Crimson Worlds Collection I

by Jay Allan

  He waited as the three search parties acknowledged. “I want the rest of the team on me, ready to respond to any threat. We don’t know what we’re looking for, but there is an energy source out here somewhere, and it may or may not be hostile.” Yeah, right, he thought. What the hell have we run into lately that wasn’t hostile. “I want the search teams to use extreme caution. Colonel Cain sent us up here, so he thinks there is something important hidden someplace. I don’t intent to let the colonel down. Do any of you?”

  He got a chorus of “no sirs.” Ok, he thought, now we’ll see if there is something up here. He kept his com open to the search teams and monitored their position on the schematic Zack was projecting inside his visor. The ground was very rough, mountainous with a series of jagged ridges flanking small canyons. Moving around safely was slow business, and it was an hour before Teller got anything other than a normal status check.

  “Captain Teller.” The voice on the comlink was calm, businesslike. These troops were hardcore veterans. They’d report calmly and completely if they’d rounded the corner and ended up face to face with a CAC armored division. “Sergeant Sawyer, sir. We may have found something.”

  “Report, Sawyer.” Sawyer had served in Achilles and half a dozen other hotspots. If he thought he saw something out of the ordinary, Teller was going to listen.

  “Sir, we crossed over a high ridge and worked our way down into the canyon. It’s wider than the other ravines, more open. We’re looking at the rock wall across the valley. There’s a lot of loose rubble all along the slope.” He paused, as if he were still observing and analyzing as he spoke. “I’m on mag 10, and I’d swear that a lot of that loose stone is newly blasted. There’s a lot of jagged, broken rock all along that hillside.” Another pause. “Sir, I’d swear some sort of ordnance detonated on that ridge. That looks like a manmade landslide to me.”

  Teller had been unconvinced about this whole expedition, but Sawyer had his interest now. “Sergeant, hold your position. Do not approach until I bring up support. Understood?”

  “Acknowledged, sir. Holding our position until further instructions.”

  Maybe it’s nothing, Teller thought. Could be just an off-target missile that impacted there. But he wasn’t going to take any chances. “Squads one, two, and three…on my mark. Deploy along the ridgeline in support of search team one.”

  He paused while the three squad leaders acknowledged. Before moving out himself, he switched his comlink to connect to the search parties. “Search teams two and three, scout around the flanks of the position identified by team one. I want to know if there is anything on the far side. I don’t care if you see a pebble that looks out of place – you tell me about it.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  Teller scaled the rocky slope in front of him. It is relatively easy to climb in armor – strength, at least, isn’t an issue – but it is tricky to maintain footing on loose stone and gravel. He took it slowly, making sure he had a strong foothold before continuing up.

  He was about two kilometers from Sawyer, and it took him almost thirty minutes to reach the sergeant’s position. He peered over the rocky spine atop the ridge and looked across at the debris strewn hillside. He’s right, Teller thought, that rock was definitely blasted by something. That’s not a natural formation.

  He could see on his tactical display that the squads were almost in position. “Squad one, deploy to my right. Squad two, deploy to my left. Observe and cover the hillside.” He stared out over the piles of broken stone. “Squad three, advance to the slope and search those rock piles. One and two are covering you – if there is any trouble, hit the deck. Don’t forget, you’ve got backup in place.”

  “Yes, sir. Third squad advancing now.” Sergeant Drake was a real veteran. He’d been admitted to the Academy a year before, but he didn’t want to leave his men until after the campaign. He was the best squad commander Teller had, which was why it was third squad out there on point.

  Teller stood behind a large rock, peering around as Drake’s troops made their way down the slope and across the broken ground of the ravine bottom. Drake moved forward alone, climbing partway up the loose rock of the opposite slope, leaning over and examining the chunks of blasted stone.

  “Third squad, advance and start clearing away some of this stone.” He stood straight up. “Captain Teller, this rock was definitely blasted, and I see no signs of a missile or other ordnance. It looks like some kind of charges were detonated.”

  There really is something manmade up here, Teller thought. “Sergeant Drake, have third squad clear way some of that debris.” He took a deep breath. “First and second squads on alert. I want every centimeter of that hillside under observation.”

  The troopers of third squad began clearing away stone and debris. An armored Marine could move tons of rock in just a few minutes, but they were having difficulty on the hillside. Whenever they cleared an area, more rubble slid down the slope from higher up. They’d been at it for about 30 minutes when they found something.

  “Sergeant, I think I’ve got something here.” Private Jerrold was highest up on the slope, and he’d managed to clear a small section of loose rock to reveal what appeared to be smooth metal.

  Sawyer climbed up to take a closer look, and he and Jerrold moved some more rocks, increasing the cleared area to roughly a square meter. Underneath was a sheet of plasti-steel, only lightly weathered. “This is new,” Sawyer said to himself. Then, on the comlink to Teller: “Captain, we’ve got some type of steel construction hidden under these rocks.” Short pause. “It appears to be fairly new.”

  “Let’s clear some more of it and get a good look.” Teller climbed up over the ridge in front of him. “I’m coming down for a look.” He slid down the slope to the base of the valley. “First and second squads, look lively. We have no idea what this is. For all we know it is some type of CAC installation.” Teller charged his rifle as he walked over.

