“Looks that way, sir,” he responded. The anesthetic barely held the pain in Pete’s leg at bay.
“Grecko, come back here and get that thing out of his leg,” Green said into the intercom on the wall. “Jones, patch me into the Two-Edge in orbit. Maybe their scanners can find another entrance to that cavern,” Green said.
As Grecko walked through the door, Green and Ramirez returned to the front.
“Just try to relax,” Grecko said as he injected Pete with another dose of the anesthetic. Again, Pete felt a warm tingle spread throughout his leg. A second later, the pain was completely gone and his head started to clear.
“How bad is it?” Pete asked.
“Doesn’t look too bad. The suit seemed to have stopped it from penetrating too far. Hold still, I’m going to pull it out,” Grecko said as he pulled at the shard with a pair of tweezers.
“Damn.”
“What’s wrong?” Pete asked.
“Nothing, it just slipped,” Grecko said as he tried a second time, again failing. “Hower, stop tensing up your leg,” he said, mildly frustrated.
“I’m not,” Pete replied.
The third and fourth attempts to extract the shard also proved unsuccessful. Under his breath, Grecko started mumbling many of the Italian curses he’d heard his father use when his old man hadn’t wanted his children to understand what he was saying. At the end of a particularly long and fluid string of obscenities, something suddenly caught Grecko’s eye.
“What the…?” he said, looking closer at Pete’s leg.
“What is it?” Pete asked, trying not to sound scared. At first, he’d assumed Grecko wasn’t much of a field medic and his inability to remove the shard testimony to a lack of training, but the look on his face told Pete it was something more.
“Hold on,” Grecko answered, picking up a medical scanner.
“But…,” Pete started.
“Just wait a minute,” Grecko said, ignoring Pete as he ran the scanner over his leg.
The hand-held sensor hummed as Grecko passed it over Pete’s calf muscle, its light blue scanning beam reflecting cacophonously off his pale skin. After the third pass, Grecko walked over to the console on the far wall and pulled up the data from the scan onto the screen.
“Oh hell,” he whispered. “Sarge. I need to see you back here A.S.A.P.” Grecko said urgently into the Rhino’s intercom, his brown eyes wide with confusion and surprise.
“What is it?” Green replied.
“Nothing good, sir. Nothing good,” he said, turning to look at Pete.
As Pete heard Grecko’s reply, a chill ran through him, raising goose bumps on his skin, as a droplet of cold sweat began running down his back.
As soon as Green entered the compartment, Grecko locked the hatch behind him. Minutes passed as the two stood in front the medical stations monitor whispering. Pete caught snippets of the conversation, their subdued speech doing little to hide the tones of their voices, nor the excessive sprinkling of damns, hells and other expletives. At the end of their discussion, they walked towards him somberly.
“How are you feeling, son?” Green asked.
“Maintaining, sir. What’s going on?” Pete asked, trying to keep worry out of his voice. He knew from experience that when they called you ‘son’ bad news usually followed.
“Grecko,” Green said, stepping beside Pete.
“Hower, it seems the shard in your leg is growing,” Grecko said cautiously as he sat in front of Pete, looking him in the eyes.
“What do you mean ‘growing’?” Pete asked doubtfully.
“The reason I couldn’t pull it out was because it’d begun to grow tendrils into the surrounding tissue,” Grecko explained. “Look at the screen,” he said, pointing to the main monitor.
Before Pete was an image of his leg and the piece of crystal that had torn into it. Grecko pressed a series of buttons on the scanner, changing the image from an external view of Pete’s leg to one of the underlying tissue. There, mixed in among the dark red muscle and white tendons, was the piece of crystal with what appeared to be roots growing out of it, twisting their way into the surrounding flesh.
“See this area here?” Grecko asked as his finger made a small circle around the screen, “This is where the shard is. Those thin green strands are the tendrils spreading into your leg.”
He clicked the screen again, and it showed four images across the top, each consecutive one showing increasingly more green crystal.
“It’s been growing, and every time we tried to pull it out, it’s increased its growth rate,” Grecko continued.
“What does that mean? ” Pete asked, his hands beginning to shake.
“Don’t really know, but if we can’t figure out how to stop it within the next few hours, we may have to amputate in order to prevent it from spreading to your major organs,” Grecko said in an even tone.
The room seemed to freeze around him. From the day he’d signed the enlistment papers, he’d known he could lose his life in the line of duty, but he’d always expected something different; firefights, explosions, enemy attack. In the Corps, death could come at any time, and he’d made peace with that--or so he’d thought. Dying slowly, with something growing inside him, destroying him from the inside out, was a terror he’d never dreamt of.
“We’re not going to let that happen,” Green said reassuringly, his voice snapping Pete back to reality.
“Sir, we’re getting telemetry from the Two-Edge. They were able to find a back entrance to the cavern,” Jones said over the intercom.
