Duggan did his best to put the Ribald’s destruction from his mind. What he planned next was going to be difficult enough without being able to use the comms systems freely and the antimatter spilling from the Ribald’s engines meant they couldn’t take a methodical approach. He didn’t know how long the suits would protect them and he didn’t want to take any more chances with the lives of his squad than he had to.
“It’s going to be far too dangerous as it is,” he muttered to himself.
Duggan studied the lay of the land in the fading light of day. The machinery he’d noted came in several different shapes, all of it oversized. There was something which looked like an earth dredger, with towers, gantries and conveyor chutes mounted on a gravity drive. Duggan had no idea what it was called, but it was several hundred metres long and at least two hundred tall and wide. There were a few dozen diggers and dumper lorries, and other cubes of dirty metal that housed the grinders. Duggan used his suit’s zoom function to look more closely - none of the mining equipment gave any impression it was operational. On the far side of the pit, three gargantuan tunnels disappeared into the earth, the distance too great for his suit to pierce the darkness within. There were ore storage containers as well, some of them up to five hundred metres long and two hundred tall. These massive, reinforced units were close to the tunnel entrances – the captain of the Goliath would have expected to be loading them into the cargo bay by now.
The figure next to him elbowed him to get his attention - Sergeant Ortiz was the culprit. She pointed towards the bottom of the slope, where there was a metal-walled hut. Compared to everything else, the hut was comically small. At first, Duggan wasn’t sure what he was meant to be looking for, then he noticed two shapes against one of the walls. They looked like sacks of goods which had been thrown carelessly into place and forgotten about. When he zoomed in, he could see they were bodies - men or women he wasn’t sure which. They were clad in the survival suits which enabled humans to operate in moderately hostile environments such as that on Everlong. It was too far to see if there were any injuries to the bodies – the Ghasts used a heavier gauss-type rifle than those used by the Space Corps and they tended to leave extensive exit wounds. Whatever had killed these people was unclear.
“Lieutenant Chainer, where did you detect the Ghast emplacement?”
“Close to the middle, sir. I’ve lost my bearings a little but I’d say it’s behind that dredger. Our sensors didn’t see anything at first, so I’d guess it’s been half buried.”
That would make sense, Duggan thought – keep the weapons engulfed in the Gallenium-rich earth to conceal them from attackers for as long as possible. It was a long way to the bottom and a long walk to the middle of the pit. Duggan would have much preferred a precise idea of where they were going, rather than being kept in the dark until they were almost at the target.
Suppressing the urge to look upwards, Duggan spoke into the squad channel. “Listen up – we’ve got a Ghast disruptor and a Shatterer missile launcher somewhere in this pit. I believe they’re hidden, almost certainly by earthworks. It’s likely they are on the far side of that dredging equipment in the middle. We’re going to spread out and make our way to the dredger. Keep low, use cover and stay alert. I wish I could tell you exactly what we’ll find, but I can’t. We’re going to try and catch the Ghasts unawares and disable their ground facilities. If there are any miners alive, it’s our duty to find them and help them. Maintain radio silence, keep movement and heat sensors on. If you see the enemy, report in quickly and succinctly. Make sure you hold your fire until you hear otherwise.”
The squad members knew that Duggan didn’t need a spoken acknowledgement. A few of them performed a clumsy nod and one or two raised their rifles. Duggan crawled to the edge of the pit and looked down. The walls sloped sharply and were covered in loose earth and gravel. The uppermost tier was over one hundred metres beneath him. If he lost his footing, there’d be a lot of dust which would be visible to anyone looking. He slung his rifle across his shoulder and climbed over the edge. The gravel shifted under his feet, but he could feel the solidity underneath. He belatedly realised the miners wouldn’t have left the walls prone to landslides every time something disturbed them. Even so, the going was tough, straining the muscles of his calves and upper legs as he tried to control his descent.
