“Maybe we should abort the mission,” Dan suggested.
‘No! I-I’m all right,’ Ariel interjected telepathically. “Ari, no, you’re still recovering from what Chakix did to you. You should never have come on this mission,” Troiano breathed.
‘Stop it Ann. I’m, okay I can do this. The team needs me. I can rest when we get home to Earth. I’m okay, really I am,’ Ariel retorted, again telepathically.
Mark walked up to her and placed both his hands upon her shoulders. ‘Are you certain? We can get out of here and back to the ship. I don’t want to lose you. That almost happened once already on this trip. I don’t know how many lives you have left, kitty.’ He smiled, hugged her. and patted her head.
‘Let’s get outta here,’ Dan grunted. ´We’re in this one spot way too long.’
‘You’re right, Dan. Move out. Dorn, Crosby back on point. Follow my directions. We’re almost at the base leaders office.’
‘What if he’s not in there?’ Eddie queried.
‘He has to be. This place is not run like an Earth base where the commander gives orders surrounded by his subordinates from one central command center. These Agalum leaders give their orders from their private quarters linked to others by their comm system. I learned that much from watching the probe’s readouts.’
Mark motioned to Dorn and Crosby, and both moved out heading toward their destination that was hidden far beneath the false and inactive volcano.
‘This is it.’ Mark halted them. He pointed at a dark wood colored door before them.
Dorn raised his gun and fired. The bolt blasted the door to kindling.
Everyone rushed into the office behind him and Crosby. Then all hell broke loose.
Chapter 37
Outside the base, Red’s phalanx of heavy suited crewmen continued to move invisibly through the edges of the deep forest. The Agalum had now begun to try to track their movements through trampled brush and disturbed tree limbs.
But it was to no avail, for each time they came near a member of the Cagliostro’s invisible crew, a blast would ring out, killing the Agalum soldier where he stood.
“Now we’re cooking with fire,” Malcom Joiner hissed. He had a smile plastered across his face within his heavy armored suit. The helmets they each wore obscured the wearer’s countenance but Red knew it was there just the same.
“Keep your head in the game, Joiner,” Red admonished through the armored suit’s comm link.
“Will do, chief,” Joiner replied immediately.
“Good man,” Red added.
The Agalum stood outside the edge of the forest. The heavy suits’ sensors depicted them within the helmets.
“What are they doing?” Bennet, one of the other crewmen, asked.
Red didn’t answer, but something was wrong and he knew it.
“Back up, all of you. Fast, something’s going on here.”
The men ran backward, holding their weapons at the ready. What came next they weren’t ready for. Over four hundred Agalum troops raised their weapons and fired into the forest, burning it to the ground.
“Run, move!” Red shouted.
En masse the crew retreated back as laser blasts lit up the dense foliage.
“Oh no,” Red murmured.
He heard it coming before he had seen it.
The woods about them lit up with laser fire from an Agalum Predator. It swooped down from the heavens and unleashed hell on the Cagliostro’s camouflaged troops, decimating the forest. It was reduced to kindling in seconds.
“Damn it,” Red growled. He dragged Joiner to his feet from where he had fallen next to him. “Get up, Mister. Shake it off. This armor protected you as much as it did me. Now move out, all of you!”
Moving swiftly through the group, Red grabbed men and shoved them forward, pulling many to their feet. Joiner and Bennet aided him now, as did more and more of the stunned crew. They roused those who received more of the damage from the attack than they did.
“Is everyone okay? This armor should have protected us at least that one time, though I wouldn’t count on it a second. If that refractive coating gets burned off we’re goners.”
The men all nodded or called out their continued existence.
“Okay everyone made it through, which I figured. It’s time to back up, maybe draw these bastards back with us. They still don’t see us. At least the camouflage is working yet. But I-”
Screams intruded upon Red’s speech and without hesitation he ran straight for the sound. To a man his troopers followed him as closely as possible.
