by S. A. Lusher
While it ran, he grabbed a shotgun, slung it across his back and grabbed a rifle as well, setting it to three-round burst. He slung it over his shoulder and turned to look at Campbell, who was finishing up as well.
“Ready to go?” he asked.
“Yep...as well as, I suppose. Not really looking forward to being back up there in that floating metal hell,” Campbell replied miserably.
“Yeah, me neither. Go find Burne, I'll be over in a minute.”
Campbell nodded and left. Greg turned face Kyra once more. They stared at each other for a long moment
“Come back to me safe,” Kyra said finally.
“I always try. You do the same,” Greg replied.
He felt that perhaps there was a lot left unsaid hanging between them, and maybe it was best left unsaid, at least for now. Although, he wasn't entirely sure why, Greg thought back to Cage's words, asking him about regrets and no time and all that. If he told her he loved her and then died in an hour, we he have any regrets?
No, he wouldn't.
“I love you,” he said suddenly, the words bursting forth from his mouth.
She suddenly let loose a burst of nervous laughter. “You do?”
“Yes, I do.”
“I love you, too,” she said, hesitating only slightly.
Greg laughed himself now, feeling a great relief flood through him.
“Well...that's good to know,” he said.
Here, they both laughed, then kissed.
“Hey! Let's get going!” Burne called from across the hangar.
“Hang on to that thought,” Greg said, and then broke away from her.
He moved through the hangar, feeling more elated and awake than he had in a long time. So he was in love, and he was loved in return.
And it was wonderful.
He moved towards Campbell and Burne.
* * * * *
They took one of the two jump ships Greg and the others had original come down in. Burne explained that they'd wanted to strip them for parts, and had, to some degree, but left both of them with basic functionality.
Just in case.
Of what, Greg wasn't sure, but didn't ask.
The three of them loaded into the ship. Burne went forward to the cockpit while Greg closed the cargo ramp. He and Campbell sat and listened to the sounds of the ship running through its warmup sequence. Greg tried to tell himself that it wasn't going to be so bad, that he was fast enough, strong enough, smart enough to get himself out of this situation alive and keep on going. That everything was going to be okay.
Only he couldn't even begin to believe that.
He felt scared, alone, and so tired, his elation leaving him.
“Can you tell me more about Dark Ops?” Greg asked, looking at Campbell, trying to distract himself.
Campbell seemed lost in his own head. “Hmm? Oh, I guess so. Not much to tell that you already haven't seen, I guess.”
“I thought you were pretty high up.”
“I was just a glorified bodyguard, to be honest. I had clearance to go places, but not to know anything. I just followed Starck around a lot, me an' Rez. God, that guy, he was creepy. He's one of those guys who just lives to kill, you know? He worked out and trained like all the time. Hardly ate anything but pure nutrients and protein, you know, bare minimum. Really lucky shot you got on him, otherwise he'd have been really hard to take down. As for me and Dark Ops, it was just a whole lot of 'shut up and go' or 'hurry up and wait'. Lot of guard duty, lot of scaring people, when the time called for it, and killing people.”
“And that never bothered you?”
Campbell shrugged. “It was a paycheck, a place to live, fantastic training. Amazing R and R, too. Five star hotels, the best bars, best women, best night clubs.”
Greg considered this for a moment, and then changed the subject. “I assume you know something about the ship we're headed up to.”
“It's called the Isis. Second biggest, next to the Anubis. Oh yeah, here.” Campbell passed him an infopad.
“What this?” Greg asked, accepting it.
“It's an infopad that's got all the relevant data about the Isis, but it's been severed completely from external stimuli. Metal fuckers can't get into it at all. It's got the location of the part we're looking for on the map.”
Greg tucked it into one of the larger pockets on the suit and secured it.
“Hey, will you two get up here?” Burne grumbled.
Greg and Campbell moved to the cockpit. Greg saw that they'd left the hangar and were now headed for the quartet of ships hovering ominously overhead. Greg frowned as he noticed something attached to the Isis.
“What's that?” he asked. “That's not-”
“That's what I was thinking, too. It's an extra-solar communications array,” Burne replied grimly.
“You can tell that just by looking at it?” Campbell asked.
“Well what the fuck else is it supposed to be?” Burne snapped. “I'm not an idiot. I understand AIs. They're digital. If that thing had a way out-of-system by now, it'd be gone. But it doesn't. So it's building an extra-solar communications array on the side of the ship. And we cannot allow that to happen. We're going to have to destroy it.”
“Fantastic,” Greg muttered. “How do we go about that?”
“Let me think a moment,” Burne replied.
They all fell silent as the Isis drifted closer. The silence remained until they had honed in on one of the hangars. Powell had given them a way to temporarily override the controls for the hangar airlock. They could get in, but they'd have to find their own way back out. Not something Greg was looking forward to.
“So, considering the fact that we're docking, I guess that means we can't just shoot the array or something?” Greg asked.
“No. We salvaged the munitions from this ship and didn't really have the time to reload it. Didn't think we'd need to,” Burne replied.
