The Dead Worlds

by T. R. Harris

31

  Captain Belan had a flash rifle in his grip, frustrated at the slow rate of fire from the targeting computer. This was a problem with such weapons during close combat situations. Smoke tended to fill the air, making it harder for the sensors to identify and lock onto targets.

  He wasn’t the only one having trouble. His raiders had resorted to untargeted firing, which tended to waste battery packs rather than increase the casualty rate of the enemy. One could not be expected to hit a target without computer assist; to ask otherwise was madness.

  Overall, the battle wasn’t going too badly for the pirates. They were holding back the attackers, keeping them from entering the chamber; however, the writing was on the wall. With the rate at which his troops were going through their power packs, Belan’s fighters would soon run out of ammo, and long before the vastly superior number of invaders would run out of theirs.

  That’s when Belan had an idea. He glanced back at the cluster of shipping containers stacked toward the back of the large cavern. Belan knew what was in them, and he knew what such weapons could do to turn the tide of the battle.

  But could he go against his orders?

  Then he realized a fatal flaw in his original plan.

  He had planned for a strategic retreat through the emergency tunnel should their position become indefensible. At that point, his troops would regroup and reengage the enemy as they moved the weapons from the chamber a crate at a time. He was expecting to stop them with this second offensive.

  The flaw in his plan hit him like a flash bolt—literally. The enemy would have access to the superweapons. His troops would not.

  He’d seen the rifles in action on Hax’on. They had incredible range and power, plus a top-level capacity of ninety bolts. What could his raiders do against such firepower?

  The answer was nothing. To decide on retreat would mean the battle was lost, along with the weapons. There would be no recourse after that.

  Belan had no choice. If Dal Divisen chose to remove the hundred-thousand-credit-incentive for the defense of the position, then so be it. Belan had to believe he would be more sensible. Belan could save the weapons … or he could lose them. Also, he could either save a few of his troops, or they could all die here in the cavern fighting a losing cause. The third option was he could take a supply of the superweapons and wreck-havoc on the enemy, only to suffer the consequences of victory afterward.

  He made a command decision.

  “You three, come with me,” he yelled through the din of the battle. The sounds were amplified by the granite walls, making it hard to hear anything below a yell. The four raiders set off across the wide stone floor for the nearest shipping container.

  All his fighters wore light environmental suits, both in case they had to evacuate the mine, and also as protection against the radioactivity associated with the containers. It wasn’t that strong by itself. But with so many pods in the chamber, as well as the insulating nature of the stone walls, extended exposure could be dangerous.

  He reached the first container, and with gloved hands, pulled up the release mechanism and slid it to one side, tugging on the handle to open the container door. It was dark inside the chamber until Belan flicked on his helmet light.

  He staggered back, stumbling into one of the other raiders who was crowding him, anxious to get a look inside. Regaining his balance, he ran to the next container, panic in his movements.

  A moment later, he stood in shock, staring with disbelief at a second empty container.

  “Check more!” he frantically ordered.

  His helpers weren’t stupid; they realized what was happening.

  They were dying to protect a bunch of empty pods, being sacrificed for nothing.

  Belan triggered his throat comm unit, linking him to the surviving officers under his command.

  “Call the retreat! Fall back in covering units. Do it quickly. Make for the emergency exit.”

  “What of the containers, of the bonus?” a voice asked in his ear.

  “They are empty. They are all empty.”

  The silence in his ears was telling. No one protested; no one shouted their anger. All they were concerned about now was for their survival.

  From where Belan stood, he saw a marked difference in the complexion of the battle. His people began running, some moving back to take up defensive positions. This strategy held for only a few moments before it became a wholesale retreat, one of disorganized panic. These were pirates, not true soldiers. Discipline disappeared with their courage.