But Red Robinski was a unique individual. He was already strong and athletic. The suit he was wearing only added to that. He leaped through the tough, packed woods like an Olympian sprinter, leaving the others almost immediately behind.
“Whoa, look at him go!” Bennet exclaimed over his communicator.
“Keep your head in the mission, Bennet,” Red ordered from up ahead.
“You got it, Sir,” Bennet replied.
Red pulled up short when he entered a familiar clearing.
“My God,” he muttered.
“What is it, Sir?” Joiner queried.
“They killed the natives, all of them. The ones we had restrained here, including Chakix.”
“What about the guards we left behind?” Joiner asked.
“Here, but stunned. I think their armor protected them as much as it did us.”
“That Predator is circling back around for a second shot,” one of the other men shouted.
Red spun and immediately pinpointed the incoming craft.
“Everyone back beyond the tree line now. I want all weapons fully charged and aimed at that thing when it gets into range. You fire on my mark!”
The crewmen scrambled back to the trees on the opposite side of the clearing. They all lay down amongst thick foliage that was left standing and was not a burning disaster.
“We’re only going to get one shot at this. If this thing fires on us we’re as good as dead.” Red propped up his canon and began overloading it, bypassing the safeties and pushing its charge well beyond the safe level, as he had done earlier aboard the Cagliostro against the robots that had been left there. “This bastard is too close to the tree tops to be running with his shields on. He’s strafing us and the natives. He can’t see us yet. Without his shields that ship is vulnerable to a concentrated attack.”
Red slung his cannon off of his shoulder and began readjusting the settings on the digital interface. “All of you set your weapons to one hundred and ten percent.”
“Aren’t they going to explode like that?” Bikowski, a female security trooper, asked.
“Not if we discharge them first. All rifles and blast cannons skyward. We have to hit him before he hits us. That means we can’t wait for him to get directly above us. Aim for the belly of this thing. Hold onto your pistols, they’re not going to be any good here anyway. Here it comes!”
The Predator circled overhead and then finally began its strafing run.
“Don’t fire until I order you. This bastard still can’t see us and thinks he’s finishing off the natives.”
“What about the rest of the enemy soldiers? Are they still heading our way?” Bennet asked.
“Forget them for now. Here he comes, weapons up and hot!”
The Predator swooped low, beginning its strafing run. Before it could attack Red shouted, “Fire!”
The fifty men and women from the Cagliostro fired their overloaded weapons as one. The energy blasts leaped from their weapons and slammed into the Predator. So powerful was the concentrated blast that it tore the underside of the craft open and sent it careening into the forest tumbling end over end and trailing smoke until it came to an abrupt stop at least a mile away.
“What happened? Why’d that ship attack the prisoners here? Some of their own people were among them,” Bikowski asked. She pulled off her helmet and a mane of blonde hair fell out.
“Because the Agalum are anim
als, Bikowski. Life doesn’t mean a damned thing to them, not even their own. Now get your head gear back on. We’ve got hundreds of Agalum back beyond that ridge line and probably heading our way now that their ship went down.”
“Why aren’t they here already?” Joiner asked.
Red snapped his gloved fingers. “Of course. Mark took out their communications center. These guys are firing in the dark. They have no idea what to do because they can’t get in touch with their superiors.”
“That doesn’t make them any less dangerous though,” Bennet added.
“No, but maybe it’s time we used their tactics against them.” Red keyed his comm. “Robinski to the Cagliostro, do you copy, Marek?”
Instantly Matt Marek replied, “Yes Red, go.”
“Matt, we need an airstrike on our position. We’ve got four hundred and change Agalum thugs heading our way. We just took out a Predator and are down to our hand guns. Can you fulfill the airstrike?”
Without hesitation Marek replied, “We’re on our way.”
“How long do you think till they get here?” Bikowski asked.
“I’m not sure, Robin. It could be five minutes, it could be less,” Red answered.
“I hope it’s sooner, because here they come,” she added.
