Master Sergeant

by Mel Odom

  “Then pray that Noojin was dead when they carried her away,” Lyem said. “That is the greatest favor you can wish for her.”

  Jahup stood then and faced his friend. “I will not leave her. I will not abandon her. Leave if you wish. Save yourself.” He made the last an accusation though he immediately did not like himself for doing so. He could not demand that the others die for his own inability to realize the inevitable.

  A haunting look of fear and guilt clouded Lyem’s thin face. One of his eyes was partially swollen shut, and he had a puncture wound in his right thigh that needed to be sewn closed. The other eight members of the hunting band were pretty much in the same shape, requiring medical attention as well. Except for bruises and a few lacerations, Jahup was relatively uninjured. The lack of personal damage contributed to his feelings of guilt.

  “What can you do?” Lyem asked. “The offworlders have security all around this place.”

  “I can go to her. The offworlders are in the caves under the mountains. Remember when we were younger and came this way? We explored these lands. We have been down in those caves. There are other ways to get down there. There is a chance I can find her and get her out.” Even as he said that, Jahup knew how thin that chance was.

  “What if the offworlders have sealed those areas off? Jahup, even if you can remember where those entrances are, they may no longer exist.”

  “I have to look!” The entrances had to be there. Anything else was unacceptable. “Noojin would not be with them if not for me.” The others would not be dead! Jahup pushed that from his mind. There was nothing he could do for the dead, but he might yet save Noojin and the two other women.

  He had to try.

  “This is not your fault, Jahup. No one saw the offworlders until they attacked us. If we had been any slower, we would have all been dead tonight.”

  “I am going.” Turning around, Jahup headed down the mountain and stepped into the arms of a shadowy figure before he knew it. He tried to escape, but he couldn’t.

  0155 Hours Zulu Time

  Sage wrapped his arms around the struggling young man and held on tight. He put his mouth close to his captive’s ear. “I am Sergeant Sage of the Terran Army. Stop struggling.”

  For a moment he didn’t think the young man—Jahup—was going to desist. Then he stopped and nodded.

  “I’m going to let you go, Jahup. Don’t run. If you do, you might alert the guards, and if you—if we—get captured, that’s not going to help Noojin. Do you understand?” Sage gazed at the young Makaum hunters that stood back a few meters away and watched them. He’d spoken loud enough to be heard by them as well.

  Gently, Sage released Jahup. He stared at the young man, knowing his mission hung on the Makaum hunter’s ability to keep calm and see the big picture.

  “Will you help me find Noojin?” Jahup asked.

  Sage nodded. “If I can. I think maybe we can help each other. You said you knew another way to get into the cave system?”

  Jahup nodded.

  “Good, because that’s where we need to be.”

  0203 Hours Zulu Time

  “This kid may not even know what he’s talking about,” Murad objected. “We could be wandering around out here in the dark.”

  Hearing the young second lieutenant talk about Jahup’s lack of knowledge when the Makaum hunter was probably less than a handful of years younger than Murad would have made Sage smile under more favorable circumstances.

  “That’s true, sir,” Sage agreed. “That’s why I’m going to go with him, see if we can find that way in that he’s talking about. If it’s there, then maybe we can get a team inside and improve our chances of finding the information we need to break this operation open. We can spare a few minutes. And this is a better opportunity than the plan we had.”

  The original plan had been for Sage to take down one of the sec guards and use one of the AKTIVsuit’s foolies to mask himself as one of the guards to gain access to the lab long enough to set the hacker drones free. Even if he’d gotten inside, even with most of the site’s guards sleeping, the chances of getting discovered were high.

  And that was hoping that the geological surveys of the cave system were accurate. Generally the mapping was done by drones, but those maps hadn’t taken into account the remodeling DawnStar might have done.

  “This is the better chance, sir,” Sage said.

  Murad nodded. “Then we’ll do it that way. Only we’re going with you.”

  “Sir, it would be better if you and the others—”

  “Remained out here?” Murad shook his head. “If the two of you can get in there, then the ten of us can get in as well. It won’t do any good if you get inside and get discovered before you can deploy the drones. We’ll split up the drones and increase our chances of getting the intel we need about the site.”