  It was now every being for himself, and Belan was no exception. He raced off for the escape tunnel, arriving only moments before anyone else. He entered and began climbing the long and narrow stairway. Other raiders crowded in behind him, shoving and yelling. The tunnel was made for only one person at a time to move up the stairs. Now three or four were trying to shoulder their way up.

  Belan had gone up only about fifty steps when he noticed a bouncing light off the curving walls of the tunnel, coming from above. He cradled his weapon, thinking this could be the enemy attempting to outflank them. That wasn’t necessary, not any longer. The battle was lost. But the advancing Cartel soldiers could cut off his only means of retreat.

  Belan fired without a target, attempting to clear the tunnel.

  An answering barrage of return fire splashed against the walls. Raiders behind him were hit, screaming in pain and answering with their own volley of blinding flash bolts.

  It was never decided whether Captain Belan was killed by enemy fire, or from friendly fire from behind. It didn’t matter. No one investigated the incident.

  Now the raiders reversed course, heading back into the huge cavern in a panic.

  32

  Adam kept firing even though he didn’t have a target. The passageway was too narrow for anyone to get past him and too narrow for him to proceed without laying down a scorching series of flash bolts first. Bodies began to pile up along the stairs, making it harder for him and Sherri to move.

  But they kept going, popping in new power packs when the current ones ran dry. At one point, the enemy fire died off, and below they could see light filtering into the tunnel from another room. This had to be the main cavern with the shipping containers. Beyond the narrow tunnel, the battle continued, although everyone who tried to escape through the emergency tunnel had backed out and were in the large chamber.

  Adam crouched down at the exit and peeked around the rock edge. The site he saw was shocking.

  It was an enormous dome-topped chamber with a smooth, flat floor. Smoke was accumulating at the higher elevations and beginning to drift lower. Flash bolts streaked through the air, smelling of ozone … and death. Bodies lay everywhere, and if there had once been defining lines between offensive and defensive forces, they had long since disappeared. Aliens were scrambling about in all directions, firing almost indiscriminately at anyone who came within their sights, be they friend or foe. There were no distinctive uniforms between the combatants, only ubiquitous environmental suits of various colors.

  Adam placed an arm on Sherri, holding her back. She was apoplectic, with her anger and fear guiding her actions. In her desperate need to find Riyad, she was willing to race into the melee without regard for her own safety.

  “Let me go!” she yelled, struggling to get past.

  “Take it easy; give it a little time. It’s a clusterfuck out there.”

  “Riyad—”

  “I know. Just hold on.”

  Adam surveyed the battle, looking for any pattern, any signs of leadership on either side. He was pretty sure Riyad would be with that group, more than likely unarmed, held back with the brass as the grunts were pressed forward.

  Then he saw an opening, a way to reach the stack of storage containers. That’s where the big weapons would be. He grabbed Sherri by the shoulder of her environmental suit and pulled her from the tunnel exit.

  They didn’t sprint to the containers, rather they leaped, in bounding arcs
twenty feet long. Running in half Earth’s gravity was a delight, even if it took a little getting used to. Without knowing how to do it, a person would mainly bounce up and down rather than move along in a straight line. But Adam and Sherri were experienced in variable gravity scenarios. They leaned forward radically, giving direction to their momentum. They reached the stack of containers three seconds later.

  Sherri blasted an alien who surprised her as he appeared around the corner of a pod. Adam then slipped past her and moved along the thirty-foot length of the container. The front end was closed but not locked. Adam set to work opening it, hoping to get his hands on one of these superweapons he’d heard so much about. A moment later he knew why the battle had disintegrated into a wild free-for-all.

  The damn thing was empty.

  Riyad and Jay were on their bellies, arms covering their heads, as flash bolts flew wildly around them coming from all directions. Pannel and Sirous weren’t too far away, also seeking cover wherever they could find it, with the Cartel leader shouting orders into his comm, which no one seemed to be obeying.

