in here,” Oodon added.
Trent saw a set of stairs leading up near the entry point.
“Foxtrot one, on me.” He waved them to follow him up the steps.
Slowly, he stalked up the spiraling stairs, keeping the MRG ready for anything. As he reached the top, he heard the signature sizzle of the tripod energy weapon.
What are they shooting at?
“General Maxwell to all units, who is under fire?”
A long pause gripped the line, Oodon finally answered. “No one, sir. No new enemy contacts have been reported.”
“They’re firing at someone on the second floor. I can hear them.”
“No units are on that floor, sir.”
“What the hell are they shooting at? Low Commander, deploy another team to back me up. I’m going to investigate.”
***
“High Commander,” Amanda said,
hoping the Kitright jamming had ceased with the last of their tripods destroyed.
“Go, Sergeant.”
“I have something here you might want to see. I think I found the crew...or what’s left of them.”
“On my way.”
Hido met Amanda in the corridor outside the compartment she had discovered. “What do you have for me?” he asked.
“Go ahead and see for yourself.” She jerked her head in the direction of the open hatch.
He took a broad step into the room. “What are these lumps on the deck?”
She came into the room, standing kitty-corner from him. “If you scan them, your CAL should detect Kitright DNA. It’s the crew. Those tripod things killed their own crew.” She shrugged. “I guess we can’t question them now.”
“Disgusting.”
“That’s one word for it.” She flipped her wrist at the scene. “Any luck on the bridge?”
“Nothing. They, or their tripods, erased everything. We’re still trying to recover something, but I don’t hold out much hope. I pray General Maxwell has better luck.”
She reached up to put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry. He always seems to find a way.”
***
Trent stood over the remains of the three tripods he’d shattered, surveying their gruesome work. The piles of what used to be the Kitright staff for the facility still radiated heat.
“It looks like this was their command center, General,” a corporal speculated.
“Yeah, and I bet we were too late,” he said. “Get some techs in here to see if they can find anything.” He shook his head. “What the hell is going on here?”
Chapter Sixteen
Conquerors
The shuttle touched down on the landing pad where Trent had first unleashed hell upon the unsuspecting laborers. A small intermixed work detail was policing the dozen or so bodies.
The engines cut off and the door whined open. Hido and Amanda marched down the ramp, helmets in hand.
Trent hurried forward.
Amanda snapped to attention and saluted. Trent returned it as their eyes met to embrace one another in their gazes.
“I love you,” she thought-spoke on a private channel. “So glad to see you’re okay.”
“I was worried sick about you. I love you, too.”
Hido stood tall and beamed satisfaction. Seeing action for the first time in a while had boosted his spirit. “Victory is ours, General,” he said raising his arms triumphantly into the air. “You and your mate brought great honor to our clan.”
“As did you, but I fear our efforts might bear little fruit,” Trent said. “By the time we captured their command center they’d managed to erase the data on their mainframe. Did you fare better on their ship?”
She shook her head. “Same story. Those damn tripods delayed us enough for them to eliminate everything. Even killed the crew.”
“They did the same thing to the staff down here.” Trent rubbed the back of his neck. “Damnedest thing I’ve seen in a while. Bet they would’ve killed all of the civilians if we hadn’t destroyed them all.”
“Civilians? How many?” Hido asked.
“Too early to tell. I have my men searching each building now, to gather prisoners. This isn’t a large post, so the number should be manageable. Though it would be helpful if you transferred a couple of your squads planetside.”
“Consider it done. There is very little work for warriors aboard the ship.”
Amanda turned to take in the scope of the trading post. Several buildings dotted the area.
“Maybe we can still get lucky,” she said. “There might be a data drive around here they missed.”
“Once we clear all of the civilians out, we’ll start shipping hardware up to the Blind Fury for more detailed analysis,” Trent said.
“Any reports from the Battle of Britain?” she asked.
“Yeah, they got the link before any outbound transmissions could make it. Two merchant vessels have already jumped through and been destroyed. Three were en route when the shooting started. Right now they’re decelerating, probably trying to figure out what they’re going to do.”
Hido said, “Blind Fury eliminated two ships in orbit.”
Trent looked to the sky. “This is certainly a busy port. Makes me think we don’t have a whole lot of time before someone starts wondering why it went dark.”
“And before those outbound ships are missed,” Amanda said.
“Agreed,” Hido added. “I want to be out of here in two days.”
“Follow me, then. I’ll show you what we have so far.”
***
Trent walked briskly into a small building near the headquarters that they had cleared out to conduct initial evaluations of captured equipment. “What do you have for us, Commander Greene? We’re extremely busy right now.”