  Sage started to object, but he knew that the lieutenant was right, and the look in Kiwanuka’s eye let him know she wasn’t going to back down either. He nodded. “Yes sir.”

  0311 Hours Zulu Time

  Kos stood in the command center of the complex’s security systems and swept the vidscreens where three mercenaries monitored the surrounding jungle. After he’d recognized the woman, he’d felt certain that the Makaum hunters hadn’t just accidentally found their way into the area.

  “Velesko,” Dubchek said, “I assure you, the hunters were just that: hunters. They chanced upon us.”

  One of the screens played back onboard vid from the powersuit pilots that had attacked the hunters. The Makaum hadn’t quite been taken by surprise. They scattered just ahead of the lethal fire that had raked the trees and chopped brush like a scythe.

  Kos operated the controls, slowing down the action and magnifying it to better see what had happened. All he saw in the jungle were the Makaum hunters. There were no hardsuits, and the return fire that had struck the mercenary unit pursuing them had been pitifully weak.

  “Those people were not armed with anything better than primitive weapons,” Dubchek said.

  Onscreen, an arrow flew through the jungle and shattered against the powersuit’s chest. The pieces fell away.

  Everything Dubchek said made sense, but Kos couldn’t get memories of the young man who had been with the girl Noojin from his mind. His spies had watched Sage train the soldiers at the fort, and some of them had reported seeing the young man.

  Jahup.

  Finally remembering the young man’s name, Kos accessed files he’d stored on the DawnStar space station and brought up the information on the young man. He pasted the image of the young man into the security footage and initiated a facial recognition search among the faces that the mercenaries’ vid had picked up.

  None of the men were Jahup.

  Kos refused to believe that bad luck on part of the Makaum hunters had brought them into contact with the sec guards. “This wasn’t an accident,” Kos insisted. “The girl hangs out with a young man who has been crushing on Sage.”

  “The Terran Army sergeant you’ve warned me about?” Dubchek asked.

  “Yes. It’s possible that Jahup and his people began working with Sage. They could have led Sage to this site, and if they did, he’s out there waiting.”

  Dubchek spoke tactfully. “If the army had been out there, they wouldn’t have allowed us to simply kill those Makaum. They would have fought to defend them.”

  A ping drew Kos’s attention to the vids displaying the stream from the drones spying around the perimeter. As he watched, one of the drones locked into a stabilized position, then painted a Terran military powersuit almost hidden in a copse of trees and a pile of broken rock. Once limned in a targeting laser, there was no mistaking the shape.

  In the next minute, the drone went offline—HARDWARE MALFUNCTION—that Kos felt certain was the result of a sniper’s bullet. He turned cold inside, vindicated for his paranoia, and looked at Dubchek.

  “Someone’s out there, Frantisek. Send a team to see who it is.”
r />   0315 Hours Zulu Time

  Sage’s hardsuit automatically mapped the underground cave system they followed. After Jahup had shown them the entrance, they had chosen the tunnels that led toward the area where Sage expected the underground complex to be located. Some of them had dead-ended, the way made impossible by cave-ins, requiring time-consuming doubling back.

  More quickly than he had hoped, however, they located one of the foam construct blockages the complex designers had put up to wall off the caverns they’d chosen to locate in. The plas-trusion looked artificially rough against the smooth walls left by the receding ocean millions of years ago. Geological survey teams had verified that much more of Makaum had been underwater during the planet’s cooling phase.

  Studying the blockage with the hardsuit’s sensors and the nightvision, Sage turned to Kiwanuka, who was inspecting the blockage with a more sensitive scanner.

  “I’m not picking up any electronic signatures.” Kiwanuka put the scanner away. “This section is inert.”

  Sage nodded. “Then this is our way in.” He glanced at Murad. “If you’re in agreement, sir.”

  Murad nodded but didn’t say anything.