  The breakdown began a few minutes ago when the raiders in defense of the containers ran for the far side of the chamber. Victorious Cartel soldiers entered after that, content to let the retreating troops go. Then suddenly, the raiders returned, catching the Cartel by surprise. Everyone scattered and began firing at anything that moved.

  Riyad was at the entrance to the cavern, pressed against a rock wall, when a soldier close to him fell to an energy bolt to the chest, his Xan-fi rifle sliding smoothly up to Riyad as if delivered by angels. Riyad snatched it up—and grabbing Jay by his environmental suit—pulled the kid with him around the corner.

  They were now in the cavern itself, which wasn’t an improvement from where they’d been a moment before. Random bolts filled the air, and there was no place to hide—only the distant stack of shipping containers at the far end of the chamber.

  “Let’s go!” he called out to Jay before he took off in gigantic leaps in the low gravity.

  A moment later, he noticed Jay wasn’t with him. He slid to a stop, crouching low to make himself less of a target. The kid was on his way, but having a hell of a time getting the hang of running in low-G. His powerful Human muscles were causing him to soar eight feet into the air with each stride, while only covering five feet or so of distance. It was like he was on an invisible pogo-stick.

  “Lean forward as you run!” Riyad yelled at him. Jay looked at him with wide, panicking eyes. But the next couple of times he made contact with the floor, he began to make more forward progress with each stride. Eventually, he reached Riyad and raced past him. Riyad took up the chase.

  They reach the cluster of containers without getting hit and bounded into the metal side of a open pod with a crash, coming to a stop.

  “That was cool!” Jay exclaimed, having been caught up in the moment—at least for that moment. Now Riyad pulled him inside the open container for cover.

  An alien with the same idea was inside, crouching in fear against a side wall, his weapon drained of power. Riyad glared down at him, confused. How could he be out of ammo when he was in a shipping container full of … of nothing.

  The dark void of the container sucked all of Riyad's attention from the raging battle. The fucking thing was empty. The weapons were gone.

  Jay had the same reaction. The two Humans looked at each other.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Jay said.

  “If not here, then where?” Riyad asked.

  A movement from outside caught their attention. Both men dropped to their knees and turned, raising their weapons toward the threat. Riyad fired first, his bolt contacting the edge of the door, driving back the attacker.

  A head made a quick look-see around the corner and then pulled back. Riyad fired again but missed.

  “Riyad! Is that you?”

  “Adam! What the fuck?”

  Riyad reached out a hand and pressed Jay’s rifle barrel toward the floor, just as Sherri and Adam came around the corner and entered the pod.

  Sherri didn’t hesitate. She tumbled into Riyad, who was still on one knee, not only knocking him down but also causing the both of them to skid along the smooth metal floor of the container in the light gravity. Now spread prone above him, Sherri laid a hard, wet kiss on his lips.

  She followed up the passionate kiss with a loud, hard slap to the side of his face.

  “You bastard! You’re alive!”

  “Would you prefer that I wasn’t?”

  “I’m not sure; give me a minute.”

  Adam yanked Sherri’s light body off Riyad. In the gravity of Masnin, it was a very … emphatic move, causing her to bounce off the ceiling of the container before falling to the floor.

  “Knock it off!” Adam said, slightly embarrassed. Sherri was shaking her head, trying to get her senses back. “There’s still a big fight going on outside,” Adam concluded.

  “Not anymore,” Jay said from the doorway.

  Everyone scrambled to take a look. Jay was right. There were still a few sporadic flash bolts going off, but other than that, an eerie silence was filling the cavern.

  Then came a movement at the entrance to the chamber where the assault was launched. More figures appeared there—a lot more—and soldiers by the look of them. They carried energy rifles and came in the same varied shapes and sizes of the Cartel troops. The tunnel was filled with them.

  “Reinforcements!” Adam called out to his team. “We have to get back to the exit.”

  “What exit?” Jay asked.

  Adam noticed that the scared alien fighter was still in the pod. He looked up at Adam and nodded. If the Humans weren’t going to kill him, then he was more than willing to tag along. That wasn’t going to happen.

