by Jay Korza
It took another ten minutes to finish the fight and secure the front entrance. Much to Emily’s surprise, Jenny slithered from the dropship and joined them.
“We must go. We do not have any time to spare.”
“How did they get warriors down here?” Seth asked.
“They didn’t,” Baldylocks said. “They are being born. Even more, I’m sure, as we speak. The Cherta slug is correct—we must hurry. They have literally billions of soldiers on this planet that can be born. We won’t stand a chance if they are allowed enough time to get too many out of their tubes.”
The team moved through the facility’s entrance. As they passed the body of a downed warrior, it suddenly grabbed at Stroth and latched onto his leg. Stroth’s bones could be heard breaking and he screamed in pain while he dropped to the ground.
Jenny was the closest to the warrior. She quickly slithered to his side and touched his forehead with her hand. The warrior stopped moving and looked at the Cherta.
“What are your orders, Your Highness?” the warrior asked in supplication.
“Let this being go and fight no more,” Jenny said softly.
“Yes, Your Highness.” And the warrior let go of Stroth just as a round from Snake’s gun blew his head apart.
“There was no need for that,” Jenny admonished Snake.
“I was already pulling the trigger when he let go. I didn’t know what was happening. Though I can’t say it would’ve stopped me from doing it anyway.”
“How did you do that?” Emily asked.
“You know the warriors can sense the royal DNA. For millennia, it has only been the Nortes royal DNA they have touched. But ours is mixed in there too, and always has been. That is why we were hunted and destroyed, almost to extinction. The warriors must obey commands from a royal Cherta family member as well as a Nortes one.”
“That’s a handy little trick. We should put her up front,” Seth said.
“I must touch them before they will listen to me. I do not think that is a tactically sound plan, to have me trying to touch adversaries that are actively shooting at us.”
“You’re probably right, but I’m not ruling it out,” Seth said offhandedly.
Daria cut in. “Reaper and I agree—Stroth isn’t going anywhere. His leg is fractured too badly for him to continue. We are leaving him with the dropship.”
“Stroth, are you good with that?” Seth asked.
“We dosed him hard with pain meds already so he couldn’t argue.” Reaper grinned.
“Right. Load him up fast so we can move out,” Surgeon ordered.
With Stroth tucked safely away, the team continued their push through the facility.
Pockets of warriors were found and cleared out. Baldylocks told the team that although warriors were born ready to fight and completely educated, it still took them awhile to get their physical and mental bearings together once they left the tube. As a result, the warriors they were fighting wouldn’t be up to the same standards as the ones they had met in the field previously.
Six hours later, the team was almost to their target: the main control room for the complex. That was where the empress had to have gone to deliver the warriors they had encountered so far. That was where they needed to go to stop it.
The team had been winning but still had to pay the price of war. Mitra and Hood were dead. Snake was down an eye and two fingers. Scan had a chunk of his thigh shot off and had to be left behind to try to make his own way back to the ship.
Nitaha was born a warrior but she was still young; Seth could see it was taking a mental toll on her. She was fidgety and even a little frightened. He didn’t see her fear so much for herself, but every time one of her family was hurt or killed, it cut her deep emotionally. He had half a mind to send her back to the ship, but he didn’t think she would do any better back there not knowing what was happening with the team.
Reaper and Daria did quick health checks on the team before they moved out again. Daria made it to Davies.
“Hey, buddy, how are you? Anything you need looked at?”
“I’m fine.”
“Okay. Let me take a look just in case. Sometimes we develop holes in combat that weren’t there when we started and we never even know until later.”
Daria began to do a bloodsweep around Davies’ body, touching between his armored fittings and everywhere else.
“I said I’m fine!” Davies snapped.
“Whoa there, big guy.” Daria put her hands up in mock defense. “What’s gotten into you?”
“I’m fine. I just don’t want you touching me. Alright?”
“That’s pretty much my job, Davies. Don’t be such a dickhead.”
“How do you expect me to be? Huh? When you and Mike are—”
“When we’re what exactly?”
Daria thought Davies had moved past this, but she now realized she had been wrong. And Davies wouldn’t answer her.
“Look. I’m sorry that things turned out the way they did. For you. And me, too, if we’re being honest. I have always loved you, and after we thought Mike had died, I fell in love with you. I’m happy my husband is alive but that doesn’t mean a part of me wasn’t excited and happy to see what might have happened with you.”
“You think that makes how I feel any easier?! I love you both and to keep feeling like this towards you makes me hate myself because Mike is my best friend. When this is over, I’m putting in for a transfer to somewhere else. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t think it makes it any easier for any of us to know any of these things about each other. But I still think that it’s important we do. And if you want to stay with the unit, Mike and I will transfer out. We will respect your wishes. We love you, too. We always will.”
“Just go check on everyone else. I’m fine.”
“Okay. We can figure out the details later.” Daria turned to walk away. “And don’t forget to hydrate, Marine.”
“Hard-ass bitch.” Davies smiled to himself.
