by D. P. Oberon
Its single triangular eye turned on them. Red light flashed out. Several more triants joined this one. They spoke in super fast encrypted Mandarin.
Saradi grabbed Yoriko, who kicked and screamed at the contact. Just as Saradi was about to knock her out, Yoriko collapsed into her, shaking and crying. Gun shots fired behind Saradi, but all she could think of was Novalie’s face smashed in that helmet. She pressed Yoriko against her tightly and lifted the slight woman up, cradling her in her arms.
Buckingarra engaged the triants, firing volley after volley from his two LR4s. Up close, their guns were a lot more effective. Trisdale ran up behind Buckingarra’s cover fire and threw two grenades. The resounding boom took out the stairwell and shoved Buckingarra and Trisdale all the way back down.
Saradi held Yoriko until they reached the tunnel. Even now the unknown scared her. But if the previous two squads took this tunnel then it should be safe.
“EngTech, you go in first. Send Ganmi in. At the other end check and make sure it’s clear,” Saradi ordered.
Peng nodded and jumped in. Ganmi, flying behind him, decloaked.
“CommsTech, I need you.” Saradi set Yoriko down as more triants came through the door and landed above them. “I need you.”
Yoriko nodded and lowered herself into the tunnel, disappearing from view.
“Sara!” Buckingarra screamed.
Six triants shot at Trisdale and Buckingarra as they ran for the huge hole in the ground. Saradi stepped to the side and fired. CoNBAT sent each one of her shots into a triant chassis. They buckled and momentarily their return fire scattered around the garage.
Buckingarra ran and dove head first into the tunnel, screaming in triumph. Trisdale followed him, the zing of sniper rails almost taking off his arm.
Saradi was last. She ran towards the hole and jumped. Trisdale looked up at her. “No,” he said. “Shoot the damn Ceradon6!” Then he was gone.
Saradi, still in the air, twisted and grabbed on to the lip of the tunnel with one hand. Her LR4 fell from her hands but the auto-catch around her shield grabbed it and mounted it on her shoulder turret. She aimed the SR2 handgun mounted to her gauntlet and fired. The first shot’s magtriol blast slagged a hole in the fuel cell tanks. The second shot took the Ceradon6 stack right in the middle.
The resounding boom and backdraft of heat burned Saradi’s entire body. Her shields screamed in red alert as she dropped to the tunnel floor. The pain like a billion screwdrivers drilling all over her.
Chapter 37 – Sacrifice
The world blurred around Saradi. The silence without the sound of the footsteps, her checking and looking down at each step to make sure her feet moved. They moved but she couldn’t hear anything. Trisdale waved them on, the light glinting off his forearm armor as he did so. Peng’s armor had scratched off in the shove to get him out. Buckingarra’s lips screaming that it was all going to blow. All going to blow.
“Squad Leader you need patching,” Yoriko said. Her face was like an apparition out the dark, floating above Saradi.
Why was Yoriko speaking so slowly? Saradi fell on the ground. She didn’t notice the cavernous tunnel they stood in, the wide mag-rail tracks that curved into the distance, or the huge lights that jutted from the walls. It looked like the inside of some strange planet. The huge dark iordite glittered all around them sometimes mixed with layers of darker rock. Disused carts large as aero-jets and overflowing with mountains of iordite lay against the walls. The squad members ants invading the realm of giants.
But all Saradi saw was Yoriko’s worried face and people talking behind her. Weird types of noises.
The pain hit Saradi like a punch to the groin. She clutched her belly and doubled over, retching. Her helmet jerked back to quarter configuration as the bloody vomit spewed from her mouth.
“Sara, I need to turn you,” Yoriko said.
Peng knelt by Saradi and together he and Yoriko gently rolled Saradi on her back.
“Fuck me,” said Buckingarra’s voice. “That shit looks like third degree burns.”
“They are,” Yoriko said. “She’s run out of her own medi-bots. Her hardshell is completely destroyed. I’m going to use my own.”
