“Exo, you first,” ordered Bombassa.
“On it.”
Exo turned his body sideways and began pushing his way through the still-widening gap. He grunted from the exertion. “Why’s this thing gotta take so long to open?”
“This is probably because the temporary power shutoff drained any warmup the doors had, and they are now opening from the first square,” Ravi said, talking while he sliced more of the beasts.
“Just focus on killing, Ravi,” Keel shouted.
Exo pushed his body harder into the narrow opening, but his armor wouldn’t yield enough for him to slip through. He was half in and half out, an arm and a leg in the airlock, the other exposed. “I can’t get in. I’m stuck.”
“Keep pushing. And keep firing,” Bombassa said.
Exo had wisely kept his hand holding his blaster rifle on the side of the door with all the action, and he awkwardly lined up a shot. The blaster bolt went well south of its mark, striking the beast in its hind leg.
Keel quickly adjusted for the miss, sending a blaster bolt from his Intec and finishing the job. “Just shout as soon as you’re through, Exo. Then we’ll follow.”
“And so will they,” Bombassa said gravely.
“It’s your optimism I like most about you,” Keel said as he lined up another shot.
Ravi was finding fewer targets now. The creatures seemed to have realized that the navigator was a distraction rather than a target, so Ravi could no longer merely position himself as a stable sentry, but was instead reduced to chasing down individual beasts with his sword held high above his head.
“What do you suppose they eat when there aren’t hapless miners around?” Keel asked.
“Not what’s in my thoughts right now,” Bombassa replied. “But I hope they’re not too hungry.”
Keel gave a fractional nod. It was perhaps best not to dwell on such things. There were too many targets and too much danger. They could count on their armor to protect against teeth for a while if they were completely overrun, but not forever. Enough of those creatures would be able to hold them down, pry off the individual pieces, and feast on the exposed legionnaire meat inside. Armor was good for a lot of things, but right now it had Keel feeling like a flay-lobster being prepped for dinner.
The snarling pack was closing in. One of them made a desperate lunge at the defenders, opening its jaws wide as it flew toward Bombassa, and the shock trooper raised his arm to fend off the attack. A crunch sounded, and for a moment Keel wondered if the beast’s jaws had actually broken the armor plating on Bombassa’s forearm.
Either way, Bombassa didn’t cry out. He calmly—and powerfully—held the beast aloft, swinging from his arm like an attack dog trained to never release its bit unless ordered. Bombassa pressed his rifle barrel into the creature’s stomach and rapid-fired two successive blaster bolts. The devil dog yelped in pain, sounding more ferocious than hurt. But it let go and fell dead at Bombassa’s feet.
“I’m through!” Exo shouted.
Keel pointed a finger at Bombassa, shooting another beast with his free hand. “You go next!”
The big shock trooper didn’t argue. And the door must have finally picked up its pace, because despite having a torso notably thicker than Exo’s, Bombassa quickly squeezed through the gap into the airlock.
Keel followed suit, shooting with both the slug thrower and his blaster pistol, dropping as many of the advancing creatures as possible as he backed through the opening. One of the beasts leapt straight at him, snapping its jaws mere inches from Keel’s face before he sent a bullet through its brain. “Exo! Shut the door! Shut the door!”
Exo was at the emergency controls. “Already on it.”
“What about Ravi?” Bombassa asked.
“He’ll be fine,” said Keel, still firing through the doors, which had reversed direction and were now slowly closing up. “Changing packs!”
Keel slammed home a charge pack in his blaster pistol before rejoining Exo and Bombassa in killing as many of the creatures as possible. They seemed inexhaustible, but now that they could attack only through one narrow opening, the three soldiers held them off with ease.
Then Keel’s slug thrower clicked dry, and a sinking sensation lurched in his stomach.
Oh, no. The ammo box.
He’d left the can outside.
He lunged toward the opening and sent an arm through to feel for the valuable bullets.
“What are you doing?” shouted Bombassa.
