Masters swears beneath his breath.
“I’m seeing outlines of the same vehicles that pursued us earlier. Looks like they’ve caught up already. Projecting an ETA of ten to fifteen minutes.”
“Everybody back to the sleds!” Wraith orders.
“What about the supplies?” Quigs asks.
“Sorry, Doc.”
Quigs sighs but returns to his sled with a nod. Andien and the remaining legionnaires also load up.
“Silver-3,” Wraith says, “recall all the observation bots except one. Keep it overhead and try to get as much intel on what this force is composed of until they shoot it down.”
“Copy.”
“So we’re speeding for Outpost Zulu?” I ask.
“God help us.”
19
It didn’t take long to reach Outpost Zulu by sled. Maybe a two-hour trip. But the time spent in transit felt oppressive. The reality of what happened to Camp Forge was a part of that, but not a huge one. I sort of expected it, to be honest. This whole time—really, from the time I saw the Chiasm explode—I knew that Camp Forge was gone, too. Call it a soldier’s intuition.
Bad as that was, what bothered me more was the feed that came in from the TT-16 observation bot we left behind. Wraith had the footage showing on every sled screen—said he wanted everyone to see what we’re up against. That there was no room for error. That this was survival time.
There were just so many of them. I was looking out at a sea of koobs, their white trucks the foam in the waves. And it wasn’t just koobs. Mixed in were uniformed fighters from the Mid-Core Rebellion. Human and kimbrin alike. Not near as many of them as the koobs. But it was enough to confirm that the loss of our destroyer and base, the ambush that killed half our sled force, was calculated. I had no idea how long in advance it was planned, but I knew that the other leejes and me had a front row seat.
Guess we were just lucky.
Of course, this wasn’t even supposed to be a possibility. Kublar was tense—the Republic wouldn’t have sent us down if it wasn’t—but this was a local skirmish, warlords gearing up to resist the progressive march of the Republic, not the staging ground for a major galactic insurgency. Every intelligence brief had said the same thing: the MCR didn’t have the resources or numbers to go up against a company of legionnaires. They were terrorists, content to bomb a planetary police station or ambush a small Republic world’s local militia away from the Core—and then fill the holofeeds with their crap about the decline of the Republic and the need for revolution. Watering the tree of liberty with blood.
But it’s never really about liberty with these types. It’s about power. They get it outside of the established order and then want more of it. And let’s be honest: it’s always violence, or the threat of violence, that acquires and sustains power.
Well, these mukk’kas were going to find out why the Republic had stood the test of time from the Exploration to the Savage Wars.
Assuming I could make this climb.
Which, standing at the base of the nearly sheer mountain that O-Z is nestled into, doesn’t look much like a sure thing. I’m staring straight up a long way, and all I can see is the needle tip of the comm dish, projecting to a destroyer that probably made a new crater somewhere on the planet’s surface. And other than some synth-rope, we’ve got zero mountaineering gear.
“Climb team ready?” I ask.
My two volunteers step forward. Rook checks the knots used to hook up Pully. The two of us are team-climbing with the bot attached to our webbing. It probably weighs close to two hundred pounds, so I’m gonna need Rook’s servo-enhanced forearms to help with the load. Almost all of our gear is stowed inside a sled. We’re going up with nothing more than hydration, N-4s, rope, and our armor.
The other volunteer is Kags. Turns out, he grew up in the mountain passes of Kenne. Climbing is second nature to him. His going up is mission critical. We’ve tied Andien to him, trusting that if she slips, he’ll have the ability to hoist her to safety. So, three soldiers carrying two VIPs. If we don’t make it up top, well, we’ve got nowhere else to go.
At least this mountain is defensible. Our backs are pressed up against solid stone, and there are plenty of crags and positions for our snipers to work from. Lots of overhangs to help with mortars. We’ll give the koobs and MCR a good fight when they show up. That’s in maybe six hours, given the speed of their vehicles. More if it takes them a while to figure out where we went.