Mike had seen the interaction but he was too far away to hear what was said. He had a pretty good idea based on what he saw; he only hoped they could work things out when this was all over.
Once the health checks were done, ration bars were scarfed down and water was almost force-fed by the docs, and then the team moved again.
The team ventured deeper into the facility. The vital systems were all under the surface structures. They knew they were going to hit a massive resistance at some point. It wouldn’t make sense to not fortify the most important part of the entire operation.
Jeeves had been hacking the system since they made entry. He was making friends with the facility’s main AI but it didn’t do him much good.
“Bloom,” Jeeves began. “Can you tackle that secondary power node over there? Yes, that is the one I needed out of my way. Thank you.”
The two were on a virtual battlefield, trying to make some headway into the system. They had found the warriors’ birthing program and were trying to stop Empress Hugany from opening any more tubes. They hadn’t succeeded yet.
But they did find out that one hundred and eighty warriors had been born in the last day. Of those, one hundred and seven were still left alive. Forty more were due to be born in two hours and seventeen minutes.
Seth, Emily, and the team leaders looked over the schematics Jeeves had gotten from the AI.
“I’m not saying it will be easy, but it’s nothing we haven’t done before,” Seth said with confidence.
“Never against so many at once, though.” Emily immediately regretted her slip. “But I agree, we can make this work.” She tried to recover.
“The key is, we need to get Jenny, Emily, Jeeves, and Bloom into the main control room here.” Seth pointed. “Those four have the know-how to get into the system and make it do what we want it to do. Every move we make has to be towards that goal.”
Emily didn’t like her life being put higher on the priority list than anyone else’s. Seth could
tell what she was thinking.
“Before you get a big head there, Captain, it’s your skills we need in that room, not your awesome self. Don’t go thinking otherwise.”
“Jerk.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he agreed.
With their plan in place, they set it in motion.
Nitaha went first. She was the smallest and fastest scout they had. She had one of two jobs: either scout the area and come back with intel, or if she made contact, to get their attention and head it in the wrong direction.
Nitaha scratched at her commlink and received a reprimand from Seth. “Hey, kiddo, I know that new molecular adhesion is bothering you, but when you scratch at it, you mess things up on our end. Stop it, please.”
“Yes, Father,” she said with no small amount of attitude in her tone. Most of it was scrubbed out by the commlink’s digital transmission, but some of it could still be heard on the other end.
Nitaha slunk down the corridor on all fours. She walked upright most of the time now, but she could distribute her weight better and more quietly when she used all of her paws.
She could smell the new warriors now; they smelled different than Baldylocks and the other veteran warriors she had encountered. The new ones had a sterile or chemical smell to them. Fresh out of the vat.
Nitaha knew that the rest of her team approached the target from three different routes: two flanking corridors and one through the ventilation system. She had read the mission debrief from her father’s last assault on a warrior base. They, too, had used a ventilation system. She hoped it went better for her team that it had for the previous one.
Nitaha peered around the last corner and saw a fortified reception area. There were two crew-served weapons, a type of weapon she had never seen the warriors deploy with. Not to mention, four of the six warriors had personal shields.
The Shirka cub used her laser designator and lit up each of the warriors. Once the laser locked on, she designated the targets with her datapad. She still didn’t have a combat visor. She refused to wear one because it got in her way. She then laser tagged the crew-served weapons before she moved to a better position for the next part of her scout.
Seth was in a flanking hallway and he saw the target designators pop up on his visor. He saw two of them were flagged normal and four were marked with personal shields. He swore to himself, and then a second time when he saw the crew-served weapons emplacements.
“Damn. They are pulling out the major hardware now.”
Emily was with Seth since his team was tasked with inserting her to the objective. Lieutenant Telfer was in command of the second team, with Surgeon backing her up. In the ventilation system was Wilks and six operators.
Emily saw the information pop on her visor as well. “The good news is, not all of them have shields. If they had enough to go around, they would all have them.”
“Way to look on the bright side,” Daria joked.
“Nitaha is finishing her scout. It looks like that first corridor with the two heavy guns and four shields is the best target to hit first,” Seth said over the squad push.
Telfer led the primary diversion assault. “I agree. We will hit that fortification while the vent team passes through to the interior chamber. When we have all of the attention on us, the vent team breaks through, attacks from the rear and splits their attention.”
“Then my team will try to get through to the main control room with the science team. We’ll drop off shooters as we can to add in the mayhem and divert their attention even more,” Seth finished.
“We’re good to go up here,” Wilks chimed in. “We’ll be there when you need us, Lieutenant.”
“Keep it in your pants, professor,” Joker said. No one laughed, but no one rebuked the comment either.
“Alright, Nitaha has given the all-clear signal. It’s on you, Lieutenant. Permission to proceed. Good luck.” Seth gave the final command.
Telfer liked to lead from the front but Surgeon pushed her towards the rear of the stick. “You can’t lead if you’re dead. Ma’am.”
“Luckily, I have you in case anything happens to me.” She pushed her way back up to the front.
