No effect.
A sharp yelp emanates over the intercom as T-Rave tries to call for help. With the lack of pain after being kneed T-Rave ejects his gauntlet blade and tries to stab the Hakorian in the chest.
He misses and slashes its left thigh instead. It hisses in pain and tries to lash out with its other hand to slash open T-Raves chest.
That was how long it took for me to get behind the Hakorian, luckily I’m not a second later, otherwise T-raves spleen would be oozing out his front.
My blade bites deep into the Hakorians back, it howls in agony this time and tried to turn around to see the attacker, it’s to slow though. I bring my other hand over its head and I pull my arm back towards my body, snapping its neck in the process.
The body slumps to the ground. T-Rave falls as well.
“You alright? You hurt?” I say, rushing over to him and trying to get him back onto his feet.
T-Rave coughs as he tries to stand up, propping himself up against the tree for more support.
“Never felt better. You know, we should have thought of a plan in case they did that.”
“Yeah, my bad, com’on we gotta keep moving.”
I look over my shoulder and zoom in with my HUD to the lone building. No other Hakorians rush out the entrance to meet us.
I run back to the tree that I had been perched in and pick my sniper rifle off the ground. I didn’t bother taking the time to clip it into my back plate; those seconds alone would have cost T-Rave his life.
“It should just be a straight shot to the building; I don’t see any other contacts on the scanner, although I’m not sure how accurate this scanner will be at depth, that place is probably crawling with bad guys,” I say.
We make a run for it, there’s no one coming out the building yet, so either they’re unaware or very slow.
We dart in between trees; I peek around the corner and quickly check to make sure there’s still no one coming out.
“Coast is clear, keep moving,” I dart around the tree and sprint to the building, it’s only several meters ahead.
I slow down as I get closer, I wouldn’t want to slam into the side and bruise my shoulder.
“Now, how do you suppose we open this?” T-Rave interjects.
“Well, these aliens are too advanced for the good ‘ol doorknob, so I’m assuming that there is a keypad somewhere on the exterior frame.” I inspect the wall in front of me for any notches or latches.
“Ok, this isn’t working. Gimme a sec I just want to try something.” I stand back away from the wall and open my Scanner in my HUD. The scan shows that there’s a section in the wall directly in front of me that isn’t solid material.
“I think I have a point of entry,” I say.
“What, you found a way in?”
“Well, scanners show a little box in the inside of the room, so I’m guessing that it’s a control pad to unlock the door.”
“Well isn’t that just useless, how the hell does that help us if it can only be opened from the inside?”
“It doesn’t, just thought I should mention it.”
I reach for my chest compartments and pull out a small round object.
“Whoa, don’t you think that’ll be a bit much?” T-Rave exclaims as he steps back.
“Well, I guess we will find out.”
I place my palm on the underside of the device and hit two small buttons.
“Alright, when I stick this on, I’ll have ten seconds to get clear.”
“Just you?”
“Of course, it doesn’t take two people to stick a bomb onto a door.”
“Right.” He says, running along the wall of the building and turning the corner in order to avoid the blast.
I look at the device in my hand and carefully extend my arm and stick it to the wall where the door should be.
It begins to beep.
I don’t look at it a second time, instead I run my ass off to where T-Rave’s standing. I feel a bead of sweat roll down my forehead and catch in my eyebrow.
An arm is prodding out from around the corner, my hand clasps it and T-Rave pulls me around.
The ground shakes violently beneath our feet.
“Close one, thanks for the hand.”
“No problem, should we go and see if there is nothing but a crater left?”
I glance around the corner; all I can see is smoke and upturned soil.
“Looks clear, no bad guys swarming out or anything like that.” I turn around the corner and slowly walk towards the smoke, my rifle aimed and ready.
The wall is churning with smoke; I point my rifle at the hole and prepare to fire.
“Well, that was useless,” T-Rave exclaims.
There’s no hole in the wall, if anything there’s a very charred looking dent barely large enough for one person to crawl through.
“Alright, we’re screwed,” T-Rave says.
“That’s really random, why is that?”
“Just think; if their buildings can withstand our most powerful handheld explosives then I can't even begin to imagine how powerful their ships hulls are.”
My stomach drops.
T-Rave thinks fast, I haven’t even considered that. If that little bomb barely made a dent in a wall then how powerful would our weaponry be against the enemy fleet?
“Well, I guess we’ll just have to use another one.” I say, reaching up to my breast to get another explosive. “Your turn.” I hand T-Rave the cylinder.
“Well, given the size of the blast radius I believe we won’t have to go that far this time.”
I walk a few meters from the smoking dent in the wall, I signal T-Rave to activate the explosive, hand gestures seem faster, even though we’re connected with an intercom.
All I can see from this far away is T-Rave placing his hand inside the dent before turning and running.
T-Rave reaches me and he looks back at the wall, an explosion follows.
“Think that worked?”
“Yeah, I think it did. The building vibrated more this time, which must mean that the explosion went farther in and shook the foundation.”