Robin Bikowski shook her blonde mane of hair out and dropped her helmet to the grassy forest floor beneath her feet. Red grimaced at that but kept his attention focused on the quickly approaching oncoming horde.
“On my mark,” Red ordered.
The Agalum soldiers stepped closer, brandishing their own laser weapons. Red grimaced beneath his helmet and barked, “Now!”
The fifty crewmembers fired in unison, sweeping their blasters from left to right together. The first group of Agalum went down screaming, but there were still over four hundred enemy warriors approaching the mere fifty on the ground.
“Keep firing,” Red commanded. “Back up after each wave. Bikowski, get that helmet back on your head now!”
She stooped low to pick it up and was instantly hit in the shoulder by a stray laser bolt.
“Aaagghh!” She shrieked, grasping her smoking shoulder as she fell.
“Her armor’s compromised, get her out of here!” Red shouted. Two more troopers picked her up and carried her moaning form out of the line of fire and dragged her deeper into the woods.
“C’mon Matt, where are you?” Red growled.
He reached into a compartment on his armor and retrieved a grenade. Without hesitation he hurled it at the troops in front of him. The resultant explosion knocked a dozen screaming men into the air. Before Red could enjoy his small victory another dozen attackers surged forward and opened fire on his camouflaged position.
“Shit!” he exclaimed and began scrambling backward while laser blasts fell all about him.
The entire fifty man crew was now in full retreat as almost ten times their number was gaining on them and pushing their advantage.
“We’re dead if the Cagliostro doesn’t get here now,” Joiner commented.
Red said nothing, but continued to back up and fire his blaster. He reached back into his suit and produced three more grenades, throwing each of them whenever the Agalum got too close.
All too soon he was out. Like an angry pack of wolves the Agalum approached their invisible enemies, firing their weapons indiscriminately.
Many more of Red’s people fell, wounded. The refractory coating was clearly burned off their heavy suits by the powerful Predator ship’s attack. Still, those able to stand and fight did so.
“We can’t back up any further. We’d be leaving people behind and I refuse to do that. Keep fighting. It’s do or die!” Red shouted.
The Agalum kept coming toward them, slowly, methodically firing their lasers. Some of the heavy armor suits’ camouflage units were beginning to fail from the damage wrought by the Agalum.
Then the sky exploded in fury and thunder from behind the backed up group. With a blinding blast of heat and light the Cagliostro flew overhead, strafing the ground and burning the Agalum forces to ash where they stood. The shadow cast by the thousand foot long ship stunned both sides of the fray. The Cag spun around in midair and lowered itself until it hovered twenty feet above the ground. From its bottom a telescoping maglovator reached down and kissed the ground. “Ten at a time please,” Lily Wallflower’s voice advised.
“Hurry it up,” Red countered. “We have wounded.” “Everyone else back to back with me surrounding the maglovator until the wounded are safely onboard.”
“I hope the boss and the others are doing okay,” Joiner thought aloud.
“I’m worried about them too, but they ain’t the only one’s I’m concerned about,” Red replied.
He turned his eyes skyward and watched as the blue sky above was lit up by bright explosions in space.
Chapter 38
“Get those forward guns back online!” Nagata shouted.
“Working on it, Sir,” came his engineers’ static filled reply.
“My God, they’re everywhere,” The Coronado’s comm officer breathed.
On the main view screen dozens of small Predator craft filled space, forcing the five remaining EPIC battle cruisers away from their Agalum counterparts.
“Once we get far enough away from that G’Kor, it can use its big gun on us. Then no matter how tough our shields are we’ll be done for,” Captain Argento growled from the Tempest’s command deck.
“I am aware, Argento,” Nagata tersely replied.
“We have to retreat,” Carlson advised.
“We can’t. We’re close to gaining control of this world. We have to see this through!”
“It’s no good Nagata. We just lost forward shields,” Jepson on the Eagle’s Claw interrupted. “We’re breaking off the attack.”