“No,” Saradi gasped. “I can take it. Just shove a stinj inside of me. You need yours.” SOHIC mandated that everyone carry their own medi-bots in their hardshells; each carried enough for a life-threatening wound. But this burn went from Saradi’s neck all the way down her back. Trisdale had already used her own medi-bots to heal her from the sniper shot. She didn’t have any left.
“She was hurt from the start. Her back shoulder,” Yoriko said, awe in her voice. “She just didn’t know. It was the adrenaline. I won’t have enough medi-bots to heal her.”
Peng said, “She can use mine. Will two be enough?”
Yoriko nodded. “Should do.”
“Hurry up,” Trisdale barked. “They’ll be on our asses soon.”
“No,” Saradi wanted to say. But her mouth frothed with spittle instead. If Peng and Yoriko gave her their medi-bots then what would happen to them when they got injured? She began to cough and choke and panic gripped her.
Yoriko and Peng uncoiled the slender tubes from their medipacks and gently inserted the connectors to Saradi’s body. Each AAEDEF soldier had two medi-bot receptacles, one on the left thigh, the other on the rear neck region. They watched as the green glowing medi-bots swished through the tubes and into Saradi’s body.
“Bucki, take guard over there,” Trisdale said, indicating the boulder with a sharp gesture of his rifle.
The medi-bots worked quickly. Saradi’s burned back and her shot shoulder instantly began to close up and heal. She spluttered once more throwing up a big ball of saliva, phlegm, and something red. It was her last cough before the ice cold feeling of medi-bots surged throughout her entire body.
A whole two minutes went past as Saradi blacked out. She awoke feeling refreshed, but her coordination was off and she had to be helped to a standing position. “I’m okay,” she said, falling against the wall.
A loud explosion came from beyond and the sound of small stones and large stones shaking resounded around the cavern. Saradi fumbled for her LR4 and stepped on Bheemasena’s dog tag. She must’ve dropped it. Her hands shook as she picked up. It glowed yellow: injured but alive.
What was going on? A fog of confusion filled her head. She shook her head to try to clear it.
“Let’s go; on me,” Trisdale said as Buckingarra came back to them.
“They’re coming! They blew up the bunker again, that’s how they’ve made their way in,” Buckingarra said.
They made their way deeper into the mine, running inside the mag-rails. As they ran Trisdale said, “CommsTech there’s a trail off this main path, one that the original two squads took. Plot a course for it.”
Yoriko said, “Something here is jamming CoNBAT. I’ve got zero visibility.”
Trisdale cursed. “Well, keep going and let’s see if we can find the turnoff.”
Saradi’s AI display had gone blank. Now all it showed her was her ammo count, medi-bot status, and her own bio-stats. A deep guilt coursed through her; she jogged to the front of their group. If they got shot she should be the one first in line, not Yoriko or Peng who’d sacrificed their medi-bots for her.
In the distance footsteps echoed, and the sound of that encrypted Mandarin blared from one triant to another. The squad members quickened their pace.
The mine’s ceiling vaulted so high it would’ve been impossible to see its ceiling without the floodlights overhead. As they moved along the mag-rail tracks, the height of the shaft decreased. Soon it was only two, maybe three meters overhead.
“Did we take a wrong turn?” Saradi wondered aloud. She’d spotted clogged rocks and boulders up ahead. Something had happened here. Was the mine not stable?
“Negative,” said Yoriko. “We are heading in the right direction. But where’s Trisdale?”
“I wouldn’t worry about
him, he’s probably just gone ahead to scout,” Buckingarra said.
“He should be visible to us,” Saradi said. “He’s breaking formation. No one else stretch beyond visibility, is that clear?”
They all nodded.
The mag-rail disappeared under a mound of rocks that looked to have been released during a cave-in. Just as they scrambled over the boulders and rubble a single sniper rail tsked past Saradi’s ear and hit the side of the cave.
“Run!” Saradi shouted. “Yoriko, where the heck are we going?”
“The markers are gone. We’ll just have to follow the main track,” she shouted back. More rails tsked passed them.
Trisdale’s form surged up ahead. He moved quickly and displayed an agility through the terrain as if he’d grown up running around these passages. He turned, his pale face staring at them, his hand waving them on. He disappeared again in the dark.