Greg sighed. “Fantastic.”
“There's an armory nearby,” Campbell chimed in, staring down at his infopad. “We might be able to scrounge up some bombs there.”
“Good idea,” Burne said as he brought the ship in through the airlock.
The next few minutes were spent settling into a lonely hangar bay. It was completely pitch-black.
“Jesus,” Burne muttered as he shut down the ship. “I'm reading zero atmosphere and deep cold out there.”
“Erebus must've shut down this part of the ship to save power,” Greg muttered.
Burne turned around in his chair. “Alright, boys. This is the plan. You two get the pleasure tracking those bombs and walking out onto the surface and plating them. I'm going after the part. We all meet back here after the job is done. Understand?”
Greg wanted to say something about sticking together, but part of him knew Burne could look after himself and that this was for the best. They were running out of time. Everyone was. They needed to pick up the pace.
“Got it,” he said.
Burne looked like he was ready for an argument, but simply nodded in response. The three men made their way back through the cabin. They checked their guns as they waited for the back ramp to lower. They flicked on their suit-mounted lights, punching holes in the vast darkness.
“Okay,” Burne muttered. “Let's get this shit over with.”
Chapter 13
–Augmented–
“Do you know what sucks about this?” Campbell asked, his voice shattering the silence that had settled around them.
“No, Campbell. What, from my lengthy list of complains, sucks about this situation that we find ourselves in?” Greg replied.
They made their way down a long corridor, bathed in the darkness, absent of oxygen, though still mercifully supported by artificial gravity. Their flashlights cut lonely, pale arcs through the bleak desolation.
“You. You're always asking people about their pasts, but we can't ask you anything about yours, because you can't remember it,” Campbell replied.
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Greg was so taken aback by the statement that he stopped. Campbell made it a few more steps, then realized he'd stopped and did so as well.
Greg laughed. Campbell stared back at him, his face encased in glass, hidden behind the visor. His eyes spoke volumes, seeming to decide whether or not Greg had finally cracked under all the pressure.
“Out of everything that is wrong with this situation, out of all the fucked things in this fucked solar system, that is what you choose to complain about?” he cried in between snatches of breath and laughter.
“Well, I...yeah,” Campbell replied, then laughed as well.
A moment passed. Their radios crackled to life. “Will you two shut the hell up and get on with the mission? It wasn't that funny,” Burne grumbled.
“On it,” Greg replied, getting himself under control.
“Maybe it was a stupid thing to complain about,” Campbell observed.
As they turned a corner, coming to the corridor that held the armory, Greg's mood darkened, and he stopped. There was something sinister about the corridor, something ominous.
The walls were dented and covered with freeze-dried blood. It was obvious a lot of fighting had gone on here. Greg could easily envision merciless, soulless Drones overrunning either Dark Ops troops or an Undead horde.
“There it is,” Campbell said quietly, pointing his flashlight down the way shining it on a deeply dented door along the left-hand side of the corridor.
The pair hurried silently down the hallway, coming to the door and studying it. The door wasn't opening, that much was obvious. However, it was dented enough that it had nearly been popped out of its frame. With a few heaves, Greg and Campbell managed to get it the rest of the way out. It made a curiously dull sound as it hit the floor.
The interior of the armory was mostly barren. Greg hoped against hope as he and Campbell cleared the room, playing their flashlights across it in one-hundred-eighty degree arcs, seeing nothing but dented metal and blood. They split up and began hunting through the various lockers and crates, their search became more and more desperate as time went on. Finally, with a small sigh of relief, Greg found a small cache of explosives.
“Got them,” he called, staring down at the collection of yellow charges.
Campbell hurried over. “Excellent.”
They distributed the meager supply among themselves, four each. There was only one detonator, which Greg took and secured in a separate pocket.
“Well, let's get to it,” Greg said as they finished up.
Campbell spent a moment searching the map, figuring out how to get to the comms. Several moments passed in an uncomfortable, bloody silence. Greg kept watch on the doors, the shadows, the vents...the pair of them shifted occasionally, making their lights bob and the shadows grow and sway.
“Got it,” Campbell said finally. “I think, at least. We can get to an airlock and get out on the surface.”
Greg spent another few moments memorizing the route and verifying that Campbell had the right idea, which he roughly seemed to. They left the armory and traced their way back through the derelict, ruined corridors of the Isis. No sound came to them. Greg wasn't sure how to feel about that. Was this region of the ship truly dead, or was the airless atmosphere muffling any sound just enough as to be virtually silent?
He felt exposed as he clomped along the corridor. The suit was nice, and certainly not too bulky, but it still made him feel slightly off-balance. They moved down the hallway they were in, came to a T-junction, looked left, then right, found nothing, and moved right. The path to the airlock was decently clear, and not too lengthy.
Greg tried to think of something to strike up a conversation with as they came to another junction. However, his mind stuttered to a halt as their lights fell on something standing in the center of the corridor. Both men froze, centering their flashlight beams on the figure that stood there. It was so stock-still that Greg almost mistook it for an inanimate object, something left behind to terrify anyone who got onboard.