“You fool, they won’t let you. Don’t turn your back to them,” Nagata implored.
But it was too late even as the big battle ship turned to put some distance between it and its attackers, the Agalum ships, Predator attack craft and larger ships alike ,opened fire and concentrated on the Eagle’s Claw. The explosion was both horrific and spectacular.
“No!” shouted Nagata, while leaping from his chair.
It was too late. The Eagle’s Claw had joined the Tempest. Both were destroyed.
“All remaining ships form up together. We’ll strengthen our shields by being in close proximity,” Nagata commanded.
“Oh no,” Nagata’s security officer moaned.
“What is it?” Nagata demanded.
“Captain! That G’Kor, it’s turning toward us and its main gun is starting to power up. Even with the ships tightly packed together, our shield strength won’t be enough to survive that.”
Nagata gritted his teeth while a million possible thoughts ran through his mind trying to find a way to avoid certain death.
***
Mark, Dan, Ariel, Eddie, and Dr. Troiano followed Dorn and Crosby into the headquarters of the head of the Agalum base. The moment they stepped through the doorway laser blasts began burning the air about them. Inside and tightly packed were a score of troops. Even though the Cagliostro’s crew was camouflaged and invisible they were in a confined space. Dorn and Crosby each caught laser blasts. While the stealth suits were derived from the standard tech suit Mark had developed to resist energy blasts and afforded its wearer some protection, the repeated blasts that hit Dorn and Crosby were too much, too close together. Both dropped to the floor of the Agalum leader’s office, their bodies smoking from multiple laser blasts.
“Back!” shouted Mark. He lobbed another grenade into the office and ran back into the hallway, ducking low and pulling Ariel and Troiano underneath him an instant before the explosion shook the walls and sprayed everyone with debris from its concussion.
Dan was the first one back through the door, followed by Eddie. Inside it was carnage and devastation. Dead Agalum were everywhere. Dorn and Crosby’s bodies were buried beneath the detritu
s.
Mark pushed past Dan to the desk at the back of the room. Atop it were controls built into its surface and it was relatively unscathed.
“What is all of this?” Mark muttered aloud. Ariel joined him while Dan and Troiano stood together near Dorn and Crosby’s bodies. Eddie stood just inside the doorway scanning the corridor.
“It looks like monitors and cameras throughout the complex,” Ariel replied.
Mark looked up. “Did any of you find the Agalum leader amongst the dead?”
“No, Mark, unless he’s one of these guys,” Eddie answered from the doorway.
“No, he’d have to be a yellow skin. You know what I’m talking about, with the full black eyes.”
Both men and the Doctor looked about at the bodies all around them.
“There’s no one here like that,” Troiano replied.
Ariel pointed at one of the monitors embedded in the desktop. “Look.”
Mark followed where her finger pointed and saw a yellow skinned Agalum running through a storage room.
“Dammit, he had an escape hatch somewhere around here,” Mark growled. “Step back, Ari.”
He began firing his blaster at the floor behind the desk, then at the walls, burning away the veneer. Within seconds he found the disguised hatchway at his feet. “Stay back,” he ordered Ariel. Stepping back himself, he turned his blaster all the way up and fired. The hatchway melted into atoms instantly.
“C’mon,” he ordered. Mark jumped through the still smoldering hatch into the hidden corridor below. Ariel followed him. Dan was next, followed by Dr. Troiano and then Eddie, but both men stopped with the Doctor pinned between them before jumping down and stared at the desk with the monitors built into its top. They both looked at the same monitor and the room it showed.
“Are you seein’ this, squirt?” Dan asked.
“Hell yes, amigo,” Eddie replied.
“What is it?” Ann Troiano asked.
“Hang on Doc,” Dan ordered before he touched his sleeve and activated his comm. “Mark, I just saw something up here on this desk top that you better take a look at.”
The Cagliostro Chronicles II: Conflagration Page 22