“Sire,” Jas said, “it’s an automated beacon.”
Josh nodded. “I understand, but we were told that some scientists and workers were left behind when the rebels evacuated.”
“You want to go back down there?” Jas asked incredulously. “Sire, we’ve done some pretty amazing things together, but I’m not in agreement with you this time.”
“I understand. The people who were left behind are probably dead, but we need to check it out. If we can do it electronically, great. Otherwise, we have to go down. I was given the most likely location of any survivors, so we can be fairly quick.” He thought for a moment, then said, “Lex and I will get together to plan this. We’ll probably need help from the marines.”
This operation, too, was an Empire responsibility and Atiana had no issues with staying behind. Galborae, on the other hand, did.
He pulled Josh aside. “I’d like to go with you, Sire.”
Josh’s eyebrows lifted. “Why?”
“It has to do with visions,” Galborae answered.
Josh did a double-take. “I thought that’s what today was all about. You stayed behind because of a vision.”
“There are other visions, Sire.”
Josh’s eyes narrowed. “There’s more than one vision about you?” he asked with some incredulity in his voice.
“Actually, Sire, there are three.”
“Awesome,” Josh mumbled. “Would you care to share the details?”
“It’s probably not necessary. One of them definitely applied to Tranxte, one almost certainly to here, and the location of the other is, as yet, unknown. I just have a strong feeling that Tranxte and Harac are related in some way we don’t yet understand. It’s just a feeling, Sire.”
Josh stared at him while he considered. He ended up saying, “Actually . . . surprisingly . . . feelings have played a big part in what we do, particularly when the Leaf People are involved.” He nodded almost absently to himself, then looked down to Limam. “Does she always accompany you?”
“Whenever possible.”
“Okay then. You won’t know our hand signals, so stay by my side unless I assign you to someone else.”
Galborae nodded agreement. Protectors did not like to delay, but with the marines involved, this was a fairly complex operation. They were ready to go the following day, and everyone, including Limam, was dressed in battle armor. Great Cats generally shunned its use, but the savagery and skill of the peicks at the spaceport had not been missed by these ancient warriors, and they were covered from nose to tail in sleek, dark blue armor. All seven operational shuttles left the cruiser and formed up on the frigate, then headed back toward the spaceport. The cruiser followed at a distance, its job to reinforce if things went poorly.
There was no attempt to hide what they were doing. The frigate settled over the entrance to an underground facility next to the spaceport and pounded away with its multiple weapons, scouring the adjacent area of anything that lived, though it avoided the area directly above the underground facility in fear of collapsing it. When the frigate backed off, three squads of marines landed and set up a perimeter around the facility entrance. Josh’s team of fourteen consisting of six Great Cats, six Terrans, Josh, and Galborae dropped down swiftly in a shuttle and deployed into two teams, one for each side of the ramp. Lex commanded this operation. The moment they were clear, the shuttle left.
Each Protector carried a backpack stuffed with explosives. They moved down each side of the ramp to the massive, armored door at the bottom. Walls towered over them by the time they reached the door. The area showed signs of attempted forced entry—the remains of old blaster shots almost obscured the artistic designs built into the door during its fabrication—though the door itself, constructed of material too hard for blasters to penetrate, appeared to be undamaged.
So far, they had seen no mulogs or peicks. The locking controls for the door had been demolished by blasters, most likely in the hands of the peicks, but possibly by the survivors fleeing into the underground facilities—they might have locked themselves in on purpose. Two Great Cats went to work on the remains of the door control, hooking up an Imperial override controller that would, hopefully, restore control.
Amazingly, ten minutes later the door irised partially open. Sirens briefly blared from inside the facility, then they went silent.
Lex, not expecting an answer and knowing that if he got one it might be from the business end of a peick’s weapon, edged along the door until nearing the opening. Another Great Cat did the same from the opposite side.
He called out, “Imperial Protectors. Come out.”
A female voice responded. “Show yourself. Use care. I have multiple, heavy weapons pointed your way.”
Lex let out a short breath of relief. The voice sounded human, not peick. “Do I look like a fool?” he called. “I am not an android. I’ve come to rescue you. Keep your weapons, but come out.”
The Protectors lined up on the door on both sides of the opening. Before long, an eye peeked around the edge of the door to check the area on the far side of the opening. She saw Lex, and he stepped away from the door with his weapon pointed down.
A brown-haired, young woman with wide-spaced, hazel eyes, a wide mouth, and a firm chin brought the rest of her face into view to study him, though she kept her weapon behind herself and out of sight. Lex nodded approvingly and stepped farther into the open. “Are you alone?”
The young woman, dressed in a t-shirt and baggy pants, stepped fully into the opening, her eyes wide as they took in the Great Cat in his blue body armor, then the rest of his men. She ignored his question and countered with one of her own. “I’ve heard tales of Protectors,” she said. “Are you one of them?”
“Does it matter? Do you want to be rescued or not? What’s your name?”
“I’m Claire Nbara.” She glanced up to the sky. “I haven’t been outside in years.” Her gaze moved back to Lex and she stepped all the way outside. “I’d given up hope.”
