A pause.
“Uh…yeah, I know that, there’s a staircase well directly beside the lift doors. I thought it might come in handy.”
“Uh huh, I’m sure that’s what you thought,” I say.
“Yeah, yeah, I made a mistake.”
I walk over to the door, turn the knob and pull it open; it emanates a sharp whine, as if someone had never oiled the hinges.
“Ah, got to love good old fashion doors,” Terein says.
“Well, in case of power loss emergency doors and similar areas have to be the most basic operating procedure. If these were operated by magnets and there was a fire in here all the people would burn alive, unable to escape.”
“Wouldn’t there be fail safes built into the doors to allow people to get through?”
“You would think, but if someone were trying to get inside then all they would have to do is recreate fire, just enough so the sensors would pick it up.”
“Stop the chatter, we gotta stay focused,” I say, already down almost a whole flight of stairs.
“Right, sorry Colonel.”
We reach the bottom after several minutes; walking down kilometers worth of stairs takes longer than people thought, especially with full military gear.
“How far ‘til we get to the security room?” I ask.
“I thought we were going to the power room?” T-Rave asks.
“We need to see what they are up to. We know the power room is what interests them, otherwise they wouldn’t have chosen this building. We also need to figure out how many there are and where they are.”
“Right, ok, let me think, the schematics for this building said the Security room was fifty meters from the stairwell. And to get there we have to go down this hallway and take the first left, then after that the second door on the right there should be the Security room,” Terein says.
“When did you do all this?” I ask.
“I did it when you were taking your time to get to the briefing room,” he shoots back.
I ignore the remark; even though it was bad to mouth off to a superior officer I let it slide, this time.
We rush through the hallways, now armed with a plan.
“Ok, this should be it, slow down; we don’t want to make too much noise.”
My hand reaches for the security pad on the side of the wall; it was dead. Although it would have been useless, seeing as the door was already open a crack, it might have been just enough to slide my blade through to pry it open.
I reach down to my left hip and grab my secondary blade, it tended to make less noise when drawn compared to the loud choonk from my hidden blade.
I slide the blade between the door and the wall, slowly but surely prying it open, millimetre by millimetre the door begins to open.
“Turn your lights off,” I say, I kill my helmet light,“help me out here Captain; let's get this thing open, Sargent you might want to get that rifle ready, we don’t know what’s in there.”
“Yes Sir,” Terein says; aiming is rifle at the closed door, his finger twitching in anticipation.
T-Rave and I wedge our fingers in between the wall, slowly prying it open.
“Humanss.” A disembodied voice comes from inside.
“Come on, come on,” Terein says, holding his rifle towards the noise.
“You are doomed humanss.”
“Like hell we are,” Terein says, turning on his Helmet light, flooding the room with light and blinding the alien.
A shot fired directly into the head of the alien, it almost sounded like thunder as it broke all silence in the hallway, not that there was any noise in the first place.
“Awe, now why did you go and do that for?” T-Rave says, “we could have used him to gather some information.”
“He spooked me, so I reacted.”
“What do you mean reacted? What if your kid snuck up behind you and spooked you?”
“Guys, knock it off, we need to stay focused, and I’m sure there are plenty more where they came from.”
I walk past the corpse; its head still smoking.
“Ok, this is good; we still have power to these main systems. Captain, I need you to start searching for the power room camera feed. Sargent, use that trigger-happy finger in case anyone comes looking for their pal here,” I say, gesturing at the smoking body.
“Yes Sir,” they say in unison
I walk over to the corpse, searching for anything useful; I notice an emblem on the shoulder pads of the tunic the alien is wearing.
“This one has an emblem on his shoulder, so did the other one, but they aren’t the same. Maybe one was a higher rank, or designation.”
“Maybe, hey come here. I think I found something,” T-Rave says.
I stare at the console screen that he pulls up, “is that the power room?” I ask.
“Pretty sure, the back portion of the screen is where the generators are, that’s the power room all right; I’m more concerned about the dozen or so aliens in the room,” T-Rave says.
I sigh heavily, “alright, we need new orders, we can’t go in there without having some authorization on what to do.”
“Wait, they’re speaking.”
I listen intently for any noise whatsoever to come out of the receiver.
It’s mostly just hissing and clicking; of course they wouldn’t be able to speak our language.
“The dead one spoke our language though, that makes no sense, where did he learn those words?”
“Look,” T-Rave says, pointing at a group of figures on the screen.
“Ah shit, that’s going to make our job a lot harder.”
“Yeah, there were not supposed to be any civilians here, I thought you scanned and it showed up as negative?”
“I did scan; they must have brought them here after we scanned the place. Plus we’re almost two kilometers down.”
“What do we do then?”
“We contact the General; see what he thinks on the matter.”
“Alright, I’ll set up a link to HQ.”