  Sage put his Roley aside and reached into his combat vest for incendiary grenades. “This plug is probably just here to help control the HVAC. It probably won’t be very thick. We can burn our way inside and take a look around. We’ll wire it with explosives in case we have to come back this way in a hurry.”

  Just as he started to place the incendiary charges, his comm crackled to life. “Alpha Team, this is Red Team One. The hostiles have discovered us. I repeat, our position is—”

  The rest of the transmission was lost in a roar of thunder.

  Murad looked at Sage, the question showing in his eyes but not once uttered.

  “We go forward, sir.” Sage reached into his pack for heavy explosives.

  “They’re going to be overrun,” Murad protested. “They’ll be killed.”

  “They’re dug in tight. The only chance they have is if we can find the information we need and call down that dropship strike.” Sage adhered the high-ex gel packs against the plas-trusion. “Now fall back to a safe area.”

  All ten soldiers and Jahup fell back to behind a twist in the tunnel. Sage joined them, gripping his Roley in his hands. He felt the vibrations of the missiles aboard the powersuits shaking through the tunnel then, and dim echoes of the explosions rolled through the hollows.

  Sage readied the Roley. “Things are going to go fast once we’re inside.”

  Kiwanuka nodded. “Blow it.”

  Sage sent the signal over his comm and the high-ex gel packs detonated, filling the tunnel with plas-trusion chunks, thunder, and smoke.

  THIRTY-THREE

  The Cer’ardu Heights

  140 Klicks West of Makaum

  0319 Hours Zulu Time

  Wheeling, Sage turned and charged down the tunnel with the Roley at the ready.

  The gel packs had cleared a space three meters across. Debris crunched underfoot and smoke filled the tunnel beyond the opening. Klaxons mounted on the walls inside the underground structure screamed to life, causing Sage’s aud dampers to kick in immediately.

  He forced himself not to think about the team he’d left out there fighting for their lives now. If they survived the first engagement, they had a chance to set up a holding action. If they didn’t, it was already too late.

  All Sage could hope to do now was locate the intel Halladay needed to call down the strike team.

  The tunnel ran straight for thirty meters. Harsh emergency lighting stripped away the shadows, peeling back the darkness to glint off the granite walls. Prefab walls foamed into the tunnel held doors and created private quarters for the mercenaries billeted there.

  As Sage ran, some of the mercenaries stumbled out of the quarters and tried to gear up. He cut them down with quick bursts from the Roley, leaving them dead or dying or heavily injured. The soldiers behind him added to the carnage.

  Bullets and beams bounced off Sage’s hardsuit, rocking him slightly as the armor’s gyros compensated. The onboard AI recorded damage, ghosting into Sage’s vision till he cut it off with a curt command. Damage reports didn’t matter at this moment. He was going to live or die in the next few moments, and measuring that by degrees wasn’t necessary.

  Reaching the end of the tunnel, Sage discovered he was on an elevated platform that ringed the storage area below. Crawlers sat between the aisles of crates and barrels, which bore chemical symbols he wasn’t completely familiar with.

  The AI recorded the rough dimensions of the open space and generated a quick potential map of the area based on probable room configurations.

  “Launching hacker drones,” Murad called out behind him.

  The drones signatures flared to life on the inside of Sage’s faceshield as they took flight. He launched his own ParaSights to help scope out the base. Their vid feedback painted translucent images inside his faceshield as well, creating layers of reality that only long periods of training allowed Sage to sift through on the fly.

  Vibrations to his left shook the plasteel deck under his boots. Turning in that direction, Sage swung the Roley around as a powersuited mercenary heaved himself up the steps. Ten meters tall, the armored goliath wheeled on him and opened fire. Gunfire cracked and beams hissed behind Sage, letting him know that the awakening mercenaries weren’t completely out of the fight either.

  Abandoning the Roley for the moment because the beams would only ricochet off the powersuit’s armor, Sage dialed up the gel launcher slung under the rifle. He squeezed off three grenades, which slammed into the powersuit’s head, hoping to break through the thick transplas faceshield.