At that moment, marines on the ground above the entrance started shooting, and snipers from each side of the ramp opened up.
Claire’s weapon snapped up toward the roof, her eyes looking for peicks. “Get inside,” she ordered. “They travel in packs.” She turned back to the interior and called out an all clear to her people as the Protectors moved in.
Lex had expected a dark, cave-like interior in which survivors eked out a day-to-day existence. Instead, a quick glance turned into a brief study when he found himself in a brightly lit loading area. The floor ran flat for forty feet, then stopped at an elevated loading dock colored with bright chevrons. Twenty feet beyond the loading dock, three wide isles stretched into the distance between tall shelves and storage units.
A glassed-in control room was immediately to his right. Several vehicles were parked beside the control room, and up on the loading dock, orderly rows of warehouse handling equipment stood in well marked parking areas. The whole place was immaculate.
He growled a command and two Great Cats went back outside to remove the controller they had used to open the door. When all fourteen of his men were back inside, Claire called out again and the door closed. A young man, little more than a boy actually, stepped out from a control room with his hands in the air. Claire called out again, and two more youngsters came out from behind storage shelves, though they had not dropped their weapons, only lowered them.
“Looks to me like you’re short a few of those multiple, heavy weapons, eh?” Lex asked.
“Are we really saved?” Claire asked in wonder.
“Where’s everyone else?” he demanded.
“Coming.”
“Why didn’t you respond to our calls?”
“The peicks destroyed our exterior antennas. We only have short range communicators working inside the facility. We heard fighting yesterday, but we thought it was the peicks fighting among themselves. Our exterior sensors on this door are dead.”
“Your distress cal
l is still going out.”
“If you were a peick, would you turn off that particular call?”
Lex’s lips lifted, and the four young people took half a step back. “No, I suppose not. Enough of these games. The peicks know we’re here. It’s time to be away. How many of you are there, and how quickly can you get everyone ready to leave?”
“There were 312 of us at the last count. It will take a while. Mother’s on her way.”
“She’s in charge?”
“Yes. She was our security chief before the evacuation. Now she’s mayor.”
Lex called Colonel Lebac with instructions: “We’re bringing out some 312 people. Work out a retreat plan while we get them ready. With this many, we might want to load them directly into the cruiser. Someone else can make that call.”
Lex left two Protectors behind with Claire’s three guards. She led the rest of the Protectors across the brightly marked staging area, then entered the storage area. Shelves and containers lined both sides of the center isle, and everything was brightly lit and clean. The shelves were about half full. Protectors spread out in the normal fashion, moving from cover to cover as if they were infiltrating an enemy stronghold, until reaching a tall, double door that was closed tight.
Claire called on her communicator and one side of the door slid open, revealing a multi-story foyer opening onto offices and laboratories. The corridor they were in continued into the facility for a hundred meters, then branched out in a Y-pattern. Armed men and women had taken cover anywhere they could find it, and many blasters were pointed toward Lex when he stepped through with Claire.
“The main door is secure,” Claire called. “This one claims to be a Protector. He says he’s here to rescue us.”
Weapons drooped, and people stepped into plain view with expressions of hope and amazement.
“It’s true. Who’s in charge?” Lex asked.
A gray-haired woman with deep worry lines etched into her thin face stepped out, then continued up to Lex. “I’m Mayor Nbara.” She glanced back at her people, then said softly so no one else would hear, “You’re a sight for sore eyes. Privately, I’d given up hope.”
“Feel free to hope again,” Lex growled. “How soon can you be ready to leave?”
“A few hours.”
Lex shook his great head. “Anyone not ready in half an hour gets left behind. Anything more than that and we’ll have a major battle on our hands. Bring nothing. Tell your people to run, not walk.”
Her lips thinned as she lifted a communicator to her mouth and started issuing evacuation orders. When she was done, she said, “I’ve activated the plan. What else do you need from me?”
“We brought charges. I could use a set of plans for the facility so I can decide where best to place them.”
“Already done. We had no intention of leaving anything, including ourselves, to the peicks if they broke through.”
“Then I need someone to give me a tour so I can confirm what you say.”
She nodded grimly and looked to Claire. “Get a hauler, a big one. He’ll want to bring his men.”
Claire left at a run but did not have to go far. A number of vehicles which resembled scooters waited nearby. She hopped on one of them and tore off into the cavernous underground facility. Several others took their own scooters and followed her at a far more reasonable pace.
Mayor Nbara stayed behind with the Protectors. Her gaze moved to each one of them as she said, “Thank you so much for coming. This has been an enduring nightmare.” She looked to Lex. “Do you understand what you’re up against?”
“Not entirely. We fought one engagement with the peicks and lost, but we learned our lesson. It won’t happen again. Professor Noor briefed us on the project back on Plenski III.”
“So he made it,” she said, nodding grimly. “He left us behind.”
“He claimed he had to leave before the peicks took his ship.”
She shook her head, still angry. “He had other alternatives. He was always terrified of the creatures. The rest of us fear them, but we’ve managed that fear.”