Peng lagged behind.
“Hurry up, Peng,” Saradi shouted.
“Haul ass dumplings, should’ve lost more weight,” Buckingarra said, pausing momentary until Peng caught up and then he hauled him along with him.
The only thing that saved them was the sniper rail that tsked into Yoriko’s hardshell and spun her about so that she landed spread-eagle on the ground. Saradi bent to pick her up and Buckingarra and Peng turned to see.
The explosion rocked the chamber and huge rocks crumbled and fell down. Saradi stupidly held out her hand over her head as if that would help. Massive rocks crashed down all around them.
No, Saradi thought, I don’t want to die in the depths of stupid darkness. I want to die outside, in the air. She spotted a large slab of rock that had formed a lean-to against a huge boulder. She dove, shielding Yoriko with her body as she pulled the CommsTech along with her.
Peng crumpled to his knees. Ganmi floated above him and transformed: her cube-form separated into twenty-seven smaller cubes. The cubes spread out from one another connected by strands of xfabrics that glittered yellow. She’s making a net, Saradi realized. Ganmi groaned under the pressure of holding the crumbling ceiling. It must’ve been tons of rock pushing down on her.
“Hurry,” Ganmi’s voice rasped.
“No!” Peng said, stretching up his hands to Ganmi.
Ganmi’s joints popped and strands of electricity danced along her network of cubes.
Buckingarra grabbed Peng and flung him like he were a kid. Saradi grabbed Yoriko and they both staggered away from the falling ceiling. They’d barely gotten out when Ganmi collapsed under the pressure. The resounding clash sent the ceiling to the ground.
The way back was entirely blocked.
Peng’s face twisted in pain. He slammed his gauntlets against the pile of rocks. He began to tear at it, shoving rocks aside, and pulling them off the pile of rubble.
“Ganmi,” he called. “Ganmi!”
For a moment the rocks quivered as if in answer and then they settled.
Chapter 38 – Underground City
“By Christos, it’s an entire city,” said Yoriko. They finally stepped out from the warren of caves and into something that looked like the inside of a hollowed out mountain. “I’m picking up CoNBAT signals from the lost squad.”
It was hard not be awestruck by the site of the ten large rockets painted in the blue-green colors of Alrosa Mirny. The rocket bodies were lightly etched with the mining company’s logo, a sinkhole with a shard of iordite in its center. The words “Alrosa Mirny” curved around the image.
A large building sat in the middle of all these, several spheres mushroomed out of its roof, and a tall tower with forty-five degree angle windows stared out onto the launch pads. Not a single person could be seen through those windows.
There was even a small park strip that surrounded this building with a pond. The grass grew wild and the murky pond gave an impression the place had long been untended.
Massive orange globes illuminated the immediate area, hovering at about the rockets’ midline. Saradi found herself staring up at the leering bodies of the huge rockets. Their cones had blinking red lights that added to the surreality of the environment.
“I financed these mines,” Saradi said.
“Really?” Yoriko asked.
“In another lifetime, when I was an exec at Autobus-Mannschaft.” She shivered. Now she knew where all the money had gone. Alyona Pavlenko had been lying to her.
Across from them, nestled against the wall of the mountain, was a pitch black pyramid whose surface absorbed the light. Saradi had only ever seen one of those before, in Autobus-Mannschaft’s corporate HQ deep down in their private underground.
“They’ve got a Khufu-core here,” Saradi said. “They’re doing something more than mining. A lot more. Nobody needs the processing power of a Khufu-core just for mining.”
Peng sniffed behind her. She turned and put her arm around him, bringing him forward to take a look. This was his thing. Normally he would marvel at it and wonder about the tech. But Ganmi’s loss weighed on him.
They made their way down, Yoriko muttering about Trisdale’s disappearance. They emerged out onto the crumbling rock that made way to smooth titancrete road. Whatever way they had come was opposite the way the employees had journeyed here — a small mag-rail station stood to their west. A rack to dock small aero-scooters sat beside the station, some of the scooters scattered on the floor along with chunks of the roof that caved in.