  “There’s a tunnel cut into the mountain behind the containers,” Sherri explained. “That’s how we got inside.”

  “Then let’s go!” Riyad yelled.

  The alien jumped to his feet.

  “Not you, dickhead,” Sherri said.

  “Fuck!” said Jay. “It could be too late.”

  This new force now raced into the chamber, spreading out and covering all sides. Adam checked his battery strength, as did the others.

  “I’m running low,” he reported.

  There was a chorus of me toos.

  “It’s going to be touch-and-go if we can make it to the tunnel before we go dry, but we don’t have a choice,” Adam said. He unhooked his projection sword from his belt as a last resort.

  “Aw, hell,” Riyad said. “There are more of those bug-eyed aliens with them,” he reported, watching the huge alien entourage as they made their way straight for the pod the Humans were hiding within.

  “What do you think they’ll do when they find out the weapons are gone?” It was Jay asking.

  Adam shrugged. “We’re about to find out. Lay down your weapons,” he ordered. “Let’s see if we can talk our way out of this.”

  The four Humans—and one alien—presented themselves at the entrance to the container, holding out their hands, showing they were unarmed. Bruised and battered, Pannel led the way, with another of the big-eyed aliens next to him. But it wasn’t Sirous. He came up a moment later, his arms secured in front of him with what appeared to be nylon bindings.

  Now that was something Adam wasn’t expecting. He led his people out of the container and up to the aliens.

  Pannel was appropriately startled to see Adam and Sherri. Sirous didn’t react one way or the other. He had the look of total defeat in his demeanor.

  Aliens rushed forward and entered the container. They came out a second later, confusion on their faces.

  “They’re all like that,” Adam volunteered. “The weapons are gone, removed by the pirates before you got here.”

  Pannel wanted to ask how Adam and Sherri got here, but he was pushed aside by one of the big-eyed aliens who stepped past Adam and entered the container.

  After his brief eyewitn
ess inspection, he walked over to Sirous.

  “I can tell by your expression that you are as surprised as we are. You knew nothing of this?”

  Sirous didn’t answer. Instead, he appeared deflated and defeated, a look of abject failure on his face.

  The alien turned to Pannel.

  “It appears as though the revolution Sirous so wanted shall never be. We give thanks to the Gradis Cartel for your assistance in stopping this catastrophe.”

  “What the hell?” Adam asked. “The Cartel was working against Sirous?”

  Pannel stepped up to the Human. “It did not start that way. As you stated earlier, we of the Cartel are pragmatic. We go to the highest bidder.”

  Adam couldn’t restrain his smile, full teeth and all. “And our friend Sirous was outbid! Now that’s rich.”

  “Rich had a lot to do with it,” the big-eyed alien replied, missing the point. “We had been suspicious of Sirous for a long time. Yet only recently did we discover who was assisting him in his attempted coup. We were relieved to find it was the Cartel.”

  “Relieved?” Riyad asked.

  “Yes. That meant his army could be bought, and not made up of ideologues who could not. Pannel received instructions from his organization to assist Sirous until the weapons were recovered. After which, we would arrive and place him in custody.”

  “But the weapons haven’t been recovered,” Sherri pointed out.

  The alien made a shrugging motion. “It matters not, just so long as they are no longer under the control of Sirous or his co-conspirators.”

  “But the pirates have them.”

  “As long as they are not used against us, we do not care. That is the concern of others.”

  Adam leaned against the doorframe of the pod. “Well, hell,” he sighed. “Now what? What about us?”

  Again, the alien shrugged. “That is not our decision.” He looked over at Pannel. “You are now in the hands of the Cartel. All we wanted to do was stop the rebellion and capture Sirous. We have done that.”

  Adam looked at Pannel and grinned, keeping his mouth closed as he did. At this crucial juncture, he didn’t want to antagonize the Cartel boss.