“Yes, ma’am.” He resigned himself to her assertion.
When they were at their last point of cover and concealment, Telfer heard Nitaha give a low growl to let the team know where she was at.
“I got your position, little cub,” she acknowledged.
Surgeon waved forward the four operators who were ready to deploy their 40mm grenades from their rifles’ underbarrels. As the last man got into position, he caught the eye of one of the sentries. Knowing he had been made, Patz fired his grenade launcher, reloaded and fired again. The other soldiers were behind the curve since Patz had fired early, but they were seasoned veterans and didn’t take long to join in.
Eight grenades sailed into the warriors’ barricade and detonated in rapid succession. One of the crew-served weapons was destroyed but the other stayed online and spit out plasma bolts at a devastating rate. Vinci went down, now unrecognizable as ever having been a human being after being hit with so many of the first wave of plasma bolts.
Fang swung out wide and fired his weapon at the warrior working the big gun. He had a shield and Fang knew his weapon was useless against that technology. He shifted his fire to the enemy weapon instead, hoping he might be able to disable it.
By the time Fang was out of ammunition, he had crossed to the other side of the room and had taken cover to reload. As he assessed the situation, he saw most of the smoke from the grenades had cleared and only three warriors still stood, all of them with shields.
“We have to close the distance and go hand-to-hand. Our weapons won’t take down their shields and we need to save some of our explosives for later. Drop smoke and go to thermal imaging,” Telfer ordered.
“Belay that order, marines,” Surgeon overrode the squad push.
“Explain yourself, First Sergeant,” Telfer demanded.
“Their third eye sees in the thermal spectrum of infrared. Smoke won’t blind them at all; it will just make things messier for us.”
Telfer conceded, “Good call, Surgeon. Do you have any better ideas?”
“I just might. Shar’tuk, load up a magazine of explosive-tipped rounds. Set the fuses for a five-second delay after impact. When you’re ready, we’ll both put ten rounds downrange.” Surgeon adjusted his magazines and timers as well.
Shar’tuk gave the signal and both men stepped out from cover and fired. Both hit different targets and then retreated back to cover.
“Wait for it…” Surgeon grinned.
The initial impacts didn’t do anything to the warriors’ shields. The bullets flattened out and dropped to the ground, becoming miniature timed land mines. As the warriors shifted position, some of the rounds ended up under their shields as opposed to lying harmlessly outside of them.
When the first round exploded, it was right next to a warrior’s foot and took half of it off. He dropped to his knee; another round exploded and tore up more of his legs. As the same thing happened eight more times, the warriors looked down and became confused.
Nitaha saw her moment of opportunity and leapt towards her adversaries. Fang followed a few steps behind her once he saw her take off past him.
Nitaha was on the first warrior, who was already tending to his torn-up leg. She slashed and bit at his overgrown and thick neck. She chewed right through his throat and ripped out his airway.
Fang was on the second warrior almost as fast. His sword was out of its sheath and then into the warrior’s chest. Both Shirkas bellowed out a battle cry that shook the heavens.
The rest of the team pushed forward and three operators pounced on the last warrior; they drove knives into his chest and skull. The first position had been taken.
Wilks had to crouch only a little bit to make it through the enormous industrial-sized air vents that also acted as repair conduits for the facility. In order to keep alarms fro
m being sounded, Jeeves tricked the facility AI into believing Wilks’ team was in the ducts to perform repairs.
Wilks’ visor showed him a map overlay of his current position in the facility relative to everyone else. He could see the fight Telfer’s team was in, and even streamed the video to his visor a few times. They had won but with a loss of their own.
The targets Nitaha had scouted and put on the map with the laser designator could no longer be counted on to be accurate. The initial targeting was static in nature and couldn’t update the visors when or if the targets moved.
Wilks could, however, guess that several of the warriors’ posts thinned out to provide backup to the one that had just been overrun. He hoped that most of the sentries would move towards Telfer’s team; otherwise, his team would be dropping in the middle of a sizeable force.
When they finally got to their position, he could see that Telfer’s team started its second engagement and took fire from two flanks. He needed to get his team down there fast.
Ratchet moved forward and put his fiber-optic camera through the grate to look around the room. Two warriors, with their backs towards the grate, guarded a hallway and waited in case Telfer’s team made it passed their current obstacle.
Ratchet’s camera relayed its images to everyone else’s visors and Wilks gave a thumbs-up for Blaze and Davies to move forward and remove the grate. With the grate off, Reaper lowered himself, with Davies’ help, to the deck.
He could see the warriors weren’t wearing shields, which gave him an internal sigh of relief. When Davies dropped down next to Reaper, both men raised their weapons and fired single rounds into the warriors’ heads. Their adversaries slumped with little sound.
Wilks dropped down last. “I’m glad Joker isn’t here to say it was too easy.”
“No shit,” Reaper agreed.
Wilks’ men moved down the hallway and had one minor engagement before they got in position to backup Telfer’s team.
“Lieutenant, we’re set. Give us the word.”
“Captain Fields?” Telfer asked.