“This place smells like ass,” Buckingarra said.
Saradi laughed. He raised his eyebrows at her. She waved her hand. “I was thinking it smells like blue cheese, but your description is apt.”
“The heck is blue cheese?”
“Never mind, Bucki, I seriously doubt you’d like it.”
“I like it,” Yoriko said. “Blue cheese, not ass.” She held up an imaginary cup. “With a glass of Australian Shiraz.”
Peng looked at them like they’d gone crazy.
And maybe they had, but maybe Buckingarra was on to something about joking when things got serious.
“That stench is coming from the crushed iordite,” Saradi said. “It’s on those conveyors.”
An intricate conveyor system moved ore from the processing facility at the east through an almost net-like circuit of the streets. The conveyors connected to the base cones of the rockets. They filled the rockets with iordite from the top down.
So that’s how they filled the rockets, Saradi thought.
“Keep going.” Yoriko said, consulting her stored digital maps. CoNBAT still didn’t work so the rest of the squad had a very sparse representation rendered in primitive polygons without the mission overlay.
They followed their CommsTech.
They passed under the shadow of a conveyor that still had a pile of iordite on it, chunks had fallen to the ground around them. They made their way around the chunks and paused abruptly.
The green lights on the rockets changed to orange and a loud voice blared into the air. “Cannot launch until authorization complete. Aborting.”
“Someone’s trying to get the iordite away!” Yoriko said.
“That’s not possible,” Buckingarra said.
“Let’s quicken the pace,” Saradi urged.
As they jogged, Saradi couldn’t help but marvel at the engineering effort that had gone into creating this hollowed out mountain with the office-city-mine. How long had it taken to hollow out the mountain?
They jogged through the entire office city in less than fifteen minutes. It felt eerie and Saradi kept looking around expecting the enemy at any time.
“Keep going,” Yoriko said, glancing at her holo-display. “Bravo One Alpha squad tracking ends up ahead.”
The road split in the face of the prow of the Khufu-core. They took the left path.
“Be ready,” Saradi cautioned. She auto-mounted her LR4 on her shoulder turret and held out her two SR2s. She directed her aiming reticle to scan the area in front of her.
At the base of the Khufu-core’s pyr
amid they came upon a pleasant courtyard with a fountain in the center of it. And against the wall behind the fountain—
“By the Archer God’s balls,” Buckingarra said.
Two hooks jutted out of the walls. The hooks eviscerated the cadavers that dangled from them. SOHIC soldiers by their armor.
“CommsTech, identify,” Saradi heard her voice say, finding it strangely calm. The urge to pull out Bheemasena’s dog tag came over her and she fought it. She squinted her eyes to focus on the bodies. Could either of those be Bheem?
“Bravo Zero Alpha, Funafuti Tefolaha,” Yoriko said, pointing to the dangling body on the right. Then, “Nathaniel Bontrager, Bravo One Alpha.” Indicating the body on the left.
Relief covered Saradi like a wet blanket. A wet patch spread around her groin. Bheemasena wasn’t one of them. Saradi collapsed to her knees and pressed the handgun against her cheeks.
“Sara, look,” Yoriko urged. Saradi took a deep breath and lifted her head. A figure lurched out from the shadowy entrance to the Khufu-core. As he came into the light, she made out Warrant Officer Trisdale and saw a figure leaning hard against him.
“Well, well, isn’t this a nice reunion,” Warrant Officer Christian Trisdale said. He staggered under the shadows of the foyer of the Khufu-core and walked toward them. That’s when Saradi recognized the man at his side. Her breath caught in her throat and she swallowed repeatedly at the lump that formed there.
Trisdale held an SR2 to Bheemasena’s head. The younger soldier’s body was naked and emaciated. Plasticuffs bound his wrists and legcuffs secured his ankles. His head lolled against Trisdale’s shoulder. Splotch marks covered his entire body as if he’d been tortured.
Trisdale said, “Now let’s not pretend and act surprised or waste words. Saradi, hand me Bheem’s dog tag or I blow your brother’s brains all over this place.” The gun made a slight beep as it auto-aimed, only a sliver more and it would fire.