To either side, stones rattled and clattered past as the others of the squad began their slithering climb. To Duggan’s relief, there were no accidents and within five minutes, they had made it to the first tier from the top. He was concerned about the leaking engine from the Ribald, but Duggan knew it would be suicide to charge all the way to the bottom without stopping to check for enemy activity. To his relief, it was still quiet and he started down again, half-crawling and half-standing in order to maximise his grip. Something struck his helmet and he caught sight of a fist-sized rock spinning away to the tier below. He looked up to see Morgan recovering from a near-fall. The man carried the squad’s portable comms beacon - a heavy silver box which made running and climbing much harder. There was no need for apologies and Morgan didn’t even bother to raise an arm – he had too much on his plate as it was.
They’d been climbing for over twenty minutes when they reached the last tier before the bottom. Duggan found himself in a routine where he could execute a controlled slide over the roughest parts of the slope and crab down the parts where the going was easier. As he set off on the last section of slope, his mind was already concentrating on the next phase of the approach. Then, his suit picked up a scuffing noise off to his left. He looked over in time to see one of the squad toppling headlong past. It was Casper, one of the new recruits to the Space Corps. The soldier tumbled over on his way down, bounced twice, slid for twenty metres before an outcrop knocked him away from the slope and into the air again. As he fell, gravel was shaken loose and clouds of fine dust burst away from the surface. No one spoke as they watched the event play out in front of them. The last tier was the highest of all, and when Casper eventually reached the bottom, he lay still, his body made small by the distance.
Duggan swore into his helmet and began scrambling towards the fallen soldier. There was another person closer – it was Corporal Bryant, bent almost double in order to keep balance with a med-box on her back. Duggan almost gave a warning for her to slow down. In the end, she knew the risks and he didn’t want to distract her. Bryant reached Casper first and had him plugged to her machine by the time Duggan reached the bottom. There were interfaces in several places across the space suits, and wires stretched from the med-box to the ports in the soldier’s helmet. Bryant didn’t wait for long. Her fingers were nimble even in the suit and she plucked the wires away from Casper’s helmet. They retracted into the med-box automatically. She looked at Duggan – at least he assumed she was looking, since the helmet visors were completely opaque. She ran a finger across her throat and wriggled the straps of the med-box back over her shoulders.
Duggan crouched over Casper’s body, a man he’d hardly said a word to, but who was still part of his squad. He was aware that the others of the unit had reached the bottom of the slope and had gathered around. Death was impersonal in this war – you couldn’t even take solace from looking in a dead soldier’s face in order to commit their features to memory. Duggan had nothing to offer this man – not even the honour of being launched into space. He stood slowly and saluted, sensing the others doing the same.
It wasn’t the time for mourning. Duggan raised a hand and waved it towards the vast structure of the dredger in the distance. His suit calculated it to be over three kilometres away. The ground between was open in places, though there were a few pieces of smaller machinery, as well as collections of disposable metal huts that Duggan had seen in places like this before. The huts provided shelter, yet were cheap enough that they could be left behind when operations moved on.
There was no sign of movement anywhere close by, though a warning alert in his helmet had begun a gentl
e, unobtrusive chime to let Duggan know about the dangerous levels of positron emissions close by. He wanted to kick something in frustration – instead, he put his head down and began a sprint towards an abandoned dump truck a few hundred metres away. The others split off in groups of two, three and four as they chose their own destinations and ran towards them.
The dump truck was forty metres long and painted a dirty yellow, which looked even less appealing underneath the layer of caked-on grime from the years the vehicle had worked at this place. Duggan wasn’t interested in its history – there was no one in the cab and nothing to indicate its engines had been fired up recently. The vehicle was valuable, but it was just another piece of ultimately disposable equipment in the Human-Ghast war. If it was no longer needed on the site, Duggan had no doubt it would be abandoned. It would form a line on an inventory list somewhere on a Corps mainframe, yet would end up rotting here since it was easier to make a new truck than send a ship out to reclaim this one. The MHL Goliath could fit hundreds of these vehicles in her hold in order to carry them elsewhere, but the containers of half-processed ores were needed far more than the truck.