We walk along the side of the wall.
“Wow, well that did the trick,” T-Rave says.
It wasn’t a dent anymore, a large scorched hole, large might have been an overstatement; it was big enough so that a grown man in full gear would be able to squeeze through.
“Yeah, it might have made a hole, but if we have to make a quick escape then I would feel more comfortable with that hole being a bit larger.”
“We aren’t going to use another one are we?” T-Rave says.
“No, it would be a waste, the wall here is weakened enough so that we can just use this to make it larger,” I say, my gauntlet blade comes out with a Chuunk.
I look along the jagged pieces of metal -or whatever kind of material it is- I scrape along the side to test how easy it is to make the hole larger. It’s just crumbling under my blade, as if it’s butter.
“I guess both explosions really softened this stuff up,” T-rave says.
It doesn’t take long for a big enough hole to be chiseled out of the original hole.
“Ladies first,” I gesture to T-Rave.
“Well in that case I must insist,” he returns the gesture.
“Smartass.”
I climb through the entrance.
The inside of the building is black, it almost seems like it swallowed up the light that’s coming from outside.
I turn on my exterior helmet light and I flood the room with light. The light is blocked instantly by fog. What seemed like fog anyways. The fog licks my armour, wrapping itself around my body as if alive.
“What the-” T-Rave bats away the mist with his hand; it’s trying to swallow him up.
“Hold out your arm Captain, and don’t resist,” I say.
“What do you mean resist?”
“Just watch.”
The fog is wrapping itself around T-Raves outstretched arm;
slowly pulling it down.
“Colonel, do something,” his voice quivers.
“Close your eyes and turn your external receivers off.” I wait a few seconds to make sure that T-Rave did those two things. I reach into my belt compartment and take out another round cylinder; this one however was more smooth and shiny. I hit the button.
The entire room illuminates with a bright flash of light, as bright as if you were looking at a lightning bolt arcing through the sky, the light is just the first step of the device. A high pitch shrieking noise pierces the silence of the chamber.
The fog vanishes almost instantly as the device activated. Without the mist to shroud it the room is revealed, nothing but a small Hakorian cowering in the corner, wearing but a simple brown robe.
“Don’t move!” T-Rave shouts at the Hakorian, his voice booming and echoing off the small-enclosed walls.
The Hakorian doesn’t have to move at all to show defeat, seeing as it’s already on its knees and crouched over.
“Was that you doing that?” I ask.
The Hakorian doesn’t answer.
I prod the barrel of my rifle into the side of its head.
“You might want to answer him; otherwise it might get unpleasant for you,” T-Rave says.
I bring my rifle down to its right leg; the barrel directed right over the kneecap.
“I’m going to ask again, was that you?”
Yet again, there’s no reply.
I sigh before pulling the trigger, the room booms with noise as the gun fires its energy into the Hakorians leg.
The screams drown out the sound of the weapon discharging, an odd scream though, it isn’t like the screams and the deep bass that the Hakorians in the power building made.
A female voice.
“Shit,” I drop to my knees and rip off a part of her robe. I make it into a rather choppy looking rag. I rap her kneecap up with the rag, “sorry, I didn’t know,” I say.
“Colonel, what the hell are you doing?! This alien is the enemy!” T-Rave shouts.
“Captain, this is a woman, I don’t care what your opinion is, I won’t harm her, and neither will you.”
“Colonel, I don’t care if she is a woman or not, you can't let that make you soft. We are here on a mission, if you can't keep the proper attitude towards that objective then there is no point in you being here. This is a war, if you don’t like the methods then tough shit, you signed up for it.”
“I don’t care what the methods are, we are not hurting her!”
“Well you already hurt her, so all we can do now is try to get information.”
It must’ve looked odd on her part, two men standing around and waving their arms around.
T-Rave turns his focus to the whimpering Hakorian.
“Now, I’m going to ask you one more time, you are going to answer, otherwise the next shot will be fired at your skull.”
I turn my back on the both of them, it’s one thing that I couldn’t witness, the strong preying on the weak.
“Did you do that?”
“Yess,” she manages to say through the pain.
“How did you do that?” He asks.
There’s no reply; all she does is smile at him with her pointed teeth before hissing.
I don’t have to time to turn around and stop T-Rave.
The sound of a weapon discharging fills the chamber. There are morals that I follow, or rather, I try my best to follow them. One of them is to never harm women. Obviously T-Rave doesn’t have the same guidelines to stick track to.
“See? It can be done; all I wanted was a simple yes or no.”
“Then why did you kill her?” I shout.
“She was a risk. We couldn’t afford to let her go; she might have told someone that we were here.”
A good point. Still, it felt wrong.
“Let’s move.”
Seeing as the fog is no longer here it’s a lot easier to see the inside of the room. Rather bland; the inside has the same material that’s used on the exterior. The wall opposite of where the female Hakorian had been, there is what appeared to be a doorway. Seeing what my scans that I made earlier had revealed what looked like a shaft leading straight down, which then led into a large round chamber.