Having civilians come into the equation just made my job a lot harder, we were originally supposed to breach the building, gather Intel and then bug out. With civilians added to that list it made it a lot harder to get out without engaging the enemy. Which at this point the rest of my team and I know that that wouldn’t be an option anymore.
“Colonel, the General is on frequency three point seven. He’s reminding us that civilian rescue is not our primary mission, we are still to gather as much Intel as possible on the hostile forces,” T-Rave says.
“Let me talk to this prick,” leaving men behind was not in my vocabulary. Major Lorid was the one exception, I didn’t want to leave him to die; he wanted it to happen though. He knew that he wouldn’t have made it out alive either way.
“General, I take it the captain has informed you of the entire situation?”
“Yes Colonel, your orders remain the same, get Intel on those enemy soldiers and find out why they are here. Do not compromise the mission to save civilians.”
“But Sir, we can’t leave them behind.”
“Orders are orders soldier, I will not allow insubordination. Now, get back out there and get me some hard Intel we can use, understood?”
“Yes Sir.” I say.
“General Anders out.”
There is only one way to vent anger and frustration; a shower of sparks light up the room as my fist collides in the middle of the screen. The security room used physical monitors instead of Holo technology.
“Sir, we need to keep moving, we need to gather that Intel,” Terein says.
“Right, let's move out,” I say, turning around and walking back through the door into the hallway.
“You said that the power room entrance was right across the hall from the security room right?” I ask Terein.
“Correct, it should be that door over there,” he says, pointing to a door at the far end of the hall, technically across from the security room.
We slow down the closer we get to the door; we wouldn’t want to alert our position to the aliens.
“Damn, this door is different than the security door.”
“How so?” T-Rave asks.
“The power is not dead on this one,” he says simply.
“Can you slice into it?” I ask.
Terein is already one step ahead of me though. He’s already taking the security pad off the wall and cutting some of the electrical wires that disappeared into the wall behind it.
“I’m surprised that a building like this is still using wires,” T-Rave says.
“Older technology always seems to work better than the new stuff, I guess that’s why they have screens in the security room and these wires; I guess they are easier to maintain and control.”
“There we go Colonel, the door is working,” Terein says, the door making a faint whirring as it opens.
“Nice job Sargent. Ok, let's get moving. In and out as fast as we can, I don’t want to be down here any longer than I have to.”
Past the door is just another dark hallway, a cold shiver runs down my spine, it almost feels like we’re walking to our doom.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
“Yeah, me too.”
Three
Day 7: Cycle 1: Period 2: Year 2397
The rest of my team and I continue to go deeper into the power room. Walking down corridors where lights were flickering. Good thing we have night vision, it enabled darkness to have a less creepy feel to it.
“Sir, what are we going to do once we get there?”
“Well Captain, we are going to find a nice place to camp out and do a little recon, and then we are going to find a way to free those civilians.”
“I thought the General said to leave them behind?” He asks.
“I’m not leaving them to die by the hands of these things, it's not their fault that they’re here, so why should we make them suffer for something that they didn’t do?”
“Good point, but the consequences will be big.”
“I know that Captain, there is little use in reminding me of my actions.”
Voices begin to penetrate the emptiness of the corridors.
“You guys hear that?” Terein asks.
“Yeah, we must be getting close, cut power to exterior lights.” I say, shutting off my helmet lights once again.
We walk as quietly as possible. We don’t want to give away our position and blow the whole mission because someone can’t walk quietly. In all fairness in the case that did happen we would blame it on the armour. They’re heavy to walk in, even though they are advertised as lightweight armour.
“I see them, over here,” T-Rave says.
I walk over to the Captain’s position. He’s peering through the spaces that separate the equipment boxes. There are dozens of boxes that line the outer edges of the room. He pointed at the far end of the room, “there they are.”
“I thought there were supposed to be power generators here?” I ask.
“There are, see that door over there? That leads to secondary rooms that all connect to one another. The generators all run through those rooms, this room we are in is just the power regulation office. All it does it keep track of the power usage and if necessary it can shut off all power to each generator.” Terein replies.
“Why don’t we do that then? Cutting all power to this building might come in handy.”
“You don’t understand, this building regulates power to the entire city, I might be able to find localized secondary generators and then shut off certain sections of the city, this building included in that.”
“Well, see if you can slice into the system and just minimize the range of the power outage. We don’t need to take sections of the city offline, just find a way to take out this building.”
“I’ll do what I can, but I can’t guarantee anything.”
“Alright, try to be quick about it as well, we don’t know how long these things are going to be here for, they might leave at any minute.”
“Colonel they are starting to question the hostages,” T-Rave interjects.
I bring my attention back to the small gap between the crates; I peer through the gap, scanning the crowd for the civilians.