  By the time he got there, Sawyer’s and Drake’s troops had cleared away a large amount of stone to uncover what appeared to be a large hatch or door, about 4 meters by 3. It was totally smooth except for 3 columns of reinforcing bolts evenly spaced across its width. The hatch was built into the slope at a 30 degree angle.

  “This thing looks solid.” Teller was speaking to himself as much as anyone else. “Larson, Captain Teller here. Report your location.” Larson was an engineer attached to Teller’s team. He’d been posted back with the other specialists, but now they needed him.”

  “I’m four klicks from your location, Captain.” Larson had a very low voice, which was sometimes difficult to hear clearly on a comlink.

  “Report to me at once. I have something I want you to look at.” Teller kneeled down and tapped the hatch with his gloved hand. The thing is definitely solid, he thought. But what the hell is it?

  By the time Larson arrived, Sawyer’s troops had completely cleared the area, exposing a 4x3 meter reinforced plasti-steel hatch build right into the surrounding rocky slope. The edges of the door disappeared into the solid rock on all sides.

  Larson came trotting up, two assistants in tow. “Lieutenant Larson reporting, sir.” He gave the clumsy salute a suited Marine could handle and stood at attention, though his head turned to look at the strange steel hatch build into the mountainside.

  “We need to know what’s on the other side of this thing. Colonel Cain needs solid information, and we can’t just knock on the door now, can we?” Teller had reported directly to Cain as he’d been ordered. The colonel had been right in the middle of what sounded like a hellish battle. He told Teller to find out what this thing was, and not to worry about being gentle about it. “I want you to blow the thing, Larson.”

  Larson’s head moved slowly as he scanned the door. “We might be able to get through pretty quickly with the plasma torch.” He was staring intently at the hatch as he spoke. “It would be less damaging to whatever’s on the other side �
� it would take a significant charge to blast this thing.”

  Teller thought for a minute. “I’m not too worried about what’s on the other side. The garrison had been completely withdrawn, so whatever is in there, it can’t be ours.” He paused, inhaling deeply, then exhaling. “What will be faster?”

  “I think we can get a decent sized hole cut through there as quickly as we can blow through.” He looked up from the door to Teller. “And if there’s something hostile in there, we haven’t ripped the whole hillside open and we just have a small egress point to defend.”

  “Do it.” Teller was decisive by nature, and he preferred the controlled approach. They could always blow the thing wide open later.

  The nuclear-powered plasma torch is an extremely effective cutting tool. One of Larson’s assistants had it attached to his armor in lieu of weaponry, though it required two people to actually operate it properly. Larson’s first guess was about ten minutes to get through, but the door was thicker and more heavily reinforced than he’d expected, and they’d had to crank the torch up to full power for more than twenty minutes.

  Teller left first squad deployed along the opposite hillside, in cover and ready to provide supporting fire if necessary, but he brought the second down into the ravine. While Larson’s crew finished cutting their hole in the hatch, Sawyer and two of his troopers stood ready to head in.

  The engineers pushed hard, shoving the cut away section of the door inside where it landed with a loud thud. Sawyer peered through the opening then, with a quick command to his companions, he swung around and through, closely followed by the two troopers.

  Teller waited for Sawyer’s report, standing just back from the now-breached hatch. There was a short period of total silence, maybe ten seconds, then Sawyer was on the comlink. The sergeant was a hardcore veteran, and Teller had seen him unflappable in desperate circumstances. But now his voice was high-pitched and excited.

  “Captain, you have to see this, sir!”

  Teller walked forward, stooping slightly to pass through the opening. He saw Sawyer and his troops standing in the open staring out over a vast underground chamber. He turned and looked out past Sawyer. “Oh my god…”

  Then the shooting started.

  Chapter 19

  Field Hospital One

  Epsilon Eridani IV

  Sarah Linden stood under glaring bright lights, leaning over a blood soaked table that held a shattered human body. Her scrubs had once been light blue, but now they were mostly crimson. The makeshift medical ward was a nightmare, her beleaguered staff like Aztec priests in the middle of horrific blood rituals.

  They'd had to set up the hospital in an old mining complex - there was no secure place for it on the surface. The battle raged everywhere, and both sides had gone nuclear. Moving underground had meant abandoning the prefab hospital units - they were much too large to get into the tunnels - but it was the only way to keep the wounded safe. Reasonably safe, at least.

  She knew Erik was right in the center of the storm, but she tried to put it out of her mind - she had a job to do. She focused on the men and women who needed her attention, but a lot of them were from 1st Brigade, and the more of Cain's broken and battered troops she saw, the harder it was to push back the fear. Worse, 1st Brigade had been completely cut off for more than a day now, and their wounded weren't even getting to the hospital anymore. If Erik was hurt, he was lying on some rocky plateau where she couldn't even help him. The thought made her nauseous.