“I can’t say you won’t be trading one prison for another,” Lex said.
She frowned. “Why?”
“Androids have been outlawed for all of recorded history,” Lex countered.
“Our project was approved by the First Knight himself. How else was he to fight the Chessori if it ever came to that? It was a trade-off.”
“The rebellion failed you know.”
“What rebellion?”
Lex sat on his haunches to consider. In the end, he said, “We can discuss this later.”
She nodded curtly. “We will. We’ve been here for fifteen years now. Claire is 22 years old. She has almost no recollection of the Empire, and there are many just like her.”
“Fifteen years! I had no idea.” Looking around, Lex had to admit that just building this place would have taken years of hard work. If Nbara was telling the truth, Struthers’ plan for the coup had been a lot more involved than he’d ever suspected.
“We might not be the only facility with people still alive,” she added.
Lex stood up on all fours and started prowling, shaking his head angrily. “We found two other areas with functioning power plants.”
“I have no idea if there’s anyone alive in them.”
“Do you have any way to find out?”
“No. The peicks took out our communications early on.”
“Your short-range comm units seem to work. Will they penetrate the main doors of these other facilities?”
“They will if we’re close enough.”
Claire returned with a hauler, a cargo vehicle with a flat bed. They all loaded on and Nbara gave an abbreviated tour of the facility while Claire drove.
“Because of the naturally ferocious population of native beasts, all the facilities on Harac were built underground,” Nbara told them. “During the uprising, we only had time to secure this portion of the facility, the part we live in. The far end of the facility is the factory where we produced peicks. They took control of it at the very beginning. We lost a lot of good people in there, including my husband, Claire’s father.”
Her eyes looked into the distance for a moment, then returned to the soldiers. “This habitat was built to hold 20 times the number of people left behind, so space and food have not yet become a problem for us. Energy is supplied by a small, dedicated fusion plant which will function for many more years. We have our living quarters, dining halls, entertainment and game rooms, schools, and everything else needed by a demanding population of scientists, engineers, and their support staffs. We’re coming to the administrative area now. I’ll show you the first of the charges you asked to see.”
After examining those and a few other charges scattered around the facility, Lex commented on what he had seen. “They have not been set to collapse the structure.”
“The structure isn’t important. They were placed to kill us and destroy our computers. We voted to never be taken alive if the peicks broke in. We came close to activating the process when you opened the main door a little while ago.”
“Is there a door to the factory on the other end?”
“There is. Peicks work the factory, so we have not opened it in years.”
Lex turned to Josh. “What do you think?”
“We came here looking for an opponent for the gleasons. The enhanced mulogs will likely be a good match for the them, and there’s plenty of other nasty wildlife here to challenge them. Peicks on the other hand, worry me. I’d like us to eliminate as many of the them as we can, and I definitely want to prevent them from making more of themselves. It’s not that I care about the gleasons, it’s that androids have no place in the Empire.”
“What about the Chessori?” Nbara asked.
“We found another solution,” Josh said.
Her eyes fell. “So this was all a waste?”
“Not entirely,” he answered. “You’ve provided a li
kely solution to another problem. As I implied, we’re looking for a new home for some gleasons. We’re going to bring them here.”
She stared at him, then shuddered, but her shoulders remained slumped in defeat.
Claire stopped the hauler at the main door to the factory. Four guards materialized out of nowhere, but she stepped out and put them at their ease. “We’ve been rescued. We’re evacuating through the main entrance, so get going.”
Lex’s men spread out as Nbara jumped down from the hauler and led the way to a control room with a computer array. There, they were able to see what sensors within the factory complex could see on the other side of the door. A U-shaped loading dock, its edges marked with brightly colored chevrons, had been built into the floor on the other side of the doors. To the right side of the doors, two more huge doors opened to a ramp on the outside. Haulers could drive down the ramp and unload into the living/administration area the Protectors were now in, or they could unload supplies destined to the factory straight ahead or to their right.
One hauler was parked up against the far side of the loading pit. Beyond it, a wide isle extended some 100 meters through a cavernous tunnel to a wall. The assembly line, currently stopped, ran along the left side of the isle, and storage areas occupied the right side of the isle. The whole area was a brightly lit tunnel, both from interior lights and from the sun streaming through the loading doors.
Nbara explained that the assembly line received drugged, unconscious mulogs on this end. They were prepped on this side of the wall, then a hundred meters away, those mulogs would disappear through the wall into the main, sterile operating area. A few hundred meters beyond that barrier, peicks would emerge with their mechanical enhancements fully operational.
“Why is the production line stopped?” Lex asked.
“I can’t say. It stopped yesterday.”
“Why did you pick such a violent species?” Josh asked.
“I wasn’t part of that discussion, but I know it had something to do with their ability to blend in to their surroundings. It’s not a perfect blending—you can see them when they move—but it takes a discerning eye to pick them out when they’re stationary. Whatever the reason, I can tell you the peicks were completely responsive to our every request until they tweaked something in their programming.”
Spirit of Empire 4: Sky Knights Page 50