“Forgot something!” Keel groped blindly until his hand found the ammo case. “Got it!”
But as he hauled it inside, one of the creatures leapt forward and clamped its jaws around his head. Keel brought up both feet against the closing doors and wrenched himself backward. The doors had caught the creature in mid-jump, wedging it in place, and as Keel slipped free and fell back, the beast hung helplessly suspended above the ground.
“That was close,” Exo commented.
Keel realized just how stupid of a move he’d made. He had felt the doors closing on his arm as he’d reached through. He could have gotten stuck himself, like the animal. That would have forced Exo and Bombassa to either let his arm get crushed or reverse the direction of the doors, potentially risking their lives. Something about being around Tyrus Rechs’s old stomping grounds was making him reckless.
Bombassa’s rifle was aimed at the struggling beast, but he didn’t fire. He seemed frozen in wonder at the spectacle before him. The timing for the little beasty was… really bad. As the doors continued to close, the thing let loose with a painfully high-pitched scream. Then its ribs cracked audibly, and the howls stopped, replaced by a breathy gurgling sound that issued from its maw. It probably didn’t have lungs, per se, seeing as how it survived on a rock with no atmosphere, so the noise was just whatever gases were in its inner cavity being forced out.
Finally Bombassa snapped out of his reverie. “We should put it out of its misery.” He pressed his weapon’s stock against his shoulder.
“Suit yourself,” Keel said, switching out a fresh charge pack and then opening the ammunition can to reload the slug thrower. “But I’m not wasting the ammo. We still got a whole ’nother fight before us.”
Bombassa considered, then unsheathed his knife and drove the blade into the beast’s skull. It stopped struggling. Bombassa cleaned the creature’s black, viscous blood off of his knife using the fur behind the beast’s neck. “A mercy kill doesn’t automatically mean spending ammunition,” he said.
Keel gave a snort.
The door closed with a resounding thud, severing the beast and leaving its front half at the feet of the soldiers. Its blood dripped down the door like some sort of pneumatic leak.
“And with that happy image,” Keel said, kicking the beast’s severed body away from them, “let’s wait for Ravi to rejoin us. Make sure to reload before we run for the ship.”
“Run for the ship?” Exo asked. “Why? Seemed like the only one of those things out there was long dead.”
“I seriously doubt that they don’t know how to get outside,” Keel said. “And something tells me that now they know that food’s on the table, the pack is excited to chow down. I don’t think they’ll give up easily. They’re probably heading back through the tunnel you guys opened up when you moved those crates.”
Bombassa let his rifle hang on its sling and crossed his arms. “You are suggesting that this is our fault somehow?”
Keel shook his head and held up his hands in a calming manner. “Don’t get excited. Just stating a fact, not casting blame. I’d have done the same thing as you. I just wouldn’t have panicked when I heard something coming, so the tunnel would have been blocked back up.”
Bombassa held out a finger to protest.
“He’s kidding, Bossa,” said Exo.
Ravi materialized within the airlock.
“Oh, hey, Ravi.” Keel sounded as if little more had happened than a chance meeting at a kaff shop. “That was some impress
ive sword work. Kind of makes me wonder what else you’ve been holding out on me. I can’t count the number of scrapes where having an invisible ghost swordsman would’ve really changed the odds.”
Ravi arched an eyebrow. “There is a time, and there is not a time. Now is the time, but it was not then.”
Keel stared blankly at his navigator. “Sure.”
“Incidentally,” Ravi said, pacing the massive airlock, “you are right to believe the creatures are not finished trying for you. The moment the doors closed, they turned at once and went back into the mines. My communications with the facility AI suggested that the miners all died shortly after finding a nest of these beasts. The mine itself only functioned for a few months.”
Keel inspected his armor for damage. His HUD informed him that all integrity levels were satisfactory, and his oxygen scrubbers provided him a full supply. “How’s everybody’s suit integrity?” he asked.
“I’m good,” said Bombassa, likewise giving himself a once-over.
“Yeah, me too,” Exo added.