  She couldn’t imagine losing Erik. Her past was dark and painful, and while the Marines had saved her from destitution and despair, she had still been alone. The past was still there, always, clawing at her from inside. She had focused on her career with unshakeable determination, and she became one of the most capable surgeons in the Corps. But there was nothing else in her life, not until Erik Cain came to her hospital. The two of them were broken toys, but they fit together somehow and healed each other. She loved him desperately, and she wasn’t sure she could face the loneliness again if she lost him.

  Sarah had spent most of her medical career serving in the big hospital on Armstrong. She'd certainly seen her share of horribly wounded men and women; Erik himself had come to her with both his legs gone and so poisoned by radiation he was too weak to move. But even he’d been stabilized before he got to her. The raw brutality of the field hospital had been quite a shock. She'd adapted to it during Operation Sherman, but none of those battles had approached the savagery or scale of this one.

  Wounded were brought to the hospital stuck in the twisted wreckage of their armor. Before a doctor could even deal with their injuries, they had to be extricated from a suit that was designed to withstand direct hits from modern weapons. If the damage was bad enough to scrag the armor, they had to cut the trooper out with plasma torches. It was slow and dangerous, and many of the patients died while the techs were still struggling to get them free of mangled heaps of osmium-iridium alloy.

  The sheer number of casualties coming through overwhelmed her exhausted med staff. They weren't even trying to treat the wounds anymore; they were just working to stabilize their patients and keep them alive until they could get back to them and finish the job. They had some portable med units with integral AIs, but they'd used all of them long ago. The partially treated men and women were now being lined up on the cold stone floor of the mine, stretching almost out of sight down the long tunnel.

  "Damn it," she muttered under her breath as she struggled to close a gaping chest wound. Not being able to evacuate anyone is killing us, she thought. How many more are going to die in this forsaken mine who would have lived with proper care? She had three medships with the transport fleet, each capable of handling over 1,000 wounded...2,000 in an emergency. But they'd withdrawn with the rest of the support ships now that an enemy battlefleet was bearing down on the planet. She couldn’t even send the wounded up before the transports left, because the skies of Carson’s World were swarming with enemy aircraft.

  Admiral Compton had his hands full dealing with the incoming warships, but even if he won the fight that was coming, it was going to take days, maybe even weeks. So dealing with the wounded was going to remain Sarah's problem for the foreseeable future, and this bleak mine was going to have to suffice. General Holm’s frantic resupply operation had eased her logistical situation; she had enough medicines and other expendables, at least for the moment. And the volunteer medical staff from the hospital ships had been invaluable. She’d supplemented them by conscripting the walking wounded to assist in the hospital, freeing anyone with even a shred of medical training to treat incoming cases.

  She’d originally had five aid stations set up on the surface as well, closer to the fighting, but the intensity of the battle had forced her to scale back to one secondary location. The general had assigned every transport and anti-grav sled he could spare to collect the wounded, but it was still taking way too long for most of them to get help.

  The patient sprawled on the table before her had been dead for five minutes before she stopped her frantic efforts. Finally she jerked her hands from the chest cavity and turned away. This man could have lived, she thought, if I had the equipment I need. His heart and lungs had been severely damaged, but she could have kept him alive if she could have gotten him into a critical care med unit. Then she could have grown him a new heart and lung once they were back at Armstrong. But the crit care units she had were all in use, and he wasn’t the first soldier to die today because of that. With good nutrition and a few rejuv treatments he could have lived to 120 years or older. Instead, he died at 25, bleeding and broken on a miserable, dusty planet far from home.

  She walked away from the table, struggling to hold back the tears. The frustration was welling up inside her. She wanted to be alone, to scream and cry and throw things. But there was nowhere she could be by herself…nowhere at all. Privacy was an unreal fantasy in the bustling field hospital. And she was in command, which meant she couldn’t l
ose it, not in front of these people. She could feel it every second, the constant burden, the unyielding pressure. She could feel the glances, the stares, as they looked to her for the strength and support they needed to go on.

  She’d seen the stress of command and how it affected people. She’d watched what it did to Erik. How many times had she lain next to him at night, feeling him thrash around and listening to his nightmares? How many nights did she wake up to see him gone, up walking around or working at his desk because the sleep wouldn’t come? She knew she’d always have to share him with his ghosts. She’d watched General Holm too, and even Jax. It affected each of them in his own way, but it was always there. Command wasn’t a privilege or a reward to them; it was a responsibility, one they accepted with grave solemnity.

  Now she had joined that club, and she finally understood what the pressure felt like. She thought of Erik and all the difficult situations he had led his troops through. How do you do this, love? How do you stay strong for them when all you want to do is run and hide?

  Her introspection was interrupted. “Major Linden?” She noticed they called her major more often now that she was in command; before it had always been doctor, though she’d been just as much a captain then as she was a major now.

  She turned around to find Lieutenant Bailey, one of the medical assistants, standing there. He was trying hard to look sharp and alert, but she could see the exhaustion in his eyes. She wondered what he could see in hers. “Yes, lieutenant?”

  “Major, I think you should come.” He paused. “We have a high-ranking casualty, and she is being…ah…difficult.”

  She motioned for him to lead her there. “Who is it?” She had let out a breath when he’d said “she.” For a second she thought it might be Erik.