Then it moved.
Much too fast.
Greg only got a fleeting glimpse of it as it came for them. It was humanoid, but its arms were too long and multi-jointed. Its head was too narrow and its eyes glowed a solid electric blue, burning neon holes in the darkness. A faint sound of buzzing came to Greg as the creature sprinted towards them, arms extended.
He realized what was on the end of each too-long arm.
Bone saws.
Both of them opened fire, three-round bursts flaring in the gloom, illuminating the thing in a series of still-shots. Several of the bullets struck, some of them embedding themselves in dead, white flesh, others ricocheted off of metal plates. At the last second, Greg ducked and rolled forward, swinging around and switching his rifle to full auto. Campbell had opted to move back, keeping it occupied.
Greg aimed and let loose, emptying the magazine into the thing's back. Black-and-red blood flew on the air as he hit something sensitive. The creature immediately lost interest in Campbell, spun and brought down a spinning bone saw. Greg let out a small sound of surprise and fear and rolled to the side.
The blade hit the deck and bounced off. Campbell opened fire from behind, hitting it several times and causing it to stumble. Greg took the opportunity to get to his feet and hastily reload. How strong was this thing?
As he slapped the fresh magazine in and shouldered the rifle, Greg prepared himself for the worst. Clearly, Erebus was good at what it was doing, and getting better all the time. The new Augmented launched a dual-attack, sending a bone saw towards Greg and Campbell simultaneously.
Greg stumbled back several steps, narrowly avoiding the spinning blade. He kept up his rate of fire, switching back to three-round bursts. More black-and-red blood flew on the air, but there didn't seem to be enough damage being done.
“Run!” Campbell cried.
He ducked beneath another bone saw attack and all but ran into Greg. They both bounded down the corridor. Campbell reached into one of the many pockets in his suit, pulled out a grenade, pulled the pin, and tossed it over his shoulder. They barely managed to reach the end of the corridor and go around the corner before it went off. A muffled whump sounded in the darkness behind them. They kept running.
Greg risked a glance over his shoulder after they turned two more corners. There was no movement behind them.
“Think we lost it?” Greg asked.
“Dunno. Hope so,” Campbell replied.
They waited a long moment, preparing for the worst, but it seemed to be gone for now. Greg let out a long sigh.
“Shit, what the hell was that thing?” he muttered.
“New Augmented,” Campbell replied. “But good news. We're at the airlock. Come on.”
Greg turned and looked. They had indeed arrived at the airlock in question. The pair moved into the locker room antechamber before the airlock itself, then pressed on after finding it void. They ran quick suit-checks one more time and confirmed that both of their suits still retained pressure. There were oxygen tanks in the airlock. The pair made sure to refill their own personal supplies before cycling through.
As the outer doors opened, Greg was given an epic, awe-inspiring view of a pure obsidian abyss, sprinkled with an infinity of multi-colored pinpoints of light. He stepped out, the magnetic boots in his suit activating automatically. He moved out and down, clamping his feet to the exterior hull and looking down at Onyx and the trio of structures residing on its surface. Although Greg knew that concepts like 'up' or 'down' were tenuous at best when you were operating in deep space. He made way for Campbell.
“Damn,” he muttered. “This is nuts.”
“Yeah,” Greg agreed. “Look.” He pointed.
To their right, growing out of the side Isis like a metal, malignant tumor, was the extra-solar comms array. Greg felt his heart skip a beat. Already, a lot of progress had been made even since they had seen it on their way up. Three metal struts supported a massive comms array, shaped lik
e a satellite dish that was over half-complete now.
“Shit, we need to hurry,” Campbell muttered.
Greg answered by setting off towards it. Campbell followed silently. They moved through the dead of space, eyes firmly ahead. Greg could see shapes moving all across the structure, as well as clustered around the base. He hoped that these might be more akin to worker Drones...but decided that they were probably still lethal.
“We're going to have to do it fast,” Campbell said.
“Yeah. Is the detonator good for more than one detonation?” Greg asked.
“Yes. Why?”
“We shouldn't wait. As soon as we get them planted on one, we move away and blow them. Three per, and then whatever grenades we have for the last one, since we've only got eight between us. Think that'll work?”
“It should. You plant them, I'll cover you,” Campbell said, switching to his shotgun.
Greg slung his rifle and switched to his shotgun as well. As they approached the first support strut, a half-dozen of the Drones broke away and immediately headed for them. Greg and Campbell blew them away, sending frozen slews of blood, bits of flesh, and entire limbs floating off into space as they worked through their shells. They emptied their shotguns and managed to clear a space around the strut.
“Go!” Campbell snapped.
Greg nodded, let his shotgun float, still attached to him by the sling and hurried over to the strut. He pulled out three of the explosives, shoved the detonators in and then hastily began placing them on the metal surface. He heard the dulled sounds of Campbell's shotgun going off behind him. Further down the hull he spied Drones making for them, intent on murder. He hurried. Campbell continued to blast away.
“Done!” Greg cried.
They moved away from the strut as quickly as their magnetic boots would allow them to.