Keel hoisted the ammunition box under an arm. “Well, let’s open the door and make for the Six. Ravi, can you get her guns online and tell her to pick off any smaller targets? I don’t want anything waiting around for us to arrive—or to follow us up the ramp like those miners in their cargo loader.”
“Yes, that will be fine.”
Everyone stood still for an awkward moment.
Keel threw out his arm. “So we gonna draw straws, or can someone open the door? My hands are a little full.”
Exo activated a sequence across the control panel, prompting the now-familiar AI voice to announce, “Beginning depressurization.”
The air slowly left the room, sucked into the same vents through which it came in. Soon the hissing faded, and the airlock fell silent. A rumble beneath their feet announced that the large exterior airlock doors were beginning to open. These doors moved much more efficiently than those on the other side of the airlock, and within seconds they were facing the asteroid’s lifeless exterior. The light from inside the airlock spilled out onto the runway.
Keel gripped his blaster. He’d half-expected the creatures to be waiting just behind the door. But as the massive entry spread wider, all that was visible beyond the region immediately outside was sheer and total black.
“Ultrabeams,” Keel said, flipping on his own and mentally chiding himself for forgetting to have it ready before the doors opened. He’d felt… off since his encounter with the ghost of Tyrus Rechs.
Exo and Bombassa swept their lights outside, illuminating the door’s two defensive N-50s, which were actively looking for targets.
“Yo,” Exo said. “Those aren’t going to open up on us once we go back outside, are they?”
Ravi stepped forward into the darkness. “No. They are now under a temporary override to withhold fire. They will not fire on any targets, though they continue to scan.”
With Ravi’s assurances, the men slowly crept outside and onto the runway. The lack of atmosphere made it impossible to hear anything, even with the enhanced audio of their buckets. Keel checked his HUD. It showed no signs of life except for him and the shock troopers. It dawned on him that the HUD hadn’t shown any of the creatures inside as life forms, either.
The galaxy was full of mysteries like this.
Something—intuition, or a survival instinct—told Keel he needed to turn around and look up. He did so, shining his ultrabeam onto the rock face just above the doors where the mining facility had been dug in. The bright beam lit up several sets of glowing eyes.
“They’re right above us!”
Keel raised his blaster and sent forth bolts that glowed in the darkness. He killed beast after beast, but this only seemed to rally others. Glowing eyes appeared from all around, and devil dogs jumped down from rock face to rock face, moving steadily toward the men. There were hundreds of them.
“Run!” Bombassa yelled, already following his own advice.
Neither Keel nor Exo argued with the big man. They followed him in an all-out sprint. With four legs chasing you, it was always best not to let up your own pace.
“Ravi! Tell those turrets to start shooting!”
“There is at least a thirty percent chance the turrets will lock on to one of the three of you, which would have a fifty-nine percent chance of causing serious injury or death.”
“I don’t care if it’s a seventy percent chance!” Keel shouted, still running for the ship. “Turn them on!”
Immediately the area began to flash with the red hue of blaster fire spurting from the N-50s. Keel glanced back over his shoulder to see the area in front of the airlock doors already littered with carcasses.
“Told you it would work,” he crowed.
When the fleeing men came within twenty meters of the Indelible VI, Ravi lowered the ramp before Keel could request it. They weren’t out of danger yet. The turrets had done a superb job of ripping the pack apart and thinning its numbers, but several of the little monsters had escaped from the N-50s’ effective firing range, and they were coming on hard.
“Hurry up inside!” Keel shouted, hoping to spur Exo and Bombassa on to one final surge of speed that would bring them to safety.
Keel reached the ramp first, dropped his ammo box, drew his slug thrower, and began to use it and his blaster pistol to pick off pursuers. Bombassa’s long strides brought him to the ramp next. Keel continued to fire away with both weapons.
Exo sprinted past him onto the ramp. “Okay, Wraith, we have you covered.”