Corporal Simmons and Commander McGlashan joined Duggan at the truck. He indicated they should wait as he peered out around the edge. There was still no movement and nothing on the suit’s heat detectors. With any luck, the Ghasts weren’t expecting an attack from the ground. As far as they knew, they’d destroyed the Corps spacecraft and their own warship had hit the remains with a missile strike. If they happened to notice Duggan and his squad approaching, things would get uncomfortable very quickly. A Cadaveron could obliterate anyone on the surface in twenty seconds.
The next area of cover was a collection of the portable huts. They were stacked two or three high in places and there was almost enough of them to call it a village. The light had dropped so low that it was distinctly gloomy and Duggan’s suit amplified his vision, the process giving everything a green tint and making distant outlines slightly fuzzy. With his rifle clutched across his chest, Duggan ran for the huts, covering the three hundred metres in a minute. He pressed his back to the first hut he reached, feeling his heart beat in his chest and hearing his laboured breathing in his helmet. He was fit enough, it was just that running in a suit was far harder than running without.
The huts were not pleasing to the eye, nor were they intended to be. They were double-skinned blocks of metal, fifteen metres in length. They had no windows, one airlock-controlled door and one emergency exit hatch. Duggan had been in places like this a few times – they were as grim inside as they were outside. Some of them were intended to be used as housing and he guessed there’d be bunks in most of these huts. It was a shitty place to spend any amount of time.
McGlashan and Simmons arrived. Duggan motioned for them to follow him. It looked as if there might be thirty or more huts here – easily enough to house all the personnel for the mine. They were a long way away from the mining tunnels, but there’d be plenty of transport to shuttle the miners to and fro. Some of the equipment made a lot of noise, so Duggan wasn’t surprised they’d left the huts here, away from it all.
He looked along a passage between two of the cabins. The gravel appeared to be well-trodden. He saw the first sign of violence nearby – one of the metal walls had been ripped, leaving a sharp-edged tear through both skins. It wasn’t clear what had done the damage – the Ghasts weren’t known for subtlety and had a variety of weaponry that could have punched through the toughened wall. There was no hint of movement and Duggan was already sure this had happened some time ago. Even so, he didn’t plan to leave himself open, so he indicated that McGlashan and Simmons should give him cover. They crouched low at the opposite sides of the passage and aimed their rifles along.
Duggan darted forward until he was adjacent to the hole in the cabin. With his rifle pointed ahead, he chanced a quick looked inside. The opening was large enough that he got a good enough view of what had happened – the damage had opened up the two main interior rooms to the thin atmosphere of Everlong. On one side were bunks, many of them thrown around. The other room contained tables and chairs. A viewscreen on the far wall had two big holes in it. A programme continued to play on the screen, the colours smeared and blurred.
There was a body – it was dressed in blue overalls. The man had been shot far more times than was needed to kill him. Duggan counted at least ten wounds. The Ghast weapons lacked finesse but they packed a punch. The body in the hut was a mess, like a piece of meat that had been tenderized far too long. Duggan looked away. At the end of the passage between the two huts was an open area about fifty square metres, surrounded by other huts. Duggan made the signal for McGlashan and Simmons to follow him with caution. He went on, scanning for movement and heat - the suit might just about pick up both through the walls of the cabins, though not accurately enough for him to rely on.
None of the huts close by were damaged and Duggan sprinted across the open space, keeping himself close to one of the walls. He entered another passageway, where the huts had been stacked two high. Their walls seemed to close in around him, exacerbating the darkness of night. He gave McGlashan and Simmons cover as they ran to join him, taking comfort from the weight of his rifle.