“Understood. Grecko, find a way to stop that crystal,” Green ordered harshly as he walked out the door.
“Yes, sir,” Grecko said, his half-hearted response leaving Pete with a sense of dread.
***********************************************************
“Here’s the situation, people,” Green started after reviewing the information from the orbiting ship. He stood in front of the main monitor, which displayed an orbital view of the mountain range they’d recently left. “There’s another entrance to the cavern through a system of connecting passages here,” he said, pointing to a spot on the map almost adjacent to where they had tried to originally enter.
“We’re going to travel northwest along the base of this ridge. Once there, we’ll send out remotes with hard line spools into the cavern. Since the passages run for miles it’ll be slow going. Once we find the missing people, we’ll load them up and hotfoot it back to the LZ,” he said.
“What about those crystals?” Griswald asked.
“I think we’ve got that covered,” Grecko said walking from the back with Jones. Pete hobbled slowly behind the two before taking a seat next to Ramirez. Pete scratched at the wide metal collar wrapped around his leg right above his knee.
“How’s the leg?” Green asked.
“Sore, sir, but Grecko stopped the crystal from growing and even managed to get most of it out,” Pete responded, grinning weakly.
“Glad to hear it. Grecko, Jones, tell us what you’ve got,” Green said.
“There’s good news and bad news. Over the past few hours, Grecko and I did some intensive scans and found those crystals all over the planet, but there are especially high concentrations within the mountain ranges and similar formations,” Jones said.
“Right where we have to go,” Ramirez said with a disgusted tone.
“Exactly. That’s the bad news. Good news is that we think we have a way to neutralize them,” she said, nodding towards Grecko.
“Right before the crystals attacked, we detected extreme fluctuations in the magnetic field in the surrounding area,” Grecko said. “Hower and Griswald were tagged by the crystals before being attacked by them.”
“Trying telling us something we haven’t figured out already,” Griswald interjected, his broad black arms folded on his chest.
“Anyway,” Grecko said, ignoring the interruption, “when I was pulling the piece of crystal from Hower’s leg, it resisted by sendi
ng out tendrils and attaching itself to surrounding tissue. The medical scans of the leg showed that he still had the magnetic tag on him. Once I neutralized it, the crystal became dormant. After that, I was able to extract most of it. That band you see around his thigh now is generating a field to keep the portion remaining in his body dormant,” Grecko said.
“And how does that help us?” Ramirez asked as he sat with his elbows on his thighs, his light brown eyes looking at Grecko quizzically.
“The tests I ran on the fragment showed it responds differently to different magnetic field types and intensities. Some it attacks, some it ignores, and a few, it avoids. And one…” Grecko said, holding up a pan full of a green powder, “seems to cause them to self destruct,” he said with a grin.
“So we can go in there and blast those things,” Griswald said excitedly, punching his fist into his hand.
“Negative. We do this quietly. Just because something worked on that little clump in a lab doesn’t mean it’ll work out there,” Green said. “Jones,” he said with a nod for her to speak.
“Thank you, sir. I’ve fitted the remotes with magnetic field generators set to the harmonics the crystals seem to ignore. The range on them is limited, but anyone within a twelve foot radius of the source should theoretically be invisible to the crystals,” she said.
“And what if we get into trouble?” Ramirez asked.
“The generators can produce the destruct field as well, but it requires a lot more power and would burn out the generator in about 10 minutes. Besides, if we went in there blowing them up or running them off, we don’t know what the response would be. Best to stay invisible; that and the destruct harmonic is hazardous to soft tissue if exposed for too long,” she said, almost under her breath.
“Meaning?” Griswald asked.
“Meaning if you’re exposed to that field for too long you fry like bacon in a skillet,” Grecko said.
“And remember to stay close to your remote. There is a lot of distortion coming from those mountains, so communications will be limited. The remotes will be doubling as comm relays,” Jones said.
“Great,” Griswald said as Ramirez sat there rolling his eyes.
“Yes, it is,” said Green, standing in the center again.
“Ramirez, Griswald and I will go out with the remotes while the rest stay here. Hower, if you can’t help Jones and Grecko, then stay out of their way,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” Pete answered as he scratched the cuff around his leg again.
Twenty minutes later, Green and the others were on their way, each walking next to a remote as it rolled along the ground, a thin wire spooling out its back. Inside the Rhino, Pete fidgeted as he sat in front of the wide band motion detector looking for signs of movement.
“Do you mind?” Jones asked as she watched her screen, looking for any shifts in the information being sent back by the remotes.
“What?” Pete responded.
“The tapping. Do you mind?” she said, nodding her head towards his good leg, whose foot he’d been tapping non-stop for the past four minutes.
“Sorry, nervous habit,” he said, stopping.