“Well, seeing as we’re inside it shouldn’t be hard to find a switch to activate this door.” I grope around the wall for any abnormalities. My hand traced up and down until it hit a small square bump.
As soon as my hand touched it the button pressed into the wall and disappeared.
Nothing happens.
“Well, we’re either very clever or very screwed. You think it was an alarm?”
A deep grating sound comes from the wall before I can answer. The door is opening.
“Hmm, well that was easy. You would think that they would have a passcode or something,” T-Rave says.
I aim my rifle at the opening door; definitely an elevator of some kind.
“Wait; give me one of your explosives,” I say to T-Rave, I extend my hand towards him.
“Why?”
“Because we can't go any further without having some type of backup plan. Didn’t the General say plant explosives and then try to negotiate with them? Well, this is what I’m doing, in case the negotiations go to hell, which they will. Then we have a way out, if we make distraction then we might be able to get away.”
“This is all on a bet if we get captured,” T-Rave states.
“Yeah, and you know, it's also common sense to have a backup plan in case the first one gets screwed.”
“Fair enough.” He says, extracting one of the explosives from his breastplate compartment.
I take the explosive from his hand and look for a crevice for which I can place it. I unsheathe my blade and start to poke the wall -I was right- it’s exactly the same material used on the outer walls.
“I’m not sure if that will work, it's just too hard.”
I dismiss his words with a wave of my hand.
I move into the elevator, still poking at the wall. The effect is different in here; in the chamber the wall was hard as steel, in the elevator however it’s almost squishy.
“I think I found an entry point.”
I push my blade through the inside wall of the elevator, it goes deep into the soft material.
I create a little slit in the wall, big enough to be able to slide the cylinder in; but small enough so that it would appear as if there was no gap at all.
“There, just what we need.” I retract my blade.
“Well, pile in, there is only one way to go, down.”
T-Rave follows me into the elevator, “I’m just letting you know, I don’t feel too comfortable with a live bomb in here.”
“Don’t worry, it’ll only explode if I tell it to, I took away the automatic detonation switch. It won’t explode after ten seconds like the other two; this one has to receive a signal from my HUD for it to go off.”
“Well isn’t that a comfort.”
“Relax, it’ll be fine,” I say.
I look for a control panel on the side of the wall. There’s nothing there; just a small room.
“Well, here we are, stumped by an elevator.”
“Shut up I’m thinking.” I say, harsher then I meant it to be, but the man just never stops talking.
These are advanced beings, surely they wouldn’t use buttons for everything.
“My speeder is voice controlled.”
“What?”
“Whenever I want to go somewhere I say the coordinates.”
“On,” T-Rave says randomly.
“Run.”
“It can't be that simple.”
“Apparently it isn’t.”
“Lower, descend, down.”
The elevator lurches.
It feels like my stomach is going into my head.
“Alright, so we got down, and I guess the opposite of down is,” T-Rave points up towards the ceiling, he probably didn’t want to say ‘up’ because the
elevator would’ve reversed most likely.
“See, you have to wonder. How could they possibly get all this crap down here? I mean, you said there was a large pocket, or chamber at the bottom, I’m assuming that is where the actual mining is taking place. But how did they transport all that equipment down here, in this lone shaft?” T-Rave says.
“Well, maybe they have the same technology that we have.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, the really compact kind, I have a hut for two strapped to my leg pretty much. Scientists and engineers are just making stuff smaller and smaller these days.”
The elevator stops abruptly.
“What? We can't be at the bottom already; you said it was almost two kilometers down,” T-Rave says.
“I did, and we have no idea how fast this thing can go.” The elevator door that we entered through doesn’t open, instead the wall behind us opens up to reveal a long corridor.
“Hmm, well, let’s get on with this then,” I say.
The corridor’s easily a hundred meters long, not the gloomy type though; well light and bathed in orange and red light, the source of the light is unknown.
“This place gives me the creeps,” T-Rave says, probably just to break the silence.
“Yeah, welcome to the club.”
We reach the end of the corridor; a door blocks the rest of the way.
“Scans showed that that chamber is on the other side of this door, now; I have no idea what to expect, the scans only show the terrain.”
“I get the idea,” T-Rave says tersely.
I raise my rifle at the door with my right hand, using my left to scan the surrounding wall for any notches or latches that could open the door.
“Got it, here we go,” I say, I press the knob that’s protruding slightly from the wall.
The door opens.
A massive cavern lies before us.
We only have a second to register it before a huge snarling Hakorian blocks our path.
T-Rave and I react instantly by pulling the triggers on our guns, the energy blasts rip right through the abdomen of the Hakorian, essentially severing it in half.
“Ok, time to go, and go fast!” I yell.
Being discovered the second we get inside hadn’t been the ideal plan.
“Do you think it sounded an alarm?” T-Rave asks.
Siege of Terra (The Mavrik Woods Series, Book 1) Page 12