There was a hut positioned cross-ways at the end of the passage, reducing the options to a right or left turn. Duggan looked both ways – across from him to the right, the door to one of the huts was missing and the frame around it was twisted. He hurried towards it. There were more bodies inside – three of them this time. They were in the far corner, facing the door. None of the three were armed – there might be a few low-level firearms on the site, but nothing that would repel an armed assault by the Ghasts. The miners had been shredded by something with a high calibre and a fast rate of fire – probably a hand-held repeater, Duggan thought. The wall behind them was pocked with fist-sized holes. There were smears of blood, brown and dried, with sprays of it reaching to the ceiling. The violence was senseless – the people in here had almost certainly offered their surrender. The Ghasts had never seemed to care in the past and here on Everlong, Duggan saw that things hadn’t changed.
McGlashan looked in. She’d not fought in the Corps infantry for years and Duggan wondered how she’d take it – he was sure she’d be angry. As he thought about it, he realised how angry he was himself. It had been building gradually within him, so slowly and subtly that it had almost caught him unawares. He clenched his teeth to get a grip on it. At that moment, the voice of Sergeant Ortiz burst into his earpiece with startling clarity.
“I’ve got movement. There’s something up on the left-hand gantry on the dredger.”
Duggan held his rifle and ran through the cabins, feeling a mixture of hope that he’d get a shot at the enemy and fear that it might lead to discovery and the death of them all.
Chapter Eight
Duggan looked around the edge of the final hut. His helmet informed him that the dredger was still two-point-three kilometres away. There was an area of clear ground before him, with another couple of dump trucks and a mobile crane the next suitable places to find cover. The distant dredger loomed above everything, its upper gantries clearly visible over the other machinery on the pit floor. Duggan checked carefully – Sergeant Ortiz was correct. There was something moving along one of the walkways. If it was a Ghast soldier, it would have a clear view across the open areas of the pit floor. The squad would be easily detected by image amplification or movement sensors.
Duggan checked to his left – Sergeant Ortiz was more or less parallel with him and was crouched behind a nondescript lump of crumpled alloy a hundred metres away. There were three others with her. Another hundred past that, Breeze and Chainer were next to a mobile crane, along with Hill, Flores and Santos. The other soldiers weren’t in line of sight and Duggan wasn’t about to ask them to report in.
They watched for a time. Seconds become minutes and the distant figure showed no sign of moving. It was tall and broad like the Gha
sts, yet Duggan couldn’t confirm for certain it was one of the enemy. It appeared to be seated and was partially obscured by a support beam. A decision he didn’t want to make became unavoidable. There was no way they could risk sneaking any closer. If it was a Ghast and it saw them, it could either escape or communicate to the others in the launcher, who could in turn relay the information to the ship in orbit.
Duggan pulled his rifle to his shoulder and peered along the length. “If you’re a miner, you’re a stupid bastard for being up there.” He took a deep breath. “Don’t be a miner.” Duggan squeezed the trigger. The rifle whined. It had hardly any kickback, producing only a gentle thump against his suit. A moment later, the distant figure pitched over. Before Duggan could release the air he was holding in his lungs, he saw it half rise again. He tried to adjust his aim, cursing that the first shot hadn’t been a straight kill. He was too slow – the figure on the gantry slumped again, falling so flat that it would be almost impossible to hit from below. Duggan looked around for the source of the second shot. McGlashan tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to where Ortiz was crouched. The Sergeant was just lowering her rifle. She raised a hand and gave a thumbs up. Duggan let out his breath and responded with one of his own.
“We need to move up and fast. That Ghast’s suit may have communicated its death,” he said to the squad. “Remain alert, shoot on sight.”
With that, Duggan broke cover and ran towards one of the trucks. After a few seconds, he realised he was pushing himself too hard. If he was too much out of breath when he reached the Ghast emplacements, his shooting accuracy would suffer. With an effort, he slowed his charge, pacing himself to a speed he knew he could maintain for hours at a time. The ground was mostly flat and he had to give only occasional glances to his footing as he crunched through the gravel. A thin layer of sand dragged at his feet and he imagined this whole pit would be filled with it in a hundred years – the entire mineworks gone as if they had never existed.
Bane of Worlds (Survival Wars Book 2) Page 6