“If she’s alive, they’ll find her,” Grecko said reassuringly.
“I just wish I was out there,” Pete said.
“You’d rather be in a S. T. A. B. suit walking into possibly hostile territory instead of enjoying the good life with us?” Grecko said with a smirk, keeping his eyes on his screen. “Why, Jones, I think I’m a little offended.”
“His girl is out there. I think it’s sweet, the whole knight in shining armor thing. A little outdated, but sweet. Besides, you’re no picnic to be around, anyway,” she said.
“Your harsh words sting me to the quick,” Grecko replied.
“Whatever,” Jones said, grinning.
“I feel the love in here,” Pete said as he started playing fidgeting with his cross.
Looking at the main screen near the top of the cabin, Pete could see the images being transmitted from the remotes and helmet cams. The walls around Green and the others reflected the lights from the remotes poorly. Visibility was barely 20 feet and it looked as if the darkness around them was waiting to swallow them at any moment. The glimpses of the walls he did see were brown and craggy but otherwise unremarkable, which the night-vision filters confirmed.
“Wait a minute… I’ve got human life-signs. Signals are faint,” Jones said sitting up as a green light flashed on her board.
“Confirmed, four men and two women,” Grecko said as he checked over the readouts from the remotes.
“Lead us to them,” Green replied over the radio.
“Second passage on the right. Six hundred yards and then take the next left,” Jones said.
“Can you contact them?” Green asked.
“Composition of the rock around you is still limiting communications. If I boost the gain on the remotes, I may be able to punch through. Standby,” she said.
“This is Rescue Team Bravo calling Rayis research team and Retrieval Squad Alpha, do you read? Over,” she said, her hands flying across the control board, adjusting instruments, as she tried to make contact.
“I repeat this is Rescue Team Bravo calling Rayis research team and Retrieval Squad Alpha, do you read? Over,” she said again. After the fourth attempt, she switched back over to Green.
“Sorry, sir, no luck. I cleared out as much of the distortion as I could. I can’t tell if you’re still out of range or if they’re just not answering,” Jones said.
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Green said. “Ramirez, double up with Griswald, we’re sending your remote up ahead.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Take her away, Jones,” Green said.
From the Rhino, Jones piloted the remote through the winding passages. Pete watched the feed from the remote unit on the monitor, as Jones navigated it over the terrain. A few minutes later it rolled it into a small cavern. On the monitor, the beam from its lamp cast an almost ghostly glow into the expanse as the end of shaft of light seemed to be over-powered by the darkness around it.
“She’s no ghost, she’s alive…she’s alive,” Pete said to himself, as the remote moved closer towards the life-signs Jones had detected. Soon the light fell across the feet of a person in an environmental suit, lying still on the ground. As the remote moved closer to the body its cameras showed, huddled together against the far wall, eight motionless forms.
While Jones worked feverishly, Pete slowly moved from his seat to stand behind her so he could see her monitor. His brown eyes squinted as he strained to see if Trisha was one of the people in the pile.
“Back off. I’m working here,” Jones said as he leaned in, accidentally nudging her arm.
“Sorry,” Pete said, stepping back, not taking his eyes off the screen.
“This is Rescue Team Bravo calling Rayis research team and Retrieval Squad Alpha, do you read?” she said as the remote moved further into the cavern.
On screen, Pete saw one of the figures move slowly reaching for its gun. As the light from the remote shined on him, the soldier dropped his weapon and crawled up the remote’s forward camera.
“We have six survivors, Sarge,” Jones said. “Two didn’t make it.”
“Damn. What’s the condition of the survivors?” Green asked.
“All but one is unconscious,” Grecko said.
Pete saw the soldier’s mouth move as he reached the remote but heard nothing but dead air over the speakers in the Rhino.
“What’s wrong?” Pete asked.
“Nothing on our end,” Jones said.
“What’s he trying to say?”
“He’s Lt. Williams and that the power cells in their suits are critically low. I’m guessing they’ve turned off their comms to conserve energy,” Grecko said, reading Williams lips.
“But those suits have solar rechargers,” Pete said.
“Not a lot of good when you’re trapped in a cave,” Jones said as she worked.
“Sarge, the cavern is clear, and they need help fast.”
“Roger that. Triple time,” Green said to Griswald and Ramirez as they ran for the cavern.
About an hour later, Green and the others had moved the survivors to the Rhino. Pete had to fight back his tears as Ramirez carried Trisha’s unconscious form on board. Pete hovered anxiously in the background as Grecko knelt down, removed her helmet and examined her. A wave of relief washed over Pete as Grecko looked up at him smiling. “She’ll be fine,” he said.
Green had been standing near the door helping Griswald with one of the others. As he heard Grecko clear the girl, a small grin passed across his lips. He even gave Pete a few seconds to enjoy the moment before ordering him to help with the others.
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