“Humanss, iss thiss the only sstructure in which thiss city iss powered from?” A voice hisses.
All the civilians do is whimper and try to look away from their captors.
“Ansswer me or one of you will die," the voice speaks again.
“Colonel should we intervene?” T-Rave says.
“We can’t, not without getting some form of information that we can bring back. I plan on saving as many civilians as I can. But, if we go back empty handed and the reason for that is because we disobeyed our orders, we would be in big trouble.”
“Alright, I’m just not sure how much of this I can take.”
The alien that spoke had now dragged a helpless civilian out into the middle of the room, in front so all the other hostages could see.
“Please don’t, I don’t know anything!” The civilian cries out.
“Well, itss a good thing that I am killing you then.” The Leader says.
“Wait!” A female voice yells, “what do you want?”
“I told you already, I want to know if thiss is the only sstructure in the city that providess power.” The Leader growls out.
“Yes, as far as I know. I don’t really know anything about this building; you see it's the first time I’ve been inside.”
“Do any of your worthlesss hidess help maintain thiss facility?”
All of the civilians shake their heads.
“It seems that we have made a mistake in our sselection, kill them all.” The Leader says.
“Wait! Please, can’t we negotiate?” A male voice says.
“No, we can’t, you have nothing we want.”
“And what do you want?”
“You humanss power your planet using a rare gass ssubsstance called Thopium. We need thiss Thopium to help reintegrate oursselvess into proper ssociety, your planet iss our way to achieve that goal.”
“Well, I know for a fact that we don’t have raw Thopium here.”
“Oh, we know that, we are already extracting it from the ground in certain locations on your planet.”
“What?”
“We have deployed mining operations to other continents; we will soon have enough to accomplish our goalss.”
“What do you want from this place then?”
“All we want to do is make you blind.”
“That makes no sense.”
“We want to initiate a city wide blackout, in order to do that we have to completely get rid of the power generatorss.”
“So you are trying to hack into the system mainframe and shut off all the generators?” I was surprised at the one hostage that was talking.
“Not exactly, I mentioned before we plan on getting rid of them completely.”
“You’re planning on blowing it up?” Another civilian says, completely horrified.
“Correct. In fact, we have already put a plan in place that will make thiss building blow up, and it sshould be going off anytime now.
I feel a tap on my shoulder plates, snapping my attention from the aliens to the Sargent.
“Colonel I can’t shut down the power; they have managed to hack into the power main frame. They said that they were going to blow up the building; well they didn’t bring any explosives. The building is the bomb. The Generators are planned to go off within the next ten minutes. We need to get out of here now!”
“No, we can’t leave them behind.”
“But Sir, we have orders to return with that Intel.”
“And we will return with that Intel, along with all those civilians.”
“Captain, pick your targets, make sure we leave one only wounded, I have a couple questions for him.”
“Got it, the four left ones are mine.”
“Sa
rgent, do the same.”
“Ok, well the four right ones are mine.”
“Ok, the rest are mine. Fire when I fire boys.”
I line up the sights of my gun to the first targets shoulder. Only wanting to wound him. I squeeze the trigger. Before I even watch the first target go down I’m already on my second, this time aiming for the head. One shot one kill, I move to the third target, which it’s scrambling around, trying to find the whereabouts of the mysterious shooters. I fire another shot, taking it in the leg. It dropped to the ground, howling in pain, only to be silenced a second later with a shot to the head.
I hear a scream go through the intercom, I search through my HUD for the biometric scanning’s of my squad mates.
Major Lorid’s icon is red with a ‘terminated’ sign directly under it. T-Raves readings show that his heart rate is irregular, but that was probably only the adrenaline rush you get into the heat of battle. However Sargent Tereins readings showed that he is bleeding out.
I spin around to see an alien crouching over the Sargent, staring into the black eyes of the helmet.
“Tell me human, how many of you are there?” It says.
“That doesn’t matter anymore,” I say, projecting my voice to the outside world, pulling the trigger and firing off multiple shots, ripping right through the neck of the alien.
“Man down! Sargent, can you hear me?” I say, running over to the motionless body.
The Sargent is slumped up against a wall in a fast growing pool of blood. His own and the aliens mixing together to form an irregular hue.
I unseal his helmet, only to reveal eyes staring past me, unfocused and unwavering, staring into nothing.
“Is he gone?” T-Rave asks, now unoccupied seeing as he finished his four targets only seconds after my own.
I check once more at the biometrics in my helmet, pulling up the statistics for the Sargent. I read through them quickly, there was no hope for the Sargent. Even if we do manage to get him the actual medical assistance he would still be lost.
“Yeah, he’s gone,” I say, reaching my hand to his neck to retrieve the dog tags, “good-bye Sargent,” I bow my head in respect.
Siege of Terra (The Mavrik Woods Series, Book 1) Page 4