“I’m ready, Lieutenant.” Kags rubs his hands and shakes his arms and legs loose.
“Okay, let’s mount up.” I motion to a waiting hover sled, and we climb to the top of it. The plan is to use it like an elevator. Have it hover as high as it can and get a head start on the climb. “Go for climb.”
The sled’s engines whine, and we slowly rise from the ground. The noise increases and the hull begins to vibrate as we move up the side of the mountain.
“Oh!” The sled pitches forward, and Andien loses her footing and grabs on to my arm. The driver quickly compensates, but it’s clear that we’re at the zenith of what the sled can do while still keeping level.
“I think that’s about as high as we can go,” the driver announces over the comm, confirming my suspicion. “Any higher and I’m worried we’ll dump you over the side.”
I look down. We’re about twenty feet off the ground. Just enough to hurt if we fall off. Still, it’s twenty feet we didn’t have to climb, and I don’t see any sense in pushing things to get up another few feet. “Let’s step off here.”
We reach out to find hand and toeholds. It’s still a long way up.
***
I pull myself onto the mesa with panting breaths. Rook’s enhanced strength allows him to hang on tightly and bear Pully’s full weight. There’s nothing I want more than to just sit here beneath the thin sun and recover. But Rook can’t hold on forever, and I don’t have the wind to call for help. Thankfully Kags shakes the sleep from his eyes and comes running over. He leaves Andien snoozing in the shadow of a boulder. Can’t blame ’em—they reached the top a good forty minutes before me.
A rock spire juts out near the edge of the cliff like a jagged thumb. I push against it to test its stability. It feels solid, so I tie my line around it. Kags arrives, and together we work to pull my partner up to the top.
Rook stretches out his arms and grabs as much of the artificial mesa as he can. Kags and I run to the edge and pull him the rest of the way by his webbing.
“Almost done,” I say, near breathless. The three of us pull on the rope until the bot joins us just outside Outpost Zulu.
Rook and I collapse onto the ground as Pully attempts to remove the ropes tied to his frame. “That was certainly an interesting experience,” the bot says. “I hope my questions were not a distraction.”
“We didn’t fall,” Rook deadpans.
“It was fine, Pully. Helped pass the time.” I look over at the rock shading Andien. Just over her head is the cylindrical impervisteel structure housing the listening station. Not much more than an observation room with a combination bunk-galley and a whole lot of circuitry. I was given the three-credit tour once while stationed in the inner core. It feels cramped with two techs working inside, and Zulu has three.
I plant my hand to push myself off the ground and feel a twinge in my forearm. It’s like there’s no strength from elbows to fingertips. I want to rest, to curl up and go to sleep. But there’s an army of koobs and insurgents playing search and destroy with us, and we need to get another destroyer here. Yesterday.
“Specialist Kags,” I say, my breathing finally even. “Go wake up the scientist. We need to start that transmission.”
Rook uses the rock spire to pull himself up. “I can’t get anyone down below on the comm.”
“I would not register surprise at this,” Pully answers. “The combination of kividiary rock formations along with the Kublaren atmosphere all but eliminate comm-to-comm reliability at this altitude.”
<
br /> I nod in agreement. “Let’s get you inside O-Z, Pully.”
Kags returns with a sleepy-eyed Andien, her hair puffing out where it rested on her arm. “We’re ready, Lieutenant.”
We follow a trail that leads to the outpost facility. I’m on point, with Rook the last man. A blue-and-black-feathered bird squawks at us from its nest midway up a comm tower, but other than that, the only sound is the whipping of an icy wind. It strikes me that no one is talking, even the bot. No one is making idle conversation with the civilian or cracking jokes, even though this outpost is probably the safest place left for us on the planet. If the others are feeling like I’m feeling, they’ve given up on any pretense of security. Hell is breaking loose sooner or later, and we seem prepped for sooner.