Lt. Commander Greene sighed quietly. He didn’t need the general’s attitude. He also didn’t want to be here and have the value of his work questioned by a militarized thug, which only rubbed salt in an old wound.
The Legion and Fleet were strictly volunteer services. There had never been a need to start a draft. With a population of billions from which to draw, neither force experienced difficultly in filling their relatively small personnel needs.
However, in a few unique cases, certain individuals who demonstrated extraordinary talents that could be applied to the war effort were ‘strongly encouraged’ to enlist.
Greene, a native of the Eden colony, attracted the attention of the authorities after he’d won the Interplanetary Science Fair for a research project that resulted in the further refinement of anti-matter generators. He was ten.
After earning his third Ph.D. by his eightieth birthday, the Fleet made him an offer he couldn’t refuse to join their Deep Blue research division.
Having waited out the fighting aboard an alien warship, he finally had the opportunity to examine some fascinating technology. Yet once again he was forced to endure another busy general’s elevated sense of importance.
“Sorry if I interrupted you, Commander. “
Greene rolled his eyes. “I just figured out how the tripod weapon worked. Thought you would like to know.”
“Nice work, Commander.” Trent offered praise in the hopes of moving the meeting along. “Please get to the point. We are very busy.”
“Very well, General.” He sighed. “First off, the gelatin material inside functioned as the power source...”
“Aha, so Sergeant Roth was right,” Trent interjected to annoy the man.
“Yes, I read her report. What she didn’t realize is that it also functions as the CPU and it’s organic.”
“Organic,” the word came off Hido’s tongue with disgust. “Those things were alive?”
He shrugged, “Alive is really a relative term in this case. It’s completely alien DNA, matching nothing on record, and alien tech as well. I haven’t seen anything like it before. I don’t know if the tripods were self-aware or if they’re nothing more than a computer with organic transistors.”
Trent moved closer to examine the panel on Greene’s table. “So the DNA isn’t Kitright?”
“As I said, it’s not on file. The Kitright DNA is on file.”
“Are there common markers between them?” Trent powered through the scientist’s condescension.
“None. As far as I can tell, their DNA evolved on a totally different planet. Or else was engineered extensively.”
Trent rubbed his chin. “Interesting. I wonder what that means.”
Hido turned to face Greene. “You said you understood their weaponry.”
He nodded. “Yes, I was just getting to that. It operates like an extremely high powered sonic gun...”
“That can’t be,” Hido waved his arms irritably. “It killed my men in a vacuum. There wasn’t anything for the sound waves to travel across.”
“I said it operates like a sonic gun.” Greene massaged his temples. “I didn’t
say it was a sonic gun. The kill force is transmitted via an electronic signal, but it acts much like sound waves, though on a scale I didn’t think was possible.”
“These weapons melted men in seconds and cut through a blast door on the Kitright ship that our demo tape didn’t even scratch.” Trent said. “You’re telling me sound waves did that?”
Greene perked up. “Incredible, isn’t it?” He added a smile, which Trent found offensive.
“You might not think that way, Commander, if you saw men die from one of these.” He growled.
Greene ignored the comment. “Its wave length functions on a sub-atomic level. Whenever the signal hits an object, the frequency violently vibrates the neutrons inside the atoms that make up the matter. That vibration causes friction and friction causes heat. It makes no difference what that matter is, flesh or metal. It’s all the same to the signal.”
Trent looked unimpressed. “Why use this type of weapon and not something simpler, like a laser?” He shrugged. “Why go through the trouble to make something as advanced as this when there are easier ways to kill?”
“Why do you use an MRG instead of a rock? It’s simpler, after all, but it isn’t as effective. This Kitright weapon is far more deadly than anything we have. Almost any hit on an organic target is fatal. Don’t your own after-action reports show no wounded? Any hit on any part of the body larger than a square centimeter is fatal. Thick armor will only buy the occupant a small measure of time, until the heat bleeds through and bakes the occupant.”
Trent placed a hand on Greene’s shoulder. “Nice work, Commander. Make sure you send this data along to Alpha ASAP through the Battle of Britain. We have to run. We pull out in the morning.”
“Generals,” Greene muttered quietly under his breath as Trent and Hido left.
***
The trading post dealt primarily in a single commodity, uin. It served as a key component in several metal alloys, including the one that made up the hulls of the ships in the Bearcat Galactic Armada.
Uin ore mining took place in massive open pits, similar to the old coal mines in the American west. Trent ordered one of the pits converted into a makeshift concentration camp for the thousand civilians rounded up by the search parties.
The Last Revenge (The Last Hero Trilogy Book 2) Page 14