Blaster rifle bolts streaked by Keel noiselessly, lighting up the asteroid’s surface with red flashes of lightning. And it occurred to Keel just how easily he had set himself up for a double-cross. Was this another symptom of being off his game after hearing what Rechs had to say about the galaxy? Or was it that he trusted the two former legionnaires? Fighting with Exo again was like being back with Victory Company.
He turned and ran up the ramp, his magnetic boots carrying him awkwardly into his ship, while Exo and Bombassa maintained a steady rate of converging fire on the animals. The burst turret under the Six dropped down as well, spraying death at the swarming creatures, and finally the ramp raised, bringing Exo and Bombassa on board. The interior airlock doors slid open, and Keel pulled off his helmet, breathing in the cool air of his ship.
“Okay, Ravi, vacation’s over,” Keel called on his way to the cockpit. “Time to get us off this rock.”
Ravi was already waiting for Keel in his navigator’s seat, going through the ship’s emergency takeoff sequence. “We have time. The burst turrets caused the predators to retreat. Even if they hadn’t, I do not suspect they would have been able to get on board.”
Keel plopped down into his captain’s seat. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather we didn’t stick around.” He set his slug thrower on the middle of his dash console and grimaced. “Of all the luck! Wouldn’t you know it?”
“Know what?”
“I left the ammunition can outside.” Keel kicked his foot against the floor and leaned back frustrated his chair, biting a fore knuckle. “I hope I can find some slugs the next time we visit a night market. Not that we’ll have time for any more trips before we reach that fleet.”
Ravi didn’t look up from his console. “You will be thankful to know then, that Bombassa picked up the forgotten item as he boarded the ship.”
Keel smiled. He was happy to hear that. “Good. So let’s take off and make the jump. We’ll rescue our people, and then we can all disappear into the galaxy.”
“I am not sure that this plan of ‘disappearing’ reflects accurately the desires of the two shock troopers.”
Throwing a boot up on the dash, Keel leaned back and laced his hands behind his head. “Eventually, they’ll see the galaxy my way, Ravi.”
06
Indelible VI
Ungmar System, Hidden Location of Doomsday Fleet
The Indelible VI zoomed toward a blue dwar
f star in the Ungmar system. “Are you sure it’s in there?” Keel asked. “You’re sure?”
“It is well hidden, is it not?”
“Well hidden? Ravi, if you hadn’t told me it’s there, I’d think the coordinates were wrong.” He glanced at his navigator. “As it is, I’m still not entirely certain.”
Ravi huffed.
The Cybar mothership—authorized and built by the House of Reason in the hopes of serving as a final line of defense; sought by Goth Sullus for his conquest of the galaxy; and operating independently of all of them, according to Ravi—would have been impossible to find without not only exact coordinates, but blind faith in spades. No one in their right mind would fly into a superheated blue dwarf. But when the Six’s external sensors showed acceptable heat and radiation readings, it became obvious that this “blue dwarf” was not the real deal.
“What’s that up ahead?” Exo asked. He was sitting with Bombassa in the seats behind Keel and Ravi.
Drifting lifelessly just before the blue dwarf was a series of broken and destroyed starfighters, as well as the ruin of a black-tipped transport shuttle.
“Looks familiar, huh?” Keel asked. “I’ll bring the Six underneath her. See if you can get a view of the cockpit.”
Bombassa’s face showed consternation. “That is our shuttle. They came ahead of us while we stopped at the asteroid.”
Keel threw a lopsided grin that doubled as an amused look of patronization. “I know. Bad idea, right?”
“And this was their fate because they didn’t have the right bio-signature aboard?” Bombassa asked Keel. “Because you gave us a fake hand.”
“I believe that is an accurate assessment,” said Ravi.
“It wasn’t a fake hand,” Keel snapped. “Just not the hand you wanted. The guy who owned it probably found it satisfactory enough.”
“I just find it unsettling that this would have been our fate if we had taken the case you gave us, and shown up here without you.”
“You didn’t,” Keel said.
“But if something had happened to you, we’d have had no way of knowing…”
Message for the Dead Page 6