The comm station is a circular building built from impervisteel. A massive dish points skyward, and the area surrounding the structure is littered with signal-boosting comm towers. One side of the outpost is built right up to the edge of the mesa, allowing those inside to get an expansive view of the land, and on the other side, at the end of our path, is the access door.
It’s shut tight. The emergency doors—two massive slabs of armor plating that slide over the primary entrance like a blast door—are in place.
“Looks like the techs are a bit spooked,” Rook says, looking up at the observation cam above us.
“Can you blame them?” Andien asks. She glances up at the bird as it beats its wings in flight, leaving the nest. “This feels like a walking nightmare. Virtually every colleague I’ve had for the past six weeks is dead, and I don’t know whether to hope I make it out or pray for a quick and painless death.”
Kags rests a gloved hand on Andien’s shoulder. “We’ll make it out alive.”
She shrugs it off. “Forgive me for not getting my hopes up.”
“If it is any comfort,” Pully says with his antenna extended, “I have been recording and logging your interactions, and I will certainly broadcast a holocast that paints you in the fondest light for your deceased friends and family to view.”
We all stop what we’re doing and stare at the bot. I exchange a look with Andien and say, “Thanks.”
She shakes her head, tossing her hair as she does so, and looks up at the holocam. “So, are they going to open the doors, or…?”
Rook cups his hands over around his bucket’s external speaker. He looks like a yodeler serenading the mountainside. “Hey! Techs! Let us in!”
Pully inclines his head and focuses his blue optics. “That does not appear to be working.”
“Ya think?” Rook counters.
“I can override,” I say, opening a panel near the blast doors.
A keypad lights up with a soft green glow, prompting me to enter authorization credentials. Normally I would just air-connect with my bucket’s transceiver—I’m really starting to miss that helmet—but instead I key in the command codes Wraith provided me.
The console beeps twice and the blast doors slide open, revealing a standard security door with Outpost Zulu painted beneath the starry Republic liberty emblem. I was worried I’d forgotten the code, to be honest. It’s nice to see it work.
“Now for the next one.”
I punch in a standard access code common to all legionnaires. There’s no rank limiter assigned to enter an outpost, and the common code is a lot shorter than my lieutenant passkey.
The console beeps three times and flashes red. Invalid entry.
I enter the code again. Beep-beep-beep.
“Code not working?” Andien asks, looking over my shoulder.
“Techs must’ve increased the access threshold. I was just using a standard legionnaire identifier. I’ll enter my officer pass.”
Rook slaps the side of his rifle. “Let ’em know who they’re dealing with! This isn’t some enlisted leej, this is the Lieutenant Chhun!”
I smile, feeling more at ease hearing the jokes coming again.
Beep-beep-beep.
“That’s not right…”
I key in the passkey again.
Beep-beep-beep.
With deliberate slowness, I punch in the code, careful not to hit the wrong key.
Beep-beep-beep.
I slam both fists against the door and shake my head in frustration. “I can’t get in.”
“Curious that it worked on the security doors, but not the primary entrance,” Pully says.
“Can I give it a try?” Andien steps toward the keypad. “I have a clearance code that’s supposed to work like a skeleton key.”
I step aside and hold out my hand. “Be my guest.”
Pully seems intrigued. “Tell me, Miss… Is Andien a first name or surname?”
“First name. Andien Broxin, Republic Corps of Science and Engineering.”
“I see.” Pully stands frozen for a moment, a sign that he’s processing data. “I do not find your name listed among the Chiasm’s personnel manifest.”
Andien smiles as she types in her keycode. “That’s because we didn’t arrive with the Chiasm. We came a standard month prior to get a head start on the surveying needed to get Kublar ready for resource development. We dropped from the super-destroyer Mercutio. My hope is that it’s still close enough to the system for the transmission to reach it.”
The other soldiers and I share a look. The Mercutio is the big dog in this part of galaxy’s edge. It’s three times the size of the sixteen-hundred-meter Chiasm and serves as the flagship of the sector admiral. Not exactly the sort of spacecraft you’d expect to drop off a science team.