  The grenades detonated in gouts of fire and concussive waves that hammered Sage. If he hadn’t locked his boots down onto the plasteel decking, he would have been knocked backward. Three mercenaries in hardsuits died in the fallout of the blasts, crumpling to smoking ruin around the powersuit.

  The powersuit pilot swiveled and managed to keep his balance, then brought the shoulder-mounted heavy machine guns to bear. A barrage of 15mm rounds chopped into the wall where Sage took cover. The tremors shivered through his hardsuit and stone slivers sang as they ricocheted off his armor.

  In the 360-degree view he had of the tunnel they’d entered, he saw that the desperate fight with the mercenaries was almost over. Kiwanuka’s sharpshooting skills picked off the targets harder to get to while the other soldiers kept up steady fire to keep her protected. As calmly as though she was shooting in a holo deck, Kiwanuka became a gunsight. Laser beams cored through the heads of the mercenaries she picked off in rapid succession.

  On the platform, the powersuit advanced with pounding steps that shook the floor beneath Sage’s feet. He couldn’t duck around the corner without getting shredded, and trying to make it to another position while facing the heavy fire was tantamount to suicide.

  Thinking quickly, he dialed up more gel grenades and called one of the ParaSights into position. He used the ParaSight’s view to aim the Roley without exposing himself, then plopped three gel grenades onto the plasteel at the powersuit’s feet.

  The detonations sounded like a solid ripple as they went off. Through the ParaSight, Sage watched as the shattered plasteel platform gave way under the powersuit. Chunks of it fell away and the powersuit tumbled twenty meters down into a stack of barrels. Ruptured and broken, the barrels released their contents in a deluge.

  Spotting two mercenaries racing up the next set of stairs leading to the raised platform, Sage brought the Roley to his shoulder and squeezed the trigger twice in quick succession. Their bodies dropped only a second apart. Even if they’d gained the high ground, they couldn’t have bridged the broken section, but they would have been able to set up sniping positions. Now they were no longer a threat.

  Below, in the debris of the broken platform, the powersuit pilot struggled to get to his feet in the tangle of crushed barrels.
His movements only broke open more containers.

  “Analyze chems,” Sage told his AI as he peered down. He wasn’t close enough for the hardsuit’s olfactory enhancements to kick in, but the spectrometer in ParaSight 01 tagged the chems as being mostly modified alcohol that he assumed was used in refining the drug products.

  Sage fired two grenades into the powersuit. The resulting explosions shook the powersuit, but they also set off the alcohol, igniting a blaze that climbed up the unit in a roiling ocean of blue and yellow flames. Normally the armor might have withstood fire, but the powersuit had either taken some damage in the fall or the artificially enhanced alcohol burned at a higher intensity than the fire retardant could withstand.

  The powersuit pilot fought to get free, but the fluids beneath his feet proved too slick to provide traction and he fell back into the barrels, bringing more of them down on top of him. The flames spread quickly across the warehouse, adding to the confusion as the smoke billowed out and filled the area. More explosions rattled the interior of the cavern.

  Below, fire suppression drones rolled toward the conflagration. Sage picked off three of them before hostile fire drove him to the ground. He checked the soldiers behind him and found his team was all still intact.

  “Kiwanuka, can you do something about those riflemen?” Sage asked.

  “Yes.” Her hardsuit scarred silver where she’d taken projectile hits, and burned black in other places from lasers, Kiwanuka slithered to the edge of the platform and took advantage of the height there to start picking off targets.

  New explosions launched flaming barrels into the air as Sage added his firepower to Kiwanuka’s. Below, with the fire spreading and the klaxons shrieking, the mercenaries struggled to maintain order. Sage hammered the cover their opponents mistakenly chose behind more chemicals with gel grenades, setting off even more fires.

  Even if they didn’t get the information they’d come for, the site was going to be a loss.

  The acrid stench of chem fumes burned Sage’s nose. Realizing the danger from the chems loose in the air, he opened the comm. “Mask up. You’ve got bad air in here.” His suit flipped over to the hour-long supply of onboard oxygen made possible by the air canisters and the suit’s carbon dioxide scrubbers.