With an acceptance chime, the door whooshes open. We step inside the temperature-controlled outpost, and the chill of the mountain air is instantly replaced by a cushion of warmth. The outpost has the familiarity of a Republic military installation; the glow of the overhead lights and the mirrored black shine of the floors make me feel at home. There’s no sign of the tech crew yet, but we’re only just in.
Rook is the last one inside. He pushes a button to close the door and asks, “So how come your code doesn’t work, LT, but hers does?”
“That’s a fair question,” I admit.
Andien meets my eye. “Just lucky, really. I was given an override code in case I needed to bypass any Republic equipment locks. Everything we were working with was military, you understand. Your code, Lieutenant, worked on the shield doors, and it should have worked on the main door. But I’d wager that the crew inside raised the clearance rank to something higher. Maybe a major or colonel—who knows? They can do that in an emergency, but they’d have to come outside to do the same to the shield doors.”
I want to ask her how she knows all that. And why she came here aboard the Mercutio instead of on some bulky research space-hopper. But that’s all luxury. Information I don’t really need to know and don’t have time to ask.
“Something tells me the techs aren’t interested in leaving this place,” Kags says, holding his blaster rifle out in front of him. “No welcoming party.”
“Think of this as the lobby,” I say, pointing to the area in front of us. “That center door leads to the observation room, the hallway to the bunks and a galley.”
Pully swivels his head neatly, scanning the area. “Is it possible the tech crew left their post? AWOL stories are generally of interest to Republic military network stations, particularly in a combat environment.”
Rook shakes his head. “Where would they even go? I mean, we’d have found them if they jumped.”
Pully considers this. “Ghost stories are of interest across virtually all demographics.”
We stop and stare at the bot.
“That was a joke,” Pully says.
I straighten myself to my full height and let out a hiss of air. “Kags, check the bunks. Maybe the techs are sleeping.”
“On it, sir.” The basic moves down the hall while the rest of us move to the door that leads to the main observation room.
I stack up on the left side of the door, by the keypad, while Rook mo
ves to the right. The bot and scientist linger directly in front of the door. I motion for them to move. “Pully, line up behind Rook. Andien, behind me. Each of you hug the wall and don’t come inside until we give an all clear.”
“Is this not,” Pully says, “a Republic installation?”
“Doesn’t pay to play,” answers Rook.
“I take your point,” the bot concedes.
Looking across to Rook, I say, “Let’s knock before entering. They’re probably jumpy.” I pound my fist against the door. “Republic legionnaires!”
There’s no reply. Rook catches my eye and shakes his head. He isn’t picking up any sounds through his bucket’s audio enhancers.
I pound again and wait. Still nothing.
Kags comes back down the hall and joins the stack, putting himself against the wall between Andien and me. “Empty, Lieutenant. Three beds. One was a mess, the other two were made with fleet precision. The rest of the room didn’t look like they were expecting an officer inspection any time soon.”
“Thanks, Kags. Sounds like at least one quit on rules and regs. Pappy can deal with that when he wakes up.”
Rook looks around the halls. “You think they all went for a walk?”
I chew my lip. “It’s a three-man crew. At least one of them should still be stationed. Let’s open the door.”
I press the recessed entry button beneath the keypad, and an automated chime comes over the station’s comms. “Security key required for entry.”
I key in my lieutenant passkey, then stop and hover my finger over the final digit. I nod at Rook, who nods back, and I press the button.
The door retracts upward with a whoosh. The hum of holotransmitters and dataservers comes forth from the newly opened room, but there are no sounds of life.
20
“Republic legionnaires,” I announce. “Is anyone in there? Are you hurt?”
When no one answers, I make to roll into the doorway and clear the room, but Rook holds out his hand to stop me. “I’ve got a bucket on. I’ll go first. What if you bumped your head on a low beam or something?”
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